Lingering in the Hither Lands by bunn

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High King of the Noldor

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The falling sun was almost gone from the shore below the Blue Mountains, on the shores of the wide new Gulf of Lune, and the makeshift camp that was slowly turning into the new city of Mithlond was in blue shadow. Though the last of the sunlight still played and sparkled on the waves of the Gulf of Lune, the light spring wind had turned chill.

“Not a word!” Elrond said, frustrated. He was sitting on a fraying mat by the small five-legged brazier, in the unfinished tall white room that was currently home to the High King of the Noldor, feeding straws one by one into the bright coals. “Not a word have I had from them. Not before they took the gems, not when they were standing there at bay before the entire host, and not afterwards.” He looked at Gil-galad. “I would have told you, if they had.”

“Would you.” Gil-galad said, in a tone of considerable scepticism. It was not a question. He was lounging on the bed, writing notes on a wax tablet. They were still short of paper, and Gil-galad preferred wax for notes, anyway. It was easier to rub things out and start again. He frowned at what he had written, and erased a word with the blunt end of the stylus.

Elrond looked sideways at him. “I would probably have told you,” he amended, although he was fairly sure that he would have told Gil-galad everything. He had fought and worked beside Gil-galad by now more than long enough to trust both his kindness and his judgement. “But it’s irrelevant anyway. I’ve heard nothing. Nor has Celebrimbor, and nor has Elros.”

“And so you sit there, interrupting my attempts to recall the songs of lost Hithlum, feeding what was my perfectly good straw mat into the flames piece by piece, and moping,” Gil-galad said, pointing his stylus accusingly at Elrond.

“If it were Círdan, we’d be out looking for him,” Elrond pointed out, watching a lit straw smoulder slowly, and the ash eventually topple off the end.

“Yes, Elrond. If it were Círdan, who has always...” Gil-galad seemed to think better of what he was saying. “It’s not the same,” he said instead. “You know it isn’t. Anyway, why are you asking me?”

“I’m your herald. You’re my king. I thought you might object.”

Gil-galad laughed. “Mmm, yes. Thingol’s heir, who also happens to be Turgon’s great-grandson and heir to all three Houses of the Edain, is herald to the High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth. If I tried telling you or Elros to do anything you did not wish to, Elrond, who do you think would rise against me first? The survivors of Doriath and the entire people of the Sindar, or the Gondolodrim? Or the Edain?”

Elrond gave him a sideways grin. “The Gondolodrim. There might not be so many of them, but the Noldor are always more trouble.”

Gil-galad laughed. “Now you decide to be Doriathrim, so you can make pointed remarks about us. That isn’t fair!”

“That’s what you think! I might be being Noldor and proud of my awkward heritage,” Elrond said, and leant over to poke him with a straw.

Gil-galad grabbed at it, missed, and laughed again as Elrond brought the straw up as if in salute. “Celebrimbor and his Fëanorians would be right behind you too, which would certainly make for an interesting and argumentative war-council on your side of the lines, but since the only people who would be left on my side would be Círdan and his people, the survivors of Nargothrond and the few from Hithlum who haven’t left for Valinor, you wouldn’t need them all to be cooperating for very long.”

Elrond shook his head. “You’d have Galadriel!”

“And you’d have Celeborn.”

“There’s a terrifying thought,” Elrond said. “But once the war was won, everyone would unite in telling me that I should have nothing more to do with Maglor or with Maedhros anyway. I’d have to be stern, and you know I hate being stern. You’re so much better at it. Perhaps I should stop pulling your mat to pieces, and we shouldn’t go to war.”

“It would be my preferred approach,” Gil-galad said, mock-solemnly, and made a grandiose gesture with his hand, like an actor playing a king in one of the new plays that people had started to perform in the new harbour-town of Forlond. “Being king is mostly hoping nobody notices you’re making it up. Elros knows that.”

“Hush,” Elrond said laughing. “When I first met you on Balar you seemed enormously kingly and dignified. I’m still convinced there must be far more to it!”

“And so the king keeps his crown and the king’s peace endures!” Gil-galad said magnificently.

“Though alas, the mat may be past repair already,” Elrond said, poking at it doubtfully. “So you won’t object if I take out a search-party?”

Gil-galad swung his feet around so he was sitting on the bed and could look Elrond full in the face. “Officially, I consider it a private matter if you seek your foster-father and his brother,” he said. “If their victims come begging me for redress, then... Oh, I suppose I would exile them for their crimes... No? Very well then, I’d try to arrange some sort of weregild, how’s that? That seems to work for the Edain, so why not us? I’d prefer to avoid another kinslaying. Though given their record, I fear they would be less particular if our situations were reversed.”

Elrond made a pained noise. Gil-galad raised his dark eyebrows and gave Elrond a fierce look.

“Well would they? They killed the guards to steal the Silmarils, though the war was done and the Enemy a prisoner.”

“Yes,” Elrond said unhappily. “And yet.”

“And yet, since you and Elros are the chiefest of their victims remaining on the Hither Shore, and also among my greatest supporters, if you want to deal with them yourself, your word has weight. Unofficially, and speaking as your friend, I hope they’re never seen again.”

“Because of the Havens,” Elrond said, feeling as though there was a bad taste in his mouth. The attack on the Havens had always been there, a shadow in the past that lay between Elrond and his earliest memories, but there had been plenty of other things to think of, and neither he nor Elros had made a habit of dwelling on it. Not until the shadow had come back to bloody life, and looked at them through his foster-father’s eyes.

“Because of the Havens and the Elves and Men they slew there, because of the guards they killed to take the Silmarils, because of Doriath... Because of Alqualondë, too, I suppose, though we all seem to have agreed that Fingolfin’s peace should still cover Alqualondë, so perhaps it’s better not mentioned. And because of you, Elros, and your parents, from whom they stole everything.”

“They did. But so much has been lost already,” Elrond said, fiddling with the loose edges of the mat. “Isn’t that what you’re trying to do just now, combing through a child’s memory of Hithlum to save what few remnants you can? It doesn’t seem disloyal to my mother and father, to have loyalties upon the Hither Shore. I have loyalties to you, to the Men who will not go to Númenor, the Elves who do not wish to go to Valinor...”

“And to the House of Fëanor,” Gil-galad said sceptically.

Elrond looked into the brazier flames and thought about it. “No. But at the same time, yes...If you and I had nothing left here, we would have sailed into the West already, as the Valar sternly counselled us to do. We wouldn’t be lingering here at all, and certainly would not be building new cities.”

“I am not going to tell you what to do,” Gil-galad said, deliberately serious. “We neither of us have much family left upon the Hither Shore, and as you say, we Exiles have our own loyalties, and they are not entirely those of Valinor. You know I’m glad you have chosen to stay! But still, to me it seems that Fëanor’s sons are long-lost to darkness, and dangerous. I’m concerned for your safety.”

“Are we not all dangerous?”

Gil-galad gave him a long thoughtful stare. “I’m not making any comments about your fighting skills, though privately I think them terrifying for your age.”

“For my age...” Elrond smiled. “I’m Half-elven, and you are less than a hundred years older than I am, oh ancient king of Elves! The half of me that is a Man considers you a frivolous child.”

Gil-galad laughed at that. “I had a scant few years to be a child, though admittedly, a few more than you. Allow me a few moments of frivolity, O grave half-Man!”

Elrond grinned back at him. “We have time for joy now, after so many years of grief and hurry. But that’s my point. We have thralls freed from Angband, here in Mithlond. Those who still feel the shadow of the Enemy’s hand over them at times, who cannot be entirely trusted. We have found ways to deal with that. ”

“Morgoth’s thralls did not choose their thralldom,” Gil-galad said, serious again. “The sons of Fëanor swore their oath freely, and freely they followed it to the red ruin of the Havens.”

“I don’t know about how they swore. I wasn’t there. And nor were you, child-king of Elves.”

“I may hit you, if you keep that up,” Gil-galad said, amused. “I get enough of it from your Gondolodrim.”

“They are your Gondolodrim, not mine! But what I saw myself of the Oath of Fëanor looked not so very much unlike the eye of the Enemy laid upon his thralls.”

Gil-galad began to speak and Elrond held up a hand. “No, a moment, please! You’ll say they could still have marched against Angband and died, instead of choosing to attack Doriath or the Havens, and there’s some truth in that. You’ll say they were princes of the Noldor who should have had more strength. Most of all, that they should have found another path at the end, and I agree. Believe me, I agree! I’m angry with them and sick at them. And yet, my heart cries out that they should not be lost to darkness. We should at least find out where they went.”

Gil-galad sighed. “The blood of their own kin ran red beneath their swords, Elrond.”

“We have seen evil ended, and we have a world to build anew in joy beneath the Sun and Moon and Stars. That’s what you said. If evil is ended...”

“I did say that,” Gil-galad agreed. He shook his head in defeat, “And now I’m regretting it!”

“Don’t,” Elrond told him with a grin. “It was a good speech. Inspiring. Look, it has inspired me to repair your mat.” He had woven the broken edges together, so that the spaces where the missing straws had been were spaced evenly to make a new pattern.

Gil-galad shook his head, smiling back. “You have, so now I cannot go to war to avenge the injury! Very well then; I give up. Seek them if you must. I won’t even tell you to be careful. Just think about what might happen if they break the peace we fought for.”