A Candle for the Hollow City by Lordnelson100

Chapter 8 Inheritance

But that is not the end of the story.  Not quite.

The news of the destruction went out among all the houses of the Khazâd, East and West, North and South. And counsel was given and taken. At last, the Wise seers of each House joined together and made this decree.

“We hold this thing accursed. In the mouths of the Elves it may still be the Necklace of the Dwarves, but it never again shall be accounted an heirloom of any of our Fathers or their folk. Let no Dwarf seek it. Though we created this treasure in joy, and gave it in friendship, it has become stained and ruined with our own blood.

It has passed away from us.

As for the people of Nogrod: if there is justice to be dealt for them, our hands are too small to make it. Into the care of They who dwell beyond world’s end, we place their cause.”

And so we watched from afar, and listened, to the later history of the Elves who bore away Thinkol’s legacy.

It became an inheritance of death. Whether it was the curse of the Jewel that sat in Morgoth’s crown that awoke; whether the unjust deeds done by those who grasped at these treasures called down their own punishment; whether the spilled blood of the Khazâd children in the mountain cried out, who can tell?

But certainly, death pursued the Elves who held the thing. Elf slew Elf, kin turned again kin. High lords and generals of the Eldar, whose faces we once knew, who fought in battle beside us long ago against the Enemy, fell into madness, and sought the now thrice-cursed heirloom through blood and fire. Doriath was sacked again, and Thinkol’s grandson slain upon his throne, and his children and people killed or driven forth.

Yet they who held this patrimony clung to it beyond even the weal of their own loved ones and children, unwilling, perhaps unable, to surrender it, even to save themselves. From place to place they fled, from one refuge to the next, and each time they were pursued, for the terrible possession of the Jewel could not be hid, and drew doom after it.

At last, after many years,  a great-granddaughter of Thingol, grown to womanhood, was driven to bay in a refuge by the sea. She was wearing the Silmaril, set in its well-crafted necklace, as foes chased her even onto the high stones overlooking the ocean.  And turning, she saw that her pursuing enemies were like to slay both she and her own small children in their fury.

And in her heart, her mother’s love rose up at last, more wonderful and powerful than any treasure of the hand, and to save her children, she threw herself over the high edge into the sea,  leading her greedy pursuers away from her cubs, as the vixen draws away the hunters.

But the Powers had pity on her, and changed her to a white bird, and she was not destroyed, but flew away over the ocean in that form. And the Wise Ones took at last the shining treasure that had wielded so much woe, and removed it from the world.  They made it into a new star of Evening. Men have many names for it, and the Elves see in it a ship, steering through the heavens. We name it Thatr Danak , the Candle Star, that is carried through the Heavens in memory of those we have lost, but will see again.

Of this sad story of the downfall of Hollowbold, our Elders have made this Teaching, that it may not be forgot. For through the long ages of the world, even stone will wear away. So much more do we lose, who are not stone but flesh, the prey of enemy and of exile.

We have our teaching, and the Elves have theirs. Through countless years, they have continued to tell their own version of events about the Nauglamír. Ever they turn the story against us, saying it reveals the greed of the Dwarves, and our treachery.

They say that Elven memory is perfect. And yet it seems not so. For they have forgotten much.  They remember the beauty and power of this great work, yet not the friendship in which it was crafted and given. They remember how one of our Kings fell into folly, but not the sins of theirs.

Strange to say; for even in their own telling, the thing does not reflect well on them.

For the children of Nogrod died when the wolves of Morgoth fell upon them. But the children of Grey-Cloak’s house were slain by wolves in the shape of their own kin.

Here the Chorus and the Speaker ended their work, and the last candle was put out.  Silence and darkness fell in the hall for a long moment, until at a signal, torches were lit, and all became as it was.