Song of Souls by Raiyana

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Chapter 4

Khalebrimbur told me.

Narví’s voice was growing stronger, as though he was moving closer to her. He wasn’t moving, he thought, but he still seemed to follow his name from her lips, follow the sound like it was the silver trumpets that had once welcomed him to Gondolin. Thinking of Gondolin seemed to have conjured a new voice.

Celebrimbor never made it to Lindon.

Glorfindel. He was almost certain of it, though he felt a moment of confusion at his own certainty before he remembered that Glorfindel had been returned from the Halls of Mandos.

Because of his work, of course, Celebrimbor thought, a shudder of shame running through him. He should have listened to Gil-Galad, he knew, when Anna- Sauron came, but he… His own great-grandfather was a servant of Aulë, and Celebrimbor secretly thought he had learned more from Mahtan than from Fëanor, how could he turn away a servant of Aulë? He, the last remnant of Mahtan’s blood in Middle-Earth? Grandmother would have been appalled; Aulë’s Maiar had always been welcomed in their house, shared their teachings freely with his kin. He had thought… but it didn’t matter what he had thought, didn’t matter that he had hoped his House might not have been entirely forsaken because of the Oath; what mattered was Sauron’s treachery, and the imminent consequences of his own naivety.

We will place your archers behind the line of the vanguard. I’ll be here, with two hundred Dwarven soldiers. Geira will take the flank, and your cavalry can sweep up from the other side…

Narví again, and Celebrimbor thought his heart would burst with the fear her words inspired. His Narví was going to war? NO!

He thought he screamed it; he didn’t want her to fight the hordes he knew were converging on his peaceful lands, didn’t want her facing Orcs and Goblins and whatever other servants Sauron would send at them. He wanted her to help yes, but she had to be safe, be protected!

 

 

 

“I will stand with you.” Glorfindel said it like it wasn’t even a point of discussion and Narví bristled. Who did the Elf think he was? She had been in her fair share of warfare, she didn’t need a minder!

“I can take care of myself,” she hissed. The infuriating elf just smiled at her.

“Yes, my lady,” he agreed placidly, “but my old friend Celebrimbor would be grieved to see you harmed for trying to fulfil his last wishes… I shall honour his friendship with you when he cannot.”

“I’m in no more danger than any other Dwarf, Lord Glorfindel!” she snarled, offended at the slight on her skills.

“On the contrary,” he murmured, “we don’t know how long Celebrimbor was in the hands of the Enemy, nor what he told them… but I should be surprised if Sauron had no knowledge of his friendship with your kin; with you.” Narví scowled, but she couldn’t think of a good argument to rebuff him.

 

 

 

Listening to Glorfindel trying to protect his Narví, Celebrimbor could only nod, even if he objected to the word friendship. What he felt for his golden Dwarf was so much deeper than mere friendship; otherwise he would never have been able to find her when he left his body, which he was sure Glorfindel knew. Even if he didn’t, Erestor was bound to have noticed, bound to have told the Balrog-Slayer that he had caught Celebrimbor looking at Narví more than once with his heart in his eyes.

He wondered why it was so much easier to hear them, now. The voices remained far-off, but clearer, no longer muffled and clouded. The nothingness had not changed, though Celebrimbor didn’t know how he was even perceiving it; he had no ears or eyes, no fingers to touch, no skin to feel chills or warmth, yet he was acutely aware that he – suddenly worried that somehow his conscious would dissipate into the nothingness – was surrounded by nothing. It wasn’t darkness, nor light, wasn’t hot nor cold, there was no breeze, no scent of grass or soil or stone or metal. He felt no other… beings – what was he? A disembodied fëa? – around him, and he only knew that he wasn’t making up the voices he heard because of the words they were saying. Had he told Sauron – he could hardly bear to think of him as Annatar, remembering moments of laughter and joy in the magical rings they were crafting – about Narví?

He wished he could see her one more time, could check that she wore the armour he had made for her – she had called him silly, insisted that her old set of mail was more than adequate for her appearances in the rings, for fighting in the tournaments... but he had made it for her anyway, mithril and steel, inlaid with patterns made of ithildin – on the inside, he didn’t want her to be spotted by an enemy due to the light of the stars above her – and decorated with jade she had carved to match the axe they had made together. He liked making things for her, pretty clasps for her cloak – he was particularly fond of the holly-leaf embossed with the eight-pointed star of his House combined with the seven stars of Durin’s Line and – Eru, he had been courting her! Celebrimbor thought he might have fainted if he had still possessed a form capable of fainting. Had he really been…? Looking back, searching through his memory, he was startled to realise just how many things he had created just to see her smile at him. And yet… he had not spoken the words, had not actually told her that she was… everything.

 

 

 

“I remember making these,” Narví remarked, when they finally abandoned their maps and plans – runners had been sent to Geira and Durin both – looking at a set of statues made of clay. “I had not thought he would have kept them on display.”

“Celebrimbor,” Glorfindel said, nodding in recognition, “but I don’t know the elleth.”

“Also Khalebrimbur,” she laughed, “I was proving a point.” Glorfindel looked confused, but Narví simply shook her head. “It does not matter.” Silently, the golden warrior resumed leading her towards the dining hall; Narví was half-tempted to remind him that she had spent the better part of ten years in this house working with its master and visited countless times since then, but her growling stomach demanded attention.

 

 

 

She made him stonework. Celebrimbor smiled, remembering the statues he thought Glorfindel would have meant. ‘You’re wrong to claim you share no features with your mother’, she had told him, ‘and I will prove it to you.’ He had not believed her, and, as always, the thought of his mother’s fate – had she been reborn in Valinor, with neither her husband nor her son for comfort? – made him sad and withdrawn, but Narví had not cared to let him brood on the past. Instead, he had found two busts; she told him they were haphazardly made, and of clay, clearly inferior to her mind, but he had not let her destroy them once he had seen what she wished him to see; the way his face bore subtle reminders of his mother’s – more pronounced if he had been born an elleth, but there to see plainly once her eyes had revealed them to him.

 

 

 

The enemy would arrive with nightfall. Dark clouds roiled in front of them, but these carried no rain; they were there to block the light of the stars from reaching the ground, to stop the Elves calling upon Elbereth for aid and courage as was their wont, but Narví’s Dwarrow did not care. Many of them saw as easily in darkness as they did in gloom; Dwarrow had never been made for life on the surface, life under the bright light of Trees or Suns. They had been made to work in the deep places of the Earth, to shape the foundations and bore through the mountains, bringing up the treasures of the dark places beneath the rock and their eyes seemed somehow luminous to the Elves standing scattered among them, colours no Elven eyes could hope to match; turquoise, aquamarine, emerald, even a few garnets scattered here and there among citrine and topaz, tourmalines of all kinds glittering in the darkness. Where the elves would be shooting half-blind, the Dwarrow would strike true; Glorfindel had expected the coming of the clouds, and he had interspersed his archers among the dwarven rear-guard.

 

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