Dust in Desert Winds by Raiyana

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Chapter 3

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The ship Erestor had chosen left port on a drizzly autumn day. It was neither the largest nor the grandest of the ones in the harbour of Pelargir bound for Umbar, but he’d insisted and Glorfindel had not bothered to argue; his own sea-voyages could be counted on one hand, after all.

Glorfindel stood on deck, staring at the stone roofs of Pelargir growing smaller in the distance and tried not to remember the last time he’d been sailing, watching the familiar disappear in the horizon in order to once more serve his people. The Valar had been as kind as they knew how, he’d eventually decided, even if Glorfindel thought the jumble that was his mind in the first many years – centuries, for some parts – less than kind. He had been told that his memories would return, and although most of them had there were still gaps in the tapestry of his first life; he had learned to work around them, barely noticing the blank spaces most times, but he knew they were there.

“Are you well?” The voice asking the question belonged to Erestor, though the colour of his long-sleeved cloak made Glorfindel hear a different voice asking the same question, half-expecting to look upon the kind brown face and the unsettling golden eyes of Pallando’s chosen body – becoming a lady of Man based solely on descriptions from others had not gone quite as expected for Alatar’s friend. Alatar himself had fared slightly better in crafting his physical body; his eyes, at least, were not akin to gold and able to see the truth in the hearts of those who gazed into the swirling depths.

Shaking off the memory of his first sea-voyage, Glorfindel turned, offering Erestor a small smile, still not certain how much he should entrust to the self-proclaimed spy.

“A memory stirred, no more,” he replied softly. “Once, an old friend asked me that question as I gazed my last upon the shores of Aman… I was simply struck for a moment by the similarity in architecture the Men have achieved here – the Ship-Kings must have learned much from the Teleri, or from Círdan’s people…”

“To me it bears more marks of the airy but solid nobility of Lindon,” Erestor mused, “but if you wish to see Mannish forms of Telerin architecture, my Lord Glorfindel, I shall take you to the hamams of Umbar and show you the bathhouses… it is one custom I miss from my journeys in these lands; Imladris cannot match the experience… we lack the warm sulphurous springs.”

“Sulphur?” Glorfindel asked, staring confusedly at Erestor. “Men of Umbar bathe in waters that smell like putrefied eggs?!”

Erestor laughed, and for a moment Glorfindel felt his spirit soar in enjoyment, that rich voice sliding down his spine like tingles.

“Oh, now I am definitely going to take you to a bathhouse – consider it a part of your cultural exploration duties.” With a wink, Erestor walked away, still chuckling lightly. Glorfindel’s eyes followed him along the swaying deck of the ship until Erestor disappeared up the small set of stairs leading to the helm, then he caught himself and turned back to look at the dwindling port city, disappearing beyond view even to elven eyes.

“So, you’re his warrior, eh?” One of the sailors asked, nodding after Erestor and slinging a coil of rope over his shoulder.

Glorfindel flushed lightly.

“On my part,” he admitted softly.

The sailor gave him a commiserating grin. “I feel ya.”

 

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Umbar was hot – hotter than he remembered, Erestor thought, but he always thought that whenever his tasks took him East and made sure to dress appropriately.

The long necklace was made from a waterfall of golden plates; each one etched with a mystical symbol or mark with significant meaning. Erestor, obviously, remembered what they symbolised, but to the Men around him they were mystical, marking him as ‘other’ – as a conjurer of magicks or a scholar of knowledge; the distinction between a hoarder of facts and stories and one of superstitions and ‘spells’ had never been made here. They called him ‘Sâpthan’ – wise man – in the Adûnaic tongue, and Erestor had learned more than enough simple remedies and colourful sagas to pass whichever way the title was meant.

The necklace, however, was not all; his fair skin would tan quickly, but his dress would be incomplete without the cape made of colourfully embroidered swathes of fabric, each one a reference to a tale of magic – not necessarily magic he had performed but certainly stories he could tell. The cloak had been made for him centuries before and Erestor had faithfully cared for it, learning the techniques used in the stitching so he could create a new version when necessary. The loose trousers hung low on his hip, revealing the small gem-studded bauble that decorated his bellybutton – at once emergency funds and a statement of both wealth and protection – the pattern-woven fabric made by a Haruze tribeswoman whose cow he had once cured.

The lines around his eyes had taken him some time to learn, but no Eastern traveller would be seen without; the glare of the harsh Sun was said to be eased by the cosmetic, and while Erestor had never discovered if there was actual truth to the claim, the kohl liner had become part of the way he presented himself in these lands, trying not to stand out any more than his pointed ears already made him.

The clothes and jewellery he had brought from Rivendell, securely stored in his bags, and when he stepped out of the room that Amihan had so kindly lent him for sleeping after their late arrival, Erestor looked very different to the Elf known as the Chief Councillor of Imladris.

“You look like a Sâpthan,” the little girl eating breakfast told him solemnly. “Ammê said she brought one, but Uncle Bagyo said they brought a Sun-Warrior.”

Erestor tried not to smile at her description of Glorfindel – had he not thought the same? – liking him to the legend of the warriors of Sun that had come from Ar-Pharazôn’s ranks.

“You need not fear,” he replied, “the Sun-Warrior belongs to me; he is here for my protection.”

The girl nodded, eating another spoonful of her food.

Erestor picked up a piece of melon, eating the juicy fruit with relish – he had not tasted such things for long years and felt slightly surprised by how much he missed the food only found in the East.

“You must be Huni,” he said, swallowing happily, “your Ammê spoke of you on our journey.” The Adûnaic words flowed easily off his tongue, remembered even though the look on her face told him his speech was dated – centuries out of date, to be exact – and Erestor made a plan to visit the marketplace, soaking up new accents and phrasings.

“Yes.” She tilted her head, “And you’re one of the Nimrî. Have you come to tell us stories or eat us?” The question was asked fearlessly, but her expression so resembled her mother’s fierceness that Erestor for a moment wondered where the girl’s blade was – if his answer was wrong, there would be retribution, he was sure, even if she could not be more than seven years of the Sun.

“I am a Nimrî Sâpthan,” he said, cutting another slice of melon, “I am here to listen to stories – and maybe tell a few of my own.” Giving her a smile when Huni nodded – a bargain struck, it seemed – Erestor felt amused by the girl’s bold frankness.

He had heard the stories of child-eating Nimrî luring unfortunate travellers into desolate places before, of course – a surprisingly persistent leftover of Sauron’s Cult of Morgoth in Númenor.

Suddenly, their task seemed that much more difficult.

 

Glorfindel had left the house early in the company of Bagyo intending to prove to Erestor– and himself – that he was capable of the necessary subterfuge required for their task. First port of call had been the marketplace, oddly quiet in the early hour, as though the space itself was waiting to be filled by the loud calls of the hawkers and merchants.

Bagyo, however, steered him towards a narrow side street, the windows of the houses on either side shuttered against the brightness of dawn and set too high for anyone to look in besides. Knocking on a finely carved door – a depiction of Uinen with some handmaidens, Glorfindel thought, based on the fish tails and the vast swathes of hair – Bagyo smiled sunnily at the person opening it, gaining admittance into the world of an Umbar clothes-maker, it seemed.

The air was slightly dusty, somehow muffled by the massive bolts of cloth in the small storage room they were led to by a silent servant. Glorfindel’s eyes adjusted to the gloom of the room, catching the deep gleam of finely dyed silk and quietly wondering at the different people Bagyo knew. This place hardly looked fit for the rowdy sailor whose usual garb seemed to consist of loose trousers and little more – aside from his carefully maintained weaponry, of course – but it seemed the elderly proprietor knew him well by the tone of his words and the warmth of their greeting.

Glorfindel didn’t understand a word.

Languages had never been his forte – Ecthelion had spent years trying to teach him Sindarin – and even since his return the fluidity of foreign tongues continued to elude him. He’d become used to Sindarin, though some phrasings and words still caught him off guard, changed as it was from when he had first learned, but he had never made a study of Adûnaic – if they even spoke Adûnaic here?

He ought to ask Erestor for at least basic lessons, Glorfindel decided, feeling a little warm at the thought of that – Erestor would have to sit close, his focus entirely on Glorfindel, and that voice patiently sounding out foreign words… Perhaps he’d be better off asking someone else, really.

“We need Glorfindel here to look a bit less foreign,” Bagyo told him, shifting back to the common tongue, he accent more notable now that Glorfindel had heard him speak the somewhat rougher sounds of Adûnaic. “Gonna be travelling with a Sâpthan, for protection.”

“A warrior, hmm?” the tailor replied, his voice dry as paper as he blinked myopically at Glorfindel. “He’s rather pale… you ought take him to the herbalist.”

With that less than flattering assessment, the old man turned around, walking with the aid of a cane towards the vast shelves of cloth.

“But I have…” Glorfindel did not know the word he used, but the deep red colour of the cloth he unrolled was magnificent, “…for warrior. Sun-hair.”

Bagyo grinned, his white teeth gleaming in the low light, the dark tattoos that spiralled over his chest and shoulder seeming almost alive when he moved to help the tailor pull the bolt from its stack.

 

 

Erestor stared, the bread-roll left forgotten on his plate while his dalandan bounced once on his thigh before rolling across the floor unheeded.

“What are you wearing?” he asked, flabbergasted when Glorfindel walked through the door. He looked like an Umbarian pirate, lacking the intricate story-telling tattoos of a true Eastern warrior, but the golden hue to his skin was enough to make Erestor swallow, his teeth watering.

The trousers hung low, revealing a light dusting of golden hair trailing down from Glorfindel’s navel, a sash of some kind tied around his hips in the style common to the warrior class of sailors from Umbar. The sleeveless shirt gaped below his breastbone, only loosely tied with a criss-crossing cord of leather. Glorfindel flexed, lifting one hand to run it through the loose strands of his wavy hair, not yet braided back in his usual manner.

“You said we would need to blend in!” he protested. “And Bagyo told me warriors here wear things like this – we visited a tailor by the marketplace!”

Erestor sighed, trying not to feel annoyed that Glorfindel had gone to Bagyo for advice rather than himself. He didn’t manage to quell the surge of jealousy, however, though it never appeared on his face, long centuries of schooling keeping his expression politely interested.

“You certainly look more ‘local’, I agree,” he replied mildly, storing the image of those well-shaped arms – would it be possible to introduce this style of shirt in Imladris? – in his mind for later perusal. “Hungry?”

The question was meant as a distraction, heading off Glorfindel’s annoyance before it became anger, and worked… perhaps a little too well, Erestor had to admit, watching the way the light fabric clung to Glorfindel’s backside when he bent to pick up the small round greens-skinned fruit the locals called dalandan that Erestor had dropped in his surprise.

“Famished,” Glorfindel admitted, aiming one of his heart-stopping smiles at Erestor, the kind he wished meant more than they really did. Then he noticed Huni who had finished her breakfast but remained to listen to one of Erestor’s tales of life in the far north, laughing at his humorous description of Elrond hunting rabbits. “and who is this?”

“This is Huni,” Erestor introduced, pouring a glass of fresh juice for Glorfindel so he wouldn’t have to look at that smile, “Captain Amihan’s daughter.”

“Where is our host?” Glorfindel wondered, attacking the dalandan with a small knife and managing to squirt some juice into his own face. He cursed loudly, biting off the word with a guilty glance at Huni’s small face and amended his expletive to something far more innocent than what he’d probably intended.

Erestor quirked a soft smile, the resultant brief flutter of his heart being entirely ignored in favour of rescuing the fruit, peeling the green skin away to reveal the tasty orange innards.

“Amihan’s kindly gone to sort out procurement of our mounts for our journey into the desert,” he offered, “she’ll be back shortly; we ought to return to the marketplace ourselves though, procure supplies and whatever else we might need.”

 

Wandering through the marketplace, Glorfindel noted the subtle signs of respect afforded Erestor, who looked surprisingly comfortable in his get-up, he colours reminiscent of his favourite robes – how did he know which were Erestor’s favourite robes? – even if the cloth was different and the embroidery far less cohesive – and yet strangely so – than any robes Erestor would have favoured in Imladris or Lindon before it. He wasn’t quite sure how comfortable he felt himself – the trousers only came to slightly below his knees and were made of such baggy fabric that air moved quite freely over his skin beneath the covering – even though the lack of sleeves felt quite freeing. The loose cut of the tunic also allowed for the slight breezes to cool him down, but Glorfindel felt quite under-armed, missing the weight of his broadsword. Erestor had made him leave it at home in favour of a pair of long-handled daggers of a sort that he recognised as the kind the Nandorin favoured; they seemed popular here, too, noting the intricately tooled hilts hanging at people’s sides. Erestor himself seemed unarmed, though Glorfindel had seen the small sheath strapped to his lower back, hidden by his trousers and cloak, but within easy reach. Hanging from one shoulder, Erestor carried a large sack, adding travel staples he bartered from the merchants using their incomprehensible tongue like he’d been born and raised to it.

Fingering the small pommel – dulled gold, edged with a band of leaping porpoises that Bagyo had explained as a custom of tribute to Ossë and Uinen that all Umbarian sailors followed, wearing porpoises for luck at sea – Glorfindel’s eyes rowed across the gathered throng of the busy marketplace. People of all descriptions mingled here; he even spotted one or two bearing the mark of Gondor’s new King. A cacophony of voices and strange dialects filled his ears, but in truth it was not so different to markets elsewhere, he thought, thinking back to strolling through Gondolin with Ecthelion complaining about his hangover all the way to their favourite food vendor. Erestor had gone over coinage and denominations with him over breakfast, and to prove himself helpful, Glorfindel stopped at a fruit stand managing to purchase some more of the tasty small fruits they’d eaten for breakfast, adding the small bag to his own sack after liberating one for eating.

“Want some?” he asked, poking Erestor, who shook his head, distracted by a gold-seller’s wares. Glorfindel shrugged, piercing the tough skin with a nail as he looked over the glittering display. Seeing Erestor’s bare chest decked out with the small gold plates of his necklace had distracted him all morning, watching those flat brown nipples peeking out through the gold when he shifted. Dropping the peel, Glorfindel bit into his fruit with a happy hum just as Erestor picked out another small rectangle, handing over a few coins and slipping the plate into his purse.

 

 

When Glorfindel choked, spitting out something with a violent curse, Erestor’s head snapped up, scanning their surroundings for danger as his heart hammered in his chest.

“What’s wrong?..Oh.” Looking down, he tried not to laugh, failing at the look of utter betrayal that Glorfindel shot the small round fruit he had dropped by Erestor’s foot. “Why did you buy calamansi fruits?” he wondered, chuckling as he watched Glorfindel hiss and spit. “Here, rinse.” Handing him a small skin of water, Erestor shook his head, soothing the agitated vendor with a joke that made him laugh at Glorfindel’s mistake and wave them off.

“They were nice this morning!” Glorfindel protested, glaring into his sack of fruit. “But now it’s horribly tart.”

“It’s… not the same fruit, Glorfindel,” Erestor said, still trying not to let his mirth take over – he had made that mistake once, too, after all – “this morning you ate dalandans – you’ve purchased calamansis – they’re similar, but …” Giving in to his laughter at the look on Glorfindel’s face, Erestor leaned against the nearest clay wall, staring at his red-faced companion and wondering if Glorfindel had ever looked more kissable. Eventually, Glorfindel began chuckling at himself, too, those blue eyes losing the stormy edge to lighten with amusement.

“Perhaps you’d better purchase things,” he laughed, leaning against the wall next to Erestor, the errant sunbeams catching in his hair making him look even more kissable. Lifting the skin, he took another long drag, washing the tartness out of his mouth with a please moan.

Erestor nodded, his throat dry and his heart beating quickly, watching a single droplet travel down Glorfindel’s neck, ending in the hollow of his collarbones, perfectly framed by the shirt that left more than enough room for someone to lick away that small bead of water.

Erestor groaned at himself, shifting against the wall.

This infatuation is only growing stronger. Valar help me.

 

 

Glorfindel forgot all charitable thoughts about the practicality of his new clothes when he saw the two… things… that the otherwise eminently sensible Amihan had purchased for their trip to Harad.

Feeling a strong sense of longing for Asfaloth, his mind travelled back to his beloved companion with ease – Asfaloth and Yáressë had been securely stabled in Minas Tirith – comparing the two.

The animal giving him a suspicious look from beneath its long lashes had four legs and a saddle – he believed it to be a saddle, at least – but that was as far as Glorfindel was willing to credit that the creature could be used as a ‘mount’. The rope harness it wore was tied to a small pole and the thing he believed was meant to be a saddle looked like a colourful blanket with handles of some type. Turning, he glanced at Erestor, but the other elf was no longer standing beside him. Instead, Erestor, with his dark hair unbound and his story-telling cloak, looked like he had been born to this part of the world, murmuring in a low voice to one of the beasts chewing placidly on whatever they ate as he rubbed its neck.

“What are they?” he asked, dropping his sack next to Erestors and moving cautiously closer to the long-necked tawny animal that huffed on his hair, the giant teeth showing for a moment in a grin.

“Camels, Glorfindel,” Erestor replied, ducking under the neck of one to inspect the other, running his fingers down each leg. “They’re a good way to travel in the desert – see the feet?”

Glorfindel looked down, suddenly fearing for his toes when the camel he had been petting shifted its weight.

“The toes splay slightly, giving it better grip on sandy dunes,” Erestor continued, turning back to Glorfindel’s camel and scratching its neck. The camel’s big brown eyes half closed, and Glorfindel could only envy the pleasure it must be to have Erestor’s clever fingers playing over your skin – even for a camel!

“And you mean for me to ride this… camel?” Glorfindel wondered, looking at the height of the saddle above ground and wondering how Men managed to swing themselves up there.

Erestor nodded, giving him an encouraging smile, and turned to pick up both their sacks.

“We’ll set off in the morning,” he called, pushing aside the bright piece of fabric that covered the doorway.

Glorfindel followed, exchanging one last suspicious glance with his so-called mount.

He missed his horse.