The Stars Above the Sea by Idrils Scribe

Chapter 3

The white towers of Pelargir, the great Port of Gondor, appeared to float above the city’s massive ramparts like an apparition from a fever-dream. Elrohir joined the throngs of travellers hanging over the railings to catch their first sight of the city from one of the fleet of ferry-boats carrying man and beast across the wide expanse of the Anduin.

The flat-bottomed ferry rocked precariously at the sudden imbalance, spooking some of the closely tethered horses. A swearing, agitated ferryman swiftly dispersed the crowd brandishing a stout wooden club. His lilting Gondorian accent reminded Elrohir so much of Glorfindel’s Sindarin it almost made the salty expletives sound cultured.

Elemir, whose fine garb and confident manner clearly identified him as a man of means, was allowed to stand wherever he pleased, and he laughed heartily at the fracas. The merchant’s elation at reaching his home safely, and profitably, was infectious. Elrohir gladly joined him.

The coming of summer in Gondor brought gentle sunshine, reflecting off the placid river like a mirror of the finest silver. The brisk westwind carried a fresh, salty smell, and the cries of sleek seagulls wheeling overhead awoke an unknown restlessness in Elrohir, a sweet ache of longing for distant horizons.

His bout of nostalgia was swiftly forgotten as he craned his neck at Pelargir’s fortifications. The King’s Harbour was sheltered by unscalable walls of white granite, hewn into smooth, creamy blocks taller than a grown man. By some arcane art the Men of Gondor had stacked them high, and so tightly one couldn’t fit as much as a fingernail between them. The only passage was through great city-gates of cast bronze. The doors were decorated so finely with gilded scenes of Elendil’s journey to Middle-earth that they seemed too beautiful to be exposed to the elements. From the gate they entered a torch-lit tunnel, its length clearly intended to inspire awe at the wall’s thickness. At its end visitors emerged, momentarily stunned, into the dazzling sunlight of a grand market square lined with flowering orange trees.

Among the multicoloured stalls and tents bustled all manner of folk. Stallholders and vendors loudly hawked their wares. Elrohir was captivated enough by the pulsing heartbeat of the city that he no longer cared whether he looked like a gawking provincial. He strolled past tubs of writhing, iridescent river fish caught in the harbour, heaped displays of fragrant spices traded from the four corners of the world, and the colourful bounty of the lush river vales of Lebennin: oranges, lemons and fist-sized tomatoes stacked as high as a man’s waist.

Dominating the city was the Citadel of the King. Wherever one turned in Pelargir, glimpses of its elegant towers could be seen through gaps in the rows of stone houses built wall to wall. Elemir pointed out the pennants to Elrohir. All were sable, but both the seven stars and the winged crown flew high, flapping briskly in the sea-wind. Proud of the royal favour his city enjoyed, Elemir was keen to explain the flags’ meaning: King Cemendur and Crown Prince Eärendil were both in residence, with the court on its yearly retreat from the stifling heat of Minas Anor.

From his days as a slave Elrohir was familiar with the city of Umbar, but he had lived in the desert for many years since, and the sheer scale of the King’s Harbour was overwhelming. He looked for the slave market or any sign of slaves in the city in vain. With astonishment he realised that Elemir’s unbelievable claim that there was no slavery in Gondor had been the truth. He fell in love with Pelargir and its people there and then.

The city’s lifeblood was the River Anduin. This close to its mouths it grew broad and deep, the eastern shore barely visible to Mortal eyes. At the sight of the rows upon rows of tall ships anchored in the docks, the gathering of Gondor’s mighty navy and its mercantile fleet, it dawned on Elrohir that without an introduction his endeavour might not have been as straightforward as he had first believed.

Luckily Elemir was as good as his word. Within days of their arrival in the city he invited Elrohir to his family’s townhouse in the stately Jewellers’ Quarter to show him maps of Eriador. Elrohir had had no concept of the sheer size of that realm. When asked where in Arnor, exactly, he meant to seek his family he realised that the mention of Rivendell would raise both eyebrows and difficult questions.

Instead he blurted out “Fornost!”

The new capital of the Northern Kingdom, and the only Northern city Elrohir knew by name. Elemir quickly disabused him of the notion that he could walk from Tharbad to Fornost in a few days with his saddle bag slung over his shoulder.

“Arnor is cold enough to freeze your bones, lad, and winter comes early. You may think nights are cold in the desert, but you’ve never seen the likes of the North! Trees lose their leaves and the river itself turns solid with ice. They’ll find your corpse in a snow-melt come spring if you try to walk that road alone. If the Orcs don’t get to you first, that is. When they do there will be nothing left to find!”

Suitably forewarned, Elrohir deferred to Elemir’s judgement in the matter. Thankfully his generous--if somewhat pedantic--friend delivered. Within a few days he spoke to his brother and gave Elrohir a letter of recommendation for the Beinalph, a caravel that sailed up and down the coast carrying Gondorian wine and spices destined for Arnor. The final journey of the season would take her all the way north, up the river Greyflood to Tharbad.

Her captain was a stout, bearded Northerling called Berengil. He had just lost several of his regular crew to summer-fever, and agreed to take Elrohir on as a deckhand and rower despite his complete lack of experience, his pay consisting of room, board and passage to Tharbad. From there the ship’s precious cargo would go up the King’s Road by horse caravan, all the way to Fornost.

Upon reaching Tharbad Elrohir stood before a vital decision. His most sensible destination was indeed Fornost. He could afford to spend the harsh Northern winter in the city’s safety if he lived frugally and found some employment. The people of Fornost were likely familiar with the Elves of Rivendell. If he still wanted to after hearing their tales, he could set out to search for the hidden valley come spring. The riskier alternative was following the Greyflood upstream to where it turned into the Loudwater. According to Glorfindel that river ran past his father’s house. If he failed to locate it, winter would find him lost in cold, wild lands. Even worse, if his welcome with the Elves wasn’t as warm as Glorfindel had claimed, he would be at the mercy of the strange creatures without hope of escape.

These grim considerations were the only stain on his sunny days in Pelargir. For what had to be the hundredth time he tried in vain to distill some clarity from the few jumbled memories he had from his early childhood. As he had long known no useful information was forthcoming. Rivendell and its inhabitants would remain a mystery until he could return to see them with his own eyes. For a few agonizing days he considered staying in Pelargir and trying to make his fortune in the prosperous harbour city where no one knew or cared about his past. Despite the attraction he felt to the city and its people, the thought of Elladan made it an unbearable prospect.

In the end Berengil’s words made up his mind. The captain assured Elrohir that he knew the Northern traders well and getting him a position as a hired sword protecting their caravan to Fornost would be no trouble at all. Elrohir gladly agreed to this, determined to make sure the man was happy with his work on board.

On his last night in Pelargir Elrohir walked the bustling quays of the great harbour. The day had been stifling, but the balmy summer evening drew city folk out of their houses in droves. Every door and window in the city had been thrown open, and before each house stood wooden benches where the inhabitants gathered to eat, drink, gamble and gossip with noisy abandon. Earlier that night he had checked out of the cheap boarding house where he’d shared a shabby room with other sailors. The Beinalph would sail out with the tide in the third hour, making it hardly worthwhile to pay for another night. Selling his dun mare proved an unexpected windfall. He had sewn the silver into his undershirt to rest safely against his skin, well hidden from the pickpockets roaming the seedier districts of the city.

Two small coppers bought a spiced fish pasty from one of the roadside food-carts doing a roaring trade. Elrohir sat down on a carved stone bench outside a sailor’s pub, the old saddle bag containing his possessions carefully tucked beneath his legs. He silently watched the colourful crowds pass. Pelargir held all kinds of folk: blond men and women from the Land of Horses in the East, small stocky woodmen and tall dark-haired Númenóreans.

The day had been memorable, and it left Elrohir in a soft mood. He had been to say his final thanks to Elemir inside the man’s shop in the cavernous jewel-market. Business was slow in the hot midday hours, and Elemir had gladly left the shop in the hands of his apprentice. He directed Elrohir to the cool, shaded courtyard in the back where he dug up a jug of yellow peasants’ wine from Lebennin. The afternoon became merry indeed, and when Elrohir let slip that he had never seen a Dwarf Elemir insisted on taking him to the jewellers’ guild-house, where all Dwarven delegations to the city were housed as honored guests of the guildmaster.

The fabled creatures had looked nearly as wide as they were tall, impossibly hairy and dressed in mail and leather despite the summer heat. Elemir had almost doubled over with laughter at Elrohir’s wide-eyed astonishment. They had parted in good cheer, with many good wishes and the grand gestures and embraces that seemed commonplace among the sanguine inhabitants of Pelargir.

The locals claimed that sometimes even Elven ships moored in the King’s Harbour. At first Elrohir had avoided the city’s better areas, keeping himself the less savoury quarters out of concern about being seen and recognised by Elvish sailors. He did not look forward to facing Elf-lord’s wrath before it had ample time to cool. ‘The grubbier, the safer’, he reckoned, because he could not imagine the likes of Glorfindel taking up ramshackle lodgings in a street lined with open sewers. During his weeks in the city he had neither seen nor heard talk of a single Elf, and his concern had dissipated.

As it turned out he gravely underestimated Elrond’s web of spies.

Elrohir quietly slipped through the milling late-night crowd on the dockside to join the crew of the Beinalph. Sunset had brought little relief from the windless, sweltering heat, and the still air in Pelargir’s sailors’ quarter seemed entirely made up of old sweat and sour wine. He briefly paused to sling his heavy saddlebag over his other shoulder before sweat would soak through his linen tunic, when from the corner of his eye he caught sight of a slender, dark-haired woman in a simple sailor’s outfit. She and her male companion had nothing of Glorfindel’s golden majesty, but one look was enough to tell they were not Mortal. The pair stood motionless on the threshold of a chandler’s shop, looking directly at Elrohir across the bustling quay.

Elrohir’s well-honed survival instinct took over. He crouched low and dove among a group of drunken seamen, pushing and pulling all he could reach to create an impenetrable throng of unsteady men. Once he achieved sufficient chaos, with shouted curses and the first erratic punches beginning to fly, he ran as fast as he could. If the Elves gave chase Elrohir did not notice.

He snuck to the Beinalph’s mooring by several detours, rushing onto the gangplank with his heart racing like a Wraith was on his heels. The outgoing tide would soon be upon them, and the ship’s deck swarmed with shouting, sweating seamen like a disturbed anthill in the flickering light of many storm lanterns. Thankfully both captain Berengil and his helmsman were far too preoccupied with ensuring the precious cargo -- man-high barrels of wine and salted lemons -- was tied down securely to notice anything amiss with their new deckhand. Elrohir brought his belongings below deck and made sure to find an occupation that kept him there.

Even at the backbreaking work of rowing the ship out of the harbour he could not find his peace again until Pelargir had receded to an orange glow on the dark horizon.

Chapter End Notes

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