Northern Skies by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 1

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“How did you find me?”

 

Elrohir tried to make sense of the world once more as Glorfindel led him away from Tharbad’s city gates along a footpath winding through fields of ripe corn. Shining leaves and ears rustled in a breeze carrying the bracing scent of rain. The land’s lush emerald and golden hues were a far cry from the arid deserts Elrohir knew. He briefly stopped to marvel at a cheeky flock of starlings descending upon an orchard to greedily peck into an absurd abundance of apples. The North’s sheer richness was overwhelming.

 

Glorfindel gently touched his arm, and Elrohir meekly fell into step with his Elvish guide, driven equally by his desperate longing for Elladan and the simple fact that he had nowhere else to go.

 

Glorfindel’s relief at Elrohir following him willingly was obvious. His smile had become a thing of brilliance. The Elf-lord had taken to his task of bringing Elrond’s long-lost son home from Harad with remarkable tenacity. In Harad, Elrohir had remembered little from his early life beyond a deep, wordless yearning for his brother, and he took badly to Glorfindel’s unusual message. He bolted, leaving the Elf behind to make his own way back to Imladris from Far Harad while Elrohir did his utmost to travel North undetected in search of Elladan.

 

He had crewed on a ramshackle merchant’s ship, the Beinalph, for the journey from Pelargir to the river port of Tharbad. The shock of finding Glorfindel patiently awaiting him on Tharbad’s quay as if their separation and Elrohir’s journey of a thousand lonely, miserable miles had never happened left Elrohir reeling. He could barely process the churning contradiction of astonishment, fear and relief at finding a familiar face amidst the strangeness of the Far North.

 

All Elrohir’s careful considerations and his best laid plans on how to discreetly inquire about Rivendell and the Elves had come to nothing. Somehow Rivendell found him, and he was headed there with all possible speed whether he wished it or not.

 

Glorfindel’s voice bore no trace of resentment or anger at his wayward charge when he finally answered.

 

“Our people in Pelargir let us know you were on the Beinalph. All I needed to do was wait for you on the quay.”

 

“So they were yours after all. I thought I had shaken them off.”

 

Elrohir recalled his flight from the Elvish sailors who recognized him among the milling crowd on the docks of Pelargir. Glorfindel deftly caught Elrohir’s memory of provoking a drunken mass brawl only to vanish into the resulting confusion, and once more laughed his musical laugh. The familiar sound briefly let Elrohir share in his shining, wholesome joy.

 

“They were not mine but Círdan’s, who is a dear friend to your father. You led them on a merry chase, but the dockmaster told them all about you. They spoke with his brother, too. He seems a kind man, that Elemir.”

 

Elemir, a Gondorian merchant, had arranged Elrohir’s position as a deckhand on the Beinalph, a selfless act of genuine charity. Concern for his benefactor gnawed at Elrohir. He suddenly realized he had been beyond selfish to accept the help Elemir offered out of a kind heart, while leaving the man entirely in the dark about the strange creatures hunting him. Among the Black Númenoreans of Umbar, assisting a fugitive was a capital offense. Elrohir had seen the gallows in use often enough to know the grim reality of it. He wondered how Elves might deal with a mortal man found to have defied them so. Whatever fate had befallen Elemir at their hands, it was long done now. Irrationally, Elrohir nonetheless felt he owed his friend one last plea.

 

“He only helped me out of kindness. He had no way of knowing I was on the run, or from who.”

 

Glorfindel looked at him with sudden sadness.

 

“Through Elemir’s interference you could travel North safely. He and his brother have been named Elf-friends, a title that comes with great honor in Gondor. It will increase the fortunes of their House.”

 

Elrohir’s relief at hearing Elemir had been rewarded rather than punished was almost a physical sensation.

 

“I thank you. Elemir deserved some good after what he did for me.”

----

The Elves’ camp was a gathering of grey tents cleverly hidden among a stand of alder and willow on the banks of the Gwáthlo. A merry fire burned brightly in the blue twilight of early dusk, promising warmth and company. Seen from a distance nothing about it seemed particularly menacing.

 

Upon closer inspection Elrohir was glad that what little daylight remained allowed him a proper look at the Elves. Glorfindel’s people were deeply alien creatures. Tall they were, men and women both, slender and elegant as blades. Their eyes held the same ancient, otherworldly light that shone in Glorfindel’s gaze. In every ageless face lay a sharp and martial beauty that was wholly strange to the Mortal world Elrohir knew. Their very presence touched the mind, a subtle press of an unknown will, and Elrohir shuddered from the sheer otherness of it.

 

The Elf-warriors seemed well aware of Elrohir’s unease, and kept a reassuring distance as Glorfindel led him into the camp. The looks he received held nothing but kindness. Nonetheless Elrohir keenly felt how much of a stranger he was, a lesser bird among eagles.

 

His welcome was no less warm for it. Nightfall in autumn brought a cold sting to the northern air, and Elrohir could not help but shiver in his light sailor’s smock from Gondor. Glorfindel must have noticed, because he sat Elrohir down on blankets spread beside the fire, its light washing him with yet more gold in the deepening dusk.

 

For the first time Elrohir truly felt robbed for not being able to remember a word of Sindarin. He thanked the smiling Elf who handed him a steaming cup of mulled wine, but had to do so in Númenórean as he did not know even this most basic of expressions in his own mother tongue. To his surprise the answer came in fluent Númenórean. A soft, lilting accent that had to be Sindarin mildened its harsh consonants.

 

The elegant cup warmed Elrohir’s chilled hands. Inhaling the rich, spiced smell of the brew, he remembered the terrifying tales of foul Elvish sorcery from his fellow seamen on the Beinalph. A single mouthful of the Elves’ enchanted draughts might ensnare hapless human wanderers. Somehow Elrohir mastered his panicked impulse to pour the wine onto the grass. Nothing good could come from insulting his strange hosts. The back of his throat contracted at his first, tentative sip. The second went down more easily. Bewitched or no, it was far better stuff than the rotgut the Beinalph’s captain had been serving his men.

 

Elrohir studied the Elf as he walked to and fro bringing a meal of leaf-wrapped flatbreads, a sharp yellow cheese and some sweet wild berries. This one seemed younger than Glorfindel. His sea-grey eyes lacked Glorfindel’s distinctive radiance. Whether it was by years or by ages, Elrohir could not tell. The Elf was dressed like his fellow warriors, in a dark wool tunic and grey leather surcoat. His movements held a feline grace and economy that belied his slender frame. Throughout his desert years Elrohir had sized up enough opponents to know that here was one he had no hope of defeating if things should come to a fight. The next moment the Elf turned around and smiled at him with such merriment in his eyes that Elrohir felt foolish for the thought. Glorfindel smiled too, sensing the mood needed some lightening.

 

“Elrohir, the one grinning at you like a child given sweets is called Ardil. He will look after you.”

 

Ardil gave a small bow, long flaxen braids briefly falling in front of his face. Elrohir returned the greeting with careful politeness. He surmised correctly that Ardil’s task would be to guard him. That Glorfindel had gone to such lengths to prevent a repeat of Elrohir’s flight in Harad was vaguely embarrassing.

 

After months of subsisting on hardtack even the simplest fresh food would have been a feast, but Elrohir could not recall ever having eaten such good bread. The flattened wafer was a golden brown on the outside, and the inside was the colour of cream. He somehow managed not to wolf it down to the last honey-flavoured crumb. In Harad’s arid lands no well-mannered guest would angle for a second helping their host might not be able to spare. Glorfindel remembered the customs of the desert well enough, because he wordlessly pressed another wafer into Elrohir’s hands before he had finished the first, and a third soon followed. Gnawing hunger had been Elrohir’s constant companion long enough that a full belly had become an unusual sensation. Once he sat back to bask in it, Glorfindel turned to him with a questioning look.

 

“Would you like to rest, or shall we break camp and gain some miles towards home? The harvest moon is full, so the way is lit.”

 

Food and warmth had done a great deal to restore Elrohir’s spirits, but he had toiled all day rowing upriver at the Beinalph’s oars. Exhausted or no, asking these eerie creatures who needed no sleep to delay their journey just so he could go to bed seemed an impossibility. He nodded silently, and at Glorfindel’s signal the Elves began to dismantle their camp with fluid efficiency.

 

Ardil motioned for Elrohir to step inside one of the tents to offer him a change of clothes. The high-collared tunic and breeches were of a whisper-soft grey cloth similar to Ardil’s own uniform. The Elvish fabric felt light as a feather but proved surprisingly warm, far better suited to northern climes than Elrohir’s summer garb from Gondor -- although the outfit had clearly been made to fit a taller man.

 

On the leather surcoat gleamed a six-pointed star picked out in a contrasting grey thread. A finely worked clasp in that same shape held the silvery cloak closed at Elrohir’s throat. He felt ill at ease in the rich garb, but Ardil shot him a glance of wholehearted approval before hurriedly packing the discarded clothes away as if he sought to remove the last traces of mankind lingering about Elrohir, who watched the honest homespun linen of Pelargir disappear with trepidation.

 

Matters grew awkward when Ardil offered to braid Elrohir’s hair. At first Elrohir thought he must have misunderstood the Elf’s accented Númenórean. When the bizarre proposition was repeated he was quick to refuse, disturbed by the very idea of a grown man plaiting another one’s hair. Ardil’s reply was a warning.

 

“A word of advice, young lord. Among Elves loose hair is for children, which is what you will look like to all those you are about to meet.”

 

Elrohir, who until then had never owned a comb, acquiesced to the embarrassment of a highly unpleasant half-hour of pulling and wrangling his salt-caked, unwashed locks into some semblance of Elvish order. Ardil doubtlessly tried his best to be gentle, but they were both glad to be done when he fastened the last tie.

 

As Elrohir turned around the Elf studied his face with wonder and sadness in his eyes. His annoyance at Elrohir’s lack of cleanliness seemed momentarily forgotten.

 

“You are your brother’s image. Both your faces hold such deep memory for those who remember the old days. It is good to have you back.”

 

Elrohir knew not what to say, except for thanking him.

 

While Ardil tended to Elrohir the camp had silently dissolved as if it had never been. The warriors had brought their mounts, probably from some nearby pasture. Elrohir knew enough about horses to tell that these were the finest he had ever laid eyes on. Like their masters, they seemed made of less ordinary stuff than the mortal world surrounding them. Glorfindel led Elrohir to a friendly-looking mare, her dappled grey coat gleaming in the willow trees’ shifting shadows under the rising moon. She had been saddled, and slung over her back was Elrohir’s saddlebag. Her head looked strangely bare, with neither headstall nor bridle. Elrohir searched in confusion, expecting to find one lying nearby for him to put on her. The horse looked at him with something akin to understanding in her dark eyes as he stood there looking in vain with Glorfindel half a pace behind him. Thankfully Glorfindel had seen enough of Mannish ways to understand his bewilderment.

 

“Rochael is trained without bit or bridle. She will carry you wherever you ask her to.”

 

All around them warriors were mounting their equally unbridled horses. Elrohir mounted and found the mare attuned to the slightest change in posture and movements of his legs.

 

So began the strangest ride of his life. The full moon bathed the world in silver, rippling over the pale horses and glistening mail of their riders. Their hooves crushed the fallen leaves and weeds of this once-familiar land, releasing scents that woke long-forgotten memories of walking and playing among willow, ground-ivy, and bramble. With them came glimpses of faces and places he did not know he had forgotten. Ardil, among others became to Elrohir’s exhausted mind a curious hybrid of the stranger he had just met and a familiar presence that had once towered over him as a source of safety. Above all he was pervaded with such desperate longing for Elladan that he would have kneed Rochael on to leave the others behind if only he had known the way.

----

The company rode upstream along the banks of the Gwáthlo, a tight knot of heavily armed Elves with Elrohir and Glorfindel at its centre. At first they passed through fields and pastures of the orderly region around Tharbad. Gradually the farms stood further apart and stretches of empty shrubland became wider, until they left civilisation behind entirely to ride between low stands of holly, gorse and birch.

 

Glorfindel glanced sideways at Elrohir as he directed Asfaloth to keep up an easy trot at Rochael’s side. The sight of him in Elvish clothes proved at once a blessed relief and a slap of unexpected sorrow. With a touch of possessiveness Glorfindel relished his young ward finally looking like a son of Elrond instead of a ragged Mortal, the star of Eärendil gleaming on his breast.

 

The labours of ruling Imladris left Celebrían with little time or care for needlework, yet this particular outfit she had made with her own hands. Her weaving was so fine and tight that the shimmering cloth of Elrohir’s grey Sindarin cloak might hold water. Sizing the tunic to Elladan’s measures had been a sad mistake. Hunger and harshness had left Elrohir nearly a hand’s breadth shorter than his twin, and his rolled-up sleeves would brutally confront Elrond and Celebrían with the damage. Glorfindel briefly contemplated asking one of his fine-boned Silvan guardsmen to pass Elrohir their spare tunic. In the end he thought of Celebrían’s lonely, straight-backed figure at the great loom of Imladris, singing her very soul into the threads that would clothe the son she so deeply longed for, and did not have the heart to let her work go unworn.

 

Glorfindel did not miss the slight tremble to Elrohir’s hands as he wound them in Rochael’s long mane in search of warmth. He was slumping forward in his saddle, face wan with exhaustion. Ardil shot Glorfindel a look of outright reproach as he brought his own mare closer to Elrohir’s so they might catch him between the two of them if necessary. The surreptitious looks of dismay as his warriors caught sight of their lord’s returning son had been equally telling. Elrohir did not know it himself, but he was dying. Death in every form imaginable was inescapable in Harad, where Men’s lives tended to be brutal and brief, yet he remained unaware of the one illness that might kill an Elf.

 

Elrohir’s fëa was deeply wounded by the cruel war between the Haradrim and the Black Númenóreans of Umbar -- Sauron’s followers, aided by the Dark Lord’s mightiest servant, the captain of the Ringwraiths. Even now the foul creature’s Black Breath still lay heavily on Elrohir. His nearly translucent appearance, with eyes that seemed focused beyond the waking world, struck fear into Glorfindel’s heart. The thread that bound Elrohir’s injured spirit to his body was fraying perilously thin. Another day spent frightened, alone among strangers and mired in strangeness and sorrow might suffice to release it to Mandos’ halls -- or beyond. Glorfindel regretted having to make Elrohir ride the night through, but given the state of him the reunion with Elladan brooked no more delay.

As they rode Elrohir’s eyes widened with awe and confusion. Glorfindel understood: the waters of the Gwàthlo whispered louder than they should, and a strange silvery sheen just a little too bright to be the full moon’s reflection played across the waters. Ancient eyes watched their party from the river. Glorfindel did not turn to look, to avoid drawing Elrohir’s attention to the otherworldly shape -- neither woman nor fish -- that tumbled in the waters’ grey depths. The weight of that lidless gaze altered the very fabric of reality. Uinen rarely ventured this far upriver. Her presence showed Ulmo’s hand in safeguarding the House of Eärendil once more. This night was heavy with shifting threads of possibility, and Elrohir perceived it like any of Lúthien's descendants would.

Several hours into the ride a well-known touch brushed Glorfindel’s mind. Elrond’s capacity for ósanwe had already been formidable before the Rings of Power were ever thought of. With Vilya on his hand he could make himself heard across vast distances, and he now had all of his considerable Sight fixed on Elrohir. The touch brought to mind the color of sapphires, its aura radiating joy. Despite Elrond’s gentle manner he startled Elrohir enough to nearly unhorse him. Glorfindel reached out to steady him as he swayed in his saddle. He turned towards Elrohir with a smile and relief in his eyes.

 

“That was your father. We will reach their camp before morning. You will meet Elladan soon.”

 

Elrohir was quick to arrange his face, but Glorfindel nonetheless perceived the stab of fear that marred his anticipation.