Northern Skies by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 26

Serdir was ancient, and well-versed in stealth and deception. Unearthing the guilt that burrowed in his mind like a red-eyed snake had taken Erestor the better part of two days and nights. Only now, as the daylight was dying for the second time and sunset spilled red across the cell’s whitewashed walls, did Saeros’ proud son break under the relentless barrage of ever more pressing questions.

A sheen of cold sweat coated Serdir’s pale face as he slumped on the tiled slab that served for bed and bench, his dark eyes closed against tears. Erestor recalled Elrond’s similar expression, his lord’s white-knuckled grip on the bell tower’s parapet as he watched his loved ones ride out into danger, and could not summon even a trace of compassion for Elrohir’s would-be murderer. 

“So you admit to it now? You overheard the Lords Elladan and Elrohir debate their ill-advised plans in the old forge. Instead of alerting us to Elrohir’s peril you tracked the boy through the valley, and when he lost his way you intervened to ensure he reached the mountains.”   

Serdir looked Erestor in the eye, his mind pried fully open at last. With grim satisfaction Erestor noted that his captive was terrified. He cast a questioning look at Gildor, who had been appointed as Serdir’s counsel, and received no objection. Gildor, too, looked worn from their long session, but he had had little cause for interruptions. Not a hair on Serdir’s head had been harmed - Erestor had no need of such unsubtle methods. Serdir was digging himself in deep enough.

“I led no boy from the valley, but a full-fledged warrior geared for battle - one who followed me of his own free will. His chances in the mountains are as good as anyone’s. When we reached the path he thanked me.”

Erestor imagined it. Elrohir’s cautious, earnest way of talking to strangers. His soft-spoken voice - so like Elrond’s at that age - shaping the Sindarin words with care as he politely thanked his father’s faithless vassal for the ultimate betrayal. It was all he could do not to howl with fury. 

“His chances !? Elrohir has never seen an Orc, let alone fought one! To give him a chance he would need a long-year’s worth of training, a mail hauberk, a pack of Orc-hounds and at least ten scouts. You left him alone in the dark, in his shirtsleeves!”

At his raised voice guards stirred in the hallway beyond the cell’s heavy oak door. These were no suggestible younglings or Wood-elves of uncertain allegiance. For the task of guarding Serdir Erestor had called his oldest and staunchest Fëanorians back from the search. They were fiercely loyal to Elrond alone, and each was a kinslayer many times over. 

The door opened to a small crack. 

“Al well?” came a mellifluous woman’s voice speaking the most ancient Quenya.

Erestor’s feral smile bared his teeth, and he revelled in answering her with a thick Fëanorian lisp that brought shock to Gildor’s face, and a fresh layer of misery to Serdir’s. 

“All well. Thank you, Canissë. (1)” 

Serdir shook with terror at the unsubtle reminder of what unspeakable deeds Erestor had proven himself capable of.

“What will you do to me?”

Erestor shook his head, and rose from his high-backed chair, one of a pair that had been brought into the cell for him and Gildor. It was otherwise empty, save for a lidded pail in one corner.

“Nothing, for the time being. Elrohir’s fate remains uncertain. We can hardly pass judgement before we know the full extent of your crime. Meanwhile you should speak with your counsel. I shall leave you to it.”

Serdir looked about himself, at the austere cell with its high, small window. It would normally show a sliver of starlight, but this evening heavy cloud veiled the sky. He sounded shrill and plaintive.

 “I am of the Nandor. You cannot hold me beneath a roof of stone!”

Serdir’s imprisonment would smart by now, Erestor knew from long experience dealing with the Laiquendi. Given time the sting would grow to a nagging pain, a blade driven ever deeper into the fëa until sharp longing for the woods and their Song became torture. Keep a Wood-elf captive past that point and their fëa would release itself from the body. Elrond was wholly incapable of such cruelty, but Serdir need not know it just yet. Let Gildor give him the glad tidings later.

“You are kept comfortable. More so than the child you threw to the Orcs.”

The full gravity of that accusation appeared to strike Serdir only now, and he was quick with justification.

“Elrohir is no child. A foolish, wilful Man such as he once took my father’s life. King Elu forgave Túrin the murderer, and he lived to prove himself a poisonous viper many times over. Must Imladris suffer Nargothrond’s fate before your eyes will open?”  

Erestor sat back down to consider this, and allowed a torturous silence to blanket the cell. Outside, the valley itself was unnaturally quiet. Not even the Wood-elves were singing. All cause for merriment had fled, and no-one yet knew whether laments were in order. 

“Aye. Elrohir is like a young Túrin, in a way. A mere child alone among strangers, his spirit wounded by grief. But he never raised a hand against you or yours! And yet you dealt with him even more cruelly than your father did of old. How did you imagine Elrohir would die? Orcs do unspeakable things to their prisoners! I should delay your sentence until we learn Elrohir’s fate, and make your punishment fit his suffering.”

Serdir blanched, and Erestor made a note of the man’s damning terror. He had known well enough what horrors awaited in the mountains. 

Serdir struck with the desperate ferocity of a trapped wolf at the hunter’s approach. “Your bloodlust shows, Fëanorian! You are not the Lord of Imladris. By what right do you presume to judge me?”

Erestor stood, his voice and bearing all sharp gravity. 

“Lord Elrond was once my ward - an orphan, and a hostage. He grew wise through many sorrows and they left him kind as summer. Not in all my years have I known a prince more deserving of loyalty and love. Your treachery might cost him both his children and yet he ordered an inquest, not an execution. For that and many other deeds of kindness I will spare him the burden of shedding your blood.” 

Erestor came to stand before Serdir, and his face must have seemed so fell and fierce that for a heartstopping moment Gildor half-rose as if to physically defend his charge. 

“Have no fear of being left to languish here, Serdir.” Erestor said, low and menacing. ”You will be fed and watered, and none shall raise their hands against you. The very hour we learn Elrohir’s fate I shall return. You will receive justice at my hands.” 

Serdir straightened himself, tall and proud as the chieftain he no longer was. His next words were in Doriathrin. The ancient language winded Erestor like a blow. 

“Erestor the bloody-handed, butcher of Menegroth. The Belain were far too lenient when they let you keep your life!” 

Serdir was a Moriquendë, unskilled in the finer arts of ósanwë, but in his terror he nonetheless seared Dior’s dead face, mouth slack and eyes staring into emptiness, into Erestor’s mind. Others followed - Nimloth, another pair of little twins with grey eyes and midnight hair.

“You prove unrepentant, Erestor. You may kill again, but there will be a reckoning - for every last one!”

Erestor faced Serdir across the suddenly airless space. Gildor had risen and stood hesitating, unsure which one of them would need to be restrained first. Erestor recalled Elrond’s grief and laughed, bitter and wholly without mirth.    

“I have stained my hands for far lesser causes, and they are bloody indeed. Do not flatter yourself, Serdir. One more will make no difference.”

----

Elladan took notice of his surroundings for the first time since he began his frenzied climb. Far below, the path where Celebrían and he had stood that morning was a grey winding ribbon in a sheet of green. At this distance Elladan could discern neither Lorien’s marchwardens nor the warriors of Imladris, but the ferocious baying of Orc-hounds resounded as Glorfindel and Celeborn turned Elrohir’s pursuers from hunter to prey. 

Nightfall came early in the deep cloven valleys between the mountains, where bluish shadows lay pooled already. Imperceptibly slow, the light had changed from lemon-yellow to copper as the sun approached the mountain ridges in the west.

Celebrían turned towards it, a look of intense concentration on her face. Above their heads, Alagras’ white peak became washed in red and gold. Elladan watched with bitter, churning anger. Elrohir’s precious time slipped through their fingers like loose sand while beauty made a mockery of their despair.

Celebrían seemed wholly untouched by it. She raised her arms, face turned towards the West, and sang. The day’s last sunlight caught the mithril coating on her mail and outlined her tall form like a living flame as she sang of the high airs, sun glinting off cloud and tearing speed, the swift grace of a lethal strike. Elladan felt lighter for hearing it, excited, filled to bursting with a wild exhilaration and the need to run, jump high and do something truly spectacular. 

The feeling vanished abruptly as the song came to its end, to be replaced by falling dusk and the press of concern. The ceaseless whistling of the wind was once more the only sound in these empty places. Celebrían remained with her face towards the setting sun, staring intently as if she expected the Valar themselves to somehow rescue Elrohir.

Elladan’s vision swam with tears of frustration. When he furiously blinked them away, a small blemish remained on the glaring white expanse of distant snowfields. Astonishment that any living creature would be foolish enough to venture such unforgiving places kept his eyes fixed on the tiny black stain. He had been wrong: it was moving fast, against the wind. This was no man or animal walking across the snow, but a fleet-winged bird. Awe filled him at the beating of wings he should not be seeing at all, at such a distance. A bird indeed, but one of such majestic size it seemed drawn from some glorious tale of the First Age. Elrohir shook with fear, but Elladan could only laugh aloud with joy when he understood their mother’s brave and brilliant plan. He wrapped Elrohir up in his arms and helped him sit, so he might see this wonder.

The Eagle had seen them, and it sped like a well-aimed arrow, growing larger with each powerful wingstroke. Elladan could soon make out the shape of its terrifying beak and count each feather where the setting sun backlit it in gold. The great bird took a majestic swerve above the slope, stretching out talons the size of broadswords. The blast of its wings was like a rising storm, scattering the light blanket of powdery snow in every direction, a dark blot of shadow leaping along beneath. The landing itself was unexpectedly light and supple, executed with the silent rush of a hunter. The Eagle primly folded its wings, and the fearsome beak turned towards Celebrían. Plate-sized eyes of gold and jet fixed on her with strange, avian cleverness. Their mother stood unfazed.

“Greetings, Gwaihir, Lord of the Winds. Blessed is the hour of your coming.” 

Her eyes did not leave those of the great bird. She had some experience with the Eagles’ perilous tempers. 

“Greetings, Lady of Imladris. What brings you to call upon our eyries?” 

Gwaihir’s voice, shaped by beak instead of mouth, was strangely shrill. To Elladan’s astonishment, Celebrían knelt on the stony ground before the Eagle.

“Only the greatest possible need. In the name of my good-father Eärendil, once your Lord’s companion in battle, I would ask a boon for this son of his House.”

Gwaihir’s great head tilted from side to side to fix each alien eye in turn on Elrohir.

“My folk have watched your venture from above. In every brood those fledgelings who flee the nest too soon will perish. This rallying against the natural ways of the world is among the Elves’ more pointless habits, lady.”   

Celebrían was undaunted. “The laws of Eagles may not be right for Elves, swift one. We beget but rarely, through our long lives, and we value every single child beyond measure. My son was struck by a cursed blade. Poison spills his blood beyond what I can cure. Of all our kin who remain east of the sea, few have the power to heal this. Elrond of Imladris is among them. Will you not carry my son home, where he might be saved?”

Gwaihir spread his great wings, shadowing Celebrían like a canopy, and began to preen his sleek copper feathers, seemingly offended.  

“I am neither a courier pigeon nor a beast of burden. You have another child, Silver-queen, and you may hatch a new brood come spring.”

Despair crashed down upon Elladan like a mountain of blackness, and for a moment he could no longer pretend, not even to Elrohir, that this might somehow still end well. Celebrían seemed wholly unaffected by the Elrohir’s inevitable demise. She stood steadfast before the great bird.

“How many branches can one pull from a nest before it falls to shambles? Ours might take all the West down with it. My son’s grandfather Eärendil battled Morgoth’s fire-dragons beside you, in the skies over Thangorodrim. He carried the body of your Lord Thorondor away from the Mountains of Ash with honour. (2) Will you now abandon the House of the Mariner in the hour of our need?”

This gave Gwaihir pause. The great head righted itself and blinked with reptilian, sliding lids over bright orange eyes, before coming to rest on Celebrían once more. 

“Let it not be said that the Eagles are faithless. I shall honour your good-father’s valour as he has honoured us.”

The time for goodbyes was short, and awkward under the Eagle’s unrelenting gaze. Getting Elrohir up on Gwaihir’s back was an ordeal. Elladan was terrified he might lose his grip and fall off in midair. Gwaihir seemed capable of reading it.

“Fear not. I will not drop what I intend to carry!”

When Elrohir finally sat astride the great bird’s back he sank deeply into a thick layer of silk-soft feathers. Celebrían set his gloved hands to grasp large fistfulls, and bade him not let go. He nodded silently. The feverish gleam to his eyes betrayed he might no longer be perceiving her for who and what she truly was, but he seemed unafraid, at least. 

Celebrían bowed to Gwaihir once more. “The thanks and good will of Imladris and Lórien go with you, oh Windlord!”

The Eagle appeared to laugh, if birds could manage such a thing. 

“All things have their price, Lady. When my brethren next visit the cloven valley, your shepherds will lay down their slingshots.”

Gwaihir crouched, and the stretching of his great wings raised a tempest as he leapt into emptiness. For a frightful moment Elladan feared to see Elrohir tumble into the abyss but they soared up, circled one more time as the eagle gained height, and turned West where the moving dot finally appeared to be burned up in the setting sun.   

-----

Elrohir knew he could not possibly be dreaming. Icy winds buffeted him until tears ran down his face to freeze on the collar of his cloak. The cold would have sufficed to raise the dead from slumber, yet the sight before his eyes was an impossibility. A strangely flattened  blanket of mist covered the landscape below. Only the highest mountain ridges broke through, standing out like splintered roof-beams from a flood. Elrohir had to scrunch up his eyes against the red light of the setting sun reflecting off the roiling white when sheer wonder cut through his initial confusion. 

Clouds. He was looking at the clouds from above . 

When the dying sunlight gave way to night, mighty Gwaihir seemed a mere speck, an ant slowly crossing a vast hall of sky, floored with living cloud and roofed in stars. In this strange realm silence reigned, save for howling wind and the soft swish of the great bird’s wings. Here, invisible to those walking in the shadows below, was a world on its own, achingly beautiful yet wholly strange, whose paths he could never hope to tread. The full awareness of his own insignificance struck deeply. What other worlds might there be, always near and yet beyond the sight of ordinary eyes?

Eärendil, the evening star, shone in its proper place as it always had, but somehow at this extraordinary angle Elrohir saw it differently, and knew himself seen in kind. The star dimmed and brightened again, and for a moment he felt strengthened by a loving regard.

Holding on against the pummelling wind took strength, and despite the wondrous view it soon became easier to close his eyes, rest his head within the mass of feathers in front of him, and leave only his back exposed to the breathtaking cold. Had Celebrían not passed him her gloves he doubtlessly would have lost fingers to its bite.

He dreamt strange dreams, of a dead sky over trackless plains of ash where his running feet threw up grey clouds that no wind would scatter. 

Each time he woke the Eagle appeared to gain speed, until the wind’s howling grew so fearsome he looked up no more.

----

Footnotes:

(1). Canissë is an OC from my First Age series From the Sun's First Rising. 'The Art of Speech through Smithcraft' has more about Canissë's Fëanorian past. She also briefly appears in 'The King's Peace' and 'Dry Lightning'.

(2). Thorondor is never mentioned again after the great aerial battle in the War of Wrath. Gwaihir is lord of the Eagles when they appear next, so it seems probable that Thorondor died in battle. The story about Ëarendil retrieving his body is made up by me.

Chapter End Notes

Fanfic writers run on comments, so please consider leaving me one if you liked the chapter!

Glorified:

Thank you for commenting! Circumstances are forcing Elrohir to accept the reality of his situation: he is not simply a mortal and acting as if he is will not solve that for him. Don't despair though. There's always hope... Injury and healing in Tolkien seem to consist of two distinct aspects: the physical wound and the spiritual one. To keep Elrohir alive Elrond will have to deal with both.

 

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