Northern Skies by Idrils Scribe

---

Chapter 27

---

“An Eagle! An Eagle is coming!”

Elrond needed neither the calls of keen-eyed Wood-elves posted on rocky outcrops throughout the valley, nor the frantic tolling up in the belfry. He recognized Gwaihir and his passenger the instant they crossed into Vilya’s wards. The touch of a Great Eagle’s mind was an alien experience: sharp, almost metallic and utterly other , thrumming with the power of an immortal spirit. 

The feel of Elrohir’s was what made Elrond rush to the House of Healing to check their readiness one more time. Whatever had befallen his son out in the mountains had his life on a knife’s edge.  Elrond could feel him drifting away to darkness. It was all he could do to call Elrohir back, keep him focused on his hands and legs holding on to his winged mount lest he plummet to his death within sight of rescue. 

 Elrond received the Eagle on the greensward in front of the house, lit by many torches. Beside him lay what he expected would be a well-received gift: the still-warm cadavers of two fat, unfortunate sheep. This was to be one of the more unusual diplomatic exchanges of Erestor’s long career. 

Elrond himself would be otherwise occupied. At the sight of Elrohir being half-pulled, half-carried from the great bird’s back, limp as a rag doll, he was convinced he could do nothing more for his son than make him look seemly for his last rites. Only after a small eternity of sorrow did he notice the Eagle’s heaving flanks, the great beak opened wide from panting, and it dawned that bringing home an inevitable loss would not make Gwaihir exhaust himself as if the hot breath of Morgoth’s firedrakes were behind him.

From then speed was all that mattered. Elrond had been a healer long enough to have treated every kind of poisoning known to Elfkind. Still the sight of Elrohir’s head lolling like too heavy a flower on too thin a stem while Lindalië cut away what remained of his clothes, stiff with dried blood, would later keep coming to his mind’s eye unbidden at the most unexpected of times.

The stressed mind works in strange ways. What finally made Elrond dissolve into speechless rage was not the oozing, bone-deep sword slash running down Elrohir’s side. He performed surgery on that wound with a steady hand and clinical detachment. The unbearable injury had been a tell-tale group of livid, finger-shaped bruises on his arm. Here was undeniable proof that some ill-begotten creeper of an Orc had laid hands on Elrond’s child, and his wrath became an ugly, visceral weight. 

Erestor had come to the House of Healing the instant Gwaihir took to the sky clutching his grisly gifts. Elrond found his counsellor in the shadowed cloister, rinsing sheep blood from his hands in the marble basin of a babbling fountain.

Elrond was beyond politeness. “Send out another company. I want that Orc den exterminated to the last Snága.” 

“Is Elrohir …” Erestor did not dare speak the word. 

“He still lives. I need them all dead regardless.”

Erestor’s eyes darted to his in alarm. “What did they do to him? He was never their captive, according to the Eagle.”

 “Would poisoning and nearly gutting him not suffice? That, and I wish to contain knowledge of this incident, if such a thing remains possible.” 

 “Truly, I do not know. I will try.”

 Elrond nodded, secure in the knowledge that his order would be carried out to the very last Orc. He turned, back ramrod-straight, to his ailing son and a long night’s watch. 

 “He let himself be found, in the end.” Erestor’s voice was soft.

 Elrond spun back around, face ugly with bitter, impotent rage. 

 Erestor was wholly unimpressed. “He made that choice and no other when he grew desperate. It should count for much, when you pass judgement on him.”

 Elrond’s hands clenched into fists until his fingernails biting into his own palms seemed the only thing grounding him. “I spoke the truth to Elladan. Elrohir will not be punished.”

 “You seethe with anger, and vicariously slaughtering Orcs will not cool it. If -- when -- Elrohir recovers, strive for mildness.”

 Elrond’s voice deserted him. He could only make a sweeping gesture to encompass the courtyard. Flickering lamplight painted its rooflines in sharp relief against a starless night sky of clouds thick as velvet. After sundown anything other than darkness and tranquility in the House of Healing was an ominous sign, and this night light spilled from many windows.

 The surgical theatre was being cleaned. Beside the entryway a basket of linen stained dark with Elrohir’s blood awaited the launderers. Through the open pharmacy door two white-smocked apothecaries could be seen, bent over their tiled workbenches busily weighing, pestling and mixing. Their lilting Nandorin voices wove together in supplication for Estë’s blessing. The chant clashed inelegantly with Lindalië raising yet another staunching song in one of the sick rooms a few doors down -- that accursed wound was soaking yet another dressing. All their efforts had failed to staunch the ceaseless bleeding, and Elrohir’s very life was trickling away.     

 A stab of desperation tied Elrond’s tongue, but Erestor knew him well enough to understand. “How could he inflict all of this on himself, and on you? He did not foresee where his actions might lead, a flaw not unheard of at the ripe old age of forty-eight. The theme may seem familiar even to you.”

 The crushing weight of responsibility struck Elrond cold, extinguishing his anger like a bonfire doused with water. Would the outcome have been different without Vilya’s interference, without Elrohir crippled and struck with deep terror of his rescuers from the very beginning? Likely so.  

 “If he dies, I will …”

 Erestor caught him as he swayed on his feet. “We will not allow it.”

 

 Inside Elrohir’s sickroom a constellation of Fëanorian lamps created unnatural brightness, a false daytime for the healers to work by. Lindalië’s face under her crisp linen cap was a study in misery. She leant over her patient, forcefully pressing a thick wad of soaked muslin bandages onto the wound in a last-ditch effort to stem the bleeding.

 “My lord, it will not clot!” 

 Her hands told the tale more eloquently. They were slick, stained bright red up to the wrists.   Elrohir lay still as a corpse under her ungentle ministrations, and the harsh coppery tang of blood stood thick in the room’s stuffy air.

 “Perhaps if we undo the stitches and apply cautery once more we might ...”

 Elrond shook his head. “Lindalië, my brave. You have done everything in your power, and I thank you. Please leave us.”

 Lindalië was a veteran of many battlefields, but Elrohir was among the youngest she had ever cared for. To her great credit she did not dissolve into tears before the door had closed behind her.

 Erestor drew the bolt, murmuring a chant of warding before doing the same with the window shutters. He took one of the hearthside chairs, placed it in front of the door and sat, a silent sentinel. 

 Elrond sank down on the narrow bed beside Elrohir, heedless of the red stains that instantly soaked his healer's smock, and splayed both hands across his son’s chest. Elrohir’s paper-white skin was cold as stone, the pulse beneath fast and thready.

 Elrond’s spirit reached for that bright, thinning thread connecting fëa to hröa. Summoning Vilya’s full might required far more than a physical voice, and Elrond was not entirely sure he was making any sound at all, to ordinary ears. Beyond the veil, his power roared like a controlled gale. 

 

 Elrond closed his eyes, and stood alone on a dead plain of ashes under a starless sky. Vast, shapeless wastelands stretched in every direction, on to a horizon that appeared to shift and shimmer in a disturbing way that was not quite real : the Unseen had no end or boundary that an Elvish mind could grasp. 

 Somewhere in this desolation Elrohir’s fëa wandered, lost and in peril of being ensnared. Other things roamed here, nameless shapes of malice and devouring, and only the foolish or the very powerful could afford to reveal their presence. Elrond had risked himself here many a time in search of other wanderers. Such lost spirits had to be called back.

 Vilya’s true nature could hardly be hidden in this place. A coruscating white light shone from Elrond’s right hand, and when he closed his fist around it the glow turned blood red, pulsing with his heartbeat. Elrond knew from painful experience that he had little time before this much light and life would attract the hungry. 

 He raised his voice and sang of things beyond this land’s imagining. Sunlight on the leaves of summer, the merry babbling of Imladris’ waterfalls and the sound of sweet rain. His voice carried far in the still air, to every crevice of that desperate place. When Elrond paused to listen the sudden silence was absolute. No living wind, no beast or bird stirred the choking dust. 

 A faint, chitinous clicking made Elrond spin around to face his audience. The creature was a lesser spirit, no doubt in some way related to Ungoliant, but it had taken inspiration for its form from far older, or perhaps deeper, days. With a shudder Elrond recalled the swollen, writhing creatures half-seen and half-suspected in the depths of cave pools far beneath the Misty Mountains. 

 This thing was that same sickly, sunless pale, its skin emitting a faint corpse glow in the low half-light. The shape was unmistakably that of a spider -- be it an eyeless one. A blind, vestigial head turned towards Elrond. The only discernible feature were pincer-like mouthparts the size of daggers, frantically waving to and fro as the fallen Maia tasted its prey on the air. 

 “Come.” It hissed with raw Power thrumming behind the words. “Come to me. I have hungered for so long, and you are sweet!”

 A lesser Elf would have been drawn in, but Elrond stood firm, and even allowed himself a breath of relief. If Ungoliant’s little sister was ravenous, it meant she had not found Elrohir yet. He did not deign to answer her, but gathered Light about him like armour and weapon both.

 “Be gone!”

 Vilya flashed, briefly blinding even to Elrond. The spider-thing screamed in agony and scuttled away, lunging sideways like a crab with its chitinous legs eating up the ground at disturbing speed, until it vanished into the shimmering, unsteady horizon.

 Elrond righted himself, winded by the Power expended in their brief struggle. He could not afford to rest. Uncountable hordes of fallen spirits roamed the Unseen in hungy search of a trace of the Light they once turned their backs on. His very presence would continue to attract them like moths to a candle flame. 

 His voice rang out across the barren plains once more.

 Only the faintest trace reached Elrond at first, the most welcome sound of his long life. Elrohir’s voice took up the song, soft and hesitant. Elrond sang back -- calling, beckoning, turning his feet towards the answering voice across dead and trackless land. 

 The sight of Elrohir running towards him was a wonder so great that Elrond might have stopped to burst into tears of relief if he had not known what would inevitably be drawn to their singing. Elrond fell silent the moment they had eyes on each other, and they both broke into a sprint until they stood face to face. 

 Elrohir’s face was pale and sharp with terror. He had seen enough to understand what hunted him. At the sight of Elrond his eyes were full of genuine wonder. Even here he remained a man of few words.

 “You came for me.”

 A whole world of dawning insight condensed in a single sentence. Elrohir’s bond with Elladan was as simple and everyday as breathing, and as essential. With his sight unveiled he now recognized that same love in his father’s eyes - fierce, uncomplicated and eternal as the stars. 

 One Sindarin word had been among the first Elrohir had been taught, in unspoken hope, but he had never said it. Not once in all their days together, from the encampment in the wilds of Eregion to long nights of darkness and healing in Imladris, through a foolishly forced and broken oath of fealty. That silence had been a wound, a gaping emptiness in Elrond’s heart. Now at last, amidst the shadow and peril of the Unseen, Elrohir spoke. 

 “Adar.” 

 Never had a single word held such meaning. Hope, healing, love, belonging, grief, gratitude, regret, every possible thread weaving the oncoming days. Father. Elrohir did not need to say anything more, and the greatest orators among the Noldor could not have bettered him.      

 Elrond reached out to gently touch his son’s face, a clean white light playing along his outstretched hand.

 “Always.” 

 Elrohir closed his eyes against tears of sheer relief. He was shockingly vulnerable here, not yet grown into the power only the fullness of time and teaching would grant. Elrond was quick to wrap himself around his child, a shield against the dangers that haunted this place.

 

At once something fought him, a strong and malicious will. 

 A massive, hulking shade disturbed the strange unlight at the horizon. Half-seen and half-suspected at the edge of perception the shadow approached, a mountain of shifting darkness flowing across the dead landscape. Horror went before it.

 The blade that cut Elrohir’s wound had oozed with vile and powerful curses against the High Elves. The master of that black sorcery had come to claim his prize. At the sight of his prey Sauron’s semblance of a face contorted in mad victory.

 “Once yours.” The Dark Lord gibbered triumphantly in some horrible thing that was not quite a voice. “Now mine!”

 When Elrond last faced Sauron, the sheer power and malice emanating from the Maia’s embodied form  had terrified him beyond words. To remain standing at Ereinion’s shoulder when Elendil’s broken body was crushed into the smoking ashes of Orodruin and the empty visor of Sauron’s massive iron helmet slowly turned towards the High King of the Elves was the most gut-wrenching feat of his long, war-filled life. 

 But not this time. This night it was not fear but a fierce, protective anger that filled every fibre of Elrond’s being. Swords and armour were useless on this battlefield of the spirit, but the light that outlined Elrond’s figure was equally sharp and deadly.  

 “Be gone! You are nothing. Faceless, formless, voiceless. Scatter your ashes on the wind and plague the living no more!”

 The mouthless shadow laughed, and the sound reverberated unnaturally, a warped echo of the Void itself. It carried loudly in the oppressive air of that lightless non-place.

 “Your craven secrecy will not avail you, Half-elf,” Sauron hissed, the words dripping with hate. “This is one of your mongrels, half-bred and half-wit. I will devour him, spirit and flesh! I will take all of your House, and break them like I did your Silver-fisted kinsman. You shall wallow in your losses at my feet before I allow you to beg for death!”

 Elrond once more raised his voice in a song, powerful as the wind itself, and he might have beaten his enemy back had not a sudden, brutal blow of foresight struck him, a premonition of dread to come. 

 Matted clumps of silver hair, the sweetish smell of pus, a grimed hand laying cold and still in his own. 

 Elrond stumbled under the onslaught, winded as if by a physical blow. The shadow that was Sauron gorged on his misery until it rose over him tall as a mountain of malice, flaying him with unbearable laughter like acid and venom. 

 “Cower in your hidden valley, oh lord of dwindling ghosts. I will come for you, and burn you like I did your usurper king, and string up your remains for my banner. Now flee and bury your whelp! As you dig his grave, know that his spirit abides with me!”

 Elrond knew the vile words were the truth, that Elrohir was lost. Elladan and Celebrían would be taken next, until he stood alone, bereaved of all he had ever loved. Ugly, sobbing despair would have brought him to his knees, forced him to release the fragile, pulsing shard of life that was Elrohir, when a flash of gold cut through the darkness.

 Even in that dead land with its sky the colour of decay, light lingered on Galadriel. Tall and fair as a white flower made of steel she stood between Elrond and the Shadow as he desperately clutched his fading son. The unbearable weight of Sauron’s hateful gaze came to rest on her. 

 “Here comes the Man-maiden. Vala-cursed bearer of ruin for every realm you ever touched!” Spat the Shadow, “How fitting, that this half-breed, the bastard of many lines, should cower under women’s skirts! Finrod your brother once dared to challenge me. Did you forget how I took him, and chained him, and threw his remains as fodder to my wolves?  Do not presume to challenge me . Step aside, or even Námo will not know what to do with what is left of you when I am finished!”

 Sauron did not wait for Galadriel to abandon her kin. He raised his fist, a hammer of shadow so black it seemed a gaping rent in the fabric of reality, and brought it down.

 Elrond could only wrap himself around Elrohir to shield his son’s eyes from the death-blow, but Galadriel stood. The impact of the strike against her wards groaned through the very structure of the Unseen like an earthquake. Elrond watched in bleak despair as his champion was brought to her knees. Galadriel’s heart was great enough to take on any foe, but this was Sauron himself, once mightiest among the Maiar. This bravest of her many battles would be the final one. They would go down together, unseen and unsung. The iron fist of Shadow rose once more, and light itself wavered in sight of certain defeat.

 Darkness would have covered and crushed them all, but then Galadriel’s voice unleashed a storm. As she sang her face was fair and fierce, limned with light, terrible to behold. She caught Sauron’s strike with a resonating note of wordless rage, sending strange sparks up to the lightless sky. 

 This side of the veil, the wrath of Finarfin’s daughter was a tempest of white light and mithril. The raw power of her song might have shifted stars and moved mountains. Galadriel remembered her brother’s fall well indeed. She had strived with all her will to increase her skill beyond what his had once been. Long had she been taught by the greatest mistress of all. There was a certain rightness to this duel: Melian’s arts plied in defence of Melian’s descendants.

 Before that white-hot anger Sauron fled. He was no longer the mighty shapeshifter, Lord of Werewolves, who once bested Finrod Felagund. The loss of his Ring had reduced him to a shadow of his former might, an empty, ceaseless hunger. Elrond neither knew nor cared whether this sudden retreat was indeed weakness, or Sauron deemed the time not yet ripe to reveal to the High-elves how much of his power he retained. 

 Galadriel’s smile was drawn, and Elrond could almost see her with his waking eyes, slumped over the steaming basin of her Mirror, a white-clad figure silhouetted against the grey mellyrn towering over her garden like silver sentinels. Her warm attention touched him like a ray of sun in that unnatural darkness. Carefully cradling his precious living child, he turned to her and watched her fair face light up at the sight. 

 “Well fought, my son.” 

 Elrond’s heart still fluttered in panic. “He will get to them! I have seen it.”

 Galadriel stilled. “Foresight is a perilous thing. Some visions will come to pass only if we should alter our course to avoid them.”

 Her own fear was quickly hidden, but not fast enough to deceive Elrond. She said no more, but gently sang over Elrohir, her touch all sorrow and yearning. 

 “Soon,” Elrond promised. “He will be healed, and we will bring him to meet you in the light.”

 

Leaden exhaustion pressed Elrond down the moment he came to himself in the stuffy air of the locked sickroom. He lay slumped onto the narrow bed, half on top of Elrohir’s still body, both of them tacky with dried blood. Sunlight spilling through the window shutters sliced the space into a strange latticework of dancing dust motes. Judging from the angle it was past noon. 

 Someone was rapping the door, then switched to a solid pounding even as Erestor rose from his chair to open it.

Gildor's voice was strangely shrill with concern. “My lord, the search party draws near on the eastern road. What news may I send out to meet them?”

 An instant of agonizing doubt passed before Elrond’s searching hands found the brave, steady thrum of Elrohir’s heart. The bandages Lindalië had pulled tight across his chest were so soaked with old blood that they felt stiff as boiled leather, but the wound below was dry. 

 Heedless of Gildor’s shocked stare at the state of them both, Elrond lifted Elrohir’s limp body to hold his living, breathing son. Elrohir’s head came to rest on his father’s shoulder, close and trusting as if forty years of separation had suddenly ceased to exist. 

 Elsewhere, in a different, irrelevant universe Erestor’s voice was giving a steady stream of orders -- for aides and hot water and clean linen. 

 Elrond could not bring himself to care. He could only bask in the gentle rise and fall of Elrohir’s chest in the circle of his arms, marvel at the warm, solid weight of him, the elegant line of his cheek where it rested against his own, that beloved face at once alike and wholly different from Elladan’s.

 When Elrohir’s mind began to stir back to awareness, dazed and panicky, Elrond gave it a gentle push down into sleep. Today, at least, there would be no more pain.       

---

Chapter End Notes

It's a big chapter this week, and writing it was an emotional rollercoaster! I'd love to hear what you think of it. Please consider leaving me a comment, feedback from readers is what keeps fanfic writers going!

The site issues have been fixed, so you'll find replies to comments in their usual place!

See you next week, when we watch the aftershocks of Elrohir's escape ripple through Rivendell.

Idrils Scribe