Northern Skies by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 6

The House of Elrond had an ephemeral quality, at once solid as carved stone and on the verge of shimmering away into another plane of existence. Small hairs on the back of Elrohir’s neck stood up - strange things were afoot in this place

The sorcery leaching into each breath he drew did not seem entirely unwholesome. The entire valley held a sharp brightness, as if they somehow stepped into some ancient tale of adventure and glory. The air itself thrummed with vibrancy, untainted and alive beyond any place Elrohir had ever known. It brought to mind a clean wind blowing in from the sea, carrying nothing but salt and foam. As he breathed it in some of the long ride’s weariness fell away, and he felt his spirits lift.

Suddenly the eerie tales from the Beinalph’s crew no longer seemed far fetched at all.  No one could set foot in a place like this and return unchanged. For mortal Men, to be touched by Elves was to be irreversibly altered. Elrohir was well acquainted with what Men in Harad would call magic. It had always been swiftly followed by bloodshed. He took a firm hold of his sudden panicked impulse to run and snuffed it. If Elves were anything like Ringwraiths, turning his back to them meant certain death.  

Elladan did perceive his anguish. He took Elrohir by the hand, the gesture all gentle reassurance as he led the way through the sprawling house. They walked through vaulted corridors with ceilings painted like a night sky of stars and up winding monumental stairs.

The Elves seemed buoyed by the very air of their home. Singing voices rang in cloisters fragrant with the last roses of autumn and loggias of sculpted ivory stone. At every window and open gallery sounded the ever-changing song of running water, a grounding counterpoint to the longing music. Their harmony was beautiful to the point of pain.

At last they passed through intricately carved double doors guarded by a silent pair of helmed and armoured spearmen, into a wing of the house that seemed given less to grandeur than quiet comfort. The bustling of Elves walking to and fro died down abruptly. Fragments of song elsewhere in the House filtered in, but in these apartments silence reigned and Elrohir relished the momentary relief from the strangeness. Elladan led him into a room hung with fair red and gold tapestries, sailing ships and charging knights, their embroidered figures almost leaping to life in the dancing light of candles. The air was fragrant with the resin of pine burning in the hearth.  

At the sight and smell a tidal wave of memory struck, sharp and painfully bright as the past relived. Elrohir had once been small enough to walk underneath that table. For a dizzying heartbeat two worlds existed at once. One where two little boys played a game, wooden pieces scattered across the floor as rain clattered against the windows. In the other he was a man grown with a much taller Elladan standing beside him. It was all he could do to remain upright as both universes spun and tilted. A hand reached out and steadied him until reality reasserted itself.

When the worst of the dizziness had passed Elrond let go. To his dismay Elrohir had no recall of the Elf-lord arriving, nor could he guess how long he had stood frozen on the threshold.  

Elrond looked at Elrohir expectantly. “Fear not. What struck you is memory as the Elves know it. What was it that came back to you?”

Elrohir rubbed his eyes. His mind felt unsettled, a boat pulled from its moorings at the mercy of the vagaries of wind and sea. “Elladan and I, playing a game in this room.”

He had to swallow a wad of emotion somewhere in his throat. “How can you bear it? It sweeps the mind away like a flood.”

Elrond laid his hands on Elrohir’s shoulders, as if to anchor him as he was gently but firmly led to a chair. The Elf was all warmth and reassurance.

“You are overcome with strangeness. It will pass.”

A cup of watered wine was set before him, its tart flavour a welcome anchor to the world outside Elrohir’s agitated mind. He could only be grateful the memory-spell had occurred here instead of outside, in plain sight of the entire courtyard. The strangeness of returning to a place once forgotten bit deeply. Without being told Elrohir knew which chair at the table had once been his. The sight of the room from that perspective was disturbingly familiar.

It robbed him of his last, tenacious kernel of doubt that this entire journey had somehow been an absurd misunderstanding, and somebody would soon notice and send him on his merry way home. At last Elrohir could no longer deny that he would never return to the life he left behind in Harad. Even so, this was not the time for mourning. He pushed back the rush of sorrow to focus on the faces of Elrond and Elladan. Hazy familiarity made Elrond’s inhuman eyes all the more unsettling. Suddenly Elrohir desperately wished to be free of that deep, knowing gaze. He rose to his feet.

“Thank you. I am well.”

Elrond smiled, but his concern was plain to see. His words were measured and careful.

“You should rest. The road has taken much of your strength.”

He was interrupted by a polite knock on the door. A solemn, dark-haired Elf appeared carrying Elrohir’s saddlebag, brought from the stables where it had gone with Rochael after they dismounted in the courtyard. He was struggling with the unwieldy thing, meant to be slung over a camel’s back. In these lofty surroundings the bag looked embarrassingly ragged. The worn and stained leather, patched and mended with many different threads, had weathered years of hard use. Elrond took it with a few words in Sindarin, and the servant retreated in silence.

Instantly there was a palpable tension to Elrond’s demeanour, and he spoke his next words with an uneasiness that seemed foreboding.

“You carried your belongings long and far, and I would keep them untouched by any hands save yours. The law of this house is that none may go armed, except the guards who defend us. To ensure your safety and that of all others here I must ask you to hand over your weapons for safekeeping.”

A cold weight of dread settled low in Elrohir’s chest. He had been glad of his knives a few times, alone with greedy men in dark corners of the Beinalph . Without them he would be defenseless. The favour of the Elves might yet prove a fickle thing. His fear ebbed at the realisation that he was surrounded by thousands of the creatures. After the awe-inspiring spectacle of Glorfindel’s battle fury Elrohir harboured no illusions. No amount of weaponry would save him if his hosts should come to wish him ill.

Silence descended on the room and two pairs of Elvish eyes looked at him expectantly. A reply was in order, and to rail against the inevitable seemed futile at best, dangerous at worst.

“As you wish.”

Elrohir carefully kept his eyes on the leaping fishes engraved on the silver cup of watered wine before him, offering no resistance. The awkward silence dragged on. Elrohir’s resignation seemed to distress, rather than please Elrond.

“I understand this is difficult to believe, but you have never been safer than you are now. No one in this valley poses the slightest danger to you, and between us and the darkness outside stands more than walls alone. There is no need to defend yourself against anything. No harm will come to you in this house. ”

Elrohir nodded mutely, his thoughts on foul enchantments, and knives in the dark. Despite the cold terror gripping his heart he did as he was told. To deceive one as far-sighted as Elrond was beyond Elrohir’s skill and he knew it. He had no desire to learn how disobedience might be punished among Elves.

He carefully undid the intricate string of knots on the bag’s ties. The pattern of knots was uniquely Elrohir’s own, and he noted with relief that it was indeed undisturbed from when he had fastened it that morning.  At least in this, it would seem Elrond had spoken the truth.

The first layer of contents was threadbare sailor’s garb from Gondor. Underneath lay turbans and tunics from Harad, still marked with faded bloodstains of battles past. Even after all these months a slight ghost of the comforting smells of the desert lingered, coal fires and camels. Elrohir was tempted to breathe it in ere it would evaporate forever, but he restrained himself. He could ill afford sentimentality in sight of the one who now held his life in his hands. What Elrond wanted sat hidden in the garments’ rolled up lengths, and Elrohir laid all of it out on the table.

First he brought out his scimitar, looted from the very first Black Númenórean Elrohir had killed long ago, and still bearing scratches where he had filed off the eye-shaped sigil of the Lords of Umbar. The wooden hilt was well-worn by years of hard use, but the blade had been fastidiously whetted, lethally sharp. Beside it came his knives, brought out from various hiding places. The small ones in his belt and boot, and his dirk, long and slender for stabbing through neck- and armholes of armour. He even offered up the skinning knife he used when hunting. Last to be relinquished was his crossbow, neatly disassembled and rolled in an indigo turban at the very bottom of the pack with its iron-tipped bolts. Elrohir’s hands went through the motions of putting it back together of their own accord, guided by the long habit of meticulous care for this precious thing that had saved his life countless times. Laying it down with everything else, unstrung, was the hardest thing he had done in a long time.  

He turned to Elrond.

“This is everything.”

Both of them knew it was the truth. Elrond smiled, but there was no joy in it as he gathered up the weapons.

“Have no fear of losing what you gave me. All these will be held for you as keepsakes.”

Elladan was staring at both weapons and gear with consternation, as if he had never seen a soldier’s kit before. His childlike innocence was disturbing. Not for the first time Elrohir wondered what, exactly, Elladan did with his days.

Elrond gathered the weapons in a bundle, which he carefully rolled in a linen cloth, presumably to keep them out of sight of passers-by in the hallway.

“Elrohir. I regret having to begin your life here by taking what is yours. It is a sad necessity you will come to understand, in time. Try to rest now. I imagine you would prefer to eat here tonight, and forego the dining hall. But we are all in dire need of a bath first!”

With that he smiled, clearly in search of solidarity for their travel-stained state. Elrohir felt a sudden spike of anger at this honey-tongued Elf who had so casually robbed him of his sense of safety, and now had the gall to expect a smile in return. Remembering in time the folly of displeasing someone who had him at his mercy, he managed to produce a rote, wooden grin. Instantly he was certain that Elrond knew, the hurt of rejection flashing in those alien eyes.

Elrohir did not want to feel sympathy for this great lord, or begin to understand the Elf’s sorrow at finding mistrust and estrangement where he must have expected something else entirely. He had enough problems of his own.

Instead of rebuke he received gentleness.

“I will not ask you not to be afraid. I might as well order you to sprout wings and fly around the valley. It will pass, given time.”

With that he took up the bundle of weapons and left. Elrohir felt himself shake as if he had run for miles. He would have liked to think it was exhaustion, or even anger. Both he and Elladan knew it was the abject terror of a deer before a pack of snarling wolves.

 

Elladan knew better than to offer childish comfort. What Elrohir needed was distraction, and Elladan delivered. He led Elrohir to a room covered in sea-green tiles where a steaming tub stood ready. Elrohir was well aware he had not seen the inside of a bathhouse since Pelargir. The sour smell of his own unwashed hair had grown so unpleasant he became glad of the Elvish braids keeping it out of his face. All unease pushed aside at this rare delight, he sank into the copper tub with a sigh of bliss, and could not resist taking his good time scouring himself with the almost forgotten luxury of real soap.

Cleaner than he had been since the start of the desert war, Elrohir dressed in the Elvish clothes that had been laid out. They fit him far better than what he had been given to wear on the road. Some fast-fingered seamstress had already altered the sleeves and hemline. With the clothes came soft-soled boots and a belt with a silver clasp engraved with yet another six-pointed star.

He pulled a fine-toothed comb through the uneven strands of his hair. In Harad he would have visited a barber to have it neatly cropped short before he could be civilised company once more. A haircut was out of the question here. Every single Elf he had met thus far, man or woman, wore their hair long and braided, down to the small of their back. The mere sight of Elrohir’s, barely jaw-length, had brought Celebrían and several others to the verge of tears. Admitting that he used to have it cut regularly -- by his own choice! -- caused such consternation he had not dared repeat the tale. Among Elves, ‘hair-cutter’ was an insult rather than an honest trade.

 

----

Celebrían found herself alone with her husband for the first time in a fortnight of emotional turmoil. She stood still for an instant to drink in the comforting familiarity of their bedroom with its arras embroidered with flowering mellyrn. Her esquire had removed her riding boots and mail, but before Baralin could start on the fastenings of her gambeson Celebrían had dismissed both her and Elrond’s manservant, eager for the opportunity to speak with Elrond without inevitably being overheard by their travel companions through thin canvas tent walls.

She had been headed for the bath that had been drawn for them when she brusquely turned around and walked back into Elrond’s embrace with a small sound between a sob and a sigh. He wrapped his arms and mind around her, grieved that he was powerless to make any of this better for her overnight.

An exquisite agony it had been. Elrond’s gasp of sorrow had resonated through both their hearts at the sight of their son lean with hunger, his beautiful hair cropped pitifully short, the way he politely refrained from stepping back when she tried to touch him but could not keep from stiffening. The worst of it had been those familiar eyes, so lively in Elladan’s identical face. Elrohir had his perpetually guarded. His expression changed as he smiled and spoke, but he never showed his mind if he could possibly help it.  

The harsh lessons of many wars had taught both Elrond and Celebrían better than to take their wishes for reality. They never harboured any illusions that Elrohir would be unaffected by his ordeal. From the ruined state of the escaped thrall who first put them on Elrohir’s trail, and Glorfindel’s tales of darkness, war and desperation there could be little doubt he would return under a shadow. The forewarning failed to make it any more bearable.

Elrond drew back from their embrace, always seeking to comfort. He took her face between his gentle hands and kissed her, softly and full of warmth.

“We knew he would be injured, and healing it a long work.”

Celebrían found herself absurdly grateful for being allowed to hope. “You do believe there is healing for his … shadow, on this side of the sea?”

He did not insult her with false comfort. “I will go the the very ends of my ability before I would even consider looking West.”

Dread knotted heavily in Celebrían’s chest, and she distracted herself by busying her hands. Elrond understood her without words. He sat on the carved stool kept in most Elvish bathrooms for that very purpose so she might undo his austere warrior’s braids. He leant into her hands as she deftly loosened each tie and removed the silver clasps.

“If not for Elladan he would never have come.” Celebrían said, relieved that this sad truth could finally be spoken aloud. “We are completely strange to him, in every sense of the word.”  

She combed her fingers through Elrond’s waist-length locks, releasing the scent of the cedar oil they had been braided with. He had never suffered the unspeakable indignity of having his hair cut, not even at the hands of the kinslayers. She wondered how long it would take for Elrohir’s to grow enough that the mere sight of him would no longer remind of cruelty.   

With his hair prepared for washing Elrond rose. Wordless in the easy habit of long years they switched positions. His fingers were skilled and gentle as he freed her silver hair from its stiffly plaited coronet without snag or pull. He, too tended to dwell on his troubles while his hands were occupied.

“Elrohir is afraid of us -- of me more than you. He watches my every move so carefully, as if he expects me to bewitch him when his back is turned.”

Celebrían sighed. “He fears being imprisoned. Ardil tells me he was asking about the sentries.”          

Elrond shuddered. “What is this madness, that drives us to guarding our own child like a prisoner? It did Elu Thingol little good, and it will bring us nothing but ill fate.”

As ever, Celebrían’s thoughts went less to ethics and historical precedent, and more towards practicality. She eyed him wryly.

“Lúthien was fully grown into her powers. When the same can be said of Elrohir he may depart with all my blessings. Snow will be thick on the ground soon enough. He has no concept of winter, or Orcs. To let him leave would be to kill him.”

She paused, thinking.

“In fact, the one good thing to come from our brush with those Orcs is to drive that home. It will deter him.”

 

----

 

The evening meal was a quiet affair, served by the same silent servant who had brought Elrohir’s bag. Elrohir could tell that great care was being taken not to aggravate him any further, the conversation as light and unthreatening as the food was heavy. Unlike Elladan, Elrohir was served liberal amounts of unwatered wine with his roast beef and buttered greens. It seemed his hosts badly wanted him to sleep.

Elrond and Celebrían took their leave after the meal. Elladan alone led Elrohir to what were to be his rooms.

“Ardil will spend the night in your anteroom, call him if you need anything.”

Elrohir nodded silently, well aware that Ardil’s presence had more to do with keeping him from leaving, than anyone else from entering.

Elladan fussed for a long time, clearly unwilling to leave Elrohir alone. After building up the fire he poured even more wine despite Elrohir’s protests, until there truly was nothing left to do and Elladan left his brother behind with a final, tight embrace.

In complete silence Elrohir set to exploring. The door to the anteroom, carved in a repeating motive of stylized stars, had neither latch nor lock. The disturbing knowledge that he might wake to a strange Elf standing over him kept all desire for sleep at bay. He sorely missed the safety of Elladan’s presence, but his twin was deeply engrossed in whatever conversation he was now having. Leaving this room in search of Elladan might violate a curfew of some kind, and Elrohir did not relish the thought of confronting his personal sentry once more. He would have to take this in hand himself, and he knew how to improvise.  

He surveyed the room with calm efficiency. Like the rest of Imladris it was Elven-fair, every object within a work of art - from the russet whorls of the walnut floor to the ceiling of cream-coloured stone, with a whimsical nesting bird carved in one corner of the cornice.  

Both the curtained bed and the wardrobe were solid oak, far too heavy for him to lift. An attempt to drag them across the room was sure to raise alarm. By the desk stood a lacquered wooden chest, decorated with a frieze of galloping horses. Inside he found a bewildering array of writing implements. The various glass ink-bottles would rattle if he should try to move its heavy bulk. He soundlessly lowered the lid again.

Finally his eye came to rest on the elegant spindle-legged chair at the desk.

Whisper-quiet Elrohir lifted the chair, to gently tip its carved back against the door. He searched the room once more. The desk held a writing set of quill holder and ink-pot on a matching metal tray, finely engraved with a pattern of vines and leaves. Dropped to the hardwood floor from a height it would make enough of a racket to raise the deepest sleeper. Careful not to drop the tray he balanced it atop the chair. The improvised construction might not make for an effective barricade, but it would serve to keep even the stealthiest Elf from surprising Elrohir in his sleep.

He turned his attention to the windows. The curtains had been drawn for the night. They were of the same heavy, night-blue silk as the bed curtains, embroidered with a pattern of interweaving stars. To his relief the set glass panes underneath latched on the inside. Outside there was nothing to see but darkness and the reflection of his own pale face. The ever-present murmuring of the Bruinen sounded close by. Presumably the room overlooked the river.

One more matter was left to attend to before Elrohir could chance sleep. With so many quills, how could there not be a pen-knife to sharpen them? Another search through the chest yielded only perfectly tipped goose feathers. Elrond had anticipated this line of reasoning.

The tiled side-room meant for his ablutions held nothing usable. The only object in the room that could conceivably serve as a weapon was the poker hanging beside the hearth. Its handle was cleverly shaped into another running horse. Whoever had equipped this room seemed rather fond of them.

As ill at ease as he was, Elrohir could not bring himself to soil the fresh, crisply folded bed linen by laying the soot-covered thing beside him. It would not do to antagonise the housekeeper on his very first day. He wiped the poker on an old rag from his bag as best he could, and placed it on the floor by the bed.    

Finally he removed his boots and carefully draped his overtunic over the chest before snuffing the candles and turning in. Despite the comfort of feather pillows sleep eluded him for a long time as he listened to the unfamiliar sounds of the river, the great house around him and distant song echoing through the valley. Once he thought he recognized Glingaer’s voice, leading a chorus of some kind. Whatever merry words the Elf was singing, Elrohir did not understand.

Chapter End Notes

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