Sun and Shadow by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 1

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“With all due respect, sir, why in Eru’s blessed name did you let him live?”

The Northerner had an uncanny air about him. What had kept his captain from slitting the man’s throat on sight was beyond Thanak.  

Amuk took no offence at his frankness. Thanak had been a trusted lieutenant for many war-filled years. His level-headed pragmatism had won him more raids than either could count. The commander of Harad’s troops straightened himself and rubbed the scruffy grey curls of his beard while thinking. Thanak kept his hands inside the wide sleeves of his robe. He was beardless himself – too much Númenórean blood. 

“He is no Umbarian. He let us slaughter an entire caravan’s worth of them without batting an eye. I believe he truly is from the Far North. Hear him out. We can kill him afterwards, if you think it needful.” Amuk smiled as he spoke, a sight Thanak had not seen in months. 

Thanak did not have it in him to match his captain’s smile. Ever since the Demon began to  haunt their desert, good cheer was in short supply among the Haradrim. Whatever this strange fellow from the snow-lands might want, he knew how to raise a sombre man’s spirits. The sudden, baseless return of Amuk’s joviality seemed highly suspicious. 

For an instant both warriors turned back to look down the sage-speckled hillside they had walked up, deep in private conversation. Stars still stood in the dark western sky, but to the east feathered clouds lit up, turning from pale gold to the blazing orange of a smith’s fire. Another day of flat, harsh glare would soon pour over the barren land like a tide of molten metal. 

The camp below was in its early morning bustle – groaning camels being unloaded, the setting of tarps, people sharing rations and gossip in their shade. For an instant Thanak resented the Northerling for encroaching on this rare moment of rest and friendly company. 

Glorfindel kept himself apart, pacing back and forth along the camp’s edge like a caged lion and staring after Thanak with a look so intense it could only be described as yearning. Whatever he was seeking with this bizarre quest into the deep desert, he wanted it badly indeed. The man was taller and broader in the shoulders than any Haradrim, each of his movements supple and efficient. Neither Thanak nor Amuk failed to recognize the precise military bearing of a trained fighter. This Glorfindel was neither innocent nor harmless.     

“There’s more to that one than meets the eye. He has an air of sorcery about him. I don’t like it,” Thanak said.

Amuk shrugged, his face wan with weariness beneath the dark umber of his skin. Thanak recognized the drooping shoulders and that same air of bleak exhaustion that must mark his own face. This thrice-cursed war was fast proving unwinnable. Mere men could not battle the Demon. What folly had driven Glorfindel from his icy home and into the final throes of Harad’s defeat mattered little, in the end. Soon his bones would be buried in the sand with those of the Haradrim.

“Metalan is keeping him at arrowshot. You need only say the word, and we’ll have one less thirsty mouth to fill.” Amuk was in charge of Harad’s troops because he was cunning, cautious, and above all – practical.

Thanak nodded. “I am about to get myself slaughtered by a Demon, but at least I’ll die with my curiosity satisfied, and so will you, sir. Let Metalan keep him covered. Any strange business, put a bolt through his neck.”

Metalan had never been their best sharpshooter, but Thanak reckoned she now qualified as such on account of being alive. The Haradrim knew how to make do.

Thanak’s gaze came to rest on the Northerner’s cloak. At first sight it appeared a strange, rippling grey that never quite caught the eye. As he moved, colour shimmered in its folds like an insect’s wing, a soft sky blue, sage green, the muted yellow of the sand itself. It was very fine camouflage indeed – good enough for stalking Demons.

“With your permission I would have that cloak, afterwards.”  

 

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Thanak deliberately spoke Haradi. It would not hurt to put the stranger at a disadvantage. 

“Greetings, Northerling. I am told you are looking for me.”

He had never met anyone who could stare quite like this foreigner, as if the man were dying of thirst and the mere sight of Thanak would somehow slake it. He was glad he had thought to replace the veil he had removed for his talk with Amuk before facing his unusual visitor. Thanak’s was not a forgettable face, and he did not care to show it to strangers. He did not invite the man to share fire or food, merely crouched in the sand beside him, fingers curled around the bone hilt of the dagger he kept in his sleeve. 

Instead of answering Glorfindel removed his own veil. The face he uncovered could have hailed from any village from here to Gondor. Vaguely Númenórean, beardless, and remarkable only for the jarring way its everyday homeliness contrasted with the depth of his gaze. He moved himself between Thanak and the camp, his back to the tents. The odd manoeuvre had Thanak close to signalling for the fatal crossbow bolt.

The next instant Glorfindel’s face shimmered and shifted like swirling mist. Before Thanak could cry out in alarm a different set of features was revealed, and memory struck him like a slap.

 

He was being carried in arms, by someone tall. Carried into crisp air and dappled sunlight - taken outside to look at the new year’s first snowdrops. He laughed, delirious with delight, reached out. 

Both chubby fists full of delicate blooms white as clouds, a burst of scent.

Bright laughter rang at his back. He wriggled around in the encircling arms to offer his prize and see that face radiant with joy, framed by a halo of golden hair.

 

Glorfindel remained still and silent as Thanak fought to remain in the present, alert and capable of defending himself against whatever sorcery was pulling him back to memories long abandoned. His fist closed on the camel-bone handle of his hidden knife, hard enough for its rough edges to bite into his palm with a sharp, grounding pain. Thanak decided to switch to Númenórean. Whatever Glorfindel had to say for himself, let him do it in a language he had mastered properly. 

“So at least this part of what Amuk tells me is true. It seems I somehow knew you, long ago.”

Glorfindel remained motionless, his sword-calloused hands still in his lap. He had enough sense of self-preservation to appear as unthreatening as he could.

“Your father sends me to bring you home. We have searched for many years. At last we have found you.”

That voice . Deep and golden as the ringing of bells, and far too familiar for comfort. After hearing but a few words Thanak knew how this Glorfindel would sound when he sang. Reality slipped and stuttered once more.

 

He was dozing, curled up on a soft blanket spread on some forgotten, starlit meadow with his head cradled in the singer’s lap.  

 

Thanak recoiled from the sharp pain of loss, battling an insane urge to ask Glorfindel to sing for him just once more lest he die without ever hearing that sound again. 

Instead he brusquely interrupted him, more to silence him than anything else. 

“I have no memory of him. What little I know of my childhood before I was captured does not allow me to tell whether you speak the whole truth. I can see no falsehood in you. That said, your mind is different from any I have encountered before. It hides many things.”

“Only what safety requires.” 

A flock of sandgrouse spread out against the lightening sky. They noisily flapped into the air in a cloud of swirling feathers, disturbed by a group of warriors hunting them with slingshots. Glorfindel paid the distressed birds no heed – his alien blue eyes remained fixed on Elrohir, seeming to beg rather than bewitch. Thanak had fought the Black Númenóreans for long enough to know that even the darkest sorcery would appear beautiful at first sight. 

He laughed without mirth. “And whose safety would that be?”

Glorfindel remained impassive. "Yours first and foremost, but also mine and that of those who eagerly await our return at home.”

Our . The fellow had nerve, to casually presume that Thanak and he might share some common cause.

“Which is?” Thanak asked curtly.

“Imladris, in the North. Where Elrond, your father, rules the Hidden Valley with the Lady Celebrían, your mother.”

Thanak was almost relieved when the words failed to stir another one of the strange images. For a moment he sat back and grounded himself breathing the crisp morning air. Behind Glorfindel, where the eastern edge of the world seemed to crumble into worn, desolate towers of sandstone, the sky was lighting up like molten bronze as the sun’s disk began to rise.   

“None of those names hold meaning to me. It must have been over forty years. I am surprised to hear my parents are still alive, let alone sending out search parties.”

Glorfindel was clearly dismayed by Thanak’s lack of recognition. His impassive mask slipped to reveal genuine dread standing clear in his eyes. With a jolt Thanak realized the man did not fear death at his hands, but rejection. 

Glorfindel’s next words were an assault. “What about your brother? Have you completely forgotten Elladan?”

Thanak fell. He was plunged into memory like deep, dark water closing over his head. 

 

He was not merely alone. He was a missing half, cut off and bleeding. What had been amputated was a face like his own, delicate features beneath a mop of dark hair. 

Elladan. 

Elladan liked blackberries, and books with maps in them, but he liked the stable kittens best – which was just silly because dogs were so much nicer. Elladan was supposed to have the bed on the right and he the left, but they always ended up sharing. They had not been apart for a single day in their lives, and it should not be so now. Not ever.      

 

It hurt. Ai Eru! It hurt worse than a hundred Demons. For an instant Thanak hated Glorfindel for cruelly unearthing his deepest sorrow, this loss beyond weeping that should have stayed buried. He gasped for breath, willing traitorous tears to remain behind his eyelids where they belonged. 

When he rubbed his eyes his fingers were gritty with dirt and the dried blood of foe or fallen friend – Eru knew who. It would feel good to be clean once more. How long had it been since he last had enough water for anything but carefully rationed sips? 

Glorfindel remained still, offering neither speech nor smile. He needed none. His battle was won and he knew it. 

Thanak imagined pulling his sore, battered body up from the sand to simply set one foot before the other like a man with nothing to lose. Away from Harad, the Demon, away from loyalty, honour, from every oath he had ever taken. Elladan’s face would guide him like a star. He might keep walking past Umbar and Harondor, where the trees bore oranges and lemons instead of dates, to reach Gondor teetering on the northern edge of the world. Imladris could not be much further. 

He had believed himself no longer capable of crying, but now he was blinking furiously to hold back tears of regret. He was neither an oathbreaker nor a coward. An impossible task lay before him, and he was honour-bound to die trying. He would never see Elladan again. The very idea was agony beyond anything the Demon had ever inflicted on him. 

He nonetheless tried his best. “We meet in interesting times, Glorfindel. The war against Umbar is at a turning point. In the coming weeks we must defeat them or be utterly destroyed, leaving all of the free people of Harad in chains. And right at this very moment you appear, as if by Eru’s own hand, with a tale that is simply too fanciful to be true in this mad world.”

Glorfindel stated fact when he answered, “Yet you believe me, or you would have had me killed by now.”

It seemed Metalan and her crossbow were not as stealthy as they had believed. Not that it mattered, in the depth of their desperation. 

“I believe you, Eru help me! But I can’t see how that still matters now. As you have your duty to uphold, so do I have mine. Time is running out. Now that I have delivered my message to Amuk, I am needed elsewhere, and with great haste. My companions and I will leave in an hour, for we do not have even the day to spare. Where we go, you can’t follow. Amuk and his folk will now turn South to the Pass of Horns. You must go with them and wait for me there. Eru willing, I will find you again. Then we will see what can be done.”

Glorfindel smiled with a self-assurance bordering on arrogance.

“Take me with you, wherever you are going. No matter what awaits, you will be glad you brought me before the end.”

No. This could not be. Glorfindel was living proof that those lost and precious things Thanak could not dwell on lest he shatter into pieces – the scent of northern flowers, half-remembered songs, his own hands stained purple with blackberry juice, Elladan – were more than just figments of his imagination. 

Thanak had no life left to live. He was hunting a deadly Demon. He would find and face it, and then he would die. His memories would die with him. But when his bones were in the sand and his soul gone beyond all knowing the image of Elladan’s face would still exist in this world because Glorfindel might keep it. Glorfindel could not be allowed to die.    

Thanak shook his head. “You know nothing of the desert, Master Glorfindel. Even if you are as much of an asset as you claim, we cannot bring one such as you on the journey we are about to make. Speed is of the essence. You don’t have a camel, and even if you did you aren’t used to riding. Go with Amuk.”

The stubborn bastard refused to understand what was good for him.

“Camels can bear two people.”

Thanak made a hand-gesture of dismissal. The very last thing he needed was some clumsy, untrained city dweller clinging to his back, drinking his waterskins dry and slowing Ot. 

“Not as far, as fast and with as little water as the journey we are about to attempt. I would condemn both of us and my camel to death from thirst if I agreed to this.”

“In that case you leave me no choice but to follow you on foot.”

Thanak was flabbergasted by the sheer folly of that.

“You’d be dead before the third day broke.”

“Do not underestimate me. There is more than the eye can see.” 

Thanak could not help his derisive snort. In Harad’s desert climate the limitations of the human body were as simple as they were merciless. He had skirted their edges often enough to know.

“Whatever that is, I am quite sure it will not allow you to walk all the way through the Great Dunes with only the water you can carry on your back!”

Glorfindel sat up straight, and his words had the finality of a dire oath. His face seemed otherwordly, fell and fierce and impossibly beautiful as the dawn washed him in light red as copper. 

“I have sworn to bring you home safely. Now that I have found you I will not let you go to war alone. If I cannot ride with you I will walk in your tracks wherever you are going, and I will find you at their end.”

He seemed a man possessed in his strange obsession with Thanak, a blind determination beyond sense or reason. Thanak might as well try to forbid the rising of the sun. For an instant he was tempted to call Glorfindel’s bluff, but the thought was overtaken by the cold certainty that he would inevitably attempt the insane endeavour. This was no ordinary man. With a sinking feeling Thanak realized that the only way he could control this northerner was by killing him.

“You are mad. All you will find in my tracks is your death.”

“A chance I am willing to take. Hear me Thanak, or Elrohir, the name I heard your father give you the day you were born. Whatever is on the other side of the dunes, you will be glad of my help. Take me, or I shall walk.”

Elrohir . That was his name once, and would be again if Glorfindel had his way. Thanak would cease to exist. The only way out was to plant a crossbow bolt in Glorfindel’s chest. Thanak had been a soldier long enough to have lost count of his kills, but he knew with shocking certainty that he lacked the stomach for this one.

“Very well. I’ll take you in my saddle, but know this. If your presence threatens our mission, I will not hesitate to abandon you to your fate in the desert.”

With that, Thanak rose to his feet and all but fled the unsettling conversation. His company were already saddling their camels and packing gear. He set to the same tasks in the eerie, blood-red glow of dawn. 

Glorfindel followed a few paces behind. As Thanak gathered, tied and buckled Glorfindel took in Ot as if he had never seen a war camel before in his life. His appraising eye lingered long on Thanak’s spears and the quivers of crossbow bolts strapped to the saddle. Whatever else he might be, this man was a soldier, and not a bad one by the look of things. Thanak could only hope he would indeed fight on his side when faced with the Demon. 

Amuk approached, bearing Glorfindel’s pack, weapons and waterskin. Thanak carefully kept a neutral expression when he realized that the commander of the Haradrim had grown sentimental in his old age. Amuk was supplying Glorfindel with water and food from his own shares. On long desert journeys every precious drop was counted and accounted for. Nonetheless Glorfindel’s waterskin had been filled to capacity, and Amuk handed him a bundle of dried dates Thanak knew for a fact was an army ration.

“May Eru protect you, Glorfindel. These times grow dark and we may not meet again in this life or the next. I am glad to see that honour and loyalty have not entirely forsaken this world.”

Glorfindel bowed to Amuk with formal respect.

“My thanks and blessings, Amuk. May your fortunes in this war and beyond be favourable, and may you return safely to those you care for."

Thanak kept his own goodbyes brief. He rode to certain death from here, Amuk to a probable one. Neither saw the use in sinking morale any further by setting that loss to words.  

He silently packed Glorfindel’s belongings with his own and allowed the man to mount behind him. He was used to riding with a passenger, but those had never been complete strangers. The forced intimacy of it was rather jarring. Glorfindel’s broad-shouldered bulk was a wall at his back. Even on a suicide mission to the heart of a waterless desert the fellow somehow managed to smell of soap.

At a click of Thanak’s tongue Ot rose to his feet. The camel grumbled with resentment under his heavy load. Thanak kneed him on without a second thought. Consideration had fallen by the wayside weeks ago. 

In the vast, shimmering distance the sun rode low on the horizon amidst a great cloud-wrack stained scarlet and madder. Together they faced its angry glare to ride East in search of a deadly shadow, and what might lie beyond.

 

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Chapter End Notes

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I wish you all a great summer!

Idrils Scribe