False Dawn by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 7

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Elrohir woke to terror. 

His bedroom lay pale in the bone-white light of the hunter’s moon, the casements open to the Bruinen’s song now tainted with an alien note of discord. A tendril of the encroaching darkness had breached the sanctuary that was Imladris. Some fell thing was out to hunt. 

Elrohir sat up in bed, and the north wind caught what loose wisps of hair had escaped his simple braid. This was no soft breeze whispering through the valley’s apple orchards, but a gale that howled from the desolate wastes of Angmar to sting with icy claws, groping face and skin beneath the thin linen of his nightshirt. It carried the stench of death.   

Elrohir’s eyes whipped across the room. There! In the sallow half-light something moved at the foot of his bed. The thing writhed, crawled closer, and Elrohir cried out in dismay. This was Glingaer, a scout assigned to Elladan’s security detail. The familiar traits of his fine-boned Nandorin face were twisted into sad mockery by a head bashed in. Despite the grotesque, unsurvivable injury Glingaer’s bloodied hands clawed for Elrohir’s throat. One eye was lost amidst the amorphous mass of shattered skull and brain. The remaining one shone black as the Void. 

Instinct took over. Elrohir leapt back. His swift kick met only air. In half a heartbeat his fingers found the silver-tooled knife beneath his pillow. A quick stab for the jugular saw the creature reduced to a heap of mangled limbs.

Where he expected gore his searching hand met wrinkled linen and feathers gleaming snow-white in the moonlight. Reality came crashing back with a rush of blood like thunder in his ears as he surveyed the ruin of his eiderdown. Some strange entanglement of memory and Mortal dream had run away with him. 

Alarm pulsed through his veins like the drums of war, his mouth dry with that gritty, metallic taste of adrenaline. A single devastating certainty cut through his confusion. Something was deadly, desperately wrong. He needed to leave. 

Elrohir swung from the bed, knife in hand, frozen in a moment’s indecision on where to turn first. The room’s once-familiar furnishings menaced him from every angle. Velvet bed curtains billowed shroud-like in the strange wind. Elrohir’s harp in its corner, a beloved gift from Celebrían, now seemed some Orcish instrument of unspeakable torture. Wall hangings, once things of beauty in the light of sun and candle, twisted to show baleful shapes of horror and decay. 

Another shadow moved near the door. Elrohir spun, knife out to run the intruder through, be they flesh or spirit. 

“Elrohir! Stand down!” Ardil kept a safe distance but his voice brooked no argument.  

Elrohir breathed deeply. In and out. He half-expected the stench of the battlefield, that greasy smoke that wafts from burning corpses. The air that filled his lungs smelled of Imladris in autumn—the crisp spice of fallen leaves and a hint of cider apples. 

“I am awake.” It sounded less confident than he had hoped. Only then did he realize Ardil’s unusual intrusion. “Why are you in my bedroom?”

“I am in charge of your security.” Ardil answered dryly. “Where else would I be when you wreck your rooms in the dead of night? You were shouting.”  

Elrohir belatedly realized he had not been left alone for a moment of the past week. Elladan’s departure had left him unstable, beset by unpredictable waves of foresight that set his mind adrift like a ship unmoored. Elrond and Celebrían had kept him close, made sure he ate and slept and was diverted with tasks that did not involve the handling of actual weaponry. Elrohir had let them. He dutifully heard scouts’ reports, wrote up rosters and accepted Glorfindel’s suspiciously spontaneous invitations to evenings of chess. Ardil must have been charged with nighttime surveillance.

His guard stepped into the room, one hand outstretched towards Elrohir. He stood staring at the strange gesture for an instant, dumb and motionless. 

“Pass me the knife.” Ardil implored. “You have no need of it.”

Every instinct Elrohir possessed screamed in protest at the very idea of going unarmed on this night. He shook his head. “I am awake.”

He sheathed the blade and turned towards the wardrobe to retrieve a field uniform. He cursed under his breath when he realized he would have to wear standard-issue armour instead of his own.

“Send word to the stables and the barracks.” As he spoke Elrohir yanked off his nightshirt and pulled the uniform’s fitted undertunic over his head without a second thought. Ardil had been his personal guard for nearly ten long-years. The man had seen it all. 

“I will need my usual escort. Have them prepare at once. Get your own gear while you are out. I will meet you in the stable courtyard in half an hour. And have some armour sent up for me!” Elrohir did not turn to look at Ardil. Issuing orders had become second nature over the years.

Ardil did not move, but stood with his feet planted wide like a swordsman taking the measure of an adversary. “You should speak to your father first.”

Elrohir spun on his heels to face his bodyguard, unsteady fingers struggling with the ties of his gambeson. “Stars above, Ardil! Of all the times to be splitting hairs! We must hurry!” Whatever this was, they had no time to lose.

Ardil shook his head. “I have orders not to let you leave this house.”

Elrohir’s hands clenched into fists and he saw Ardil’s eyes settle on his knife-hilt. He was intimately familiar with Ardil’s every move and feint, that minute twitch of tension in the man’s shoulders as he prepared to leap. Not once in ten long-years of training together had Elrohir managed to best the ancient warrior in unarmed combat. His only hope now was the strength of the desperate. 

Ardil raised both hands in a placating gesture as if he sensed the thought. “Come with me, Elrohir. Let us talk before we do each other an injury. There is someone you should see.” 

 

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None of what awaited them in Elrond’s study made any sense.

Not Celebrian’s steely, dry-eyed silence.

Not Elrohir’s ruby pendant, which should be around Elladan’s neck in Fornost. Celebrían now inexplicably clutched the jewel, her eyes blazing with something Elrohir could not name. 

Not Borndis, who should likewise be in Fornost. The Silvan warrior was briar-scratched and mud-soaked as if she had been there, then come crawling back to Imladris on hands and knees. How absurd she looked, kneeling before Elrond like a supplicant instead of standing to attention as she should. 

Elrond did nothing to restore order or rightness but stood frozen, impotent, eyes empty as if his mind were elsewhere. And what fool had raised Glorfindel and Erestor from their beds before they even fetched Elrohir?

All eyes turned to Elrohir as he stepped into the study. The press of their one question filled the room thick as smoke in a house on fire. He knew the answer, knew it with devastating certainty. 

Time slipped, stopped and stuttered when he spoke the words. “Elladan is not dead.” 

Elrohir’s voice came out calm and level, but all their eyes were heavy on him and he could not bear them.

Now Borndis was sobbing, deep and harsh, and Elrond buried his face in his hands. Elrohir did not know what would have been the better thing to say. 

“What happened?” he managed to utter, though his mouth seemed made of wood.

Borndis, now prostrate at Elrohir’s feet as if he were some tyrant king of Black Númenor, at last gave him some clarity. 

“Oh, my lord, they took him. The Men were traitors for Angmar, bait to trap a son of Elrond! Your brother sent me away to warn you. His guards were all killed, but he is captive!”

One rainy autumn day long ago in Lórien, Elladan had fallen from a mallorn tree. Elrohir recalled every agonizing detail of his twin’s stumble on wet, moss-covered bark, the wobbly overcompensation that followed, the toppling. He could still feel in his own chest that jerking sensation of weightlessness, the pummelling of rushing branches, the dull, teeth-rattling thud of the ground. Elladan had been knocked out cold. For an instant his mind went black as the Void and Elrohir had believed him dead. He had wept like a child then. Now, he was the one falling.

No language Elrohir knew had a word for what he would become. Orphan, widow, widower. These defined a person by their loss. No such word existed for an amputated twin.

Someone keened, and only then did he realize it was his own voice. In an instant he was embraced, wrapped in hands and arms and bodies. Elrond, Celebrían, and Ardil.  

It seemed an unusual display of affection from his stoic guard. With a jolt Elrohir felt Ardil deftly reach into the tangle of limbs to lift his knife from its sheath.

 

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“And now for the bitter question.” Elrond fought to keep his voice steady, but could not keep from rubbing his face with trembling hands. “What shall be our next move?”

His eyes came to rest on Elrohir with unveiled terror. Elrohir was not himself, with his mind awash in whatever horror was being visited on Elladan. Their reserved, fastidious son had emerged from his rooms wild-eyed, unbraided and dressed in what appeared to be half a field uniform. Ardil, eminently sensible even now, had sent for a formal robe, a comb and a flask of miruvor to restore his captain’s dignity. It did nothing to soften Elrohir’s heart-wrenching look of mute despair.  

“Our options are limited,” said Erestor. He rose to pace the room, his robes trailing behind him like the wings of some great, dark bird. “There has been no demand for ransom or surrender.”

“They do not know that we know. Not yet,” Elrohir interjected, a haunted look in his eyes. ”Time and surprise are our only advantages. We must set out for Carn Dûm at once!”

With a swordsman’s agility, Erestor spun to face Elrohir. “Is he in Carn Dûm? How do you know this?!” he demanded sharply.

Elrohir seemed astonished, and answered with rock-solid certainty: “I know .”

Elrond’s stomach dropped with the sickening implications. So did Celebrían’s, it seemed, because she clasped his hand beneath the table with bruising strength. Together they shared a look of horrible understanding. 

Erestor was quick to intervene. “Elrohir, if you know where Elladan is, does he not know the same of you? And will he share that knowledge, when the information is requested with enough … persuasion?“

Erestor turned to Elrond and Celebrían, his mouth set in grim determination. “We made contingency plans for your sons. I recommend you follow through on them despite matters being ... the reverse of what we anticipated.”

Elrohir gave Erestor a perplexed stare. “Reverse? What contingency?”

Erestor moved to stand beside Elrohir, and laid a hand on his shoulder. The gesture seemed both comfort and restraint. “You and your brother share great closeness in mind. This might be used against us if one of you were captured, and it was most likely to be you. Events have turned out otherwise, but the risk is the same. You should leave this council, Elrohir, lest other ears than yours learn our plans.”

“You have no hope of finding Elladan without me,” Elrohir growled, shaking off Erestor’s hand, his every muscle coiled like a great cat about to leap.

Erestor did not answer him, but turned away to face his lord and lady once more, beseeching. “You have more to consider than your sons alone.”

Through a fog of grief Elrond nodded, hanging on to composure by the merest thread. “Elrohir, go rest in your rooms. I will come to you soon.”

Elrohir shot to his feet, his chair clattering to the ground behind him. “Father, I have obeyed you in all things, but not this. I will ride out after Elladan.”

Elrond reeled with the horror of his child’s agony, and wished for nothing more than to give comfort. He reached for Elrohir with a half-formed, desperate gesture that was half embrace, half caress, as he delivered another blow. “I cannot allow it.”

Elrohir flinched away. “Will you abandon him!?” That look of shocked betrayal in his eyes was harder to face than the worst of Sauron’s horrors. 

“Never.” Celebrian’s voice was carefully level. “Elrohir, the Witch-king has sought vengeance against you ever since the siege. With Elladan’s assistance he will hunt you down wherever you turn. You must remain within this valley where our wards can shield you.”

Elrohir interrupted her with a shout of rage. “The Void take your accursed wards !” He spat out the word like a curse, and all in the room paled. 

He seemed shocked by his own fury, and let his voice go calm and clear. “You will let me rescue my brother.”

Celebrían rose to stand before him. “Be reasonable, Elrohir. You are not Fingon, to walk into Carn Dûm alone with your harp across your back.” 

He scoffed. “I may not be Fingon, but that ill-begotten Mortal who calls himself Witch-king is no Morgoth!”

Elrohir turned to the door, and Glorfindel rose to his feet. He glanced at Elrond with that unspeakable question in his eyes. Elrond had no choice but to agree. 

Seize him. For his own safety. He will never forgive us, but we have no choice.

Glorfindel coiled to leap, but in the next heartbeat three sharp strikes of wood against wood rang against the door. All in the study froze, and Elrohir made a small, keening sound. A message this urgent could only be grievous.

Erestor opened the door to reveal, not a message-bearer but Mithrandir wielding his staff, flanked by an apologetic-looking Fëanorian doorguard. 

“I bid you good evening, though one could hardly call it good.” Mithrandir shouldered past Erestor uninvited, and his piercing blue eyes lit on Elrond and Celebrían. “I would have a word with the lord and lady. A private word.”

 

 

 In later days he {Mithrandir} was the friend of all the Children of Ilúvatar, and took pity on their sorrows; and those who listened to him awoke from despair and put away the imaginations of darkness.

The Silmarillion, Valaquenta, Of the Maiar 

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Chapter End Notes

Hi everyone, 

I hope you'll enjoy this double update. Fanfic writers thrive on feedback and caffeine. A comment would make my day. (seriously: the silence is getting a bit unnerving!)

Happy Holidays!

Idrils Scribe