Three Golden Hairs by Idrils Scribe

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

 

 

 

“For Fëanor beheld the hair of Galadriel with wonder and delight. He begged three times for a tress, but Galadriel would not give him even one hair. These two kinsfolk, the greatest of the Eldar of Valinor, were unfriends forever.”

Unfinished Tales

 

“I would sooner hand it to a Dwarf!” 

Artanis is still on the speaker’s stand, and the auditorium’s perfect acoustic carries her voice to each and every ear. 

The Lambengolmor, the great masters of tongues, to a man are rendered speechless. On the jury’s balcony Quennar had been scribbling furiously, checking Artanis’ calculations as she spoke, doubtlessly preparing some thorny question. The Reckoner now sits frozen, his quill hovering over the parchment before him with a blood-red drop of ink suspended at the tip.

Fëanáro does not take the blow well. The crown prince of the Noldor finds himself in unfamiliar territory, not just being told “no,” but by a tongue as sharp as his own. Humiliation flashes behind his eyes, briefly, before it smolders and chars into fury.  

Artanis’ words hang in the air, but Fëanáro owns the silence that follows, stretches it to breaking point. 

He burns with rage, Artanis thinks unbidden as her half-uncle stomps from the questioner’s stand to the center of the auditorium, silver-tooled boots drumming against the floor mosaics. As always, Fëanáro is resplendent. His academic regalia is of a stiff, diamond-crusted brocade, red as his namesake and trimmed with sable. Any other would have looked gaudy - and who but the crown prince could afford such richness? - but on Fëanáro, the broad bell sleeves trail behind like the wings of some great, fiery bird.

Artanis stands on the podium, ignored, pinned into place like a butterfly on a collector’s board. The silence stretches into torment.

At last Fëanáro chooses to shatter it. “I hear you, kinswoman. And I shall remember.” 

Fëanáro never threatens outright, but his displeasure is terrifying. Artanis knows, from many ruined family gatherings, until Finwë gave up on inviting all three of his sons at once. That dark look on Fëanáro’s face is normally reserved for Nolofinwë alone.

Whispers curl through the hall like smoke, from the apprentices’ benches at first, but soft chatter spreads like wildfire and soon the journeymen and masters are aflame. 

Artanis' face heats when she catches some of it. Fëanáro, you fool! 

If only he asked her in private, or demanded some other favour, any boon less fraught with sex and scandal. But no, rash Fëanáro had to ask for his own niece’s hair. The sparking gossip will find dry tinder, with the estrangement between Fëanáro and Nerdanel Aulendil. The pair have shared neither bed nor table for years. 

Today’s sordid tale will set Tirion ablaze, from the lowliest stone-cutter’s bungalow to Finwë’s great hall. The very idea of an illicit affair between Fëanáro and his half-niece is patently absurd, and therefore all the harder to stamp out, a juicy scandal for the Noldor to sink their teeth in. They will look at this incident and see a lovers’ spat. 

Any other would have fled the podium, but Artanis straightens her shoulders and raises her head in wordless defiance. Let Fëanáro dismiss her dissertation, let him bar her from the Lambengolmor. At least she still has her dignity - and her hair.

Maitimo rises to stand beside his father, his face pale and shocked above the scarlet brocade of his robe. His is a kinder heart, and doubtlessly he is pulling at his father’s mind even now, imploring Fëanáro to end this, sit down and let Artanis’ induction proceed without further hostilities about hair. Fëanáro ignores his son, as always where the children of Indis are concerned. 

Laurelin’s light is at its peak, and through the soaring windows of stained glass it paints Fëanáro in shifting patterns of gold and crimson as he stalks the hall like a lion prowling.

It is Rúmil who averts open war. The great sage is nowhere near tall, but nonetheless he draws himself up to his full height, his slender back ramrod-straight beneath his robes, and smites his ceremonial rod against the tiles. The silver-shod foot sends up a clear, ringing note that abruptly silences the hall. 

“This concludes our questions for the candidate,” Rúmil proclaims, and his tone brooks no argument. 

Fëanáro may have replaced him as guildmaster of the Lambengolmor, but he is the eldest among them still. Rúmil the fatherless, lore-master and letter-maker. The man who once outwitted the Black Hunter.

Fëanáro spears Artanis with one last, scathing look, but decides not to spend his rage on disarraying his own society, or else he fears the scandal as much as she does. He turns, robes aswirl in a harsh aura of red, and takes his place of honour in the front row.

Rúmil glances up to the jury’s balcony. The jurors’ lanterns, diamond panes set in a delicate lacework of mithril encasing a Fëanorian crystal, spring to light one by one. All save the largest: Quennar sits still and straight, his eyes fixed on Artanis. Terror pierces her, clawing its way up her throat. Her work is excellent, of course. But has the other matter weighed against her? Quennar is known to admire Fëanáro.

An age of the world passes, and then Quennar, too, waves his hand. With a snatch of Song his lantern flashes to life, lighting his face in arabesques of silver-white. 

“The jury has decided,” Rúmil announces.

Quennar shoots to his feet a little too quickly to be wholly dignified. He has always been soft-spoken, not one for conflict, and Artanis imagines that he would rather fly off to his observatory atop Taniquetil amidst silence and hallowed light, and peer through his telescope to chart years and stars. 

The Reckoner looks mortified: a red ink-stain glares from the front of his robes, splotched against the kingfisher-blue silk. Artanis’ breath strangles in her chest as she watches him grapple, for surely this has ruined all her chances. Then Quennar straightens himself, and holds up his parchment. 

A calligraphed “Ná’ greets the gathered loremasters.  

Yes.

Relief flows in like the tide, and Artanis is nearly swept off her feet. Her fingers clutch the pulpit’s sculpted edge, the gilding biting into her skin with a small, grounding pain. She is a loremaster.

On cue, the auditorium busts into applause. 

 

----

 

Row after row of loremasters file from the auditorium, chattering like a flock of parrots in their varicoloured robes. Fëanáro stomped off first, surrounded by his usual cluster of red-robed sons and sycophants like a walking bloodstain. The final stragglers, a group of poets doubtlessly in search of more material for their tales, give Rúmil and his student a shamelessly inquisitive look. 

Rúmil laughs again, and makes sure to pat Artanis’ shoulder in support. Part of her is irked - she needs no one’s protection! Another, more realistic one, is grateful. She made herself a powerful enemy today. 

“Ah, Artanis. You always had a talent for repartee.” Rúmil’s smiles wide enough to melt the entire North. The scar on his cheek ripples like wrinkled silk, pink and unnaturally pale against his skin. Rúmil chooses to keep it, for reasons entirely his own. Why would anyone wish to look so disfigured?  Here is something Artanis cannot grasp, a thing from marred Middle-earth, and her own incomprehension chafes her. She will fathom it, one day. 

Artanis lets out a great whoosh of breath, and wills her glowing cheeks to cool. Rage thunders in her chest. How dare he!

“Fëanáro will not expel you. I shall see to it, with what influence I still wield in this guild,” Rúmil is trying to ease her mind, but all he achieves is to further stoke her anger. 

“How dare he!” she rages. “I present my dissertation and it is great, on par with his best work! And instead of … “ her breath catches on the ball of venomous rage in her chest “... instead of asking me a proper question, he demands my hair!?” She realizes she is yelling, but she cannot seem to lower her voice. “As if I am a .. a sheep, or some long-fleeced goat to be shorn and spun into a robe for him to prance in!”

Tears spring to her eyes, and she mashes her hands into her eye sockets. She must not cry. Not within this hall, not before master Rúmil. 

“It is not as personal as it looks,” he answers, carefully avoiding pity in his tone. He knows his student's prickly pride by now. “Prince Fëanáro grows excessively single-minded when inspiration strikes, and his courtesy tends to fall by the wayside. Do not feel singled out.”

“Asking me such a question, in public, three times?! He cannot do this.”

Rúmil is matter-of-fact. “He is the crown prince. I daresay that you will find he can.”

Behind his eyes lies an old sadness. Artanis recalls the Sarati of her youth, and how children these days no longer learn them. Fëanor has taken Rúmil’s greatest work, and improved it so vastly that it became another script entirely, and named them anew. Fëanor’s Tengwar, they are now. She tries to imagine the pain of it, the humiliation. If Rúmil is wise and kind, that is because Fëanor has crushed his pride. 

“Father should hear of it,” she says. Arafinwë prefers not to cross his irascible brother, but he defends his children like a lion, and he wields influence with Finwë.

Rúmil nods. “As quickly as possible. There are .. implications.”

She clenches her teeth. Arafinwë’s house has so far managed to stay out of Fëanáro and Nolofinwë’s foolish cockfight. Whether she wants it or no, Artanis has now picked a side. Was that Fëanáro's intention all along? 

She asks Rúmil, mortified at letting herself be provoked.

Rúmil shakes his head. “Fëanáro is too impulsive for intrigue. I imagine he has the setting standing ready for your tresses, and could think of nothing else but obtaining them. Today was but another opportunity to ask. He genuinely did not believe you would refuse thrice.” He thought for a moment. “Or that you might take offense.”

“Come now,” Rúmil says, his tone almost fatherly. “Your grandfather has a feast prepared. Take heart: rivals add spice to one’s career. Fëanáro will sharpen you.”

Artanis nods, and makes for the doors. Fëanáro will be at the feast, and even he will not dare make a scene in the king’s hall. He will have to sit in his proper place at Finwë’s right hand, granting him a view of Artanis’ tresses, close and yet unreachable. 

And tomorrow, she will start her next project. Rúmil may have been bested, but she will show Fëanáro. 

 

 

 

Then the Lady unbraided one of her long tresses, and cut off three golden hairs, and laid them in Gimli's hand. `These words shall go with the gift,' she said. `I do not foretell, for all foretelling is now vain: on the one hand lies darkness, and on the other only hope. But if hope should not fail, then I say to you, Gimli son of Glóin, that your hands shall flow with gold, and yet over you gold shall have no dominion.

The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2 ch 8: “Farewell to Lórien.”

 

---

Chapter End Notes

I'd love to hear your thoughts on my interpretation of these events. Let me know in the comments!