Full of Wisdom and Perfect in Beauty by Gadira

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Heading West

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“So.” Amandil was trying to keep the sinking feeling in his stomach at bay. “You told her everything.”

 

Halideyid nodded, still without looking up.

 

“She never stopped believing that you would be back one day. But then, the first grey hair appeared in her head, and she grew sad. She felt that you were both running out of time. And then I realized what that meant. I had heard about the blood of Indilzar, and I could feel it running through my veins, but she... is not like us. Her sadness began eating at me. And one day, I could not keep it inside me any longer. I told her who you were. “He took a deep breath. “I am sorry. It was not my place.”

 

Amandil bit back a curse. It would not do to lose his temper, especially at his son, who was looking so ashamed. He knew very well whose fault everything was.

 

“You are right. It was not your place”, he sighed. “It was mine, but I was a coward, and you should not have tried to fight my battles for me. Where is she?”

 

“She is not in Armenelos. When she saw the letter announcing your arrival, she... left.”

 

“Then where?”

 

“Away.” His son shook his head. “She made me swear not to say.”

 

As agitated and guilty as Halideyid looked, it did not seem like he would give up on this point easily. And why should he, Amandil thought.

 

“Halideyid.” His eyes narrowed, ready to push the matter regardless. At that moment, however, someone grabbed him by the shoulder, and he turned to meet his father´s grey eyes.

 

“You cannot go now.” He, too, looked sorry. “Lord Valandil is waiting in Andúnië.”

 

“Oh, yes, and he is going to be so happy when we arrive without the wife I took instead of the Princess of the West because she is hiding from me!” Frustration had the virtue of making him throw prudence to the winds, and it came upon him that he had not wanted any of this, that he would not had left her before and that he did not want to leave her now. “All these things you say about there being a hidden purpose in this life of mine, will Lord Valandil believe them too? Because otherwise, I think I should simply stay here and consider myself disinherited. I have a son, see? He is fully grown now. He can be your heir!” Just leave me alone. If he was left alone, he thought, he would be able to find Amalket, and put his life together somehow. The longing to escape this cycle, dulled while he lived an isolated existence in the mainland, returned now stronger than ever, so strong that it was almost overwhelming.

 

Halideyid stared in shock. Númendil reacted as he usually did, with grave understanding and no solutions.

 

“If there was anything I could do...”

 

“But there is nothing.” Amandil pressed a palm against his pulsating forehead. “There is nothing, or is it?”

 

“Father.”

 

“I mean it,” he insisted. “I do not think I can be who you need me to be.”

 

“Father.” Halideyid´s soft voice became stronger the second time, and Amandil slowly turned towards him, wiping the sweat of his forehead with his fingers.

 

“What is it?”

 

“I have an idea. You could go to Andúnië with Grandfather and meet Lord Valandil. Meanwhile, I will go to Mother. I will speak to her, maybe bring her a letter, if you want me to. I will convince her to return to you, and then we will travel to Andúnië together, to meet with you. If somebody asks, we can say that she is ill, and that I stayed with her.”

 

“You will do nothing of the sort!” Amandil bristled. “This is my problem, Halideyid, not yours.”

 

His son did not back down.

 

“I robbed you of the chance to talk to her yourself. I caused this, and now I can solve it. I... do not know if I can make her understand, but I can convince her to speak to you. I know I can.”

 

Amandil looked at Númendil, who seemed suddenly absorbed in musings of his own. He sighed.

 

Halideyid´s voice sounded firm, earnest. Demanding to be trusted. It was tempting to rely on his maturity, on his better grasp of the situation, on his will to redress the wrong that he believed he had committed. And what if he did rely on it? It wouldn´t be the first time. Amandil had been relying on his son for years, to survive by himself, to learn his way around the world, to keep out of trouble and to protect his mother. To remember who he was. All the while, without receiving anything in return except an untimely conception, a secret wedding, a few letters and a stolen conversation one distant night.

 

Not anymore.

 

“Halideyid, you are going to your mother now,” he declared, searching for his son´s glance and keeping it in his for a long, meaningful while. “And I am going with you.”

 

Númendil did not speak a word.

 

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

 

She was staying in a village at the outskirts of the Meneltarma, in an old aunt´s farm. Amandil asked Halideyid to guide him to the gate, which was barred by a wooden door covered in a faded green paint. The door creaked ominously when he knocked on it.

 

“Stay right there”, he said. The footsteps of Halideyid, who was heading in his direction after tying the horses, froze on their tracks behind him. For a moment, Amandil thought that he was going to protest.

 

“As you wish.”

 

The older man smiled wryly. The sunlight upon his skin was hotter than he remembered having felt in years, reminding him of his days in Harad.

 

“Have you ever loved a woman?”

 

Halideyid had been updating him on things during their trip here, but almost everything he said had concerned Amalket. It made sense, as they were things whose knowledge could help Amandil deal with his present plight, but nonetheless there remained a definite impression that Halideyid was not comfortable talking to his father about himself. Amandil, too, was not exactly eager to share his own experiences. Númendil´s bland acceptance had coaxed an outburst or two, and Amandil had revealed more in them than he had ever planned to, but he would die before Halideyid knew all the horrible and shameful deeds he had done in his life. And yet... somehow, his son´s own reserved attitude managed to cut him to the bone. What could a young man like Halideyid need to hide from his father?

 

“I am still young”, Halideyid said, or rather recited, as if it was something that he had already said to other people before. “Someone is coming.”

 

Amandil forced himself to discard these thoughts, and focus on the present. There was plenty of work left to do.

 

“Who is it?” an old woman´s voice asked from behind the door.

 

“I am a seller. I sell cloth from the capital”, Amandil replied. The door opened an inch, and dark eyes peered through. He waved the red and blue cloth he was holding, helpfully, but his gesture was met by a snort.

 

“Some seller you are. Sellers never come with no Elvish eyes and the brown skin of soldiers. You are that good-for-nothing mainlander that my niece was stupid enough to marry back then, and you are here to see her. Well, she does not want to see you! Oh, and if you try and bring your soldier fellows with you, you would do well to remember that her son is the tallest man in Númenor and a much better swordsman than you will ever be!”

 

Amandil took breath. In the mainland, this was usually the moment when the door was kicked and the old woman was trampled over. But this was Númenor. His wife was here. The very fact that he could think like this in such a circumstance filled him with a terrible stupor.

 

“Wait.” He grabbed the door just before the old woman managed to close it, and tried to remember the words he was supposed to say. Right at that moment, however, she started to scream, and his tethering resolve broke in a million pieces. His mind started receiving orders which his consciousness rejected. Memories tugged at his nerves.

 

He is not here!

 

A child had been crying in the back of the hut.

 

“Aunt, please. He is here with me. He only wants to talk.”

 

Halideyid. His quiet voice broke through the quivering mess, and his limbs started to relax. The door, however, did not close as he let go of it; the old woman had stopped trying to bang it shut.

 

“How could you bring him here!”

 

“He is my father. He is not an outlaw or a monster and he is not here to hurt anyone. And Mother does not hate him, she just did not want to... see him right now”, Halideyid tried to reason. The old woman shook her head furiously, until the veil she wore fell down to reveal a disheveled tress of grey-white hair.

 

“That is right, she did not want to see him! You are betraying her!”

 

“Things have changed, Aunt. He is here to stay this time. He is free from all the oaths of consecration, and he is his family´s heir. And...” Now, it was Halideyid´s turn to swallow. “If she does not like what he has come to say, he will leave.”

 

The woman´s frown looked slightly more thoughtful, though not any less confrontational. If a second figure had not appeared behind her right then, she would probably have closed the door on their noses anyway.

 

“Let them in.” It was Amalket. “I want to see him. I want to see how he looks like.”

 

The voice was calm, almost eerily so, yet also full of a controlled fire. The old woman turned back and hobbled away, grumbling something between her teeth.

 

She had aged, not as much as his wild calculations after seeing his dying mother and hearing Halideyid´s story had led him to believe, maybe, but there were still some gray hairs on her beautiful black mane, and wrinkles in her brow which had not been there before. She stood still behind the doorstep, her eyes inspecting him, his every feature and limb, every detail in his body from head to toe. They seemed to be devouring him, though not with the love or desire that he remembered from their earlier days. Instead of that, there was a darker emotion in them, one that he could not read.

 

“So it was true. You do not age. There are no white hairs, no wrinkles.” Her lips curved in a wry grin. “And yet, you are changed, too.”

 

“Amalket...” he began, uncomfortably.

 

“That skin. Those scars. That face... you look very different from those Elf-fiends you are descended from.” Halideyid´s face reflected the dismay of someone whose direst predictions had come true. Amandil thought about Lord Valandil and what he was going to say about all this, then immediately realized that he could not care less.

 

“I did not mean to lie to you. I was in love with you, and nothing else mattered... until the child came.” Halideyid mumbled an excuse and rushed across the space between them to disappear the same way as his mother´s aunt. Amandil was deeply grateful for this. “If he was to be born, my identity had to be kept secret. From everyone.”

 

“Even from me? What if I could not... what if I did not want...?”

 

“To have him?” Amandil finished softly. Amalket grew furious.

 

“How dare you use him as an excuse! How despicable of you! I love my son more than anyone in the world, but I had a right to know the truth!”

 

She was right, he thought, hating himself. It was an excuse, and a despicable one at that.

 

“I...” He sighed. “There is nothing I can do, but tell you the whole truth now. And hope that you will understand my behaviour back then. I was... I was scared, Amalket. “He had not planned on this line. “They tried to kill me several times when I was a child, just because of who I was. They would have also tried to kill any child of mine, or any woman who carried it in her womb. And I did not mean for you to carry it. You know what happened, as well as I do. Some people in my family are already calling it a divine miracle.” He repressed a humourless snort. “But I loved you. When I heard that you were pregnant with my child, I thought we had been sent a gift. I wanted it, and I wanted you, too. I broke with the Temple and entered the Cave, trusting that you would both be safe that way, and that, one day, we would be able to be together.”

 

“And you let me think you were the son of a merchant! My father married us and died without knowing that you were... that you were...!” Her eyes were red, agitated with a violent emotion, but she did not finish the sentence. Amandil wondered if maybe she cared, even slightly, for how it might have hurt him if she had.

 

“I did not know it would be so long. Oh, I knew that the late King had to die, that he was not that old yet. But deep inside, I did not realize how many years that would cost us. You.”

 

“Oh, yes, me.” Paying someone else´s debts. “For you, it was only a short period of your life, was it not? You will be able to make up for it later. Marry a woman from the line of Indilzar... have a real heir...”

 

“I will have no wife but you!”

 

She stared at him in incredulity.

 

“And why should I believe you? You have lied to me about everything, about who you were, about your friends, about who your family was!”

 

“You have to believe me now because I am here”, Amandil hissed. “I am here to take you to my family in the Andustar, and introduce you as my wife, and live with you there for the rest of our days!”

 

“Or for the rest of my days, at least”, she corrected bitterly. Something in her tone, in her words made a realization start dawning in Amandil´s mind. He opened his mouth to act on it, but she shook her head violently. “And that would be only if I agreed. Of course, you might take me by force, as you are so powerful now. But if you did, you would be shamed before your family.”

 

“Do not be so sure of that. “Now, it was his turn to snort. “Maybe they would think nothing of it, with their penchant for treason and associating with evil creatures.”

 

“Then, I hope you care for your son at least. I hope you do not want him shamed.”

 

“Now, who is it who will not leave Halideyid out of this?”

 

For the first time in the conversation, there was a long silence, barely interrupted by the rhythmic heaves of her breath. Under her dark raiment, her breasts were moving together with it, and Amandil swallowed a knot from his throat.

 

“You do not look older. You are as beautiful as ever.”

 

And then, the tears came.

 

“You lie. “

 

He felt a surge of hope.

 

“Why would I?”

 

“Because...” She wiped her cheek furiously, as if ashamed of her weakness. “Because you need me to... you need me to make Halideyid legitimate.”

 

“You said yourself that I could just have another child with a woman from a noble family.”

 

“But you love him. I know you do. You told him the truth, after all.” Him, not me. Amandil had been at the brink of revealing the secret that night, but he was still haunted by his previous conversation, and the next day he had to leave for the mainland. Her arms were warm and they gave him comfort, so he had stalled.

 

His greatest mistake.

 

Slowly, she walked towards a chair propped against a low table, put it up and sat on it, her back to him. Led by an impulse, he followed, and carefully laid a hand on her shoulder. She tensed, but did not shake him away. Encouraged by this, he touched her neck. It was as graceful as he remembered it.

 

Why did the gods, or the Elves, have to play such jokes on them, forcing similar lifespans to diverge, and tearing apart men and women who belonged to the same land and the same people? Why? Even his father had found it cruel.

 

“Amalket, they say that we have Elven blood in our veins. Elves can only marry once, and they do not love more than one person in all their lives.” Oh, how he hoped this could be true. It was his father who had claimed it, and Númendil was always finding ways to absolve every higher power from the mess they had created, but if only he could believe this thing alone, make her believe it too.... “My father and my grandfather were like this. I saw my mother die, Amalket, and she was old, but my father loved her, he loves her still...”

 

Little by little, she started leaning on to his touch. Her breath blended with his, until both were breathing in unison, and the spark of hope grew warm within him.

 

“Come with me”, he pleaded. “Let us say farewell to this ghastly charade, and live together like husband and wife. You will be a great lady in the Northwest, and one day your son will be the lord of Andúnië, the kin of kings, and rule over thousands...”

 

Suddenly, her limbs grew rigid again, and the warmth was gone. Amandil bit his lip.

 

“What is the matter?”

 

She stood up, her back to him.

 

“I do not care for your power and your riches. You can keep them all.” Her voice was icy, and yet it failed her slightly as she began the next sentence. “I... will go to Andúnië. For my son´s sake. But I am not ready yet, so you will have to go ahead.”

 

Amandil fought hard to hide his disappointment. He had been close... so close.

 

Still, speaking in terms of strategy, as a soldier would, the balance of this exchange had been a success. She was coming. Not with him, not forgiving him -but she was coming. He would have to hold on to that.

 

“Very well,” he nodded. “Write to me when you are ready, and I will send you an escort. Halideyid will probably want to come for you.”

 

“So, you are taking him.” She had begun to walk towards the corridor, but at those words she stopped briefly in her tracks. She shrugged. “Very well.”

 

“Please” he called after her before she could leave, “do not blame him. He only wanted the best for you. He loves you more than he will ever love me.”

 

“And whose fault was that?”

 

Amandil had spoken without any bitterness, but he still accepted this parting barb with nothing more than a silent wince.

 

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

 

Halideyid had followed him back to Armenelos without a complaint. As far as Amandil could gather from the few emotions he displayed, he seemed to have accepted his new destiny as matter-of-factly as he had accepted being left to his own devices since he was a child. Amandil wished he could share some of this attitude himself, of this willingness to shoulder any challenge, but all those years seemed to have exhausted it.

 

Of Amalket they did not speak anymore, not even once during the rest of the trip. Halideyid had spoken to her one last time before they took their leave from the farm, and whatever had been said between them, Amandil guessed he would never know.

 

Meanwhile, back at the abandoned palace, Númendil had been preparing everything for their departure. If he was surprised or dismayed to see them return without his son´s wife, his features did not show it. He accepted Amandil´s curt explanation gravely, and agreed to claim an imaginary illness of her old relative as an excuse for her absence. He did not even ask how long it would take her to return.

 

Amandil had the feeling that Lord Valandil was not going to be so understanding.

 

“Where are we going now? Is it haunted too?” Ashad asked as he walked in, carrying an armful of clothes. Númendil smiled.

 

“Not by anything evil. “Before the boy could reflect upon this, he chuckled. “Until we reach it, we have a long journey ahead of us, however. I am eager to see how your people ride. I have read many stories about that.”

 

His people ride like devils. They jump cliffs and cross raging streams and are upon you before you even have the time to get your sword out, Amandil thought, but Ashad looked excited at the prospect. So much that he ran towards the door and bumped into Halideyid, who came in at that moment. As he looked up, the boy forgot how to regain his balance and fell on his rear, the bundle of clothes pressed against his nose. His eyes grew large as moons, and he whispered something in a Haradric dialect.

 

“Come on, Ashad, do not be so dramatic. He is just tall,” Amandil sighed. “Halideyid, my son. This is Ashad, a boy from Harad. He stole my horse and boarded the ship without my permission. Or tried to, anyway.”

 

Halideyid stared at him curiously. Ashad jumped to his feet in a quick movement, and retreated a little.

 

“I see. “Halideyid smiled, and suddenly Amandil realized that he had been holding his breath. Before, other people had thought... “So, you are from the mainland! I have never been there.” With an easier, more natural movement than any he had performed since they met him on the doorstep of that school, he took the clothes from Ashad and rearranged them under his arm. The boy didn´t even have the time to struggle or refuse. Little by little, fear turned into uneasy wonder. “Will you tell me about your country?”

 

Ashad seemed to realize that his hands were empty, and after a moment´s thought, he followed him and the clothes towards the yard. Before the sound of their footsteps died, Amandil could hear both his voice and Halideyid´s voice pick up a conversation.

 

“Well, well. He is good with children.”

 

“He has been a teacher for many years.” Amandil nodded, still distracted by what had just happened, and tense with the repressed fear of moments ago. Belatedly, he noticed that he was alone with his father and should therefore switch to Quenya. He was growing better at it, but still not enough for Lord Valandil, and the presence of other people was making it difficult to find moments for practice. Even worse, when under any kind of pressure he tended to forget what he had remembered, and his mind went dangerously blank. “He is... good”, he completed, lamely, in the ancient tongue.

 

“Oh, he is.” Númendil smiled. “And you will be, too, at whatever you have to be.”

 

Amandil was not so sure of that.

 

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

 

The departure took place early in the morning, before most of the citizens of Armenelos were roused from their sleep by the cries of vendors or the chants from the temples. The King had advised them to be prudent about their “public displays” until they won back the trust of the people. Amandil was fine with this; he had never displayed himself anywhere and was not comfortable at all with people noticing his presence.

 

They all rode horses this time, for speed and also because, as Númendil had told them, the road to Andúnië became hard and difficult towards the end. Like Gadir and Umbar, the natural access to the place used to be by sea, which the Northwestern lords used to control, while the land traveler was not so welcome, especially after the shadow of suspicion and war arose among the Númenoreans themselves. During the war of Alissha, of terrible memory for all, Andúnië had become an almost impenetrable stronghold where the Faithful and their people could gather in safety, surviving from the provisions sent by sea until the very end, when even the powerful fleet to which they had entrusted their hopes had been destroyed in battle by the ships of Forostar and the colonies.

 

For the most part, however, the roads were fairly good, the springs abundant and the shade trees thick and numerous, especially after they crossed the borders of the King´s land and entered the Andústar. The fields were lush and green, and Amandil was surprised to hear his father regret the wilderness to which they had been reduced because of the exile and deportation of the people who used to till them. In painfully constructed Quenya, he told Númendil that the Haradrim would kill for fields like these, and that, to him, they looked perfectly fine to grow things on them as they were. Besides, with all that water available nothing could possibly go wrong. Númendil looked really surprised at this, more than he had looked in any of the last days since their first, stormy talks in Rómenna. He nodded at Amandil´s words, and admitted that he hadn´t looked at things that way.

 

Meanwhile, Ashad, who would have scoffed at this -he had to teach the boy how to address Númenoreans if he was to live free of trouble in the Island- was too busy pulling dangerous stunts with his horse on the front of the column. Usually, Halideyid would take upon himself to watch him, but that day he had stayed on the rear, and now and then Amandil had caught him gazing at his surroundings with an unfathomable expression. Once, as a crowd of peasants waved at them from the side of the road, he saw the young man´s frown darken slightly.

 

“They are happy to be back home”, his father mused at the moment, and he reluctantly turned his eyes away from his son to look at him. “They are happy, and yet...”

 

“And yet what?” he asked, curious. Númendil shook his head.

 

“You will find out soon.” For a moment, there was a speculative glint in his grey eyes which made his expression look less ethereal than usual. “Lord Valandil will no doubt inform you of everything which has been going on here since our return.”

 

Amandil nodded, thoughtful. What could have happened? Border trouble? A conflict with the Cave? His father might fancy that he, as former priest, could help with that. No matter how often he had told him that the priests of the Cave had no reason to harbour any friendly feelings towards him whatsoever.

 

In any case, he had the distinct suspicion that Númendil expected him to succeed in something where other people had previously failed. And this would not make things less any difficult than they already seemed to be.

 

The cry of a seagull broke through his thoughts, while in the front of the column, somebody shouted that they were approaching the sea.

 

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

 

Amandil remembered the Western sea. By its shores, he had lived what had arguably been the most peaceful years of his life, away from the capital, from the King and his priests. His wife and son had been away, but not a world away, and now and then they would visit him and he would see their faces among the crowd of pilgrims celebrating the Lady´s Battle. The authorities of the Cave tended to ignore him in fear of sharing in his disgrace, or being suspected of conspiration with the Eastern exiles. He had been free to cool his feet on the white surf and watch the sunset, and this, more than the grueling daily sessions of combat practice he had engaged into in the hope of being sent to fight in the mainland, was what had really stayed with him from those days.

 

Now, he was back to those same shores as a son of Andúnië and a Faithful, not as an exile. The lands which stretched to the East of the road and the coast which stretched to the West belonged to his family, and so did the impregnable citadel nesting in its gray stone cliff. And yet the feeling of being a prisoner, which had always followed him wherever he went, dying briefly in the brutal anonimity of the foreign Middle Earth only to be awoken with a vengeance as he set foot in Sor, haunted his step and deepened the afternoon shadows as they advanced through the pathways of the cliff. His father walked before him, his son behind him, the former as sure-footed as the latter seemed careful and awkward, and for an irrational moment he felt trapped between the two, the misplaced generation who had been drafted by some Greater Power to make things right for the others after failing them for all his life.

 

A crowd of people was expecting them at the other side, beside one of the pale arms of the artificial bay of Andúnië. They pressed around them as they mounted and made their way up the stone and marble stairs towards the upper level, and the palace perched on the summit of the cliff. Curious glances were directed towards him and Halideyid, the scarred warrior and the freakish giant, each in his own way so different from the proper lords of Andünié that they were used to see. Halideyid looked down, seemingly chafing under this onslaught of attention. Amandil was feeling uncomfortable as well, but he felt the impulse of shielding him somehow, of hiding him from the whispers of the people. The impossibility of carrying out this wish provoked a momentary bout of frustration. He clenched his fists on the reins.

 

It was already late afternoon when they crossed the gates of the strange palace of Andúnië. Amandil had never seen anything like it, not even in the most exotic parts of the mainland. The main house stood at a distance, and around it lay, not a wilderness but a proper garden, with noble and well-tended plants, which for some reason had been allowed to grow outside instead of inside. Behind them, the walls were built in pale marble. Under the moonlight, Amandil could not help but think, the place would have felt as alien and otherwordly to him as the house of his family in Rómenna. Ashad would not be able to sleep here -and he might not be the only one.

 

As they made their way across the garden paths, the noise of the streets faded and died in their ears, leaving nothing but silence and a distant rumble of waves that reminded Amandil of the night in which his mother had died. Though it was warm, he threw his cloak over his shoulders and shivered against its folds.

 

“This way,” his father´s soft voice guided him. He was ushered again through stone corridors and white marble floors, wondering, in the blink of an eye, if everything since that fateful night had been nothing but parts of the same dream.

 

Climbing a set of pure white stairs without tiles, they came to an audience room, and everyone except him and Númendil were motioned to remain behind. The place seemed empty, the walls bare except for an old tapestry that hung behind a wooden chair where an old, gaunt-looking man sat following his movements with his glance. His hair was white; long and disheveled over his thin shoulders, but his features were those of the lords of Andúnië, with a sharp, aquiline nose and grey eyes that stared at him as if they could tear his flesh apart and see what lay underneath. Amandil stopped in his tracks.

 

“Lord Valandil”, he greeted in Elvish, bowing low.

 

“Amandil”, the man replied. The penetrating quality of his glance was intensified, but Amandil did not falter. His father had hinted enough about the importance of this meeting.

 

He had also received hints about the things he was going to be asked about, and of the dangers he should avoid. However, when the old man stretched forth his hand and revealed an object he had been holding in his lap, puzzlement superseded his feeling of alert. His eyes widened.

 

“Do you know this?”

 

The words had been spoken fast and between the teeth, very differently from the slow and patient tone in which Númendil always addressed him, to give him the time to recognize the words and the grammatical structures. Still, the intonation left no room for doubt as for what he meant – and what he was referring to.

 

It was a statue, coarsely carved in stone, the likes of which Amandil had seen in the mainland often enough. However, it was the first time he had seen that particular depiction: a man and a woman, both sitting side by side, with stars scratched roughly upon their brows.

 

He paused, thinking hard what to say. He had never seen those statues, but maybe he was expected to. Maybe they represented the gods that his family had always worshipped, and this was some kind of test, to see if he could recognize them.

 

The Valar are not gods.

 

He took a long breath. It was not possible. Their people made no temples, or statues, or any such things. This was left to the worshippers of the false gods. The only god they recognized was Ilúvatar, and there were no statues of Him.

 

So, what was this?

 

“I...” he ventured cautiously, slowed both by his thoughts and his attempts at a perfect pronunciation. “I am not sure.”

 

Valandil´s frown deepened.