A Web of Stars by Idrils Scribe

Sneak peek: The Ring and the Star

"In 1974 the power of Angmar arose again, and the Witch-king came down upon Arthedain before winter was ended. He captured Fornost, and drove most of the remaining Dúnedain over the Lune; among them were the sons of the king. But King Arvedui held out upon the North Downs until the last, and then fled north with some of his guard; and they escaped by the swiftness of their horses.

The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix A, Annals of the Kings and Rulers: Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur: The North-kingdom and the Dúnedain

“Lord, I implore you.” Fíriel wrung her hands within the wide drape of her sleeve. “Do my sons not deserve to know whether they are orphans?” 

The Queen of Arthedain held her head high beneath the Elvish disapproval. Fíriel wore mourning already, a heavy winter velvet dark as anthracite. The dress made her look like a black stain against the colourful Elvish robes of Círdan’s privy council. 

“If you care so little for the House of Isildur,” she said, “whom you once called friends and allies, then consider your own folk, Lord of Mithlond! Your mariners crewed the ship you sent out after my husband. Surely you wish to know what befell them?”  Clearly she had not yet grown used to begging. Her grey eyes were wide with shock at finding herself in the petitioner’s seat. 

Elrohir kept from shifting in his seat beneath that gaze, and held his tongue. As Círdan’s guest and envoy of Imladris he should not interfere in the affairs of the Grey Havens. As if Ossë shared the queen’s anger, a cold west wind rattled the room’s arched windows, howling as it whipped the lead-grey sea outside to foam.

Círdan had risen to greet his royal guest, but now he sank back into his chair. His ancient face was lined with grief, as if the past year burdened him with another age of the world. 

“Your highness …” he began, then thought better of arguing and motioned for wine to be brought for Fíriel and her son. 

Even now, Círdan gave the queen her due courtesy. The remains of King Arvedui’s proud court - Queen Fíriel, her son Aranarth, and a handful of battered courtiers - had reached Lindon at the head of a ragged caravan of refugees from the sack of Fornost, bearing little more than the clothes on their backs. 

All winter they had been guests in Círdan’s care, with little hope of repaying that hospitality. He watched her as they waited for sweet Dorwinion and almond biscuits. Fíriel took a polite sip, then laid her hands in her lap. 

“Your highness, what you ask of me is a pointless act of sacrilege,” Círdan said at last, once the queen was installed comfortably, flanked by Aranarth. “Elostirion is the highest hallows of the Eldar in Middle-earth. Its palantir looks only to the West. You will not learn the King's fate by gazing into it.” 

Fíriel’s glare could have split rocks. “Would you call Aranarth gazing into the stone a sacrilege? My son is Elendil’s heir. Need I remind you who carried the seven stones across the Sea?” 

Aranarth sat still and pale amidst Círdan’s counsellors, seething beneath their sharp elvish gazes. With a mere thirty-six winters he was a proud prince already, and a prickly one. No one in the Havens was quite sure how to address him. With his father Arvedui missing, he languished in a no man’s land between crown prince and king. 

He could not escape it: even if Arvedui’s body were to miraculously wash ashore on the next tide, Aranarth’s crown would be hollow. The Witch-king had destroyed the last kingdom of old Arnor, and no one yet knew what might be salvaged from the rubble. 

Elrohir watched the prince glower, and a tide of ancient sorrow washed over him. Elrohir was young in the reckoning of the Eldar, but he did recall the splendour and glory of the North Kingdom as it once was, the starred banners flying from the white walls of Fornost Erain and the mighty tower of Amon Sûl. 

Arnor had fallen to infighting. Quarrelling princelings carved Elendil’s realm up between them like a side of meat, only to have the Witch-king slay them one by one. Only Arthedain’s royal house now survived, and the North was reunited indeed - beneath the black banners of Angmar. Elrohir balled his hand to a white-knuckled fist, unseen in the wide drape of his sleeve. He should not blame Fíriel or her son - his own kin! - for the folly of their ancestors. He tried not to, with all his might. Other Elves would not be so well-willing.   

“I need no reminder, your highness,” Círdan replied. “Seven stars and seven stones and one white tree did your house carry from Númenor. But by Elendil’s own will did the Palantir of Elostirion pass to the Elves, and no Mortal hand has touched it since.”

Firiel opened her mouth, but Círdan quickly said. “I deny not your son’s worthiness, but his purpose. Unlike the other Palantíri, the Elostirion stone is aligned with the Master-stone in the Tower of Avallonë. Its eye is fixed on Eresseä and cannot turn elsewhere—”

“Elendil’s heir may impose his will upon the stone.” With a sharp gesture, Aranarth flung back the trailing sleeve of his court robe. The Crown Prince had been outraged at the suggestion that he wear mourning. His chosen garb was princely enough: a costly sea-green silk embroidered with breaching whales in silver thread, but it sat small on Aranarth’s broad shoulders - clearly a loan from some Elvish benefactor. 

Elrohir pitied this boy in borrowed clothes. The House of Isildur had fallen far indeed. The Sack of Fornost left Aranarth a pauper, wholly dependent on the good will of the Elves. The people of Arthedain could no longer pay the royal taxes: their corpses lay heaped in town squares, their farmsteads reduced to smouldering rubble. Arthedain’s fields sat fallow, its herds wantonly slaughtered by voracious Orcs. Weeds sprouted thick on the ancient trade routes.

“Lady, the Palantír is far older than Elendil.” Círdan’s tone was kind, but decisive. “The stone was created to gaze West, and looks not to the lands of Men. It will serve no other purpose. To apply force might destroy it, and deprive the Elves of Middle-earth of our last connection with Valinor. I cannot allow it.”

“My husband could be in desperate need even now!” Fíriel’s eyes burned with anger, but it was a thin veil over the fear beneath. 

“That is true, but you will not learn it through the Palantír.” Círdan delivered his final verdict. Aranarth’s face twitched into a mask of rage before he could master himself.

Elrohir recalled a time when Dúnedain armies dwarfed the forces of Lindon and Imladris. A time when the hand that moved the levers of power in the North had been Mortal, and the Elvish realms were but satellites in Arnor’s orbit. Círdan would have been hard- pressed to refuse any request a Queen of Arnor might care to make of him. That time was now past. 

He watched with sympathy as Aranarth seethed in his chair. How bitter it must be for this proud prince to watch his royal mother beg, the cold knowledge that his House no longer possessed the leverage to command the Elves, that what aid they received was mere charity. 

Elrohir withdrew from the reception room, and discreetly sent Ardil to have a word with Círdan’s chamberlain. He needed to speak to the Lord of the Havens in private. 

Arvedui must be found. 

The only Stone left in the North was the one in the Tower on Emyn Beraid that looks toward the Gulf of Lune. That was guarded by the Elves, and [...] it remained there, until Círdan put it aboard Elrond's ship when he left [....]

But we are told it was unlike the others and not in accord with them; it looked only to the Sea. Elendil set it there so that he could look back with 'straight sight' and see Eressëa in the vanished West; but the bent seas below covered Númenor forever.

The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, Annals of the Kings and Rulers: Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur, Footnotes

Chapter End Notes

Times are dark: the Witch-king has conquered the North, and the Dúnedain are leaderless and scattered. Pack your fur cloak and join Elrohir, Ardil, and Prince Aranarth on an expedition into the icy north in search of lost King Arvedui.
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