A Web of Stars by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 3

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“Thranduil’s march-wardens are good. I feel their eyes, but none are showing ...” Arwen abruptly fell silent to master her horse. The mare snorted and skitted beneath her, wild eyes showing white in the half-light beneath the trees. This forest was too strange for both their comfort. 

Celeborn’s stallion strode on, perfectly poised. “Practice makes perfect, child.” He pointed ahead, at their armed escort. “Follow Haldir’s gaze. He has been staring them down since we started the climb.”

The path turned sharply, and Arwen breathed the cool, humid air at the bottom of a cleft. Craggy walls draped in moss and little ferns rose high and steep, plunging the gorge in eternal twilight. A clear brook murmured downhill in a stony bed beside the path. On the banks grew dark pines with boughs reaching overhead, so the company rode as in a tunnel of green. 

The place had a watchful air, but none of Thranduil's invisible sentinels deigned to hail the Lord of Lórien or his granddaughter.   

Arwen scoffed. “Surely even Wood-elves think it boorish to …” She was cut off by a horn blast from above.

“Greetings, in the name of the king!” called a woman's voice. The hidden watcher spoke Sindarin, but with a heavy Silvan accent.

Celeborn knew her regardless. “Greetings, Captain Tauriel! Will the king not receive us?” he called out to the whispering roof of needles, clearly taken aback at being casually hailed like a Dwarvish toy-peddler.

In an eyeblink, what Arwen had thought a gnarled bough transformed into a russet head. A tall shape unfolded, and then a Silvan woman stood lightly on a branch overhead. Now Arwen spotted Tauriel’s company in the trees all along the path. 

For a welcome party, these Wood-elves were exceedingly well-armed. Tauriel and her warriors carried short, sinuous bows of wood and horn, quivers of birchwood arrows, and a pair of bone-handled long knives in sheaths on their backs. Their tunics and breeches were buckskin. 

Arwen thought of her brothers’ expertly forged mail, steel swords glittering at their side. Ai Valar! They have not a ringlet of mail between them. Small wonder they were slain in their thousands!

As if she could see Arwen’s mind - and had these people mastered that art? -  Tauriel looked straight at her. Her eyes were as green as the forest, and her face gave nothing away. She merely stood, perched at perfect ease, contemplating the High-elves below. Arwen stared back, in equal parts indignant and intrigued.

A trickle of fear ran down her spine: these Silvans were no true Avari, but nonetheless as wild as Eldar might get. How would they deal with unwelcome intruders, without the Laws of the Valar to temper their fey moods? 

“You are expected, Master Celeborn,” Tauriel spoke at last, holding Arwen’s gaze. “Follow me. The king awaits in his hall.”  

 

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Thranduil’s herald smote the rod of his office against the many-coloured floor of the throne room. The silver-shod foot sent up a ringing note, high and sharp as a distressed bird. 

"Lord Celeborn of Lórien, kinsman of King Elu Thingol, Prince of Doriath!"

Celeborn stepped forward into the hall. Arwen waited, and willed herself not to raise a hand to smoothen the fall of her hair. The court of Eryn Galen was watching, and if Arwen’s heart was pounding and her throat choked with nerves, she would not have them notice. Elrond’s daughter, the Evenstar of Imladris, would not grant these provincials the pleasure.  

“Lady Arwen of Imladris, of the House of Elu Thingol!” 

Arwen straightened her shoulders, raised her chin and drew a lungful of air, heavy with pine-scent and perfume, and stepped forward. 

A strangely mixed crowd filled the hall. The Silvan courtiers wore dull greens and browns, the muted colours of buckskin dyed with pine needles and foxglove. One Silvan — a chieftainess, perhaps — wore a cloak of iridescent magpie feathers, a shimmer of richness amidst the drab, and Arwen held her pace to look. Then the woman turned to face her. Arwen would have recoiled if not for long years of courtly protocol. Her face bore strange swirls of tattoos. 

The Sindar were less alien, restrained in their classical Iathrin elegance: robes of that soft grey-blue of nightfall in winter, a lining of silver shimmering inside a robe of fine damask.  

Celeborn had waited for her, all poise and courtliness, and offered her his arm. Once side by side they picked up their pace. Before them the crowd parted, clearing a path to the throne. Heads turned to stare, both Sindar-silver and Silvan-brown. Together they advanced like a pair of warriors guarding each other’s flanks. 

Arwen did not dare look aside at the hard, closed faces lining the aisle. As they walked, a chill washed along the hall like a gust of cold wind bending the trees.

Thranduil’s throne room was truly vast. From the gilded doors to the dais at its end was a hundred paces at the least, and the distance seemed to lengthen with every step. When she reached out, Celeborn’s mind beside her was in turmoil. Then she understood, and felt her cheeks flush with the humiliation: Thranduil made them approach him like petitioners. 

Long ago, Celeborn had been the prince of vanished Doriath. He once sat in state on the dais in Menegroth’s great hall, but a single step below Thingol, Melian and Lúthien. Oropher was a mere courtier in those days, one of many, and Thranduil himself an untried youngling relegated to the galleries at the back. 

How satisfying it must be for Thranduil to have Prince Celeborn, wearing the very same circlet, now reduced to standing at his feet. A hot, throbbing anger on her grandfather’s account settled in the hollow beneath Arwen’s breastbone. 

The court watched Celeborn’s abasement in heavy silence. How many of these onlookers had once bowed before him, or taken his commands on the battlefield? Arwen did not look aside at her grandfather’s expression as they passed between the silent lines. 

She would not take her eyes from the king enthroned in state at the end of the hall. It seemed Thranduil was not unlike a bird of prey: one had to return his gaze without fear, or be bitten. 

An eternity of step after step, head held high, shoulders squared and eyes forward until she believed she had permanently frozen into the stiff posture. But then, at last, they stood before the dais. 

Thranduil’s cool stare lay heavy upon them. Crownless he was, his wheat-blonde hair bearing naught but a braided garland of bluebells and catkins. It seemed uncharacteristically modest. 

This king was no pauper, though. A carcanet of white jewels shone about his throat. The long drape of his mantle was that deep, wine-dark Númenórean purple imported from Far Harad, and it was trimmed with ermine. If Galadriel was the spring and Elrond summer, this king was autumn: rich perhaps, but cool and demanding like a reckoning come at feast’s end. 

There was no queen, nor even a throne where one might sit, but Thranduil was not alone. On the lower step of the dais stood a high-backed chair, where a prince clad in samite robes of state leant forward in his seat. One pale hand curled itself about the chair’s armrest, the other rose from where it had rested idly on the head of a slender hunting dog that lay curled beneath his chair.   

So this was the elusive Prince Legolas. Arwen knew she must not stare, but by Vána, he was handsome. A fine-boned face showing Sindar blood, broad archer's shoulders, his wheaten hair loose and unbraided, held back only by a circlet. And yet he looked so young beside his formidable father. 

Arwen tried to capture Legolas’ gaze, and he willingly obliged. First he looked startled, then he smiled, tentatively, but when Thranduil’s head turned to him he quickly looked away as if caught at some mischief. He looked quite sweet with colour rising in his cheeks.

“Hail, Thranduil Oropherion, King of the Woodland Realm!” Celeborn sounded calm, as were he addressing his dear friend Amroth. “I am honoured to find hospitality in your halls once more.” On his lips played a satisfied little smile, as if a long-held expectation of his had finally been fulfilled. Whatever this was, he had it planned. “I present to you my granddaughter Arwen, daughter of Celebrían and Elrond son of Elwing.”

Celeborn needed not speak the inevitable conclusion: heir of Díor, of Lúthien, of the House of Elu Thingol. 

Arwen took a deep breath, consciously drawing out her moment. Then, with all the court hanging on her every move, she bowed.  

That very bow, in the traditional style of Doriath, had been analysed and practised at least a hundred times, before Celeborn and his Doriathrim advisors, before Galadriel, Elrond and Celebrìan. Celeborn had requested even Erestor the Kinslayer’s opinion on precisely how deep one of the Children of Lúthien might curtsy before her father’s former retainer to avoid outright offence, while still reminding the upstart of who stood before him. 

She now bent her knee a hair’s breadth less deep, and shortened the elegant sweep of her arm. Let Thranduil glower. Arwen could face him.  

And indeed Celeborn’s scheming would have come to naught if not for Arwen’s face. Her hair had been braided back to expose it to best advantage from all angles. Every eye in the hall had come to rest on it, and a buzz like a hive disturbed rose from the crowd.

Younger Elves had called Elrond’s children beautiful, with sea-grey eyes and dark hair contrasting the smoothness of their fair skin. Those who once walked the halls of Menegroth would invariably gasp in shock at the uncanny resemblance to Lúthien Tinúviel. 

Behind Arwen's head the fall of her dark tresses draped her like a cloak. Few in this hall could look upon those strands of midnight without seeing that other princess, dancing in a starlit glade.  

Thranduil’s council now clustered around the dais, a tight knot of unreadable faces in richly dyed silks. And yet Arwen could tell exactly who among them was from Doriath and who was Silvan, or merely too young to have met Lúthien: the Iathrim all stood transfixed by memory.  

Beside the throne a venerable Sinda leaned over, her face half obscured by a waterfall of silver hair, to hiss into her neighbour’s ear. The man startled, then quickly prodded a third who stood frozen, caught in memory’s webs. On the dais, Legolas’ eyes widened as his father’s senior advisers broke protocol. 

For a mere heartbeat, Arwen stood transfixed beneath the weight of their gazes, their memories. She had been called Lúthien reborn before she was old enough to understand the terrible weight of her heritage: Lúthien Tinúviel, daughter of Melian the Maia; Lúthien, fairest of all the Children of Illúvatar; Lúthien, the greatest Singer among all the Sindar, who brought down the Morgoth in his own halls, and Sang Mandos into pity; Lúthien who alone among all the Eldar had passed beyond the world. It seemed too much for any living woman to live up to.

Thranduil’s face remained closed as a fortress besieged, but his fist closed tight and white about his oaken staff. 

Celeborn smiled like a contented cat and bowed, shallow and brief. He had outwitted Thranduil. Thranduil could not humiliate the Lord of Lórien with a living reminder of Thranduil’s oldest allegiance — and the ultimate source of his authority — standing within his very hall. 

Whispers swirled and seethed, sounds of wonder rising to the sculpted rafters.

Thranduil’s lips had gone white, so tightly did he press them together. He breathed in through his nose and let the breath out silently through a half opened mouth. Then the king caught himself and rose to greet his guests, his gaze fixed not on Celeborn but on Arwen. 

“Welcome to the Greenwood, daughter of Elrond. We look forward to making your acquaintance.”

 

 

In a great hall with pillars hewn out of the living stone sat the Elvenking on a chair of carven wood. On his head was a crown of berries and red leaves, for the autumn was come again. In the spring he wore a crown of woodland flowers. In his hand he held a carven staff of oak.

Chapter IX, Barrels out of Bond, The Hobbit

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Chapter End Notes

Hello friends, and welcome to A Web of Stars!

This tale has been long in the making, and I'm very happy to finally share it with you. Arwen is definitely enjoying herself, but Celeborn's diplomatic mission seems off to a rocky start...
I'm usually more of a book fan, but I'll be sprinkling in a few elements from the Hobbit movies here and there. Tauriel is among them, but also Lee Pace's majestic interpretation of Thranduil. This scene was definitely written with that performance in mind. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the royal reception and the characters. A comment would make me a very happy scribe, and recs are very much appreciated.

See you next week!
Idrils Scribe.