Above Barad Eithel by StarSpray

Above Barad Eithel

Read Above Barad Eithel

In the early hours the half-built towers of Barad Eithel looked more like ruins than like the start of something new, ghostly in the mists that clung to the mountains and hovered in the hollows and valleys of Hithlum even under the noonday sun. Lalwen hummed to herself as she sat cross legged by the springs above the tower. It was hard to believe that the frigid, sweet-tasting springs, such a small thing really, were the source of the mighty Sirion that would flow steadily all the way from this mountainside down to the Sea far away in the Bay of Balar.

Lalwen had not yet traveled that far south, but she would! She wanted to see the Isle there, that piece of Tol Eressëa that had been left behind. She wanted to follow the Sirion through the whole of its journey, and all of the other rivers in Beleriand, too. She had followed rivers in Valinor from their source to their end at the Sea, either the Great Sea or the quiet, dark waters of Ekkaia in the farthest west. The thought of doing such a thing again in these wilder, more dangerous lands sent a thrill through her.

But first there was so much work to be done, and a war to be fought. Lalwen swung her legs, kicking her heels against the stone, and let her gaze shift from the misty mountainsides to the plains to the north, green and lush, where already their horses thrived—and beyond even that to the darkness hovering on the horizon, where the pits of Angband were hidden beneath the peaks of Thangorodrim. The gates of Angband were tall and strong, but not impenetrable. Nothing was.

They were here, now. Their swords were long and their lances were keen, and their spirits burned with the same fire the Fëanor’s had—though tempered by the ice of the Helcaraxë, now unbreakable.

The wind picked up and scattered the mists around the tower below, and Lalwen could see her brother carrying the stones up the slope to pass on to those hard at work building the walls ever higher. Lalwen tipped her head back to gaze up at the clear morning skies above, breathed in the clean mountain air, and laughed.