On the Starlit Sea by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 22: Quality Time

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Elrohir wakes to the morning sun pouring gold into the cabin. He blinks against the brightness, but soon settles for watching the light play along the carved wave-crests that cover the wall. Simple sunshine has become a marvel, after believing he would never see it again. 

His head is heavy, his thoughts syrup-slow. Whatever Elvish concoction Glorfindel gave him last night must have held a good dash of poppy. Even so, he hurts as if he has been trampled by a mûmak. His head, his chest, his wounded hand. Every breath is a struggle. 

The thirst is the worst of it.  

He turns his head to scan the room. Some kind of healer’s ward. Several beds. Only one is occupied. The hands resting atop the blanket are bandaged so thickly he can barely discern their shape. He cannot see the face because the head, too, is partly wrapped in a cream-white dressing. 

Calear. They cut off his ear.

Elrohir’s stomach drops and he needs to swallow, but his mouth is too parched. At least the poor Elf seems alive and awake. 

A white-smocked Elf-woman - Falver - stands over Calear’s bed. She is speaking to him, her voice low and gentle, but Elrohir’s head feels full of sand and he cannot grasp her lilting flow of Sindarin. He has not the heart to interrupt whatever it is she is doing for Calear.

Looking around is slow and difficult. Once he manages it he finds Glorfindel’s tall shape, folded into a chair beside him. He is covered in a grey blanket and his cheek rests on the backrest. His open eyes are glassy with some Elvish dream. 

Elrohir watches for a time. He has not seen Glorfindel sleep before. He must be exhausted. 

Elrohir does not mean to wake him, but on the bedside shelf sits a cup, and he is thirsty enough to drink whatever he can find. He tries to be silent, but the instant he raises his unsteady hand, Glorfindel blinks. 

Elves are never clumsy, not even upon waking. At once Glorfindel notes Elrohir’s eyes on the cup, and deftly lifts it for him.

Elrohir’s one good hand is shaking, but he balks at the indignity of having Glorfindel bring the drink to his mouth. Glorfindel hands it over, with his hand lingering over Elrohir’s to steady him. 

Cool, clean water with only the barest taste of tar from the barrel. 

“There. You must be parched.” Glorfindel laughs his golden laugh as he refills the cup, and Elrohir drains it thrice over.

 

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Glorfindel cannot help but laugh, allow the bubbling fountain of his joy an escape lest he burst with it. The relief is too immense. 

Elrohir’s eyes are open. He has emerged from the oblivion of Mortal sleep, that alien foretaste of death, deeper and darker than Elvish rest. 

Barely a day ago Glorfindel stood on deck singing Elrohir’s burial dirge, longing for the bitter consolation of a corpse to tend to. He cannot contain his stunned delight at having him alive instead. 

At the work table in the corner Falver looks up from her log, joy open in her eyes, and even Calear turns his bandaged head towards the sound of Glorfindel’s laughter with some lopsided thing that might be a smile brightening his battered face. 

Once Elrohir has drunk water and some broth, the poppy loses its grip. His gaze grows clear, and behind it his mind is present once more.  

He has many questions, and Glorfindel answers them without saying too much. The Nemir and her crew are safe. The Shakhalzôr remains afloat. The prince is dead, along with most of his marines. The slaves are free. 

In the other bed, Calear has turned onto his side to listen, sea-grey eyes bright amidst his bruises.  

When Glorfindel falls silent, Elrohir smiles - thank Manwë and Varda for the sight! - and promptly falls asleep once more. Glorfindel settles back into his chair, and takes what rest he can find.

 

At midday, Elrohir awakens with a start. 

“No!” His face twists in dismay. “I lost it!” His eyes are wild, and his breathing quickens with genuine fear.

Glorfindel leans forward, alarmed, and lays a hand on his shoulder. “What did you lose?” 

“My sword!” Elrohir lifts himself off the pillows. “I let go of it in the water!” 

Glorfindel recalls seeing him plunge into the sea with the scimitar in hand. Ossë has not seen fit to raise it up from the abyss; when Glorfindel undressed Elrohir after his ordeal, he found his scabbard empty.

Elrohir’s lost sword was Umbarian army issue. He must have looted it off some dead Corsair. A utilitarian lump of steel, utterly without beauty. Glorfindel had tested it once, to be sure Elrohir had a good weapon, and found malice in its make. Elrohir had filed away the Eye insignia on the blade, but the iron still carried a cruel Song of bloodlust, a twisted pleasure in causing pain and ending life. Let the accursed thing crumble to rust on the bottom of the Sea.

“You need it no more,” Glorfindel says, his voice all calm reassurance. “Our battles are done.”

It is as if he suggested that Elrohir walk around naked. 

“I can hardly go without a sword!” Elrohir looks as if he has half a mind to go diving for it. 

There it is. Elrohir has not the slightest expectation that this deluge of violence that was his life thus far will ever end. Peace is a thing beyond imagining. Glorfindel vows to give it to him.

And so he says, “you will be given another one later, at home.”

It is a half-truth. Elrond will indeed give Elrohir a sword, but not until some glad day of feasting many years from now, when Elrohir passes the trials and takes his oath as a knight of Imladris. 

The trials are for full-grown Elves who have spent a long-year in training. Glorfindel is a harsh taskmaster, because he must be. And he will not inflict any of it on a half-starved lad of less than fifty with ghosts behind his eyes and the spectre of fading hovering over him. It will be long before Elrohir carries arms again. 

He eyes Elrohir’s hands, covered in tell-tale scars and calloused by the rough leather hilt. Elrond will make sure that they soften, wrapped around pens and books and harp strings. 

“For now we have no spare to give you,” Glorfindel says, decisively. And then, remembering how to distract any lad of fifty, “would you like a story instead?”

Harad taught Elrohir to endure what cannot be changed. He settles back against the pillow. “Tell me about the Balrog?” he says, innocently.

Calear eyes Glorfindel with a startled air. Falver’s head shoots up, her gaze a warning.

Glorfindel smiles. This is what he gets for bragging. 

Elrohir does not know yet that Glorfindel has died, and his spirit returned to life in a renewed body. To the Men of Harad, revenants carry the reek of necromancy, of the Houseless hungry for bodies, of Sauron’s blackest arts - precisely the sort of thing that would strike terror into Elrohir even now. Glorfindel must hold that particular story back until later, when Elrohir is stronger and more settled against the strangeness of it. 

“I will not darken today with that tale,” he says. “Would you like to hear about Fingon and the dragon?”

Elrohir hesitates. “Who is Fingon?”

Falver has grown used to Elrohir’s stunning ignorance about vast swathes of common knowledge, but Calear eyes him with genuine shock. 

“Fingon is the son of Fingolfin and Anaïre,” Glorfindel explains with a smile. “He is both your great great great uncle on your father’s side, and your first cousin twice removed on your mother’s.” 

Elrohir gives him a panicked stare, desperately trying and failing to commit this to his fever-fogged memory. 

“Fear not. One day it will seem like you have always known him,” Glorfindel reassures, and moves on to the dragon.

It is a tale from those bright days when the Noldor held Morgoth at bay behind the leaguer and Beleriand lay fair and green beneath the newborn sun. 

He makes it a riveting victory: the noble prince Fingon and his brave knights; sunlight glittering off their shining armour, the splendour of their banners, the white shimmer of great warhorses with gem-braided manes. 

Elrohir is staring wide-eyed, and even Calear, who is old enough to have seen the glory of the Noldor with his own eyes, and all of it brought to utter ruin, has a glimmer in his eye. 

A warmth like a good fire settles in Glorfindel’s chest as he watches them turn to his voice, their eyes bright and free of pain as they hang on his every word. 

Glorfindel carries them to the wide green plains of Ard-Galen, a sea of waving grass stretching beneath the sky onto the horizon, where the dreadful towers of Thangorodrim loom.

Elrohir gasps as the indemmar move before his mind’s eye. Mere months ago he would have gone pale with terror and grabbed his knife. He is growing used to them now, and leans back as he lets the story play out. 

Glorfindel smiles. Trust, at last.

In his eagerness to keep Elrohir’s smile, instead of slime and horror and flesh-melting flame he makes Glaurung a creature of golden scales and leaping fire. 

The knights confront, encircle, confound the dragon with a hail of white-fletched arrows shot from horseback. Tearing speed and cool wind in their faces and the joy of battle and skill of arms. 

Elrohir has turned onto his side to face Glorfindel, his bandaged hand stretched out before him. The wound is forgotten as he listens, rapt.

Fingon moves in for the final strike. 

Glorfindel’s audience barely breathes. 

The brave duel. The bright-mailed prince against the golden dragon. Stroke and harry. An arc of roaring flame caught on Fingon’s white shield. 

Elrohir and Calear gasp as one.

The mighty spear-thrust. The dragon pierced, bleeding, fleeing in disgrace. 

Both faces break into smiles.

Fingon himself set that battle to song, and Glorfindel sings the final verse, all joyous triumph. 

His listeners are beaming, their hearts glad for a moment, free of the memory of their pains. Elrohir looks better than he has since Glorfindel pulled him from the sea. Falver in her corner gives him a nod of rare approval. 

Elrohir smiles. “You are a bard, Glorfindel!”

“I am not,” Glorfindel laughs. “But I have heard many a good one at work.”

“I could see it happen! Was it your memory? Were you there?” Elrohir asks, his eyes wide. 

“I was elsewhere at the time,” Glorfindel says, trying not to think of Gondolin, “but I have learned both tale and song from one who was.”  

“Fingon?” Elrohir asks eagerly. 

Glorfindel barely manages to hide his wince. When last he saw Fingon, he was no longer that merry, dragon-defying prince, but the stern and warlike High King of the Noldor, commanding the field at what was to become the Nirnaeth. 

“Now, Elrohir,” Falver arises from her work table and comes to Glorfindel’s rescue, clearly eager to distract Elrohir from this grim line of questioning. “I should give that wound another look.”