On the Starlit Sea by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 8: Hugs/”You better start talking”

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Elrohir wakes to singing. 

Elf-song from up on deck washes around the cabin, mingling with the rush and sigh of the Sea’s waves. He cannot make sense of the words, but the music stirs the tattered remains of half-forgotten memories, and for a moment of what seems like madness he is sick with longing for some elusive thing he cannot name. It is a sweet, aching kind of yearning. Tears spring to his eyes, but he swallows them down. 

A good thing that he is alone. Glorfindel must have risen hours ago, judging by his neatly made berth. He did open the shutter before he left, and the wing-shaped porthole has the cabin awash in daylight. Elrohir sits up, rubs his eyes with his sleeve, and tries to make sense of this place. 

The room is narrow and compact, but intricate as a jewellery box. Walls of foam-white wood flowing in sleek, wave-like lines with carved dolphins leaping among the breakers. Elves have a taste for beauty, it seems. He eyes Glorfindel’s sea chest, bedecked in gilded flowers. Skillful work, and very rich, but perhaps a bit over the top. 

The one that is supposed to be his is more restrained: honey-coloured, lacquered wood with a frieze of entirely life-like horses in gallop, their long mane streaming in an unseen wind. He runs his fingers along the proud arc of a leaping stallion’s neck. 

Horses are Elrohir’s namesake, Glorfindel was quick to tell him almost as soon as they met. Elrohir has never owned one - not hardy enough for the desert - but he likes them. Even so, he does not open the chest: it feels like pawing through another man's belongings. That, and there is no telling what memories might lie buried there. 

The Elvish tunic still lies draped over the lid. He has never felt anything like this strange cloth: soft as the finest Khandian silk, but far sturdier and warm against the sea wind. When he pulls it over his head the sweet scent of the northern herbs it was packed with draws him into hazy memory once more. 

To keep from sinking into it he turns to the window, and staggers. Outside lies an alien world. A ceiling of scattered cloud above a shifting surface of silver waves. Without a fixed point of reference Elrohir cannot not tell whether the ship is moving, or how fast. For a terrifying moment he wonders if he would see the looming shape of Umbar’s desert hills, if the porthole looked east. 

“We are eighty miles from Umbar,” says a voice behind his left shoulder. 

Elrohir whips around, a hand on the dagger in his sleeve, but he releases it at once.

Glorfindel seems unaware of how uncannily silent he can be. Even holding a tray full of bowls and cups, the Elf has somehow opened the door without Elrohir noticing, and is now standing in the middle of the cabin.

“Good morning!” Glorfindel says with a sunny smile, politely pretending not to have noticed the dagger. “You look much better than yesterday. How are you feeling?” 

Glorfindel sets down the tray atop his sea chest, and Elrohir’s stomach awakens with a growl at the sight of honey-drizzled flatbread. The smell is warm-golden and full of a faded sweetness he knows, but cannot place. 

“I am well.” Elrohir is amazed to realise that today, his rote answer is the truth. He had his first decent night’s sleep in months, and it is a damned relief. 

Outside, on deck, the Elves are still singing. Bright and merry the song plays back-and-forth with the wind and waves, and for a moment his heart leaps.

Then his eyes meet Glorfindel’s, and he knows .

He has grown better at this Elvish way of seeing behind people’s eyes. Beneath Glorfindel’s cheerful manner lies something else entirely. 

Elrohir stands up straight, bread and song forgotten. “Say it.” 

Glorfindel takes a deep breath. His gaze holds something like regret as he lifts a steaming carafe off the tray with steady hands. “When we step on deck,” he says as he fills two cups with hot spiced wine, “you will see the Umbarian navy giving chase.” 

 

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The words land like a gut punch. The blood drains from Elrohir’s face as what small sense of safety Glorfindel built for him crumbles like ill-fired clay. 

Glorfindel’s heart hurts at the sight. “Ours is the faster ship, and we need to outrun them only until we reach Gondorian waters.” he tries his best to sound confident. “We have a few tricks up our sleeve. Do not despair, Elrohir.” He offers him the wine. “We came through tighter spots, you and I.”

Elrohir’s eyes are wide and wild. “Who?” he demands, ignoring the drink. 

Glorfindel does not understand, at first. 

“Who is chasing us?” Elrohir insists. “What colours are on that ship?”

There is the shape of this sorry tale, half suspected like a sea monster lurking beneath the waves, and Glorfindel must drag it up. “The Prince of Pellardur,” he says, watching Elrohir’s eyes.

Elrohir’s mind is closed as a besieged fortress, but he swears under his breath.

“We do not know if he knows that you are aboard. He might be chasing us simply because we are Elves.” 

Elrohir nods a little too quickly. Sheer terror bleeds past his guard.

“But then, he might know.” Glorfindel adds, looking straight into Elrohir’s eyes. “Will you not tell me why you have the price of half a fleet set on your head?”

Elrohir cannot hold Glorfindel’s gaze. Silence falls, and Glorfindel lets it deepen between them. 

On deck, the Nemir’s crew is singing as they hoist the sails. Their merry sea-shanty seems a mockery as it drifts down into the cabin. 

Foam is white and waves are grey; beyond the sunset leads my way.

Beneath his feet Glorfindel can feel the ship leap into her long flight as the wind catches the sails. The chase has begun.

“I killed someone,” Elrohir says at last, his eyes on the floorboards. He speaks Haradi, as if he fears being overheard.

‘Someone’ is a definite understatement. Glorfindel has seen Elrohir kill scores of men with the seasoned indifference of a professional soldier. 

“Someone important, you mean,” he says, switching to Haradi as well.  

More silence. 

Shadows long before me lie, beneath the ever-bending sky, Galdor’s people chant on deck. 

“Important indeed.” The fight has gone out of Elrohir, and he folds himself down on the farthest corner of the bench, as far from Glorfindel as he can go in the narrow cabin. “Can we not leave it at that?”

“Elrohir…” Glorfindel pleads, “trust me, I beg you. Nothing you say to me now could turn me against you. Nothing. All I ask is that you tell me the nature of your predicament, so I may solve it. As things stand, your enemies possess knowledge that your friends do not. Take away their advantage.”

Elrohir hangs his head, rubs his hands across his face, and for a moment Glorfindel fears that he will refuse. Then he sits up straight, pale but dry-eyed, his father’s very image, and says, “I killed the Emperor of Umbar. The previous one, that is. Our prince’s father.”

Stars above! Glorfindel somehow manages to keep his dismay off his face. “When?” he asks, because surely this is not possible.

“Twenty years ago.” Elrohir‘s voice has gone rough.

“You were so young ...” Glorfindel tries to imagine under what circumstances such a thing might have come to pass, and draws a blank. “How?”

“Please-” Elrohir falls silent, swallows. “Do not make me speak of it. Is this not enough?” Behind his eyes looms a shadowed city, ghosts howling in the empty halls. 

Glorfindel does not have the heart to make Elrohir tread those paths. Not now. Let Elrond go with him into the darkness, when he is safe in Imladris. 

“It is enough.” Glorfindel says, glad he can afford at least this small mercy. “Do not be afraid. I made you a promise, and I stand by it. They will not get you.”

Elrohir does not answer. Glorfindel has seen him ride into battle without flinching, but this conversation has him at his breaking point. He is death-pale and his eyes stare through the floorboards at something beyond the waking world. He has begun to fade once more, the threads binding his spirit to his body worn gossamer-thin. 

Glorfindel cannot bear to see him suffer. He sets down the cup, hesitating for a moment. And then he crosses the width of the cabin, sinks down on the bench beside him, and takes him into his arms.

“They will not get you,” Glorfindel murmurs it against Elrohir’s hair, again and again. “They will not get you.”

A refrain and a promise, until Elrohir lets out a shuddering breath, closes his eyes, and lays his head against Glorfindel’s shoulder.