Northern Stars by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 6

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“Evening, lord.” The cook gives Elrond a look of compassion as he steps out with Elrohir’s plate, his delicious seared yellowfin barely touched. The great cabin’s pearl-inlaid door clicks closed behind him. 

Beyond the windows, dusk spans over the rushing waves. The oil-lamps fill the cabin with a golden glow that plays gently along the carven wave-crests lining the smooth curves of the walls. Snags of song drift down from the deck, where the crew celebrate their victorious return with wine and great merriment under the summer stars.

For the first time today, Elrond finds himself alone and unwatched. He drops his face into his hands and allows his stinging eyes to fall closed. 

Clearly Elrohir’s experience with handling princes never included sharing a table with one. Skittish as a wild bird, he ate next to nothing in Elrond’s presence and spoke even less, until Glorfindel ended the ordeal by taking him to their cabin in an attempt to get him to sleep. 

Elrond had not the heart to demand that Elrohir leave the familiarity of the Nemir and her crew to share his state cabin aboard the Laegrist . He has suffered too much strangeness as it is. 

Wooden walls are thin, and from the adjacent cabin he can hear soft voices. Elrohir’s accented Sindarin weaves through Glorfindel’s melodious baritone. Elrohir sounds distressed, Glorfindel soothing. About what, Elrond can guess. 

Then Elrohir falls quiet. Glorfindel begins a low, soft song. The Lay of Leithian, judging by the melody. Bitter, and yet fitting. It hurts to see another as his son’s confidant and carer, but for the time being it cannot be helped. 

Elrohir was exhausted, and it is not long before Glorfindel’s song winds down. The door’s soft click heralds his return. 

Elrond opens his eyes and sits up straight. He catches a glimpse of a slender shape in the hallway as Ardil settles into standing guard before Elrohir’s door, before Glorfindel closes the great cabin’s door behind him.

“Elrond …” Glorfindel hesitates.

Elrond eyes his master-at-arms, the strong lines of his face a play of light and shadow in the wavering lamplight. Glorfindel is an Elf-lord of Aman. His endurance and mastery of his renewed body is near unto one of the Ainur, but now those shining eyes carry the faintest of shadows beneath them. He looks drained by great effort, body and spirit. Clearly he has poured much of himself into Elrohir. 

Glorfindel’s eyes are guarded as he watches Elrond for signs of displeasure. He does not smile. 

Sometimes matters are … complicated, between them. As the Elder King’s emissary, Glorfindel is Elrond’s one true peer in Imladris, and his elder, while at the same time he is a member of Elrond’s household. They both dance around the unspoken hierarchical complexities. 

Then understanding strikes Elrond. Glorfindel is wary of having displeased him with this obvious closeness to Elrohir. A closeness Elrond desperately wants and cannot have.

This cannot stand. Elrond rises to embrace the man who willingly went into darkness and brought out his son. 

“Thank you, my friend.” Elrond should say much more, words of eternal gratitude and friendship, of heaped honours and rich rewards, but those will come later.

Glorfindel pulls him in eagerly, his relief open in his mind. His grip is solid, strong with a swordsman’s muscle. 

“Thank you,” Elrond says once more. “For everything.”

“I reckon this is not how you imagined this day,” Glorfindel says as he steps back, still unsure of Elrond’s approval.

“My imagination ran to far worse things.” Elrond breathes. “Tell me all of it, if you will.”

“Would you not rather sleep? That was a hard journey you made.”

“I have made worse ones for lesser causes.” Elrond softens his eagerness with a smile. “I would know everything before he wakes tomorrow, so I may take better care of him.”

He turns to stand before the stern windows. From here he can see the Laegrist’s aftercastle. The waves below are flecked with golden light spilling from her great cabin, where no doubt at this very moment Galdor is giving his report to Círdan. 

“Let me ease the task for us both,” he says, lifting a cut-glass bottle from its protective box on the sideboard. “I rushed to Círdan’s gates with naught but a pack of waybread, but he brought his best single malt.” 

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Glorfindel lowers himself into a chair at the table, and hesitates. Where to begin? What does one say? 

I found your son about to throw himself at a Ringwraith, which I chased. Not a week passed before he got himself trampled by a mûmak instead. After that I dragged him through the worst dregs of Black Númenor in a guise of glamour, but he leapt into the sea like his grandmother did, and was lifted up by Ossë’s own hand - no, his tentacle.

He suppresses a hysterical laugh, and watches Elrond pour two tumblers and set out a treat. Círdan’s cook remembers Glorfindel’s tastes from his days in Lindon, and sent over a platter of paper-thin slices of smoked salmon to go with the liquor. Clearly this is Círdan’s own tableware: silver-grey Lindon porcelain fine enough to let the light fall through to the table below, painted with elegant leaping dolphins in shades of indigo. 

“Thank you,” Glorfindel smiles, and lifts a salty bite. The salmon melts in his mouth, the comforting taste of the North. A smooth sip of whisky washes it down. He has delivered mission reports in worse circumstances. “It is a long tale indeed, a night’s worth at least, and not all of it easy to hear.”

He looks at Elrond, and finds him determined. Blue shadows pool beneath his eyes, and he has that waxy look that means he fretted through the night instead of getting the sleep he desperately needs after that mad ride he made. Elrohir takes after his father, in that respect. Glorfindel makes a note to intervene.

“Some of it I have already heard from Master Ruhiren,” Elrond says. “Elrohir returns from a dark place indeed.”

“Not all darkness,” Glorfindel leans back, glass in hand, and settles in, “but more of it than even Ruhiren knew.” He wonders what became of the wretched Mortal. A question for another day. 

Elrond and he have developed a comfortable osanwë between them over the long years. It lessens the need for speech. Glorfindel takes a deep breath. Elrond ’s deep-seeing eyes are on him, his mind close to his. Glorfindel willingly opens himself, so Elrond may see what he has seen.

The Haradrim and their war-ravaged desert. Amuk, their formidable general, who chose to let Glorfindel live, and who led him to Elrohir. 

“A good thing that Amuk introduced me. Elrohir did not know me, at first. He would never have trusted me otherwise.” 

Glorfindel does not say that Elrohir would have killed him. How to explain the terror of that war against impossible odds, the cruelty in its ever-present darkness? 

Then Elrond’s eyes meet his, all pain, and Glorfindel realises that Elrond knows. It is what Beleriand had become towards the end. Elrond would have given anything to spare his own child from it. 

“Elrohir led me to a place in the heart of the desert. A lone mountain amidst the dune-sea, and within it a cave. It should have been empty, but fear smothered it.”

Elrond’s eyes are glued to Glorfindel’s face. Glorfindel says it at once, without embellishment. 

“A Ringwraith. The Captain of the Nine himself. He lay in wait for Elrohir, expecting him to bring only Mortal companions, and easily capture him. ”

Even here, a world away and deep in Ulmo’s realm, his words darken the lamplit room.  

“Valar!” Elrond’s face drains of all colour, and he clutches the armrest of his chair. 

He remembers the Nazgûl well indeed. Mordor drove that home.

“So they haunt the world still! That is what I felt in Elrohir: the Black Breath. A terrible wound.” Elrond swallows. “Elrohir is brave to face such a foe.”

Glorfindel wishes he could allow the distraught father the joy of his son’s valour, unmarred by the bitterness of Elrohir’s impossible quest. 

“The courage of despair,” he says instead. “The war went ill for the Haradrim, and Elrohir had resigned himself to death in battle. It seemed better to him than being captured by Umbar.”  

“Oh, child…” Elrond somehow keeps himself from going to Elrohir. Opening the door would startle him badly. Instead he turns to the wall behind which Elrohir sleeps, and lays his hand against the polished oak as if he might touch his son through the planks. 

Glorfindel gives him a moment to steady himself before he shares their desperate battle in the cave, light against dark, and how in the end he maimed and chased the Nazgûl.

“He knows Elrohir’s name, but I also reminded him of mine.”

Elrond turns back to him, his eyes gleaming. “A deed worthy of song, my friend. I thank you.”

“I could not kill him,” Glorfindel says ruefully. “He fled, but he clings to his miserable half-life still, and his hatred of your House has only grown deeper. He will return to seek vengeance.”

He fortifies himself against the knowledge with another draught of peaty liquor. 

“Elrohir fears him greatly. This was not their first encounter. Judging by his nightmares, he has not told me the worst of it yet. I did what I could, but those foul dreams poison what peaceful nights he has, and he suffers terribly from them.”

“No more,” Elrond says, with dogged determination. Elrohir’s sleep will be guarded. 

They are silent, for a time, listening to the slow and regular breaths behind the wall, the lapping waves of Elrohir’s slumbering mind. Dreamless, for the time being. 

Then Glorfindel gently lays the enormity of it on the table between them, ugly and bare. 

“The implications … It is as you feared.” Glorfindel used to debate Elrond on this, ever the optimist. Now Elrond’s grim predictions prove true.

“And bitter it is,” Elrond says as he folds back into his chair, mournfully and without a trace of smugness. “If the Nine still haunt the world, Sauron’s Rings endure. They draw their power from him. He is neither dead nor vanquished.” 

Elrond raises his eyes to Glorfindel’s face. “Does Galdor know?”

Glorfindel looks him in the eye. Divulging such weighty intelligence to the Falathrim captain was a daring call, but he made it, and now he must account for it. 

“Galdor was at Barad-dûr. He remembers the Black Breath well enough. He knew what he was seeing the moment he laid eyes on Elrohir. I did not insult him by denying it.” He pauses. “Others aboard are as keen-eyed, and more inclined to wagging their tongues. There is no hope of holding back the news once these ships make port.”

Elrond breathes in deeply through his nose, then drinks another mouthful of whisky. “Círdan is being told as we speak. He will be dismayed.”

“Aye.” Glorfindel remembers Círdan’s anger when Elrond did not force Isildur to destroy the One, that fateful day on the slopes of Orodruin. 

Elrond rubs his red-rimmed eyes. “The White Council must meet.”

Hosting a conclave of crowned heads will take much of Elrond’s time. Círdan, King Amroth of Lórien, Celeborn and Galadriel, and King Thranduil of Eryn Galen all must be invited and received with proper honours before the ill news can be broken. 

And then there are the Mortal kings. Valandil of Arnor is Isildur’s heir, and Elrond’s closest neighbour, upon whose good will much of Imladris’ trade depends. Valandil should hear of Sauron’s resurrection from Elrond’s own mouth before the news makes its way to Fornost through other channels. And proud Cemendur of Gondor, whose southern borders look out upon the shadowed desert. 

Glorfindel sees Elrond blanch at the realisation: rallying yet another alliance against Sauron will call him away from Imladris, from the son who needs him so sorely. 

He thinks for a moment, then says, “you should not leave Elrohir while he is ill. Not unless Sauron himself marches forth and attempts to ford the Bruinen.”

Elrond grimaces. “Sauron’s plans are unripe yet. We will not see him move again for many years. The Ringwraith cost him the element of surprise when he revealed himself to you. A grave mistake. Sauron will make him rue it. He will not make another, but when his time comes he will strike.”

Even now, confronted with the worst, Elrond remains a master tactician.

“We will be ready.” Glorfindel says nothing more, but his mind is whirring with calculations. 

He must field more knights skilled in Song, and procure the steel for their armour. More archers, more warhorses, more well-forged pikes and the infantry to wield them. Strengthen the wandering companies that gather news from abroad. Find the silver to pay for all of it. Thank Aulë that Erestor’s clever trade levies have Imladris’ coffers brimming. He will begin as soon as they get home.

“Celeborn and Galadriel are doubtlessly on their way to Imladris, if they have not arrived yet.” Elrond takes hope. “We might as well inform them of the return of the Dark Lord. Galadriel can take charge. Surely Finarfin’s daughter is an acceptable head of the council.” 

“Thranduil has little love for her,” Glorfindel states the painfully obvious.

“Nor for me, so it makes little difference.” Elrond sighs. “Thranduil Oropherion will never forget the Dagorlad. He values Celeborn as an old compatriot, so he might be less sharp-tongued with Galadriel than me.” 

Elrond swirls the remnant of his whisky around in his glass, somberly watching the amber liquid. “When Sauron moves, he will do it in the East. We must mend fences with Thranduil, Glorfindel. At any cost. ” 

He throws back the glass' entire contents, and briefly closes his eyes when the burn of the alcohol hits him. When he opens them once more, his gaze finds Glorfindel’s. “Celeborn must be our peacemaker. He alone can make Thranduil see reason.”

Elrond the inveterate statesman, already scheming. Glorfindel smiles. It is only the barest outline, but they have a plan of action.

Elrond looks wan with exhaustion, but this is not the end of Glorfindel’s tale, not by far. 

“Eat.” He rises to place the platter of salmon before Elrond. “And drink.” He sets another glass down, this one heavily watered. 

Elrond does without protest. Feeding sickly Peredhel is Glorfindel’s specialty, of late. 

Song and raucous laughter drift down from the celebration on deck. A lively jig. Alphalas has broken out her fiddle, it seems. Beyond the wall Elrohir turns over, sighs, then sleeps on. 

Only when Elrond’s plate is half-empty and Glorfindel has poured himself another two fingers of whisky - neat - does he soldier on. 

Hamalan. The way Elrohir’s smile reached his eyes when she spoke. 

Elrond pales, but dares not interrupt the tale. 

Glorfindel shows him the great battle of the Haradrim against the Black Númenóreans. The steel-clad might of their marching legions. The gold-plated Mûmak bearing their general, a Prince of Umbar. 

The Haradrim camelry charge, brave and bright against overwhelming numbers. 

Hamalan’s death. Elrohir’s blind rage. His mad leap, bringing down the prince's brocaded  pavilion. His fall. 

Elrond sits frozen, his face a study in misery. 

Glorfindel is brief about his own part in making short work of the prince’s bodyguards, then the man himself. His search through the pavilion’s wreckage, pulling Elrohir out from beneath the splintered beams.  

He tries to hide the terrible wounds he tended, but Elrond demands to see every last miserable moment of it.  His healer’s hands ball in his lap. He will feel for the scar first thing tomorrow, if Elrohir allows it, to make sure it no longer pains him. Glorfindel knows for a fact that it does.

Glorfindel does not hide Elrohir’s grief when at last he rose from his sickbed. His mad insistence that they find Hamalan. Their fly-ridden search through the scattered charnel of the battlefield. The state of her when they finally did. 

“He loved her.” Elrond says it with terror in his eyes when he sees Glorfindel’s recollection of Elrohir kneeling before the Mortal woman’s cairn, his forehead leaning against the rough pile of red desert rocks as he sang her dirge. 

What memories of lost Elros are now flashing before Elrond’s eyes? 

Glorfindel wants to shake him, point out that Elrohir is not Elros. Elros’ Mortal love shared his long life and bore him children, while Elrohir’s died like a flower crushed before its bloom.

“He did not wed her,” Glorfindel says instead. “He did not choose the Gift of Men.”

“Not yet,” Elrond says only, and swallows the tears that shine in his eyes.

Glorfindel tries not to imagine that possibility, but he has seen Ereinion draw his last breath in Elrond’s arms. The king was burned and battered, grimed in the stirred mud of the battlefield. 

Elrohir would die in bed, the empty house of his body whole and lovingly tended, but Glorfindel’s memory readily supplies the image of Elrond’s face slack with sorrow as he rocked Ereinion’s corpse against him. Elrohir will be worse, still.

Glorfindel may offer so little comfort. The Choice of the Peredhel  looms over Elrond’s House like a shadow. Mortals leave the cares of their short lives behind as they pass beyond Arda, while memory eternal with all its griefs is the fate of the Elves. Will Elrohir choose to set down that burden and join her beyond the circles of the world? 

Glorfindel cannot say.

Elrohir has not Sung since Hamalan's dirge, save when Calear guilted him into it. Something has broken inside him, and Glorfindel knows not how to mend it. 

“He does not want to die,” he says matter-of-factly. “He fought hard enough, then and later.”

He looks at Elrond's glass, and decides against pouring him another. He will need a clear head in the morning. He has another swig of his own before he speaks of their secretive journey through Umbar to their rendez-vous with the Nemir . 

Yet another horror Glorfindel wishes he could spare Elrond, but the cruelty of he Black Númenóreans cannot be hidden. The dreadful city of Pellardur with its market where speaking people, Children of Ilúvatar, are bought and sold like cattle. The chains and bloody lash-marks and the weeping wails of those torn from their loved ones. The looming Temple of Melkor, smoke spiralling from the great louver that gapes in its dome of blackened silver. 

“Not the temple,” he reassures when Elrond goes pale with dread at the thought of his son chained to Morgoth’s altar. “Not the temple, though I think Elrohir passed through a similar foul auction shortly after he was taken, then served for some years as a thrall. Forgive him his fear of you, Elrond. That dreadful land is where they beat it into him.” 

Elrond’s gaze grows hard. “Has he told you what happened?”

Glorfindel swallows at the thought. “I have not been able to piece together the tale. I did not press him with questions while the answers were not needed yet.”

“We must ask him soon.” Elrond says. “Though I am loath to dig up yet more old sorrow. Others await as eagerly as we did.” 

“I know not how Elrohir will react,” Glorfindel says. “He is … unmoored. May I be there when you ask him? It would be easier on him, I believe.”

“That, and you wish to hear this firsthand.” Elrond gives him a knowing look.

There lies an old sorrow of Glorfindel’s, a debt not yet paid, and he means to settle it. “Elrohir’s guards were under my command,” he replies, firmly. “I owe their kin some answers.”

Elrond nods. 

Glorfindel goes on with his tale, watching as the moonlight that pours in through the window turns the sea outside to silver glass. 

He shows Elrond their meeting with the Nemir. The red-sailed ship giving chase. 

Elrohir’s terror when Glorfindel pressed him about the prize on his head. 

“He killed the emperor. He was not yet forty, and he killed the emperor. ” Elrond repeats it mechanically, the weight of the words sinking in. “How?”

“I do not know,” Glorfindel says. “When I asked him he was distraught, and begged me not to make him speak of it. It was the one small mercy I could grant him at the time.”

He sees Elrond mark it. Yet another foul wound to be cleansed and closed.

On Glorfindel goes. The Prince of Pellardur. Calear’s torment. Glorfindel walking across the plank. The Nemir’s losing battle against war-fire and overwhelming numbers. 

Elrohir’s climb aloft, his mad leap from ship to ship, his act of foolish bravery, offering himself as bait to save Glorfindel. 

“Praise Elbereth!” Elrond smiles, hope suddenly returning to his eyes. 

Glorfindel falls quiet, amazed. 

“Can you not see it?" Elrond's expression has thawed into open joy. "This is not the deed of a man indifferent to life. Elrohir cares so deeply for you. He remembers how to love, and there lies our hope! We must fill his heart, until despair is driven out.”

Elrond’s smile falters when Glorfindel tells of Elrohir’s plunge into the sea. The grief over his loss driving the Elves through that bitter battle that followed. 

Glorfindel shows Elrond Prince Bawbuthôr’s death, but skims over Elrohir’s last rites. Elrond does not weep, but it is a near thing.

Ossë raising the drowned. Elrohir’s slack body dredged up from the deep. Glorfindel giving Elrohir his breath. That long night spent at his bedside. 

And then, the aftermath - Calear and Elrohir, two battered souls holding each other up on the journey home. 

Silence falls as they both sit with their thoughts, quiet before the work ahead. Something slow and soft in a minor key filters down from the deck, a voice bright with sorrow lamenting those lost in long-ago wars.

Beyond the windows, the stars have run their bright arc across the sky. The moon is setting into the waves in a long runnel of silver. Soon Eärendil’s bowsprit will cleave the darkness and herald the coming day.

“Thank you,” Elrond says at last. “Thank you, my friend. For everything.”

“All gladly done.” Glorfindel pauses, swallows. He has been meaning to say this for a long time. “Thank you. For Elrohir, for trusting me with him.” 

He cannot put words to so profound a love for a child who is not even his by blood, but Elrond knows. 

They both think of that icy winter morning when Elrond placed a swaddled newborn in Glorfindel’s arms, careful as if Elrohir was made of spun glass. The twins were tiny, even for Elf-babes. He remembers his alarm at seeing how close Elrohir came to fitting within the sword-calloused length of his palm. Glorfindel was afraid that day. Afraid of not being enough. 

Then Elrohir was taken, and he knew his failure for a fact. 

Glorfindel is not one for self-pity. He mastered its siren-song long ago, but Elrond Peredhel can somehow look at him, and see his heart. 

“His loss was not your doing,” Elrond says softly. 

“I am the captain of the guard.” Glorfindel states the simple truth.

“I never laid it at your door,” Elrond says once more, like he did so many times. “Neither will Elrohir, when he hears the tale.” Elrond turns to look at him. “You were always worthy, and now you have proven it once more.” 

Glorfindel smiles. Here is Elrond Peredhel. His great heart, his deeply generous ability to see the absolute best in his people. 

Only then does the full weight of Elrond’s exhaustion strike him. His pale skin is waxy over his sharp cheekbones, and shadows pool blue beneath his eyes.

Glorfindel points at Galdor's bed in the corner of the cabin. “Now sleep,” he commands his liege-lord like he is a child in his charge before he catches himself at the habit. “Elrohir tends to rise with the sun. You have a few hours left.”