Northern Stars by Idrils Scribe

Chapter 10

It has been long since Elrohir last slept beneath a roof of stone. This one has lofty arches in the shape of branching vines, but the weight of it presses down, cutting him off from the stars. Even in the darkest depths of war he has never been without their comfort. The loss is a jarring ache, like a wound. Aboard the Nemir , Glorfindel would let him spend the night on deck whenever he wanted to.  He does not know if he is allowed to leave this room, and he dares not try. Elrond’s guards have an air of danger about them. Stern and fierce they seem, these Elf-warriors; more fey than the Falathrim, with keen blades and eyes bright with a light that is not wholly of this world. Running afoul of them would be the last thing he ever does.  In the other bed Elrond himself has gone quiet. He lies with open eyes, sunken into that strange Elvish dream-state. Sharing a cabin with Glorfindel taught him that such sleepers -if sleep it can be called- are lightly woken.  No matter. Elrohir knows how to be silent. The windows paint strips of starlight onto the flower-tiled floor. He takes one of the down feather blankets that lie piled on the mattress, drapes it around himself, and sits down within the stripe of silver, his back against a carven pillar. The stones’ chill seeps into his bones, but he has spent nights in worse spots.  The very skies are strange here, so many unfamiliar constellations he can hardly tell which way is north, but from his new vantage point he finds amidst the unknown stars the Resting Lion spanning its slow arc against the sky. The sight brings him the comfort of an old friend returned, if only for a moment. This far north the constellation sits low on the horizon. Soon it will wheel out of sight, so he must not let his eyes stray from it, nor his thoughts.  The dream comes to him regardless. He is alone in the dark, but the night comes alive and it seeks him, ever-hungry. She is screaming, somewhere in the distance, and he knows the dark has taken her, that it will devour her and spit her out a woundless corpse with staring eyes.  The Eye. The Eye. I shall take you to the Eye. The shadows mutter and rave, over and over until those terrible words burn in his mind.  He runs, but the earth is strewn with open-eyed corpses and they grasp for his feet because they do not stay dead and his lungs burn; he must run faster but then he hears her screaming still - she is alive and he must turn back but he cannot, their hands close around his feet, dead hands blue and mottled but moving pull him down to the ground amidst the writhing corpses and her pleas still ring in his ears as he falls  There is not enough breath in his lungs to scream out the horror of it, and when he jerks awake someone is standing in the room.  For a moment of blessed, bone-deep relief he thinks Glorfindel has come. Then he blinks the tears from his eyes.  Elrond . Pure soldiers’ instinct makes him move and make himself presentable. His body seems made of stone as he forces it to rise from the sweat-soaked tangle of the blanket, stand up straight and wipe his face with his sleeve.  It is nothing. He has dreamt this before, this and worse. If only he had a moment where he might slip away in silence and escape into the vast star-brightness of the desert night, to check Ot’s hobbles, bury his hands in the camel’s warm coat, and perhaps fall back asleep a while with the beast’s great grumbling body at his back. Ot and the desert and the bright beloved stars are gone. There is only this stone-roofed room, and Elrond looking pale and probably livid at being shouted awake.  Elrohir tries to hide the thought, but Elrond looks at the rumpled mess he must present as he struggles to pretend that nothing unusual just happened; looks with those eyes that pierce like pale stars, then turns to the wardrobe to lift two cloaks. “Come,” he says only. He hands over one cloak and dons the other, opens the folding door, and steps out into the night.  Outside a clear sky of summer stars spans over the sea. Elrond leads the way to the meadow in front of the house. Elrohir follows in silence, and meanwhile tries to master his breathing.  Elrond motions for him to sit where the greensward slopes down to the cliffside and the wide view across the moonlit firth. The grass is long and soft beneath him, the air rich with the scent of flowering herbs. All around them crickets sing their silver song.  The night is still young, the gentle half-moon barely risen. Across the bay twinkle many lights that must be the Havens. Elrohir can make out the masts of ships moored at the quays. The Nemir must be among them. A stab of longing tears through him.  Elrond sits down beside him. “See the stars, Elrohir, and be at peace.” Elrond’s voice is low and soft, without a trace of anger. “I would stay with you, if you will have me?” Elrohir looks aside, and finds Elrond’s eyes on him. “I do not like to leave you alone.”  Elrohir can only stare. The lord of the house can sit wherever he pleases. Then, because Elrond seems to expect it, he nods. ---- Elrohir has curled up within the wide drape of his cloak, as if trying to disappear from sight like some small hunted animal taking cover. His face is pale above the collar. He has rubbed away the tear-tracks, but his eyes remain red-rimmed. His shock of unbraided hair is a wild tangle. He forgot to straighten it in his frantic rush to tidy himself, because he is still used to wearing it shorn.  He looks so completely lost. His mind is closed, but Elrond has seen enough of the dream to know what harrows him now; how the cruel, cold eyes of the Nazgûl still seeking him in some other, starless night. He longs to embrace his son, wipe his face with a cool cloth, take a comb and brush his hair smooth, then ask for the tale behind the snatches of dream he saw. He could do all that now, he knows. Elrohir would not dare refuse any intimacy Elrond cares to name. Every question he asks will be answered, each horror laid out in minute detail and relived to the very dregs.  All of it would be forced, and false, and bound to injure Elrohir further. And so Elrond must ask nothing at all, until Elrohir is ready to offer freely.  “You are no prisoner,” he says instead, his voice full of a calm he does not feel. “Walk outside and see the stars whenever you want.” Then again, for emphasis. “Always.” “Thank you.” Elrohir says with a half-bow, as if he is being granted a rare and precious boon.  He seems to expect a scolding, and is now cautiously relieved that none is forthcoming. Elrond’s heart contracts in his chest.   He is shaking himself, and folds his hands together beneath his cloak to hide it. The rushed ride from Imladris still burdens him, and he slept too deeply. Startling awake to a scream of terror to find his wounded son shivering on the floor in a desperate bid for a sliver of starlight, like a Wood-elf caught in an Orc den, shocked him to his core. He must be more vigilant. This nightmare fell upon Elrohir’s sleeping mind like a rushing wave and wholly swept him away. The next one will find Elrond in its path. They sit in silence for a time, watching the waves wash back and forth in the firth below. The summer wind murmurs gently in the long grass.   Elrond is at a loss, but then he remembers Glorfindel’s advice. The closest thing to contentment Glorfindel has seen from Elrohir came in the evenings, when Glorfindel would busy his hands with some meaningless little task or other, and meanwhile sing, so Elrohir could fall asleep to the sound of his voice. Elrohir would curl up in his bedroll like a contented cat, and sometimes even smile as his eyes fell closed. “Glorfindel tells me that you like songs," Elrond says. “Would you like to hear one?” Elrohir hesitates. Clearly he would not dream of asking Elrond such a thing.  “I would not trouble-”  “No trouble at all, Elrohir. It has been so long since I could sit with you.” He shows his longing open in his mind.  “Please,” Elrohir says, very carefully.  At that, Elrond lets his smile light up his face and mind. He takes off his cloak and drapes it over the grass against the cold rising from the ground. He motions for Elrohir to lie down on it, which he does at once, wrapping himself in the other cloak. The summer night is balmy, though the dew will bring a chill. Elrond will manage in his nightshirt. Elrohir needs the warmth more than he does.  What should he sing? He thinks for a moment, scrabbling for a song without even a note of sorrow or darkness, then thinks of one he has not sung for an Age or more. A merry Wood-elven ballad, all lightness and laughter, about a thrush and a clever squirrel chattering in a hazel bush. The language is a dialect so ancient even he barely recalls it.  Elrohir could not possibly understand the lines, but the joy of it needs no words. He lies still, his head pillowed on his arm, listening raptly. Glorfindel was right: two verses in, the haunted look lifts from Elrohir’s eyes. By the fifth one his lids blink, lower, then fall closed. His breathing slows and his body slackens into sleep.  Only then does Elrond indulge himself, and reach out a hand to lay it on Elrohir’s head, his fingers softly curled in his hair. He has not seen him sleep yet. He looks frighteningly Mortal, with his eyes closed. Beneath them shadows lie blue as bruises in the twilight.  Now Elrond dares to reach out his mind and give of his own strength, pouring forth the essence of himself. It washes over Elrohir’s battered fëa like clear water raining down upon parched land to soothe the cracked earth. He keeps at it, watching Elrohir’s face ease into peaceful, painless slumber, until bright stains wheel before his eyes and a headache begins to throb behind his temples. It matters not - he will manage.   Meanwhile he keeps singing, verse after verse of thrush and squirrel stealing one another’s nuts in increasingly ridiculous ways, and back to the beginning once the little creatures laugh and make up.  It is good to sit here under the stars beside his sleeping son.  On the third pass his voice grows hoarse. The night wind carries a chill, and he feels his skin break into gooseflesh beneath the thin linen of his nightshirt.  Even as he falters, another voice picks up the song. Ardil must have gone back to the house before approaching them, because he is holding a steaming cup of mulled wine and a grey guardsman’s cloak draped over his arm.  He does not miss a single thrilling note of the thrush’s squabbling as he hands them to Elrond.  Elrond eyes the man, wondering how he knows the words to a song so obscure. Only then does it strike him - the song is one of Elwing’s, and the language is ancient Doriahthrin.  Elrond gestures for Ardil to sit down. He crouches at a respectful distance, still singing, his eyes on Elrohir. Elrond cannot read what lies behind his gaze.  “Thank you,” Elrond says when the song ends, and he means it. He would gladly have kept his night’s vigil over Elrohir in naught but his nightclothes, but he is grateful for the measure of comfort. The wine is hot and well-spiced, and restores him to some semblance of his usual grace.   “He sleeps better like this.” Ardil casts a fearful gaze at Elrohir’s sleeping face. He must have heard him scream.  Irmo have mercy. The whole house did! “The worst is over, I believe.” Elrond reassures him. “Tonight, at least.”  Ardil sags with relief. Stern and obstinate as he is, the old Sinda has genuine care for Celebrían’s children.  “I have not heard that song in many years,” Ardil says, not unkindly. “My mother taught me.” Elrond wonders at how easily those words fall from his lips. My mother. It has been long since he last spoke of Elwing. “It was her favourite, when she was little,” Ardil says, his tone careful, as if expecting rebuke. Elrond almost startles at the realisation. Of course Ardil would know such things about Elwing. Elrond has never thought to ask him.  “I did not know that.” He gives Ardil a tentative smile. This is a time of beginnings. Perhaps Elrohir’s return will mend more than one old fracture in his house. “I know little about her days in Doriath. Perhaps you and I can speak of it, some day?” “Whatever you would have of me, lord, you have but to name.” Ardil says solemnly, and rises to his feet. “And for your son.” “I thank you, Master Ardil.” After a moment’s hesitation, Elrond adds, “I am glad that you are here.” “I, too, am glad to be.” Ardil smiles, bows, and fades into the summer night.