Like a Morning of Pale Spring by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 1

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Glorfindel emerges from the cabin with that stricken look of a man freshly wounded. 

Before the door clicks closed behind him, Ardil glimpses Elrond sitting cross-legged on the floor amidst the scattered letters. Elrohir is barely visible within his father’s embrace, but his posture is stiff and uneasy. His eyes are closed. 

Ardil averts his gaze. He thought the worst was past yesterday, when Elrohir sank to his knees before Elrond. Clearly he thought wrong.

Glorfindel turns to look at him. The envoy of Aman looks pale in the hallway’s half-light. How strange and disconcerting, to see that over-bright flame in his eyes dimmed by his cares. 

Ardil lowers his eyes, awaiting Glorfindel’s censure in silence. When he fetched Glorfindel from his council with a bewildered Círdan, he was honest about what befell between him and Elrohir. 

All of it - Elrohir’s request, made in a voice full of false bluster as he thrust silver into Ardil’s hand, his eyes aflame with fear. The way he recoiled when he imagined what Ardil might desire instead of coin. How does a lad of not yet fifty conceive of such horrors? 

Stars above! His heart sinks at the full depth of his own failure. His first meeting with Elrohir - the very purpose of his presence in Imladris - and somehow he managed to alienate him. Celeborn expects a report of his grandson’s condition rushed to him the moment Ardil sets foot on dry land. What in Araw’s blessed name will he write?  

“You did well, Master Ardil. I thank you.” Glorfindel’s voice is soft and low, so it does not carry beyond the closed door behind him. 

Inside the cabin all is silent. Presumably Elrond remains on the floor, his arms around his son. 

Ardil stares, weighing the man before him. “Elrohir did not take to me, I fear,” he replies, keeping the pain out of his voice. 

“I think he did.” Glorfindel’s smiles, almost wistful, and then he speaks in that same, steady whisper. “When I first met Elrohir, he tried to kill me.” 

Ardil hears the words, but cannot grasp them. Surely he misunderstood. Surely Glorfindel did not call Celebrían’s son a would-be kinslayer. 

“Pardon, lord?” he manages to utter, perplexed.

Glorfindel sees his shock, and hesitates in the narrow hallway. “Come with me, Ardil,” he says, with an inviting gesture. “Let us have a drink, and a word.”

An unexpected thaw. Glorfindel and he are fellow warriors, and peers in age, but they have always kept each other at a polite arm’s length. Glorfindel is Elrond’s man through and through. Ardil very much is not. 

Glorfindel leads the way up the stairs and on deck, and Ardil breathes deeply of the clear and open air. The Blue Mountains slope down into the firth of Lindon, their foothills crowned with oak and beech. Merry rivers murmur in each mist-wreathed valley. This land was once called Ossiriand, and even aboard ship the Song of the living forest makes Ardil’s spirit soar. Almost home now, sings the crew, and he feels it with all his heart. 

At Glorfindel’s sign, Borndis peels away from a group of singers and heads downstairs to take Ardil’s place guarding Elrond and Elrohir. Ardil follows Glorfindel to the stern deck, where they pull a pair of stools up to the railing so they may watch a pod of dolphins leap in the Nemir’s wake.

Another of the warriors of Imladris brings them a bottle of Lindon spirits and two glasses. Glorfindel pours generously. Ardil eyes him with a measuring gaze - it is not his habit, drinking before noon. 

“Stars and Powers! Have we not earned it?” Glorfindel chances a smile, and holds out his glass. 

It is the first time something like this has befallen between them, sharing a cup and a laugh. They serve different lords, Glorfindel and he, but what they have in common is long and faithful service, hacking away at one battle after another campaign, skirmish upon skirmish. The endless, iron grind of the long defeat of the Elves. 

Perhaps they might rest together, for a moment in time, and have a drink. Ardil looks into Glorfindel’s Aman-bright eyes, smiles, and clinks his own glass against Glorfindel’s. 

The man does pour a fine whisky - a burn like a Balrog’s whip, as the Falathrim say. Ardil does not say that out loud, of course. Not in the present company. 

“The tale of our sea journey you have heard from the crew,” Glorfindel begins. “Of what came before Elrohir will speak but little. He is not a man of easy words, you will find.” Glorfindel pauses, his eyes on Ardil’s, and his mind gives an inquisitive tug. “You know what we fought?”

“I do.” Ardil does not look away. He would not be worth his salt if he had not sussed it out.  “A Prince of Umbar and a shipful of marines, the crew tells me. And before that… another fallen Lord of Númenor.” 

Ardil was in Mordor, both on the Dagorlad and at the Siege of Barad-dûr. He knows better than to speak of the Ringwraith. Not even here, beneath the midday sun upon the blessed waters of Lindon. 

He recalls the coming of the Nazgûl to the battlefield, deeper shadows darkening the dusk. Abominations, befouling the very fabric of Eä. Even the mighty Dúnedain would shriek in terror as the night came alive with malice. Mortal flesh that should have died an Age ago, caging a tortured spirit kept embodied by Sauron’s artifices. 

Glorfindel, too, remembers. His voice is low, his face grave. “None other than their captain. He knew Elrohir, and hunted him. Elrohir does not speak of it.”

Ardil has seen many terrible and grievous things in his life, and so he does not flinch at the thought of a half-grown boy pitted against that monstrosity. Small wonder Elrohir looks so haunted. He is lucky to be alive. 

“Did you kill him?” he asks instead. 

“I maimed him, drove him off, but he is not dead.” Glorfindel looks down to where the dolphins breach the waves, throwing up white flashes of sea-foam in their raucous play. “My heart tells me that he cannot die. Not for a long time yet, and not by my hand.”

“Curse the wretched Mortal.” Hate darkens the heart, but Ardil is not above it. 

Glorfindel looks aside. “You are not surprised?”

Ardil shakes his head. “The Sindar have seen evil hewn down many times, and each time it sprouts again. We know better than to hang our axes on the wall.” He pauses. This is not the time for spouting philosophy. “I pray to Îdh that we can save Elrohir.” 

Glorfindel eyes him with stark sorrow. The boy may yet die, and they both know it. 

“Is it true what they say?” Glorfindel asks, his curiosity seemingly getting the better of him. “That he looks like her ?”

He need not speak the name - Ardil knows who he means, and for an instant the stab of grief leaves him mute. 

Elrohir does resemble Lúthien.

Night-dark hair and grey eyes, lit not with that eldritch, too-bright flame of the Trees, but the reflected starlight of Middle-earth. Something of Melian’s alien presence lingers in all of Her line, a strand of Power to alter the very threads of which Eä is woven. Elrohir has that strength in him, the unyielding might of Her inhuman will.

Ardil does not say that. His fingers clench on his empty glass as cold anger rises in his heart. This Golodh who never laid eyes on Lady Lúthien thinks only of her fair face. When remembering the greatest Singer the Lindar ever brought forth, all he wants to know is whether Elrohir has her looks. 

Even as he opens his mouth to snipe out some rebuke, he looks up into Glorfindel’s eyes, and reads there the full weight of the man’s question.

Lúthien, too, once died of sorrow. 

Ardil recalls that grey winter when Beren was mauled by the hell-hound. He was among those who threw wide the great gates of Menegroth and ran out to meet King Elu’s party when he carried Lúthien’s dying husband home. Beren’s spirit clung to the ruin of his body just long enough to die in her arms, there upon the frost-rimed flagstones of the forecourt. 

Then the lamps of Menegroth dimmed and her nightingales fell silent. Thingol and Melian watched in dismay as their daughter walked that dark road on its slow descent into stillness. Lúthien died in the spring, pale and slender, her sorrow like a burning in her face. 

Laid out on her deathbed she was more beautiful than ever before. Ardil stood in the honour guard around her catafalque while the people of Doriath filed past. Man or maid, noble or commoner, they all entered singing, every lament known to Elfkind ringing through the great hall, but every last one fell silent before Lúthien’s bier. 

The sight of her face in the light of the Silmaril struck the heart like a blade. 

Ardil is no healer, but he can see Lúthien’s death in Elrohir’s eyes, the shadow of the Doomsman’s hand reaching out once more. When he is alone Elrohir grows still, his eyes staring out beyond the weave of Arda. She had that same transparent look, before her spirit released her body and winged into the West after Beren’s.  

Ardil knows not who Elrohir might be grieving, but follow them he shall, unless Elrond performs a great feat of healing. 

“Yes,” he answers Glorfindel with complete and open honesty. “He looks like her.”

Glorfindel is a brave man, but now open fear bleeds from his mind. He loves Elrohir, that much is clear. “You and I, we must help Elrond save him.” 

Ardil cannot do much for Glorfindel, but he can be honest. 

“I am no healer,” he says, softly. He has been a soldier all his life, a sword in Celeborn’s hand. His is a long and blood-soaked road leading from the Marches of Doriath to the Fall of Eregion, and from there to Mordor and the defence of Lórien. His skill is at taking lives, not mending them. 

Surely Glorfindel, of all people, understands this.

Glorfindel only looks at him with a ghost of that bright, golden smile. ”You have other skills.”

Ah.

Only now does Ardil understand why of all the knights in Elrond’s household, Celebrían chose him. 

His sons. 

Haldir, Rúmil and Orophin, who he raised into men he is proud to call his kin. He was Celebrían’s tutor, too, in woodcraft and archery. She thinks him experienced, and now he is to try his hand with her son.

The full gravity of it strikes him, then. 

Elrohir is just shy of fifty. At that age Ardil’s own boys were a challenge even on dry land. Aboard this ship they would have been a heart-stopping handful, getting into mischief and wild dares up aloft from the sheer pent-up energy of being cooped up. 

Elrohir plays no foolish pranks. He obeys Elrond’s every word, completely and at once. And bows while doing it.

“Îdh save him!” Ardil mutters, and rubs a hand over his face. 

“Be kind.” Glorfindel says at once, seeing his dismay. “Be straightforward. Be predictable. Do as you said you would, always. Keep your eyes open. He never complains, never asks, but he is very ill. He needs you to notice if he needs anything.” 

“Such as?”

“Rest, mostly. He needs sleep like a Mortal - all night, every night. Make sure he gets it. Hand him his food and check if he eats. He will not tell you that he is hungry, tired, or hurt. Notice it before he keels over trying to keep up with us.”

Seeing the open concern in Ardil’s eyes, Glorfindel smiles once more and says with an air of absolute certainty, “Elrohir will like you, once he knows you.”

“Will Lord Elrond allow it?” Had Elrond had his way some Fëanorian would sit here in Ardil’s stead. Glorfindel might be of that same mind. 

“He will not gainsay Lady Celebrían’s choice.” Glorfindel says. 

“If not for her, he would have appointed a kinslayer.”

Glorfindel looks at him, then says, “Elrohir is wounded and lost. We must not burden him with Elfkind’s ancient evils, nor draw him into feuds.” 

“Neither evil nor feud are of my making, and I cannot undo them.” This is an old debate, a path well-trodden, and Ardil walks it without thinking.  

“Can you not be civil?” Glorfindel asks, a note of desperation in his voice.

“Would you be civil , if you ran into Maeglin the Traitor in the street?” Ardil hesitates. He has never taken this Noldo into his confidence, but strange times demand the unusual. 

“My mother stood beside me in the last defence of Queen Nimloth,” he says, and tries not to lose himself in the memory of it, the sights and smells. “Nelloril was her name. She was a gentle soul, a master weaver who never before held the sword I thrust into her hands.” 

He pauses, swallows. He must master himself. It has been so long. “She wore no mail. Canissë did, and she wielded Fëanorian steel. She had to land but a single blow to hew my mother’s arm clean off. She screamed, but I could not even look at her as she bled, because Celeborn bade me follow him to defend the nursery.” 

He seeks Glorfindel’s gaze with his own. “You know what became of the little princes.” 

Glorfindel listens, and waits patiëntly as Ardil breathes against the bile that rises to his throat. He, who has seen three Ages’ worth of slaughter. 

“I am glad that I never saw which Fëanorian finished her off, or I might be tempted to sully myself with their blood.” He laughs a bitter laugh. “ These are the people who took Elwing’s son from us and turned him into a Noldo in their image. ‘Be civil’, you say to the Sindar, but what you mean is ‘can you not pretend it never happened, so we can all conveniently forget?’” 

He looks Glorfindel straight in his flamelit eyes. “No, lord. I can do much, but not that.”

Elrond and Elrohir. Two stolen children, returned with their minds turned by their captors. One will forever remain a Noldo. For the other there is hope still. 

Glorfindel thinks for a while, turning his empty glass between his fingers, his gaze on the white foam of the Nemir’s wake. “None will forget Doriath,” he says at last, “both her glory and her fall. Especially not in Elrond’s house.” His eyes find Ardil’s. “Think better of him, Ardil, for he is worthy of your regard. No good will come from feeding the young on old bitterness.” 

Ardil always thought of Glorfindel as overly lighthearted, a laughing peacock. Only now does he note the depth behind his laughter. If Glorfindel’s heart is a fountain of joy, its waters spring from deep wells of sorrow. 

Glorfindel smiles, his regard softened. “Lady Celebrían is wise, and she chose well. Elrohir finds himself among strangers, and he is sick with loneliness. He needs friends to guide him. I alone am not enough.” 

“He and I did not part friends,” Ardil remarks, and the thought is a sharp hurt.

Glorfindel shakes his head. “You gave him what he needed: kindness and patience. Canissë would have failed that test.” 

It is strange to hear Glorfindel criticise his Fëanorian lieutenant. Ardil searches his face for dishonesty, and finds none. Glorfindel does not speak ill, only states fact. Whatever offence Canissë would have taken when presented with a coin stamped with the Eye of Sauron, it would not have ended well. 

With a slow, deliberate gesture, Glorfindel takes the bottle from where it stood on the deck beside his stool, and raises it towards Ardil, ready to fill his glass.

Ardil stills for a moment, the cup grown heavy between his fingers. Then he nods, and holds it out. 

Glorfindel does not hide the small sag of relief in his shoulders. “Elrohir will warm up to you. You might be stuck with him for a long time yet.” He smiles, and pours them both another.