Shore Beyond the Shadowy Sea by Quente

---

O’er mead and mount and shining mere

---

lfwine could have dwelt longer upon the fact that he was in the future as well as in a magical country, and all the Men he knew were likely dead; but he was also in the company of Elves out of history, and saved from the wreck of his ship by an Ese of the sea, so it was simply another wonder added to the rest.

Resolutely pushing his worry into a corner of his thoughts and firmly telling it, later, he went to find hunting gear.

Maedhros took the news of Elfwine’s travel through time with interest and some amount of resignation. “What did father think, when he began to build this kind of path? He was no doubt playing with chords of a Song that he only half understood, but deemed useful at the moment.”

“As usual,” Caranthir agreed. “Anyway, we’re off hunting.”

They kitted him in a sturdy leather jacket, another from Fingon’s chest of goods – apparently Fingon enjoyed the hunting and fishing at Lake Helevorn, and could not be bothered to bring new clothes with him every visit.

Caranthir lent Elfwine a beautifully crafted sword that was only a little long for him (“Good enough to spit a spider or two, if need be, until father can fit you with one of a proper length and weight.”), and a hunting bow. The bow’s design looked like the bow of the Galadhrim that Legolas had commissioned for him on his departure from Minas Tirith – only a little shorter, and strung with horse hair rather than that of Elves.

Then, to Elfwine’s great delight, Caranthir gave him the freedom of his herd. Elfwine was nigh frozen by the wealth of choice, eight great Mearas running in the field by the keep, all in the strength of their days.

But he finally lured Súretal to him, the mare as dark as his own hair. He offered her fruit saved from breakfast, and rested his hand against her fine cheek. “I am glad to have met you, lady,” he said to her in his father’s tongue. “If that is Iethcwen’s only design in sparing me from drowning and sending me here, I will praise her with great praise!”

She eyed him as if to say, Fair words mean naught if the pocket is not full, and he laughed, bringing up another slice of apple.

“I see you are practically minded.”

Soon they were riding west, toward open plains. Súretal’s stride was sure, and she was as responsive as he could wish, although she knew him little.

“I am not the hunter that my brother Celegorm is, but I’ve learned a few things from him. We’ll find deer in small copses near water,” Caranthir said, pointing west, “And boar. Boar would be a nice change, I could do with some rashers of bacon to break up all the venison.”

“Where is Celegorm, today?”

“Ah – he is in the woods where they found you, along with a few of my house. They are clearing out that nest of spiders, in case any more of you come tumbling through the portal.”

The forests in the distance looked just as ancient and wild as they had the previous day, and Elfwine spoke to him of Fangorn – both the tree-herd and the wood. “There has been little tale of the Ents for long years,” Elfwine said. “I have only seen them a few times; Bregalad is tending to the Treegarth of Orthanc, as Isengard is called now. And I have not yet met Fangorn.”

“That is because he journeyed far North, and then he came here,” Caranthir said. “He went to investigate rumor of the Entwives in Eriador, but when Beleriand rose, he came here to visit the Lady Galadriel in the willow meads of Tasarinan. Now, he is getting reacquainted with one Fimbrethil, his wife of old. Even if my time and yours are distant some hundred years, perhaps they have finally said ‘nice to see you again.’”

“The tree maidens! I am relieved. Master Holdwine told me that Fangorn was long in search of them,” Elfwine said. It was amusing to him that they had an acquaintance in common, even if it was an Ent.

Elfwine found that despite the past few years spent at ship building in Dol Amroth, the training he’d been given by Elladan and Elrohir and the Rangers of the North held strong. They dismounted on one side of a river and moved toward a copse, and there sat in bracken to wait for their prey.

They were in luck, and before Elfwine could fall into a doze with the wind whispering in his ears, they heard the snuffling from afar of a sounder of boar.

Soon, they had plenty of game tied off the saddles of Súretal and Morirocco, and Elfwine realized that he felt strangely hale. Healthy, entirely present, not at all haunted by a whispering sea in his head… and very much appreciating being alive rather than drowned in a storm. He took great gulps of air, and wondered if Caranthir would let them gallop back.

Caranthir led the way back to his keep at a peaceful walk, however, glancing sideways.

“I am relieved that it was you who fell through this path of my father’s,” Caranthir said. “But I admit that it is uncanny that a stray Man should speak like a scion of my family, look like a grandson of my uncle, and hunt like the people of Haleth. You fit here, in a way that cannot be by sheer chance. The fingers of the gods are in this, and not just my father’s fingers, for once.”

Elfwine was silent, pondering this. There was something haunting him about the phrase ‘fingers of the gods,’ but he wasn’t sure what. “I have Elladan and Elrohir to thank for any language you find familiar,” he said. “And King Aragorn made sure that all the fosterlings of his house took our rotations with the Rangers of the North.”

Suddenly Elfwine realized that the urge to ride toward the shore that usually overtook him in the middle of the fields was remarkably quiet. He took a deep breath and prodded the place in his mind that was restless unless it was on or near the sea. Nothing.

“Have you ever spoken to anyone about the sea longing?” Elfwine asked.

“The sea longing…” Caranthir’s voice trailed off in thought, and so they rode on, out over the wild landscape without a trace of farm or mill or tamed herd, save to the north and east, nearer to Lake Helevorn.

The wild country was beautiful beyond Elfwine’s imagining – the grass was almost greener than home, and everything felt more real than real, although he wasn’t quite sure what he meant by thinking it.

“I have,” Caranthir said finally. “I have felt it myself, a bit, in the before-times. The urge to go ‘home’.”

“Do they say that this longing is quenched once they set foot upon the undying lands, or here, in your father’s realm?”

“It is, in part,” Caranthir said. “I know where home is, now. And it is here.”

If Elfwine no longer felt the urge to sail because he was here – why? His heart felt strangely at peace, there with Caranthir, riding through this wild land, and that in itself was troubling.

~

The boar were taken gladly by elves of Caranthir’s household, and whisked away for butchering before dinner.

That night they ate cutlets with a sauce of apples and cinnamon, and drank golden cider.

“When you raised Beleriand, did you raise Númenor as well?” Elfwine asked, his eyes fixed on a pile of second-age maps set beside Fëanor, depicting the island of his mother’s ancestors. There were several notes scrawled upon the parchments related to angles of trajectory and force projection upon sea-waves during the moment of sundering and comparative sea depths across three ages.

Fëanor’s eyes burned a little more fiercely, and he leaned over to catch up a pen. “I’ll ask Aulë what he thinks of that,” he said, making a note on a list.

Across the table Maedhros frowned at him.

“Aren’t you curious about Elros’s great city, Nelyo? You never got to see it. And I think Elrond would be interested in returning too. We could go on an expedition.”

“It’s nothing but a tomb,” Maedhros said. “Who would live there? The dead of Men remain locked away from us Elves at least, saved for some other purpose in the Song.”

Elfwine noticed that Caranthir looked almost involuntarily up at the shield that hung over his great hearth. The shield was a strangely humble one for a house of stone and iron: made of wood, it was painted with the device of a tree full of berries on a field of white flowers. Whose was it?

Fëanor shook his head, mind clearly afire with the idea. “It wouldn’t be empty for long, if we found folk to dwell there!”

“Would you have it filled with Elves, or Men?” Elfwine asked. “Would you raise it in this hovering part of Arda, or within the round earth, if it were to be raised again? If you raise it within the round earth, I will go and dwell there!”

Elfwine could picture it, a fair harbor of white marble, and a house with a tower looking west.

“Would you? Would you leave the fields of your father to another lord?” Maedhros asked, his eyes glinting at Elfwine beneath his lowered brows.

The question made Elfwine’s breath hitch. He paused before speaking and drank again, another swallow of a bottled-up autumn day, and sighed. “I am torn,” he admitted. “Perhaps this is what comes of being of two races. Even though my fate is to rule when fæder sleeps under the simbelmynë, my heart forebodes that the barrows of his line will be few indeed. My heart has ever been at sea.”

Except when fate took him here.

Would his brother Léofwine become King of the Mark if Elfwine could not find his way home? Would they all mourn him, lost at sea? Elfwine found himself blinking back tears.

“You have the gift of making my guests melancholy, even when they are drinking my best pressing of cider, brother,” Caranthir said, kicking Maedhros under the table. “Let the child dream a little! He’ll grow up soon enough.”

Maedhros rolled his eyes but nodded. “More practically, father, what have you found out about how to send him back?”

“What?” Fëanor asked, his nose deep in a map of Númenor. He blinked up, remembering the rest of the table. “Oh, yes. We must ride to Gondolin – I need a book of mathematics that we don’t have here.”

“I suppose sending a courier to fetch the book would take too long?” Caranthir asked, dryly.

But as Caranthir spoke, suddenly Elfwine felt a strange pressure within him, and stood swiftly, knocking back his chair. He opened his mouth, and it was as though someone else spoke through him, with a voice that filled the room with a low booming power.

“We must go to Gondolin.” Elfwine said, and then, as if the strings of the puppetmaster were cut, his legs gave way.

Celegorm, seated beside him, moved swiftly to catch him.

Fëanor’s expression passed from astonished to concerned, and he was up in an instant. “Fetch a damp cloth,” he called, and caught at Elfwine’s wrists, feeling the pulse. “Erratic, as one might expect from a Man used as a tool of the Valar,” he said, frowning. “Elfwine, can you focus on me?”

Blinking hard, Elfwine did, staring into the light at the center of Fëanor’s eyes. “I remember some of it now,” he said, hoarsely. His throat felt abused. “In the tunnel, Garsecgesfréa stood before me. He said…he said.” Elfwine closed his eyes, but could not bring the words forward. He shook his head in frustration. “I don’t remember! But he was there, and he charged me with a task, and now I cannot recall it.”

“Well, the next part is certain,” Fëanor said, accepting the cloth and pressing it to Elfwine’s forehead, and then his wrists. “Caranthir – more cider, I think. We’ll definitely go to Gondolin – and there, I deem, more will be revealed.”

Maedhros regarded his father thoughtfully. “Have you charted your path?”

“We shall pass through the Gap to Himring,” Fëanor said, “and thence through the Gorge of Aglon to Dorthonion and home, for a bit. I have need of a few more implements to create the return portal. It must be worked in glass and silver. ”

Fëanor pressed a refilled cup of cider into Elfwine’s hands, and he sipped it gratefully. The taste of it did restore him.

“At the behest of Ulmo, we shall all go with you,” Maedhros said, nodding. “All of us. Including Caranthir and a company of his riders; Celegorm; and Amrod and Amras – brother, can you call out to them with the Palantir?”

“Aye,” said Caranthir, rising. “I can try, if they are near it.”

“But why?” Fëanor said, frowning. “Is time not of the essence? Why not just us three who came to visit Caranthir?”

“Because,” Maedhros said, “Elfwine must be alive when he returns to Middle-earth, and not rotting from spider poison, nor fallen off a high cliff, nor party to any experimentation with time or the Song – especially not that. Because anything happening to Elfwine here and now will impact the Elfwine still in Middle-earth.”

Elfwine had not thought of that. Could he ask them to tell him whether he became king, or whether it was Léofwine instead? His thoughts circled for a moment, and then he decided that he’d best act as if the future was not yet certain. Besides, if he had truly drowned, he wouldn’t have a future to worry about.

“I suppose I can see the necessity of it,” Fëanor said. “Very well.”

~

Maedhros escorted Elfwine back to his room while the rest made preparations for the journey. Along the way, he said, “Would you like a way to hide your true identity as a Secondborn, if you wish it?”

Elfwine pondered this. “I mislike deception, but if it will spare Fëanor some trouble, perhaps having such an ability to hand would not be amiss.”

“Then, I shall put a glamour upon your ears. The only part of you that would materially change is how others might perceive them,” Maedhros said.

Pulling his hair away from his ears, Elfwine bent his head.

Maedhros lifted his palms toward Elfwine’s ears, and began to hum. Tuneful and strange, Elfwine felt the notes lodge into his skin, leaving behind a small tingling. Reaching up, he felt it – the most marked difference between Men and Elvenkind.

He turned his head toward a mirror and saw an Elf stare back at him. Indeed, now he was no Knight of the Riddermark at all. The world he was in had changed him, with one more tie to home severed.

“Here is the verse to turn off the change, and trigger it again.” They sang it together for a moment, until Elfwine caught the trick of it.

“Well. That’s done,” Elfwine said, sighing. He’d worked long to prove himself a Man full grown: it should not come undone in one small alteration to his appearance.

Maedhros seemed relieved as he surveyed the results. “Now you seem ordinary enough, as long as you stay away from curious Nolofinwëans,” Maedhros said. “Thankfully, most of those – save for one – are in Valinor, and not in Gondolin!”

~

The next morning Caranthir laughed heartily when he saw Elfwine in Fingon’s clothing with his new ears, but stopped when Elfwine gave him a shove. In apology, Caranthir showed him how to create the braids of the Noldor, and Elfwine truly did look like a scion of Finwë by the end of it. His sailor’s garment with his grandfather’s crest he packed into a satchel – he did not want to part with it, his remaining tie to Middle-earth.

Then, the household gathered in the courtyard to see them off – a company of twenty, along with Fëanor and his three sons, and Elfwine. They gave Elfwine Súretal to ride again, and he spent a moment with his arms around her great neck.

She nosed at him as if in sympathy for his mood. He had not slept well, tossed and turned by nightmares, haunted by a message he could not quite remember.

Orlinn, standing in the courtyard to see them off, handed Elfwine a small jar of salve. “Keep these on those spider-scrapes for a time, and on any other trouble you might find, young one. I recall from ages ago that the Men said it was good for keeping away the wrinkles.”

Elfwine thanked him and bid him farewell, tucking the jar deep into his satchel.

“We will meet Ambarussa at the Gap, and pause there for the night.” Fëanor said, and then addressed Caranthir’s household in extremely brief farewell. “We ride to find this Man of Middle-earth a path home. Thank you for taking care of me, you lot, and please do not dispose of any notes I might have left lying about,” and with that he wheeled around and they were off, riding at a fair pace north and east.

Riding surrounded by a company and their horses settled Elfwine’s spirits again. This, at least, he was used to, and the country he rode through once again lifted his mood.

The rest of the host rode horses that seemed of a half-breed with ones from Beleriand’s northern country, horses as familiar-looking to Elfwine as his own Blacfínda. They were still great horses, especially with the blood of the Mearas stallion in them, but not as noble as the Mearas themselves.

The shieldmaiden who rode beside him, a doughty fighter with deep red scars down her cheeks, was named Orvanis. She was deeply amused that with the charm set upon Elfwine’s ears, he looked of a kind with the rest of their company.

“What is the provenance of the horses?” Elfwine asked her. “They look bred with the native herds.”

“Aye, young prince. Larcatal son of Turcanna is their sire – at least for this batch of mares and geldings. Turcanna is the sire of those that you and the Lords ride, with Carnirocco the dam. Turcanna has retired, and we put him to pasture in a green field in Ambarussa’s land, so that he can eat the daisies in peace.”

“How many generations have lived here, and for how long?”

“Ah.” Orvanis drew her eyebrows together for a moment in thought. “We brought over the first generation from Valinor, just after the Singing – I mean, the days when we called Beleriand back out of memory. That must be a hundred years of the sun back. Two generations, fifty years apiece, perhaps. It is hard to reckon time, here. It flows by, sometimes. Every day on the flat Earth felt like a day, you know? It was all the rushing to keep pace with the sun and moon. Here, we see them drive past, but sometimes I deem they tarry longer.”

Elfwine pondered the idea of the sun and moon tarrying longer than they should and thought, Elf magic, again.

They followed the Greater Gelion down the slope of land as it descended from the snowmelt of Mount Renrir, and from there onto the great plains between the two ranges of mountains. The vistas were beautiful and strange; he’d seen the sweep of Rohan from the top of the mountains behind the Hornburg, but he was well used to that. This landscape was wild in the truest sense, and yet he could feel that it still held memory.

As they rode through the long day, Celegorm came up beside him on Morirocco. He pointed down to a bit of building by the fork in the river, quite distant – some three or four scores of miles ahead, perhaps. “There was where my brother Maglor held camp, back in the days of the Leaguer.”

Obviously, in the first age of Arda. Just when Elfwine felt at peace, someone would say something like that. “I can hardly believe it, sometimes. That you all lived so long ago, and for so long.”

Celegorm shrugged. “Most of us didn’t live for all of that. I was dead for two ages.”

It was difficult to know how to reply, so Elfwine looked out over the fields again, and into the distance where the land turned brown. “What did it look like, when Morgoth held sway to the north?”

“Sometimes you could hardly tell,” Celegorm said. “Except for the feeling of the place. You looked north and felt – unsettled. As if the country was looking back at you with predator’s eyes, but you weren’t sure from whence the stares came.”

“Until all those orcs began pouring out of the hills,” Maedhros said, dryly. “Then you could tell who was looking at you.”

But Elfwine noticed that Maedhros did not look north.

They stopped at the halfway mark in their day’s journey and took some refreshment. Observing the land to the east on sentry, one of Caranthir’s company sighted two horses, so far in the distance that Elfwine could barely see them, riding north along the River Gelion to where the greater and lesser branches met.

Fëanor looked down the slope toward them and smiled. “Give them a hallo,” he said.

Celegorm raised his shining horn, and the long, clear call of it echoed off Mount Renrir behind them, and out over the land.

Far, far away, an answering call came, and the two riders turned, just a bit, to intercept their father’s company.

“A new one,” Caranthir noted. “Did you name it ‘Horn’?” Caranthir did not duck swiftly enough to avoid the smack.

~

They met with Amrod and Amras at the old encampment of Maglor, delved at the northern edge of the Gelion where the rivers met and became one. It had been well maintained, or magicked into order, because the low stone dwellings covered in turves were still sound and fit to house a garrison or more of riders.

Some of the company went to tend the horses, make ready the beds, and cook, and Elfwine gathered with Fëanor’s sons around the large stone-lined fire pit.

“You mean to tell me that Maglor lived like this, for centuries? It’s much more rustic than I would have thought comfortable for him,” Fëanor said.

Fëanor’s five sons stared at him in silence, until finally Fëanor threw up his hands. “And, yes, I know he spent two ages of Arda living in the wild. It’s simply strange to actually see the conditions he lived in out of choice, rather than to be told.”

“‘Choice’ is not the word to use, father,” Caranthir began, but Amrod laughed.

“Let us not rehash our centuries of quarrel in front of a new friend,” Amrod said.

“We heard the story, but did not quite understand what you meant about a lost brother of Idril – until now,” said Amras. “Come to the fire and let us look upon you, Elfwine son of Éomer.”

Elfwine came into the light and looked back at the two, and saw russet-haired elven lords of a kind with the rest of the brothers. He picked out the differences relatively easily – a scar on the neck of Amras in the shape of a burn, the quickness of Amrod’s smile. Elfwine was well used to twin Elven lords, and had ways to tell them apart.

But they stared at him without blinking. “Unnerving,” said Amras finally.

“Quite,” agreed Amrod. Elfwine finally tilted his chin. Were they done staring?

“Let us send him straight to Turgon,” Caranthir agreed, with a smirk. “I desire to know what words Elenwë might have for her husband.”

“We won’t be throwing about accusations of infidelity in this age,” said Fëanor somewhat dryly. “But yes. The Valar, by their grace, have sent him here with a purpose.”

“Although I do not remember what it is, save to go to Gondolin,” Elfwine added.

“What do you guess?” Fëanor asked.

Around the fire, the fey eyes of Fëanor and his sons fixed on Elfwine, pinpricks of light in the dusk. The feeling of their combined attention was weighty.

Elfwine shut his eyes, the better to think back to that moment in the wave. Garsecgesfréa said… he said… “Something about revealing his purpose when the time came. I suppose he did not trust me to carry it through myself,” Elfwine said, a little crestfallen. “Even Tuor remembered his conversation with the Ese.”

“Do not think overmuch much on it,” Fëanor reassured him, “It only means that he considered you too independent. It’s likely that Ulmo simply thought you’d find an interpretation of his words that he did not agree with.”

Elfwine nodded. “Although I have a purpose here, it is still my duty to the Riddermark to return home, if I can,” he said. “As far as my own hopes: I suppose it is too much to expect that my purpose here is the same as any Man’s who stumbles across the path to Sindreám: do deeds of great courage, and along the way, win the hand of a fair elven princess. But I have yet to see a princess among you.”

Amrod and Amras laughed, and Fëanor looked amused. “We did try to have a daughter, as you might have guessed. You’ll be meeting a fair elven queen soon, but I’m afraid she’s quite married.”

But Maedhros looked at him, his gaze thoughtful. “You name Tuor, and you also name Ulmo. What was it Tuor did in Gondolin?”

“He brought word to King Turgon of news about his city,” Elfwine said, and then considered. “But King Turgon is not in Beleriand, is he?”

~

That night, Caranthir’s riders took out instruments, and under the stars and in the light of the fire, they made merry. Their songs struck Elfwine as sad but stirring – of long campaigns that never quite ended in victory, but yet held moments of beauty; deeds of kindness like stars glimmering in the darkness.

Elfwine had been born in the years after the great stories of the third age had already ended, in the first flower of King Aragorn’s realm. His father had seen his fair share of battle, of course, and told Elfwine all the tales of it. He grew up listening to the song of Frodo of the Nine Fingers – and part of him longed to be part of those times.

King Aragorn’s realm was far from free of evil, with orcs and men lingering to give battle…but the sense of preparing himself to fight the darkest powers of Arda, the chance to do great deeds worthy of song, were no longer there. Those stories had ended.

There was not much to be done about it, though, and Elfwine knew that Prince Eldarion and his cousin Elboron felt the same way. Their task was simply to keep the peace. Still, the songs of the Elves stirred his heart: they sang of the slow, hard path they’d chosen, and the joy they’d found despite it and because of it.

When a pause came in the singing, Elfwine asked Fëanor if they’d heard of his grand-uncle Théoden and the part he played in the War of the Rings.

“Some. But can you sing it for us, as you would to the Men of your country?” Fëanor asked, eyes glinting.

As if he was with his fæder’s Eoréd at home, Elfwine rose to sing before the company. He clapped out a slow rhythm that was taken up by drum and tabor, and opened his mind as he lifted his voice, in the way that the sons of Elrond had taught him. He envisioned it as he chanted in Rohirric, the better for the company to see with him the tale of Théoden King of Rohan…

Caught in snares of Saruman, crippled was Théoden King,
Crushed by the grief of son-loss, heir loss, sorrowing sat he…

All the way through to the mighty battle, and the final moments where Théoden King slew the fell beast, but was crushed beneath the agony of his horse, Snāwmana. And then, the final farewell to his esquire, Holdwine, and his death in glory:

Eyes closing, he departed, king unconquered, to the Hall,
Joined the company of his longfathers, unashamed, standing tall.

The company was silent after Elfwine’s song was done, honoring Théoden King. And then they applauded his deeds, their shouts rising high into the star-bright sky.

~

“So your aunt is a warrior too,” Orvanis said, the next day, riding beside him. “Those were my favorite parts of your tale – how she burned in her fury! How she slew the Witch King with a swift stroke of her blade!”

“Aye, one of the great warriors of the third age, but turned healer in the days after the fall of Sauron.”

“Hm,” Orvanis said. “A pity. I suppose to Men, there is never enough time to do all that you desire, and you must make a choice in the end.”

“I suppose,” Elfwine said.

~

Maedhros led the company as they came to the hills to the south and east of Himring, but as they saw the keep getting closer on its bare peak, one of the company cried the alert that she saw riders.

From the south, heading north and west toward the Pass of Aglon, they espied a company of several score of mounted Elves – too distant to tell their livery.

“Could be nothing,” Fëanor said, scanning the horizon. “Could be something. Celegorm – go see what this is about. Meet us at Himring, we planned to tarry there for the night anyway.”

Celegorm wheeled Morirocco and spurred him off, increasing his pace, leaning low to encourage the true speed of the great mare. Elfwine watched his progress until he was too far away to view, feeling his heart thunder from the sheer pleasure of it.

Caranthir smiled at him. “Don’t worry. You will have your time to ride swiftly, before your stay in our realm is over, I feel.”

~

The late afternoon sun silhouetted the keep at Himring against the sky as they approached it from the eastern slope. Nothing grew there save bushes and a short scrub grass that the Mearas pawed at, and the hills around it were similarly cleared of trees. Small wild goats grazed the upper pastures, their long fur patchy with shedding in the height of summer.

The goats bleated at the company as they came near, and Maedhros laughed. “I almost missed those goats,” he said, his expression fond. “They worked well at sounding the alarm when the enemy came near. We used them mostly for milk and cheese – their meat was too gamey even for stew.”

The closer they came to the keep, the stranger Elfwine felt.

The first wave of dizziness swept over him when they crested the edge of the hill where the keep sat. He gripped Súretal’s mane and furrowed his brow – looking up, the outline of the keep wavered between something time-worn and ruined, and something fully built in the strength of its days.

Blinking, Elfwine scrubbed at his eyes. Was the elevation affecting his vision? They were not very high…

Then, closer, Elfwine stared at the keep’s walls. It was covered, he thought, in filth and orc-scrawlings, the writing of black speech. He looked away, wondering why such evil was allowed to continue in a land long cleansed of it, but when he looked back, the wall was pure and bare.

He rode up to Maedhros. The keep shifted in front of him yet again – this time it was broken to a thing worn by the wind and snow to a tumble of stone and brambles. Elfwine stopped, staring at it. “What do you see, Maedhros?” Elfwine turned, and for a moment, no one was there.

A second later, a hand was grasping his arm. “Elfwine? You flickered for a moment there, like a candle about to go out.” Maedhros kept hold of him. “I see my keep, as we sang it out of song. What do you see?”

“I see it as it is in my own time – a ruin on the edge of the world that we call Himling now, an island with nothing else on it. But more than that, I see it as an orc outpost. And now I see it as you see it. But it keeps changing.” Elfwine shivered.

“Father,” Maedhros called, and Fëanor rode up to them. “This place – it exists in Middle-earth, and Elfwine sees it as many varieties of itself. I think he might slip sideways into the Middle-earth version of this place, if I let go of him.”

Fëanor nodded. “We can’t let you go back until we control WHEN you go.”

Elfwine thought with alarm about arriving in Middle-earth a hundred years into his own future. “A century might not seem like much to an Elf, but to me, everyone I know would be long dead. I will not be wandering off!”

“It is good to know that we can use Himring as our starting point for your journey back, if necessary,” Fëanor said thoughtfully. “It seems to hold onto its location within our own plane very lightly indeed.”

“I would rather not,” Elfwine said, shifting to grip Maedhros’s sleeve in alarm. “Unless necessary. It is an island, in my time – and I’d have a difficult time getting off of it, unless a fishing boat chanced by. Inland is much preferable.”

“I see,” Fëanor said thoughtfully. “But until then, perhaps we should sing it a little more into being, to stop any more slips sideways.”

Fëanor gathered the company outside of the walls of Himring, and they began to sing a strong and structured kind of melody, as if reinforcing the stones from the inside. Some of the goats wandered up as well, adding their emphatic bleats as a counterpoint, and Himring began to glow pink around the edges in the sunset.

Soon, the well-built walls looked very solid indeed, and Elfwine tentatively let go of Maedhros’s arm.

After a moment, when nothing changed, he breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’ll sleep beside you tonight and keep hold of you, little rat,” Caranthir said. “Just in case.”

“Thank you!” Elfwine said.

“But for now, let us see if there are any war bows about – you’ll need one, if there is trouble as father suspects.”

~

Elfwine was asleep when Celegorm returned during second watch, but he heard voices, and then felt a hand tighten upon his wrist.

“What is it?” Elfwine asked, sleepily.

“We must away,” Caranthir said from where he sat next to Elfwine on his bed roll. “We are two days’ hard ride from my father’s house, Calissir, in Dorthonion, but Celegorm brought news from the riders. Queen Nimloth, and the elves who dwell with her in Taur-im-Duinath, ride to the succor of the keep. My mother spoke to them by Palantír last evening, but received only the image of a sinking ship when she turned her thoughts toward us.”

The death agonies of the Mithrellas, Elfwine thought sadly. “And now we ride to Calissir? What besets her?”

“It is werewolves,” Caranthir said, “Moving north out of Nan Gorothreb. A mighty pack of them, numbering several hundreds – how they came to find the keep, and why they seek to harry the folk of the highlands, we cannot tell.”

---

Chapter End Notes

• With thanks to the Silmarillion Writer's Guild for pointing out that if Celegorm's dog is called Huan, his horn would be called Rhoma.
• Also: This is the chapter that made me add the tag "Elfwine is a horse girl," because he's in the middle of a grand adventure and yet would not. stop. talking. about. horses.