Ulmondil by mouse

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Bread and Water

Tuor delivers his last prophecy, and Turgon gives his Final Answer. Idril, as usual, is planning ahead.

“On a scale of Dor-Lómin to Nan Dungortheb, how filled with dread are you?” Voronwë asked Tuor. They were standing in the Palace Square, looking up the wide marble stairway that led to where Glingal and Belthil stood guard over the front doors.

Tuor scratched his beard as he considered. “It doesn’t feel too serious. Not like Eyes-of-Morgoth level dread. More like … running into a warband of Orcs alone, or thereabouts.”

Voronwë didn’t think Turgon kept Orcs on hand to rid himself of dissenting subjects, but who knew what Maeglin might advise the King to do, if his counsel were sought. After Voronwë brought Ulmo’s Messenger into the Hidden City, he was questioned closely by both the King and his sister-son. Turgon, though stern, had been gracious enough, but an interview with the Mole Lord had left Voronwë so rattled he walked out half convinced that he must be a deluded thrall working Morgoth’s will, as Maeglin had repeatedly implied, suggested, and flat-out stated.

Voronwë wasn’t even going to ask why Tuor was carrying a small scale and a set of measuring spoons with him. He didn’t want to know. “Maybe it is only the everyday dread of Gondolin’s imminent Doom that you feel, and it’s not even related to this audience with the King.”

“Maybe.” Tuor reached up to pat his hair, the top part of which had been pulled back into a small knot behind his head. “Do I look all right?”

Voronwë was surprised to be asked this question by someone who only days ago walked around wearing musty bearskins and a beard long enough for mice to nest in. Were Tuor’s aesthetic sensibilities changing under the influence of the Eldar? Or was he worried about how his recent prophetic acts might be perceived by the King? “I don’t think you look insane, or like a servant of Morgoth,” Voronwë offered. “The birds are an especially nice touch.”

Tuor was fond of birds and often fed them with seed and suet. While the white birds who dwelt in the city squares expressed gratitude by singing from a dignified distance, the grey jays trailed Tuor like hungry orphans. One of the dark-hooded birds now landed on his hand, while two more flitted around his feet, their tiny black eyes peering up bright with hope. Tuor tried to lift the first jay to his shoulder but it fluttered away to a nearby tree.

“You’ve got paint in your hair,” was Tuor’s response to Voronwë as they began their ascent to the palace doors. “It matches your tunic, though.”

 

“Tuor. Voronwë. Rise. Be seated.”

The King of Gondolin was very tall. It wasn’t that Voronwë ever forgot this, but every time he knelt before Turgon he was impressed anew by how far he had to crane his neck to look up at his lord’s face. Turgon did not look angry, he was relieved to see, only wise and aloof. Voronwë wondered at the cause of Tuor’s unease, for he had sensed the man’s nervousness growing as they entered the palace and were shown to the audience chamber. Voronwë found himself grateful that Tuor was carrying his measuring implements. Otherwise he wouldn’t have put it past the Mortal to go straight into a handstand or cartwheel or some other nonsensical feat of strength in order to calm his nerves.

They rose. After the King was seated, they sat, in comfortable chairs spaced around a low, oblong table that held platters of bread, cheese and dried fruit, and pitchers of cider and water. Idril was there too, on Turgon’s left, and Maeglin on his right, but Voronwë found it hard to pay them attention because Turgon occupied so much of it. The Elven-king seemed to be the length of Sirion, from the gold-and-garnet circlet that bound back his dark hair to the pointed toes of his gold-embossed boots. Turgon sat with his legs casually crossed to one side, his elbow leaned on the armrest at his other side, and his hands folded together in his lap. The white fabric of his long tunic draped him like a waterfall pouring over stone. His breeches were tight and a lurid shade of crimson.

“It is good to see you again, Tuor,” Turgon said, with an enigmatic smile. “You look changed already from when you first arrived here. You remind me a great deal of your uncle. Your father too, of course.”

“I am glad to hear it, lord,” Tuor replied. “Though I never knew either of them, I know of their valour in the Nirnaeth. I hope I will have a chance to remind you of the strength found in Men.”

“I have not forgotten it,” Turgon said. “To me it seems a short time since Húrin and Huor were my guests, and no time at all since I parted from them on the battlefield.” Sorrow crossed his face, and Idril reached out to lay her hand on his arm, which he covered with his other hand. The emotion fled as swiftly as it had appeared, and Turgon turned his gaze on Voronwë. “Voronwë Aranwion. I thank you for welcoming Tuor into your home. Your service to Gondolin, past and present, does not escape my notice.”

Voronwë would have taken the statement at face value if it weren’t for Maeglin’s cold eyes watching him from beside Turgon. Voronwë swallowed, wondering if the King had just delivered a veiled warning. “Thank you, sire,” he managed faintly. “I have always tried to act in the best interests of Gondolin.” Other than daydreaming for months in Nan-tathren, he supposed, but surely Turgon didn’t know about that. Unless … the Eagles …

“Please, help yourselves to refreshment.” Turgon gestured at the food and drink before them. Maeglin had picked up a knife and was sawing into the loaf of bread in a way that Voronwë found menacing. “I have summoned you here,” Turgon continued, “to discuss the message you brought from Lord Ulmo, and other reports that trouble my heart.”

Voronwë didn’t feel like eating, but he took some fruit to avoid seeming discourteous. Tuor picked up the scale he had set down by his feet, and put it on the table. Taking the smallest pieces of bread and cheese he could find on the platters, he weighed each carefully before laying them onto his plate. Then he brought out his measuring spoons, and with great care he doled out two meager spoonfuls of water from the pitcher into his cup.

Turgon, Maeglin and Idril were all staring at Tuor, their own plates and cups forgotten. But Voronwë did not see or sense nervousness in Tuor now, and knew that Ulmo must be with his prophet. Tuor returned the gaze of each royal Fingolfinion in turn, and Voronwë noted, not for the first time, what a vibrant shade of blue Tuor’s eyes were, rather like the ultramarine paint that had made its way into Voronwë’s hair.

Tuor spoke. “In the days to come, those who live through the siege of Gondolin will be scattered and lost. They will eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and they will drink water by measure and in dismay, for food and water will be scarce for them. The people will wander, and will look at one another in despair and waste away, because of the Doom that is on them.”

There was a pause. Maeglin said “Uncle--” But he stopped when Turgon lifted a hand. Voronwë dared a glance at the dark prince, expecting to see wrath in his face, but Maeglin was as expressionless as ever.

“Tuor, know that I, too, fear for the future of Gondolin,” Turgon said, his gaze lifting from Tuor’s face to stare into the distance, or perhaps the misty future. “Particularly since I received tidings of the fall of Nargothrond, and the devastation the Great Worms of Angband wreak upon the land. I know you would counsel me to abandon the city, but the fate you have just described to me does not require a siege to come to pass. The marching of so many cannot stay concealed, and during the long journey down Sirion we would be subject to attack after attack, and would be hard pressed to carry enough supplies with us, or to replenish them once spoiled or abandoned.”

Turgon straightened up in his chair and looked at Idril, taking her right hand in his left. “The need to take action weighs heavily on my mind, and I have pondered the Counsel of Ulmo many long nights now, alone and with my counsellors.” He looked to his other side, resting his right hand briefly on Maeglin’s shoulder, before returning his attention to Tuor, with eyes piercingly bright under finely arched black brows.

“I cannot,” Turgon said, “repeat the folly of Nargothrond by abandoning secrecy, and allowing hosts of my people once more to issue forth into danger. We will not leave Gondolin. But I agree that we must take every precaution against a siege. Therefore I have commanded my sister-son to see that the Hidden Way in the Echoriath is completely filled with rock, so there will be no way through the mountains. Henceforth no one shall go forth from the city, or enter here, whether on an errand of peace or of war. This is the will of the King of Gondolin.”

The silence after he spoke was the ear-ringing silence that followed thunder. Voronwë felt just as he had when he stood at the prow of his ship and watched the storm that would be their ruin grow in the sky. It was not shock, or fear and doubt, but a dreadful certainty, as if he had watched this unfold before, perhaps in a dream. He grieved for the young Mortal Man, whose hopes had always exceeded his own, and almost with reluctance turned his eyes to see Tuor.

Tuor was looking at Turgon, his mouth set and grim. Turgon was looking at Maeglin. Maeglin was looking at Idril. Idril was looking at Voronwë. Voronwë did a double-take. Yes, Idril was looking at him, steadily, unblinking. Voronwë didn’t know if it was more rude to stare back at the princess or to look away from her, so he shut his eyes, hoping it would pass for dismay at the king’s words.

“Voronwë Aranwion, come with me,” Idril’s voice said. “I’m sure the Ulmondil has much to say to the King and his counsellor.”

When Voronwë opened his eyes, Idril was waiting for him by a side door. The last thing Voronwë saw before he followed her out of the chamber was the startled faces of both Tuor and Maeglin as they leaned back in their chairs to watch him leave.

Once out of the room, Idril took Voronwë’s arm and sighed. “My father spends too much time with the Eagles. He has started to think like one.”

“Like an Eagle?” Voronwë supposed the top of the King’s mighty tower could provide a bird-like perspective. He wondered if Turgon stood up there and imagined himself soaring through the air, seizing Orcs in his mighty talons and throwing them to their deaths. It did sound appealing.

“You know what Lord Thorondor is like,” Idril said, as if everyone did. “No one could be more faithful or valiant, but he is also proud and solitary and knows no fear. My father too has grown proud, and he trusts too much in his own strength and wisdom. If he appears to listen to Maeglin, it is only because my cousin’s counsel agrees with what he already decided. This way.”

Idril led Voronwë into a sort of alcove, where ornate shelves built into the wall held a variety of small sculptures and huge geodes of raw crystal. On the topmost shelf was a figure of a beautiful Elf-woman Voronwë had never seen, save in statue form. Idril stood on tip-toes and pulled on the statue as if it were a lever. A panel in the wall beside them slid back, and Idril beckoned Voronwë to enter a passageway that had been hidden behind it.

The panel shut behind them with a quiet grinding noise and Voronwë might have felt panic, shut closely in the dark as if it were the hold of a ship, if Idril had not taken his arm and led him onward. They walked past a sword and mail shirt hanging on the wall, and then past a nook filled with books and scrolls. Voronwë glimpsed two of the titles — The Secret Lives of the Nargothrondrim and I Was a Feanorian Love-Slave — before he climbed up a rope ladder into another passageway. Idril again pulled a lever, and they exited into a windowless chamber softly lit by Feanorian lamps.

“Maeglin would have tried to follow us and eavesdrop, and I wanted to speak privately,” Idril explained matter-of-factly. “Do you remember what I said to you, the day you left Gondolin for the Havens?”

“I think so,” Voronwë hedged, though in truth he remembered very clearly. Idril had embraced all the mariners being sent forth from the city, speaking soft words of gratitude and encouragement to them, with tears shivering on her long lashes. Until she got to Voronwë. Then she had only clasped his hand, looked in his eyes and said, “Don’t tarry too long, and keep your lembas dry.”

Voronwë had agonized over the encounter for weeks afterward, wondering how he had managed to make such a poor impression on the princess. Now, however, it made sense. “You knew I was the only one who would return,” he said.

Idril nodded. “I have dreamed of you. And of the Ulmondil. Sometimes the both of you together, at the same time.”

Voronwë was taken aback to see her face turn very pink before she turned quickly away from him and stooped to open a wooden trunk on the floor. A glitter of light on the rounded ceiling overhead caught his eye, and Voronwë looked up, but the ceiling was low and hard to see well at that angle. He sank to the floor to sit cross-legged, and leaned back on his arms, and in the lamplight he saw there was a tapestry of dark fabric fixed overhead on which were sewn tiny white gems in the patterns of the stars. Not all of them, of course, but the brightest ones that the mariners used to navigate were all captured there.

Idril had brought a piece of fabric out of the trunk and unrolled it on the floor in front of Voronwë. It was a map drawn in ink on silk, a detailed picture of the coastline of Beleriand, with a great deal of empty space to the West.

“You are the only mariner who has come back to us,” Idril said, kneeling beside Voronwë. “But I believe you will not be the last to sail West. Will you help me fill in the map with everything you saw and learned of Belegaer?”

Voronwë wanted to avoid her eyes, and say it was all a darkness in his mind and he could not help her. Instead he met her eyes and heard himself say “Yes”, as if another spoke with his mouth. He was rewarded by her smile, a smile of such sweet and earnest gratitude that he thought the memory of it might make reliving his nightmares bearable.

 

As Voronwë followed Idril back to the King’s audience chamber, he started to wonder with unease what had occured after their departure. Tuor no longer had the cloak of Ulmo to make him look taller and more imposing. Would he dare to oppose the will of Turgon the Mighty? What if Ulmo possessed his Messenger with a voice from the uttermost depths, and spoke in wrath to the King who had scorned his counsel? And then if Turgon continued to defy the Lord of Waters, would they duel? Tuor didn’t have a sword with him. Wrestle, then, perhaps? Would Ulmo lend Tuor divine strength? If Tuor bested the King, would the guard slay him, and if they did, would all the springs and fountains in Gondolin flood the city and drown everyone to avenge Ulmo’s prophet and punish Turgon’s overweening pride?

Loud music met Voronwë in the hall outside the chamber. Oh no, he thought, a battle of songs? It wasn’t Tuor’s strong suit. Voronwë hastened ahead of Idril and burst into the room. The King sat at a large organ by the far wall, his hands roaming its keys with elegant abandon. Tuor stood beside the instrument, facing him. Turgon was singing.

“He was born in the summer of his seventh century
Coming home to place he’d never been before
He left yesterday behind him, you might say it set him free
You might say he found the cure to every war.

When he first came to the mountains, his heart was far away
On the Ice and hanging by a song
With his fate already woven by a spirit fell and fey
And a yearning for the land where he belongs.

But the Ondolindë Eryd Echor high
Where eagles rise like smoke into the sky
The starlight in the Crissaegrim is softer than a lover’s sigh
Eryd Echor high…”

“High in Ondolindë,” Tuor sang back at him.

Voronwë turned to Idril, but her eyes were on Tuor, with a startled expression he thought must mirror his own. Clearly neither of them expected to return to a musical duet. And Turgon had a magnificent voice.

“Now he walks in quiet solitude by mallorns and by streams
Knowing peace in the Flower of the Vale
His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand
The serenity of a clear green mountain dale…”

Tuor took a turn at singing the chorus:

“The Ondolindë Eryd Echor high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
Talked to Ulmo, listened to the thunderous reply
Eryd Echor high…”

“High in Ondolindë,” Turgon sang.

It seemed to Voronwë that he saw a new understanding and acceptance in the look the King and the Prophet shared while they sang together. He supposed it was only natural that Tuor’s lonely heart, dispossessed of home and kin, and filled with a longing he didn’t understand, should feel sympathy for an Exile and for the power that a place of belonging must hold over him. Voronwë looked around the room for Maeglin, wondering what he would make of this, but the prince was nowhere to be seen.

 

Idril walked Voronwë and Tuor out, leading them through a garden where trembling aspen trees with slender white trunks formed a colonnade with the evening light filtered through their branches. Brilliant daffodils everywhere nodded in the wind. Idril picked flowers as they walked, weaving daffodils into her braided hair, and then into Voronwë’s. For Tuor she found some white primroses and tucked the blooms into his beard. Tuor stood frozen still as he had when Meril trimmed his hair, his startled deer eyes again seeking out Voronwë’s.

When they came to the gate that would let them out, Idril stood between Tuor and Voronwë and clasped the hand of each. “Take each other’s hand,” she said, and they complied so hastily they smacked their knuckles together hard before settling into a proper handgrip.

Idril looked from one to the other. “We may be the only ones in Gondolin who still listen for the Lord of Waters, and his voice grows quiet here. Let’s all agree that we will not forget his counsel, even though the King has refused it. Nor will we ignore any of the messages that come into our hearts and our dreams in the days ahead, but must always share them with one another. Ulmondili?”

“Ulmondili,” said Tuor.

“Ulmondili,” said Voronwë.

When they released hands, a movement caught his eye, far back in the shadow of the trees behind Idril. It was gone almost before he knew it was there, like a snake starting into the bush. Voronwë wasn’t sure, but he thought it might have been the tail end of a black braid.

 

Tuor turned several cartwheels in the street as they exited the Palace Square. Some of the primroses fell out of his flower-beard, all of which he diligently collected and cradled in his hands like precious gems until Voronwë had restored them to his beard.

“There is something about Idril,” he said to Voronwë, “that reminds me of your story about Nan-tathren, and the spell that fell on you there.”

“Yes,” Voronwë answered. He had just been thinking about how her soft voice reminded him of the rustling of willows, and that her eyes looked like grey-green slate under a sunlit river. “I know what you mean.”

Tuor slung his arm over Voronwë’s shoulders while they walked and gazed at the sky with a contented smile. “I feel like there is something I am supposed to be worried about, but I just can’t remember what it is.”

“Whatever it is,” said Voronwë, “I’m sure it’ll come back to you.”

“I’m sure you’re right. Do you want to go home, close the curtains and do that thing we were doing this morning?”

“Can you make sure there’s no paint on your hands this time?” Voronwë was trying to pick the blue paint off his hair.

Tuor took his arm off Voronwë to examine his hands. “They’re clean. Say, do you think Idril would ever want to join us? For partner acrobatics I mean.”

Voronwë thought about that. “Would that work, with three people? It sounds complicated.” The evening seemed to have gotten uncomfortably warm for spring. He tugged his collar open a little more, trying to cool his skin.

“I think it can work. At least, I have a few ideas.” Tuor glanced sidelong at Voronwë. He looked a bit flushed himself. “Let’s talk about it when we’re at home. Race you.”

Chapter End Notes

1. Tuor’s prophecy is inspired by the Book of Ezekiel chapter 4.

2. Turgon and Tuor are singing a filk of John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High.” If you are not familiar with this song, listening is recommended for the good of your soul. tehta contributed to the lyrics. If you, unlike Lindir of Rivendell, can tell the difference between two Mortals, guess which parts are mine and which are hers.

3. Turgon’s large organ (the musical instrument, not his other one) was borrowed from Zhie. Thank you to everyone in the SWG Discord who made suggestions for Turgon’s instrument. It was difficult to choose and my choice was mainly based on getting to make jokes about his huge organ. (Those breeches are VERY tight.) I'm quite sure he plays several instruments.

4. Thank you for reading.

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