Elessar by clotho123

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Elessar

The news that the banner of Fëanor’s line had entered Nevrast was, if not quite the last thing Turgon wished to hear (in all justice an attack by Morgoth would have been worse) most definitely unwelcome.  With the plans for final and secret withdrawal towards the hidden valley all but completed the timing seemed at best unfortunate.  At worst he feared it was no coincidence, and though he could not guess what thoughts word of his departure might have stirred in Fëanor’s sons, what plans for opposition or taking advantage, he did not trust them at all.

It was easy enough for his father to talk of the need of union.  Easy for Fingon, blithe with relief, to speak of forgiveness.  The first Turgon admitted, but he did not accept that alliance must mean friendship and trust was out of the question. Forgiveness he would not even consider, not when he could never forget Elenwë’s scream, and it rankled that his brother should even suggest it.  He was grateful that Aredhel at least was of his own mind, so much so that she had come to Nevrast with him, rather than remain in Hithlum where father and brother preached reconciliation.

A herald had ridden ahead to Vinyamar, to make sure the main party would not take the lord of Nevrast by surprise.  The wording was polite enough, the lord Curufin Fëanorion wished for audience with his kinsman.  Turgon supposed he had better agree to it.  At least it was only one of Fëanor’s sons.  At least this should be the last time he should have to see any of them for a very long while. He was glad Idril and Aredhel were not in Vinyamar but overseeing the last preparations for withdrawal in the North.  He would not have to ask them to speak politely with a blood-traitor.  Aredhel had been a close friend of Curufin once, close enough even to begin learning forge-work from him for a short time, and her anger was the deeper for it.

It was a small party also, he saw with relief, no more than was needed for safety on a long journey through land that were still not wholly safe and might never be so.  Turgon ordered them fed and lodged, and before others he said the proper things.  Deciding there was no point in putting it off he showed Curufin into a private chamber that same afternoon.

“Well,” he said, “we may as well get to the point.  I do not imagine you came merely to pay a friendly visit to a kinsman.”

To do Curufin justice he did not take offence at plain speaking.  Indeed, though they could never have been called friends, in the long ago days before the peace of Valinor was broken Turgon had found him rather easier to deal with than some of his other half-cousins.  There was in the intense, inward turn of Curufin’s mind some qualities that Turgon recognised, and though Curufin might have Fëanor’s face and skills Turgon had always thought Maglor or Celegorm to be more like their father in nature, which in his mind was not a compliment.

“I came to bring you something,” from the breast of his tunic he took a small casket made of inlaid wood.  The design was unfamiliar to Turgon, probably a work of one of the eastern elf kindreds. Curufin did not open it yet.

“I know you are leaving Nevrast.”

“Who told you?” Turgon demanded.

“Celegorm told me. You know he can learn from the birds, these brought him news of great preparations for departure.  I am not asking where you are going, although my brother could likely learn that also if he chose to ask.  But I guess you are going to a place of refuge.  A place perhaps to make fair in peace.”

“And if I am?” said Turgon. “We came here to found new realms where we might use our gifts.  I do not need to account to you or your brothers for my comings and goings.”

“Have I said that you do?” Curufin gave him a long look.  “I did not ride the width of Beleriand to make demands.”

“To bring me something, you say?  And what would a son of Fëanor bring?”

“Have you met with the Naugrim?”  Curufin asked.  “I have been learning their customs and something of their language.  The Sindar call it mere growls and grunting, but that is not so at all, it is a tongue of great strength, indeed I think it may be more like to the tongue of the Valar then any other, certainly not to the Black Speech as some have held.  I would like to learn all of their dialects but they are slow to teach strangers.”

“I have seen some Naugrim in Nargothrond.  But you did not come here to give a lecture on language.”

“Ah, I can get carried away with my studies.  It was the customs of which I wish to speak.  They are a tough folk, the Naugrim, and quick to seek vengeance, but they have also a tradition that wrongs may be repaired with gifts of worth. Blood-price they call it, a way to end feuds, most of all feuds between kindred.”

Turgon’s looked at his half-cousin with kindling anger.  Wrongs between kindred!  Did he think some golden trinket could erase the betrayal of the ship-burning or call back the dead from the ice!  Would it restore Elenwë’s life or make the cries of Idril for her mother as though they had not been?  Could it ease his loneliness or bring into the world the further children they had thought to bear?  And how fared his gentle one in Mandos, stripped of the comfort of the Valar by the Curse that the sharp blades of Fëanor’s house had earned? (there long shall ye abide and yearn for your bodies and find little pity… the Valar did not threaten idly whatever his cousin Finrod might say.  Ah, Elenwë, Elenwë, without the murders of Alqualondë they would have let us go in peace!  Now how do you suffer alone?)”

Curufin must have read something of this.  “But we are Eldar,” he said harshly, “and I spoke of the Naugrim.  It is no matter.  I bring you this as a craftsman, not for your sake but for my own, that it should be where it will be well-used. There can be no certain peace in Himlad while the Siege lasts.  And it must be my dwelling, while the Oath lasts.”

Curufin opened the box and took out a jewel, and the sun through the western window caught it in a flash of green.  Turgon’s breath had caught audibly before he could prevent it.

“My finest work,” Curufin said.  “It may be the finest I shall make, for although I feel greater works within me they all demand time, and the siege gives too little of that.  My father caught the Light of the Trees, but I have to work with that of the Sun.  Through the leaves of trees in Spring it catches something of the Light we knew of old.

Turgon could not forbear from reaching out to take the jewel which Curufin extended.  He had seen the finest works of jewel smiths, and yet he was amazed.  The light of the green stone was not as clear and bright as the light of the Silmarils, and yet it had a quality of its own for the Silmarils had been pure light but this jewel spoke of living things nurtured by the light.

“It is not for simple decoration,” said Curufin.  “I have been able to filter some of the power that dwelt in the light of Laurelin, but which is dimmed in the sun.  It has some of the virtue we knew of old in the blessed realm, and if you take it your land will be the fairest in Beleriand.”

He had not intended to take any gift from Curufin, but as he gazed at the stone he wondered if works of hand could indeed be free of any taint from their creator’s heart, and whether it must be wrong to accept any token from a Kinslayer.

“Why would you give it to me?” he demanded.

“Because you mean to found a hidden refuge,” said Curufin.  “As Fëanor’s son and a lord of the Noldor I disapprove entirely.  I understood that you came to Middle-earth to make war against Morgoth, not to skulk in the hills.”

“You dare to disapprove?  I thought it was the wish of your house to fight the war alone, no matter how great the betrayal to accomplish that.”

“I was giving my opinion. I did not expect to change your mind.  The important point is that as a lord of my house I disapprove, but as a craftsman I see here a chance to place my greatest work in a dwelling where it will be safer than upon the Marches and can flourish to its full potential without the lands it makes fair being easily ravaged by war or attracting undue attention from Morgoth.  I want my stone to be in the place that is best for it.”

The jewel lay in Turgon’s hand, calm and pure.  It spoke to him of the healing of spirits and the growth of a city as fair as lost Tirion.

“Fëanor,” he said, “would never have let his greatest work out of his hand.”

“Contrary to general opinion,” said Curufin, “I am not my father.”  The closed expression on his face was one that Fëanor had never worn.

Turgon looked down again at the green jewel, and saw the promise of spring.  “This alters nothing,” he said.

“No,” Curufin agreed. “It alters nothing.”  There was a long pause in which neither moved to thank the other before he added, “I will not stay.  We will be out of your lands soon enough.”

Left alone Turgon remained still for a time before he placed the jewel carefully away in the casket. He would not, he thought, spread word of who had made it or of the powers Curufin had claimed, would not show it to many persons at all.  The strange agreement they had reached, an agreement without debt on either side, would not be readily understood.

His eagerness to found his new city quickened, as he thought on what he might make there if Curufin’s claims proved true.

Chapter End Notes

I don’t find either of Tolkien’s theories about the origin of the Elessar entirely satisfactory. The story that it was made by Fëanor and given by Maedhros to Fingon doesn’t explain how it got from Fingon to Galadriel, possibly via Eärendil.  Besides, if you accept the rather attractive later concept that it was made to reflect sunlight through leaves then Fëanor can’t have made it, because he never saw the sun.

On the other hand when he came up with the idea that it was made by Celebrimbor, or a friend of Celebrimbor, in Gondolin Tolkien seems to have forgotten Celebrimbor was a descendent of Fëanor.  It’s hard to see what he would have been doing in Gondolin, and doubtful that he would have been old enough to make the Elessar before Turgon disappeared into his hidden city.

So if not Celebrimbor and not Fëanor then who could have made it?  The otherwise unknown Enerdil is possible but to me not very inspiring. Someone active in the First Age, whose work Celebrimbor might have known well enough to make a second Elessar, and who might have made it before Turgon went to Gondolin.

Obviously Curufin.

But why would he give it to Turgon?  Now that was the challenge…

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