Clear Pebbles of the Rain by StarSpray

Twelve

Voices roused Maglor from his dozing. He heard Estel’s voice, and Elrohir’s, coming up the path through the pines, and kept still, only turning his head to peer down through the leaves. It was only the two of them, ambling up the path, Estel meandering more than Elrohir. “…wondering why he didn’t say anything when he pulled me out of the river yesterday,” Estel was saying.

“You really do need to stop jumping off the bridge. One of these days the current will be too strong for you.”

“I didn’t jump! The water’s too cold for swimming. And I would’ve been fine even if Maglor wasn’t there, because there’s that place where it gets wider and slows down and it’s easy to reach the bank. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“The answer is that he can’t speak,” Elrohir said. “A curse of some kind was laid on him in Dol Guldur.”

“Oh.” There was a pause; Estel picked up a stick and swung it, making small swishing noises through the air. His face was thoughtful beneath his mess of dark curls. “Can Ada lift it?”

“Yes.” Elrohir’s voice was quite firm, and Maglor envied him his certainty.

“Is he dangerous? Or I suppose will he be, when he can speak and sing again?”

Elrohir laughed. “Nearly everyone in Rivendell is dangerous , Estel, except for you.”

“You know what I mean!”

“I do know.” Elrohir grew serious again. “He poses no threat to this valley, or else Elladan and I would not have brought him here, or Adar allow him to enter. You know the old tales, so you know also that he was driven by his Oath, which is no more.”

Driven by the Oath and laid under the Doom, Maglor thought, turning his gaze back to the sky, grey through the leaves. A squirrel darted through the boughs over his head.

Elrohir was still speaking. “But I think he will not take up any weapons again. Nor should he have to. He spent many lives of Men in lonely Exile, and many years a captive of the Enemy—no one deserves that, whatever he has done. And when he can speak again,” he added, a tone of playful sternness entering his voice, “you must not pester him for songs or tales. Maglor has enough to worry about without young boys clamoring at him for a performance.”

“I don’t pester people,” Estel muttered indignantly. Elrohir mussed his hair, and he ducked away. “Race you to the falls!” He took off running up the path, past the oak tree where Maglor still sat, unseen and unnoticed. Elrohir laughed and chased after him after waiting a moment to give him a bit of a start. Once their voices faded away, Maglor slipped down the tree and back down the path, taking a branch of it that wound away around the house rather than going straight back to it. The pines gave way to birches with their pale bark, and maples, and more oaks, though none so old and broad as the one he’d spent half the night in.

Maglor paid little attention to where he went. He just wanted to be moving . He ’d spent so long staying still, forced into it by captivity and then by his own weakness. The valley did not feel as constraining as L órien had, at least. There were no walls hemming him in, except the mountains, and Elrond’s power was more subtle than Galadriel’s. It was still there , of course. Maglor knew that Elrond would know if he tried to leave the valley, or if something happened to him, and that was a comfort of a sort, though it also meant that someone might come looking for him at any time. Eleryn had spoken of those who had followed Maglor’s brothers and then Celebrimbor, who had settled at last in Imladris. He’d not met any yet. Perhaps they, like Estel, had been asked to leave him alone. He found himself pathetically grateful that they were keeping away, whatever the reason.

When he heard voices ahead of him on the path, talking merrily, Maglor slipped off of it into the trees. There was little undergrowth and he was able to move quickly and silently. Occasionally he came upon a blackberry bramble, putting out flowers now, or a honeysuckle thicket heavy with sweetness. When the rain came he did not immediately turn back to the house. He found and open space in the trees and tilted his head up to feel the cool fresh drops on his face. The rain soaked into his hair and his clothes and he soon felt the chill of it. As he passed back beneath the trees he ran his fingers through his hair, grimacing all over again at how short it was. It had not been this short since he’d been a child—but no, that wasn’t quite right: he’d had to cut it short once before after an incident with some kind of glue Curufin had been experimenting with. Maglor could not remember now how it had spilled or how it had gotten all over him, but they’d laughed about it afterward, after he had finished being furious. He had been rather vain of his hair in those days. Curufin had made him a set of beautiful combs afterward, of ivory and gold, as an apology. He’d left them behind in Tirion, for there had been little call for such ornaments in Formenos—and less on the road east.

But that had been different from having to cut away a mass of hair hopelessly matted and tangled, clumped with old dried blood and dirt and probably other things too.

He lowered his hands and sighed, suddenly exhausted and cold and yearning for his bed. He had gotten turned around in the woods, but that did not overly concern him. He must come to a path eventually, and the path would lead him back to the house.

So it proved, and he came back to his own window without meeting anyone. He hoisted himself up through it, and then slipped and fell to the floor with a thump when an amused voice said, “I did put doors into the house for a reason, you know.” It was Elrond, of course. “The last time I caught someone sneaking back in through a window was when the twins were still young enough to steal wine out of the cellars to drink in the woods. I had not expected to again until Estel was old enough to do the same.”

As Maglor picked himself up, Elrond crossed the room, catching his arms and lifting him the rest of the way. “I did not mean to frighten you yesterday,” he said more quietly. When Maglor began to shake his head he said, “No, Maglor—if you are not ready, it can wait.” He caught Maglor’s face in one hand, and looked into his eyes. “And on top of it all, you are suffering still under the effects of the Black Breath. Are you often cold, and cannot get warm?” Startled, Maglor nodded. “Then you should change out of these wet clothes. I will fetch athelas. It helps.” He offered a smile, and departed.

Maglor had not heard of the Black Breath before, but it seemed a fitting name for whatever it was the Enemy did to his prisoners. He peeled off his wet clothes, draping them over a chest, and changed into soft robes that felt more like wrapping a blanket around himself. He curled up in one of the large, deep chairs near the hearth where a small fire was already crackling, and rubbed a hand over his face before leaning back and closing his eyes. The fire’s warmth was welcome, but the chill that was not from the rain remained. He shivered, folding his arms over himself, feeling the scars on them through the fabric of his robe. His hair was still damp, and he could feel strands of it sticking to his forehead and temples.

The door opened again, and Elrond came in; Maglor did not open his eyes, but heard him moving quietly about the room. There was the sound of pouring water, and then the fresh sweet scent of athelas. He inhaled deeply, and felt something in him ease that he hadn’t even known was tense. Then he opened his eyes, finding Elrond seated in the chair next to him, and a bowl of steaming water on the small table between them, with a few dark green leaves floating in it and slowly turning the water green. Elrond held out his hand, and Maglor took it; his grip was firm and warm and steadying.

As Maglor breathed, Elrond spoke, quietly telling of how the Black Breath was a weapon of the Nazgûl, known in Imladris because of the long wars against the Witch-king of Angmar, which culminated in the fall of the splintered kingdoms of Arnor. The Black Breath was despair made manifest; most of its victims were struck down quickly, and caught in a web of dark dreams as they slowly slipped away into death without waking again. Athelas was used, by those who knew its virtues and how to call upon them, to chase it away. Maglor had not been so strongly affected as most Elrond had seen and treated, but he had been a long time an object of their attention.

Sauron had not wanted him dead. Just broken. Maglor closed his eyes and breathed. Sauron was far away, and—well, he had been broken, but perhaps…perhaps not wholly irreparably. Somehow it was easier to believe it in that moment, with the fresh scent of the leaves in the air, mingling with the wood burning on the hearth, and with Elrond there beside him, with his quiet voice and soft assurance and steady, enduring hope.

As Elrond finished talking a little more of athelas and its importance to the Dúnedain, Maglor turned their hands over so Vilya shone in the firelight, and looked up at Elrond. “The tale of the Rings is a long one,” Elrond said, “and full of darkness. Do you truly want to hear it now?” Maglor nodded. It concerned his nephew, and in some small way now it concerned him; he wanted to understand. “Very well. I will try to make it brief—and there is much knowledge that has been lost in any case, after Eregion fell.”

His tale spanned from the founding of Eregion to the end of the Second Age with the War of the Last Alliance, in which Sauron had been defeated—for ever, they had dared to hope, though in vain. Always he managed to return, even after the cataclysm of Númenor, even after his destruction at the hands of Gil-galad and Elendil. Elrond spoke of the Seven and the Nine and what befell them—and had to pause when Maglor shivered anew when he spoke of the Nazgûl, the Ringwraiths. He spoke also, worst of all, of the One, that Sauron had forged himself in the fires of Orodruin in the heart of Mordor.

“They cannot come here,” Elrond told him. “Imladris has been besieged before, even by the Witch-king himself, but he has never crossed the Bruinen to find it.”

Of the great Rings, the Seven and Nine had been either recovered by Sauron or destroyed by dragon fire. The One was lost to the Anduin when Isildur was slain at the Gladden Fields on his return home from war, and it was supposed by some among the Wise that it had been taken by the current even down to the Sea. As for the Three… “They were never touched my Sauron, though it was in part his craft that Celebrimbor used to make them. Were he to take up the One again, they would fall under his sway.” Elrond lifted his hand so that Vilya shone in the light of the fire. Outside, the rain continued on, a steady drum on the roof and on the leaves. “But while it is lost we are free to use them, and we have not been idle. Vilya is here. Nenya, I guess you know.” He looked at Maglor, who nodded. “And Narya, too, has its wielder. But of them we do not speak, not even to each other, and I will say no more after today.” Maglor nodded again. Anyone who knew enough to guess, he thought, already knew the tale in full. Anyone else would perhaps sense the power at work but they would not know what it was.

But the thought that the Ruling Ring was still out there, even if it was at the bottom of the Sea—that frightened Maglor more than anything else. That Sauron might get it back, and if he did… He looked at Elrond, who had risen to toss another log on the fire. Elrond caught and enslaved—turned into something like the Nazgûl but worse. It was a nightmare beyond imagining. As Elrond turned from the fire Maglor rose and stepped forward, wrapping his arms around him, holding him close.

“Maglor?” Elrond sounded surprised, but he did not pull away. Maglor held tighter. They were safe, for now, but the Shadow was growing, even without the One Ring.

“I’ll be all right, Maglor,” Elrond said after a moment, with a small sigh. “Even if the worst happens—there are plans in place. Please don’t worry.”

He would always worry, Maglor thought. He released Elrond, who smiled at him. There were too few left in the world who had known Elrond when he was not the Lord of Imladris, among the wisest of the Wise—when he had been a young child with more courage than sense, let alone wisdom, with scraped up knees and missing teeth and a brother who never left his side. Too few who might realize that though he had survived so much for so long, he was not invulnerable.

Elrond of course could tell the direction of his thoughts, and he reached out again, his grip on Maglor’s hands firm and steady. “I am not unprotected, Maglor. There is no one in this valley incapable of coming to its defense, or mine. And for now, at least, the Shadow is pushed back, and we have some room to breathe before it begins to gather itself again. Evil things do not come into my valley. You do not need to fear—not for me or yourself or anyone else. I know it is easier said than done, so I will remind you as many times as you need me to: this valley is safe.”