The Election Farce of Nargothrond: Of Dumbness, Treachery, and Brotherly Love by Dawn Felagund

Chapter 8: Beren Comes to Nargothrond

Chapter 8: Beren Comes to Nargothrond

Atop Amon Ethir, all was dull and quiet and still as though the realm had been placed inside an opaque jar stuffed with cotton and the whole thing then locked inside an empty white room with very thick stone walls. The clear night sky was interrupted by neither comet nor cloud, the wind slumbered and left the leaves unprovoked, and the stars were scattered in their usual arrangements and so even these provided no diversion. Atop the hill, two guards reclined upon chairs cleverly disguised as rocks by the crafty Curufin on order of fair Celegorm, for Celegorm liked to profess as often and loudly as he could an overweening affection and pride for those on the front lines of defense in Nargothrond. The guards had spent their venomed darts on a rough sketch of Sauron tacked to a tree and now devoted themselves to a game of Telerin Fish with a well-worn deck of cards that smelled faintly of hand lotion and cooking oil.

"Go fish," mumbled one of the guards called Taltdirith--a strapping Noldorin fellow born in Nevrast who wore a look of perpetual digestive upset--when naught came up in his opponent's net. The other guard, Gulthirith, who had previously made a meager living performing cheap sleight-of-hand tricks that would fool not even the children of Nargothrond and, by this qualification, had promoted himself to Lord Orodreth as a wizard (Orodreth still remaining mystified as to how his ear had produced that silver piece but, whatever the cause, always wishing without luck for a return of the affliction whenever he called upon the vintner), groaned and drew a card from the pond. By his petulant look, Taltdirith assumed his comrade's luck unfavorable. Piled in the middle between them, and so far ignored, was a stack of data sheets delivered earlier that day by a featureless Elf whose name neither could remember--helped along in that plight by a bottle of wine, of course--and whose voice had borne a slight resemblance to the sound that dust makes when it slides down a dusty hill, so far as either could remember, of course.

Gulthirith said, "What do you say I show you an amazing card trick instead?" and Taltdirith replied, "Not likely," though whether he spoke of the unlikelihood of desiring such entertainment or of the trick's propensity for being amazing was never made clear.

The night progressed as such for many hours--without wind, without moon, without any cause for excitement at all--until Gulthirith snapped up from drowsing over a mug of wine to garble amid a snore, "Did you hear that?"

"I heard nothing," said Taltdirith, who was trying to count the stars and kept losing his place at number fifty.

And so onward and onward the dull night went.

Morning drew near, as oft it does. "I know I heard something," said Gulthirith. "I know it."

"All you hear is the rattle of the rocks in your head," Taltdirith retorted, having been roused from a most pleasant dream. But both guards strained their ears to listen and, indeed, there was a tiny sound much like the noise a single blade of grass makes when being bent to the ground and then springing upright again.

"What was that?" hissed Taltdirith, and then the sound came again, and again, and again, like blades of grass were being bent to the ground and spring upright again in a rhythmic procession beneath something that moved in precise, orderly distances across the earth. "What could that be?" asked Gulthirith in a low voice, and Taltdirith shrugged. Both were wide awake now, and each was already formulating a heroic tale with himself the intrepid star to tell come their return to the barracks. Five years atop Amon Ethir and neither had seen this sort of excitement.

Then the sound escalated, as though a blade of grass was not only bent but broken, and both guards let out an involuntary squeak of alarm.

"I am friend!" came a voice from the darkness. Both guards clutched each other in terror. "Friend, not foe! I beg you to let me pass!"

The noise of bending--sometimes breaking--grass blades resumed. And atop Amon Ethir, the two guards clutched each other in the dark, uncertain what to do and so doing nothing.