Revelator by Lilith

Prologue.  

Ost-in-Edhil
1697 S.A.

He stood upon the battlements and watched the enemy host approach. Slowly and steadily, wave upon wave of orcs and men pressed forward with a precision of movement he had not seen since the First Age and seldom then. Detachments of wolves flanked the orcs and they leapt and gamboled in the air, chattering and howling as though they scented their prey upon the wind. He supposed they had. Another several companies of orcs and trolls pulled siege engines into position. These appeared similar to his own designs, and he wondered what improvements Thû had made upon them. They were not in sufficient range for him to see, though he suspected he would see the evidence of those changes soon enough.

“This is different,” a calm voice said.

He turned to see Celeborn standing at his side. “Is it?”

“They were not as orderly when I faced them before,” he said. “They caused as much destruction within their own ranks as in ours. The Enemy succeeded primarily through overwhelming numbers.”

“They were seldom so orderly,” Kemmótar said. “Even the Balrogs struggled to enforce order as Gondolin fell.”

“Balrogs are not much interested in order,” he replied. “Thû is, and she was not at Gondolin. She is here now. They fought so at Tol Sirion and she commanded that force. She is stronger now.”

Celeborn stirred, and Tyelperinquar knew that he thought but did not say that Thû was stronger due to the craft he had helped her develop. 

“I know,” he said. “It is my fault.”

“I doubt it,” Celeborn said. “The specifics of the ringcraft, perhaps. But she would have found another tool and another way; she decided that she wished to dominate the Elves and bend them to her will. You are no more responsible for that aim than a smith is for the deeds of the one who wields a sword he’d crafted.”

He appreciated the point but disagreed. The Rings were not swords; the craft too fine, the purpose too perilous, the risk, in the end, too great.

“Are you surprised she came?” Kemmótar asked.

“No,” he said, “I knew she would come.”

“Because she does not trust her commanders to defeat us?” 

“That and more. I defied her. She will finish this herself.”

“We defied her,” said Celeborn. “You do not stand alone. You may also choose to leave when the time comes; we need only hold the city long enough to ensure everyone has cleared its walls and taken the hidden path.”

“I cannot. I must meet her when she comes.”

“It is her doing, not yours.”

“It would serve no point if I fled, even when the city falls and all our creations are lost. I would only endanger the others. She would know if I left,” he said. “She could find me anywhere I went as I might find her anywhere she was, no matter how far and no matter how many years had passed."

“Are you certain?” his cousin’s husband asked. “We cannot hold them forever, and the fate that awaits you should she capture you is not a kind one.”

“If I stay, even if she captures me or believes she might, I may ensure that you have time.  She will tarry for that.  She will not pursue you, at least not for some time."

"That is a generous but too costly offer," Celeborn replied.

"It is not only that.  It is mostly that, but not only," he began, not looking at Celeborn but out upon the field before the gates. “I heard once that you tried to convince Thingol not to demand the Silmaril as a bride price for Luthien.”

“I did,” Celeborn replied. “I remembered what it was to be young and in love; I knew he would not dissuade them. It did little good in the end.”

“I heard too that you warned him of the jewel.” He noticed a small company of wolves and men mounted on horseback moving through the ranks and saw the army part before them. A man rode behind the company, bearing a black banner with a red eye emblazoned upon it.

“It was perilous,” Celeborn replied. “Anyone might see that. We needed no letters from your uncle to prove it.”

“You would do so again?” he asked. The company had made it near to the front lines. He saw a figure, tall and slim, familiar still, at its center. “Had you the opportunity?”

“I would,” Celeborn replied. “He was my kinsman and my friend, I loved him and I would continue to try to steer him to a better path.”

“Even if you knew you were unlikely to succeed?” Though he heard no words, he saw that Thû had given an order. The army snapped to attention. He saw her banner whip in a breeze that was not there.

“Even so,” Celeborn replied, “but Thingol was unlikely to have me killed.”

“His actions nearly did.” The wolves howled and the orcs began to pound their spears into the ground and to beat their swords upon their shields.  

“That is different.” He heard a low and steady beat of drums, and he watched her ride forward to take her place at the head of her army. She lifted her hand, the light caught something bright upon her finger, and her troops, even the wolves, fell silent.

“Even so,” he said to Celeborn as he watched her and waited for her to move. “Even so.”

3019 T.A.
March, sometime after the 25.
The Field of Cormallen 

Voices continued to float in and out of her dreams. Some she knew. Some she did not. Some reminded her of those gone long before.

“He said she pulled him out.” The voice was Olorin’s. The tone was surprised.

“Why?” She. was unfamiliar with this voice. It reminded her of one she had heard years before but she was unsure of which one it was. She thought, vaguely, that it was important. It would give her information she needed to know if she could but remember. But she couldn’t. Hers had been a long existence. She had forgotten more than she remembered, and she was tired, so very tired, now.

“I don’t know,” Olorin replied. “But she did.” She heard the wonder in his voice and then the world became grey and then dark.

***

Time had passed. She did not know how long. It might have been minutes or hours or days. 

“Why are you trying to heal her? You know who she is.” This voice was impatient. It was the voice of a mortal.  

“Everyone deserves the opportunity to heal.” It was the second voice, the one that reminded her of someone, someone she’d known, someone she couldn’t remember. She felt water trickle over her face, smelt the scent of something, something green, something living. It reminded her of the smell of Arda newly made or of the forest of Neldoreth where her sister once dwelled or of Eregion in the spring outside the city near the foothills when the trees were in bloom, when the rivers bubbled with the spring thaw, and when she was not alone.  

She was alone now. She was always alone now.

She had chosen that.  

No, he had chosen that for her, for them both.

She tried to lift her hand and push the cloth away.

“Don’t,” the voice said. “It will help.”

“Smells of dirt,” she said.

“Yes,” the voice said, a touch of laughter in it, “it is from the earth so I suppose it would.”

She stopped trying to fight him and allowed him to bathe her face.

“I will bring you something to drink,” the voice said. “Then you must sleep again. You are very hurt. Far more than I think you know.”

She turned away from the voice.

“The injuries are deeper than your body,” it continued, “and have been with you for more years than I know how to count. It will take much longer to heal and will require a desire to heal. But you are not beyond hope.”

Fool, she thought. She had not had hope for more years than she could count. But there were hands upon her and they were gentle. One lifted her head and held a bowl to her lips. She drank. Water trickled down her throat clear and cool.

“Do you think you can drink more?”

She nodded.

She heard the voice ask someone to bring a cup. The person to whom the voice belonged held her gently, one arm behind her back, her head against his shoulder. He brought a cup to her lips.

“It’s broth,” the voice said. “Concentrated to be of more benefit to you. Will you try it?”

She lifted a hand and touched the cup and the hand of the one who held it. That hand trembled slightly beneath her touch.

She drank.

***

Later she felt hands lift her. She felt a damp cloth gently drag along her body and then felt someone wrap her gently in fine and soft material..  

She heard the same voice as before. “She is hurt. Beyond my understanding. Perhaps beyond my ability to heal.”

“Sometimes the damage is too great.” This voice was Olorin’s. “Sometimes it depends upon the willingness of the patient to be healed.”

“Does she want to be healed?”

“I don’t know,” Olorin answered. “She would also have to believe that she could, that grace would be extended to her.”

“I see,” the voice she didn’t know said and she felt a damp cloth run gently over her face. “She is not what I expected.”

“No,” Olorin said, “she wouldn’t be.”

“Is she what you expected?”

“Yes,” Olorin replied. “No.” He paused. “I loved her once, Estel. She was my friend. She was more gifted than you can imagine. I want ...”

“What do you want?”

“For her to be the blessing she might have been.”

“Is that what she wants?” the one named Estel replied. “I feel only a bottomless well of grief and of pain and of despair. I hadn’t expected that.”

“I know,” Olorin replied.

“Had you?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” Estel said. “I am sorry.”

“For whom?” Olorin asked.

***

There was a gentle touch in her hair. Someone was combing through her hair, carefully teasing the tangles out. She held up a hand and tried to push the person, whoever it was, away.

“Hush,” the voice said. It wasn’t Estel’s or Olorin’s, but there was a kindness in it. “it won’t take long and you’ll feel better.”

That was familiar. She remembered doing this herself for another so very long ago. She remembered her own voice, murmuring gently, as she ran a comb through fine silver hair and loosed the tangles from it. “Let me,” she had said as she soothed the weary and tired girl, “Let me. It won’t take long, and I promise you’ll feel better.”

The girl had let her, settling quiet against her. She had been gentle and trusting. But the girl was gone, lost foolishly and wastefully, a causality of another one of her plans, and she could not follow. The girl would not have wanted her to follow anyway. Not anymore.

She was tired. She let this other person, whoever it was, comb her hair, and, as they plaited it, she wept and did not try to prevent it.

***

This time, when she woke, the voices were clearer and her senses sharper. She felt blankets beneath her and smelled the scent of fresh earth and new grass.  

She felt the sun upon her face.  

“Mairen?” It was Olorin again.

“Yes,” she answered.

“How do you feel?”

“As if I’d been carved in two. I expect that is how I should feel, given what happened.”

Olorin laughed quietly, “Yes, I suppose so.”

“Why am I here?”

“Why did you go to the mountain?”

“You know why,” she said. “I felt the Ring.”

“Why did you take the Ringbearer from the mountain?”

“How do you know I did?” she asked. “Perhaps we fled, all of us?”

“He told me,” Olorin replied. “So did Sam. They’d not have survived without you. They do not understand. Neither do I.”

She did not reply.

“Why, Mairen?”

“Do you want to imagine that there is hope for me after all?” she responded. “You know what they’ll do to me. Don’t give yourself hope for something that cannot be and that I do not want.”

“That wasn’t my question, Mairen,” Olorin replied. “Why did you take them from the mountain?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she answered.

“I am willing to try.”

“He told me that there had been enough death,” she answered. “I decided that he was right.”

“Frodo told you that?”

“Frodo?”

“The Ringbearer, Mairen. His name is Frodo.”

“Frodo Baggins,” she said. “No, it was not he.” 

“Then who?”

But she turned her head and then her body away. Olorin did not try to force an answer from her, but she felt his fingers lightly touching her shoulder. 

***

“Are you there?” This voice was different, younger in some ways.

“I am,” she answered. “Who asks?”

“I do,” he replied, and she perceived the Halfling she had seen before her, fallen to the ground in the Sammath Naur, clutching his bleeding hand. He had no index finger on his right hand. His hand matched her own as he matched her. She had no index finger on her right hand and she had not been able to resist the lure of the darkness nor more than he could resist the call of her Ring.

“And you think you may compel me?”

“I am not trying to compel anyone,” the Halfling answered. “I could feel you, and I thought I would see if you could hear me.”

“And what then?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I needed to know.”

“I see.”

“Did you not wonder?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “but, once, it was not unusual for me to speak with others this way.”

“Why did you pull me out?”

“Perhaps I thought I might kill you.”

“If that’s what you wanted you might have pushed me into the fire,” he answered.

“True,” she said.

“Why?” he asked. “You knew why I was there.”

“Too late,” she said, “but, yes, I knew. I also knew that you couldn’t.”  

She felt the sharp pain within him.

“No one might have expected you to,” she said. “I made it to withstand the wise, the very greatest among the Eldar. I doubt they might have resisted it there. That is why it consumed so much of my strength.”

“Why?”

“The one who created the rings with me was very strong,” she said. “So very strong. It took so much of what I had to try to bind all of the works we made to me.”

“And did you?”

“Yes,” she said. “But only to this end, apparently. He was right after all, it seems. I did not want him to be right.”

“How so?”

“He once told me that there had been enough death, and that all of what I had created and all of my plans and hopes would be for naught if it resulted in more,” she replied. “He was right.”

“And you realized this?” the Halfling said.

“Yes.”

“It seems a little late,” he observed.

“Oh, yes, she replied. “It is more than three thousand years and millions of deaths, including his own, too late. But, in the end, he was right. I gambled. I lost and for what?”

Valinor
Outside of Tirion, near the Halls of Aulë

The news of the Dark Tower’s fall arrived one morning in the early spring. Even in Valinor, the fall and winter had been alive with anticipation. It was a feeling he’d not experienced since Morgoth had been defeated and the world had been changed. Had he still been the person he was then, he might have seen the promise of a new beginning in the aftermath of this second fall.

But he was not. He stood in the courtyard of his grandmother’s home, having left the forge where he’d been working alongside her father, his great-grandfather, and watched the Eagles wheel and dance above him. He heard them call out their joy and triumph to the skies and the wind that Thû had fallen and the world had been saved. He stood and watched as the craftsman and artists resident in his grandmother’s home laughed and danced and praised the Valar. He heard Elves passing along the street shouting with joy and, from a distance, the bells in Tirion ringing out in celebration.

But he stood still and uncertain. No feeling of joy washed over him. He felt no triumph and no vindication. If anything, he felt relief that the long cast was over and comfort that the one who had betrayed him was no longer able to bend the world to her will. But, if he were honest — and, in a tale of betrayal, it was important to be honest lest the story be lost forever, he must acknowledge that, as he’d heard the Eagles’ first cry, he had felt a wave of grief for the one whom he’d known and loved and who might now be nothing more than a shadow of malice haunting the dark places of the world.

He felt a soft touch on his arm and turned to see his grandmother beside him. He saw the concern upon her face and the fear shadowing the triumph in her eyes. He looked up and saw her father, hammer in one hand, tongs in the other, watching him from the door, an equal measure of joy and worry upon his face.

“She is gone,” his grandmother said. “She cannot hurt you any more.”

He heard the hope in her voice and the anger and the worry behind it. He smiled and took her hand, and he kissed the top of her very red hair. He did not correct her.  

It was not, he knew, that he was ungrateful for Thû’s fall or that he misunderstood its significance. By the end of their acquaintance, he had acquired a deep and personal understanding of her desire for domination and of her plans for Middle Earth as well as the ruthlessness with which she would pursue them. He had understood that better than any. He had reason. He knew and comprehended the purpose that drove her, the peculiar hopes and dreams and fears that underlay age upon age of constant planning in pursuit of a single, unchanging, inalterable end. He also understood its cost to the people of Middle Earth and, indeed, to her, better than most. It was possible that, by the end, he understood that more clearly than even she herself did.

But he also mourned the one whom he’d lost. He grieved for the mind, quick and sharp, and the spirit, bright and fierce, that he had known. He mourned the one with whom he had laughed, at whose side he had worked and with whom he had spent almost every moment of the near four hundred years they had worked and learned at each other’s side. He grieved for the one who had pushed him to think more deeply, who had encouraged him to reconsider the boundaries of the possible and who had helped him to become what he had thought he most wanted and had briefly been — a craftsman unmatched by any in the Middle Earth of his day.  

He grieved that loss and grieved it deeply because he knew that more was lost in her fall than the remnants of the person she had seemed to be and might have once been.  

He knew her fall signaled the final retreat of elvendom in Middle Earth and, with it, the loss of the last vestiges of magic and wonder. He mourned that deeply. After all, it was the desire to preserve and to keep that sense of magic and of wonder and of possibility alive in Middle Earth that had brought him to her side and aligned their purposes for a little while.

The world left behind was beautiful still. But it was not the one he had once hoped to build in Middle Earth and to build with her.  

The long defeat had come at least. Perhaps, he thought, in the end, they had all been fighting it — the elves and their adversary.  

Or perhaps not.

He knew Thû well enough to know that the world that would follow would be comprehensible to her. It would lack magic but would be built upon the foundations of craft and be replete with the wonder of metal, wheels and gears. She would have found it simple to understand and easy to shape. She would have thought it useful. It would have been another tool. A hammer. An anvil. Tongs. Or, perhaps, the sword that was shaped with them.  

He imagined her laugh and amused expression at this thought — at his own uncertainty and turmoil, and he heard her response to his thought as neat and as precise as it had ever been as if she stood next to him as she had for so many years. “What sword of worth,” she might have said, “has only one edge?”

***

The news of Thû’s defeat was quickly followed by other stories and rumors. Strange tales began to circulate in Valinor. Some seemed reasonable. Others were not. Still others were ones of which he was not sure he wanted to be true. There were stories of a new king of men descended from the line of Elros Tar-Minyatur and heir to the one who had, with Ereinion, defeated Thû on the slopes of Orodruin. Wielding the sword that been used against her before, he had bested her forces twice, defeating them once before the capital city of the land he would rule and a second time before the Black Gate of Mordor itself. Another tale held that a heretofore overlooked people called Halflings had been essential in Thû’s defeat. One, he had heard, had carried Ring and borne it into Mordor past her defences and her armies and her own watchful Eye. He had been seated in his cousin Findaráto’s home, waiting to hear him perform with his wife Amarië, when he heard that story. He had shuddered. He had not been able to prevent it.  

After Eregion, after the One had been forged and been used against him, he had begun to understand that the rings, the lesser as well as the great, posed a profound threat to those of mortal blood. At the time they had shaped them, they had seemed but mere trifles, necessary essays in the craft he had developed with her. He had been too exhilarated by the craft, too fascinated by the possibilities the rings presented, the seductive promise that these tools would ensure that the elves would no only find themselves fighting a vain battle against the forces of time and decay but might, in fact, best it and develop newer and more powerful crafts and build bigger and more beautiful cities, ones that would rival Tirion itself. He had not considered the cost of bearing such a powerful tool upon one whose days passed more swiftly and who was far more subject to the forces of Time. She, he knew, had not considered it at all or, if she had, had not cared. Still, over the years, he had learned, and he had not been able to turn his eyes from the power their creations had to alter a mortal life.  

But, if the lesser rings were dangerous, then the Great Rings, the Rings of Power, by whose measure the others were mere tools for his study and toys for her amusement, were far more perilous. They were too powerful for any mortal to bear without being profoundly and utterly altered in time and in being, and the One Ring had been beyond the mastery of most immortals. He knew this. He had felt his power and heard its siren’s call. True it was that Galadriel or Ereinion might have wielded it for a time. But, in the end, it would have bent them to its will and purpose. He was unable to fathom what it would have done to a mortal. He stood quietly and walked carefully towards the doorway as far from the others in the room as he might be without leaving it. There, he remained lost in thought, only half-listening to Findaráto and Amarië.

“Cousin, are you well?” On some level, he had noticed that the music had ended. However, he had not realized that Amarië stood before him. 

“I am,” he said and smiled at her. “I was only a little lost in thought.”

“I had thought you were,” she said, “and that is why I had wondered if you were well.”

When he did not reply, she continued, “While I had hoped that the recent tidings would have given you ease, I have feared that they must also remind you of events you would prefer not to recall.”

“I might have preferred that they had not happened,” he replied gently to her. “But I played my part in them, and they are mine to bear and mine to recall. Those days may have passed and the partner in my craft may have been vanquished, but the time cannot be undone and the damage from our work cannot be unmade, even if the Ring was.” He touched her hand lightly. “Regardless of my thoughts, I am glad to be here with you both tonight.” 

She smiled, but it was a shallower smile than was her wont, and he knew he had not allayed her concerns. “Come with me,” she said. “He wishes to speak with you before you go.”

“I’m sure,” he said and began to leave his place at the door.

“And he thought you’d try to go soon,” she continued.

“He was not wrong,” he replied.  

His cousin was seated at the opposite side of the room, conversing with those who wished to speak with him and tuning his instrument. He allowed Amarië to take his hand and guide him easily through the small crowd that had assembled. But, as she did, he noticed that more eyes were drawn to him than usual and that several conversations were hushed when he drew near. Nonetheless, he still heard several remarks uttered before his presence was noticed and the speakers fell silent.

“We could ask him,” a man said to his friend. “Of all people, he should know how she was defeated.” 

“Do you think he feels responsible?” said another. “He should. He worked with her for years. His craft made her as powerful as she was.” 

“That’s not fair,” a woman replied. “She chose to wage war and to conquer. He opposed her.”

“I cannot imagine what it must be like to know that you had helped to make them, that she could not have created them without you, and then to know what happened to those to whom she gave them.”

“She tricked him,” said another woman. “She was ever known as a Deceiver.”

“He was a fool.”

“Many fell into her traps,” a man replied. “He was not the first nor the last. That fool in Númenor ….” 

“Still Galadriel knew and Ereinion too. He ought to have listened.”

“Those of Fëanor’s line don’t listen. They’re stubborn and foolish. Besides, she offered what he wanted.”

A man laughed. “That’s one way to look at it.”

“I meant the knowledge he desired and the skills,” the other said. “I was from Gondolin. He was famed for his ambition even then. He wanted to surpass his grandfather. She might have promised that he could.” 

“She offered other enticements,” said a woman. “Or so I heard.” 

“Well, she was Morgoth’s little whore. We have seen that she would use any strategy to achieve her ends.”

“It must have been easy,” said another. “Who would have wanted one of the Dispossessed?”

“Be kind.” It was an older elf’s voice. “He swore no Oath.”

“And, yet, he is of that House. Oath or no Oath, he bears many of the same flaws— consumed with his art, blind to the consequences of his actions,” a woman replied. “Would you have rejoiced had your child wished to join with him?”

“Hardly. But still …”

“And he’d pined after Findaráto’s sister for years and she’d have naught to do with him even before she married. He was virtually an outcast to boot. I imagine he was very lonely and wanted companionship. Morgoth’s whore had only to look at him and promise him greatness and he’d do whatever she wanted. She might not have needed to spread her legs for him.”

“But she did. The rumors from the city were that they were seldom parted, that he lived in her home until she left. They had been so close and he was so obviously grief-stricken when she’d left that no one understood why she had gone. At least not until she returned. With an army of orcs at her heels.” 

“Achieved what she wanted, I’m sure.” 

“Enough,” said a woman. “I heard the tales too, and I heard how he resisted her in the end and what she did to him. That is punishment enough.”

“Ask the other dead of Ost-in-Edhil if it was. Ask them what her army did to the old and young, to the women and the babies. Many refuse to leave Mandos.”

Amarië squeezed his hand. He shrugged. Far worse had been said to his face in the days before her army arrived at Ost-in-Edhil. The comments had ceased to burn, but his conduct still shamed him.

They found his cousin tuning his harp in the corner of the room. He had already dismissed those with whom he’d been speaking and looked up as they drew near.

“Are you well?” his cousin asked.

“A common question these days,” he replied. “As I told Amarië, I am well enough.”

“He has qualified what he said to me,” Amarië noted. “He was well when he spoke to me but merely well enough in the short time it took to traverse the room.”

“Did you hear something that discomfited you, cousin?”

“Nothing I had not heard before,” he answered. “I am aware my story is a scandalous one.” Findaráto continued to look intently at him, and so he corrected himself. “There was something I heard that I did interest me but not in the way you imagine.”

“I will speak to them.”

“There’s little need. The gossip is not new and is nothing that I will not hear again until the news of her defeat becomes familiar,” he replied. “Still, cousin, I would know more about the rumors of a people called the Halflings and their role in this tale.”

“Ah,” Findaráto said. “It is true that a Halfling had possession of the Ring and agreed to take it into Mordor to be destroyed. I do not know the details of how it happened but it was through his bravery and sacrifice that the Ring made its way to the fire.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them to see Findaráto watching him very closely. “Is he …” he began, “Is the Halfling living?”

“Yes,” Findaráto replied, “they say he is.”

“Is he …” he struggled to find the words, “whole?”

“That,” his cousin answered, “I do not know. I have been told that he has permission to come to Valinor when he is ready. I suppose that means that he is not.”

He nodded

“It isn’t your fault,” his cousin said. “Whatever whispers you hear. Whatever foolish and unkind things someone says. It is not your fault. It was her choice and the blame lies with her.”

“I helped her,” he replied. “We developed the craft together. That, at least, is, in part, my responsibility. She would not have been able to do it without me.”

His cousin shook his head but did not argue further. His hands moved along his harp and plucked the strings gently. Tyelperinquar heard several notes, the pattern and sound of which he recognized, though the name of the song eluded him.  

“There is another story,” Findaráto said, continuing to pluck lightly at the strings “about Elrond Halfelven’s daughter. I think I should tell it to you; it will matter to you since her mother was as dear to you as she has become to me.”

“And that story is?”

“She has made Lúthien’s choice,” his cousin said gently. “She gave her heart and her troth to the man who has succeeded to Elendil’s place and his throne. He is mortal and his path is now hers.”

He remembered Lúthien. Despite the intervening years, he was able to recall, though more with feeling than accuracy, memory being an imperfect mirror, her brilliance and bravery. He remembered her starlit eyes and her hair black as night and finer than silk. He remembered Beren too — fierce and bold and with the impatience only a mortal had.  

He looked at Findaráto’s face and knew that he was remembering her too.  

“What is he like,” Findaráto asked, “her great-grandchild, the Halfelven? The one who married my niece.”

“He looks or he looked like Lúthien,” he replied. “I assume he still does.”

“That tells me how he looked,” said his golden-haired cousin, and Tyelperinquar recognized the tune he played. For a moment, he wondered how and where he had learned the Lay of Leithian, and then he remembered that his cousin had the ear of many who knew it and the time to learn it. “It does not tell me how he was.”

“He was clever,” he answered, “as she was. He was gifted at healing as she was, and he was kind. He was very kind to me, ere the end, when he’d no reason to be.”

Findaráto nodded, “His wife is here. With my mother’s people.”

“Yes,” he replied and thought of the little girl who’d run so often into the halls of the Mirdain in search of him. He remembered the gifted woman she had become.

“I had to take the news to her,” Findaráto continued. “It was not an easy thing to tell a mother.”

“I would imagine it was not,” he said and found a seat near Findaráto. Unbidden, an image entered his mind — Celebrían as a child, silver-hair and bright-eyed in the snow on a Midwinter’s morning, laughing with him as they played in the snow — as they played in the snow with another, a woman whose hair was a black as Lúthien’s but whose eyes had been a brilliant green. A woman who’d made him laugh and Celebrían smile. A woman who’d listened to them both. He remembered the touch of her fingers against his, the softness in her eyes as she’d told stories of the East to them both, and a feeling, also unbidden and unwanted, came with the memory, a feeling of being whole and seen, of being known and accepted. But he knew that feeling had only been a lie and it was followed by a familiar pain, old and known but nonetheless sharp. He forced himself to watch his cousin’s hands moving easily upon the harp strings and felt it slowly abate.  

“It was,” his cousin continued to speak, “but I did not want her to hear it unsuspecting at the market or to force her husband to be the one to break the news. I wanted to give her time to grieve, if she needed to grieve, out of the public eye.” 

“She will need to grieve,” he said. “She dreamed of a family of her own when I knew her; sometimes those dreams were dismissed as the silly wishes of a romantic child but she sought something to call her own, apart from the world created by her parents. I am glad she found it and am sorry it was taken from her.”

“Perhaps you might go to see her,” his cousin said gently. “Have you seen her since you returned?”

“No,” he answered. “I wrote to her when I was returned, but she did not reply.” He did not wish to say more. Much like the pain he had felt remembering that long ago Midwinter with Celebrían and the friend who’d truly been Thû, the grief at his parting from Celebrían was old and familiar, but it was no easier to bear.  

His cousin seemed as if he wanted to say more, but he did not. Instead, he continued to play and, as he did, Tyelperinquar thought he might have heard a nightingale beginning to sing.

***

Three days later Findaráto strode into the smithy with an expression on his face that Tyelperinquar had only seen twice. The first time he’d encountered that look upon his cousin’s face had been when he had newly returned from Doriath and had, when Tyelperinquar had asked where Artanis was, informed him that she had married a Doriathian prince and would not be returning home. The second time had been at the gates of Nargothrond when Findaráto, Beren, Edrahil and a handful of warrior prepared to leave the realm and embark upon what seemed to be a hopeless quest. Each time the news Findaráto had imparted or the purpose that drove him had twisted Tyelperinquar’s heart.  

Still, it would have revealed too much had he shown that he remembered that expression and the ill tidings that had caused it. He nodded at his cousin and inclined his head to indicate that he was not yet at a place where he was willing to stop his work. Findaráto inclined his head to reveal his agreement and, then pointing in the direction of the gardens to show where he might be found later, left.  

After he had left, Tyelperinquar looked at the piece he was in the process of finishing. With a sense of shame, he acknowledge, if only to himself, that he had not been entirely truthful and that he might have left it. It was no complicated piece, not as he used to make. He made no ornaments now, only tools, and the piece at which he labored was a simple chisel for his grandmother, something he might stop and pick up again at his leisure or might, if he must, begin anew. But he had wanted the time to compose himself and so he had dissembled, if only a very little.

In a little while, hardly long enough to show much progress in Arien’s journey across the sky, he had completed his task. Moving with care, he returned his tools to their proper place and removed his apron. He walked to the place at the outside of the forge where running water might be drawn from a pipe and used to wash his face and hands. As he washed his hands, he noticed that many of the trees had begun to flower. Had he not come from the forge, he thought he might have been able to enjoy their delicate perfume. When he had finished, he went to find his cousin.

Findaráto was pacing back and forth beneath the statue of a Telerin mother and her child situated near the center of his grandmother’s garden. He appeared, if anything, more agitated than he had been before.

“What is it?” he asked.  

HIs cousin turned and stared at him. Then he sat down at the base of the statue and buried his face in his hands.

“What is it, cousin?” he asked a second time. “Has any harm come to our kin? Is Celebrian well?” When Findaráto did not answer, he continued. “Is Lord Elrond safe? And your sister?”

Findaráto shook his head. “They are well, at least as far as I know. That is not the news that I had brought to you. That is not what disturbs me so.”

“Then what news have you, cousin?” he asked. “It shall not be better for waiting.”

“But, then,” his cousin said, “I can savor the moments that you do not know and wish it would always remain so.”

“What news?” he asked again with more impatience. 

Findaráto sighed but then sat up and met his eyes. “They have captured her,” he said.

“What?” he asked. “Who?” For a very brief moment, the meaning of his cousin’s words eluded him.  

“Thû,” his cousin said. “They have captured Thû.”

“How?”

“I only know that the Eagles retrieved her from the mountain with the Halfling and his companion. They have decided that she shall be returned to Valinor for judgment. She will take ship with Olorin, the Halfelven and my sister.”

“Where is she now?”

“With the new king’s army. I do not know where they shall keep her before they sail. Elrond’s home. The king’s capital city.”

“Imladris,” he said. “After Numenor, they would not trust her with mortal men.”

“No,” his cousin said, “I cannot imagine that they would.”

“And she will be returned here?” he asked. “And tried?”

“Yes,” Findaráto leaned against the statue’s base, and Tyelperinquar wondered, with no small amount of shame, what had happened in the place that had once been Tol Sirion so very long ago. But, truly, he knew he did not want to know.

“And then condemned to the Void?”

“What else is to be done with her?” asked his cousin. “You, of all people, know what she has done.”

He met his cousin’s eyes.. He knew what she had done. He knew better than most, and he knew that the sentence was deserved.

“Cousin,” Findaráto said, “my father believes that you will be asked to be present at her trial. Are you … do you want to be? I did not think that you would want to see her.”

“You did not think that I would want to see her?” he asked in reply. “That is kind of you and of your father, but I doubt I shall be given any choice in the matter. In this, especially in this, I think that, as one of the Dispossessed, I must continue to pay what is my due, for my folly and my daring.”

Findaráto looked down at his hands and then back up at Tyelperinquar. “Cousin,” he said softly, “what happened between you and her all those years ago?”

He closed his own eyes in response.

“I have heard the rumors and the speculation,” Findaráto continued. “But I had not wanted to give them weight, and I feared to hurt or to shame you if I were to ask. But there is a weight that rests upon you and pain that is so great that I know not how to relieve it — cousin, I fear you are not healed and now she will return before I think you could be — so I ask you, not to hurt you or to shame you but to help you if they should require you to face her — what was it that passed between you all those years ago?”

He looked at his cousin’s face, at the kind and handsome face marred so many years ago by her order, and he gave the only answer he knew how.

“Too much,” he said to his cousin. “Far too much.” He bowed his head and refused to meet his cousin’s eyes. “I am sorry. I am sorry for it all. But it is too much, and I am ashamed.”

He looked down and saw that a crocus and more than one of the narcissi had started to bloom. Blades of grass were visible too beneath his feet. It was spring. It had been spring, not long after the thaw, when it was once again safe to move, when he had received word of a visitor newly arrived to Eregion.