Chapter Text
Northern border of Hollin, 6 January T.A. 3019
“And as pleasant and well-spoken a gentleman as ever I’d like to meet, for all that three days ago he didn’t seem to know a word of any language but that High-elven speech,” Sam insisted, keeping his voice low as their little camp was preparing to bed down. It had been a long and unpleasant march through woods that all looked the same after the first hour, and looked like nothing at all when the winter sun dropped out of the sky almost as soon as they began to march. “And it’s not that I object to his coming along, if Gandalf says he don’t mean harm,” he added, reasonably. “Only —”
“Only what?” Frodo asked, with that glint in his eyes like he was making fun but was too polite to say so out loud. Still, if Sam were being honest, he’d much rather Frodo be laughing at him than still looking so on-edge, like he had ever since the stranger had popped out of the woods seemingly from nowhere. Gandalf had vouched for him, after a stilted conversation in tones too low for Sam to catch anything that was said, but he and Strider and the stranger had all been very close-lipped about who he was and what he was doing with them ever since, leaving Frodo with a mounting anxiety that was beginning to show to more than Sam’s single-minded attentiveness alone.
Sam looked carefully around, making sure that the Elf wasn’t in range to spring out of the undergrowth beneath their noses like a rabbit bolting from its warren. “Only that I wish he’d leave me alone when I’m making a bite to eat!” he finally whispered, and Frodo threw back his head and laughed. “I’m in earnest, Mr. Frodo,” Sam added, half-reproachfully. “He’s the farthest thing from a bad cook himself, especially for field cookery. There’s not a hobbit in the Shire would turn up their nose at that roast duck he fixed yesterday, and I’ll tell anyone who cares to hear it. Tasted all the better for not having to be the one to clean and dress it, for that matter. But there’s no call for him to be hovering and asking questions all while I’m trying to make wild onions and whatever roots Strider’s dug up into something worth eating. It puts me clean off my nerves to have him looking over my shoulder with those gimlet eyes of his.”
“You could ask him to stop,” Frodo suggested. He had at least stopped laughing, though there was still a pronounced glint of mischief in his face that he likely thought he was doing a fair job hiding. Well, he wasn’t.
“Mr. Frodo, I don’t see how I could,” Sam protested. “You weren’t there to hear the lecture Gandalf was giving the other two, when he first popped up. ‘He’s a very fierce warrior, Master Peregrin,’ he said, ‘born a long time before you were ever causing mischief. Don’t meddle with him or you’ll find yourselves wishing you had stayed well beneath his notice.’ I’ve been as far from meddling with him as you could ask for, and I’ve caught his notice anyway. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed the experience, and I’d be grateful to un-catch it.”
“Well I don’t see how you mean to do that,” Frodo said. “Maybe his hovering has distracted you, but for your information he seems to have taken quite a shine to you. In any case, sort it out when we break camp! No one is cooking anything anymore, not now that Aragorn has decided we are too exposed again for a fire to be safe, and I mean to get some sleep before Gandalf has us all on our feet again, too soon for comfort. If he’s giving you trouble about stale bread and cheese, wake me — but until then I am going to stop thinking about food, before I make myself miserable, and I suggest you do the same.”
Sam threw his hands up, thoroughly rattled. Still, it was true enough that there was no good to be gotten from woolgathering at present, so he laid out his small bedroll and sat on it for some moments, rather chilled despite wearing nearly every layer he had with him, and looked around. Most of them were either asleep or preparing to be so, though Legolas and Boromir, who were taking the first watch of the morning, sat alert at the ends of their little camp. Nearer to Sam and Frodo, Merry and Pippin were already curled up, sound asleep, and in the middle of the camp the strange Elf sat, talking again with Gandalf in low tones. Seated as he was, mostly in the shadow of a low oak, it was easy enough for Sam to watch without being watched, and some of the inquisitiveness he had developed over the summer before they set out was rising again. Gandalf’s back was turned to him, but he had a fine view of the Elf’s face, and could finally give him the scrutiny his sudden appearance had warranted.
Tall, he was, even for an Elf — Sam had had opportunity to get used to being surrounded by Big Folk in their time in Rivendell, but this stranger had an inch or two even on Strider, which made his looming all the more disconcerting. His clothes were as travel-stained as all of theirs, but fine and seeming warm enough beneath, though the cut was odd even to Sam’s eyes, and at his side he wore a long straight sword in a carved sheath that must have been nearly as long as Sam himself was tall. But what drew the eye most was his face. The features were fair enough, Elven-sharp and seeming really neither old nor young, as Lord Elrond’s own had been, though where most of the Elves of Rivendell had been pale as Legolas this stranger was nearly as brown as Sam himself. And his eyes — gray, maybe, though that same queer light seemed to fill them as had Glorfindel’s, making it hard to meet them straight-on. Merry enough he seemed at times, and yet more and more often there was a rising heat about him, like the subtle sense of danger just before a pot boils over. Sam found he would far prefer he, and Frodo and all of them, be well out of way when the water got truly hot.
As he sat watching, the Elf suddenly glanced aside, and Sam found himself locking eyes with the stranger, helpless to look away as a mouse before a garter snake. It might only have been for a moment — certainly Gandalf seemed to take no notice — but Sam felt ever after that hours or years might have gone by and him none the wiser, trapped in under that white-hot gaze. Then the Elf turned his attention back to Gandalf, and Sam, ears tingling and no longer feeling the least bit chilled, burrowed as quickly as he could under his meager blankets. Frodo stirred beside him at the motion with a half-asleep inquiry, but settled again as Sam patted his shoulder. It was some time before Sam could follow him into sleep, though.
They all woke in the late afternoon, sore and cold and, with the exception of the Elves and maybe Strider, poorly rested from a long march through the previous night and too-brief hours of sleep in the middle of the day. Pippin was complaining loudest of all, though Merry and Frodo, laughing, reminded him that late to bed and late to rise had been his professed hours of choice all through his tweens. But despite Pippin’s outrage, and the others’ clear amusement, Sam felt oddly that he hardly had the heart to join in. He sat quietly by his pack while they broke down the camp, until early in the evening they set out with the sunset away to their right no more than a smudge of red and purple through the trees.
The clouds kept them from the sight of the stars all that night, but through the stranded layers Sam caught a glimpse from time to time of the Moon, nearly full and bright enough to show as a faint silver glow in the relentless dark around them, and it made the going a little easier. Only a little, though, and before long Sam found himself drifting from the middle of the company, where he and Frodo had begun together, toward the end where Legolas bringing up the rear kept him from being left behind altogether. A stop for water and a bite to eat at the crest of a particularly steep incline gave them a chance to reorder the file, but to Sam’s great astonishment Frodo pushed him ahead, where Strider and Gandalf were leading the group with the strange Elf close behind them.
“You go on, Sam,” Frodo insisted, when Sam made to protest, “Gandalf is in a rare mood to dispense lore, and my head is too full of Elven kings now to fit any more history. You’ll have to pick up the slack, and educate me when we stop in the morning.” So Sam had found himself padding quietly along, listening with all his ears. Not that there hadn’t been tale-telling aplenty in the warm wide Hall of Fire back in Rivendell, but somehow Sam had never managed to keep his eyes open through all the many verses of Elven singing, on the nights it had been put to use. There was at least a little less danger of him dozing off on his feet, though he was tired enough to be half tempted.
They swung back out from the little clearing by the side of the path onto the trail again, Strider in the front and Gandalf and the strange Elf close behind, with Sam padding softly behind them, just within earshot. He had to follow rather closely, for neither of them were speaking very loudly, but the Elf’s step, while lighter than it should by rights have been for one of his stature, was still heavier than Legolas’s or even Strider’s, and Sam found that by placing his feet very carefully he could time the sound of his own pack rattling to keep pace with the strange Elf. He had a sudden urge to get his listening in as quietly as he could, not wanting to miss a word and not wanting to be observed either.
”Turukáno built a city in the mountains, you said,” the Elf was saying as they trudged on. Aside from the slightest lilt of an accent unlike that of any other Elf Sam had met, he seemed to have adopted the common speech of the West quite easily. “I suppose I can guess what has happened to it.”
Sam didn’t think he’d ever heard bitterness from an Elf before. It was odd, and made him uncomfortable.
“Fallen, yes, though by a different doom,” Gandalf said. Sam had to strain to hear him over the sounds of their company passing along the narrow trail, and he too sounded different — half like an Elf-lord in his own right, Sam suddenly thought. “Gondolin — Ondolindë, as Turgon its king named it in your tongue — was for many years the fairest city in Beleriand, where Sindar and Noldor together built a shining realm among the high mountains that they say rivaled Tirion-upon-Túna in all her glory. Great warriors lived and died there, too many for me to speak of now, though I suppose some of them would have been familiar to you if I knew the High-Elven names. There for many years Turgon ruled, and his daughter Idril, and with them his sister Aredhel Ar-feiniel, the White Lady of the Noldor, and her son Maeglin.”
It was a long story, made longer by frequent interruptions, but the gist of it, as best Sam understood, was this: a great Elven-king had built a beautiful city, and had been betrayed by his nephew, and the city had fallen. It had been hard to keep quiet, hearing about the king’s poor sister and her poor orphaned son, and harder still to keep quiet when the king’s nephew had turned traitor and laid all the high towers in ruin and ash, and when the whole thing was done Sam wasn’t sure whether he was more inclined to hit something or to burst into tears.
“And the survivors?” the Elf only asked, when it was done, as though it weren’t enough to make a stone weep.
“They settled in Arvernien, by the mouths of Sirion, and there Eärendil married Elwing daughter of Thingol’s heir, whose sons were Elrond of Rivendell and Elros Tar-Minyatur of Númenor,” Gandalf said, and in the flow of great names Sam caught the familiar ones with a bracing shock that woke him up at once as he tried, with some difficulty, to reconcile the kindly face of the Lord of Rivendell with the story of terrible loss he had just heard.
“You said Númenor was a land of Men, of great kings of Men,” the Elf said, after a very long pause.
“So I did. But perhaps I should leave the telling of the land of Númenor to the heir of the Númenoreans.” Sam, barely finished processing that first shock, found himself thoroughly out of his depth as Strider fell back to rejoin the others, picking up the thread of the tale where Gandalf had left it. It was still too much for Sam to properly put together in his mind: that the odd, taciturn Ranger who had been seemingly more mud and moss than flesh and bone when they met him in Bree could be allegedly, a prince or lord of his own folk. But the longer he spoke the more it seemed to make sense, of a sort.
Lord Elrond had told the whole story over in Rivendell, of course, and Strider’s voice seemed to take on some of the same reciting tone that Sam remembered from that morning. More than once his ear caught on a phrase that seemed if not identical then at least strangely familiar, as the story settled a little more firmly in his mind. But more than the words themselves, as Strider told the story Sam caught more and more of the grief in his voice, the mourning for a great land and people lost beneath the waves even as the bright realm of Gondor rose from the ruins. If Gondolin had been a great city, Númenor had been a land of city after city like it, and yet all of them were now lost beneath the waves, and their like would never come again. It seemed a grief too great even to put to words.
“Am I to be relieved that it is not only my own people who have been dogged by disaster?” the strange Elf asked, dryly, but with a sudden weariness beneath it. There was no response from the others, and for several moments they all walked on while the quiet sounds of the woods settled around them. After some time the Elf added, “You spoke of my – you said the name of Tyelperinquar of Eregion, among those who opposed your Enemy.” For the first time even Sam could hear something that he afterwards said sounded “really alive” in his voice, though he was hard-pressed to explain what he meant. “I am not fool enough to suppose he has escaped the ruin that seems to have thoroughly consumed the rest of his kin, but I would know more of his fate, if you are able to tell me.” The words themselves were perhaps harsh, but Sam, who by now had had some experience with Gandalf’s own quick temper, guessed there was something else lurking beneath.
“If you like. It is not what I would call pleasant listening,” Gandalf warned, but the Elf only laughed.
“What, O reverend fellow-messenger, has been pleasant listening of all you have told me so far?”
Gandalf spoke so lowly then that Sam, walking more silently than he ever had in his life, was still hard pressed to catch the whole story. The Elf made no interruptions at all as Gandalf told of an Elf-lord of Hollin, not far from where their path now led them, a marvelous clever worker with his hands as his father and his father’s father had been before him, and of his friendship with the dwarves and of the forging of the great Rings. Gandalf’s first story had been a new one to Sam, and Strider’s history had been much the same as Elrond’s during that long morning of talk. This one was familiar in a general way — the secret enemy among the great Elven jewel-smiths, the hidden Ring that carried so much weight, and was weighing down poor Frodo now — but the Elf had evidently asked about one of the craftsmen in particular, and the story that Gandalf told was drawing out the shape of a person, who had long ago done great deeds and made beautiful things and had died defying his enemy to the last, never giving up the secret of the three Elven-rings he had hidden.
They walked in silence for a long time after that story was done, which was all to the better. Sam didn’t think, personally anyway, that he could have stood to hear another like it. Away in the east there was beginning to be a slight gray in the black, heralding a rest and the end of that leg of their long night march.
“And the other two?” the Elf finally asked. With a start Sam realized that the queer note in his voice was not unlike that of a man who has been weeping, silently, and he wondered a little at the change. The stranger had been all sharp edges and too-bright smiles ever since he had appeared, and to hear grief from him — a grief Sam had only ever heard in some of the songs of Rivendell that the Elves had sung for themselves, in their own tongue — gave him something of an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps the stranger should have been left to hear his tales alone.
Gandalf seemed not to share his sympathy. “Secrets are best kept when only their keepers know of them,” he said, low, sharp as Sam had ever heard him, putting Sam in mind of old Mr. Bilbo’s voice whenever he told of the great dragon of the Lonely Mountain. The Elf only laughed, weary and humorless.
“If you think me a blind enough idiot to miss a lit torch two feet from my eyes, I rather wonder that you think I have anything to contribute to this company of yours. But I will hold my tongue, if you think there are ears in these woods less friendly than those of our own merry band.” He did not turn, and indeed made no sign at all that he was speaking to Sam, but a feeling came over him all the same, rather like those silver-gray eyes drilling into his own, that it had mattered very little in the end how quietly he stepped. There was no anger in the awareness that washed over him — indeed Sam felt a touch of dry amusement, if anything — but it made him uncomfortable all the same, and he slowed a little as they went forward, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Well, what did you learn?” Frodo asked, when they made camp that morning in a nest of close-growing thornbushes that Strider seemed to think would do for a temporary hiding-place. “Even if the answer is ‘nothing’ you will still come out ahead of me; I have had my head full of Pippin’s chattering all night and have escaped knowing rather less than when we started.”
Sam marshaled what he did recall of the many long tales, but after the first few sentences he found himself faltering, strangely tongue-tied. “It was a great deal of talk, Mr. Frodo,” he tried at last, “and a good deal of it rather hard to follow, especially seeing as they weren’t always using the same names, talking to each other. But I don’t know as I could tell it how they did if I spoke every kind of Elvish under the sun — not in their way of speaking. It was as though they felt it, more than any of us might, if you take my meaning.”
“Good old Sam! Of course I do. In fact I sent you on ahead of me because I didn’t feel that I could stand to listen any longer.” Frodo sighed, stretching and windmilling his arms to work the tension out of his shoulders, and Sam made a note to himself to see what else of the shared gear he could slip out of Frodo’s pack and into his own at the next stop. “Well, if it is important I suppose Gandalf will tell us all eventually, and if not, no need to think overmuch about it now. Whatever clouds there may have been in ancient days, the sun is still shining on us now, and that is something of a comfort.”
He sounded as though he was trying to convince himself as much as Sam. But that, Sam decided as they settled in to rest for the day, didn’t make it any less true.
Hall Twenty-one, Khazad-dum, 14 January T.A. 3019
Silence had fallen over the great hall of Moria perhaps an hour ago, and even the last stirrings as Sam had struggled to find a comfortable position on the flat, cold plane of the living rock beneath them had long since died away. To Frodo, his own breathing sounded horribly loud in his ears, in the dead stillness of the cavernous black vault above them, but still he strained his ears for any sound of distant footsteps, or any sign that they might not be alone in the dark passages of the mines. He’d heard the echo of soft feet far behind them more than once, but that night in the great hall there was only the faint whistle of stale air moving through the smooth pillars. In the other chambers where they had stopped, they had been enveloped in pitch black from the moment Gandalf’s light went out, but here from time to time the air seemed to move of its own accord, and Frodo found, as time passed, that toward the far side of the hall there was the faintest hint of light, growing over time, and proving just enough for him to make out some slight differences in the depth of the shadows, as the moon finally rose over the mountains far above them.
He had been straining his eyes into the black, trying and mostly failing to make out the lines of the high columns they had seen for a moment, when far away in the direction they had come from he suddenly saw two pinpoints of light, pale and shining in the long corridor they had left earlier that night. Frodo would have sworn that the tall Elf who had joined them a week out of Rivendell had stretched out on the far side of their group, where he and Gimli had been talking quietly for hours, but perhaps — Legolas for one could move unheard when he wished, and certainly in the pitch black of the hall Frodo might easily have missed even someone so imposing as their new companion —
“Narthan,” he whispered into the stillness, and the two points of light vanished as though they had never been there. On the other side of their little company the Elf sat up, that fathomless light glimmering deep and faint in the wells of his silver eyes.
“All well?” the Elf said, very softly, and Frodo heard a quiet sound that might have been his hand going to the hilt of his sword. Pippin, in a fit of daring, had once asked if it carried any great name or story like Gandalf’s Glamdring or Aragorn’s Anduril, and the Elf had only laughed, fingers trailing over the patterned sheath.
(“It is not quite like theirs in name or lineage,” he’d said, which to Frodo’s ears had not been an outright denial, but had kept Pippin busy suggesting increasingly outrageous names until he fell asleep, despite Sam’s furious attempts to hush him.)
“Yes,” Frodo whispered back, feeling more than a little foolish. There had barely been anything there, and it was likely a trick of his eyes from so long sitting in the dark. “I thought I saw — nothing, I suppose. Forgive me for waking you.”
“Nothing to forgive. I was awake already.” There was a pause that Frodo, in anyone else, might have called hesitant. It felt nearly impossible to apply the word to the bright-eyed apparition that had unceremoniously joined their little company, though, and he was more reminded of the way a hawk might seem to hang in the air before plunging to seize some small creature on the ground. “In fact — I have had my fill of lying flat on my back staring at the ceiling. I think I will join you for the watch, if you have no objection.”
Frodo said that he had none, which was true in its essentials, but nevertheless he still felt a little uneasy around the stranger. Certainly there was no air of malice about him, as he had felt in the presence of the Black Riders, and there was that same clear clean light in his eyes that Frodo had been so easily able to trust in Glorfindel. Indeed if Glorfindel had seemed to him a valiant lord of a noble house, this stranger seemed as one who might command dozens like him as easily as he breathed. But where Glorfindel had been merry, and Frodo had only seen the white-hot wrath beneath for one dream-hazy moment on the road to the Ford, in this Elf that same heat seemed only ever an inch or two below the surface, and to Frodo’s eyes it seemed only to be growing. For a moment, beside the pool at the western gate of Moria, he had thought it might finally break out in earnest, a grief and a fury so great it might have boiled the Sea dry, but the fire had been banked again almost as quickly. The Elf had let Gandalf thoroughly exhaust his patience in guesswork before getting to his feet to examine the archway, and then he had said a single word and the doors had swung open before him.
After that he'd been shockingly withdrawn for the best part of the journey under the mountains, only breaking his silence to ask Gimli the occasional soft question about the endless halls around them during their short rests. More often he marched toward the back of the group, his slow soft tread often lost under the sound of the rest of the company as they walked. But Frodo had never really rid himself of the feeling of watchful silver eyes on him, and he had been glad when they stopped in the hall and the Elf had gone back to drawing out as much of the history of Moria's delving as Gimli knew or was willing to share. Until he had offered to share the watch with him, he had in fact not said a single word to Frodo for the best part of their journey through the silent passages.
Now the Elf sat cross-legged beside him, a little apart from the others, and for a long time more there was no sound in the hall aside from their breathing, and the breaths of the others sleeping nearby. Frodo felt himself beginning to drift in time and space again, and in the hopes of at least giving himself something of an anchor, and something to do, he drew Sting from its little sheath and laid it across his knees, turning it this way and that to try to catch the faintest hint of light.
Beside him the Elf stood suddenly, only the whisper of his clothes shifting and the rush of air as he moved giving him away in the dark, but the soft thump of boots as he began to pace was unmistakable. “Did you hear something?” Frodo whispered, scrambling to his feet as well, and the strange Elf went still, peering down at him.
“No,” he answered very quietly. “Not as such.” Frodo heard more than saw him lower himself to the floor again, and soon after that he heard the restless tapping of long fingers light upon the polished stone. “Though you feel it also, no? The weight of this place does not sit easily with any of us, I think, and I am perhaps less able to bide still beneath it than your folk.”
“Maybe,” Frodo said a bit doubtfully. “But hole-dwellers as we are, I think even we are better suited to more light and less bare stone. I would be far happier in any shack above ground, and I think my friends would say the same.”
“Oh!” The Elf laughed, softly, and for a moment Frodo thought there might have been days, now far in the past, when such laughter came more easily to him. Then it was gone. “Yes, I suppose the halls of Moria are not to everyone’s taste, though I think I might happily spend many years of the Sun mapping out their ways. But I did not speak of the tunnels and shafts themselves. Some shadow yet haunts this place, though the bones were fair once and may yet be again.”
“Orcs?” Frodo asked, glancing around at the deep shadows, though Sting still lay dull in his lap. In truth the pale-shining eyes he had seen only an hour before and the soft padding footsteps that had followed them all through the tunnels were closer to mind. The Elf only let out a long slow breath.
“Perhaps. There is a familiar note that I still do not understand, though foresight was hardly ever a great skill of mine. All the same, I can think of very few things, none of them pleasant.” He turned his gaze on Frodo, eyes narrowed very slightly, glittering with more than the faint trickle of moonlight. “But perhaps the line of fate will have another odd turn in store for us. It seems to do so, around you.”
“Not by my choice! I would not have asked for such a chance —” Frodo protested, bristling a little defensively.
“I meant no insult,” the Elf said quietly, and Frodo, aware that his voice was beginning to rise above a whisper, fell silent. “Of course I can think of few who would choose such a burden, and none who would do so wisely.”
Despite telling himself that the opinion of a stranger who had joined their company only a week prior mattered very little to him, Frodo found himself asking with no little relief, “Then you think it just that? Not — a tool, or a weapon?”
The Elf scoffed, a harsh little breath that sounded loud even in the cavernous vault around them. “Should a man treasure a blade that slew his son? Let the steel go to some better use and be forgotten with the one that forged it. A rabid dog on a fraying leash is more useful, and I wager safer and more pleasant to the bearer.”
“You speak as one with no fear of him,” Frodo said, half amazed at the Elf’s boldness and half wondering at the flash of real feeling that had seemed to animate him for one moment.
“What good can fear do me now? What more do I have to lose?” the Elf asked, a harsh note coloring the words. But Frodo felt a sudden flash of perceptiveness rush over him, and coming so close on the heels of what he was certain had been truth, the words rang false and hollow. It was well-delivered bravado, but bravado nonetheless.
“I am afraid,” he heard himself say, very softly. “But if I had nothing left to lose, I think I should have nothing left to strive for.”
The Elf looked him over for a long minute, silent, still. Even the restless tapping of his fingertips on the cold slick stones had ceased, and Frodo very nearly quailed under his scrutiny. “Well,” he finally said, “we should count ourselves fortunate that the one with the greatest part in this plot has the greatest hope of its success. And perhaps when the hope has run dry, you will have wrath to drive you in its place.”
Frodo shifted a little uneasily. He felt neither particularly hopeful, nor particularly wrathful — at least not enough to accomplish anything of such magnitude. “Perhaps,” he said, a bit doubtfully. “But whatever else, I have given my word to the Council, and to my companions, to see this quest to its end.” To his surprise, the Elf laughed quietly, neither merry nor mocking.
“Oh, that will certainly do it,” he said softly. “So, so. I have taxed you enough for one night. Let me take what is left of your watch in payment; I will get no good from dreaming tonight.”
Frodo made a token protest, but really there was very little that appealed to him about sitting quietly in a dark room straining his eyes and ears for the faintest hint of a threat, and the Elf seemed better suited for the task as well. He felt his way back to his bedroll and stretched out awkwardly on the stones, and fell into uneasy dreams before long — flashes, scarcely remembered in the morning, of flames licking up stone and wood alike, of thick smoke shrouding the black heat of old embers, of a bright sword glittering red in the firelight before suddenly falling into darkness.
Some of those faint memories trickled back to him, with the hazy uncertainty of dreams, as the rest of the horrible day wore on. His recollection of the waking hours was scarcely better, between the rush of the fight in the Chamber of Mazarbul and the terror of the long flight to the eastern gates of Moria, but a few moments stood out clear as crystal, though he spoke of them only rarely in years to come. The High-Elf had fought beside them with such fury that many of the Orcs had turned tail and fled rather than face him, and he and Aragorn and Boromir had together accounted for more than enough to gain them a little breathing space. Three in one blow he slew before they broke and ran, and where Frodo lay struggling for breath against the wall of the chamber he caught for a moment a glimpse of the tall Elf springing into the red torchlight, seeming to blaze with a light of his own. A snatch of song flashed unbidden into his mind, caught perhaps in the long hours in Rivendell or in Bilbo’s poems — burning with a white flame, as one who returns from the dead. Then he had other things to consider, as their company turned and ran in the other direction, Aragorn pausing only for a moment to catch him up from where he lay with his head still swimming.
The final stand at the bridge, the sudden and utterly unbelievable loss of Gandalf: all these passed in a tumult of grief and terror and pain. The tall Elf had sprung to Gandalf’s aid as readily as Aragorn and Boromir, though none of their valor proved enough to save him in the end, and as they left the broken span of the causeway he had been tireless in the rearguard, catching up the other hobbits when they happened to stumble in their desperate flight through the lightless halls. But Frodo had caught a glimpse of his face as they finally burst from the eastern gate into the pale, cold light of the morning beyond, and it seemed there were yet some things that all the wrath in the world had very little answer for.
Western border of Lórien, 15 January T.A. 3019
In the end, it had been Gandalf’s decision to allow the second king of the Noldor, returned suddenly from death itself like a fire-eyed messenger of doom, to join their company. Aragorn had at first been in favor of sending him back to Rivendell for Elrond to deal with, but Gandalf had said that for him to be sent back to the land of the living at all was indication enough that he had a part to play in their quest, and Gandalf had had the final say. Then it had taken a few very long days and nights of fumbling Quenya to teach him their common language and to give a brief account of the thousands of long years that had stretched since the days of the Trees of Valinor and, most of all, to impress on him the absolute need for discretion in the presence of a descendant of Elu Thingol’s court. But to his credit Curufin Fëanor had taken to a new tongue like a duck to water, and had seen at once the threat that Morgoth’s lieutenant now posed to all of them, and had agreed to hold his peace as to the matter of his name and lineage in the presence of the grandson of Oropher of Doriath. He was a willing and competent helper in the camp, a tireless pair of eyes and ears on watch, and a terrifying opponent in battle, and he was by some miracle slowly winning over both Gimli, who was pleasantly astonished to find an Elf both knowledgeable and interested in matters of craft, and Legolas, who was to all appearances pleased enough to not be the only one of his kind in the company to care very little about any other differences. Even in the depths of Moria, faced with the creature that if legend were to be believed had brought him low so many thousand years in the past, he had stood firm between the bridge and the Ring-bearer, though he had looked as gray and ill as the rest of them when they finally emerged from those cursed halls into the cold foothills of the mountains.
And yet, for all these commendations of character, for all that Aragorn could far too easily imagine their quest failing at point after point without the sword and the keen mind of Fëanor at their side, sent by the Valar themselves to their aid — Aragorn could well wish him on the other side of the Great Sea again. Perhaps Gandalf had indeed meant for their path to lead them east to Lórien, but that should have been Gandalf’s concern. For his part, Aragorn would have given anything at his disposal not to have been the leader of the company that brought Fëanáro son of Finwë beneath the eaves of Laurelindórenan.
“I could still slip away and meet you on the eastern edge of the woods.” Aragorn blinked wearily up at the sound of whispered Quenya to meet an all-too-keen silver gaze. For one moment he allowed himself to imagine the simple bypassing of one more trouble — the breathing space of a few days, only a few days, beneath the golden leaves without having to feel the pulse of their little fellowship at every moment for the first outburst of the implacable violence that haunted all memory of the Elder Days. To allow himself only a little time to consider their next course, to learn the weight Gandalf’s loss had left so suddenly on his shoulders — and then, gently, he shook his head; allowed the dream to pass.
“You would never reach the borders of the woods without being marked by the sentries,” he whispered, just as softly. Even he and Legolas could never have hoped to evade the marchwardens of Lothlórien in their own lands, much less this great glowing warrior with his heavy tread. “And even you could not fight off all the hordes of Moria lying in wait beyond, not alone.”
There was a set to Fëanor’s jaw, as though he very much thought he could, but after a moment all he said was, “Neither can you, if Artanis and her husband deny you sanctuary for bringing me under their roof. Better one than all.”
It was, Aragorn could admit, a thought that had crossed his own mind more than once as they had made their way deeper and deeper beyond the borders of Lothlórien. Long years — joyful ones, as much as they could be — had fostered in him a deep respect for the grace and wisdom of the Lady of Lórien, and he had never seen her moved to intemperate or unconsidered action. But he had never seen her confronted with such a question — certainly no one could fault her for deciding against them. Surely the danger of the Ring falling into the hands of Orcs must take precedence even over the oldest of grievances. But if the ruling were only against one of their fellowship – Gimli at least would hardly brook the insult to one whom by now he held in high esteem, and Boromir would only have his worst suspicions of Lórien confirmed. If all three were to leave them together, then the duty of Elendil’s heir would be to Minas Tirith, but the duty of the leader of the fellowship would be with the Ring-bearer, a question Aragorn had been vainly hoping would be answered for him ever since Gandalf had fallen in the dark of Moria. For a moment a wave of weariness crashed down upon him so suddenly that his head swam, and he had to put out a hand to the smooth floor of the flet beneath him to keep from falling.
“I can only trust that the Lord and Lady will understand what need has brought us all here, and make no decision that will end in ruin for us all,” he finally said, the words tasting dead in his mouth. Fëanor only made a noncommittal noise, deepening the pit in Aragorn’s stomach even further.
“Artanis has been able to hold a grudge longer than she could remember why ever since she was knee-high to her brothers. But let it be a problem for the morning.” He turned away, stretching out on the floor of the flet, and folded his arms behind his head and was still.
At his side Legolas, lying near the edge of the flet with a hand trailing through the leaves, lifted himself up on one elbow. “What were you speaking of?” he asked softly. Aragorn fought the urge to wince.
“Lothlórien is a strange country to him,” he only said, and hoped it would pass muster. Thankfully Legolas’s expression brightened a little.
“I hope we will have the chance to learn more of it together. Our dwarven friend may have distracted him with the cursed vaults of Moria, but a proper Elf should love the woods as well, and I have already been warned to see to his education in that regard. Between minding the Dwarf and schooling our tall companion, Haldir has been laying all sorts of charges on me tonight.” Legolas paused, thoughtful, a small frown creasing his brows. “I have never met one of my race so far removed in years, or in speech — the Sindarin of Mithrim has not been heard on these shores since my father’s father was young. But now I have journeyed with one of the great lords of the West-Elves, and climbed the golden mallorn-trees of Lothlórien, and that alone will be matter enough for tales aplenty if I ever find myself beneath the leaves of my own woods again. Forgive me — you are weary,” he said suddenly, taking Aragorn’s stricken unease for nothing more than the exhaustion that lay just beneath it. “Good night! May the clean air of Lórien give you rest well-earned and much-needed!” He lay back and to all appearances was lost in the paths of dreams again in moments.
For all his good wishes, Aragorn felt sleep elude him for much longer. Of course it was no difficult matter for Legolas to have guessed already that their strange companion was an ancient lord of the Noldor, and in any case the deception had little life in it now – it was beyond hoping that the Lady Galadriel would not know her father’s brother again. But the hope still lingered that by some miracle their tenuous fellowship would not be split so soon upon the rocks. Aragorn’s last thought, as he finally fell into an uneasy doze, was a final wish that Gandalf had not been taken from them so soon – not even to leave the course of their company in another’s hands, but only missing his sharp wit, which would have been a comfort even in such uncertainty.
Aragorn woke still ill at ease, only worsened when they reached the secret paths of the Naith of Lórien, but he had thought the trouble neatly headed off by sharing the inconvenience among them all. Legolas had grumbled, to be sure, and even in the depths of winter the woods were fair enough that the loss of sight was keenly felt among them all — but the air of Lothlórien was still sweet, and the ground easy and level, and in the end it seemed a small price to pay for safe escort and goodwill among them all. Legolas even forgot his irritation long enough to play translator between their rearguard, who spoke no Westron, and Fëanor, who spoke only a little Sindarin and nothing at all of the tongue of the Elves east of the mountains. Whether by good fortune or by skillful management, their conversation never strayed into dangerous territory, and soon Aragorn found himself even able to let their words wash loosely over him and forget everything but the soft path beneath his feet and the scent of the living grass and the faint, faraway sweetness of elanor and niphredil. At least until Caras Galadhon there might be peace.
They had a quiet night, and for the better part of a day walking was nearly as restful as sleep. Already the air of Lothlórien was soothing the worst of Aragorn’s unease, and it seemed that in those quiet golden woods not even the worst memories of the Elder Days could truly trouble them. Then a company of warriors passed them, coming from Caras Galadhon and bearing greetings from the Lord and Lady and freedom for all of them to walk the rest of the way with eyes unbound — save the Exile who traveled with them. Aragorn, standing near Haldir and catching the first mutterings of the verdict, felt his newly won calm evaporate in an instant. There would be an outburst, and they would be fortunate to escape without steel being drawn or blood being shed, and he would be responsible for the first kinslaying among Elves since the last days of Beleriand, since the days before the founding of Numenor itself —
Haldir was going down the line, unbinding their eyes one by one, and Aragorn stood stock-still as his blindfold was finally removed, hardly daring to breathe. Lórien was spread before him, as beautiful as it had been nearly forty years before, and all he could do was brace for the thunderstorm to break. Soon only one of them was still blindfold, and Haldir paused for a long moment as though unsure of himself. Aragorn would have felt sympathy if there were room in his heart for more than dread. Gandalf would never have made such a choice, he knew suddenly — Gandalf would have found some way around, as he had in leading them through Moria, and as in Moria he would have at least made sure that none but himself ran the risk of his choice going awry —
“By the orders of the Lady, all the Company is to walk freely in our land,” Haldir was saying, slowly, as though reluctant to go on. “Save the one she names her kinsman, to whom she sends welcome and greetings, and her hopes that he will learn something of foresight along the way.”
Once, caught at night in a storm north of Fornost, Aragorn had seen lightning split a high lone tree on the next hill in a gout of white flame that shot from crown to root in a single instant, and had felt the hair-raising, crackling tension that seemed to stretch for years before the heavens had broken open into light and sound. For a moment the same heart-pounding feeling returned, waiting for the storm to break. And then the crackling anger of the firebrand king of the Noldor burst into a small laugh.
“Your gentle Lady has learned only a little of subtlety in her insults since we measured days by something fairer than the Sun,” he said, as though it were a thing of little weight in the end. “Well, a fine hypocrite I should be if I denied her right to command as she pleases in her own court.”
“You shall not bear the insult alone!” Gimli sprang in hotly. “I will accept no courtesy from these wood-wights that has not been extended to you.” And as Aragorn stood there, still reeling from seeing their ruin pass so closely before his eyes, Gimli immediately put a hand over his eyes and began to feel in his pack for the kerchief he kept there, paying little heed to the rising mutter of their guards. Legolas already appeared ready to argue on behalf of his people, and Aragorn could sense a fight in the offing, for the second time in nearly as many minutes.
Before he collected himself enough to intervene, though, Fëanor himself stepped in. “Peace, peace, son of Gloin,” he said, “if you share my blindness, who will be left to describe the woods to me?”
“Our law exists so that only those with the leave of the Lord and Lady may know aught of the secret ways of Lothlórien,” Haldir said, a bit disapprovingly, but then he sighed. “But it seems clear enough that the Lady’s decree here has all to do with her knowledge of you, and little to do with your knowledge of our lands. Rest or wander as you like upon Cerin Amroth, with what company you like! Only return here before dusk.”
And at last the tension left Aragorn, all in one great rush, and the sunlight on the golden elanor and silver niphredil seemed, for the first time since leaving the black gates of Moria, to warm him through to the bones without a trace of fear or doubt. The sweet waves of long-past years bore him swiftly away, leaving all the anxiety of their journey behind for a little while, washed away in the memory of dark hair and eyes gray as the clear twilight turned to him in love and deep knowledge.
Many hours it seemed when Haldir returned with Frodo and Sam to gather them for the march, though the golden light of the afternoon still shone for a little longer on the heights of Cerin Amroth. The last leg of the journey was far more brief by comparison, all the world around them seeming to fall into a dream as they passed away into the gloaming around the heart of the land. On either side of the road lights were beginning to spring from the trees, faint flickers of silver and gold in the blue shadows, and night fell on the heart of the fair land of Lórien.
At the foot of the dwelling of the Lord and Lady the guards met them with greetings and permission for their lone blindfolded companion to walk once more with free eyes, but Aragorn’s anxieties only rose once more. He had more faith now in the Lady’s wisdom, and in Fëanor’s own ability to keep his temper in check — but if Celeborn were to raise objections to the presence of a kinslayer beneath his roof, things might yet take a turn for the worse.
Haldir went first with Frodo beside him. The others were given leave to follow at their own pace, and almost at once they separated into two groups: Haldir and Frodo in the lead, with Legolas and Fëanor close behind, and Aragorn joining them out of a morbid desire to at least see their impending disaster with his own eyes. It was a long climb, made longer by lingering apprehension, but even in the woods of Lothlórien, where the stream of time seemed to run in strange eddies and curves, there was eventually an end to the waiting. As night came soft and dark upon the forest they came up through a last flight of stairs to the great flet of the Lord and Lady of the Golden Wood.
To each of them Celeborn offered greetings, knowing their names and whence they hailed without needing to be told — save Fëanor, at whom he only glanced coolly. And it was Galadriel who turned to him with the gracious smile that she had passed to her daughter Celebrian and her daughter’s daughter Arwen Undómiel and said, very gravely, “Welcome, my kinsman and friend, to our woods. Many long years have sundered us, and yet I hope that as the last of our people on these shores those years might also have brought us closer than we have been before.”
For a moment Fëanor stared silently at her, as the breeze blew softly through the golden mallorn-leaves above them. Then he smiled, rueful and soft. “Hail and well met, Artanis,” he said, and bowed in the odd old courtly way that Aragorn had only seen Elrond use from time to time. And with the last test finally behind them, Aragorn let himself set down the nagging fear that he had carried for so long, and did not take it up again.
Caras Galadhon, 16 February T.A. 3019
Aragorn woke before dawn without being aware that he had fallen asleep. He was still sitting beside the fountain where they had held their final debate, damp with dew and quite cold and stiff, and in the dim gray light before the sun cleared the horizon he could see the rest of their company fast asleep beneath the nearby pavilion. Save one — as he looked up, stretching sore limbs, Fëanor paced into view on the other side of the lawn, seeming deep in thought. He had sat to one side during the previous night’s debate, speaking very little save to cast his vote behind whatever the Ring-bearer should choose, and looking darkly under his eyebrows at the rest of them as they spoke. But Aragorn had thought that at the end of the discussion he had gone off to sleep with the others, and it had not seemed, at the time, to carry much weight to him. Whatever the cause, something seemed to be carrying a great deal of weight with him now.
“You have been restless,” Aragorn said in a low tone, as he took in the many overlapping circles of long strides, dark in the dewy grass. “Is all well?”
Fëanor lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. “As well as it can be.” After a moment, he conceded, “I have been talking with Artanis. Certainly a less restful way to pass the night than in dreams.”
Aragorn meant to leave it there. But he was weary already, and the previous night’s debate had left him with more questions and confusion than answers, and there was always a chance that the most lightly spoken word might finally provide him with some sudden solution to the questions of their route that still loomed first and foremost in his mind. “What did you speak of?” he asked, and hoped his indecision might not be immediately obvious.
Fëanor glanced at him curiously for a moment, but Aragorn kept his face impassive and the scrutiny passed as quickly as it had come. “Only of our ancient home, and of our kin long gone, and of news that I have missed which Olórin perhaps had no chance or inclination to impart,” he said. With a sudden flicker of sharp-edged laughter in his eyes he added, “And of how furious her husband was to be forced to give me a boat, even a small one.”
Celeborn had not looked at Fëanor even once as he made the offer of boats to take them down the Great River at least as far as the Falls, but Galadriel had, giving him a single slight lift of the eyebrow that thankfully had gone unnoticed by everyone else. Aragorn had spared a moment of guilt at the time for the raising of old wounds, but he was entirely too grateful for the intervention to make any sort of protest. And, if he were to be fully truthful, he could see the slightest glimmer of humor in it as well.
In lieu of taking a side in an ages-old fight that was none of his concern in the end, he only asked, “Your course still lies with us down the river?” Fëanor had of course said words to that effect in the previous night’s debate, but that had been early on, and for the hours after he had merely sat quietly and listened as some of the other members of their company had succumbed to weariness.
“I can hardly stay here.” Fëanor shot him a piercing glance, appraising though not quite passing judgment. “Are you having second thoughts about your own route?”
Gandalf had kept his own counsel in many things, and whatever plans he had had for their fellowship were now lost with him in Moria. Aragorn at least had no intention of making the same mistake. “I will not abandon Frodo to complete his task alone. But I have a duty to Minas Tirith and to the people of Gondor, and it goes much against my heart to leave one for the other.”
Fëanor gave a noncommittal hum. “There will be few people left in any country, if this renegade Ainu is left unchecked.”
“Who knows it better than I?” Aragorn asked, hearing his voice grow a little sharper than he’d meant. Still, the words had sounded rather like an accusation.
“So, so.”
There was a pause, filled by the distant chatter of birds sensing the coming dawn from the trees all around them. “You and the Lady have mended all your differences, then?” Aragorn found himself asking, more to fill the silence than anything else. Fëanor raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth ticking up slightly.
“All of them? No. But we are both too old now to sit in the winter of our people and argue about the slights of springtime.” That was a rather different response than Aragorn had been led to expect from the old lore and the old songs, and he found it in himself to be amused as well as relieved at the change, amused enough to give voice to the thought. Fëanor only laughed, as dry and sardonic as ever.
“Oh? Then take this answer instead: my anger has been too keenly brought to bear against one great enemy to admit any other.” That, now, was more in line with the legends.
“A fortunate thing for us all that Celeborn seems to have adopted the same approach.” Fëanor snorted softly, an oddly undignified response.
“Lucky indeed.”
Another thought suddenly came into Aragorn’s mind, in a similar vein, though admittedly one that had been nagging at him for far longer. “You and Legolas are as close as ever, though,” he said, keeping his voice carefully light and low in an effort to test the waters before diving fully in.
“Does he know, do you mean?” Fëanor asked with a slight cock of his head, utterly ignoring the effort at subtlety. Well, it was better to have the thing out in the open in the end.
“The question had crossed my mind.”
“If he does, he has made no sign of it. And moreover, he seems to show very little interest in the history of his people or mine, mind more on what is than what was. Perhaps he still knows too little of the long-past ages to even suspect.”
That, to Aragorn, seemed doubtful — his knowledge of Thranduil of the Greenwood was mostly a matter of reputation, and from long conversation with Elrond and others who had known him longer, but even from hearsay the Elvenking had never seemed the sort to let go a grudge, least of all one so ancient, or to allow any child of his to let it go either. But anything was possible, and certainly if Legolas did know the identity of his fellow-traveler, it would have become quite apparent to all of them in the instant. Aloud, he only said, “There are worse faults to have, in these days of darkness. A little shortness of memory can be as much a gift as a curse.”
Fëanor’s expression said otherwise. “Not one I can respect, as much as it seems to be working to my benefit now. At any rate, his memory seems to be long enough to regale me with every detail of these woods and those that bore him.”
“If you dislike his company so intensely, we can of course put you in another boat, and inflict his discourse on Boromir instead.” It was something of a struggle to keep his countenance, and of course it would be a shame to separate Boromir from Merry and Pippin if Fëanor were to call his bluff, but —
“Gimli is fond enough of his prattle,” Fëanor said rather gruffly, looking out into the woods rather than at Aragorn, “and I’ll not leave him to suffer that fate alone.”
“As you will,” Aragorn said very gravely. Really he was highly amused and not in the least surprised. The three of them had been all through the city of the Galadhrim together in the days since their arrival, and while Gimli had always returned to their pavilion in the evenings, Fëanor had often spent days and nights together with Legolas among the people of Lórien, and had seemingly picked up a fair understanding of the Silvan tongue and a taste for Silvan cooking along the way. It would be a pity to see that swift-growing friendship killed in the bud. Then again, if Gimli had been willing to take up with the son of Thranduil, perhaps the son of Thranduil might extend the same easy acceptance to the father of the sackers of Doriath.
It was a problem for another time, though. They were leaving Lórien that morning, and there was still much to be done before setting out, and far more to be concerned with afterwards than age-old strifes. Perhaps Fëanor did have the right of it after all — neither to forget, nor to raise the ghosts of the past to life, but only to look forward to the new work to be done. Certainly that was never in short supply. Together they went to rouse the others and take their leave.