Standard disclaimer: Most of the characters, locations, etc. contained within are not mine but are the property of their respective authors, Robert Jordan and J. R. R. Tolkien. No copyright infringement is intended by their use in this story. Sthenn, Amatya, Ciriel, Risha Dumai and Deanna Sing are the property of this author. Daughter of the Nine Moons Riyath is nominally mine, but in reality she is basically Tuon—I originally wanted to use Tuon in this story, and would have done so except that according to my timeline, there is no way Tuon could have been alive (this story is set about a thousand years after the events in the Wheel of Time series). The poem Elrond recalls at the end of the story was originally written by Diane Duane and included in her book The Romulan Way. Again, no copyright infringement is intended by its use in this story.
Author's note:I started this story immediately after I finished and posted Rare Ould Times, essentially because I felt that the question of what happened to Elrond, Celebrian and Arwen had to be answered. If you haven't read Rare Ould Times, then I strongly suggest you do or else this story will absolutely not make sense. This story took about a year to write, then was mostly done but languished inside my computer for want of two scenes that needed finishing. Recently I've been experiencing some serious writers' block, so I decided to haul it out, finish the two scenes and post it as a means of hopefully breaking through the block. I'm not happy with it; Rare Ould Times was a strange story to begin with and this one is just as strange, and perhaps even less polished, but basically it was post this story now or never post it, so I decided to post it.
I repeat what I said in the intro to Rare Ould Times. This is a LOTR/WOT crossover that is mainly a flight of fancy. WARNING: CONSIDERABLE LIBERTIES ARE TAKEN WITH BOTH CANONS. If you are a devoted Tolkien fan, or a devoted Wheel of Time fan, then this is probably not the story for you. In my experience Tolkien fans tend to be more passionate about their fandom, but this warning is aimed at both fandoms, particularly because this story is not Winter's Heart-compliant (yes, it's been languishing for that long.) If you are not a canon hound and are capable of taking your fandoms with a grain of salt, then come on in.
"And what of the King Stag when the young stag is grown?"
--The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
The sun had gone down and the night was falling fast as the ten double chevron formations of the First Raken Flight swept up the Bruinen River toward Rivendell Garrison; they were scouting ahead and providing an honor guard for the to'raken flight carrying the Daughter of the Nine Moons Riyath Rehhei Kore Paendrag—or rather, High Lady Riyath, for she was traveling under the veil. The to'raken flight was about a day or so behind them; the First Raken Flight was traveling high and fast, to prepare the way for their followers. First General of the Air Briande Duchen Paendrag—who over a thousand years ago and in another life had been first Celebrian, Lady of Imladris, then Celebrian, da'covale shea dancer, then morat'raken Briande, then der'morat, then Supreme Der'Morat'Raken and now, for the last hundred years First General—tightened her grip on the reins to Yaiak, her raken, and adjusted her helmet to try and keep the light drizzle from getting in her eyes. Yaiak was hers; he had been given to her as a gift from the Empress's personal breeding dens, after her last raken had died. It was one of the privileges of the rank of First General of the Air—a rank that had been created especially for her by Empress Yi-ming after her performance in the Second Jianmin Incident. She was the first—and only—First General of the Air there had ever been, although if the rumors she had heard were right, there was another promotion in the offing for her. It mattered little to Briande. Promotions had long since lost their luster for her; she had had so many of them during her career, and she was so high already, that another change of title was almost meaningless. Although if she did get a promotion, she mused, it might open up another slot for those behind her. Those behind her. Yaiak bobbed in a brief swirl of air currents as a raken detached itself from the double-chevron formation that followed in her wake and drew up alongside her; she did not have to look—although she did—to know whose it was.
Supreme Der'Morat'Raken of the Ever Victorious Army of Seanchan Arisae Minabet Paendrag—who had enlisted, over a thousand years ago, as Apprentice Morat'Raken Arwen of Imladris—and her backrider Sthenn Kimail, one of the very few male morat'raken, pulled alongside her, matching Yaiak's speed and altitude precisely. Arisae lifted her hands above her head—complicated speech would have been difficult to impossible at this distance, at least for mortals if not for Others—Elves, as we are called here, Briande reminded herself; she kept forgetting—and flashed sign language at Briande—Land here.
Briande shook her head and gestured back: No. Five more miles minimum.
Arisae glanced back at Sthenn. They appeared to exchange words for a moment. She gestured again more forcefully. Land here. Dark; rain. No further tonight.
Briande shook her head and gestured back in her turn, with emphasis. No!
Arisae rose in her stirrups then and shouted across the gap, secure in the knowledge that they were far enough ahead of the rest of the flight that their words could not be heard: "You may go on if you wish, but if I give the order….." She said no more; she did not need to. She stared hard at Briande across the space between them, her gray eyes like stone. Behind her, Sthenn smiled.
Briande's fingers tightened on Yaiak's reins, till her nails dug into her palms. She hesitated for a long moment, then cursed under her breath. "Land the flight, Supreme Der'Morat'Raken Arisae Minabet Paendrag," she replied, her voice cold; Arisae—Arwen, for so Briande still sometimes thought of her, though she knew better than most how Arwen had ceased to exist the moment Arisae had gained her new name—smiled slightly, then sat back in her stirrups. A twitch of the reins, and she and Sthenn dropped back to the rest of the flight and flashed the hand signals.
As Yaiak led the spiral toward the wood and stone barracks and stables of Rivendell Garrison, looming as dark shapes in the slanting last of the evening's light, Briande was cursing under her breath the entire way down.
Elrond of Imladris—Elrond of the Others, as he was known by most of the Seanchan who lived, worked and carried out their business on what was still, after all these centuries, nominally his land—watched from the shelter of his front terrace, standing with his arms folded as the flight of raken spiraled down to the place where the Seanchan camp—thrown up with such haste by High Lady Suroth's forces in the first days over a thousand years ago—had ossified into wood and stone barracks.
Gandalf was gone. After the fall of Mordor a thousand years ago at the hands of the Ever Victorious Army, the Istari had headed as far east as he could go in an attempt to get away from them; under Seanchan law, as a man who could perform magic—or channeling, as the Seanchan called it—he would be subject to execution if he was ever discovered. Elrond had heard nothing of him since he had left, but hoped occasionally, with what shreds of hope were left him, that the Istari had been able to evade capture.
Gandalf was gone. Aragorn had passed his limit of years and fallen into dust over ten centuries ago. Boromir had returned across the sea with the Seanchan and had not been seen since, although Elrond had heard tales that he had risen to Banner-General in the Ever Victorious Army during the war the Seanchan called "Great Tarmon Gai'don," had been raised to the Blood of Paendrag, and at the end of the Seanchan's war had been able to retire a very famous and wealthy man; though he too had died a millennium ago, Elrond could still hear the young pikemen in the barracks singing the praises of "Ol' Thunder" Boromir. No longer a land of death and destruction, Mordor had been turned into a thriving mining province which every year sent tons of iron ore and steel by boat and to'raken across the sea to Seanchan. Gondor and Arnor, the lands Elrond had hoped would be reunited by Aragorn so long ago, were now another province, as was the Shire. The lands prospered and thrived; soon after the Seanchan had consolidated their grip on Middle-Earth, the inhabitants had learned that these strange, insect-helmeted people were willing to more or less let things run as they always had—as long as nobody resisted.
That lesson had been taught to the Riders of Rohan, about a hundred years after the War of the Ring; or what the Seanchan called Little Tarmon Gai'don. Elrond had stood—on this same terrace—and watched, as the Ever Victorious Army had gone out, heading with lopar and raken and pikemen and damane, toward the plains of Rohan; had watched, a short time later, as cages of newly made da'covale from Rohan were brought through Rivendell on their way to the Seanchan docks, to go across the sea to Seanchan. He had not known what da'covale were, before then. He had not understood, when Celebrian had told him….when Briande had told him. Seeing it, he felt he could understand a little better, the story of the woman who had been his wife. He might have tried to help the Rohirrim, to resist somehow, but the Seanchan Blooded Lord in charge of the campaign against Rohan had made it very clear that he was allowed to keep Imladris only on sufferance; Galadriel, he had heard, was allowed to maintain control of Lothlorien in the same fashion, once the Seanchan sul'dam had tested her and found that she was not affected by their shining silver collars—their a'dam. Apparently that meant that she was not a damane, and therefore worth dealing with.
Still, he might have tried to help the Rohirrim, except…except…somehow, he seemed to no longer care what happened around him. The War of the Ring—Little Tarmon Gai'don—had cost him his wife, his daughter, and one of his sons; Elladan had crossed the Sea in a Seanchan ship at the end of the war, to be—so he had told his father—a soe'feia Truthspeaker to one of the High Blood, and remained there. If he had not been killed fighting what the Seanchan called Great Tarmon Gai'don, on the other side of the world. The War of the Ring had cost Elrond almost all his family, but more than that, it had cost him the entire world he knew—the world he had spent three thousand years building. And there was a deeper cost, a cost that had fallen hard upon all the Others—Elves, he had to forcibly remind himself. It had cost them the Land Beyond the Sea. The cost of that stifled, frustrated longing—for instead of to Valinor, the Undying Lands, as they had thought and dreamed, any journey beyond the sea would only bring them to the shores of Seanchan, to the docks of Shon Kifar—had driven many of his kind to despair, and even to death; Haldir had been one such who had died in that fashion.
The effort of finding the will to survive in such a changed, such a strange world had drained almost all of his energy and strength, and left him too exhausted to spare much of a thought for anyone else. So he had simply stood—as he stood now—and let the da'covale cages pass on beyond the boundaries of Imladris. After all, what could he do? He had seen what happened to the proud who took on the Seanchan Crystal Throne.
Now he stood, head tilted back, and looked up at the shapes of the rakens—black against the color draining from the night sky—as they spiraled down to the landing field a distance away from his front terrace. Then stopped and narrowed his eyes, straining to see through the rain and the lowering dusk as the light declined, cursing inwardly as a flare of hope lit his chest.
They had come back. After a thousand years, they had finally come back.
Celebrian and Arwen.