Song of Distant Stars

Chapter 1


The glade was cool and dim, the only illumination golden drifts of sunlight between trees in full summer-leaf. Celeborn lazily opened his eyes, as the warmth at his back shifted and a low laugh vibrated through him from the one who lay curled around him, steel-silver hair covering their nakedness.

"We should get back, how long does it take to find a lost horse?" The deep voice voice was drowsy, reluctant. Fingertips drifted across Celeborn's hip, closed lightly over the ridge of bone, digging in slightly as the King of the Teleri sighed and kissed the nape he had just exposed to his mouth.

Celeborn watched a bee make its drunken way between tiny clumps of a bright yellow flower, its body velvet soft as he reached out to gently stroke a finger over its back. It buzzed at him, and crawled down into the depths of the flower as he smiled and dipped his head, silently inviting further caresses from that warm and knowing mouth. Shivering as the hand travelled up that delightful place where leg joins body, he pushed his hips back into the cradle of Elu's. He felt the warmth between his beloved's thighs stir, though they had loved but moments ago, and he thought again how lucky he was, how blessed, to have found a love of which he could never grow tired, a desire that would never be sated.

"She had wandered far, ere we sought her," he said. "It could take all day to find her. She is your best mare. I think bringing her back may safely justify a night spent searching..." The words trailed off on a gasp as Elu moved more firmly against him, breathing across the sensitive tip of Celeborn's ear.

The king's voice was muffled as he trailed his lips down the side of Celeborn's neck, "Ai, you do my conscience no good at all, but you taste of summer, and I would fill my cup ere we return." As he spoke, Elu turned his lover onto his back, bending his head to take the youth's mouth with his. His body settled atop Celeborn's slighter one.

Wrapping his long legs around the King's taut waist, the younger elf smilingly murmured against firm lips, "Still tempted to return before nightfall, hir nin?"

But Elu was no longer in the mood for speech. He growled a response against Celeborn's nipple, making him squirm and tighten his thighs, toes curling with pleasure at the weight and warmth that pinned him down, the slow progress of tongue and lips over his skin. Talk was forgotten, all thought of returning to their people lost once more as the late afternoon sun gilded them, elegantly sculpted forms, entangled among the soft grass of the forest floor...


Celeborn woke abruptly, tangled in the light covers of his bed, his gasp loud in the night-shadowed room. Held fast by the power and vividness of the dream, he lay a moment, his heart pounding and his body tense and aroused. At his window, a light breeze lifted the light silk covering. He blinked and drew a deep steadying breath, somewhere between laughter and a sob. The curtain! It was wind blown silk, and not the warmth of a sword-calloused hand which had caressed him.

Shutting his eyes, he forced his mind from the stab of emotion. Too deep to bear, too deep even to gaze on; at least, not now, now while he was still drowsy, still wrapped in the enchantment of that scene.

Slowly, untangling himself from dream-wound sheets, he sat, brought his long legs up so that he could hug himself, resting his chin on his knees. Night was slowly slipping toward day, and his hair was touched by the fading light of Isil; a spill of silver, warmer against his skin than the chill, empty bed.

Shutting his eyes, he gave himself up - just for a moment - to the bright comfort of the dream. It had never happened, he and his lover had never lain together in the warmth of Anar. He had never watched that big hand trace a shimmer of gold over his skin, until the light of Aman that ever lit his king from within melded with sunlight and blinded him with its beauty.

What madness was it that scant years after Galadriel had sailed, he was visited by dreams of a lover and a beloved in Mandos these many centuries? He had not dreamed of Elu in millennia, not while Noldorin gold had slept by his side, her slim body pressed to his. It would have been a betrayal. Was it not a betrayal even now? Yet it was not the first time, nor even the fifth. It had become a regular thing, a haunting.

"Ai, Elu!" he said, and rested his head in his hands, to block out even the watching walls of his empty room. "Please... Why now after so long? Why must you plague me now?" Tears pricked against his palms as he dug his fingertips bruisingly into his face. "No more pain. Enough! I was not permitted to keep you, and I could not keep her. Why mock me with what I may not have? Leave me be!"

Quiet music threaded into the night from the courtyard outside, mingling with the rain-like music of the fountain. A love song. Some fool - probably Elladan, who was far too poetic for his own good - was sitting in the trees below his window, playing an ancient, plaintive duet from Doriath.

Celeborn shook his head, water-bright hair flashing in the moonshadows. He was being melodramatic. Clearly he had merely conjured this image of the unattainable out of music and silk, and his own loneliness. There was no need to look further, or suppose himself wound about by omens. When had he ever been a seer, after all?

Standing, he wrapped himself in a long robe, meaning to go to the window, look down over the empty beauty of Imladris. Now he was awake, the song would - perhaps - bring him serenity.

But as he turned, something caught his eye; a flash of crystal in the soft shadows. He had not troubled to unpack since arriving in Imladris. The few personal items he had been able to bear bringing with him from Lorien still lay in his saddlebags, against the further wall. Last night, he had moved one of them, searching for a knife of Galadhrim design Elrohir had wanted to see. The pack he had moved fell open, spilling several items to the floor.

In the corner between clothes-chest and wall lay the source of that glitter. A keepsake, carelessly let fall. Only one end was visible, lying outside the deep shade, sparkling with a muted fire, throwing tiny speckles of reflected light across the floor. He knew it at once. If he moved closer, drew it out from its concealment, he would find a gull feather, soft and grey; the beads about its quill shaped by the very hands that had spread their warmth across his dreaming skin.

Celeborn stared at it, struck motionless, his attempts to explain himself faltering back into helpless awe. It must mean something. It must. But what? Ai, Iluvatar! What did it mean?

Gathering himself, he walked the few steps to where the feather lay, mercilessly eloquent, soft as the shadows which covered it. As if he tempted some wild creature to come to his hand, he knelt quietly, reached out for it, tentatively; picked it up. Running his fingers over it, he watched as it flexed under the gentle pressure, as light from the crystals slid across his skin. Unable to help himself, the dream vivid in his mind, he brought it to his mouth, drew its softness across his lips and cheek.

Holding it, he looked down. Further back, in the darkness, lay the dull sheen of a stone blade. It was as though the past had come alive to beckon him. Trifles, kept out of sentiment, were suddenly become portents. Wood and stone spoke to him, but he did not know what they were trying to say. He knew only the stir of old memories. Absently, as if to soothe away a recent ache, he put a hand to his right shoulder, rubbed at a wound he had thought long healed.

As he did so, the fading moonlight flashed bright on the ring he wore. He blanched in horror. What was he doing!

Swiftly, he placed the feather back in the pack, stuffed the knife alongside it, closed and buckled the leather strap and turned his back on it. There. He had it trapped - the past, the dream, the haunting; whatever it was. Bowing his head, he raised his hands into the light, where the golden ring on his finger gleamed in the dimming starlight. He touched it, turned it, feeling its smoothness, the many little nicks and scratches which had softened its first glitter over the centuries, each one the mark of an experience that bound him to his wife; a long defeat, fought by the side of Galadriel.

The thought of her was no respite from pain. She too he had lost. She too had found something that enthralled her more than he did. She too he still loved, as he had sworn to do, until the end of time.

Closing his eyes, he conjured her image, the fire and gold that was Galadriel; a fire that had rescued him from this obsession once before, long ago. Yet through that image, as familiar as his own heartbeat, shone a deeper light, the colour of steel, mocking his attempts to forget it.

With a sound of frustration, he dropped his hand and turned away. Dawn was now touching the Eastern horizon and he faced it resolutely, turning his back on the West with all of his stubborn will. I have no time for dreams, be they living or dead.

Dressing quickly, he sat on the bed to don his boots. Braiding his hair deftly, he shook it back and stretched, easing the last vestiges of sleep from his muscles. Then he picked up his bow and quiver and left the room, letting himself out into the echoing corridor.


Anar was setting by the time he returned, a young stag slung across his saddle-bow. A day spent alone in the woods surrounding Imladris had settled Celeborn's sprits, and he sang softly to himself as he rode through the open gates, laying a gentle hand on his horse's neck. In the dimness of the stables, he slid down easily from the big stallion, and, setting the deer aside, turned to fetch grain from the bin at the end of the wide corridor.

No...

A figure stood in the dimness, further in, almost obscured by shadow. Slanting light from the doorway fell soft on the powerful line of his shoulder and neck, on the twilight hair, the colour of mist and early stars. His face was shadowed, but Celeborn did not need to see it to know who stood there.

"Elu?"

He had lifted a hand before he could stop himself, reaching out to touch, entreating; before sanity returned. Snarling in anger and pain, he clenched his fists, drove himself at the spectre - if this was a trick, its culprit would pay a high price!

But his onrush passed through air, particles of grain floating in shafts of light. There were chinks in the roof where birds had made their nests, a stack of loose hay, an empty barrel, and the wall. Cursing and shaken, he staggered backwards into the evening bustle of the stable yard and near collided with Arwen.

She laughed at first, the gems twinkling in her hair, and her grey eyes more starlike still. "Daerada! I saw you from the library window, and thought I would come to meet you. You had fine sport!"

Aragorn had gone to bring the King's Justice to Arnor, to visit Fornost and plan new cities. Arwen had chosen to stay in her father's house, visit her brothers and grandfather, and bless them all with her obvious happiness. Normally he would have teased her, knowing that she watched not for him, but for Elessar's return. But today the bond of love that lead his granddaughter into death seemed to resonate sickly within him, and he looked at her with stricken eyes.

She sobered at once, took his elbow in fine, strong hands, warm and real. "What is it? As Elessar's folk would say, you look as if you had seen a ghost."

"I have," he said, numbly. "Or something like it."

Straightening up, he scrubbed his hands across his face, took a steadying breath, and then looked at her again. She resembled Elrond, and through him Melian. Her mind was alike to that of Melian, of Galadriel, rather than to his own. At home more in the world of spirit and power than his own practical craft. It was a wisdom he had long known himself deficient in, one for which he had learned to lean on others. Part of his pride was that he knew his limits well, and was not ashamed to ask for help when he needed it.

Another was that he did not run away. From overwhelming force he might retreat, but only to regroup and fight on. Too long he had fled from these dreams, retreated before this haunt into helplessness. It would not do. Now he would take advice, and act, and run no more. Grandchild though she was, Arwen was Queen of Gondor and Arnor, powerful, intelligent and wise. What better person to turn to?

"I need your counsel," he said, quietly. "I cannot work this out on my own."


A servant kindled the fire in Arwen's sitting room, went around with a taper, lighting candles in their sconces. One of her ladies in waiting from Gondor brought in a tray with small savoury pasties, still warm from the oven, spiced summer pudding and cool wine. She sat herself down, unobtrusively in the corner, her raw-boned face and raven's wing hair an echo of Elros. The reminder was pleasing, or cruel, depending on how one looked at it.

"You may go, Indis," said Arwen, and opened the window. A steady drizzle had begun to fall, wreathing the distant trees in mist. The air blew in, soft and wet and fresh.

"It is not the custom in Gondor for the Queen to sit alone in her chamber with any guest,"said the lady, cautiously, biting off her thought incomplete. From the expression in her eyes, Celeborn could not tell whether she was going to say 'especially a man' or 'especially an elf.' It amused him either way.

"It is the custom in Imladris," Arwen smiled charmingly, waited, and at length the silence, and the regard of two pairs of elvish eyes, ancient and profound, drove her to leave, further protests unspoken.

Celeborn poured wine for them both, looked around at the fair room with its tapestries, red and gold, bright with light and the dancing warmth of the fire. There was a quiet patience in the very stones. Only recently had the song of this place taken on notes of joy. In the face of her loyalty, she who had waited for her mortal love most of his lifetime, he felt a little ashamed, reluctant to let her steady gaze examine his wildly unsteady heart.

"I am not a child any more," Arwen pulled her embroidery basket towards herself, pulled out the half finished trim for a tunic, worked in gold and copper thread. "There's no need to shelter me, whatever it is." She looked up, gauging whether her words had hit home, and smiled, radiantly. "Grandfather, I've always known you had faults. Mother used to list them, trying to persuade me not to go to Lorien for the summer. It never worked. It never worked for her either - we loved you anyway."

She certainly had her grandmother's way of seeing into the soul. He almost laughed at being read so easily. "This is a fault about which your mother was ignorant. I know not what she would make of it, but I fear she would take it ill."

"What was it you used to say to me?" Arwen found a green thread, measured off three handspans and snapped it off in her teeth. "Say it quickly. Then it will be out, and we can deal with it."

This time he really did laugh. Was all his advice so hard to take? He turned his face away from hers, looked at the fire, shadows racing over the embers, the hot, fierce colour. Took a breath, as one about to dive from a great height, and leapt. "I am being haunted by the ghost of an old lover," he said. "Someone I loved long before I met your grandmother. Who died a long time ago. Who I thought I had long since laid to rest. He will not let me be, and I do not know how to get him to stop."

She looked up, startled. Hurt, maybe. He cursed himself for speaking; for burdening her with this, when she had so few years left to live, and deserved to have them full of joy. But it was out now, and it must be dealt with.

"He?" Arwen asked, and he remembered she was much among Men these days. Men, who - being mortal - needed to breed, and who therefore had a low opinion of childless love. Why had he not found a different confidante? One whose good opinion he was not terrified of losing?

But he could feel only surprise, not revulsion from her, so he smiled ruefully, as he did when speaking of the drowned beauty of Doriath, or the small tales of his grandfather with which he had once entertained her in childhood. "Elu."

"Elwë? Elwë, the father of Luthien?"

"Yes," Celeborn admitted, fear leaving him, a strange, giddy lightness taking its place. "It was a brief thing, I suppose. We came together not long before the host of the Teleri reached the Anduin. We had perhaps fifty years in bliss. But then my mother found out." He shook his head, even now it made his voice shake to remember those days, the days of death, before Galadriel came.

"She made it clear to us that our love could not be allowed to continue. By various ways - I won't go into them - she persuaded us that the only decent thing to do was to part. And so we did." His fingers hurt. Looking down he found that they were twisted together, white knuckled, and the solid silver stem of his goblet was bowing slightly under their pressure. He was leaving dents in the metal.

"It was the worst time of my life. We left the river behind us and climbed the Misty Mountains - ah, they were raw in those days. Rough rock that cut through your boots as you walked, that took the skin off you if you fell. Bitter cold; killing cold." Laughing humourlessly, he put the wineglass down before he could damage it further. "Death, outside and in," he said, forcing the words out, though his throat was closed with remembered pain. "I remember wanting everything to end - the world to go away. I wanted the Eternal Void to swallow me. I wanted not to be, any more.

"I believe that Elu suffered too, but they kept us apart, so I know not, for certain. But I do understand that when he met Melian he had been alone and desolate for many years, and she healed him. Whatever else I might feel, for that alone she has my eternal gratitude."

"It still must have hurt!" Arwen's voice was soft, not with outrage but with pity. Expecting condemnation, pity seemed to unlock the spring of his grief, as though a thaw had come. Fifty years? Had it been so short a time? Yet they had been the only years of his thousands when he had been completely at peace.

"He disappeared," he explained. "I had time to think him dead, and to mourn him. When he came back he was changed. Taller, more radiant, more splendid; like a Maia, and I told myself that my Elu was now forever gone. That I should move on."

The embroidery lay disregarded across her lap. Now she moved it away and leaned forward to take his hand, the surprise in her gaze replaced by deep, healing compassion, as she read his mind and heart. "But you could not."

"No." He felt his eyes well with tears, turned back to the fire swiftly to sniff them back. "No. At first it was easier. I had also changed. While the King was gone, my grandfather Elmo ruled, and I aided him. I was now full grown, mature. Elu greeted the change with pleasure, and - I have no doubt - told himself that the beautiful youth with whom he had fallen in love was also gone, past recall.

It should have ended thus - a harmless youthful experiment, outgrown. But the truth was that before long I was as much in love with his new self as I had been with his old. My whole life became a battle against desire, against the dreams, against my obsession with him. So when your grandmother arrived in Doriath, like the sun arising in fire, and eclipsed him, I cleaved to her as if to sanity. We went East and left it behind us, and there it has stayed, until now.

Now she is gone from me, and once more he visits my dreams and haunts my waking hours. He is wed, and I am wed. Death and the Sundering Seas lie between us. Yet I love him still - I still love him - and I do not know what to do."

"Oh, Daerada!" Arwen rose and went again to the window. The drizzle had turned into a steady rain. Its chill voice chattered over the roof and through the many downspouts of the house with a peaceful music. But the damp was blowing in and splashes of water lay on the bright tiles of the floor, and the embroidered flowers of the bedcurtains. She closed the glass, and the rain beat on it like the wings of birds.

Returning, she went not to her seat but to kneel close to him, the fire's moving light casting shades of honey over her dark hair, turning the silver ornament of her grey dress into sumptuous gold. Leaning forward, she put her hands on his knee and rested her head on them briefly, as she had done in childhood. Without needing to think, he rested his hand on the spilled midnight of her hair. A benediction.

She looked up, smiling. "Now I understand why you never tried to separate me from Aragorn; why you never imposed the stupid conditions on our union that Father did. How I wish I had defied him forty years ago and run off with Aragorn as Luthien did with Beren. Elessar will never see those forty years again! Our time is so short, and I wasted it in duty."

She leant back on her heels, alight with a kind of fey recklessness, and now at last he could see himself in her. How ironic to pass on only one's worst traits. "Do you not regret it now, Daerada? Do you not rue giving up a love so powerful for the sake of a duty that is now long past? I would."

He shook his head. What a question! "How can I?" he said, "How can I regret a love which gave me Celebrian, which gave me you?"

Taking one of the little pasties she broke it open, nibbled on it thoughtfully. The fire settled, snapping, and the rain drew serpents on the window against the darkening sky. Scents of butter and spices filled the warm air. He took up his bent wine glass and drank in strange content, briefly eased.

"You know," said Arwen at last, in a drowsy, contemplative tone. "My blood descends from Elu Thingol, through Father, and from you, through Mother. Your lines met and mixed in me. In a way you could say that I was your child - his and yours."

Iluvatar! The thought hit him like an arrow, as sudden and as shocking. Oh, there had been moments of weakness in which he had thought it himself, right from the moment when Celebrian began to speak admiringly of Elrond, but to hear her say it! To hear her say it herself! He wrestled with the impulse to throw himself to his knees by her, take her in his arms and beg her not to leave him, not to take on Aragorn's fate. Don't die, Arwen! Don't die!

But he held it back, said instead, "In a way. Every love I have ever had has met in you, beloved daughter, and I am so proud of you. Even if you have not - with your vaunted wisdom - managed to answer my question. What should I do?"

Arwen laughed, though her eyes were suspiciously bright, brought almost to weep for his pain. He was glad now that he had shared this with her, shown her how much he trusted and valued her, before it was too late.

"You do not need my advice," she said gently. "You already know."

"I suppose I do," he admitted, thinking back on his attempt to beat the phantom back with his fists. "I need to confront the problem and solve it. But how do you confront memory? How do you fight the tides of your own soul - things unacknowledged for thousands of years? I am no expert on these inner battlefields; I have always done my fighting against foes of flesh, not of spirit."

"With any knot," Arwen smiled, "the best way to unravel it is to find an end. If you can find the place where this tangle all began, perhaps the next step will be waiting for you there. If there is such a place?"

A dry cave in the centre of a river; a storm of falling stars; the place where he had been lifted out of death by the hand of a Vala, only to wake surrounded by the love of a king. "There is," he said; afraid and excited, but no longer helpless. "If the earth has not swallowed it over the centuries. I will find it. I will turn and confront that which haunts me, and have the truth out of it."

"Whatever the answer turns out to be?"

His heart quailed at the thought of dishonour, the thought of madness, if he was not strong enough deal with this, to cleave to both love and duty. But he was a warrior, and knew better than to take the counsel of fear. "Yes," he said, determined. "The truth will be enough for me. Whatever it is."