ANNÚMINAS
by Soledad
Disclaimer: The characters, the context and the main plot belong to Professor Tolkien, whom I greatly admire. I'm only trying to fill in the gaps he so graciously left for us, fanfic writers, to have some fun.
Rating: G to R in different chapters, for violence, angst and m/m interaction. Nothing too graphic, though.
Warnings: This is a male pregnancy-story. If that grosses you out, do us both the favour and go away. There are many other wonderful stories for you to read.
And a special plea to grammar pedantists: Dear people, as you probably know, I'm not a native speaker, So, if you truly are that much offended by my spelling, regardless of how many times I tried to eradicate the stubborn typos, there are only two sensitive things you can do about it: a) offering to proof-read, and b) hitting the Back button. Hm?
Summary: Not so long ago, I started an AU, based on my own Boromir-series, ''Fall Before Temptation'', with the significant difference that this time Boromir does not die, but gets the girl instead – well, sort of. In exchange, many of the other canon characters had to bite the dust, and the fate of Middle-earth became a very different one - though Sauron still has been defeated.
This is a stand-alone story – an AU inside an AU, if you want – which I have written because I simply could not resist the topic. So many fics are out there, in which beautiful, androgynous Elves – presumably Legolas – get pregnant and behave like crazed women. I wanted to do something different. Didn't want to ruin the original story, though, so I wrote it independently.
Still, it might help if you read my AU story, ''Seal On My Heart''. However, that story has not reached its end yet, so if you don't want to read the events out of order, you'll have to wait a few Ages until ''Seal On My Heart'' is finished. I can't offer you a deadline for that, sadly.
Dedication: to Altariel, who wanted a humour fic to my AU. I cannot promise that it will be very humorous, though.
And now, on we go!
CHAPTER 1: THE KINGDOM NEED HEIRSRating: PG-13
Author's notes:
This story is a sequel to my AU, ''Seal On My Heart''. It starts roughly a year after the Ring War. Sauron is overthrown, Arnor and Gondor are reunited – but a little differently than the good Professor Tolkien had imagined.
[The 22nd day of Gwirith(1), in the year 3020 of the Third Age]
As he stood and looked at the magnificent walls and towers of the recently re-built Annúminas, the Sunset Tower, rising sheer above the quiet murmur of the light evening breeze on the smooth surface of Lake Nenuial(2), Aranel(3), High King of Arnor and Gondor, saw the very fabric of over three thousand years of history.
For these stones and stairwells, corridors and ramparts had been witnesses of the lives of the powerful and dispossessed, the rich and poor of generation after generation. Here it was that Kings had been made. And broken.
Annúminas, the Tower of the West, had been built by Elendil himself on the shore of Nenuial as the first capital of Arnor, and served as such for several hundred years til it had been deserted because of the decline of Arnor, and the court removed to Fornost.
A whole Age had passed since the City of Elendil had been raised first, with its strong walls and great, white towers, a dream of power and beauty, as it was custom among the Lords of Westernesse, who always built for eternity. The Men who had once built it, were long gone, yet the walls, carved into the living rock of the mountains, remained, and as the High King walked around on the ramparts of his newly-rebuilt fortress, it seemed him easy to imagine it still echoing with their presence. Every step he took now, they had taken themselves.
It helped a lot, of course, that the newly-built city looked very much the same as it had nearly three thousand years ago. The High King made sure it would. He still could remember the old city, after all. Though fairly young for his own noble kin, he had already been here. Several times, in fact.
At the time of his first visit, the city had hardly been two hundred years old. He remembered the great halls of the royal palace, with its beautiful murals and woven cloths, the high, narrow windows with their pictures made of stained glass, the marble-paved floors and the silver-and-golden mellyrn murmuring in the Queen's garden.
But more than anything he remembered the smooth, shimmering dark surface of the chief palantír of the North, resting on a low, round table of black marble in a central depression, so that it could at need be revolved by hand. Hardly more than a young child back then, who sneaked into the secret Chamber of Sight in his father's wake unnoticed, the Seeing Stone seemed huge and intimidating to him(4).
One of the greatest – and most pleasant – surprises during the reconstruction of Elendil's city upon its old foundations had been the discovery of the Seeing Stone in one of the deep pits, where it must have rested forgotten and undisturbed for over two thousand years. Now it had been returned to its original place, under the great, silver-covered dome of the royal palace, where only the Kings and their counsellors had entry, and properly seated again. It had a new warden, one of the Elven folk, who could use it and care for it properly, and prepare it for the Kings' use by need.
So many years had passed since the foundation of the first city! Kingdoms, were born and divided and reunited and overthrown, royal Houses of Elves and Men were founded and had perished, Dark Lords rose and were defeated… Who would have thought that – after two Ages – kingship would return to the elder line, and that his own Final Choice, made of love only, would raise the twin kingdoms of Men once again?
Certainly these kingdoms were quite different from the old ones. Arnor and Gondor now both had their own Kings, as in Elendil's times, who ruled as vice-regents of the High King himself; but final decision and the ultimate power lay in his hands alone. For he was the only one of true royal blood; the one with the rightful claim for High Kingship – the only now-mortal Lord directly related to Tar-Minyatur(5), first King of Númenórë.
He shivered in the cool night breeze and wound his richly-embroidered, heavy velvet robe tighter around himself. Things had been changing so fast, and he still was a little unused to such swift changes. Living as a mortal proved a noble challenge, indeed.
He felt the approach of his seneschal ere he could have heard the light Elven footsteps. Having become mortal changed little of his skills, at least... and his foster brother had been around him since his birth. Long enough even for Elves to grow close.
"What is it, Erestor?" he asked tiredly.
"'Tis late, my Lord," the Elf bowed slightly, "and I do believe that your spouse would require your presence. Tomorrow is a difficult day for both of you – he would need reassurance."
The High King raised an elegant eyebrow. Just like his forefather Dior, from whom he borrowed the name he chose for ruling, he was very beautiful, for the blood of three races (the Edain, Eldar and Maiar) flowed in his veins, and this small gesture made him look even more impossibly young.
"He said naught when I left."
"And in his stubborn pride he never would," Erestor smiled; his Lord's youthful beauty, that served the High King so well when dealing with mortal subjects or allies, had little to no effect on him, of course. "Yet trust me as one who had spent the last twelve centuries in the bond of matrimony when I say that he needs you. These will be trying times for him; for his pride even more so than for his body."
High King Aranel sighed. His seneschal, chief counsellor and ever-faithful foster brother was right, and he knew that. His beloved spouse, the vice-regent of Arnor had agreed to endure unnumbered indignities for the good of their kingdom and deserved all the support he could give him.''
"I know I am being selfish," he admitted ruefully, "but I truly needed a moment of solitude. Things are changing so fast, Erestor, I can hardly cope!"
"The more reason to go to him," Erestor insisted. "He knows more about being mortal than the rest of us together. He was born that way, after all!"
"And he was born with his volatile temper as well," the King added with a small sigh. "I cannot imagine how much worse it shall become once the mood swings would come…"
"Oh, but I think I can," Erestor laughed. "I only need to imagine ten times worse than when I enter your rooms unannounced. Fortunately, as an Elf I still am nimble enough to avoid all the heavy objects thrown at my head."
They both laughed with the easy familiarity of years unnumbered spent in each other's company (including even short seasons of intimacy during their youth long gone), and guided theirs steps towards the palace, for indeed, the High King had wandered off rather far, almost 'til the gatehouse, and they needed to walk around half the fortress to reach the royal wing.
"What about you?" the High King asked. "Is Lindir still nagging you to allow him taking the risk?"
"He is," Erestor nodded, sobering swiftly, "and when I imagine him swelling with our child, there are times I almost become weak enough to let him… But he is so fragile, both in body and in his gentle heart, I could not bear to endanger him like that."
"Do you believe I bear it easily?" the High King replied bitterly. "That I would risk this if we would not need heirs of our own flesh and blood?"
"I know you would not," sighed Erestor, "but King Aratan(6) is, at least, a strong Man… a seasoned warrior, used to many kinds of hardness."
"Yet he, too, still is a male," the High King interrupted, "and male bodies are not meant for such thing. How I wish the foolish laws of Númenórë would not demand me to be the father! Even as a mortal, my body would adapt more easily."
"That is true," Erestor agreed, "for regardless of your Final Choice, you still are an enhanced being. But what we cannot change, we cannot change. Fortunately, both your father and your sister are due to arrive tomorrow. Between them and the heren istarion(7), we can hope that everything will go well."
"I do hope it will," Aranel sighed. "'Tis bad enough that he had to leave his beloved city because of the narrow-mindedness of his own people and to come and dwell with me here in the far North – now I have to risk his life, too, just to satisfy the needs of those very people for a dynasty."
"He knows the risks," Erestor offered mildly, "just as Lindir does. And just as Lindir, he wants to do this. Not only for the peoples of the two kingdoms… but for he loves you and wants you happy."
"I am happy!" the High King let out a frustrated growl. "I would be happy if he still were the Heir of the Steward of Gondor and I his consort… and I fear that he, too, would be more happy like that."
"That I do not believe," reaching the royal palace, Erestor stepped aside to let his Lord enter first. "No matter how cautious you were, one day people would have noticed that there was more between the two of you than friendship alone. He would have become an outcast, and that would have broken his heart. You are better off here, in the North, where the Dúnedain had been close enough to us all the time to understand the different kinds of true love."
"I know," said Aranel sadly; "still I wish I could love him without taking him away from his home."
Erestor stopped in the middle of the corridor and gave him a very serious look.
"My Lord, if I have learnt aught from the admittedly not always easy years of my marriage, then this: home is wherever the one dwells whom our heart loves. 'Tis true for Elves as well as for Men, I believe. Your spouse needs not a place – he needs a person. He needs you. This is the only thing you can – and should – give him: your love. Aught else can be solved as you go."
The High King smiled at him, his mood lightening a little.
"You are a wise Elf, Erestor. I am grateful that I could persuade you to remain on these shores a little longer and support us in bearing the burdens of kingship."
"I am an Elf," Erestor replied simply, "I have time. The Sea can wait a little longer. And I am not weary of Middle-earth yet, either. There still is so much to see, so much to learn. And now that so many of our folk are leaving these shores, I am less needed in your father's court than I used to be."
He stopped at the entrance of the royal wing and bowed slightly, like a young tree in a light wind.
"Have a peaceful night, my Lord. Day shall come again, and then the clouds would look less dark then, I hope."
TBC
(1) April. Following the Steward's reckoning as used in Gondor, I use the Sindarin names of the months (30days each), originally used only by the Dúnedain.
(2) Also called Lake Evendim. Lay in Eriador, near the south-eastern slopes of Emyn Uial.
(3) Means ''royal star'' or ''royal Elf'' in Sindarin, according to Robert Foster. Was one of Dior's surnames.
(4) In ''The Unfinished Tales'' Tolkien ponders over the measure of the palantíri and says that the Stone of Annúminas might have been a small one, like that of Orthanc or Minas Tirith, while Amon Súl should have had a large one. I dare to disagree with the Great Maker in this. Annúminas was the capital of the whole empire – the Stone of the High King could not have been a lesser one than that of Osgiliath.
(5) Who was, of course, no-else than Elrond's brother, Elros.
(6) Means ''royal Man'' in Sindarin. Isildur's second son wore this name.
(7) Plural form for Istari, or wizards.