Idril burst into her father's private study, but saw only Egalmoth standing beside the desk. Startled, he looked up from the papers he had been reading, his brow furrowing with sympathy when he saw her.
"Your Highness," he said, bowing deeply and hiding his discomfort behind courtly manners. "Allow me to offer my deepest condolences for your loss."
"Where is he?" Idril demanded, trying and failing not to sound desperately worried. "I heard -" her voice caught slightly, but she continued, "from Ecthelion, about what happened. Where has he gone, Egalmoth?"
"He told me not to tell you," Egalmoth said uncomfortably. "Insisted, in fact. He wishes to be alone, and he knew that if you found out where he was going, you would follow him." He sighed. "I think that he does not want you to see him grieve...this time."
Icy fear clutched at Idril's heart, but she summoned up all the righteous anger she could manage. "I am no longer a child!" she snapped. "He cannot simply let me find out about such things through rumor and hearsay, and then disappear!" She rounded on him. "I have to find him, Egalmoth! I cannot leave him to his own thoughts at a time like this! You were there when my mother died, you saw what he was like!" She could not bring herself to mention Aredhel; the pain of her aunt's death was still too raw.
Egalmoth winced, and set the papers down on the desk. "My lady, I understand your concerns," he told her, not meeting her eyes. "But he is going to bury his father's body, and he wants to do it himself. He has that right."
Idril gaped at him. "Grandfather's body is here? How? Where? Egalmoth, he's my kin too, I deserve to know!"
But her father's closest advisor and childhood friend just shook his head. "I gave the king my word that I would not tell you. I am sorry, Your Highness."
It was all Idril could do not to scream. Too angry to reply, she simply turned around and stalked out of the room, head held high and fists clenched at her sides. If Egalmoth knew, her father's other lords might also have some idea of where he had gone, and she knew she could count on several of them to be more tractable than the Lord of the House of the Heavenly Arch.
Ecthelion was exactly where she had left him, pacing back and forth next to the fountain in the front courtyard of her father's palace. The only difference was that Glorfindel had joined him, sitting on the edge of the fountain and watching his friend with concern. They both turned to look at her, and the guilt on their faces told her that she had guessed correctly. They knew.
Glorfindel jumped up from his seat as she approached them, bowing awkwardly. She wished he wouldn't; the three of them were all within a few years of each other in age and had been friends since Vinyamar, even if she was no longer quite as close to them as they were with each other. Ecthelion stopped pacing and watched her, balancing on the balls of his feet as though about to flee.
It was Glorfindel who spoke first. "I'm so sorry, Idril," he said, and she was grateful for his familiar tone. "The whole city is in shock - it was all so unexpected, losing the High King and the lords Angrod and Aegnor in one blow..." he realized that he was babbling and stopped talking, watching her nervously.
"Tell me where my father is," Idril asked in the steely tone she had learned from her aunt, looking from one to the other so that they knew she was addressing both of them.
Running a hand through his golden hair and staring at the ground, Glorfindel said, "He told us not to tell anyone. Especially not you." Ecthelion just stared at her, his face tense and unreadable.
Idril couldn't tell whether the "he" Glorfindel spoke of was Egalmoth or her father, but she was too angry to care. "That was not a question!" she shouted, feeling a stab of fierce satisfaction when Glorfindel flinched. "I am already well past the limits of my patience, and if one of you does not tell me where I can find my father and grandfather, I will beat the information out of you!"
Glorfindel reached out a tentative hand to touch her shoulder, then thought better of it and withdrew. He glanced at Ecthelion, who had not taken his eyes off Idril during her outburst.
"He's gone to the northernmost mountain," Ecthelion said at last, his strained face full of sympathy. "You know the one - accessible path, beautiful view of the valley, favorite climbing destination. That's where the eagles took the High King." He returned Glorfindel's panicked look with one that said, she deserves to know.
Idril slowly released some of the tension in her muscles, unclenching her fists and relaxing her stance. She took a deep, slow breath. "Thank you for telling me," she said solemnly. "Especially knowing as you do that I am not half as skilled a warrior as either of you, and would not have been able to defeat you in combat."
Glorfindel and Ecthelion exchanged glances. Idril felt an inexplicable, inappropriate urge to laugh at the almost identical expressions of guilt on their faces, but she was afraid that if she started she would not be able to stop, and that it would be a dangerously small jump from laughter to hysterical tears. At last Glorfindel said, "Would you like us to take you to him?"
Idril was impressed that he'd offered at all. It was clear that neither of them really wanted Turgon to find out that they were the ones who had disobeyed his orders, but they were willing to risk it for her sake.
"Thank you, but no," she said firmly. "I want to talk to him alone for a little while." This was a family matter, and the climb was not a difficult one; she had made it many times with her aunt when Aredhel had been alive, and even now she sometimes went there by herself to think.
He did not hear her approaching, so absorbed was he in his work. Today, her father did not look much like a king; he wore his hair in a single braid, and his clothes were simple but well-made. He looked the way he usually did when he had no public appearances to make, right down to the rolled up sleeves and grim expression.
The main difference was the work. She was used to seeing her father sitting behind a desk attending to the administrative work of running his city, or reading with his favorite chair pulled close to the fire. And yet here he was gathering stones on a barren, rocky mountaintop to add to the ever-growing mound beside him.
It was, she realized, a tomb, and her heart almost stopped. She had arrived too late; somewhere beneath the pile of rocks was her grandfather, and she would never see his face again.
The gasp that escaped her was half-sob, and her father whirled around to face her. He dropped the stone he had been holding and took a step back. "Idril?" His voice was hoarse, his eyes red-rimmed. "You should not be here."
His whole body was trembling slightly, whether from exhaustion or grief she could not tell. Looking down at his hands, she saw that they were scratched and bleeding from carrying the rough stones, but her father did not seem to have noticed.
"You should not -" he started to repeat himself, his voice growing more desperate as she stepped closer. "Itarillë..."
It had been decades since she'd heard her Quenya name. She embraced him, burying her face in her father's chest as much to hide her own tears as to comfort him. His shoulders slumped and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her as though she were the only thing keeping him from being swept away by some violent current.
They stood together silently for a long time before Idril broke away, holding her father at arm's length and studying his face. He looked wretched, but was clearly trying hard to conceal his misery from her, so she decided not to comment. "What happened?" she asked gently.
Turgon sank to his knees on the uneven ground, and she sat beside him, tucking her skirts around her legs to make herself as comfortable as possible. She knew from the look on his face that they were likely to be here a while.
When her father finally spoke, his voice sounded hollow, and he would not meet her eyes. "There was a battle, worse than any they'd seen before. The Enemy took them unawares and burned Ard-galen. Their forces were sundered, outnumbered, and routed. My father grew desperate."
"He led the final attack that turned the tide of the battle?" she guessed, feeling cold. Her father shook his head.
"He - he challenged Morgoth to single combat."
Idril let his words sink in, not sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. She pictured her grandfather, a crystal-clear figure in her early memories. Tall, though not as tall as Turgon. Dark hair, merry grey eyes, an infectious laugh. Strong arms holding her close, protecting her from the Ice and comforting her during the horrible days following her mother's death.
She shivered, though the day was mild and the air still. Just once, at the sight of the faint glow of fire on a distant shore, there had been terrifying, earth-shaking rage. She had known even then that it was not directed at her or any of the people she loved, and she could not remember being frightened of him before or since. All the same, she wondered if the mighty Vala had not been just a little scared to see her grandfather approaching him in anger.
"I could have saved him," Turgon said, his voice barely more than a whisper. "Gondolin has grown strong in its safety - if I had led the city to war, we could have prevented the Noldor's defeat, and he would not have given his life."
"There's no way for you to know that," Idril said, unsure whether to try for her aunt's no-nonsense tone or the calm firmness her mother had sometimes used, and ended up with an unsatisfying combination of both. Tears of frustration began to well up in her eyes and she bit her lip, struggling to hold them back. She wished more than anything that Elenwë or Aredhel were here, the two most capable people she had ever met, who had always known how to fix every situation except the ones that had caused their deaths.
Turgon looked up at her, the twisted familiarity in her voice bringing a look of horror to his face. "I shouldn't be telling you this," he said, gripping her arm. "You're my daughter. I should be the one comforting you."
"No, I'm alright," she said, lying with all the conviction she could muster. But it wasn't completely untrue - she needed him to trust her, to confide in her, to have some outlet for the grief which might otherwise consume him.
I'm all he has, she realized with a pang of fear. Well, he has Egalmoth and the other lords, but they're not family. And he has Maeglin, but Maeglin doesn't really understand, doesn't remember the old days. He hasn't spoken to Uncle in years. Mother, Aredhel - now that Grandfather's gone, who else has he got?
He has Gondolin, Idril reminded herself. He's a king, and his life belongs to his city and his people. He won't abandon them, or me.
"I'll have to send a message to Findekáno," she heard him say, and she realized she had stopped paying attention. "I have to tell him - I don't know. That I buried Father. That he will make a good king in father's place."
He was talking more to himself than to her now, and it was something of a relief to Idril to hear him making plans for the future. He'll survive this, she thought. We all will.
She stood up, and carefully lifted a jagged stone from the ground. The tomb was finished, it seemed, but surely there was room for one more. Walking around it, examining it from all angles, she finally found a space where the rock would fit perfectly among its fellows. As she set it into place, Idril offered up a silent prayer for Nolofinwë Arakáno, High King of the Noldor, and for those who had died before him.