Chapter Four: The Heir
"It's a slaughter," Elrond said. He sat high on a promontory and saw far below him the rout of the Sindarin armies. He could not hear the sound of battle, he could only see what dust and fog and grime would permit, and what he saw was dire. The elves were far outmatched by their foes, they had marched right into a trap so blatant Elrond wondered if the Enemy had truly expected it to work. He knew Oropher and Amdír had gambled on the Enemy's attention being diverted by the main forces, but he had too great an army to be surprised by so unskillful a maneuver.
"Can you extract anyone?" Gil Galad asked, and he peered down at the disaster. "Can we intervene?"
"No," Elrond said. "If you intervene you'll lose more men than you'll manage to save. Besides, I told Orpher this was his fate. I said we would not rescue him."
"He's your kinsman," the King said, and Elrond watched the shadowy tide of the Enemy's monsters creep across the silvergreen of the forest elves. "If you rescue him I won't see it as faithlessness," the King said. "Do what you must." He could ride down the western slope, he supposed, and sweep upon the Enemy where his lines were thinnest. He could break through them, and perhaps circle back and up then swing north, to prevent a regrouping. He calculated the chance of death against the chance of life.
"If my own father were in that valley, I'd let him perish." The words were cold, and tasted bitter on his tongue. He was right, he knew it. He could not sacrifice the many to the few. He could not let the bonds of blood that bound him to the Sindar overwhelm his duty to his men.
"Would you leave me to die, if I stood there?" Elrond met his lord's gaze and wondered which truth he would prefer.
"The Cause is greater than any one man. It's greater than any one tribe or people, it's the Cause of all the Free. Sentiment has no place on the battlefield." Still, Oropher and Amdír would not survive this, and the thought turned his heart to stone. He liked them both, even if they were weak and foolish and prideful. He was all those things too.
"It's a hard thing to know, and harder to admit. Elrond, Cousin, I am sorry."
"What should be shall be, my lord. I wish this did not harm our efforts."
"You are permitted to feel things," Ereinion said. "The titles don't have much flexibility, but you're allowed to feel sorrow."
"Rationality above all, my lord," he said. "Please excuse me."
"As you wish." Elrond bowed, and turned his face from war.
The prince's face was wet with tears. Elrond sat beside him and felt his heart twist in sympathy and shared pain. He touched his arm and felt him shudder. "Thranduil," he said, and his voice was that of a Healer, not a warrior. "Thranduil, look at me." The prince's storm-green eyes met his own, and Elrond read the guilt-agony in their depths.
"They're gone," he said, almost to himself. "All my father's forces, and those of Amdír too. I've seen so much, I've lived through so many wars, but never did I dream-"
"Your father prepared you well to take up his mantle," Elrond said. The prince frowned and Elrond frowned in turn.
"I knew Lúthien before she met Beren," Thranduil interposed. "I won't be counseled by her great-great-grandson. You may leave me."
"Forgive me," Elrond said. "I came only to offer my sorrows."
"I've enough," Thranduil said. "My people are shattered, their lives are destroyed. We never should have left the forest."
"This war is not confined to this black hell. Sooner or later it would have made its way to your glades, and then your women would have fallen alongside of your men. Your father and Amdír were overbrave, Thranduil. They did not wait for counsel, but thought to fall on the Enemy like a hammer. They did not realize this land is the anvil, and we the sword. We cannot damage aught but the forge-master, do you understand? We can't break this kingdom, we can only break its king."
"I understand that the Noldo held back as my people died." The words were bitter, terrifying. "I understand that we have more than one enemy in this accursed place."
"No," Elrond said. "I warned your father not to forsake the council of the King, I told him that I could not send my forces into so narrow a defile, but he insisted. I could not stop the slaughter, Thranduil. The King wept as he watched, he ordered me to find some way to rescue the survivors, and we did what we could, but neither of us was willing to spend more lives heedlessly. We cannot afford to fight battles individually, we must thing of the greatest good, and that is victory."
"You're a damn coward," Thranduil said. "You're a fool and you're not strong enough to lead."
"I'm not the King," he said. "My heart breaks for our people, Thranduil. They were my kinsmen too. I saw them wed and met their children, I spoke their tribal tongues and knew their stories. You were not alone in your love for them."
"And yet you betrayed them," Thranduil said. "I'll keep what men I have here, in service of this greatest good, but know this: should your king fall we'll have no peace between our people. I'll not fight alongside one who aspires above his station. It matters little to me whose scion you are, I don't give a damn for how noble your blood is. You're a coward, a man who'd rather heal than fight, and you left my people to perish because your lord ordered you to." The Sindarin word, lord, had connotations of a god. Elrond wondered idly what that said about the difference between father, who spoke of lovers, and son, who spoke of deities.
"May the Valar guide you, Thranduil," Elrond murmured, and he stepped from the tent. Oropher would rush headlong into a trap, he thought. It was just like him to forget the forest for the trees. The Sinda never understood the scope of war-
Elrond heard the sound of Maedhros in his head and made a conscious effort to ignore the criticism of the Dark Elves. He himself once made the same foolish mistake, he once gambled and lost tens of thousands of lives at a single stroke. Still, he had been young then, he had not possessed experience stretching across millennia. With Oropher and Amdír's armies reduced to less than a quarter of what they had been, defeat was more than certain. He forced a contrite prayer from his lips and felt suddenly weak. This land was no place for one who did not revel in death. Already so many had fallen...
"So," the King said. "How is our lord of the Greenelves?"
"He'll fight with us," Elrond said. Ereinion poured him a goblet of thin wine, and he grimaced at the dusty film that covered cup and liquid both.
"His father was a damn fool," he said, and Elrond laughed mirthlessly.
"If we were wise, any of us, we'd away to the Westlands like a ship driven before a storm. Instead we've run into the waves and we're just prepared to capsize."
"The first reports are positive."
"So is death, if you shut your eyes."
"You're too gloomy, my friend," the King said. "You need something to make you glad again."
"If you had an heir I'd feel better," Elrond said. "Instead you talk nonsense in front of the others, as if I were your choice. It's serious, Ereinion. You must choose a successor."
"I've chosen," he said.
"Have you?" Elrond asked.
"It's always been you, Cousin," he said. "You're nearer to the crown than I, you're better suited too. This Ring was my father's, and before him it belonged to Fingolfin. You've the Ring of Thingol too, you're the blood of two great elven Kings. You could rule both Kindreds; with their lords dead, the Greenelves will need a lord."
"You speak as if you intend to die," Elrond said, and his lord, his friend, laughed. "You must know the Noldo will never accept me."
"You've proved yourself time and again, you've drawn victory from defeat and found strength in weakness. You're a politician and a diplomat and a healer; you'd make a fine king, Cousin."
"My blood is tainted, Ereinion," he said. "There's too much of other races in my body for me to lead your people. Surely you've seen the way they look at me? Don't you wonder why more fathers don't suggest marriage with their daughters? Doesn't it concern you how few elegible ladies vie for my hand at dances? In Council they listen and they obey, but I'm always the Outsider, the Unaccustomed. They mark all my missteps and weigh my actions by my heritage."
"So what?" the King asked. "Banish a few rebellious lords and take to wife a member of Turgon's Household."
"I know better than to aspire for what is above me," he said. "You must name another heir, Ereinion, and you must do it quickly."
"I'll name you," he said. "It may be expedient for you to decline. If they see you're not in search of power they may bestow it upon you more freely than otherwise."
"I can't rule your people," he said. "Name someone else. Name Glorfindel, he's the blood-"
"No," Ereinion said. "No, I've thought for many thousands of years whom I would choose, and always I come back to you. You can decline my choice, it's your right, but there isn't another. You're the closest to my throne and the wisest in my Court. Have a drink, Elrond."
"I've had one."
"Have another, and talk with me. What can we do to allay this defeat? How can we turn this to our favor? When would be wisest to speak with Thranduil regarding the command of his army?" Elrond understood the King hoped to make him less morose by asking questions that had answers, and he appreciated the effort. He opened his mouth and began to speak, and found his grief and fear and anger washed away. He lived only in his counsel, in the images and ideas that twisted upwards from his reservoirs of experience. He explained, and when the King asked, he explained further. When at last he bid his lord a good night, he felt more at peace. This was not the end, only the beginning of the end. Things might yet turn in their favor after all.
The heat from the mountain scalded every inch of his body. In his armor, light though it was, he felt as though he were being roasted living, and the fires that gorged themselves on the bowels of the earth fumed and frothed and boiled beneath them. Isildur stood behind him, and in his hand he clutched what he had cut from the Enemy's finger. After long years of battle, the Enemy had opened all his pits and breeding dens and sent out his dark sons to overwhelm what free folk yet stood to oppose them. All men who could hold a sword were put out in ragged lines, first pikemen, then spearmen, then swordsmen, then archers, until the field stood ringed with those who gave themselves to the cause of Light. The Enemy came from the mountain and bore down on them, he ground their forces and their replacements into the dust. King Gil-Galad he singled out, he charged the Elf-Lord who had been his most ardent foe since the end of the First Age, and although he fought valiantly, he fell. His helm melted into his face, his armor sizzled and boiled away, and then the Enemy cast down Elendil, King of the Númenorians. Next his gaze lighted on Elrond - once I met your ancestor, Herald, and I've a blood-debt to repay - but Isildur interposed and, his sword lost in the melee, he picked up his father's shattered blade and swung. The Valar kept his aim true, or else Fate's scales were weighted heavily in his favor, for he cut off three of the Enemy's fingers, one of which bore a glinting golden Ring. The Enemy collapsed inwards and his armies fled. In an instant, nearly three thousand years of horror came to an end.
Elrond knew about Rings. Celebrimbor, the great smith, sent one to Galadriel and two to Gil-Galad, who had entrusted one to Círdan, lord of the westernmost city of Lindon, and one to Elrond himself, although when the Enemy first put on his Ring, the elves had removed theirs, fearing he would seek to control their minds and make them thralls. Some of the bearer's spirit was bound up in the Ring, and Elrond deemed it wise to destroy that of the Enemy, if only to ensure no trace of him remained. He summoned Isildur and let him up the ashy mountainside to the volcanic crater that revealed a river of lava far below. "Cast it into the fire," he ordered. "You must destroy it."
"My father and brothers were slain by the Enemy," Isildur said. "I will take this as a wereguild for their deaths. I will not destroy this thing."
"That is not wise," Elrond said. "Nothing of the Enemy should remain, not the Ring, not a tower, not a single creature of his dark invention. Destroy it and let us be done with him."
"No," Isildur said. "Now let me pass, Uncle." Elrond looked at his kinsman, covered in blood and grime, weary and warsick, having witnessed the death of so many thousands of his people, and he looked at the gold band he held. It was a simple thing, plain and unornamented, most likely a conduit for the Enemy's spirit. It was dangerous with the Enemy in existance, of course, but now that he had been defeated it could not pose much of a threat. What harm could it do to allow Isildur its possession? He could always travel to Gondor himself if he sensed some evil in it, take it, and dispose of it as he deemed best. He stood aside.
"As you wish then," he said. The heat from the flames ate at him and he emerged coated in sweat and suddenly weary. Below, they had begun to number the dead. He met Thranduil's eyes, and remembered the threat he had leveled. The King was dead, the Enemy defeated. Peace had fallen, suddenly and impossibly, like a lightningbolt.