Sixteen: The Last Mortal Bond

Ioreth dreamed again that night.

Talion was somewhere in Núrn, stretched out in a vast field of long grass looking up at the night sky overhead. All the stars were bright and clear as they had never been save in the wilds, with Varda's Path of clouds and stars leading from east to west across the sky.

But Talion wasn't alone. He had never been alone in those early years, but this was the first time she had actually seen his companion.

Celebrimbor was a ghostly, blue-white figure perched on a nearby rock, also looking up at the stars. Though he was withered and worn by long years in Mordor, Ioreth could still see the beauty and grace of the Elves in him, even though he was simply sitting, unmoving.

"Have the constellations changed at all since your younger years?" Talion was asking him.

"Greatly," the Elven smith replied with a slight smile, looking down at the Man even as Talion tilted his head back to look up at him, "I was still a child when we arrived in Beleriand, now sunken beneath the Great Sea, and I remember thinking that there were more stars here, and that they were somehow better than those of Valinor. Here they seem closer, more real, as if the light we saw in the Far West was only a pale echo of what reached Middle-earth. It may very well be that that is the truth; during the Years of the Two Trees, the stars were but specks trying to rival their light.

"There are some that I recognize, though. There is Menelmacar, the Swordsman of the Heavens," he said, pointing towards the western horizon, then moving his finger north, "and there is the Valacirca, the Sickle of the Valar, which Varda put in the sky as a warning of Morgoth's downfall. In Beleriand at this time of year, they would have been directly overhead, rather than on the horizon, but now I also see constellations that I only knew from legends." He turned to point east. "There is Soronúmë, the Eagle of the West who flees the returning sun every night, and above him is Wilwarin, the Butterfly he chases, and there in the distance, where the Ephel Dúath comes down to meet the land? The star just north, almost level with the tops of the grass?"

Talion propped himself up on an elbow to follow the ghostly hand. "I see it."

"That is the very edge of Anarrima, the Sun-Border. If you travel far enough east that it is directly overhead, that marks the place where the Walls of the Sun once stood, back before the world was made round."

"Wow," Talion breathed, but he wasn't looking at the stars anymore. "The Swordsman and the Sickle I know, but I've never heard of the others. How do you know so much?"

Celebrimbor shot him an amused look, though there was nothing cruel about it. "I was a lord, you know. My grandfather Fëanor was High King of the Ñoldor in Middle-earth while he lived, and in the Second Age, I ruled Eregion together with the Gwaith-i-Mírdainfor more than three hundred years. And I have not a few years on you, Talion."

"True enough." The Man laid back down with his arms folded behind his head. "Still, it's one thing to know it. It's another to see evidence of it with my own eyes - or rather hear it with my own ears."

The Elf hummed, looking off into the distance. "Well, you are certainly better company than many I've spent longer years with, even among those I counted close friends. Among my fellow Jewel-smiths, that was Arcamo, who sought to make a necklace finer than the Nauglamír of old, which together with a Silmaril led to the doom of Doriath in the First Age. Yet he was engaged in an endless contest to get the better of Tinwedil, a fellow craftsman, which made them both insufferable more often than not. I can't quite recall who was quote-unquote 'on top' when Sauron came."

"Well you won't need to worry about that here," Talion replied, closing his eyes and settling in to sleep, "It's just the two of us."

Celebrimbor looked down at him and smiled warmly. "Indeed."

She woke before sunrise, and found Talion still where he had been sitting yesterday, under the fruit tree with Fëanor's egg in his lap. He seemed to have finished whatever he was doing to it, because the Ring's glow was only a dim speck in the predawn darkness.

Ioreth sat down next to him and spread the blanket she'd brought over them both. Talion raised an eyebrow but said nothing, only shifted so she could lean more comfortably against his side as they watched the sun come up, turning the grass and water to golden waves.

Finally, she asked, "Were you in love with him?"

Talion jolted under her. "What? What makes you ask that?"

"I know you; that's what." She also knew exactly what had made his father so cruel towards him; enjoying intimate relations with other men hadn't been looked well upon in Minas Tirith, let alone men and women. And now Elves, apparently.

He looked away guiltily, a grey blush on his cheeks, which was answer enough. "I think I could have been," he whispered, "You don't spend nearly a decade sharing your soul with someone without feeling something for them, but…"

"He was good to you? Before - the bridge?"

Talion flinched automatically at the mention of the Elven smith's betrayal, then nodded slowly. "He was - tough at first. But it was what I needed to stop from losing myself to grief. After that… it was so easy - at least when we were fighting Sauron and his armies. It was like we'd known each other all our lives, and we were faster, stronger, better together than we ever were apart, even with the New Ring. I talked to Swinsere - that is, Maglor - about it after he arrived, and he said that it was rare but not unheard of amongst the Eldar. That there were Elves who just - fit together, like they had once been one being but were born as two. They harmonized, and were better together than apart."

"'At least when you were fighting Sauron'?"

"A few people pointed out that both of us had a hard time knowing when we needed to stop and rest, let ourselves recover before we kept moving forward. There were more than a few times we ended up running ourselves into the ground on accident."

"Mm. Sounds like you back on the Gate."

"It does not."

"Do the words 'back-to-back week-long hunts on only a few hours of sleep' mean anything to you?"

Talion grumbled under his breath, and Ioreth smirked, then sighed. "I wish I could have been there for you - both of you. With my Númenórean blood, sometimes I dreamed things that were happening here - or that I assume happened - but it never occurred to me that it was real. If I had known-"

"What happened, happened," Talion said softly, leaning his head against her own, "It is the past, and cannot be changed. All we can do now is learn from our mistakes, and keep moving forward."

When they returned to the Sea Cave, there was a messenger from the Moonshadow Citadel. "The other Wraiths have raised an army of the dead in Gorgoroth," the Uruk, Hûra of the Terror Tribe, told them, weary and grim, "There're too many of 'em to count now, and they're heading south for the Gap. They'll be at the tower in a few days, if they don't try to hit Cirith Ungol first."

Talion immediately sent word out at once to rally everyone they could to prepare to defend themselves and their lands, then questioned the Uruk more closely. "It's been two years since Gorgoroth fell in; the dead can't be much more than skeletons, if that."

"Aye, but it's the ghosts that are the problem. There're so many of 'em that they look like a solid wall of fog coming on, from east to west."

"Their attack from a few days ago must have been to see how you called back the dead," Idril realized with mounting horror, "to learn, and see if they could do the same."

Talion cursed lowly in a dialect of Black Speech, fists clenched on his desk.

"How did you defeat the other Ringwraiths?" Aragorn asked, knowing that it was already too late to send for aid from Gondor.

"Caught them alone. Because of how long I wore my Ring before I fell, its power has saturated me more than their Rings had them. I'm stronger than all the others individually save the Witch-King, but I'm not strong enough to take on two at once."

They all discussed options for how they could bait away one of the Ringwraiths while Talion fought the other, Éowyn even offering to do battle against them as she had the Witch-King until Arwen frowned thoughtfully and stepped forward. "I know much of your power comes from your Ring," she said to the Man, "and it was thought that in turn the Nine got their power from the One and would be destroyed together with it."

"That was my thought as well. I felt it when the One was cast into the fire." Talion looked down at the golden band. "I felt it falter, and my throat opened, but somehow it caught on something new and endured, which let me escape the eruption."

"Something new - like the New Ring?"

Everyone froze. Then Talion vaulted over his desk and burst out into the main hall. "Where is Eltariel?! Has anyone seen her at all since Sauron's defeat?!"

"The scary Elf lady?" Ratbag asked, "She left, din't she? Said there wasn't a chance you lived, an' that she was goin' back home to her Elf-forest. You sure showed her."

"When was this?!" Idril demanded.

"Right after everythin' went down! She said she wanted ta get out before the tribes got organized and started fightin' again!"

"By Eru, what in Mordor is wrong with you, why didn't you tell us she was gone?!"

"Because!"

"And don't say because nobody asked!"

"But nobody did ask!"

"Eru damn it!"

"We need to send someone to Lothlórien," Talion said, slamming back into his rooms and digging into his desk for a map, "I felt the Elven Three leave Middle-earth and pass into the West, so she must still be here with the New Ring. We need to find her, and quickly."

"Not even the finest Elven horse can cover that distance in so short a time!" Arwen protested, even as Éowyn seemed about to go ready her mare.

"Which is why we will be sending a drake with a flag of parley; at top speed, they could be at Lothlórien in two days at the outside. If we can get word to her, Eltariel should vouch for the messenger, and hopefully she will also return to Mordor so we can use the New Ring to take down the Hammer and the Staff. If she can cut their own Rings off from its power, we might not even need to fight."

"Is riding a drake like riding a horse?" Ioreth asked.

"Similar enough that some skills transfer. Why?"

"I will go," she answered, "I am not so well-trained in fighting as the rest of you, and I have no doubt that you will need all of your actual messengers to help organize your forces to respond to this threat."

Talion hesitated, then sighed. "Are you sure?"

"Positive. Give me supplies and a map, and I will move at all speed."

The Ringwraith sighed again, then turned to the open window. "Fëanor!"

There were a few thumps and a rustle of grass. Then a red-scaled head appeared with an inquisitive "Mrr?"

"Head to the stables; you need to eat, and we need to change out your harness."

"Mrrr." The head vanished, and there was a leathery flap as she headed off.

"Fëanor? You want me to take your own drake?"

"You don't have an actual bond with any drakes that let them understand you in their own way, and she understands verbal commands better than any other. And I trust her, and you."