Hey everyone- I am going to do something different for a change. Post smaller chapters more frequently. Hahaha.. Do I really think it will help keep this short? ^_^. lol. there is FTW next chapter to finish too.. Ah well. Hope you enjoy.
Faramir decided it was indeed a pleasant thing to stand on Dol Amroth's fabled quay and watch Tirith Aear glinting gracefully in the sun.
It was an almost perfect day. The high bright blue sky at summer's close came down to kiss the gentle waves; the wind was easy and the air just right. Overhead the kittiwakes dipped and dived and out in Belfalas bay the shipfish leapt. The whole of the Bay it seemed was smiling in delight—a summer of rare beauty and abundance was sliding into fall, and as was fashion all over Middle-Earth, young folk freed of shadow were getting wed.
The Steward of Gondor stood on Dol Amroth's quay in his finest black and silver and watched his sixth?-tenth?—twelfth? ceremony of the year. It had started with the King's of course: midsummer's high excitement had been glorious and gay—a sight to delight the heart of a young man who had once dreamed of Elves. And peace.
This day's affair, in contrast, had none of the Firstborn but was entirely magnificent. By tradition, Swan Knights and their brides were joined by Prince Imrahil himself. Six couples had been wedded, feted and fed under the morning's shining sun, and now they had one blessing left. The Rîuil. A gift for Uinen, the Lady of the Sea.
He watched as the beaming. happy couples trod light and quick below a sabre arch held high by the honour guard, ran hand in hand and stopped at the quay's very edge. There each bride took off her flower crown and cast it, spinning, into the sea- white rose and olive leaves, oleander and knight's lily— graced with the tiny nodding heads of shy lantan to bring luck and fair winds and seas for their life together.
When the last crown drifted in the waves like a blue and white, beribboned jellyfish, Faramir sighed and thought it was time he turned his thoughts to other things. It had been, he would allow, a tiring summer. There had been heady weeks that saw the King and Queen safely wed, months of rebuilding and reconstruction, work at Emyn Arnen of his own, and then the utterly blissful, swift whirling days in Edoras with his shieldmaiden.
They passed too fast. The return to Minas Tirith with Aragorn and Arwen had been entirely sobering. After the work and buzz and day after day of too-much-to-do, once there, he had rattled around unmoored in the Steward's Palace. Missing Eowyn. And Boromir. And his father.
A certain melancholy began to stalk the slowly waxing nights.
Bless his Aunt and Uncle. Their invitation to spend the fall harvest time in a sunnier, drier clime came at his lowest ebb. The first two weeks in Dol Amroth he had done nothing of note at all and simply relaxed in the familiar warm embrace of his mother's family.
Elphir took him hunting. Amrothos sailing. Mareth and Lothiriel recommended books from the library and Aunt Ivriniel nearly made him cry with an entire tome of her recipes and herb care for Eowyn. They were spoiling him. Even Imrahil was taking days out of his busy schedule to distract his nephew: on the morrow they would ride to see his mother's dower lands, the working vineyards prized for their frothy wines made from Befalas' famous green-white grapes.
It was all to the good. So much that he felt rested and light and energized enough to turn again to Geraint's niggling mystery.
Uncle could be hours yet quaffing many goblets with the Knights, but Aunt Iviriniel he suspected was at liberty.
"Aunt Ivriniel may we speak?" he asked, of the dainty, bird-like woman who stood at his elbow resplendent in a gauzy gown of silver-blue and a silver circlet in her cascade of white-streaked, raven hair. "Are you still needed here?"
The lady looked up and smiled. "Not now. The serious, non-official celebration is about to begin, and I, bless Estë, have no pressing cases at the moment."
Excellent news. Ivriniel, as a noted healer and herbalist, assisted the Dol Amroth's Healing House on any day she could.
"Shall we take a walk?" he asked and politely held out his arm for her to take. They wandered away from the noise and music of the throng, past Imrahil's flagship bobbing at anchor to the southern arm of the quay. The grey rocky schist of Dol Amroth's headland stood sentinel and glinted in the sun.
"There is another wedding to be planned," mused Ivriniel, looking up and gracing him with a small knowing smile. "I am quite certain that Eowyn will have many hands to help and Cahil, your Seneschal, is remarkably efficient. But if there is anything that we can do, you have but to ask. Your celebration may not involve all the United Realms but it is still no small affair! The Steward of Gondor and the King of Rohan's sister are to be wed!"
Faramir laughed and shook his head. There was rarely a moment that Cahil let him forget it. "I confess I am very relieved official negotiations for the Bride Price are done! Uncle was a superb help in that. But as for the day itself, I would be happy with just our family and my beautiful bride shining more radiant than the sun. We did speak of it, Eowyn and I, and much hope for something smaller and more personal than the King and Queen's. At least as far as we will be allowed."
"Which is to say, not much," Ivriniel snorted, eyes glinting. "Eomer will be the one to marry you in Edoras?"
"Yes, and then we shall have another official blessing with the King in Minas Tirith."
"And then your face will hurt for weeks, so much smiling will you do!" His aunt sighed and a small wrinkled palm patted at his arm. "It will be grand. And there is time through the long winter months to plan. I shall look forward to learning all about Rohan's exotic traditions."
Faramir groaned. "Not I. I must win a race to set the morning price! And devise a way to spirit her out from under the nose of an entire soused eored. They aim to put to us to bed. Officially. All of them." He shuddered. "I shall need one of Gandalf's magic tricks."
"You are the one who lost your heart to a maiden from the North!"
"Yes! And I am truly blessed however hard the trial!"
They strode along at Ivriniel's customary brisk pace, halting when they reached the flowerbeds that marked the small crescent beach before the next quay down. The summer's searing heat that had bleached the colours of the shore had begun to fade and left in its wake a new crop of bloom. Pink cyclamen and white caper. Her favourite. For its delicate purple stamens and use as a vermifuge.
He remembered walking these very shores to pick the flower buds almost thirty years before. Her knowledge was formidable. But it had come about from loss.
He took a breath, knowing sometimes the only way to sail was to plunge in and steer carefully past the shoals.
"Aunt Rini I wanted to speak with you about a new effort I have taken on. It concerns the family of one of Boromir's lieutenants. He was lost on the Pelennor and I have exhausted all I can learn in Minas Tirith."
A look of puzzlement was swiftly replaced by curiosity. "I presume his a Belfalas man or you would not be asking here? Have you tried the palace. The archives?"
"Not yet. I will. But before I do I wished to ask a bit of family history."
"Ours? Why?" He hesitated. She saw it, and ever shrewd, swiftly understood its import.
"Something of this discomfits you?"
"It does," he admitted. "Geraint, the man, would have turned fifty next spring. He was born in 2970. A year I know brought sadness to you. I would not speak of it but Uncle does not know the family tree so well as you."
A tree that was like to a great oak. His mother had but two siblings but their father was one of five and his father five before. "True. I have always been the cataloger and my brother the rough gardener," she said, speaking of the grand gardens begun by her grandmother. "Why this man? And why our family?"
"I believe he had the Dream."
A pair of fine black brows flew up. "The Wave?!"
"Yes. And now his son has been left fatherless."
"And you are concerned our family has a duty by him?"
"Yes," he admitted reluctantly. "He was clearly a son born on the wrong side of the mast. I wrote first to Great Aunt Ivrenna in Tolfalas. She told me cousin Galathon does not have the Dream but her Mirenna does, though none of her children. Her elder sisters did not, nor Great Grandfather Angelimir's one brother." He paused, heart beating hard, coming to the crux of what worried him. "Of Grandfather's line, I know that Uncle does, and Mother did, and so have I from her. But Boromir did not. It was not in him to dream and cross the twilight." Except once and that lead him to his end. He swallowed hard around a sudden lump in his throat. "I wondered…"
"Which of us might have had a by-blow?" Ivriniel finished for him. He winced to hear her use that word. "Do not blush dear boy," she scolded mildly. "I may not be wed, but I have tended seaman and soldiers for far too many years." "It was not a precocious Imrahil I can tell you that much. He was 15 that year, a little early for even him to sow wild outs. And what is more, he spent it out at sea. As a rating. Worked to the bone swabbing decks and setting and sewing sail."
Faramir chuckled. "I have heard of the escapades."
"As has all of Arda!" Ivriniel ruefully shook her head. "They are embellished by now, no doubt. But even then, he was careful. None ever came forward to claim a child. And if they had, we would know about it. Neither Imrahil nor Father would ever have spurned a child of theirs. Grandfather Angelimir made sure that all knew that this was true."
Faramir looked down, deflated. So it was as he had feared. None of the men had unacknowledged children and that left the women. He had hoped it might be his dashing uncle. T'was far easier a thing to consider than his mother or his aunt.
He looked up and out to sea. A great brown pelican was fishing in the waves—diving like a thunderbolt and bobbing up again. He watched it for a while, until a slim hand tugged on his sleeve.
"You have always been good at sums," announced Ivriniel, remarkably light of tone. "You have correctly calculated that Finduilas and I would have been young women when he was born."
He felt his cheeks flame up. "Do you have the Dream?" he asked gently as he could. "I know that there was someone you loved very, very much…"
A grey veil of sadness came down across Ivriniel's gaze. "Rorend. His name was Rorend. Let Manwe's airs hear it on this day."
He nodded sadly. It was not a name he had ever known—he had had only the barest frame of the tale. His aunt's young love had been first mate on Dol Amroth's swiftest ship. A commoner, but a good man she truly loved. One who had died of an ague caught somewhere on Harad's shores.
He felt a heel for speaking of it. When at last Ivriniel looked up, her lashes glistened with unshed tears. "To answer your question, I have my mother's green thumb but not my father's Dreams. And from what I have learned of it—nursing father in his decline and Imrahil at times, it is often strong. And does not skip generations."
"I am so very sorry if I have hurt you speaking of it."
She squeezed his forearm gently. "Do not berate yourself. It is an old, long callused pain; it has lost its capacity to wound. Or at least for very long. A brief stab—no more." The princess with a spine of steel wiped delicately at her cheeks; put her sorrow away and tilted her chin up. "My Rore and I did not have a child. And if we had, I would have borne him and raised him up with pride, no matter the flapping of gossip's gums. It would have been too much a blessing to have a piece of him." She sighed and reached to cup a hand against his cheek for his was also wet. "Be not distressed. It was fated I think, for I believe I do know who it would be."
"You do?!" Faramir's stomach plummeted suddenly.
She saw it and was quick to allay the last possibility. The one he both dreaded for his mother's sake and desired now that Boromir was gone.
"Is it not that you have a half brother we have kept from you for fear of Denethor. In those years when Finduilas had not yet met your father there was no swain who caught her eye for long—she was immersed body and soul in her art."
Relief, tinted with a wash of disappointment, poured down his veins. "Then who?"
"Another we lost in darkening days. One you are forgetting." She pointed to his hip. "Whose sword do you bear?
"Aglamir!" Faramir looked down in surprise at the well-used blade slung low. It's great blue-violet ijolite shimmered in the sun, its ancient tengwar flashed still bright upon the tang. Bright as the day his grandfather bequeathed it to him—the sword of another beloved younger brother.
Dead in his prime without any children to come after him.
"Speak before doing; come before need, peace before living," Faramir murmured softly, remembering the rhyme Adrahil had given a very nervous cadet on his oath-taking day. "Could it be him?"
"Yes. I think so." Ivriniel replied. "He had the Dream and very strong. It once woke us up, Imrahil and I, napping with him in a hammock slung in the orchard."
His great-uncle! He had never thought of that. It made sense, in retrospect. The pirate and wandering Prince known as the 'Curse of the Corsairs' had been larger than life-a rakehell and a feared warrior. "What happened to him?"
"He died the same year Geraint was born. Of the same malady that took his valiant First Mate."
"Rorend?!"
Ivriniel nodded. "Yes. The very same. Together they sailed so far, to so many unnamed shores, I have always thought there could be a child. Father searched in the dark months after his untimely death for they were all so very grieved. Ivrenna was closest to him in age, but Aglamir was very much the baby of family. Grandmother Fana doted on him the few days he was in port. We all did," she added, looking up to catch his gaze. "I am afraid that is as much as I really know." Her mouth quirked wryly. "You will have to suffer the trial of exploring in the archives. His ship's log—the Minuramar- will be there. But not for her last sail."
"Why not?" Were his hopes rising to be only dashed?
Ivriniel spoke again and her eyes went dark with memory. "We shall never know where they were those final months. Minuramar came in to port running the black flag for contagion. Two-thirds of the crew succumbed. Inside a week all were gone."
"All!" echoed Faramir, shocked to his very core.
"Yes. They burned the ship…and all that was on board."
