31
While the Elrond he had become watched in weak-kneed dread at Galadriel's mirror, clutching the stone pedestal to keep from sinking to the ground, the Elrond he had been awoke with a groan. His mouth felt like sandpaper and tasted of graphite shavings. A tribe of dwarves thundered their iron mallets inside his head. He cracked open his eyes, only to snap them closed again when the light burned them like molten daggers.
"Oh, sweet Elbereth, what a night," he groaned, and sat up. He did not yet see the figure lying silently and watchfully in the bed beside him. He remembered very little of the night before, and it troubled him. The last thing he could recall was dancing with Celebrian. He smiled, gladdened by the memory. He had had a wonderful time last night, the best in ages. He'd done something else, too, later on, but that he could not remember just yet. The fog of last night's debauchery had not yet lifted sufficiently.
He stood up stiffly and shambled over to the bureau to inspect himself in the mirror. Whatever he had done, it must have been quite rigorous; he was naked and there were several fresh bruises on his chest and stomach. His face had fared no better, he saw, when he looked in the mirror. An ugly purple bruise had found a home on the point of his chin. His eyes, usually so keen, clear, and inquisitive, were bleary and bloodshot, red- rimmed and chapped, the eyes of a man in the grip of a long illness. Elbereth, what had he done last night? Celebrian would have a fit when she saw him.
Further examination of his face was interrupted by a violent spasm in the pit of his stomach. He grabbed the edges of the bureau and vomited wave after wave of sour red liquid into the fortuitously placed wash basin, the smell of rancid grapes inciting his already tortured stomach to greater violence. It went on and on, choking off his breath. The pounding in his head sharpened, no longer the heavy-handled mallets of the dwarves, but the searing claws of the orc warrior sent to rape and pillage unwary travelers. Bruised purple flowers bloomed in his vision, and he was very sure he was going to pass out, to choke to death on his own vomit.
"Quite unbecoming of you, Lord Elrond, if I do say, vomiting in front of a lady. And naked, no less."
The voice, so coldly triumphant, was like a brisk slap in the face, and the retch that had been coalescing in his stomach dissolved in an instant. He snapped his flushed face up and looked into the mirror again, this time looking beyond his puffy red reflection. A flash of platinum blonde hair. Glittering serpentine eyes. Sithirantiel. She was sitting up in his bed, crisp white sheets pulled up over her chest. As his eyes slowly focused, he saw that her face wore an expression of terrible glee and awful victory.
"What are you doing here?" he asked without turning around. He was afraid that if he let go of the bureau he would crumple to the floor like a doddering invalid.
"Don't you remember, love? How can you not recall our passionate embraces of the night before?" Her voice was beautiful and savagely mocking.
"You lie!" he spat, whirling around to face her. "Leave at once and take your forked tongue with you." He was trembling in fury and terror.
"I lie not, and well you know it…m'lord," she said calmly. She had been waiting for this moment for many months, and she intended to savor every moment of it. Though her face remained impassive, the face of an eyeless stone idol, she was inwardly celebrating the success of her flawlessly executed plan. The horrified expression on the normally placid elf lord's face was ambrosia to her. It made her feel woozy with exhilaration, tingly, a lyre string too tightly wound. It reminded her of the way she had felt so many centuries ago when she experienced the illicit thrill of her first kiss secreted away in the heart of Rivendell. She had grasped then, just as now, the power in such a small yet somehow forbidden act. One did not kiss strangers the way she had, and one certainly did not bed the quite betrothed lord of Rivendell. Yet she had done both, and done them successfully. A strange thought occurred to her as she relished the look of apoplectic rage etched on Elrond's face. Power lay not in the hands of the grand armies of the earth, but in the subtle words and deeds of men and elves brave enough to do or say them. She bit down on the inside of her cheek to stem a ferocious, jubilant cackle.
"No. You lie," Elrond said again, his hands clenched into tight fists. He stared at her with eyes the color of melting amber.
"I lie not," she said again, her eyes never leaving his face. "If you doubt me, I can go to the midwife for proof. Besides, I am covered in your scent, my lord, unless you know of someone else who smells of toasted coconut." She held out two fingers of her left hand. "This is yours. Go on, smell if you must."
"No. You lie," he muttered again, but the words were more a wish than an indignant denial. Hazy memories of what he had done last night were finally beginning to surface in his mind now that the alcohol had lost its grip on his rapidly sobering brain. Images of writhing, entwined bodies beneath soft white sheets and the sounds of muffled lust rang inside his head. "No." He shook his head vehemently. "No…it cannot be," he moaned, "it was Celebrian in my embrace last night. Celebrian. You lie."
The harpy in his bed threw back her head and laughed, a cold, contemptuous laugh that grated on his throbbing head like a steel pike. Her molten white tresses spilled down her back in white waves. She straightened her head and fixed him with her black eyes, two lumps of polished coal pushed into her pale face. She wore a leering smile.
"My dear Elrond, you are so naïve. Your sweet, innocent, stupid little Celebrian would never do the things we did last night, nor would she permit you the licenses I can assure you took last night. Sweet little prude probably thinks the baring of a breast in the dark a feat of great daring," she sneered.
Looking back at the way things unfolded from a safe distance of a millennium, Elrond would admit to himself that that was the moment she had truly beaten him, the moment his honor collapsed like a wall of sand. But back then, he had been unable to see things clearly. He was blinded by rage, seething at her haughty disregard for everything good and decent, everything he loved about Celebrian-her sweetness, her innocence, her love of life. He crossed the room in three quick strides, intent on making her pay for her impudence. She must have seen something in his face because for the first time that morning, the mask of cool triumph slipped, and he saw a flash of unease on her face. He was viciously glad of it in the instant before he backhanded her out of the bed.
She tumbled out of bed with a surprised squawk and landed in a tangled heap upon the floor. A pale hand clutched her face where he had struck her, and her black eyes, suddenly alive with a dark fire, blazed up at him with such venomous hatred that he would have flinched had he not been so angry himself. "Bastard," she spat, making no move to rise from the floor.
He instantly regretted his actions. He was a kind man by nature, and violence against any creature deeply disturbed him. More than that, he knew he had validated at least some of the unrelenting loathing she had undoubtedly harbored for the past two years. On a less philosophical level, he also understood that seeing Sithirantiel, his former consort, leaving his chambers with a bruised face was bound to raise questions and eyebrows. He wanted her out of here, the sooner the better. He reached down to help her up, but she recoiled, her face contorted in an ugly rictus of fury.
"You have touched me for the last time, you filthy pig," she snarled.
Elrond struggled to retain his tattered equanimity. He was determined not to let his anger get the better of him again. That had already caused enough damage here today. He was equally resolved that she should not see the kernel of regret for what he had done.
"Get up and get out," he ordered. "You are hereby banished from the province of Rivendell. Never shall you pass over the threshold of my realm again. I want nothing more to do with you. Now go, so that I may cleanse myself of your corruption.
Her response was not what he had expected. She gave a short, scoffing laugh. "No."
He stood frozen, startled by her temerity. In his brief time as ruler of the realm, no one had ever opposed him. He was not a tyrannical despot, not by any means, but he carried with him an air of quiet authority that no one dared challenge. Now, treacherous Sithirantiel, sitting sprawled and naked on the cold floor, had openly defied him.
"Yes, you will," he replied, his voice biting and cold, hard as December frost. He reached down and jerked her roughly to her feet.
She was looking at him with her black marble eyes, and he noticed with sinking dismay that she was once more wearing a placid, triumphant expression. She snatched her arm away and moved away from him, clutching the rumpled sheets to her chest. She reached the center of the room and stopped, her small, secret smile growing until it consumed the entire lower half of her face, the mad, mindless grin of a shark. Then she began to laugh, shuddering and rocking to and fro with the force of her mirth. One arm rose up and a slender, accusatory finger jutted out at him.
"Oh, you silly man," she gasped between bouts of uncontrolled mirth, "do you still believe you hold power over me? I am the one who holds power now. Surely you can see that. I have no intention of leaving Rivendell now or ever. If you see fit to compel my departure, I will destroy everything you hold dear. It would take but a moment."
Elrond still blind to the terrible snare that had been so patiently lain for him over the past two years, could only stare at her incredulously. "And how, pray tell, do you intend to do that? Raise and army and march against the city? My dear, there is not an elf in all the number of this great city who would follow you in such madness, and you have mastered not the dark arts to force their minds to your will." He did not boast with his words. They were the simple truth. Nothing could have made the noble citizens of Rivendell turn upon their lord, for, though not long in power, his fairness had inspired their loyalty and trust.
"It is not of Rivendell that I speak, my lord," she purred, her shark- tooth grin growing impossibly wider.
"Then you speak of nothing."
"It does my heart good to know that you hold Celebrian in so little esteem."
"What would you know of so sweet and good a thing as Celebrian?" he snarled, his best intentions to keep his anger in check fading rapidly. "If you but lay one finger upon her adored person, I will hunt you down like the cur you are."
She chuckled. "And they call you Elrond the wise. Fool. There are more, and mayhap, better ways to take her from you than simple murder. Death would be too easy a thing. I haven't waited all this time to play childish games with you. Two years is too long a time for that."
"What are you talking about?" he rasped. He felt a terrible coldness seeping into his limbs from the floor up, a coldness not unlike the one that would grip him as he stared helplessly into Galadriel's mirror after the countless passing of seasons. His heart began to pound in his bruised chest, and he desperately wanted to sit, but he knew that to do so would be a sign of weakness and one he dared not show. He willed himself to stand.
She must have seen the effort on his face because she snorted laughter and moved to sit upon his bed, a proprietary gesture that infuriated him.
"Get-," he started to say, meaning to order her from his bed, but she held up a hand to silence him.
"Things are going to change around here, and one of those changes is going to be that you will not order me around like a common trollop," she said imperiously.
"How dare you presume to dictate to me what I shall and shall not do!" he thundered.
Sithirantiel did not flinch. "I wonder what Celebrian will do when she finds out that she is promised to a man who would violate a woman and then raise his hand to her when she protests his abuse," she said in a musing voice.
There was absolute silence in the room as the gears, gummed and bound from too much wine, finally began to turn in Elrond's head. Now he did sit down. His knees unhinged with an ungraceful pop, and he plopped heavily on the floor. Maintaining dignity no longer seemed relevant.
"I did no such thing," he murmured dreamily, more to himself than to her. His mind seemed to have ground to a halt again.
"Really? Can you remember anything of the night before, anything at all?" She was mocking him.
She looked more like a shark than ever, cold black eyes filled with insatiable bloodlust. At any moment, he expected them to roll upward to whites while her large, boneless mouth opened to consume him in a mindless frenzy. It was a disturbing image, one conjured by a frightened and incoherent mind, but he could not shake it.
"I thought not," she said when he had made no answer for several minutes. "Your careless merrymaking made things considerably easier. I had planned on using a drop of sleeping potion in your wine, but your excess made such a difficult step unnecessary. It was easier than I expected, really. Perhaps I should thank Celebrian for making you so desperate for a woman's caress."
"I know not what I have done," he said in a voice that sounded tired and hollow in his ears, "but whatever happened, passed willingly between us. I felt your eager touch upon my flesh."
"As the walls have neither ears nor eyes, my lord, there is no one to substantiate your claim," she said, absently fingering the corner of a pillow. "There is, however, a waiter who can aver that you were so besotted the effects of Rivendell's finest wine that you spilled it upon his tunic, leaving an irrevocable and very clear stain. Any remembrance of yours would be irrelevant should this matter ever come before a high elven tribunal. Only I know the truth of what happened in this room, and I intend to bend it to my will."
"You wouldn't," he said, but even as he said it, he knew she would. It was clear that she had put much time and planning into this, too much not to go through with it now. She might have even planned the waiter on whom he had spilled the wine, but he did not think that likely. It was a mistake born of his own drunkenness, a fortuitous event that had worked to her distinct advantage.
She was unmistakably mad; that was beyond dispute, but it was not an irrational madness. Even as he sat in stupefied silence in the center of the web she had so artfully woven around him, he could not help but admire it. For two long years, she had labored over it, nursing her hatred while he lay sleeping, deftly connecting the delicate strands as she watched and waited for her time to come. What patience it must have taken to sit in his presence all those nights and watch as he and Celebrian dined, hoping for a night such as the last. And he had been too stupid to see it coming, too absorbed in his rare happiness.
"I must certainly would," she retorted, cutting into his thoughts. "If you do not concede to my wishes, I will go to the high elven council and lodge a formal accusation of violation against you as well as an accusation of abuse of power and the people's trust. Then we shall see just how much dear Celebrian values your tainted love." She was silent for a moment, then continued. "I was rather angry when you struck me at first, but now I count it a blessing, one of the many you have unknowingly bestowed upon me." She traced her finger along the edge of the bruise forming on her cheek as though it were a precious possession and fixed him with her haughty black eyes.
For the second time that morning, Elrond abandoned himself to his fury. He sprang from his chair and fell upon her, wrapping his burning hands around her throat and throttling her. She pried at his squeezing hands, but they were like vises. He wanted to choke the life from her, to feel the bones in her neck grind and snap as he rid the world of this horrible blight. He would have done it, too, if he had not glanced down at her eyes. Bubbling tar pits in a livid face, they glared back at him. There was fear in them, yes, but there was also a perverse glee. Do it! Do it! they cajoled.
An image rose in his mind, sparing her life and forever condemning his. In it, he saw his sentries bursting through the door to find him with his hands still wrapped around Sithirantiel's lifeless throat. There would most certainly be a tribunal then, and they would have no choice but to find him guilty. Worse still, he would not even be able to claim intoxication as a defense. He was stone cold sober. Any hope of binding himself to his Celebrian would be forever lost. He would be stripped of his land and privileges and banished to the land of Mordor, where even Celebrian would not follow.
He flung Sithirantiel away from him with an effort, his face a moue of disgust. She fell backwards and tumbled off the opposite edge of the bed. He could not see her, but he could hear her gasping for air and coughing on the other side of bed. It made him glad.
"What do you want?" he asked when her head reappeared on the other side of the bed. It was the voice of defeat.
"I…want…anything…I desire…any…time I ask…it," she wheezed, coughing and rubbing her throat. Her hair was a disheveled wreck and there were hectic red patches on her cheeks.
"Impossible," he snorted, already regretting that he had released his grip. "Not even the wife of an elven lord is granted that much power. It would call too much attention to you. I won't do it."
"Apparently, you still do not understand the precariousness of your position, my lord," she croaked, trying to sustain her self-assured demeanor even as a runner of drool dribbled down her chin. "I will give you twenty-four hours to decide what you value you most-your pride or your love." She wobbled to her feet and slipped on her dress. Then, as if nothing whatever were amiss, she bowed and left the room.
For a long time after she left, Elrond sat in the silence. His mind had slipped its tether and was now floating outside of his body, watching everything from a safe distance. It was hard to believe only an hour had passed since he had awakened. After a while, he got up, urinated, and put on his robes. The idea of anyone seeing him naked now made him feel ill. He splashed his face with water and shambled onto the balcony. His joints felt hollow and stiff, as though all of his two thousand years had come home to roost at once. He moved slowly, jerkily, like a bundle of sticks that has learned to walk.
He stood on the balcony and let the cool spring air dance and eddy across his face. Before him, the pristine waterfall roared and crashed, sending up a fine mist that blanketed everything and created a million dancing rainbows in front of his eyes. Farther down was the green canopy that shielded Rivendell from prying eyes. This spectacular vista soothed him, but not as much as it normally would have done. His thoughts were turned far too inward.
What was he going to do? In the space of an hour, the world he had imagined to be so safe and secure was all but destroyed. There seemed to be no way around it. If he struck first, made a public confession about the incident, it might kill this dreadful conspiracy before it really got started. It might also backfire. Sithirantiel was a fine actress, and she would no doubt be able to convince some people to her point of view. He wasn't sure he could bear it if Celebrian happened to be one of them. Even if she wasn't, he would still have to face her heartbroken face when she found out that he had given himself to another woman, willingly or not. No, confession was not an option. What then? Murder? He supposed he could hire a disreputable piece of rabble from the city of Gondor. They would do the job cheaply and well, no doubt. Be that as it may, it was also not an option. He was a man of conscience, else he would not be so worried now. What then?
There is yet one other possibility you have not yet considered, said a voice inside his head. It was a voice he would come to know very well over the next three thousand years, but on this day, not long before things would go from bad to abysmal, it frightened him badly as he stood in the warm sunshine. It was a cold, dispassionate voice, devoid of hope and warmth. And as he would later learn, it combined brutal honesty with demonic deception. Hearing this alien voice inside his head made his skin rise in hard little knots of cold gooseflesh, and the hair on the back of his neck gave an ominous prickle.
Who are you? he asked himself. When things really fell apart, he would talk out loud to his internal companion, but for now he was still strong enough to resist that compulsion.
It matters not, came the reply. You'll get to know me soon enough; I'll be staying awhile, I think. Now as I said, there is yet a third possibility you have not yet considered.
What? He was cautious but not yet terrified.
Suicide. You have started this mess, after all; seems only fair that you alone suffer the consequences. Rather tidy solution, really. You can avoid the whole nasty affair and watch the aftermath of your cowardice from the comfort of Valinor. It's the only way out, truth be told. The trap was well laid, and like the fly too stupid to realize its peril, you struggle in the binds that hold you. Your own fit of temper has drawn them ever tighter around you. There is no escape, save this one. Take it while you still can, or greater torment awaits you.
Shut up!! The voice that had guided him through the agonizing months or Rivendell's construction and organization, the voice of logic and reason, scored one of its final victories and pushed the intruding voice away. Elrond knew it would be back, though; yes, indeed.
What had the voice said? Suicide. Preposterous. It was a concept wholly foreign to the elves. He could not remember a single case of suicide in all his years, though he guessed many humans might interpret elves dying of grief in the same fashion, an idea not wholly without merit. Yet it did hold a dark magnetism for him, with its twisted logic. He would be escaping the problem, the same way an animal caught in a trap will gnaw off a limb to free itself.
He imagined himself smashing the mirror above his bureau and picking out the cruelest, most jagged of the shards. After ordering a nice hot bath, he would climb in and calmly slit his wrists. He would watch the blood gush out into the water and turn it red. He wondered if the air would smell of copper as it so often did on the blood-soaked battlefields of his youth. It didn't matter. By the time the guards thought to check on him, it would be all over. Nice and neat with no embarrassment.
It was an appealing image until his logical mind, the one still able to see clearly despite the growing chaos, showed him the flipside of his actions. Yes, the trapped animal escaped the cruel snare by the loss of its limb, but at what cost? It usually bled to death not long after its liberation, or, if it did not, it starved to death because it could no longer hunt. Though he would be far removed from the mayhem to follow, Celebrian certainly would not. His death would undo her. He was treated to the vision of her pretty face contorted in grief as they carried the bloody shroud containing his corpse away. She would blame herself, he knew. As the mind-numbing grief slowly overtook her, sapping her of will and life, she would be wracked with a needless guilt, forever wondering would she could have said or done to change the course of history and cursing herself for not doing more to ease his woes. No. He was not a coward, at least not that much of one. Not yet.
A walk in the garden. That was what he needed. It always helped to clear his mind, put things in a new perspective. If there was a way out of this, he would come to it there. He turned and walked back to the bureau. The top drawer held his favorite cloak, the one Celebrian said made him look the most dashing. He took it out and put it on, adjusting the silver clasp in the mirror. When he was done, he took a look at himself. A bit pale and ragged, but nothing that could be chalked up to anything more than a night of overzealous drinking. That was good.
His guards looked at him from the corners of their eyes as he stepped out between them, and he saw the one on the left knit his brow in confusion, sparking a myriad of paranoid thoughts in his mind. What had he heard? What had he seen?
"Is there a problem?" Elrond snapped
"No, sire," he responded quickly, "it's just that, well…your cloak is on backwards."
Elrond looked down. "So it is," he muttered absently, and set about fixing it. "I'm sorry for my rudeness. I fear I enjoyed myself rather too much last night."
"So did we all, sir." This comment earned the young sentry a sharp nudge to the ribs. His eyes widened as he realized what he had said. "That is…within…limits, uh, sir."
Elrond gave a distracted chuckle and went out. The sinuous path that led to the lush gardens was sparsely populated, and the few elves that were on it sported eyes as red and distracted as his own, a fact which cheered him a little. The even fewer women along the trail hailed him happily as he passed, having the good sense to indulge in spirits little or not at all. He envied them.
The gardens had existed long before Rivendell was even dreamt of in the minds of elves. It was a place borne of the earth, wild and dizzyingly beautiful. Elven legend had it that it was a gift to the elves from the Valar, a reward for protecting the trees and green things of the earth. Looking at the wild profusion growing around him, he thought that was the truth. A wide and endless variety of plants grew here, some that by all rights should wither and die, flourished. When he had first arrived here to build Rivendell, he had come here to try and count the different species that made this place there home. He lost count at three thousand and gave up.
He wandered through the gardens admiring the fragile flowers until he came to a small stone bench situated beside a small, burbling brook. He sat down with a sigh and bent down to pick up a handful of damp earth. He held it to his nose and breathed deeply. The rich smell heartened him, but it did not solve the problem at hand. He let it crumble through his fingers and rested his head upon his closed fist.
He hated to bring such a vile dilemma into the place where he and Celebrian shared so many happy times. He felt like he was defiling it somehow, but he also understood that this was also the place where he thought mostly clearly, and if ever there was a time he needed a clear head, it was now.
The voice of logic, emboldened by its earlier victory, pleaded with him to confess everything to Celebrian. She is a fine woman. Her love for you has never wavered, and it will not now. Trust in her. It is your only hope. The voice was frantic, as though it knew already that it had lost.
Of course her love has never wavered, sniggered the more sinister voice. Things have been relatively easy until now, and she is promised to the lord of the realm. Just see how long her love lasts when you tell her that you have lain with another. Her love will fade as quickly as a raindrop on burning desert sand. Mind your mouth, good sir, and mind it well. You have looked too long and too hard for this love to lose it over such an abstract thing as honor.
"Ah, there you are, dear."
He turned, expecting to see Sithirantiel and her malignant grin, but it was only Celebrian. Unlike him, she looked fresh and vivacious, Elbereth bless her. He got up and went her, enfolding her in a smothering embrace. "My love."
She returned his embrace, then pulled away to inspect him. "Valinor, you look terrible," she said when she saw his haggard face and bruised chin.
"Do I? I'm afraid I overindulged last night and am now suffering the consequences. It is nothing more than that."
"Are you certain?"
He had a chance to tell her then. His voice of reason was imploring him to do it, screaming for it, actually, but he didn't. Instead he said, "If I was ill, seeing your beautiful face has cured me of it."
She smiled at him, then turned and picked blossom from a nearby jasmine bush and twirled it between her fingers. He offered her his arm, and she took it. Arm in arm, they headed back to Imladris. Neither one of them knew it, but Elrond's last chance to avoid near ruin had passed him by. He was now heading down a slope of deceit and horror from which he would not be able to turn for another three thousand years.
While the Elrond he had become watched in weak-kneed dread at Galadriel's mirror, clutching the stone pedestal to keep from sinking to the ground, the Elrond he had been awoke with a groan. His mouth felt like sandpaper and tasted of graphite shavings. A tribe of dwarves thundered their iron mallets inside his head. He cracked open his eyes, only to snap them closed again when the light burned them like molten daggers.
"Oh, sweet Elbereth, what a night," he groaned, and sat up. He did not yet see the figure lying silently and watchfully in the bed beside him. He remembered very little of the night before, and it troubled him. The last thing he could recall was dancing with Celebrian. He smiled, gladdened by the memory. He had had a wonderful time last night, the best in ages. He'd done something else, too, later on, but that he could not remember just yet. The fog of last night's debauchery had not yet lifted sufficiently.
He stood up stiffly and shambled over to the bureau to inspect himself in the mirror. Whatever he had done, it must have been quite rigorous; he was naked and there were several fresh bruises on his chest and stomach. His face had fared no better, he saw, when he looked in the mirror. An ugly purple bruise had found a home on the point of his chin. His eyes, usually so keen, clear, and inquisitive, were bleary and bloodshot, red- rimmed and chapped, the eyes of a man in the grip of a long illness. Elbereth, what had he done last night? Celebrian would have a fit when she saw him.
Further examination of his face was interrupted by a violent spasm in the pit of his stomach. He grabbed the edges of the bureau and vomited wave after wave of sour red liquid into the fortuitously placed wash basin, the smell of rancid grapes inciting his already tortured stomach to greater violence. It went on and on, choking off his breath. The pounding in his head sharpened, no longer the heavy-handled mallets of the dwarves, but the searing claws of the orc warrior sent to rape and pillage unwary travelers. Bruised purple flowers bloomed in his vision, and he was very sure he was going to pass out, to choke to death on his own vomit.
"Quite unbecoming of you, Lord Elrond, if I do say, vomiting in front of a lady. And naked, no less."
The voice, so coldly triumphant, was like a brisk slap in the face, and the retch that had been coalescing in his stomach dissolved in an instant. He snapped his flushed face up and looked into the mirror again, this time looking beyond his puffy red reflection. A flash of platinum blonde hair. Glittering serpentine eyes. Sithirantiel. She was sitting up in his bed, crisp white sheets pulled up over her chest. As his eyes slowly focused, he saw that her face wore an expression of terrible glee and awful victory.
"What are you doing here?" he asked without turning around. He was afraid that if he let go of the bureau he would crumple to the floor like a doddering invalid.
"Don't you remember, love? How can you not recall our passionate embraces of the night before?" Her voice was beautiful and savagely mocking.
"You lie!" he spat, whirling around to face her. "Leave at once and take your forked tongue with you." He was trembling in fury and terror.
"I lie not, and well you know it…m'lord," she said calmly. She had been waiting for this moment for many months, and she intended to savor every moment of it. Though her face remained impassive, the face of an eyeless stone idol, she was inwardly celebrating the success of her flawlessly executed plan. The horrified expression on the normally placid elf lord's face was ambrosia to her. It made her feel woozy with exhilaration, tingly, a lyre string too tightly wound. It reminded her of the way she had felt so many centuries ago when she experienced the illicit thrill of her first kiss secreted away in the heart of Rivendell. She had grasped then, just as now, the power in such a small yet somehow forbidden act. One did not kiss strangers the way she had, and one certainly did not bed the quite betrothed lord of Rivendell. Yet she had done both, and done them successfully. A strange thought occurred to her as she relished the look of apoplectic rage etched on Elrond's face. Power lay not in the hands of the grand armies of the earth, but in the subtle words and deeds of men and elves brave enough to do or say them. She bit down on the inside of her cheek to stem a ferocious, jubilant cackle.
"No. You lie," Elrond said again, his hands clenched into tight fists. He stared at her with eyes the color of melting amber.
"I lie not," she said again, her eyes never leaving his face. "If you doubt me, I can go to the midwife for proof. Besides, I am covered in your scent, my lord, unless you know of someone else who smells of toasted coconut." She held out two fingers of her left hand. "This is yours. Go on, smell if you must."
"No. You lie," he muttered again, but the words were more a wish than an indignant denial. Hazy memories of what he had done last night were finally beginning to surface in his mind now that the alcohol had lost its grip on his rapidly sobering brain. Images of writhing, entwined bodies beneath soft white sheets and the sounds of muffled lust rang inside his head. "No." He shook his head vehemently. "No…it cannot be," he moaned, "it was Celebrian in my embrace last night. Celebrian. You lie."
The harpy in his bed threw back her head and laughed, a cold, contemptuous laugh that grated on his throbbing head like a steel pike. Her molten white tresses spilled down her back in white waves. She straightened her head and fixed him with her black eyes, two lumps of polished coal pushed into her pale face. She wore a leering smile.
"My dear Elrond, you are so naïve. Your sweet, innocent, stupid little Celebrian would never do the things we did last night, nor would she permit you the licenses I can assure you took last night. Sweet little prude probably thinks the baring of a breast in the dark a feat of great daring," she sneered.
Looking back at the way things unfolded from a safe distance of a millennium, Elrond would admit to himself that that was the moment she had truly beaten him, the moment his honor collapsed like a wall of sand. But back then, he had been unable to see things clearly. He was blinded by rage, seething at her haughty disregard for everything good and decent, everything he loved about Celebrian-her sweetness, her innocence, her love of life. He crossed the room in three quick strides, intent on making her pay for her impudence. She must have seen something in his face because for the first time that morning, the mask of cool triumph slipped, and he saw a flash of unease on her face. He was viciously glad of it in the instant before he backhanded her out of the bed.
She tumbled out of bed with a surprised squawk and landed in a tangled heap upon the floor. A pale hand clutched her face where he had struck her, and her black eyes, suddenly alive with a dark fire, blazed up at him with such venomous hatred that he would have flinched had he not been so angry himself. "Bastard," she spat, making no move to rise from the floor.
He instantly regretted his actions. He was a kind man by nature, and violence against any creature deeply disturbed him. More than that, he knew he had validated at least some of the unrelenting loathing she had undoubtedly harbored for the past two years. On a less philosophical level, he also understood that seeing Sithirantiel, his former consort, leaving his chambers with a bruised face was bound to raise questions and eyebrows. He wanted her out of here, the sooner the better. He reached down to help her up, but she recoiled, her face contorted in an ugly rictus of fury.
"You have touched me for the last time, you filthy pig," she snarled.
Elrond struggled to retain his tattered equanimity. He was determined not to let his anger get the better of him again. That had already caused enough damage here today. He was equally resolved that she should not see the kernel of regret for what he had done.
"Get up and get out," he ordered. "You are hereby banished from the province of Rivendell. Never shall you pass over the threshold of my realm again. I want nothing more to do with you. Now go, so that I may cleanse myself of your corruption.
Her response was not what he had expected. She gave a short, scoffing laugh. "No."
He stood frozen, startled by her temerity. In his brief time as ruler of the realm, no one had ever opposed him. He was not a tyrannical despot, not by any means, but he carried with him an air of quiet authority that no one dared challenge. Now, treacherous Sithirantiel, sitting sprawled and naked on the cold floor, had openly defied him.
"Yes, you will," he replied, his voice biting and cold, hard as December frost. He reached down and jerked her roughly to her feet.
She was looking at him with her black marble eyes, and he noticed with sinking dismay that she was once more wearing a placid, triumphant expression. She snatched her arm away and moved away from him, clutching the rumpled sheets to her chest. She reached the center of the room and stopped, her small, secret smile growing until it consumed the entire lower half of her face, the mad, mindless grin of a shark. Then she began to laugh, shuddering and rocking to and fro with the force of her mirth. One arm rose up and a slender, accusatory finger jutted out at him.
"Oh, you silly man," she gasped between bouts of uncontrolled mirth, "do you still believe you hold power over me? I am the one who holds power now. Surely you can see that. I have no intention of leaving Rivendell now or ever. If you see fit to compel my departure, I will destroy everything you hold dear. It would take but a moment."
Elrond still blind to the terrible snare that had been so patiently lain for him over the past two years, could only stare at her incredulously. "And how, pray tell, do you intend to do that? Raise and army and march against the city? My dear, there is not an elf in all the number of this great city who would follow you in such madness, and you have mastered not the dark arts to force their minds to your will." He did not boast with his words. They were the simple truth. Nothing could have made the noble citizens of Rivendell turn upon their lord, for, though not long in power, his fairness had inspired their loyalty and trust.
"It is not of Rivendell that I speak, my lord," she purred, her shark- tooth grin growing impossibly wider.
"Then you speak of nothing."
"It does my heart good to know that you hold Celebrian in so little esteem."
"What would you know of so sweet and good a thing as Celebrian?" he snarled, his best intentions to keep his anger in check fading rapidly. "If you but lay one finger upon her adored person, I will hunt you down like the cur you are."
She chuckled. "And they call you Elrond the wise. Fool. There are more, and mayhap, better ways to take her from you than simple murder. Death would be too easy a thing. I haven't waited all this time to play childish games with you. Two years is too long a time for that."
"What are you talking about?" he rasped. He felt a terrible coldness seeping into his limbs from the floor up, a coldness not unlike the one that would grip him as he stared helplessly into Galadriel's mirror after the countless passing of seasons. His heart began to pound in his bruised chest, and he desperately wanted to sit, but he knew that to do so would be a sign of weakness and one he dared not show. He willed himself to stand.
She must have seen the effort on his face because she snorted laughter and moved to sit upon his bed, a proprietary gesture that infuriated him.
"Get-," he started to say, meaning to order her from his bed, but she held up a hand to silence him.
"Things are going to change around here, and one of those changes is going to be that you will not order me around like a common trollop," she said imperiously.
"How dare you presume to dictate to me what I shall and shall not do!" he thundered.
Sithirantiel did not flinch. "I wonder what Celebrian will do when she finds out that she is promised to a man who would violate a woman and then raise his hand to her when she protests his abuse," she said in a musing voice.
There was absolute silence in the room as the gears, gummed and bound from too much wine, finally began to turn in Elrond's head. Now he did sit down. His knees unhinged with an ungraceful pop, and he plopped heavily on the floor. Maintaining dignity no longer seemed relevant.
"I did no such thing," he murmured dreamily, more to himself than to her. His mind seemed to have ground to a halt again.
"Really? Can you remember anything of the night before, anything at all?" She was mocking him.
She looked more like a shark than ever, cold black eyes filled with insatiable bloodlust. At any moment, he expected them to roll upward to whites while her large, boneless mouth opened to consume him in a mindless frenzy. It was a disturbing image, one conjured by a frightened and incoherent mind, but he could not shake it.
"I thought not," she said when he had made no answer for several minutes. "Your careless merrymaking made things considerably easier. I had planned on using a drop of sleeping potion in your wine, but your excess made such a difficult step unnecessary. It was easier than I expected, really. Perhaps I should thank Celebrian for making you so desperate for a woman's caress."
"I know not what I have done," he said in a voice that sounded tired and hollow in his ears, "but whatever happened, passed willingly between us. I felt your eager touch upon my flesh."
"As the walls have neither ears nor eyes, my lord, there is no one to substantiate your claim," she said, absently fingering the corner of a pillow. "There is, however, a waiter who can aver that you were so besotted the effects of Rivendell's finest wine that you spilled it upon his tunic, leaving an irrevocable and very clear stain. Any remembrance of yours would be irrelevant should this matter ever come before a high elven tribunal. Only I know the truth of what happened in this room, and I intend to bend it to my will."
"You wouldn't," he said, but even as he said it, he knew she would. It was clear that she had put much time and planning into this, too much not to go through with it now. She might have even planned the waiter on whom he had spilled the wine, but he did not think that likely. It was a mistake born of his own drunkenness, a fortuitous event that had worked to her distinct advantage.
She was unmistakably mad; that was beyond dispute, but it was not an irrational madness. Even as he sat in stupefied silence in the center of the web she had so artfully woven around him, he could not help but admire it. For two long years, she had labored over it, nursing her hatred while he lay sleeping, deftly connecting the delicate strands as she watched and waited for her time to come. What patience it must have taken to sit in his presence all those nights and watch as he and Celebrian dined, hoping for a night such as the last. And he had been too stupid to see it coming, too absorbed in his rare happiness.
"I must certainly would," she retorted, cutting into his thoughts. "If you do not concede to my wishes, I will go to the high elven council and lodge a formal accusation of violation against you as well as an accusation of abuse of power and the people's trust. Then we shall see just how much dear Celebrian values your tainted love." She was silent for a moment, then continued. "I was rather angry when you struck me at first, but now I count it a blessing, one of the many you have unknowingly bestowed upon me." She traced her finger along the edge of the bruise forming on her cheek as though it were a precious possession and fixed him with her haughty black eyes.
For the second time that morning, Elrond abandoned himself to his fury. He sprang from his chair and fell upon her, wrapping his burning hands around her throat and throttling her. She pried at his squeezing hands, but they were like vises. He wanted to choke the life from her, to feel the bones in her neck grind and snap as he rid the world of this horrible blight. He would have done it, too, if he had not glanced down at her eyes. Bubbling tar pits in a livid face, they glared back at him. There was fear in them, yes, but there was also a perverse glee. Do it! Do it! they cajoled.
An image rose in his mind, sparing her life and forever condemning his. In it, he saw his sentries bursting through the door to find him with his hands still wrapped around Sithirantiel's lifeless throat. There would most certainly be a tribunal then, and they would have no choice but to find him guilty. Worse still, he would not even be able to claim intoxication as a defense. He was stone cold sober. Any hope of binding himself to his Celebrian would be forever lost. He would be stripped of his land and privileges and banished to the land of Mordor, where even Celebrian would not follow.
He flung Sithirantiel away from him with an effort, his face a moue of disgust. She fell backwards and tumbled off the opposite edge of the bed. He could not see her, but he could hear her gasping for air and coughing on the other side of bed. It made him glad.
"What do you want?" he asked when her head reappeared on the other side of the bed. It was the voice of defeat.
"I…want…anything…I desire…any…time I ask…it," she wheezed, coughing and rubbing her throat. Her hair was a disheveled wreck and there were hectic red patches on her cheeks.
"Impossible," he snorted, already regretting that he had released his grip. "Not even the wife of an elven lord is granted that much power. It would call too much attention to you. I won't do it."
"Apparently, you still do not understand the precariousness of your position, my lord," she croaked, trying to sustain her self-assured demeanor even as a runner of drool dribbled down her chin. "I will give you twenty-four hours to decide what you value you most-your pride or your love." She wobbled to her feet and slipped on her dress. Then, as if nothing whatever were amiss, she bowed and left the room.
For a long time after she left, Elrond sat in the silence. His mind had slipped its tether and was now floating outside of his body, watching everything from a safe distance. It was hard to believe only an hour had passed since he had awakened. After a while, he got up, urinated, and put on his robes. The idea of anyone seeing him naked now made him feel ill. He splashed his face with water and shambled onto the balcony. His joints felt hollow and stiff, as though all of his two thousand years had come home to roost at once. He moved slowly, jerkily, like a bundle of sticks that has learned to walk.
He stood on the balcony and let the cool spring air dance and eddy across his face. Before him, the pristine waterfall roared and crashed, sending up a fine mist that blanketed everything and created a million dancing rainbows in front of his eyes. Farther down was the green canopy that shielded Rivendell from prying eyes. This spectacular vista soothed him, but not as much as it normally would have done. His thoughts were turned far too inward.
What was he going to do? In the space of an hour, the world he had imagined to be so safe and secure was all but destroyed. There seemed to be no way around it. If he struck first, made a public confession about the incident, it might kill this dreadful conspiracy before it really got started. It might also backfire. Sithirantiel was a fine actress, and she would no doubt be able to convince some people to her point of view. He wasn't sure he could bear it if Celebrian happened to be one of them. Even if she wasn't, he would still have to face her heartbroken face when she found out that he had given himself to another woman, willingly or not. No, confession was not an option. What then? Murder? He supposed he could hire a disreputable piece of rabble from the city of Gondor. They would do the job cheaply and well, no doubt. Be that as it may, it was also not an option. He was a man of conscience, else he would not be so worried now. What then?
There is yet one other possibility you have not yet considered, said a voice inside his head. It was a voice he would come to know very well over the next three thousand years, but on this day, not long before things would go from bad to abysmal, it frightened him badly as he stood in the warm sunshine. It was a cold, dispassionate voice, devoid of hope and warmth. And as he would later learn, it combined brutal honesty with demonic deception. Hearing this alien voice inside his head made his skin rise in hard little knots of cold gooseflesh, and the hair on the back of his neck gave an ominous prickle.
Who are you? he asked himself. When things really fell apart, he would talk out loud to his internal companion, but for now he was still strong enough to resist that compulsion.
It matters not, came the reply. You'll get to know me soon enough; I'll be staying awhile, I think. Now as I said, there is yet a third possibility you have not yet considered.
What? He was cautious but not yet terrified.
Suicide. You have started this mess, after all; seems only fair that you alone suffer the consequences. Rather tidy solution, really. You can avoid the whole nasty affair and watch the aftermath of your cowardice from the comfort of Valinor. It's the only way out, truth be told. The trap was well laid, and like the fly too stupid to realize its peril, you struggle in the binds that hold you. Your own fit of temper has drawn them ever tighter around you. There is no escape, save this one. Take it while you still can, or greater torment awaits you.
Shut up!! The voice that had guided him through the agonizing months or Rivendell's construction and organization, the voice of logic and reason, scored one of its final victories and pushed the intruding voice away. Elrond knew it would be back, though; yes, indeed.
What had the voice said? Suicide. Preposterous. It was a concept wholly foreign to the elves. He could not remember a single case of suicide in all his years, though he guessed many humans might interpret elves dying of grief in the same fashion, an idea not wholly without merit. Yet it did hold a dark magnetism for him, with its twisted logic. He would be escaping the problem, the same way an animal caught in a trap will gnaw off a limb to free itself.
He imagined himself smashing the mirror above his bureau and picking out the cruelest, most jagged of the shards. After ordering a nice hot bath, he would climb in and calmly slit his wrists. He would watch the blood gush out into the water and turn it red. He wondered if the air would smell of copper as it so often did on the blood-soaked battlefields of his youth. It didn't matter. By the time the guards thought to check on him, it would be all over. Nice and neat with no embarrassment.
It was an appealing image until his logical mind, the one still able to see clearly despite the growing chaos, showed him the flipside of his actions. Yes, the trapped animal escaped the cruel snare by the loss of its limb, but at what cost? It usually bled to death not long after its liberation, or, if it did not, it starved to death because it could no longer hunt. Though he would be far removed from the mayhem to follow, Celebrian certainly would not. His death would undo her. He was treated to the vision of her pretty face contorted in grief as they carried the bloody shroud containing his corpse away. She would blame herself, he knew. As the mind-numbing grief slowly overtook her, sapping her of will and life, she would be wracked with a needless guilt, forever wondering would she could have said or done to change the course of history and cursing herself for not doing more to ease his woes. No. He was not a coward, at least not that much of one. Not yet.
A walk in the garden. That was what he needed. It always helped to clear his mind, put things in a new perspective. If there was a way out of this, he would come to it there. He turned and walked back to the bureau. The top drawer held his favorite cloak, the one Celebrian said made him look the most dashing. He took it out and put it on, adjusting the silver clasp in the mirror. When he was done, he took a look at himself. A bit pale and ragged, but nothing that could be chalked up to anything more than a night of overzealous drinking. That was good.
His guards looked at him from the corners of their eyes as he stepped out between them, and he saw the one on the left knit his brow in confusion, sparking a myriad of paranoid thoughts in his mind. What had he heard? What had he seen?
"Is there a problem?" Elrond snapped
"No, sire," he responded quickly, "it's just that, well…your cloak is on backwards."
Elrond looked down. "So it is," he muttered absently, and set about fixing it. "I'm sorry for my rudeness. I fear I enjoyed myself rather too much last night."
"So did we all, sir." This comment earned the young sentry a sharp nudge to the ribs. His eyes widened as he realized what he had said. "That is…within…limits, uh, sir."
Elrond gave a distracted chuckle and went out. The sinuous path that led to the lush gardens was sparsely populated, and the few elves that were on it sported eyes as red and distracted as his own, a fact which cheered him a little. The even fewer women along the trail hailed him happily as he passed, having the good sense to indulge in spirits little or not at all. He envied them.
The gardens had existed long before Rivendell was even dreamt of in the minds of elves. It was a place borne of the earth, wild and dizzyingly beautiful. Elven legend had it that it was a gift to the elves from the Valar, a reward for protecting the trees and green things of the earth. Looking at the wild profusion growing around him, he thought that was the truth. A wide and endless variety of plants grew here, some that by all rights should wither and die, flourished. When he had first arrived here to build Rivendell, he had come here to try and count the different species that made this place there home. He lost count at three thousand and gave up.
He wandered through the gardens admiring the fragile flowers until he came to a small stone bench situated beside a small, burbling brook. He sat down with a sigh and bent down to pick up a handful of damp earth. He held it to his nose and breathed deeply. The rich smell heartened him, but it did not solve the problem at hand. He let it crumble through his fingers and rested his head upon his closed fist.
He hated to bring such a vile dilemma into the place where he and Celebrian shared so many happy times. He felt like he was defiling it somehow, but he also understood that this was also the place where he thought mostly clearly, and if ever there was a time he needed a clear head, it was now.
The voice of logic, emboldened by its earlier victory, pleaded with him to confess everything to Celebrian. She is a fine woman. Her love for you has never wavered, and it will not now. Trust in her. It is your only hope. The voice was frantic, as though it knew already that it had lost.
Of course her love has never wavered, sniggered the more sinister voice. Things have been relatively easy until now, and she is promised to the lord of the realm. Just see how long her love lasts when you tell her that you have lain with another. Her love will fade as quickly as a raindrop on burning desert sand. Mind your mouth, good sir, and mind it well. You have looked too long and too hard for this love to lose it over such an abstract thing as honor.
"Ah, there you are, dear."
He turned, expecting to see Sithirantiel and her malignant grin, but it was only Celebrian. Unlike him, she looked fresh and vivacious, Elbereth bless her. He got up and went her, enfolding her in a smothering embrace. "My love."
She returned his embrace, then pulled away to inspect him. "Valinor, you look terrible," she said when she saw his haggard face and bruised chin.
"Do I? I'm afraid I overindulged last night and am now suffering the consequences. It is nothing more than that."
"Are you certain?"
He had a chance to tell her then. His voice of reason was imploring him to do it, screaming for it, actually, but he didn't. Instead he said, "If I was ill, seeing your beautiful face has cured me of it."
She smiled at him, then turned and picked blossom from a nearby jasmine bush and twirled it between her fingers. He offered her his arm, and she took it. Arm in arm, they headed back to Imladris. Neither one of them knew it, but Elrond's last chance to avoid near ruin had passed him by. He was now heading down a slope of deceit and horror from which he would not be able to turn for another three thousand years.