The sun had gone down, and the moon was beginning its ascent into the sky by the time Supreme Der'Morat'Raken Briande managed to escape from her round of meetings, first with High Lady Suroth and then with the der'morats of the various Talons underneath her. Keille had gone off somewhere, probably visiting Ajan Idwalle, so Briande was more or less free. After another session of chewing out Lana and Sheilene—for crash-diving again; Briande was almost out of ideas as to what to do with those two and it was all Lana's fault; Sheilene was nowhere near as adventuresome, nor as ready to risk her raken—she waited until the two young morats had filed from her tent, then with a heavy sigh picked up her insectile helmet and rose.
She knew where she was going as she stepped out of her tent and into the muddy, churned-up lanes that divided the tent-blocks of the Seanchan encampment. Of course she did; every Seanchan military encampment was laid out in the same fashion from one location to the next. This camp would be the same in every respect as a camp on the other side of the world in N'Kon province, back in Seanchan. Yes, she knew the encampment all right. And more; as she crossed the boundary of the camp and stepped onto the clear, green ground of Imladris, she was both reassured and disconcerted to find that she remembered Imladris almost as well, even after five hundred years. But she had not recalled it as being so small, that was the thing, and as she wound her way down the white-stone path to the terrace where she had told Elrond she would meet him, she was surprised to find herself faintly saddened by this seeming change.
Elrond. Briande sighed again to herself at the thought, swinging her helmet idly by its straps as she passed underneath the shadow of ancient trees, in between low and blooming flower bushes that sent sweet fragrance through the air and perfumed the night breeze; the irrelevant thought that Keille would scold her if she saw her treating her equipment in such a careless fashion surfaced briefly and was then dismissed. The little morat was one of over a dozen backriders she had had in the years since she became der'morat, and without doubt, one of the ones most concerned about equipment.
Briande had known, when she had first taken the mission, that there would be a better-than-even chance that she and her husband would meet in Middle-Earth; she remembered how Elrond had always striven to hold Imladris ready as a bastion of resistance against Sauron in the time after the Last Alliance. He had spoken to her on more than one occasion about his fear that the One Ring would someday resurface and engulf Middle-Earth in flames. Having heard that, and knowing who the Enemy that the Empress's soe'feia Neferi had seen must be, it was a logical conclusion that if Elrond still lived, he would be in the forefront of the struggle against Mordor, and that the Ever Victorious Army would have to deal with him sooner or later. That knowledge had caused Briande more than a little discomfort, but she had not considered even for a moment turning down the Empress's offer of this position. After all, the road to the Westlands—the road to the Hailene—lay through Middle-Earth, and she would have gone to Shayol Ghul itself—to Barad-Dur itself—for an opportunity to go with the Hailene. She had known this was coming, but that did not make it any easier.
The gardens she passed through as she followed the white-stone path were new, and it occurred to her as she stopped briefly to smell a rose that Arwen must have created them—must have, because for all her former husband's many virtues, gardening was not among them, and she knew that the twins also did not garden. No, these were her daughter's gardens; she could see Arwen's hand and heart in the artfully artless placement of plants, the gentle sweeping curves of the path, the shadows of the tree branches in the moonlight. Arwen, Briande mused to herself as her boots clicked on the smooth stones and her helmet swung crazily from her hand, in and out of shadow as she moved beneath the trees. She needed to speak to Elrond about two things, and Arwen would be the easier one—certainly the simpler one to explain.
Elrond was waiting for her on the high terrace when she climbed the last step, wrapped in shadow and moonlight; he rose as she approached and faced her. For a moment, neither of them said anything; they both simply stood still, looking at one another. Her husband seemed much the same as he had been when she had taken her leave of him five hundred years ago; clear gray eyes, long dark hair, pale with even, regular features. He had not changed at all, she realized, and felt suddenly weary. She had changed. She had changed and he had remained the same.
After a time, she spoke. "Elrond," she said quietly, looking at him. His expression did not change, but she saw that his eyes lit with hopefulness.
"Cele—Briande—" He faltered, and fell silent.
She closed her eyes and ground her teeth together. The mere sound of her da'covale name felt like a blow, cut her like whipscoring; had anyone else attempted to call her—that—name—she would have drawn her sword and challenged the unfortunate one then and there. Anyone else.
She drew a short breath through her teeth, then forced herself to speak. "If you wish….you may call me….Celebrian." She almost choked on the last word; even as she spoke, she knew that he would never understand just how great a liberty she was granting him.
And he smiled, she saw as she spoke; she was vaguely incredulous even as she saw it, that he could be so unaware of the favor she did him, of what it meant to a Seanchan. "Celebrian," he said, his voice as soft as the wind in the leaves of the Sen T'jore, and she dug her nails into her palms to avoid the inevitable flinch. "I….I missed you."
Briande was silent.
He came toward her and offered to embrace her, watching her as carefully as a damane watches a sul'dam for the slightest hint of rejection. She hesitated a moment, then with an inward sigh permitted it, and he put his arms around her, clasping her so tightly she found it difficult to breathe. He buried his face in her shoulder, and she could feel him trembling minutely against her. "You came back," he murmured softly. "After all these years….you came back…."
Briande said nothing, but stroked his long dark hair absently. A fragment of dim memory from her previous life resurfaced, and she recalled that she had liked to tease him by playing with it, under the sheltering trees of Lothlorien, her mother Galadriel's enclave….the land where they had first met. The memory surfaced briefly, carrying with it a faded wisp of warmth, then was gone just as quickly, leaving only that bone-deep weariness in its wake.
After a time he released her and stepped back, saying nothing but drinking her in with his eyes, looking at her as if he would never be able to stop. Briande supposed she should have felt warmth or joy at such a regard, but instead it only made her feel uncomfortable.
Elrond seemed to see her unease and looked troubled. Briande simply remained silent for the time being, attempting to formulate a beginning for the conversation she had come here to have with him; she allowed her….husband….to fill the odd pocket of quiet between them. "Come," he said awkwardly, gesturing to a stone bench against the low railings of the terrace. "Will….will you sit down? This bench is the best place to view the gardens from, and from this angle you cannot see the Seanchan encampment," he offered, looking at her almost shyly.
"Are the gardens new?" Briande asked for the sake of making conversation, taking a seat on the stone bench; and indeed he was right, she saw, for from this angle the Seanchan encampment was behind them, out of their line of sight. If one closed one's ears, it might even have been possible to pretend that the encampment did not exist.
Elrond moved to sit beside her, looking at her hopefully; Briande turned away a little and placed the Seanchan helmet that still dangled from her fingers on the bench between them. He saw this and dropped his eyes. After a moment, however, he rallied and went on. "Yes, Arwen created these gardens three hundred years ago. She is quite proud of them."
"She is right to be," Briande murmured, looking out over the elegant beds and banks of flowers, the graceful, arching trees, the splashing fountains; for a moment memory stirred again and she fancied that she could almost see her daughter's placid temperament in the form and sweep of the land, accentuated by the careful placement of flowers and shrubs. Then it was buried by a stronger memory. Three hundred years…. While her daughter had been delicately creating these gardens, Briande had been learning, first with bad grace, then with better, to be a to'raken stable da'covale, mucking out stalls, changing the nesting boxes, collapsing onto her filthy pallet every night too exhausted to even dream. She gave a small sigh. It had not been easy.
But in the end, it had all been worth it.
Arwen.
It could no longer be put off. Briande drew a deep breath and turned to Elrond. "There is something I must discuss with you."
At the words, Elrond felt his heart grow cold within him. He knew what she was going to say. How he knew, he was not sure, but he knew. "Celebrian," he began, having not the slightest idea what he was going to say, only knowing, somehow, that he had to try and forestall the inevitable.
He failed.
"Elrond, there are two reasons why I agreed to meet with you tonight. I knew only of one when last I spoke to you, but since then another one has been added. I—"
"Celebrian, please," he began, raising a hand, desperate to silence her for one more moment.
"No, Elrond, this has to be said. I wish to say this first to make it completely clear: I may have returned to Middle-Earth, at least for the space of time the Ever Victorious Army is here, but….Five hundred years have passed. I have done much and seen much. Too much. I am changed, Elrond, and I cannot return to what I was. You call me Celebrian, but I am not. Not anymore. Celebrian died three hundred years ago. There is only Briande now. So if you had been hoping that I would return to you, that we could take up our marriage where we had left off, as if nothing had happened since then, I must tell you that hope is vain. I am not your wife anymore," she said, her voice quiet yet absolutely firm, "and I will not be ever again. I am sorry."
He had expected this—in some deep, haunted part of his mind—but her words still struck him like a blow to the gut. He almost gasped, literally feeling the air rush from his lungs with a blow. He stared at her, searching her face, looking for some indication that she felt pain at what she was saying, at least, pain to match what she had dealt him, but there was nothing; her face—the face that he had carried with him in his heart for every day of the past five hundred years—was distant and unapproachable in the moonlight. If anything, she looked the way she had looked when her favorite horse had stumbled and broken its leg beyond all repair, just before the mare had been put out of its misery.
"But—" he made himself say, struggling to keep the beseeching tone from his voice, "but….why? Celebrian, I….I still love you. I have waited—for so long—"
"I'm sorry, but that's your misfortune," she said at once. There was no malice in her voice, no ire; it was a simple statement of fact.
"But—you must feel something for me. Love cannot die—"
"I'm sorry but it did," she said, her voice quiet and yet firm, as unyielding in its own way as granite.
"I—I will change if you wish," he said, aware in that moment that he was pleading, pleading in a way he would never allow himself to with anyone else—she was his wife. "Tell me—" He broke off. "Tell me how to change, and I—"
"No, I don't think you can," she said calmly, looking at him with a cool, evaluative stare. "It's not in you. And if you did change, it still would not be enough; more than likely, you would change in a direction that led you apart from me. Our roads have diverged, Elrond, and they cannot be brought back together again. Too much has happened to separate us. Accept it."
Elrond started to speak, then stopped as he realized that he could not trust his voice. He averted his face, staring instead at the timeless blocks of stone that made up the floor of the terrace, running his eyes along the cracks between the stones. Behind him, he heard the gentle scrape of Celebrian's Seanchan helmet against the bench as she moved slightly. He dared not look back at her, lest the sight of her overwhelm his fragile self-mastery. After a time, speaking with iron control, he said, "Celebrian, I don't understand. It has only been five hundred years. What could have happened to—What happened?"
His wife was silent for a long, long time as if thinking. "More than you could imagine," she said at last. "But that is unimportant at present. The important thing is that you understand—"
"I don't understand." He cursed inwardly, knowing he sounded weak, almost petulant, but unable to help himself. "Celebrian, please. Tell me what happened. I don't—I can't—" He cut himself off with an effort.
Celebrian sighed. "Things changed, Elrond. I'm sorry, but they did. That is all. Things changed."
"How?" he demanded harshly, feeling the first stirrings of anger.
"I don't have time to explain it all. And there is more," she said, holding up a hand, forestalling him.
"More?" he asked, staring at her as he wondered what more she could possibly want.
She shifted in the moonlight, her face taking on a stony cast. "More. I have heard of Arwen's choice, you see."
"Arwen's—choice." He floundered a moment, thrown off course by her abrupt change in conversation. "Celebrian—"
"I am speaking to her, Elrond," she said calmly. "I am going to ask her if she would like to come with us when we leave. And if she does, I am taking her with me."
He was silent for the space of a moment, trying to understand what she had said; when at last the words made sense to him, they were accompanied by a resurgence of anger, as strong and sudden as it was surprising. I have lost my wife, he thought with a startling rush of rage, and now she wishes to take my daughter from me as well? He could not believe the gall—
"Out of the question," he responded harshly. "I forbid it. I will not let you—"
"You forbid it?" One delicate brow went up, and he realized he was facing Celebrian as an adversary. "You? You can't," she said calmly. "I will speak to her whether you will or no, and I will offer her the choice; and it is her choice, not yours. And if she chooses to go—"
"No!" His voice was growing sharper now; he could hear himself becoming more angry, and was powerless to control it. "I will not allow it. I will not permit you to take my daughter—I will not allow her to be debased in such a fashion—"
"Your daughter," Celebrian responded, looking at him. "Ah yes. Your daughter. You will not permit your daughter." And as he frowned at her, wondering what she meant, she continued, "I regret to inform you that you have nothing to say in the matter. I will speak to her, and should she so choose, I will bring her with me. Things have changed. Accept it."
He swallowed fury at her words, fighting to control himself, then after a long pause forced out, "How? How did they change? I think you owe me at least that much explanation."
For a long time, Celebrian said nothing, then at last shrugged; he saw her do this out of the corner of his eye, for he kept his face turned to the ground. He refused to look at her directly. Perhaps he dared not. "You are right," she said at last. "I do, don't I? At the very least, I owe you, if no one else….the only other I might have…." She trailed off for a moment, closed her eyes, then sighed and glanced at him. Elrond said nothing, only watched her, waiting in hurt and anger. "Very well," she said at last. "Though I….do not enjoy speaking….of the time before I was Briande, I will tell you."
Again, he said nothing, waiting in righteous silence.
She took a moment, to gather her thoughts, then spoke. "The Land Beyond the Sea….was not what we thought it would be," she said slowly; she spoke slowly, he realized, with many long pauses, as if she were unearthing words from crypts of memory. "Do you remember? We expected to sail the straight path, to return to Valinor in glory—we expected that we would be welcomed into our kinsmen's arms, with feasting and song—that we would arrive in a land of grandeur and wonder, beyond anything that Middle-Earth possessed—" Suddenly she stopped with a grim, mirthless smile. "That did not happen." Then her smile sharpened. "Although one might say in a way it did, if one were so inclined; the land of Seanchan does indeed contain many wonders the likes of which Middle-Earth has never seen. So in a way our hopes were fulfilled, though that fulfillment would be enough to cause the Valar themselves to laugh….
"We were so arrogant," she continued, looking not at him, nor at anything in the outer world, he saw; her eyes were turned inward, gazing at memory. "I know that we consider arrogance to be a trait of humans, but did you know that Others—that Elves—can be arrogant as well? Arrogant indeed, passing the arrogance of Men…." She paused again, then drew another sigh. "It happened when we were within sight of land. We were confused….it did not look like the coast of the Undying Lands to us; but we were not sure where else we could be, and were trying to get our bearings...perhaps that distraction is the reason why such misfortune was allowed to befall us. For misfortune it was, no matter what else may have come of it.
"A ship hailed us. It was a strange ship, not one of Cirdan the Shipwright's design; it had a square, ribbed sail, and its hull was exceedingly strange. Its captain, a human woman—a 'Daughter of Men,'" she said, and he heard the hesitation in her voice as she struggled to recall the Elven phraseology "—called upon us to stand down in the name of—" Celebrian paused here and smiled, a smile that touched him even through his anger and grief. "In the name of the Empress of the Nine Moons." Her smile sharpened. "That being a name we had never heard before, we of course paid the captain no heed. Were we not Elves? Did we stand down or turn aside at the request of a daughter of Men? Of course not. We sailed on, heedless. And why should we not? We were Elves, and this was our home, no matter that we did not know exactly where we were. It was not for a human to tell us to stand aside.
"That was our mistake."
She closed her eyes again, and lowered her head, looking tired. "A strange wind sprang up," she continued, "a wind from nowhere, running counter to the prevailing air currents; we could not tack across it, but only run before it, and it drove us directly toward the shore. We did not….We did not know it at the time, or understand it, but the Seanchan ship had on board a damane and sul'dam pair, or perhaps more than one, and they were working the weather to drive us aground. The Seanchan damane are not as skilled in this as are the Windfinders of the Atha'an Miere, or so I have heard, but they were skilled enough to accomplish their aim; the ship was driven aground and irrecoverably wrecked. When we saw that the other ship was following us, dispatching landing parties in boats to chase us, we abandoned our own ship and scattered—we scattered, in panic, we scattered, before these humans—into the countryside. Some of us even managed to escape," she added, her smile so twisted that, like a knife held wrong, it cut unexpectedly. "Some of us. I was not one of them."
"Celebrian—" he began, unsure of what he might say.
She continued as if she had not heard him. "There was a battle," she said, looking past him, at things five hundred years gone. "It was a short battle; they had damane, and we did not put up much of a fight. I remember the whole thing, and could relate it all, but I will not; suffice it to say, that when it was over, I—" She drew a breath to steady herself. "I was confined in a da'covale cage, surrounded by my shipmates, headed inland to Seandar. To the Court of the Empress of the Nine Moons."
Elrond started to speak, to offer her comfort; then stopped at her expression. He watched her instead, her head bowed slightly, and her face composed and perfect in the moonlight. Oh, my wife, he thought inwardly, and ached for her; his anger was slowly draining away.
"The Empress at the time was Hueyia," she resumed calmly. "Hueyia and those of her dynasty, the Riyame Paendrag, were well known as lovers of pleasure and the fine arts. Empress Hueyia had been collecting all the Others—Elves—she could find, both those already within her realm—and there were some; many of the Elves who had taken ship for the Undying Lands in the past thousand or two thousand years had somehow or another found their way to Seanchan and been brought into that vast land—At any rate, Hueyia had been taking all the Elves she could find, those already within her realm and those arriving, as we had—she had been taking them for da'covale to be a troupe of shea dancers at her court; she wanted us, you see, for our beauty and our grace. She had taken several ships before us, and did not even look at us when we came in; instead, she sent us directly to the trainer, to begin our transformation.
"The first few decades were….very hard," she said simply. "It is hard for many reasons, to be a shea dancer; not the least, that it is hard to go from being free to being da'covale. That was, perhaps, the hardest transition of all. In my case, it was even harder, in that I was still suffering from the after-effects of…my…ordeal…" Here she paled and looked away briefly before mastering herself again. "So it was hard, very hard, on all of us. Almost sixty were taken with me to be shea dancers, and at the end of fifty years, only thirty of us were still alive."
She caught his startled look and smiled grimly. "That's correct," she said softly, in response to the question he had not asked. "Only half. Some caught the displeasure of the Empress in some way and were killed; some turned to dreamsmoke to ease the pain of loss of freedom and loss of home and died in that fashion; some….they….contracted the wasting disease and so they died; some died of accidents, some of carelessness….In the end, though, no matter what it seemed killed them, it was only one cause; they simply lost the will to live. They could not bear to face the world of Seanchan, could not—they did not have the heart or the strength to endure the grief of loss and the life of a da'covale, and so they died.
"I was almost one of them. I would have been, if not for….Ciriel."
Ciriel. For a moment, Briande fell silent, unearthing memories long buried—memories buried for a reason, for who of the Blood would ever choose to remember that she had once been da'covale? She would never have willingly revisited—much less spoken of—these memories for anyone but Elrond, and even with him, it was only the combined weights of duty and debt that forced her to it. She thought of Ciriel again, Ciriel who had saved her life, and knew that there was no way she could make him see just how important this pale, fleshless girl had been to her in those first days, when she had been brutally torn from every single thing in the world that she knew or loved and thrust, reeling and dazed, terrified and alone, into a world she had never expected and into which she did not fit.
She had lived the experience, and she still did not entirely comprehend it; how she could ever make Elrond see—Elrond, who had remained behind, who had stayed the last five hundred years here in Imladris, living—as he had lived—a life of freedom and familiarity in which he was respected and obeyed, surrounded those people and places he knew and who knew him in return—how she could make him understand the shock of alienation that had come so close to overwhelming her—she could not. There was no way. Ciriel was no part of his life, nor he of hers.
"Ciriel was…." She began, and then trailed off again, struggling to find the words to tell him, to explain to him the loneliness, the terror, the long, grueling days of arduous toil, the humiliation of having gone from free to slave, from Lady of Imladris to da'covale shea dancer. And the orc-dens. The horrible shadow of the orc-dens. That ordeal had never been far from her mind. The combat training she had received when she had become morat'raken had helped to dispel it some, but the fear was still there, still present within her. "She was someone who was very important to me," she finished, then stopped, for that did not encompass half of what the other Elfwoman had meant to her. "She was," she continued, finding a better image, "the piece of driftwood I clung to to save myself from drowning."
"Was it so bad?" she heard him ask gently, into the silence that she had not realized she was leaving. She raised her head and looked back at him.
"You have no idea," she said quietly, meeting his eyes.
He nodded and looked down, seemingly abashed.
"Ciriel was…one of us," she continued quietly, "an Other, but from Seanchan, not Middle-Earth; she had been born there. She never told me who her parents were, but I gathered from a few things she said once that she may not have been fully Elven; very few of the Others born in Seanchan are, for there are so few of us compared to the humans that it is not unusual for an Other to take a human mate. Or be taken. Ciriel had been one such; she had been an asa to several noblemen before the Empress bought her for a shea dancer. She told me about it; she had loved the last one deeply, and hoped he would take her for wife, for asa sometimes become wives, but that was not to be. It was as asa that she had probably caught the wasting that finally killed her." She was silent for a moment, grieving for her friend, the first friend she had found in that strange and frightening place.
"Why she took a liking to me, I don't know," she continued quietly. "She told me once that I reminded her of her sister, but she never said anything more, so I don't know what she meant by that. She….saved my life.
"She saved my life," Briande continued, "but she could not save her own. She was already sick with the wasting by the time I knew her, though I did not recognize it at first, and even if she had not been—They have this smoke, in Seanchan," she explained, looking at her husband with dry eyes. "It is made from the seeds of poppies, and many there use it for the dreams it brings when it is breathed in, so they call it dreamsmoke. It is dangerous, because after a while all you care about is getting more of it, breathing more of it, and seeing more dreams—eventually you do not eat or sleep or do anything except dream the smoke dreams. Ciriel used it," she said, swallowing. "Many of the Others—Elves—who were captured with me eventually found it too, because while you are dreaming then you don't care about anything else, and when you are awake, then all you care about is the dreaming. I might have gone that way—I certainly had pain enough—but the first time I tried, Ciriel shouted at me, and the next time she struck me and told me if she saw me doing it again, she would beat me and worse, abandon me. She meant it too, and I did not dare take that risk—she was the only thing that kept me alive," she admitted, and looked down.
"The smoke would probably have caught her eventually-" she went on, collecting herself, "—I saw enough of my shipmates go that way so that I knew what the final outcome would have been-but as I said before, she was already ill when I met her, and between the two, the illness and the dreamsmoke, she didn't have a chance. Soon she reached the point where she could no longer perform. About a hundred and fifty years after I was first taken da'covale, she was dismissed from the troupe and sent I knew not where—at least, not then."
She was silent a moment in the moonlight, thinking. Elrond was silent too; she could not decipher the expression he wore, nor did she much care to. She wondered if he even understood the favor she was doing him—the gift she was giving him in memory of their time of marriage—the cost that these thoughts exacted from her, in grief and pain. No Blood who had ever been da'covale would ever speak of such a thing except in direst circumstances; she was baring for him a wound that had not healed—would never heal. She pushed the thought aside. Of course he did not understand—how could he? She would not have, before she had become Seanchan.
"Celebrian, I am sorry," he said, reaching out to lay a hand on her arm.
She shrugged him off. "You have nothing to be sorry for. It didn't happen to you."
The two of them sat in silence for a moment, and at last, Briande marshaled her thoughts enough to go on. "I met her again, fifty years or so later. The dynasty changed, you see; the Riyame Paendrags were overthrown to be replaced with the Athaem Paendrag dynasty. The first empress of this line, Wulei, was a stern moralist; she believed that the Riyames had become weak and decadent and was determined that the same thing should not happen to her line. Among other changes, she banned public shea dancer troupes and discouraged private ones; she taxed them heavily, forbade the sale of da'covale for shea dancers and the employment of trainers….And one of the first things she did, of course, was to disband her own troupe. Those of us who remained were scattered and dispersed, reintegrated into the structure of the Empress's government in various areas….I was sent to the to'raken stables, to become a to'raken da'covale. And it was there that I was reunited with Ciriel.
"She was dying."
So blunt, that statement. So plain and ugly in its truth. It sounded ugly to her, still, after all these years. She could see pain for her in Elrond's gaze; she felt him reach out to touch her again and again brushed him aside, no matter that she could see her rejection hurt him. He had no part in this pain; it was her own. It had helped to make her what she was now.
"She was so weak that she could barely perform her tasks." So weak, Briande thought grimly, that she could barely breathe, though there was no reason to relate that. The words she spoke seemed disconnected somehow from her, from Blooded Lady and Supreme Der'Morat'Raken Briande Duchen Paendrag. "The der'morat'to'raken in charge of the stables had given up trying to make her work; there was just no point to it. She was not being insolent, and she was so ill that beating her would do no good. They were hardly going to waste medical care on a to'raken stable da'covale, even if there had been a cure for the wasting which there wasn't, so they simply left her to lie on her pallet." Dying slowly, by inches. Briande swallowed at the thought of what had been left of her friend. "I would come and sit with her when I had a moment or two, telling her useless things, things that we would do when she recovered—which of course was nonsense, she wasn't going to recover, anyone could see that, but I thought—" Had she, she wondered now? Had she been thinking at all? There had hardly been time for thought, back then. "If I could pretend I didn't know that, then maybe it wouldn't happen…." Her voice broke. She swallowed hard, trying to regain control; she saw pain, again, in Elrond's face, but he did her the courtesy of remaining silent and allowing her time.
"She died then?" he asked after a time, and Briande saw what he was doing; he was giving her a kindness, for all she had to do was say yes or no, and move on to other things. But as she started to speak, memory caught her. Words she had spent three hundred years trying simultaneously to forget and fulfill rang again in her ears and she was back at the side of a skeletal figure lying on a filthy pallet in a dark, squalid to'raken stable.
"She told me not to worry….she said, the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills and that when the Pattern spun her out again, perhaps we would meet in a better place….then she looked up at me and met my eyes, and she said…."
Briande fell silent.
Celebrian, listen. You are wise and strong. You have so many gifts that I never had—don't let them go to waste. Don't end up killing yourself like me—
Ciriel, please. Please don't talk like that, Ciriel—you'll be all right—
No. Promise me, Celebrian. Promise me that you will not end up like me. Promise me that you will find a way to win your freedom. Celebrian, promise me. Promise me, Celebrian. Promise—
The pain of a hand clamped on hers, almost strong enough to break the bones—how there could be so much strength left in a dying woman's fingers, Briande Duchen Paendrag did not know.
Ciriel, please—you're frightening me—
Promise!
I promise….
"She told me to gain my freedom." Strange that such an encounter—one that had guided her every action almost to this day—could be reduced to such a simple, dry sentence. "I promised, and she told me that she could then die in peace. Soon after, she closed her eyes, and soon after that, she breathed no more."
Elrond swallowed at the pain he heard in his wife's voice, sternly controlled, yet there none the less. He reached out to touch her again; she had rebuked him before, yet he had no other way to express his sympathy.
"You don't have to go on," he said, with fumbling, awkward words.
"I do though," she replied at once and looked back at him. He saw that though her eyes were brighter than they should be, her face was perfectly composed and calm. "So that you will know how and why our paths diverged, and so that you will never have cause to question."
"Celebrian—"
"After she died," Celebrian continued quietly, "I came as close as I ever had to simply lying down and dying, even closer than in my first days of captivity. Then I had had Ciriel. Now, I had no one. I remember—"
She paused for a moment, her blue eyes turning inward. "I remember the exact night," she said slowly. "It was less than a year after her death. I had been worked very hard that day, and beaten by the head der'morat'to'raken—
"That night, I dropped, exhausted and sick, onto my filthy straw pallet, and I began to weep," she said quietly, speaking, he thought, less to him than to herself. "The walls I had built up to allow me to survive, to function in this world for which I was never intended and into which I did not fit, came down. I had no defenses left. I thought of….of my ordeal in the orc-dens, and I thought of how I had lost Ciriel and how I had lost Arwen and Elladan and Elrohir—and you, my husband," she added quietly, "and it seemed like I had lost everything. I had lost everything there was for me in the world. I lay there weeping, and I longed to die. I wanted to die," she repeated, regardless of her husband's horrified stare. "I lay there and waited—I actually waited for death to come and take me, to relieve me of this existence that had become a torment to me.
"And it did not.
"For as I lay there, something….else….happened," she said slowly, frowning in thought. "I have thought about what happened ever since that night, and I still cannot explain it entirely, but as I lay there, yearning for death, a—a—realization came over me. I cannot describe it in any other way but that," she said, lifting her eyes and looking at him with an almost surprised expression, as if the emotions were occurring to her again for the first time. "I, Celebrian, daughter of Celeborn and Galadriel the Lady of the Golden Wood—I, wife to Elrond Half-Elven and Lady of Imladris in my own right—mother of Arwen Undomiel the Evenstar, whom all hailed as being as beautiful as Luthien Tinuviel had been—I, Celebrian, was lying on a filthy straw pallet crawling with vermin above a dark and fetid to'raken stable, too weak and exhausted to move, weeping desperately and wishing only the release of death….and not a single person in the world knew or cared." She said those last words slowly, staring at him as if to drive the emphasis home, then repeated, "Not one person in the world knew or cared. Can you imagine? And what was more," she went on, her voice filled with surprise, "nobody would care even if they did know. Everybody had far too many problems of his or her own to worry about me. Nobody was going to come along to save me. Nobody was going to help me. Nobody….cared," she repeated, pausing and staring at him to emphasize the point.
"That is a terrible thing to realize," she said, looking at him with that look of surprise. "That is an absolutely terrible thing, the knowledge that not one person in the world cares about your plight. There are no other words to describe it. It is terrible. And yet….it was good," she said earnestly. "It was good for me to know that. Because as I lay there, I realized…..that I was on my own. And—in that moment….it was as if….I decided something," she said haltingly, trying to put into words a process that had taken place on a gut level. "I can't explain it, but it was as if….I decided….
"The past was past," she said suddenly, strongly. "The past was behind me. It was finished with. Forever. There was no recapturing it, not then, not ever. Celeborn, Galadriel, Elladan, Elrohir, you, Arwen, Imladris, Lothlorien, Middle-Earth—they were all part of the past. They were gone. There was no going back, and it was time to look ahead.
"I suppose you could say, if you so wished," she said, smiling grimly, "that I had decided to live."
Elrond could not speak. He could find no words.
"From that night forward, I never looked back. Instead of dreaming of the past, I clung to the promise that Ciriel had made me give, and threw all my effort into trying to change my future—I had all the time in the world, remember," she said with a laugh, "for I was immortal. I was working in the to'raken stables, so it seemed that they might be my avenue up. I pestered my superiors day in and day out," she continued, smiling, "for any scrap of information they could give me about the to'raken, and hoarded what little I could pry out of them. I performed every task I was set to the best of my ability, and went beyond wherever I could, often volunteering for extra duty if it would give me an opportunity to work directly with the to'raken. My efforts were not in vain either; diligence paid off. Within five years, the head der'morat'to'raken had placed me in charge of all the to'raken stable da'covale and had begun to teach me a little about working with the raken—more difficult, for they are more delicate, high-strung beasts, thus imparting higher status to those who work with them. I could be patient; I was willing to wait as long as I had to.
"In the thirty-third year after Ciriel's death, I had my chance," she related. "In the thirty-third year after I had decided to live, a plague hit the stables of the raken and the to'raken. By this time I had gained an innate knowledge of both creatures, and combined with my innate Elven talent at healing, I was able to cure them where even the most skilled der'morat'raken failed. Almost single-handedly, I saved almost the entire flight of raken and to'raken combined. And…." She stopped and smiled. "And Empress Malaina noticed.
"Malaina was a hard woman, but also a fair and just one; she rewarded merit. She called me before the Crystal Throne—I stepped into her presence and felt the….the awe that the Crystal Throne inspires—it is a huge ter'angreal designed especially for that purpose—and I went down on my face before her, and she said…."
Celebrian stopped here, remembering; her expression softened, her eyes grew wide and misty; her face looked almost radiant at the memory, an expression so familiar to Elrond it brought pain. For once, she had looked the same way at him.
"She said," Celebrian went on, her voice soft and musical as she recounted the memory, " 'Rise, my most honored servant, and be sei'taer in my sight. You have saved my raken flights; ask any boon that you might wish.'
"And I rose, but I didn't—dare—look her in the face. Not while she sat on the Crystal Throne. I said, 'What I ask is only my heart's desire. I ask to be manumitted from da'covale status and apprenticed to the morat'to'raken. That is all that I wish.'
"And she laughed and said, 'Do you wish for so little? Then I must better it, that all may know the generosity of the Empress of the Nine Moons to those who serve her well. From this day forward, you are manumitted, no longer da'covale. Apprenticed you shall certainly be, but not to the morat'to'raken, but the morat'raken. Furthermore, I hereby raise you to the Blood of Hawkwing Paendrag, to be granted the lands of Duchen on the edge of the Sen T'jore, and from this day forward, your name is no longer Celebrian; that is the name you bore as da'covale, and it is not suitable that one of the Blood should be known by a da'covale name. You are now Briande, that is, 'healer;' Briande Duchen Paendrag. Take these gifts from the Empress and go, and tell any who asks that Empress Malaina is not ungenerous to those who serve her well.'"
She paused and remembered as Elrond watched her; she was glowing from within at the memory. He, for his part, was having a difficult time crediting it. How his wife, the Lady of Imladris, could gain such pleasure from simply being honored by a Daughter of Men, he could not imagine; it was, in its way, as far outside his experience as anything else the Seanchan brought. He could not even conceptualize what she must have been feeling.
Celebrian—Briande, he remembered unhappily—did not notice. She was still, rapt in the joy of the moment, savoring it again; the sorrow she had shown while relating what had come before had been washed away by an emotion which he recognized as triumph. "When I left the presence of the Crystal Throne," she continued, remembering with a laugh, "I was almost literally walking on air. Of course, nobody wanted Duchen, which was why she was able to give it to me—it's still there, on the edge of the Sen T'jore, a mass of tangles and vines and brambles and bushes and various beasts, poison and otherwise, who skulk through the undergrowth waiting to grab an unwary passerby—but it's mine. It's mine," she said with a fierce possessiveness. "I earned it. I had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams—beyond Ciriel's wishes for me—can you imagine? I entered the room as da'covale, respected by no one, honored by no one, sei'mosiev in the eyes of even the humblest street peddler—and I left a landed Lady of the Blood of Paendrag, morat'raken instead of morat'to'raken—I had been permitted to stand sei'taer in the sight of the Empress! Can you believe it? That's something even High Lady Suroth can't say. And what was even better, I had earned it, by exercise of my knowledge, skills and wisdom.
"From that day forward," she said, grinning, "everything started to go my way. It was harder than I had thought it might be to learn to be morat'raken—the raken are like the to'raken, but not the same—but I persevered and did not fail. Within ten years I had been made first full morat'raken and then der'morat. And since that time, I have been rising, slowly but steadily, through the ranks of the der'morat'raken until I am here," she said quietly, looking at him. "Supreme Der'Morat'Raken to High Lady Suroth's Expeditionary Force. If all goes well, if there are no mishaps, I will almost certainly be tapped to be Supreme Der'Morat'Raken to the Hailene. When our forces go the other way," she said, looking beyond him, her eyes gleaming in the moonlight. "When we cross the Aryth Ocean to the Westlands, to bring the name of Paendrag back to Paendrag's home. To seek and find the Dragon Reborn, that we might bring him to kneel before the Crystal Throne, so that he might fight alongside us at Tarmon Gai'don….the Last Battle.
"And….after that…." Her words became more tentative now, trailing off as she looked beyond him. "Assuming that we survive, that the world survives the Last Battle…well then…." She paused now, and he saw that her eyes were shadowed, as if she were thinking around the edges of something that both excited and frightened her, something she almost did not dare to name to herself as a desire. "Not in the lifetime of this Empress, certainly," she said quickly. "Nor in the lifetime of her daughter Tuon, who will most likely be her heir. Most likely not in the lifetime of this dynasty. But….well….I have all the time in the world….if I am not killed….if the world is not Broken….why not, yes, why not? If the correct opportunity presents itself….for instance after this dynasty falls—which it surely will, for all dynasties fall— And if I want it," she said hurriedly. "Only if I want it, which I do not at present and may not ever; on the heights, all paths are paved with daggers….if it can be easily enough done, and most especially if it could be rightly done—and if I have an escape, for only a fool boxes herself in with no means of escape—but….why not? It would not be….the first time….in the history of Seanchan….that a former da'covale has—become—" she paused, looking scared right down to the bone of what she was about to say, then swallowed and finished it "—Empress."
Silence fell as Celebrian—no, Briande—sat there contemplating what she had said—the hope that perhaps, before, she had not even dared to articulate to herself. Elrond did not try to fill the silence. He was overwhelmed by what she had told him, all she had endured, how far she had come; he could barely comprehend her tale, for it was so far removed from his own experience. The two sat there in silence as the night wind, laden with the sweet perfume of many blossoms, brought up the distant strains of a song from the Seanchan encampment:
So go and bow your head and weep
For your world won't change while you sleep
So go and bow your head and weep
For the summer that was lost now is gone
The summer that was lost now is gone….
"Of course, that's only if I want it," said Briande at last, speaking hastily, like someone backing away from the edge of a cliff. "I don't want it yet and may not ever; and even if I do I may never find a way or a time. And even if I did, I would not want to be Empress forever. Only for fifty years, or perhaps a hundred, and then to retire to the estates of Duchen on the edge of the Sen T'jore and see if I could not carve a productive patch of land out of the jungle. But do you see now, Elrond, why I cannot go back to being your wife again? I closed the door on the past a long time ago, and I am sorry, but you are part of that past. And while I was happy here as Lady of Imladris, I cannot be Lady of Imladris anymore. I have grown beyond that now, away from it, and I cannot be reduced to that again without giving up some part of myself. That, I will not do. I am sorry."
Still, Elrond did not speak. He was stunned to silence by what Briande had told him, and as he stared back at her in the moonlight, it seemed suddenly, strangely, as if he were looking at a stranger, her face unrecognizable. He struggled to make sense of what he had heard. Words such as Tarmon Gai'don, shea dancer, da'covale, were unknown to him; he had strained his comprehension to the limit trying to grasp what she was saying, but in the end it had come through to him that this person was not his wife of old.
She leaned forward now, frowning as she looked into his face. "Elrond?" she asked, apparently concerned by whatever it was that she saw there.
One idea then rose to the surface of his mind, coming to the fore of the roiling mass of impressions called up by her recitation. "You can't have Arwen." He barely knew he would speak until he said it.
She frowned again, more sharply. "I'm sorry?"
"You can't have Arwen." This time his voice was stronger, more sure. His anger, dampened by Celebrian's pain, was beginning to reawaken—and why not? This was not Celebrian. This was Briande. "You can't have her. I will not allow it."
"You will not?"
"No." His voice was unsteady with the force of his emotions. He spoke wildly, scarcely knowing what he said. "You—you may have taken my wife from me, but I will not permit you to have my daughter too. I won't let that happen—"
"Won't let what happen?" Briande asked, raising an eyebrow.
He looked at her, and his anger was reawakening. "I won't let her become like you."
"She's my daughter too." Briande's words were cool, dispassionate as she said what she had said before. "You have nothing to say about it."
"You want to take her away from me and make her into a mortal Seanchan—" he accused.
"You were prepared to let her die by permitting her to go with Aragorn," Briande responded, with a trace of anger of her own. "You're not willing to release her to me?"
"I know who Aragorn is," Elrond responded bitterly. "I have no idea who you are, Supreme Der'Morat'Raken Briande." He threw her title at her as a deliberate insult and said with reawakened fury, "I may have no choice but to abandon hope for my wife, but I will tell you now, Arwen is mine and I will not give her to the Seanchan."
Supreme Der'Morat'Raken Briande tilted her head and regarded him icily. "Arwen is yours," she repeated slowly. "You will not 'give' her to the Seanchan. Interesting. I had remembered that you could be possessive and controlling, but I had forgotten to what extent."
"Possessive?" he spat with a bitter laugh. "Controlling? I should say. You wish to take my daughter from me, to make her into something she is not, something that goes against everything that she is and will be—"
"Something that goes against what she is? Or something that goes against what you think she is?"
"What?"
"I will not 'take' your daughter from you," Briande continued as if he had not spoken, her voice chill. "I will only give her the choice. It will be up to her to choose whether she remains in Middle-Earth—"
"I will not let her make that choice!" he insisted. "She is all that is left to me-I will not let her—"
"Why? Because you're afraid she'll choose the wrong way? Because you're afraid of losing her?"
Elrond broke off, staring at Briande, unable to think of a word to reply. Now she smiled, with the thinnest edge of scorn.
"How did she ever convince you to let her fall in love with Aragorn?"
"I don't understand what you—"
"Oh, I think you do," she replied, and now there was anger in her voice as well. "Are you even listening to yourself? You say 'my daughter' like you say 'my sword' or 'my horse'—"
"I do not—"
"You do. You always have," Briande insisted. "Not just about her, but about the twins—even, occasionally, about me. I don't care for it and never have."
Stung, Elrond retorted, " I simply have no interesting in seeing my—in seeing Arwen turned into—into some pallid imitation of a—a Seanchan beast handler—"
"But you're willing to let her die."
"I—" He stopped, unable to come up with a reply, unable to put into words the complex web of feelings overwhelming him. "That is her choice," he said at last, knowing he was only injuring his stance by doing so but unable to come up with anything else to say.
"And this would be her choice as well. It is the same."
"It is not!" he insisted desperately.
Briande looked at him. "How?" she asked. "How not?"
"I—She—" He stared at the tiles of the terrace, attempting to put his thoughts in order. It was hard. The story Celebrian—Briande—had told him, the shock of seeing her again after all this time, the pain and anger of learning that she would not return to him, the general upheaval caused by the arrival of the Seanchan, the memory of the destruction of Isengard—all these things combined in him now, colliding together. He drew a breath, suddenly feeling tired and unsteady, and passed a hand over his face. "Her choice of Aragorn—" he began at last, aware that his voice held more than a tinge of desperation, "is a choice that is….sanctified, through custom and through tradition. I—I faced such a choice myself, as did my brother Elros, and though I chose the other way, it is something that is rightfully hers, that belongs to her through her bloodline. And though I—though I do not understand why she or anyone would ever choose to be mortal, I know that I cannot stand in her way should she so choose; I watched my brother Elros choose in her fashion, and though I tried to reason with him, to convince him otherwise, in the end it was his choice and I could not stop him from doing so. Though I do not approve, this choice is rightfully hers—and though I do not wish to see her wed Aragorn, he is of the Dunedain—the last descendant of the line of my brother. He is known to me. To be a Seanchan—" He stopped, then shook his head, able to repeat only, "I will not permit it."
Briande looked at him for a long moment. "You would rather see her die than lose her."
"Yes," he said fiercely, and now his anger returned fully. "I will—I will not permit you to make my daughter into a stranger to me, as was done with Celebrian. I will not permit you to debase her in that fashion—to change from what she is now, Arwen Undomiel, the Evenstar of Imladris—"
He stopped then, for she was regarding him, pale and still in the moonlight. "Perhaps your desire that she remain as she is is why she chose the mortal life." And as he stared at her, unable to believe what she had just said to him, Briande rose from the bench and raised her helmet to her head. She secured it beneath her chin, throwing her features into shadow and obscuring them from him. "I am sorry this causes you pain, Elrond of the Others," she said formally, addressing him as a Seanchan might, "but I will tell you now that you cannot and will not prevent me from speaking to my daughter and offering her the choice. If she chooses to remain with you then that is well. If she chooses to come with me and with the Seanchan, however, allow me to warn you not to interfere. If you attempt to keep her against her will and mine, let me assure you that you will most certainly fail." Seeing his expression, she softened slightly. "Forgive me for speaking in this way to you, but please understand that I won't let you stop her from leaving, should that be her choice."
"Celebrian—" he said quietly, an appeal, a plea.
She did not answer. She simply turned and strode off down the path, her boot heels ringing. Leaving him behind her and bereft.
