Lost Youth
Chapter Seven
Just a short chapter this time, but hopefully there'll be one each day this week.
Thanks to Lalaith and Escapistone - ES, I'm sorry that I didn't wait for your betaing. I promise I will tomorrow. ;)
This is for Isis with big hugs.
Ere the midday, the wind had fallen to nothing, the air was stale and still; naught but a brush of breath across the flapping sails. Becalmed, the fleet drifted this way and that, the sea glassy beneath them, the sky calm and blue above them; sharp of bitter ice. Only wisps of pale cloud drifting high above the sea sullied the immaculate vault.
The king went here and there among the people, face and frame wracked with pain, long-fingered, slender hands seeking out the wounds that battle had wrought upon flesh and blood. Sheets and jib-lines, tarred decks and sleek gunwales, hither and thither was his way bent, face pale and eyes dark, sleepless, hopeless. Always he looked to the West, raising his face to the breeze which ever and anon blew from out of the deepest seas; always he looked to the change in the winds, watching, waiting, even as his fingers fleeted before the faces of the sick and the dying.
A boat skimmed the sea, oars rising and falling.
The prince touched his shoulder lightly, imploringly, but he did not listen, shrugging the touch away. After a while, the prince left, his eyes cold and dark. He leant upon the rail, his gaze fixed upon the unchanging sea, the glaring light of midday glancing off his hair, his restless gaze fleeting across the waters. Little hope there seemed to him there; little hope that there might be some rising light beyond the darkness
The stench of death rose up from the hold, of too many bodies crammed too close together, too many bodies too close to death, Men and Elves and Dwarves alike, and still the king passed among them, his hair hanging in ragged tails about his shoulders, his shirt tattered, his eyes weary and bleak. Time and again he would tilt his head, as if listening, waiting, but no far-off call rang in his ears, and the harsh lines of weariness etched themselves deeper about the corners of his mouth.
It was nigh on dusk ere wind touched the face of the Shipwright, seated athwart the great beam, his gangling legs dangling idly against the slack canvas. He raised his chin, his expression sharply alert beneath the sea-wracked tangle of his beard. His hand clenched about the smooth wood of the yard arm, and his loud curses raised the heads of the survivors huddled on the decks far beneath.
Even as he slithered down the rigging, the heathline slipping between his fingers, the sails bellied, creaking and flapping before the rising wind. His feet touched the deck, and an anxious hand tugged at the sleeve of his salt-worn tunic. "Lord Círdan..." Araliel stared up at him with wide, curious eyes.
"Go to the king and tell him that the wind is rising." He shrugged away her hand, already turning to the sail hands who awaited his instructions. The tiller was beneath his hand, the line which had lashed it falling away. Still, the healer stood at the foot of the mast, her usual calm competence deadened, her face upturned to the breeze, bleakness drowning out the blue in her eyes. "Go now."
She shook her head as if to dispel some dark malaise, wiping her hands, still bloody with the fruits of vicious battle, on her grimed and tattered skirts. Gathering them up in tightly bunched fists, she made her way down the companionway, swaying with every step as the sea began to roll and swell beneath the ship.
It was no wind born of the weather of this world that blew that night, as dusk fell, and the first stars pricked the night sky with light.
"Elrond." She had found him in the darkest spaces of the hold, bent double beneath the shadow of one of the great timbers, his hands pressed to a sword wound that gaped beneath the flickering light of a lantern. The wood that formed the floor was a pale silvery grey, the shade of starlight shining above ancient woods, beautiful and seamless, so smooth that even the gaze seemed to roll off it. The light seemed to pierce, and, so piercing, return to the beholder a hundredfold, glimmering bright in hair and eyes, lending an unearthly glory to the most earthly face. And yet, for all that, it was as rank and dark as the lowest slave galley of Morgoth, the shadowed spaces between the massive bracing beams roiling with groaning pain, reeking with the stench of death. And in the midst of all this he knelt, as he had for hours passed. Since last she had seen him, someone had caught his dark hair back in a rough loop of leathern cord, and yet it but served to heighten the gaunt pallor of features. He looked as nigh unto death as the ailing figure beneath his touch. "Elrond…"
He raised his eyes enough to meet hers, and no more. His lips were utterly bloodless. "A moment, Araliel, but a moment and I shall be finished…."
She dropped to her knees beside him, and pressed her hand over his. "You are not needed here, but above decks the need is great. Even now the wind is rising. The hour of our doom grows near."
"The wind?" He drew his hand from beneath hers as if it burnt his very flesh. "Which way?" A nerve danced in his cheek. "Which way?"
She bowed her head, and she found the strength to raise it once more, her eyes were bright with tears. "From the West, my lord. The wind blows from the West, and it blows us to our doom."
What little colour there was drained from his face. His dark hair was a stark mass above his pallid skin, black as the unholy night, as darkness with neither sun nor moon nor stars. "I understand. At last, I think I understand." He rose slowly, his long legs unfolding beneath him. "Tend the wounded as best you may, my friend, and when the darkness comes, I beg you, do not be afeared." He bent and brushed a chaste kiss to her forehead, and was gone.
"Neither dawn nor darkness will bring my respite." But he did not hear her, and the Elf beneath her hands merely moaned with pain, his mind lost to speech and thought alike.
"Círdan?"
The Shipwright took the young king's arm and drew him near. "The wind…"
"Aye, I know." With his free hand, he loosed his hair to spill out in the hastening wind, a dark curtain swept back from his brow as he turned to face the utmost West. The last glimmer of light limned the horizon, the memory of the sun, more imagining than aught of solid truth. "And now I understand."
"Understand?" A moment of confusion riffled the Shipwright's calm.
"Aye. I am not made to leave the shores of the Hither Lands until my task is done and my labours ended. Whether it shall end well or ill lies but in my deciding, and in the power that is beyond this world, but I cannot leave. Give me a longboat, and I shall be away."
Círdan stared at him, all calm forgotten. "You are a fool or a knave to suggest such a thing, child."
A strange smile quirked Elrond's lips. "Most likely I am both, and yet this is the truest course I can steer. If, beyond all doubt, the light comes again, crown my brother, and take him as king in my place. May his realm last long and burn brightly."
Elros' head came up, and he gazed upon his twin as if he looked upon the force of madness itself. "I am not made to take your place, nor sit your seat."
"And thus you will sit it full well, my brother." He bent the full force of his sweet smile upon his brother, and upon the Shipwright who stared at him, his mouth dropped open in wonder and in horror. "A longboat, Círdan, that is all I ask."
"And I say you nay, king though you are. A boat I shall not give you, nor shall I permit you to pass into the East unless these few ships pass with you."
"And that I shall not allow," Elrond said, a bitter smile twisting his lips. He half-bowed, wincing as the movement tugged at sore muscles. "I owe you more than I can tell, my friend, and now I beg your forgiveness for that which I must steal from you." And, silently, he crumpled to the deck.
The flushed vigour seeping from his face, his eyes wide with fright, Elros lowered the sturdy length of timber. His hands trembled, and he dropped it abruptly, his gazed fixed upon his brother who lay insensate at his feet, his hands folded almost neatly at his sides. "I am sorry, gwanur-nín."
Círdan stepped around the body, his footing sure on the swaying decks, and laid a hand on the young man's shoulder. "That was well done, my friend."
"He will not forgive me."
"Perhaps." The Shipwright shrugged eloquently.
"What now is there for us to do?" Elros wrapped his arms tightly about his body, shivering as the wind whistled piercingly about him.
Círdan smiled, a strange, wry look beneath that deep beard. "The mast. We must lash him to the mast."
A choked laugh escaped the younger twin, a burble of amusement and despair alike. "I feel as if we were caught in some poet's tale."
"And so we are like to be if there is no one to tend the rudder." Círdan scowled ferociously at the steersman, and the young Elf of the Falathrim returned his attention to his task, one slender hand guiding the tiller.
While his liegemen lashed the High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth to the mast, binding cords about his knees and chest, Shipwright and prince gazed into the West, into the teeth of the wind which was even now blowing up before them.
"This is no weather I have ever seen," Elros muttered, his fingers tapping out a restless rhythm.
"Nor I," Círdan admitted slowly. "This is no weather born of this world. I durst not say from whence it came, for it defeats even my years to encompass such power as is in this night."
And so they beat a course into the West, tacking against the rising wind, foam frothing at prow and streaming at stern. Grey mist enveloped them and billowed away in great streamers, and dolphins leapt and sang in the seas before them. Waves broke on rocks that had not been there for a thousand years or more.
Some three hours before the pallid dawn of another winter's day, the mist broke entirely, and starlight streamed through undimmed. The foaming wave crests shone whitely as the brightest star shone down upon the fathomless wastes of the ocean.
The ships straggled vainly onwards, straining against the great strength of the sea. Their decks were awash, splashed with saltwater and the debris of the sea. The High King, but lately awakened, clung to the mast as if it were Telperion itself. Innumerable lacerations stung with the bite of the sea, and his drenched clothes lay plastered to his pasty skin, and still he strained against his bonds. Thus the starlight found him, falling full on his face, pale silver illumining his eyes.
One star shone brighter than all the rest, and the Elves clustered upon the deck cried aloud, their faces alight with wonder. Brighter and brighter it shone, a beacon in the darkness. Bright, brighter, brightest: more than silver this star shine. The waves sung with it and the air cried out with it. Terrible and wonderful it seemed, beyond Elf or Man to decipher, although those who had known the Lady Elwing whispered and huddled together in dark corners, their faces hidden from the light.
And, as the dawn came, the watch set upon the highest mast cried out, his voice high and hoarse with wonder.
Like wrath they came, the swan-prowed ships of the Teleri, fleeting across the face of the ocean. Bright were the colours which flew high upon their masts, and stern were the faces lined about their sides.
The host of the Valar had come.
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gwanur-nín - my brother.