In An Age Before – Part 27
Upon their arrival the group immediately ascended the hill.
"When did this come to pass?" Helluin asked Oldbark as she examined the dried or wilting flora atop Laiquadol. The Onod had led the four Elves thither and now they stood at the high hill's crown amidst snags and dying trunks. Downslope the devastation trailed off, and it seemed that thus far only the topmost area was afflicted. O'erhead Anor shone strong and bright, standing 'nigh the zenith, nearly noon.
"In the last decade mostly," he told her, "well 'nigh in the blink of an eye it seemed. Some blight I deem it, borne on a pestilential wind from the south."
A stench of Mordor perhaps, Helluin wondered, could Sauron be assailing Greenwood?
Behind them, Galadriel was turning in a circle and staring about whilst clutching compulsively at the pendant that hung about her neck. She had been doing 'naught else since arriving. Oldbark had looked at her hopefully, watching as she gingerly laid her hands on a blighted trunk.
'Tis long dead and far gone, Helluin thought as she watched, good for 'naught but firewood. But then she noticed a faint greenish glow surrounding Galadriel's hands and it brought back a distant memory. That pendant had seemed familiar when she'd first seen it, back when the princess had rounded on her in the talan in Lórinand whither she and Celeborn had been imprisoned. Now Helluin realized why.
Well 'nigh 1,500 years aforetime she had seen one similar, clasped about the neck of Idril Celebrindal in Gondolin. Turgon's daughter had worn a green gem possessed of the virtue to preserve and heal. To gaze through it gifted one with visions of life unfaded, and it had endowed her with a healing touch. The Elessar, that had been its name! But when had she seen it last? Helluin tried to remember. She had spent so many years in the delta and the lands outside Avernien, ceaselessly on guard against spies and enemies. Only infrequently had she spent time in the settlement, and more rarely yet had she passed time with Tuor and Idril. Idril had not been wearing it when she sat with Tuor ere Helluin had taken her leave of them and journeyed to Vinyamar. Indeed by then it had been years since she had seen it. Whither had it gone? She filed her questions away for another time.
By now the greenish glow had spread all o'er the dead trunk, whilst Galadriel's face showed deep concentration. Incredibly, a hint of color had suffused the shivered bark, and the exposed wood had lost its ghostly grayish cast. The dried trunk seemed to swell subtly, as if sap now flowed within. The effect quickened and healthy bark spread to enshroud the heartwood as the glow of green intensified. At the tips of shriveled branches, points of new growth developed; the precursors of buds and eventually leaves. Everyone was amazed. The Onod nudged Helluin and offered her a smile.
"She has certainly lived up to the rumors," he whispered. "I cannot thank you enough."
What rumors? Helluin wondered. I had heard 'naught but of her mania ere we set out. Huh. I suppose all is well that end'th well, but I wonder wherefrom comes his news?
Indeed the Lord Oldbark's tidings had been proffered by the trees, whispered leaf to leaf from 'cross the river, and conveying hence that which was of import to those concerned. Of Galadriel's quest for an enchanted stream and such Elvish gossip they cared 'naught, but of the presence of the Elessar they cared much. 'Twas news of great import to the olvar.
Galadriel's spiritual healing proceeded through the afternoon, but when the sun dipped to the Hithaeglir, she ceased.
"I have need of Anor's healing light, else 'naught shalt come of my efforts," she offered the Onod in an apologetic tone. She looked 'round measuring her progress against what remained to be done, nodding to herself. "I shalt continue upon the morrow and thou should find thy home restored ere evening."
"'Tis magnificent, my Lady!" Oldbark exclaimed. If an Onod were capable of capering, he was close to doing so. "I am in thy debt. Allow me to offer thee and thy company my hospitality this night."
Galadriel looked at him carefully and with some uncertainty. "Is thy hall free of spiders?" She asked.
"I am sure of it. Indeed it seems all the spiders have removed north…a migration of sorts, I suppose," he said innocently. "'Tis their nature perhaps. Who truly knows what stirs in a spider's heart." He gave the equivalent of a shrug.
Galadriel nodded, accepting his assurances, and the company made their way downhill to Oldbark's hall. Indeed their rest was untroubled that night…by vermin.
Some hours after Oldbark had planted himself with one foot in the stream, Helluin was roused by a hand shaking her shoulder. Half enmeshed in a pleasant memory for once, and expecting that 'twas Beinvír, (who had taken to engaging Helluin more oft at night as the events of their travels became more bizarre), Helluin merely wrapped an arm 'round the person and pulled them close. She was treated to a hiss in her ear.
"Psssst! Helluin! 'Tis I, Galadriel! Get off me!"
Helluin started up abruptly and sat staring at the princess, who had extricated herself and was smoothing her hair. She managed a, "huh?"
"Be that the stream enchanted of which thou spoke?" Galadriel whispered urgently. She was pointing to the freshet in which Oldbark was standing. With a groan, Helluin nodded and lay back down, hoping to recapture the memory from which she had been so abruptly dragged. Beside her Beinvír lay quiet. Nearby, Celeborn was motionless. Helluin shook her head. Galadriel was already crawling stealthily towards the water.
The next morning, Helluin noted that the princess was surreptitiously trying to compare their relative heights. If 'aught had changed in Galadriel's stature, Helluin couldn't mark it. Indeed the princess was unchanged save for a subtle puffiness about her cheeks and eyes. Later, after breaking their fast, they resumed the mending of the blight upon Laiquadol. It seemed to Helluin that during the first hours, Galadriel was taking more frequent breaks than she was normally wont to do. As expected, by evening the hill was again green with living plants. 'Twas little short of a miracle and Oldbark was ecstatic.
"Whatsoever I might do to repay thee, you have but to ask," the Onod told the princess.
'Twas obvious to Helluin that Galadriel could barely contain herself when she heard his words. She immediately broached the topic of the enchanted stream. Oldbark nodded.
"The stream you seek indeed runs though my hall, but the virtue thou crave has gone out of it of late with the failing of the life upon Laiquadol," he explained. The fall in Galadriel's face was well 'nigh comical, but Helluin dared not laugh. "Now perhaps it shalt resume as you have rejuvenated the olvar with your Elvish magic," he said hopefully. "We shalt see. I should suggest you drink, and if the virtue is indeed restored, then thy stature shalt increase much as did Helluin's aforetime."
Galadriel looked at Helluin by reflex and the dark Noldo could but shrug and look away. 'Twas 'naught that she could do and she'd had no idea that the stream had been affected. Later, as Galadriel sat beside the stream, filling and quaffing cup after cup of water, Helluin came to her and sat down. For several moments she chewed her lip as she formed her questions.
"Whence came thy Elessar, Princess? Is it indeed that same as was borne aforetime by Idril of Gondolin?"
Galadriel swallowed yet another mouthful of water and groaned. She felt bloated, but anything would be worthwhile if she could but exceed Helluin again in height. Somehow the quest had taken on inertia in the doing, and even she could see the obsessive nature it had visited upon her. Galadriel shook her head in irritation. She felt no different.
"Nay, 'tis not the same. Elrond claimed that the Elessar of Enerdhil¹ was passed from Idril to Eärendil ere she and Tuor took ship upon Eärrámë into the West. I am surprised thou know this not, Helluin." ¹(Enerdhil, renowned jewel-smith of Gondolin. UT, Pt 2, Ch IV AHoCaG, pgs 248-9)
"I but recently remembered it at all, having seen it only infrequently even in Gondolin. In Avernien I was most oft keeping guard upriver and in the lands about Sirion, and spent little time in Tuor and Idril's company. I was far away when last Eärendil sailed."
A sadness came upon Helluin at the memories of the sack. So many had died and no few by her hand, and all for the fulfillment of that vain and wretched oath. She was glad enough to have accomplished Ulmo's bidding, but still the memories were bitter.
Galadriel looked at her bowed head and thought back to what Elrond had said of that attack by the sons of Fëanor. Of the rampaging Noldo with blue fire flaring in her eyes, bearing a black sword against which no foe could stand. Amrod and Amras had become mighty hunters in Beleriand, twins given to fighting side by side in battle, and yet Helluin had slain them as if they were children. Much like the sons of Fëanor, Helluin had the blood of the Eldar on her hands, yet had failed of her quest. She had not stayed the Sack of Avernien nor saved the children of Tuor and Idril. Much else than the disposition of the Elessar had occupied her thought in those days. The perception of Helluin's melancholy moved her to pity and sorrows of her own.
"The gem I bear came of Celebrimbor," Galadriel said softly. "He wrought it with great effort to fulfill a whim I had mentioned but in passing. Ne'er did I think he had taken the desire hidden in my heart as a command to his. I had but aired my sorrow o'er the fading of beauty in Mortal Lands, and he spent more than twenty years recreating a work long lost to the Noldor. It hath much the same virtue as Enerdhil's gem. Celebrimbor finished it but shortly ere the Gwaith-I-Mirdain seized control of Eregion. He presented it to me as a token of his heart at our last parting, beside the very door he had wrought with Narvi for Khazad-dûm. Helluin, I fear greatly for him. He has become dear to me as I would ne'er have thought possible. He hath the craft, but not the flaws of his forebears."
"I too fear greatly for him," Helluin said, "and I fear the treachery of Sauron, and his mastery. Twice now he hath come to me disguised, and neither time have I marked him. I feel he shalt corrupt Celebrimbor in the end. He is too persuasive a foe. Celebrimbor desires to advance his craft and thus gives the Master of Lies an entry into his heart. And in creating the Elessar, has not Celebrimbor already partaken of the path upon which Sauron sought to lead us? By doing thus, freely and for love, hath he not made easier to his heart the crossing of that line?"
Helluin paused and Galadriel watched her carefully. During all their years together they had seldom actually talked thus, and more seldom still, agreed. Celebrimbor was in peril from the love in his heart and the talent in his hands, not from any darkness within his soul. But Helluin had claimed to have twice encountered Sauron…that she knew of. Why had he sought her? What had he wanted? How had she escaped him?
"Whither did Gorthaur the Cruel find thee?"
"First in Ost-In-Edhil, on the day I came thither; indeed not an hour after I left thee. He appeared as a guildsman and we drank wine in a tavern. He asked after the Sarchram. The second time was not a month past, in Fangorn, whither he wore the guise of an Onod."
Incredible! Galadriel had ne'er once seen him in Eregion despite all the years he had hidden amongst her people. Her eyes slid down and for a moment lit upon the weapon at Helluin's side. She had seen it aforetime of course, but had ne'er paid it much attention. Now she read the cirth and shuddered.
Helluin had engraved a fell sorcery upon the Sarchram, not to merely slay an enemy or bring victory, but to damn the spirits of her vanquished to the Eternal Night. Galadriel shivered. To come ne'er hence to the Halls of Mandos after the hroa failed, but to be fore'er entrapped, a fëa naked in the Void. 'Twas equivalent to a mortal grinding the bodies of their fallen foes to paste so that the eternal rest of a pyre or tomb lay beyond hope. In her heart, the daughter of Finarfin felt a chill of foreboding. Such virulent and unamendable hatred would be very attractive to one who reveled in cruelty. And Sauron had twice sought her out. Galadriel had heard tales of the wars of Beleriand and Helluin's conduct in them; her unquenchable bloodlust, her unremitting frenzies of slaying, and the maniacal laughter that had accompanied her screams of, 'Kill 'Em All!'
Galadriel would indeed have questioned Helluin further, but the bulk of water she had been drinking made its presence felt with urgency. She was required to excuse herself.
Helluin sat silently, feeling the approach of a brooding mood. Celebrimbor had taken his first step on the road to fighting off the stain of Mortal Lands, the very goal Sauron had suggested all those years ago, and he had done it to please his princess. And now Galadriel had just been staring at the Sarchram cirth…paying them every bit as much attention as had Sauron. All this atop her memories of Avernien; it left her feeling like singing a maudlin song. I have to get out of here, she thought by reflex, there's no more to be done. That night the company's rest was disrupted by the flight of the millipedes.
Helluin was rousted from an unwelcome memory of her journey through Ossiriand in the company of Maedhros and Maglor. The brothers had been depressed by the failure of their attack, the weight of the curse, and the impossibility of satisfying their oath. Elrond and Elros had been despondent o'er the destruction of their homeland, the slaughter of their people, and most of all, the absence of their parents. She herself had been worried, nervously anticipating the appearance of the Laiquendi. In all it had been a mirthless and demoralized company that went forward, missing friends lost at Avernien, many of whom she herself had slain.
As usual 'twas Beinvír who had crawled o'er and wrapped her arms about Helluin, shaking her and relentlessly whispering in her ear, "Helluin, Helluin, harken to me. Something strange goes forth; the ground moves!" Her eyes were wide with alarm.
With a groan, the dark Noldo raised her head past her friend's hair and looked about in the murk 'neath the trees. Sure enough, the ground about them had become a moving carpet of tubelike bodies, armored and segmented as if wrought by the Dwarves, the largest close in length to her lower leg. They advanced slowly by wavelike motions of their myriad, short, hairlike legs, but at a steady pace and all in the same direction, none tarrying, paying them no heed at all.
"'Tis but a migration of millipedes, Beinvír," Helluin muttered in amazement. 'Twas rare enough to see even one of that kindred. She realized that they were coming down from Laiquadol and making for the forest through Oldbark's hall, as therein lay the only path. "They sup on rotten wood and the like and art harmless. I suppose they flee starvation now that the olvar upon Laiquadol art restored. Huh. Pay them no mind."
"Pay them no mind?" Beinvír whispered incredulously. She crawled up until she lay full length atop Helluin, ensuring that she was completely off the ground as the creatures passed by. 'Twas much the same reflex as rules one drowning when they attempt to climb up the body of a rescuer and rise into the air. Where Fangorn had been threatening, Greenwood was simply bizarre. "We have to get out of this forest," she hissed, "'tis too uneasy and too alive, and…and too strange."
Moments later Galadriel was up, mercilessly shaking Celeborn and dragging their belongings to and fro, seeking a place unupholstered by the carpet of crawling animals. She was muttering in disgust and irritation whilst Celeborn pleaded with her to be calm. The invasion lasted a couple hours and then trailed off to a trickle of smaller stragglers. Long ere morning, all had returned to normal.
Oldbark greeted them cheerfully after stretching and shaking his branches to greet the morning light. Galadriel immediately set upon him, still aggravated by the night wanderings of his kelvar.
"My Lord, though I seek not to seem ungrateful of thy hospitality, I must protest. Our repose was sorely disrupted by the flight of thy creatures…millipedes they were, and many, crawling o'er us in a horde of such proportions that I am still aghast. 'Twas quite unseemly and disconcerting, to be roused thus and o'errun as if we were but so much leafmould or mulch!"
Oldbark appeared suitably mortified. Indeed he looked carefully 'round them at all the ground 'nigh, and then both up the path to Laiquadol and out the hall into the forest. Last, he returned an apologetic gaze to the princess.
"I am most sorely embarrassed and indeed vexed, my Lady. I had nary a suspicion that such would come to pass, I swear. I humbly beg thy pardon on behalf of the subjects of the woodland; millipedes art, as thou may know, simple scavengers and little more than mouths afoot. They have scant sense of genteel manners or the proper modes of conduct. Indeed they art given at whiles to such moronic, herding behavior, oft thinking perhaps that many making the same mistake can make that action right. They art kelvar, my Lady, yet of such simple grade as to be somewhat unfathomable…at least to me. Still, they art necessary for the management of a forest, removing litter ere it becomes intolerable. Again, my Lady, I humbly apologize for thy inconvenience and suffering. I shalt speak to them and convey thy displeasure, but I truly doubt it shalt elevate their comportment."
"Very well," Galadriel said, seemingly placated for the time being, "I can only imagine the o'erbearing nature of thy rule in hither realm…with so many beings of such various kinds to organize and o'ersee. I thank thee for thy concern and attention." She shook her head sympathetically, as one monarch to another, and then excused herself to the stream with her cup.
Helluin caught the Onod's eye and with a cant of her head indicated that she desired to speak with him outside the hall. He nodded to her and walked out, followed closely by the two ellith. Once outside, they took counsel.
"I deem the time has come for our departure," Helluin said. "I feel I have accomplished my intent in conveying hence Galadriel and Celeborn. I am glad of the restoration of thy home, but I find viewing the princess' hydrophilia tiresome."
"'Twas not the spiders then, nor the worms, nor the millipedes that have driven you forth?" He asked, just to be sure. "Such things are not common occurrences as you know."
"Bah!" Helluin dismissed with a wave of her hand, "I have tarried in Greenwood long enough to suspect that such was merely a welcome of sorts. I shalt no doubt return someday when it hath worn out." She examined Oldbark with an eyebrow raised in knowing calculation. "Feel free to extend such welcome to thy guests as thou see fit. I am sure they shalt tarry 'til either thy stream provides its virtue or Galadriel burst."
The Onod chuckled, but admitted 'naught to evince such a perverse sense of humor.
"I wish you both well upon your journeys," he said, offering them a warm smile. "Return at your leisure, either of you, and enjoy then unmolested the forest." He turned to reenter his hall, but then stopped and faced them again, a serious look upon his face. "Helluin, beware of Morgoth's little slave. He takes not an interest in one without cause. I am sure you know this, but I worry for you, Elfling, I do. The two of you must watch out for each other. I feel that soon the times will darken as they have not in an Age. Fare thee well upon the road." And with those words he strode back into his hall.
To Be Continued