4.

NOTES: In the UT, Galadriel is at one point noted to have spent some time at Lake Evendim in the Second Age... But the descendants of Hador and Bëor are also placed at that lake. I decided to give Galadriel the right of way to let her have a little space of her own for a while.

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The Lady of the Lake

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The clanks of clashing objects of metal and wood echoed through the trees early in the morning, interrupted every so often by a single person shouts of command. On an open field in a clearing on the hills around a fair mountain lake ranks of trainees were at practice, at swordsmanship and archery and wrestling, and marching and maneuvers and riding, while the rising sun filtered through the trunks of the trees. The morning exercises had just finished, and the instructor was strolling here and there around the field to the different stations. He was just teaching blocking moves in swordsmanship to a group of trainees when the high lady governing over the lake realm emerged from the woods.

She was very tall, with the wisdom of long years in their glance. The lady's hair shone so bright it seemed that the beams of the sun and stars were caught in it, giving her a crown of radiant light. In her face was the light of her homeland in the west beyond the seas. Presently she approached.

"Mind your left arm with that move," she said to the trainer with a calm cheer in her voice. She held out her hand, and the instructor handed her his weapon to demonstrate. The lady strode up with it and bid the opponent to cast a strike, and she raised up the blade to block it. "Ensure it stays flush with the blade," she instructed, "to reinforce the weapon and protect the arm. Then parry!" Then suddenly she sent her opponent's hand, arm, and sword flung up together over his head toward his back. This earned a round of impressed laughs and applause by the onlookers. She held the blade back out to its owner; her beaming smile having never left her face.

"Come my friend," she said to the instructor. "There is something I would like to show you."

The instructor handed his weapon and charge of the training to his assistants, and followed the lady off the field. They walked together in silence for a good while, until they came to a ledge of boulders on the edge of the lake. And now she gave another lesson of a different kind. Singing a chanting song she began to raise with dance and movement the energies that could be drawn from the soil and the trees, and rocks, leaves, and breeze – the earthly magic she had learned from the woodland peoples of her husband's kindred. And using the might of her own magic as and one of the mighty elves of light out of the West she hallowed the lake with a spell of enchantment. And the gray of its waters seemed to deepen to a rich blue, and in the morning sun the lake appeared to light up like the shine of the lady's hair, and the greens of the leaves brightened on the trees of the surrounding hills. The lieutenant looked on in awe and wonder.

"I do not have the ability to do all I desire through such work," she said to him. "For that, I would need some way to concentrate more power, and to better focus it. But if you would know what I can teach, then I will show you."

He nodded with enthusiasm. And she led him up the slopes to the ridgeline of the hills surrounding the lake. Every so often they passed thick high trees by which the lieutenant had guard stations staffed with several elves, who kept their little homes down the hillsides in the woods below. At these stations the lieutenant had established lookout platforms up in the trees – per the lady's guidance, and shelters on the ground well concealed to store goods and supplies.

The two leaders gave them their greetings as they walked by. At length they found a quiet place high up on the hilltops, where there was a stone ledge, such as the eagles might use for their eyries (though not near high enough for the liking of those great birds). But here the pair stood, and the lady instructed her protégé on such works of spell and use of power available to them. And with her guidance the student set a more practical beginner's enchantment – by which the leaves would suddenly sing like little bells in the wind if any outsider passed the ridgeline borders of the land. A simple alarm system that would alert the guards nearby, but would not disturb the peaceful living at the lake. But the lady would take few chances with security, and insisted that any who managed to find their way to their borders – by accident or not – be escorted directly to her and none else before being given any leave to stay or even pass near. For one skill she had that needed no improvement or support was the power of her gaze to perceive the hearts and minds of others. She was better at it than any of her brothers or cousins had been, and the only one who could rival her in this skill was the old shipwright. Never forgetting that two of her brothers and their kingdoms had fallen to either hidden treachery or overzealous pride in their closest subjects, she often wondered if she could have availed to save them had she been there to read the hearts of the friends and kin they kept as counselors.

At last they headed down toward the shores of the lake, as the lady continued the lesson with lectures on such arts of enchantment. Toward the end of the day the pair were making their way back to their dwellings set on the fields that ran down to the shore. Most of the elves in the area lived in small huts on the ground beneath the tree canopy, and so the lady and her husband, in keeping with the sensibilities of their neighbors, directed to be built for themselves a house of wood. But in homage to the carvers and masons and crafters of her own people, it was rather large (though not as large as the stone palaces of her forefathers), its columns and walls handsomely carved with images of trees and leaves and flowers and creatures of the woods. Now they made ready for the evening's festivities, for it was midsummer again. But unlike the mortals dwelling not very far away, the elves began celebrations at sunset, for the folk here revered the starlight and the deep shades of the night sky before the coming of the sun and moon. That evening they stood on the shores of the lake, and up on the high places of the hills, and hailed the onset of evening, and sang to Varda the Lady of the Stars, and then turned to feast and dance and sing and drink and tell tales through the night as elves do at such times.

Amid the merrymaking, the lieutenant asked the lady for tidings of her other kin. "Have you any news of the jewel smith?"

"Not in some time," she replied. "He may be working and learning still in the Blue Mountains, or have made his way to that dwarf realm of Moria, or yet be somewhere in between. I will hear from him soon enough, I think. In the meanwhile, this is a fair place to pass the time."

"Indeed!" he replied with a laugh. "It is one of the fairest places I have yet seen in the lands east of the gulf. I have very much enjoyed my time here." He wondered that the lady had left the wonderfully built up twin cities by the gulf, to come here and live instead. But she was proud, he knew, older and more powerful than the king who now ruled there. It was little to her liking to remain a subject in such a way, and here she had found a place to dwell apart from the king's lands, wielding her own power as she would in her own way. His thoughts turned to his last midsummer festival, and the lady saw a melancholy come over him.

"Do you worry for your brother, my friend?" she asked him.

"Yes, Lady," he replied. "I have not seen him in some time. I have been here in work and learning for the better part of a year now, but I wonder if it is not time to set out again."

The lady smiled. "Yes," she said. "You have learned what lessons I can provide in lecture and practice and experience. But you are still young, and have much yet to see and do in the wide world. Indeed, you should go and seek your brother, for I have a foresight on me, and feel it important you reunite with him soon."

And so, at last when the festivities concluded, young Elrond took his leave of Lady Galadriel and her husband Lord Celeborn. Alone again he headed east this time, in search of the settlements of his mortal kin.