Gil-Galad Ereinion, High King of the Noldor, son of Fingon, son of Fingolfin, heir of Finwë, sat proudly on his great throne made of mother-of-pearls and sapphires. Upon his brow shone a tall crown of gold, wrought with exquisite metal flowers inlaid with blue enamel. His hands - a warrior's hands, but also a harper's - rested on his knees, and he wore robes of grey and blue embroidered with the rising sun of his House.
By his right, on the first step of the dais, sat his lady mother, Eriel of the Sindar, White Queen of Hithlum who, widowed in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, schooled her son in the ways of power and might. By his left sat Círdan the Shipwright, who had served as a foster father to the child prince - now come into the full strength and wisdom of his age. Below, in a semi-circle full of dignity, stood the councilors of his House. Even the most expert eye might have failed to notice the signs of hurry in them; if a brooch or an ear-ring was ill adjusted, surely it was in an imperceptible way. All were grave. None were panting, although many had ran to be there.
At a sign of Gil-Galad's hand, the great doors of the hall were opened; a guard of honour poured in two orderly lines and, finally, Eönwë, herald of Manwë, emissary of the Valar, walked in. Tall he was - taller than any Elf or Child of Ilúvatar, and upon his face shone the immortal light of the West. And, as he walked, with each step the light around him seemed to move, so that he appeared to be followed by wings of pure brilliance.
At last, Eönwë stood before Gil-Galad's throne, who said aloud: "All hail the herald of the West! All hail!" And all rose and saluted, even him, for no power higher than the Valar's was in Arda, save the one of Eru Ilúvatar that is beyond the Circles of the World. Then all sat, and waited for the envoy to address them.
Silence stretched just a little too long, and Eönwë, herald of Manwë etc, spoke thus: "Hail, High-King of the Exiled Noldorin Elves! By my mouth, hear the words of Manwë Sulimo, the Elder King, who sits upon snowy Taniquetil!" His voice was deeper than what could have been thought, and it resounded under the tall arches of the hall.
But again there was silence, until Gil-Galad asked: "What says the Lord of the Winds? For I am anxious to hear these words, of him who banished my sires and their kin, and remained mute ever since."
"Wait a minute," said Eönwë, who started rummaging though his pockets. He had many. At last, he found a small notebook (the cover was quite bent, as if it had traveled a long way squeezed between a pocket knife and a lucky stone (which it had)) and shuffled through the pages until he found what he was looking for. Holding the notebook at arm's length, Eönwë stood tall and read: "Here are the words of Manwë Sulimo, the Elder King, who usually sits upon snowy Taniquetil except right now, because he is on his way to cross the Sundering Seas, accompanied with a mighty host of the Valar and the High King of the Noldor." Giving Gil-Galad a pointed look, the herald added: "The other one. Finarfin. Ours."
Impassible, Gil-Galad didn't answer. His mother, though, muttered something that amounted to yeah, the one who ran back home to grovel while others did all the work. Gil-Galad's foot connected with her chair. Accidentally, for sure.
Eönwë cleared his throat, and continued: "Moved to pity by the plight of the Children of Ilúvatar whose two great races, united in the flesh of Ëarendil and Elwing…" He stopped, and said: "I mean, I'm not counting Dwarves, Ents, or Hobbits. No one ever counts them. They're knock offs. Step kids, at best."
In an audible whisper, one of the councillors asked his neighbour: "What was that last one? Hobbits? You ever heard of these?"
Gil-Galad shot them a dark frown - to no avail, as they weren't looking in his direction. But he had never heard of Hobbits either, and was too busy wondering what kind of creatures they could be to realize the herald was speaking again. Fortunately, Eönwë had begun from the start again, so no information was lost.
"… of Ëarendil and Elwing, begged for help against the Great Enemy and the pain he inflicts to all, Manwë Sulimo, the Elder King and etc, I'm not repeating that each time, decided to lay his wrath upon he who was once known as Melkor and counted amongst the Powers of the world. The Exiled shall join the host of Valinor and thus gain their pardon."
A murmur of excitation ran through the councilors. Eönwë looked like a cat who had been given cream, his handsome features showing his happiness in delivering such good news. Círdan, with a clap of his hands, brought the room to order, so that Gil-Galad could ask: "All those who fight shall see their ban lifted?"
"Yeah," said Eönwë. "All of them. Full pardon, for everything, kinslayings included."
"But what of those who cannot or will not wield a sword?"
Struck by the apparent idiocy of the question, Eönwë slowly explained, as if to a child: "Then they won't be pardoned and will remain shut out of the Valar's hearts and the shores of Eldamar."
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Gil-Galad explained his thought.
"It is not feasible, I am not even saying practical, I say feasible, to have a whole population take up arms for what will probably be a war lasting several years. Who shall till our fields and feed such a host? Who shall forge and repair our weapons of bright steel? What about the wounded, in spirit or in flesh, who are unable to take up arms? What about children?"
"Well, sucks to be them, I suppose," shrugged Eönwë. "Although you could try and argue that participating to the war effort from the back might be just enough. Not that I support any elf trying to argue with Manwë - it ended bad enough for the ones who tried it before. And I thought you guys didn't marry or have children in times of war?"
"We do," coolly said the White Queen of Hithlum.
A perceptible chill fell over the room as the lady Eriel stared down the herald. Who shuffled his feet, and mumbled: "Well, I'm just the messenger, lady. You'll have to make your case yourself to Manwë."
"Oh, I shall," she answered in a tone that sent Gil-Galad in a cold sweat with flashbacks of some of the less glorious episodes of his childhood. Wise in the ways of how such conversations went (they were more like monologues, really, and usually ended with the non-Eriel party desperately wishing for the floor to swallow them up), he interrupted her to say: "Surely, the Valar, in their great wisdom, shall find pity in their hearts for those. For the Great Enemy even the least of us would gladly fight, for the benefit of all here in Middle Earth, and it is through no fault of their own that some shall find themselves unable to oppose him in arms."
Not exactly knowing what to do next, Eönwë looked down in his notebook for inspiration, and suddenly remembered a slight point of detail.
"Of course," he said, "the surviving sons of Fëanor shall be barred from joining the Valar's host."
"Hold on," said Gil-Galad. "Not that I have an overwhelming love for them, but Maedhros is the finest tactician in Middle Earth and it would be absolutely moronic to deprive ourselves of his experience." And Maglor is terribly fun to drink with and have jam sessions on the harp until the small hours of the night, he added privately. "Although they did slay many of my kin in the Havens of Sirion." Not Doriath, though: second cousins by marriage didn't count, and they had been stuck up Sindar assholes anyway. He wouldn't have cared to voice this particular opinion within reach of his mother's hearing, however, since for some reason the lady Eriel had cared much about these ones. He guessed it had to do with a common love of bossing people around. Whatever his father's faults (including, but not limited, to his capacity of being slain by Balrogs), Fingon had wisely chosen his queen.
It was with an apologetic gesture of the hand that Eönwë answered, as if an elf — of all people — had not just publicly called the will of Manwë Sulimo, Lord of the Winds, he who sits and etc, moronic.
"Yeah, yeah, great warriors and all, I get it, but really we can't trust 'em not to nick the shinies. The Silmarils, I mean. We, uh, we kinda want to get them and bring them back to the West."
"Wasn't that," slowly mouthed Gil-Galad, "exactly what Fëanor feared would happen? That the Valar would claim the Silmarils for themselves and deprive the world of their beauty?"
"Well, colour me shocked - the bugger had to have foreseen a few things right, hadn't he? Anyway, the Valar have seen how much havoc the shi… the Silmarils have wrecked upon Middle Earth, that they love, and they have decided, in their wisdom, that such mighty things are not safe here at large in the open."
What Eönwë kept for himself, thought, was how much dissent between the Valar this very discussion had brought. Of the big ones (as Eönwë called them), Ulmo had first opposed the decision, his distemper causing a few choice tempests when he had lifted his hands high and facepalmed with enough force to give himself a brain injury (if he had had a physical brain instead of an ineffable spirit made of whatever stuff the Ainur were truly made of). Nienna, for her part, had even stopped weeping long enough to give a piece of her mind to Manwë, leaving him shaken for days, as there is no greater wrath than the one of usually calm and quiet people. She had called him names the likes of which had never been heard on Taniquetil before; it had been a surprise to most that the valarin language could be this rich in insults. Most, however, boiled down to you greedy sonofagod, can't you see in your fatuous, asinine, gormless mind that this (1) shall make everything worse as you'll fall prey yourself to cupidity (2) makes you loose your only chance to come out of this as a selfless saviour and (3) will prove that you have the ruling skills of a teapot? The valarin language being such as it was, there were also many nuances of disrespect and contempt, together with wonder at the concentration of so much stupidity in a single mind that was usually considered fairly clever; unfortunately, all these would be lost in translation. In the end, Nienna had left in tears (of anger, this time) and gone back to Lórien's gardens where she had had tea with Míriel — and they soothed their minds by talking of other things.
While Eönwë's eyes were glazed over by the fond recall of all the nasty and justified things Nienna had told Manwë, Gil-Galad lowered his head to Círdan's ear and whispered: "Do you think he might be drunk, or high?"
"I'm not sure that he can be either," murmured back the Shipwright. "But I certainly expected someone quite different to come out of the deep West unto our shores. More formal, I suppose."
This snapped Eönwë out of his trance of memory. "I'm not drunk," he protested loudly. "And I have an excellent hearing." A sudden look of horror came upon his face, and he added: "You won't complain to Manwë, will you? I mean, I usually do the announcements for parties and stuff. This is my first proper gig as a herald since he sent me to relay the curse of Mandos to the kinslayers!"
"Erm, no, I won't," replied Gil-Galad. "Do you, do you want to have a seat? We can get some refreshments. The travel here must have been exhausting."
"Nah, thanks, I'm good. I should be on my way, really."
After some back and forth dictated by the usual courtesies, however, Eönwë relented. The honour guard was dismissed, everybody relaxed, and the Emissary of the West, seated upon a comfortable stool with cushions, was able to stretch his legs while nursing a cup of wine. Gil-Galad dried up his own cup in one gulp and immediately got a refill: no one could be expected to deal sober with the news of an all-out war and fairly probable Valar trouble put together. From his own limited experience, that consisted of one renegade Valar killing off about three quarters of his family tree, and the rest dooming his people to endless suffering, the Valar were Bad News even on the best of days, never mind what the lunatics singing to Elbereth at night could say. Although, as a musician, he had to say that the songs from the Blessed Realm were really good, it would take him a few long years to accept that the Valar might have had a point or two concerning the events that had unfolded many years and many, many leagues away from the time and place of his birth.
Anyway, the chat with Eönwë was now proving to be much more friendly as the herald regaled them with tales from their long lost kin. He was a fantastic gossip and soon got everyone laughing while he leafed through his notebook and read aloud some of the most passive-agressive invitations to weddings and celebrations that he had on record. There were also some uninvitations, and the whole of it brought a tear to the eye of those who had known the white city of Tirion upon Túna in the heyday of its glory and drama.
But when Eönwë reached the end of his notes, he saw a paragraph that he had somehow missed and, with a grimace, asked: "Say, where will those of you who won't fight with the Valar, er, stay?"
"Home, I should think," answered Gil-Galad. "Why do you ask?" And should I send for stronger booze, he thought. I should probably send for stronger booze.
"I, ah, I found a note that explains why the whole of the Noldor and Sindar are asked to join. Haha, silly me, I had forgotten."
"Didn't you say it had to do with a blanket pardon?" asked Gil-Galad.
"What about the Sindar?" asked the lady Eriel at the same time, because she was one.
The herald winced and lifted his hand in self-defense. "Please, not everyone at once! Yes, there will be a pardon. But it also has to do with, shall we say, erosion? Of the sudden kind?"
"Erosion," repeated Gil-Galad, thinking that he would definitely need to get black-out drunk as soon as that audience was over. It was a drastic measure he only resorted to thrice in his life: on that very day, and later in Imladris, as is told elsewhere1. The third time remains to be recounted in full form, but it wasn't pretty either.
"Would tectonics be a better word? Anyway, the last time the Valar went to war in Middle Earth, the whole shape of the world was changed, as the saying goes. It triggered a mass extinction event that Yavanna is still pissy about. Trust me, it's better if everyone gets out of the way."
The mood in the room suddenly dampened; unfazed, Eönwë droned on. "But this time there's Ents around, and Tasarinan is actually my next stop. Her Ents will do something, I guess, although trees aren't very… moveable, but I guess seeds or cuttings or some shit? You guys should get ready for anything, really, but my best bet would be that we'll sink the land. Melkor likes to fight with fire, and a big expanse of water would certainly put a halt to it."
Very slowly, Círdan asked: "They will sink the land?"
"Maybe," said Eönwë. "As I said, anything goes. Total war and all that." Beaming, he added: "Oh, but you're the one who builds ships, aren't you? So that's good news, hey! More Sea to sail upon and all that!"
"I wouldn't," voiced prudently Círdan, "call the sinking and destruction of half a continent good news." Gil-Galad admired his restraint. He was starting to feel an hysterical urge to run away screaming and, from the looks of them, quite a few of his councilors were ready to, as is commonly said, altogether lose it.
"Right then," said Gil-Galad, slapping his thighs pointedly before rising, "Tasarinan is quite far, so you should probably be on your way. We wouldn't want to delay you on the mission appointed by the Valar themselves."
Oblivious to that universal gesture that says quite succinctly it has been very nice to have you over, but now you should leave, as in half-an hour ago, Eönwë waved away Gil-Galad's statement in a carefree motion. "Oh that's very thoughtful of you," he said, "but I only just got here and I've got plenty of spare time to see the sights along the way. Perks of the job, sightseeing. I love it."
"Let me show you the way to the outer gardens, then. They are extremely beautiful at this time of the year," said Eriel, grabbing the herald's elbow to get him up, light of Valinor and all. She escorted him all the way to the door which she then closed swiftly behind him in the expert movement of one used to guests who overstayed their welcome.
Gil-Galad sighed and sat down heavily. Everyone sighed. But it wasn't a breath of relief; it was the collective groan of those who see both their greatest hope and most terrible fear realised at once. The Noldor (and all the Free People of Middle Earth) would at last get some help against the Great Enemy. Gil-Galad wondered if dying alone in the struggle wouldn't have been an easier fate.
"We shall hold a council to ponder these things tomorrow," he announced. "In the afternoon. In the late afternoon. So that in the meantime we can all reflect upon that which we have learnt, and how we shall act. But this I can already say: the Valar's host we shall join — not because of promises of forgiveness, or out of fear of the destruction of our land, but because it is good and right to fight against Morgoth."
All nodded in agreement and he rose, a figure of majesty, noble of heart and kind of spirit. He would do his own reflection plucking away at his favourite harp's strings while chugging down everything he could lay his hands on. Tomorrow, he would be king again — the greatest the Noldor had ever seen. But tonight, he just needed to stop thinking for a while.
The whole tale of which can be read here and chronicles the life of Falmaramë Telpënar, and that more specific part is to be found there. The lady Eriel also plays a small part in later chapters. The reader shall take note that the tone is quite different from this work.