Chapter 3: The Westward Wind
"I have missed you so, my dear Tyelpë."
Annatar's voice snakes across the enclosed space like a length of silken steel; it binds Celebrimbor's shaking hands and roots him in place.
He cannot breathe. The cellars of the citadel of Ost-in-Edhil are dark, and Annatar's cruel laughter like the clashing of thunder, and Celebrimbor can only curl deeper into himself like a wounded animal waiting for its master's next strike–
"Cousin." Elrond's voice, like sunlit steel.
Celebrimbor blinks, and looks down at Elrond's hand on his wrist.
Air enters his lungs in a great, gasping breath as he raises his head.
"Are you not happy to see me?" Annatar says, his gaze wounded even as his lips twist knowingly. "I, your closest friend?" One pale arm rises, its outline wavering in the firelight, and reaches towards Celebrimbor in mocking supplication.
"You will be silent," Celebrimbor whispers, and hates the tremble in his voice. "You have done naught but lie from the moment you stepped through my gates."
Annatar breathes a laugh. "You know that not to be true. We have laughed away many an evening, you and I. Brother of my heart, you once called me; that was no lie."
–Annatar's forge-calloused hands briefly clutched in Celebrimbor's own, spinning through the dance at the festival of Mettarë, when all within Eregion gathered in Ost-in-Edhil to celebrate the turning of the year; the great hall of the citadel, dancers changing hands every two steps as they wove the pattern of the new year into the steps of their dance–
Celebrimbor shakes his head to clear it. When he raises his head again Annatar is smiling slyly.
"That was your subterfuge," Celebrimbor hisses. "A gilded mask behind which you hid your foul deeds and fouler plans."
"Perhaps," Annatar says easily, draping his flickering form languidly against the bars of his cell. "But it was so very amusing, playing with you. I had the most wonderful time."
Celebrimbor's vision washes crimson.
He has shaken Elrond's hand off his wrist and thrown himself towards Annatar's knife-like smile before he registers his cousin's warning shout; Celebrimbor stops short an arm's length from the bars of the cage, chest heaving, teeth bared in a snarl.
A thin line of glowing white glimmers at his feet. Námo's enchantments, meant to keep the prisoner in and any others out.
"Ah, there you are," Annatar says almost fondly, straightening to press his face against the bars. "Such fire. It took far more work than I thought it would, unmaking you. But you were unmade in the end, as all matter must."
Celebrimbor takes a breath that tastes of blood, and the aftertaste of his own screams.
"You did not unmake me," he hears himself whispering. "I did not give up the Three."
Annatar's face twists into a terrifying expression of rage; the glamour wavers for an instant, and Celebrimbor glimpses the chasm of shadow within.
Celebrimbor finds he has enough strength to muster a smile.
"Why the anger?" he says. "You lost from the moment you failed to break me. My three rings were instrumental in your defeat."
Annatar laughs, a sound like the shattering of stone and the roaring of fire; it lances through Celebrimbor's very fëa, reminds him of bruising fingers at this throat and an ice-fed blade tracing meaningless patterns in his skin–
"Oh, but you have not emerged unchanged," Annatar declares, baring teeth like fangs as he looks down on Celebrimbor's shuddering form. "I know you too well for that."
Celebrimbor blinks. When had he fallen to his knees? He opens his mouth to speak, but Annatar speaks on, snatching Celebrimbor's words out of the air like shriveled leaves.
"I know you," Annatar says, each word like a cruel twist of a knife. "I know your forge, each brick and each stone. I know where you place your hammer after you work at the anvil; I know how you record your notes when a new idea occurs to you. I know you like to rise early to watch the sunrise, and I know you take a glass of wine before retiring for the night. I know you like hunting for the company but despise the killing of defenseless things."
"No," Celebrimbor whispers. His vision burns black at the edges, and the air stops in his throat.
"Oh, but I do," Annatar says, foul delight in his gaze. "I know the cadence of your screams; I know the exact depth of each cut to make you cry out in precisely the manner I wish. I know you had a scar a handsbreadth above your right hip from when you fell off your horse as a child; I knew how to make you relieve that moment, again and again, when I opened it afresh. I knew you would never give me the Three; I knew a mere fortnight into our time together, but you were far too amusing a plaything not to continue–"
"You will cease speaking. Now." Words of power lash across the chamber.
Annatar stumbles back from the bars of his cage.
The soft sound of shifting cloth as deep blue robes enter Celebrimbor's view. Gentle hands pull Celebrimbor to his feet.
"My apologies, cousin," Elrond says quietly. "I should have intervened sooner."
Celebrimbor looks at the otherworldly glow of Elrond's eyes, clearer and somehow brighter even than the light of the Trees in his own, and remembers belatedly that Elrond is of Maiar heritage – and after his journey to the Void, the only one of the Firstborn to have the light of Illúvatar in his eyes.
"Ah, the filthy half-breed of Lúthien's line," Annatar sneers. "How came you by that light in your eyes?"
"Are you still speaking?" Elrond says, seemingly unaffected, though there is still a faint glimmer of compressed fear in his mind when Celebrimbor looks at him. "I'm afraid I wasn't listening."
Annatar's lips twist, his beautiful features flickering for an instant into a crumbling, decaying mask, and Celebrimbor has a sudden revelation.
"No," he murmurs, "You do not know me at all."
Annatar – Sauron's teeth are bared in a snarl, now, but Celebrimbor looks at him and sees only the shadow of an old friend.
"You do not know me," Celebrimbor says, and stands straighter, shaking off Elrond's hand on his shoulder. "And to say nothing of smith-work. You are a poor excuse for a smith, no matter how much I once taught you."
"Do you so insult your own skill?" Sauron laughs. "Why, I have succeeded in breaking you after all."
"No," Celebrimbor says, meeting the false gold of Sauron's gaze. "My youngest apprentice is a far greater smith than you. You only see beauty in the sharpness of a blade and the power of enchanted rings. You do not see the beauty in the pewter cup a mother brings to the lips of her child; you do not see the beauty in the brief glory of a summer flower, or the warmth of a fire, except to burn. You are broken, Mairon. I am not."
Sauron barks a laugh. "You are picking false silver from river-mud, old friend."
"Am I?" Celebrimbor leans closer, close enough that the hum of the enchantment that surrounds the cage rises to a ringing howl of warning. "Thou, craven filth, who was once the mightiest craftsman of Aulë's people. Thou might have many more years than I, but I too was once welcome in Aulë's house. Aulë's smith-work was of beauty and of life. He thought not of the sharpness of a sword or the burning of a flame. Thou hast lost thy craft, Mairon. Even if thou knowest it not."
Sauron's face twists in furious rage, and Celebrimbor knows he has struck the winning blow.
"I have changed you!" Sauron's scream ricochets about the walls as the throws himself against the bars of the cage; the runes glow white-hot, burning great chasms into the crumbling mask of Annatar. "I will haunt your waking dreams until Arda is unmade!"
"No, you will not," Celebrimbor says, and is surprised to find it is the truth. "I have passed through Námo's Halls. I am healed. And though I believe it might require a little while, I cannot imagine thinking of you very often after another yení or two. You are but a single foul breath in the lifetime of the Eldar, and the westward wind is strong."
In the corner of his vision, Elrond is smiling.
Sauron turns to Elrond with vehement spite. "You may smile all you wish, Peredhel," he hisses. "But I poisoned the ear of your brother's descendants; they declared war against the Valar and were drowned for it. You will never erase the stain of my name upon your brother's house."
"Not at all," Elrond says mildly. "My many times great-nephew reigns in Gondor now, as you know, over a united northern and southern kingdom. My daughter reigns with him. Out of the Great Sea to Middle-Earth I am come; In this place I will abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world."
Sauron screams with fury. There is very little left of Annatar's face, now, burned away by the flaring runes; even the scream diminishes after a few moments, as the figure in the cage folds in on itself, smaller and smaller until it is barely more than a swirl of shadow pooled on the floor of its prison.
"Cousin?" Elrond looks at Celebrimbor.
Celebrimbor nods, and takes a slow breath before turning back to the formless shadow that was once Annatar, the friend that had betrayed and killed him.
"Farewell," he says. "You will not be seeing me again."
The thin pool of shadow makes a noise. It is no more than the thinnest of screams, snatched away like windblown smoke.
Celebrimbor does not wait for Sauron's reply; he turns on the spot, Elrond beside him, and ascends the steps up into the pale grey sunlight beyond the shadow of Námo's halls.
Eönwë inclines his shining head to them, and Celebrimbor gives the most perfunctory of bows in return before leaping into the saddle.
Celebrimbor urges his horse into a gallop, and hears his cousin do the same.
Through the silent forest, the thunder of hooves and the huff of the horses' breath the only sounds among the towering pines; Celebrimbor's hands clenched so tightly around his reins that the leather cuts into his palms, the grey sky still and silent above–
Ahead, golden light through the trees –
The two riders burst out into a meadow of wild spring flowers, startling a flock of starlings that cascade into the air with a cacophony of sharp cries and fluttering wings. The noonday sun blazes overhead with painful fire; it burns like a fiery caress across Celebrimbor's face. The wind comes as a gust that sends a flurry of grass and petals dancing from the horses' hooves, and brings with it the scent of a hundred thousand flowers turning their faces towards the sun. In the distance, deer flee from the banks of a burbling brook, leaping like elegant dancers through the whispering reeds.
Celebrimbor slows his horse to a halt. He hears Elrond do the same behind him.
Birdsong. The rustle of many small animals running through the grass. Celebrimbor raises his head, and looks up into the unbroken arch of blue that is the Valinorean sky in spring.
Elrond draws even with him. "Cousin?"
Celebrimbor lowers his head and looks down at his hands, which have released the reins only to curl into fists, trembling.
He dismounts, and lowers himself to the sweet-smelling grass. The wind caresses his flyaway braids, the air wholly fresh and never before breathed.
A rustle as Elrond crouches by his side. Elrond's hand finds Celebrimbor's shoulder.
"Celebrimbor?"
Celebrimbor takes a breath so sharp it aches in his throat. "You warned me about him. You and Gil-Galad both, when he came to Eregion. I always– I always wondered how things might have changed if I had listened to you."
Elrond's hand tightens on Celebrimbor's shoulder. "You cannot blame yourself so. Þauron has always been a liar."
Celebrimbor's runs a hand over his face. "I know. In a way I always knew there was something not quite right about him. But I was Lord of Eregion, the one whom all of grandfather's remaining people looked to for guidance, and all my family was long dead – well, perhaps except you. But you visited less once Annatar came, and I–" His next exhale comes in a thin, shuddering laugh. "In truth, I missed you."
"Oh," Elrond says. There is a note of genuine surprise in his voice.
Celebrimbor turns his face away, and reaches out to cup a camellia by his feet; it glows a beautiful, fragile pink.
The first crystalline raindrop slips down his cheek to splash against the petals of the camellia and down its golden throat.
The sun shines overhead; it is not raining.
But for Celebrimbor, the storm has broken at last; he folds his face into his elbow, and draws great, heaving breaths as his shoulders shudder about his unraveling braids.
His horse nudges his shoulder, whuffling in concern. Celebrimbor barks a wet laugh and raises a hand to pet her velvety nose.
Then Elrond is there, curling dark blue sleeves about him, and Celebrimbor turns his face into his cousin's shoulder and allows himself to be held until his storm at last runs its course.
The wind sends the flowers dancing about them, and Celebrimbor, looking through his tears at the sun-drenched spring of Aman, finds to his surprise that it is beautiful – and, even with his unraveled braids and cascading tears, so is he.
Next up: Two grandsons of Fëanor attempt to sneak back into Tirion undetected, and Celebrimbor finds joy at last.
The next (final) chapter will be up in two days; I've already finished writing it, but I'm going to wait 48 hours to post it so it doesn't get buried. In the meantime I'll be getting a head start on writing the next fic in this series - focusing on Fëanor and Nerdanel's attempts to heal their long-fractured relationship after he and their sons return in The Ransom of the House of Fëanor.