Light filtered gradually through the fog, illuminating the wreckage of the night.
About him was the familiarity of chaos: a sweep of destruction across the floor. Broken lens, scattered papers, stubs of smoked-out candles and their ashes. A lamp still burned at his elbow though the angle of the sun glinting off the window (agonizing in its dazzle) had rendered it useless.
He scraped back his chair and rose, cautiously, on bloodless legs. With the faltering stub of the only remaining candle, he lit a shred left of sage to burn the juniper fumes and the remainder of the night out of his head.
On the worktable, aligned on a cloth, lay three golden rings. The facets of their jewels splintered the light through the windows, the dazzle of them almost painful and yet it was a sweet, wholesome pain.
Sapphire.
Ruby.
Adamant.
How strange. He looked at them as if they were the work of another for the shape of them, the angle of the shank, the polish and cut of the stones.
For a moment, his heart misgave him. But he lifted them up one by one, and it was only in the gazing on them, lifting one after another to adjudge their fit and angle and proper fitting, that he realized what they were for and what he would have to do next.
He gathered them up in one hand and made for the door.
There was no time to lose.
He dared not enter the Wood when at last he neared its eaves.
If the memories of the Eldar stretched long with the count of year, that of the trees stretched longer, beyond the count of time, beyond when the world lay quiet under a starlit sky and had known no touch of the Sun. The trees remembered their old dominion that had once crossed every mountain and spanned every stretch of land from West to East. Only since the destruction had their fiefdoms crumbled, and their fastnesses dwindled.
Some of the outliers that loomed above him now had the growth of a thousand years by the size of their boles and, as saplings, might have taken their first sips of life on the shadowy banks of the Esgalduin. Their forefathers had bounded the Girdle set in place by Melian. The whole of the air of the place tingled with ancient memory and enmity for any of Fëanor's brood, who had trespassed in their wood and dappled their roots with something rather thicker than water.
But the hour for diffidence was long past.
Time was slipping through his fingers and every moment lost was one that would not be regained.
He rode beneath the overhanging boughs, the sudden lift and clamor of the leaves announcing his coming like the blare of a hunting horn. A wind, despite the still branches, whipped across his canvas shirt.
Thee pulse in his neck beat in time with the silence. He tensed, waiting, very aware of his danger. He raised the hand not occupied with the reins of his mount, palm empty and outward in the (he hoped) universal gesture of harmlessness.
"I come as an ally to the people of Lórinand. I seek an audience with one who shelters here."
Silence.
He repeated himself often, wondering increasingly if he were only talking to the trees and if the notoriously wary folk of the land had somehow withdrawn deeper into their woods. Ahead of him, the glint of a river flashed between the boles of the trees, and he directed his mount thither.
Something struck him neatly between the shoulder blades and with enough force to unseat him. He landed hard enough to crush the breath from his lungs, and for a terrifying moment, he thought they had shot him after all. Then a boot heel planted itself firmly in the small of his back, pinning him against the ground as if between hammer and anvil.
Celebrimbor craned his head to one side, spat grit from his teeth, and rolled one eye upward in an effort to glimpse his captor. "I come as a friend, damn you."
"Bearing such bloody arms makes you no friend of ours."
The voice was male. His speech thick but intelligible. And he was not alone. Though Celebrimbor heard no step or voice, the subtle creak of bowstrings under tension was unmistakable to his keyed up senses.
"The wild is no place for the unarmed," he tried to explain. It was hard to negotiate with his face in the dirt. "I carry such only at need. I come on an errand of peace."
"I know your ilk well enough, kinslayer's get," growled the boot. Something wet and sharp stung the back of his neck and dripped down his collar. Then the boot lifted off him. "You will be taken to the king's judgment. He will determine what a traitor's life is worth."
Two sets of hands gripped his upper arms and hauled him up to his knees while another set bound a length of thin, strong, silver rope about his wrists.
"Cease this."
The silvern tone, soft but full of steel, gave the hands binding his wrists pause. A frisson went around the circle though whether wary or defiant was hard to tell.
"We have strict orders, Lady. The king—"
"The king, of all men, will grant me leave to deal with this matter myself. Now unhand him."
With grudging reluctance, the leader whose boot heel had imprinted itself on his lower spine, bent and split his bonds.
"Leave us."
No more hesitation now. Celebrimbor felt more than saw or heard the sentinels as they faded back to their posts even if one or two cast doubtful looks back.
After he was certain they had gone, he rose, cautiously, and rubbed his wrists where the cords had dug into his flesh. "I thought you might let them shoot me."
"If you think that of me, you know me not at all."
He looked at her as a man who had spent years crossing a desert might rest his eyes on an oasis. "You look well, Alatáriel."
She did not return the compliment. Even a lie for nicety's sake was beyond her. It was why he had come. He smiled inwardly.
"I wish our meeting were under better circumstances. My time is short, so I will be brief. Are we alone here?"
"We are alone." The ice in her expression thawed a little. "You look tired."
"Beyond all bearing." He sank under one of the silver-boled trees, rested his head back against its smooth skin. "The greatest secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves. Annatar — Gorthaur , I should say — I knew what he was. In some way. I knew...but I refused to believe it. I wanted the lie."
She came to sit beside him, tucked her bare feet under her, her skirts in the long grass. "You know that he will return. With force and might enough to take what he desires and sweep all away before him."
"Yes. That is why I have come. Before—" He stopped himself from saying 'before I die.' Too histrionic, that. "I have dispatched two of my most trusted messengers to Gil-galad. But this one… this one I needed to deliver myself."
The pouch he had cradled more closely than his weapon he now lifted from around his neck. Tipping its contents into his palm, he held up the ring, its white stone flashing green under the cloud of so many leaves. It burned with a pale fire. The White Gem, Adamant, strong and steely as a woman. It belonged here and knew it.
He looked at it, easier than meeting her eyes. "For a long time, I thought my father a cold, foolish, short-sighted man. Consumed with his pursuit whatever the cost to others — or even himself. I did not know that a man could come to evil by mistake or out of love. That one choice and willful blindness could lead you down a dark path from which there was no returning."
"It is never too late."
He smiled at her pale attempt to comfort him. "I have made many rings. But this one is different. Its power lies not in its facets, but in the heart and will of the wearer. Whatever else lies between us, Alatariel, I trust you with it. It is a burden. Make no mistake. Such things always are. But it will help with what's to come. I pray it goes a small way to settling our accounts."
She listened to all this without a word and stared at his outstretched hand. When she made no move to take it, his heart despaired.
"If I had known I was going to prattle on so, I would have brought refreshment."
Her fingers brushed his as they closed around the pouch. They were cool and slender and shaking ever-so-slightly. He had never seen any sign of vulnerability in her until she lifted her eyes to his face.
"Stay. Telperinquar."
How strange, he thought, the interstices of choice and circumstance, the offshoots of consequence. Once, he would have done anything for her to look on him like that. Now he only ached for what was gone. Ever had he sought to grasp that which had ever been withheld from him; yet in the end he desired, not the reward, but the reaching. The chaos and self-immolation of it.
"Thank you," he answered, meaning it. "I cannot. He will come to Eregion. I would be there. I pray, at the end, history will adjudge me kindly and remember my better deeds. I may be my father's son, but perhaps I will end better."
Suddenly, impulsively, he leaned forward, pressed a chaste kiss against her cool cheek. Then he stepped away.
The wood eased its grip on him, and the shadows fell away as he rode back into sunlight and the world that pulled Time on ahead of him, rushing and unrelenting and yet he no longer balked against its grasp.
He followed the line of the river, up towards the West Gate and home. If home it could be called now. At the confluence of Dwarf-road and river, he halted for a while.
His finger was swollen, and it took steady twisting to work the shank over the ridge of his knuckle. He laid it against the cool skin of the water and let it fall. Even now he could conjure gemstone eyes in black shadows of hair, the nearness of the stars to his hands, the sweet melding of order and chaos. Each needing and consuming the other. The ring rolled over, the ruby flashed once, a scarlet star in the murky depths.
Straightening, he turned his face to the sun sinking into the West in a riot of color. A band of fire smoked on the shoulders of the mountains while further up and back, pale greens and blues swam into a deepening twilight, finer and more timeless than any jewel, and a peace suffused him such as he had never known, as if some inner winter had withdrawn its claws from his soul.
What price , he thought as the light slipped away, to touch such a star ?
Chapter Notes:
Esgalduin - a major tributary of the great river Sirion in Beleriand that divided Doriath in two
End Notes:
If you enjoyed this, I have written several loosely related stories of the First And Second Ages (listed chronologically below):
Be All My Sins Remembered - Finrod/Bëor
And All Our Wounds Forgiven - Finrod/Curufin
Against the Rising Tide - Elrond/Celebrimbor
From Ashes, Rise - Elrond/Glorfindel
Shadowlands - Elrond/Erestor