AUTHOR'S NOTE:
From the Dwarrow Scholar:
Lomil Zatamaradu (Night of the Kill) – evening of the last day of 'âfizhu
"Lomil Zatamaradu starts on the last evening of 'âfizhu and ends at Foredawn the next day. The Night traditionalLy starts with a fellowship of Dwarves heading out early in the evening, set out to hunt and kill a deer or boar. The meat and hides are donated, later that night, to dwarves that are less fortunate. In comparison to other dwarven feasts no heavy ales nor feast meals are to be had, instead most dwarves drink a simple Mead and eat meager rations on this eve. When the fellowship returns it is noted to pay homage to those dwarves that have gone to join Mahal."
"Will they come soon?"
Meisar adjusted the tilt of her table-mirror to catch Thorin's eye. She rose, feeling too heavy already in her formal clothes. The air was growing cool again though, crisp and frosted through the day. It would not as stifling as summer.
"A raven has come this morning. They are making good time," Thorin answered. His face shone with a certain pride and anticipation. "Alfhilde has brought a larger entourage than we planned for. They say the caravan is a league long."
"She must think herself to be very ostentatious, or very threatened by recent events," Meisar suggested with a hint of coolness. Stunted fat elf.
"To which we owe our queen's good sense that she comes so well-guarded," Thorin said.
"Then now it is time they see a queen in her true form," Meisar declared stoutly, setting her crown in the nest of braids, her neck heavy in sapphire and diamond. She wore a short mantle of snow-white fur and a damask kirtle beneath the fine royal-blue of the extant robe, with its purple-and-cloth-of-gold lining.
"On second thought," she turned to Griet and Bertha. "I should like to wear my hair down instead. Halfway at least. I think it will make me look... younger. Will you assist me?"
She leaned her head back against the weight of all the luxuriant orange hair spilling from its confines and Griet rushing to adjust the plaits under her crown so they would not bunch and frizz. She put them forward so that they tumbled over her chest and set elegantly off her hips.
"You are very beautiful, my queen," Griet said. "And any who would dare suggest otherwise are soft in the head."
.
Dwarves waited all along the route and upon the walls of Dale and Erebor in hushed anticipation for the Iron Hills dwarves to arrive. When they had been an army coming over that hill, one could hear them marching many leagues away. Something akin to that might have been coming, Meisar imagined. One needs their armor nonetheless.
"Bashud Stonehelm!" the herald finally cried. From over the hill a line of rams emerged against the horizon.
Alfhilde was drawn in a chariot by a razorback clad in armor. The Lord Mother of the Iron Hills wore a suit of mail herself. Upon armored goats were a small coterie of older dwarrowdams in rich cloaks and hoods. The boar-bristle helms marked the Iron Hills dwarves apart from their brethren, in the raven-sigil half-helms of Erebor. The latter flanked a succession of wains carrying yet more dwarrowdams. Alfhilde stood in her chariot, with the pose of some ancient heroine, tall and gallant, not a dwarf woman who could be seen half a league off to be squat and timeworn. She let her tartan cloak billow into the wind behind her.
"Now remember, my queen, you must remember to have Gimli face to face with her, at least at evening's meal. They tell me there is no more beautiful a dwarf-maid in all the Iron Hills," Emli pecked, anxiously.
"There are very few dwarf-maids to contend with there, so I hear. But of course, I will oblige you, Emli," Meisar assured, frayed nerves always seeming to leave the tip of her tongue sarcastically even when she was in honest moods. Gimli, standing stolidly beside her, seemed to nod with a wearied agreement toward Meisar. He wriggled in the heavy doublet of burgundy velvet and his hair elegantly braided. A young child was as surly forced to dress up, she thought. Hopefully the girl would be as unenthusiastic.
The dwarves proceeded down the hill two-score abreast and five deep, famously and militarily regimented for their reputed un-hingedness in battle.. The units in boar-bristle helms flanked the succession of steel chariots that carried first Stonehelm's mother and her immediate attendants and then her son in a steel wain of his own, steeply guarded by Iron Hills dwarves on war-pigs clad in plate armor themselves.
"Well that's not something you see every day," remarked Meisar dryly.
"In the Iron Hills they call it riding in high style," sniffed Emli. "You'd think they'd never heard of ponies."
They made their way in haste to the throne hall as the Iron Hills dwarves dismounted and gathered themselves at the gates.
Outside the huge delegation kept coming, line after line being hastily tended to as they dismounted and entered the mountain. The baggage train at the back was attended also on goat-back by a separate regiment in boar-bristle helms- a cart of fine wool and boar-hide leathers, bouquets of short-swords and iron-forged mattocks. There were flat-beds with long bars of unprocessed iron ore, another drawn by huge aurochs with three wains linked behind, all filled with Iron Hills mead, beer and whiskey in squat barrels. At the gates of Erebor there were gifts for them too- beeswax candles, jeweled combs and picks, dwarven silverware and casks of wine from Gondor, textiles in thick bolts, barrels of tar from Lake-Town.
Nonetheless, even from the foyer, she could hear the sounds of the stable-hands dwarven and mannish alike seeing the animals swiftly off to their stables-for-pay nearby and the loud collective sloshing of their drinking from buckets of cool water as they were conducted off. Many more dwarves busily were chattering away in their churlish brogues characteristic of the Iron Hills, littered with good-natured profanities and booming laughter. Somewhere women were gossiping in that same rough tongue, but she could not hear what they were saying.
Soon horns blared on the gallery high above the throne hall on the far side, above the doors. "The dwarves of the Iron Hills, your majesty!" boomed the herald.
"Let them come and be greeted in my halls!" Thorin replied, echoing with good cheer. The doors bowed open and in single file came the noblest of the delegation's members, the lord-mother and Stonehelm, their council.
Alfhilde the Lord-Mother stepped forward first. A stout woman with broad cheekbones and pale copper hair fading to gray, she was of middling height as far as dwarves went and squinty-eyed in the way that women were when they were used to sizing up their company superciliously. Two great brooches of rubies the size of child's fist fastened the cardinal surcoat that was worn over the jet-velvet gown, with chains of gold draped between them to her chest. Rubies adorned the long central plait of her silver-streaked beard that still did little to conceal the lack of definition between her chin and neck, and dots of rubies were too set in the circlet of iron that capped her head. She bowed low before Thorin, rattling, her knees cracking under her skirts.
"Beloved cousin and king, I am honored of yer presence," Alfhilde preened.
"My noble kinswoman, I too bid you welcome," Meisar stood and summoned her to embrace her. Alfhilde's coterie of dwarrowdams clapped and fawned on cue as the women embraced.
"The famed queen under the mountain. You are even handsomer in person I must say," Alfhilde chortled.
Stunted fat elf. A dwarf's memory was long, a dwarrowdam's longer.
"That is... good to know then," Meisar answered, tightly. "I praise your ladyship's hardiness as well. You look very well."
Weary looking old thing.
Alfhilde turned to Thorin and curtsied dramatically once more. "My king, might I be given the honor to present my son, once more?"
"You may, my lady."
Thorin Stonehelm, named for his cousin, bowed so deeply and dramatically his armor made a symphony of clinks and clanks. He was a young dwarf, younger even than Gimli, but as rough and wild as his father had been, which made him appear much older than he was. His copper hair was wiry and wild with leather ribbons studded in boar-tooth sewn into his locks at the temples, his beard pomaded below the chin to form the shape of a boar's bottom-teeth. A sigil of mattocks and a round shield was worn on his doublet, and a sash of his father's tartan. A true son of the Iron Hills in that way. And he was Thorin's heir.
"Iraknadad!" the boy caterwauled with joy. He leaped into Thorin's arms when he summoned him for an embrace, slapping backs together and greeting each other with booming, familiar laughter that shook the very buttresses of the ceiling above.
"Look at you, my boy. You are your father's image. And even better manners."
Stonehelm threw a great chuckle at that. "Ah! Well, ye haven't seen me over supper yet. We'll see, cousin! We'll see! Give me a few flagons of mead!" He threw his arms around Thorin's shoulders again. "I plead, present me to your queen. I have wanted a long time to meet her."
Thorin took her hand and brought her to face Stonehelm. His smile could have lit the sky at night when beheld her. It made a fluttering in Meisar's heart that comforted her against the critical stares of the rest of his synod. His mother behind him, eyes smirking.
"My queen," boomed the boy. "I have brought you a gift. It has been my delight to come and meet ye." He summoned his man-at-arms who procured a small squealing creature and knelt before Meisar in offering it up to her.
"I hear you are recently bereaved of a beloved pet," Stonehelm said cheerily. "I pray this here wee beastie will ease your sorrow. He presented to her the grinning pink piglet with black-speckled fur. "I picked this one from the litter myself to bring as a gift to ye, the strongest and best-natured of 'em. Knowing I do ye are a kind woman whose kindnesses are given to animals alike, I pray he shall be a friend unto ye as well as protector."
She held him up to show her pink-cheeked approval. The Erebor dwarrowdams up on the gallery with their pugs sighed and oohed, cosseting their little dogs and studying the young dwarves of the Iron Hills below.
"He is perfect, my lord. I shall treasure him," Meisar said. The little piglet was indeed very endearing, a little nose that wriggled flat and enthusiastic to her shoulder. It seemed to smile up at her.
Stepping before her son with an aire of calm dominance, Alfhilde offered Thorin further salutations and then Meisar. "I have brought with me many fine young ladies of my halls. Here now, I present my niece, the daughter of my brother Johen. Gunhild, come, child. Come now."
Emli daintily shoved her way forward to have a look at the girl who plodded past Alfhilde with her shoulders lowered timidly in the older dwarrowdam's overbearing proximity, and Emli's eyes were lit with delight. The girl was strong in the shoulders if gawky in the face, bushy brows and kind brown eyes. Her thick auburn hair was loose and embellished in a bronze filigree circlet, a beard that fell elegantly from her jawlines and grazed her chest, also finely adorned. She wore a demure sienna overgown with a red sash belt and mantle of pale goldenrod.
Aroin had been certain to bedeck herself in currant velvet with a forepart over a petticoat of printed silver-and-gold silk damask, a long jeweled girdle and her largest brooch worn squarely at the chest. Before Emli could prance forward she pressed through Alfhilde and then to Gunhild, offering the girl an embrace.
"I am Aroin, sister of Gloin and Oin, secretary to the princess and comptroller of her household," she trumpeted, as Dis greeted Alfhilde behind her.
Emli waited her turn flaring with indignity. "Welcome, my dear," she kissed Gunhild's cheek as if they had known each other many years. "I am Emli, wife to Gloin, head of the queen's household."
Aroin drew back and tried to cross her arms in her heavy over-sleeves and failed. Even Siv had the look of an ordinary serving wench in comparison to her, in a salmon-pink dress with gathered sleeves and a tight bodice embroidered in silver thread, worn over a beige chemise pleated and gathered closely at the neck. Three-teardrop diamond earrings hung from her ears, though her hair distracted from their simple elegance, pomaded into a trident as always.
"I invite you to my chambers to refresh yourselves, my ladies. There is food and drink, or quarter should you wish to rest awhile," Meisar offered Alfhilde and her women.
The dwarrow-maids all gawky and fidgeting adjured carefully and quietly to Alfhilde, some stuffed into fine woolen kirtles and velvets with itchy bodices too small for them. The two older attendants herded the younger dwarf-maids in the direction the steward was guiding them once Alfhilde had made her agreement to that known.
As they walked Emli quickly took young Gunhild to her side and fawned about the girl, awkward and freckle-faced but good of nature in a bashful sort of manner. Alfhilde's other dwarrowdams wore fine woolens or unadorned velvets, and sashes of Dain's tartans over their shoulders. Gunhild's large eyes absorbed in youthful awe Emli's matronly opulence, a raspberry surcoat lined in vair and a front-laced saffron-yellow gown with broad bands of contrasting black velvet, her gold-thread crespine and ostentatious velvet cap.
"There have been dark moments in the weeks and months past about these lands," Meisar said, pouring Alfhilde a light ale when the women came to her chambers. "I am happy that your entourage reached us without trouble upon the road."
"That some magic brought your Thorin from the dead, it has staved off a far darker time in these lands I well assure ye," Alfhilde replied, considering the six-sided cup in her hand. "A dwarf-king and a dwarf-lord after all together are stronger. As are a lord mother and a queen." Alfhilde smiled at her, the smugness ducking into the corners of her lips not quite successfully.
"Thorin wasn't dead, only... the magic was to keep the impression of it I suppose, until-" Meisar shrugged in her direction, the intensity of her poached-looking eyes unnerving her.
"Donna think any dwarf ought be crossing way with magic, 'specially not the sort wizards are peddling," Alfhilde interjected chidingly.
"When it serves its purpose, it will do," Meisar said.
"Especially a dwarf woman to be messin' with it or keeping its company, no good I say, that sorta magic," Alfhilde went on, stentorian enough to make her ladies pinch their lips behind her lest they breathe too loud. "You haven't dabbled about in magics, my queen? I hope. It is a dangerous game."
"I haven't, my lady. No need of it," Meisar assured.
"Of course not. I do imagine you are smart enough to know," Alfhilde remarked. "They say you are clever, my queen."
"I have found we accomplish our goals quite well with more practical means, so far anyway," Meisar commented lightly.
Warm pumpkin bread and Urdlaug's apple tarts were prepared along with smoked beef on thick slices of bread with spicy mustard. Alfhilde's maids ate in little dainty bites when she wasn't looking but scarfed the tarts and beef ravenously when she turned away, licking their fingers of the mustard, holding down belches in their stomachs. One supposed they were used to doing so freely in the Iron Hills. Yet her women shrank back behind her so consistently and kept their eyes on the ground, the younger ones fidgeting when she looked away, chafing and dolled up in their good clothes.
Alfhilde reached out across the table as Meisar set the food toward them and pressed her large, ringed hands into hers. "An army stood between my late husband and yer Thorin, and yet he came to him. Do ye know why? Because nothing stands between kin, my queen."
"Rarely if ever," Meisar replied, petaling her mouth the way she did upon the road when she felt the drawbridges about her heart draw up, guard what was inside.
When she was frightened.
Efficiently, Alfhilde patted her hand. "Thus, I hope none shall ever stand between us, Queen Meisar. We are kin now."
Could that gargoyle heard the sound of her ribs forming regiments and drawing spears? "No my lady, I cannot imagine anything ever will."
.
In Thrain's Hall there was much laughter and mead that evening, but light of fare was supper, as tradition was wont to encourage. Pheasant stew was served and light ale. The male dwarves would ride out that evening on a hunt and bring back a substantial kill- a boar, but this night perhaps, a deer seemed more appropriate. Thorin and Dwalin and young Stonehelm were already garbed in matching plate over their doublets.
The commandant of the guard, the Hlevang Meisar remembered from the months prior, cut a brawny figure in the hall beside them, as wide as he was tall. He had a throaty, resonant laugh that carried far. Never far from Stonehelm's side, he made the young lord laugh. The boy-lord chuckled easily and loudly, even at the jokes that flopped miserably with the rest of his cadre.
Emli had Gunhild for company for the evening, praising and fawning still. "Has no one told you how fair you are, my lady?" she cooed to her. "And for only sixty-eight years of age. Why, I have a son Gimli at that biratakhsigi buhhu age, precisely yours in fact. Have you met him?"
She shook her head shyly no and blushing. Emli took her on her arm and made their way together to the table where Gimli was already imbibing and Gloin jadedly surveying the scene beside him.
"Oh my! You both have that lovely copper hair!" Emli whispered excitedly. Gunhild was already smiling and blushing.
"What a handsome lad!" Gunhild whispered back to her and Emli was flushed with pride to swelled up to see anything else. Eluf of the Iron Hills approached their table and bowed with a kind ease toward Meisar.
"Scarcely do I believe this regal lady is the same queen who humbles herself to share in the labors of her kin, toiling with shovel in hand and knees in the dirt. How splendid you look, my lady," Eluf offered.
"Did not the king toil beside his own in times of need? Perhaps it is our lot, or our nature," Meisar offered graciously. "I thank you for your kind words nonetheless."
Thorin stood and raised his cup. The hall quieted. "It is time we gathered ourselves, men. The sun is going down. We must away, and seek our prey."
He swung his arm around Stonehelm's shoulder. "It shall be good for us to spend time together and bond as close kin," he said to Stonehelm. "I am glad you have come upon this particular festival night."
"Aye, none but by your side would I be, cousin. Let us bring back a stag or five!"
"We shall return, my queen, by morning, afternoon at the latest," Thorin assured Meisar. "Await me here and keep company with these fine ladies," he acknowledged Alfhilde and her coterie with quiet grace.
"Kiss me as if it is the last you will," she whispered, high and hushed, against him. He kissed her in all their sight, indulgently. Though she wanted to raise them wide open and stare Alfhilde down, she closed her eyes, taking in the abrasive touch of his beard, the mead on his mouth, alone in their world again, if only for a moment.
"When you return, you shall find our baskets prepared, ready to be filled with meats and hides," Meisar vowed. "It is a queen's duty." She turned to the gathering of the dwarves. "Take to the hunt and be blessed. Here we shall do our duties as dwarf women."
When they had farewelled the fellowship of hunters at the gate, ripe with masculine energy all of them, the dwarrowdams came back into the hall, now emptied of its supper guests. Meisar took her seat the head of the table nearest the fire, the hearth being kindled against by two stewards, who brought more flagons of mead for the women too.
Alfhilde brought her stodgy attendants who said nothing at all, as the dwarrowdams busied themselves over the long table in the hall, with rushes and birch-bark in strips. An elderly dwarrowdam had come to show them how to weave the baskets, a skill she regarded herself cheerily as being alone in under the mountain.
"Natâh," Meisar explained against Alfhilde's stony silence. "For the less fortunate, but not just the poorer of us. The aged and the lame, orphans, the recently widowed, and the households with the slow-witted or the maimed to care for, shall be gifted when we are done with these baskets."
"Care to join, milady?" Brynja offered, wide-eyed, sweet, naive.
"I leave the busy work to my maidens," Alfhilde laughed, pinched. "Best they learn the art sooner than later." She snapped a wrist at her skittish maids. "Ainâth! Go to! Make yourselves useful."
"Traditionally this is the queen's duty. I would not oblige you exhaust your hands if they are tired. I know you have had a long journey," Meisar cajoled. She scooted over and graciously called for padded seats for Alfhilde's maidens, who were far more willing, or obedient. They all murmured thanks with lowered eyes.
"It is unconscionable the fates of yer sons," Alfhilde said to Dis, purposefully sliding herself between her and Meisar within a moment's time. "The noblest that ever were, those lads."
"Yes, indeed they were," Dis answered sharply. "And to my cousin, your husband. Many a fine dwarf fell that day."
Alfhilde turned to Meisar. "I ask of course as mere a practical matter, I assure ye. But I am wont to inquire of the dwarf-maids in this mountain. Would ye know any suitable for a marriage to a lord, perhaps even a future king?" Alfhilde said sweetly. Meisar's ladies gawked with silent indignity.
"I would offer up mine for consideration but several of them are already married or betrothed," Meisar imparted to her stiffly. "And the unattached of them shall marry whom they choose, without my meddling."
The weaving dwarrowdam drew her breath in sharply and disapprovingly.
"What about you, my good lady? Do any names or family lineages strike ye as so fine as to qualify? For my son."
"I am but a Broadbeam crone, my lady. I've no verse in noble lines, nor match-making," the dwarrowdam rebuffed her gently.
"M'a Broadbeam too," Brynja piped up.
Alfhilde triangulated quietly, smiled that serpentine smile. "Come here, mistress, tell me your name,' she summoned Brynja with a wave of her hand used to giving girls under her thumb directives.
"Brynja, m'lady."
"A Broadbeam lass you say? Ered Luin?" Alfhilde asked, a question she already knew the answer to. Her lips pursed in wait.
"Yes, m'lady. From the Southern Blue Mountains."
"Coal territory," Alfhilde quipped.
"Brynja is wife to Bofur, one of the brave thirteen who took the mountain," Meisar interceded. "Also a Broadbeam of the Blue Mountains."
"And a very good wife I think. I see yer sweetness, girl." She gave Brynja an approving quirk of the mouth. "And I do say, my queen, I respect the diverse quality of your attendants much. Broadbeam and Durin's Folk and even the Eastern clans in your coterie, what a feat." Oliada regarded her suspiciously in her exotic armor, to which Meisar gave a knowing glance. The Blacklock could have cut her throat.
Alfhilde stroked Brynja's double-tailed hail. "Raised up coal-country lasses to be proper ladies. Mine could learn something from yours," she eyed her young dwarrowdams starkly. The girls looked at their feet, except for Gunhild, taken under Emli's velvet-and-damask wing and wearing her garnet necklace. Alfhilde's synod were more alike to each other in comparison- the two matronly attendants stodgy and humorless, and the fair dwarf-maids she had so carefully selected to trail her all painfully self-conscious in their inelegance and terrified of her. The Iron Hills may have been rich in mineral, but they were little else cultivated.
"When ye are a mother made you will understand how deeply we devote ourselves to our children's good fortunes," Alfhilde sighed. "My son proves a fine lord in his youth, and if king, I give praise he shall be as fine as his namesake. I wish him only to have a queen as tenacious, as akin and lovin', as his namesake's."
The smile held as Meisar's women squirmed atop ant hills of disapproval.
"Meisar is the only queen there is right now and will be for a very long while. And she will have an heir I do believe," Dis cut in, inelegantly. "We shall discuss this matter when it becomes prudent, Alfhilde."
Alfhilde ignored Dis's prickliness and sized up Meisar instead. "Well, you're rather plump, and you look healthy otherwise. It bodes well to yer your virility still. I would not give up yet," Alfhilde said. "My apologies if I've implied anything undue. I mean no insult."
"Khuzd lulkhul ma taktibi amthâg nutuhbujbu khuzd murd takhafi kharshu bark," Freyda muttered ominously under her breath, taking up a line of bark and snapping it fiercely in her hands to bend. Meisar's women made tiny noises of approval while Alfhilde's maids held their breaths and before long the beat of their hearts deprived of air could be heard.
"I am a dwarf, my lady. I never give up," Meisar replied, as vigorously tugging the weave of birch through the hole. Dis smiled out of the corner of her mouth.
"Nor do I," Alfhilde half-smiled in her infuriating way. "Nor do I."
"Shan't worry, either of you," Eda interspersed, sing-songy, into the tensing silence between the two dwarrowdams. "If you are implying what I think you are, lord mother, you know, they say the gates to the womb are very much akin to moon-runes, or magic doors, only opened a prescribed time, unknown to the lot of us. Just as the moon runes at Rivendell were opened to us on that summer night, so each of our fortunes shall come at the time meant to."
"As I was akin to saying earlier, I donna trust magic at all. It's an improper dabbling. Leave it to wizards where it belongs, I say," Alfhilde replied to her, tiredly. "We up in the Iron Hills are fallin' too close to magic o' the darker sort, these days."
"Some of it darker dwells everywhere," Dis quipped under her breath.
"All the world is given to an undercurrent of magic, m'lady," Gyda peeped.
"And it is fading, isn't it?" Alfhilde sighed, looking at Meisar with the smugness gone from her eyes and something graver and melancholy replaced in them, as if to say she knew it too. "Oh forgive my manners. We Iron Hills dwarves are blunt to a bumblin' fault."
"Forgiven," Meisar answered, swift on the tongue. She put aside her finished basket and smiled serenely. "The sun is coming up. Would you like to see the gardens, my lady? I think we shall gather sweet-squash and pumpkins for the kitchens to make bread of, and see these giving-baskets filled with more than just meat."
"There is food other than meat?" Alfhilde laughed. "Well bless my beard, I didn't know it!" There was a smug frankness about the way she moved that infuriated her to the point that steam seemed to build in the confines of her chest with every meeting of their eyes.
"You certainly do hold yer own, Queen Meisar," Alfhilde said, abjuring.
"Why, I am certain lady of your formidable quality did so just as easily," Meisar came back, saccharine on the edge of an amaranth sweetness.
"In my halls? Dain's business was his own. I did not meddle in his. But I don't suppose Thorin has that luxury. You must divide your tasks in running this kingdom, and I have heard much of your... innovations. Including these gardens. Well then, let us see them, and what purpose they serve."
"One less debt to owe, one less foreign enterprise to rely on for our needs," Meisar replied, stoutly. "And more for the coffers that will see to the needs of a burgeoning kingdom."
"Do you yourself know how to tend garden? That would be an impressive skill for a dwarf woman."
"I do."
They walked across the bottom terrace, nearest to the ground, after a brief climb. Alfhilde's knees cracked all the way up and Meisar relished every grunt and wince from the old hag. She sat on the bench and looked over the orbs of the pumpkin crop, orange and brilliant in the morning light.
"Tell me, does the king ever come about to do some planting?" Alfhilde inquired.
"I'm afraid it's not his forte," Meisar answered.
"Ah, so I've been told. Well, seems he ought to. These terraces are very... fertile."
"You should learn the art. It wouldn't hurt. Why not have a few common gardens in the Iron Hills? To stave off famine, to-"
Alfhilde gave a curt chuckle. "I'm a dwarf, naturally I don't know much about growing things. I'll leave that to someone who does. But sometimes it may be that it's not the quality of the seed or the amount of watering it gets, but the soil it's planted in." She let the dirt fall through her plump hands to the ground. "Or at least, that is what I am told."
.
"Pig-boffers!" Elsa snorted in loud disapproval. "Pig-boffers and dirty-fingered iron-miners. No manners, not even before their queen!" She plucked the straight pins from Meisar's hair as she sat weeping bitterly at the vanity table. "If she thinks she or her son will rule this kingdom, she underestimates you sorely, my queen."
"Stonehelm is a worthy heir. Do not drag his name in this matter," Meisar chided. "He is a fine young lad." The tiny piglet squealed at her feet and begged her lap. She picked him up and snuggled him under her chin, the bristles on his little head abrasive. The dogs too curled at her feet and gazed up with jealous eyes. She wanted to take them all up in her lap and hold them until the end of the world, in Thorin's absence. Her arms were too short.
"Perhaps he is. His father certainly was, in his way," Elsa conceded. "He was of a particular strength. Stonehelm will bear it on in the Iron Hills, where he is needed. You will be the only queen under this mountain, until you are stone again, or you live to see your own son wear the crown."
"I am not going to have any children, Elsa," Meisar choked a sob. She winced as she heard the chamber door open on the other side of the room and the sound of Emli's busy feet, the purposeful pitter-patter they made on the stone floor.
"Gimli paid her no mind, Meisar. A true dwarven beauty, and he would rather slurp his mead like a fish!" Emli lamented loudly. "Did he think it would impress her? Even the Iron Hills girls don't dare, not in Alfhilde's-"
"Boffer that name!" Elsa hissed.
Emli realized swiftly and sunk onto her knees beside her even in her good dress. "Dearest queen, you mustn't weep! The nerve! Ahrâk!" Emli complained bitterly. "I know it now! I should have said so!" The other dwarrowdams flooded in after her, battle-ready.
"I just wish to sleep," Meisar said over their bitter talk. "Would you stay, any of you?"
"What a cruel woman to treat my queen so, when you are the kindest I know." Brynja leaned over and held her from behind, resting her chin on her head when they all climbed onto the bed together. When they were there the anguish took her, doubled her over and Brynja had to lay her up on the pillows she sobbed and choked so she was afraid she would swallow her own tongue. The dwarrowdams all piled around her like a great swaddling.
"What absence must be in her heart to steal another's pride and dignity!" Emli yowled. "Dain would never have had it, and his tongue was as sharp as a knife. He did not offer insult to his own!"
The pig wriggled out from under the blanket and nestled under Meisar's chin, nuzzling her with its bristly snout.
"Stonehelm is a good lad," Emli concluded. "Hopefully Thorin will be able to nurture and inspire him further than his mother will. He's already wrested himself from her meanness at least."
"Yes, he is," Meisar garbled through a throat full of tears and sticky phlegm.
"Don't weep, Meisar. You will be so much more. As they call Thorin Ukhthaz, they will call you so too. When you have your child. And you will..." Brynja comforted. "And they will sing songs of how brave you were in the waiting."
Meisar turned her head, swimming up from the pillow that had been deluged in her tears. "I am barren, Brynja. I am barren. I am..."
"No, no, you are not. If I am not, you are not. I have no child yet either, and it's not for lack of effort, I assure you." She giggled her sweet, reassuring girl's giggle. "Thrice a day sometimes. But I'm sure Thorin loves you even more."
"It is not a question of love, Brynja," Meisar muttered hoarsely from crying. "Nor even of luck. Not anymore."
.
The fellowship returned in the early afternoon when the sun was still high and bright in the sky. Several large stags were strung up on the wains behind them. Stonehelm's eyes were big with glee beside Thorin. Meisar had dried the tears, powdered the redness of her face, squeezed several fat drops of a solution into her eyes to whiten them that Eda had given her. They had stayed all night, even after the weeping stopped, and were there in the morning.
They came down to greet the dwarrowdams at the gates with their baskets waiting.
Meisar embraced Thorin and Stonehelm his mother. The pulse pounding fiercely at his throat from the exhilaration of the hunt. Sweat and iron and faint copper of blood. She kindled it fiercely, a savage, unrelenting lust, to claim him and his virility and have him abed rather than spend another moment with his kin.
Afterward the hunting party cloistered briefly to bathe and dress again in more suitable attire for the evening banquet. The air was thick and fragrant with the venison being smoked and dried in the great kitchens to fill the alms baskets.
Small and stout beside this handsome king, she tried not to imagine what they were thinking, as they entered Thrain's Hall together. Elegantly as she tried to carry herself, proud as she was on Thorin's arm, and filled with love that was assured. She closed her eyes and imagined Thorin and Thorin alone, away from all this noise and fray, delighting in her Rubenesque form and she his hard dwarven breadth, dusky whispers telling her she was beautiful to him. Old and rather plump and weary-looking and beautiful to him.
Freyda had gone on Dwalin's arm behind them, announced as the first lieutenant and his betrothed. They were handsome together, their evergreen and bronze colors subtly matched, strong and stalwart to look upon.
"Let us pay our homages to our kin this night, those that sit here with us now, and those who have gone to Mahal. Blessed be the beards of each," Thorin decreed across the crowded hall.
"For all that we have lost," Meisar added. "Let us gain. And grow. Stronger. Each Day." She poured her mead carefully to the brim of her cup and raised it along with Thorin. "To my brothers, my mother, my father, and beloved kin to me whom I shall meet someday in the Halls of Our Creator."
"Nephews," Thorin said, rising beside her. "Father, mother, brother, grandfather, cousin..."
"Husband," Alfhilde joined. "Brother, father..."
"Father," Stonehelm said, shaking.
"Sons..." Dis drank deeply.
At the tables below every dwarf rose and joined their voices in a solemn chorus proclaiming in a buzz of voices that all blended together the names of their fallen kin. There was not a single mouth that did not speak.
As supper came after the grim tributes Meisar smoothed the wide-paneled skirt of her brocade gown over her stomach, avoiding the sidelong glances from Stonehelm's mother. She wanted Emli to come and sit between them, give her a stern eye, but Emli was too busy making sure Gimli didn't get mead in his beard again. Gunhild was stationed across from him making friendly eyes. Gimli's eyes were equally akin, but at the beef pie on his plate.
Stonehelm sat beside his mother as another huge flagon of mead was poured for her counsel. Their heads pressed together, secretively, like a clique of little girls.
Meisar sharpened her ears to their talk and winced.
"…If that queen of his can give him an heir. And not a beardless one…"
"I think her quite nice, mother. And she isn't that old," Stonehelm protested. 'Amad, I like her much and so does Thorin. Be kind."
Alfhilde looked cross over the rim of her cup. "Ufuntai, bunhai, udurjai," she quipped. She turned to her son and smiled haughtily, patting the boy on his hand as if he were a babe seeking her comfort after a bad dream. "I should have no worries about Thorin's queen, my son, for your inheritance. She is famously barren, in addition to all those things."
"They have a lustiness for each other's company," Thekk, Dwalin and Balin's kinsman, protested to Alfhilde. "Verily and much-oft kindled, so I am told by my eyes and ears here."
"A year has passed and there is no baby," Alfhilde seemed to all but snap back. "It is not a question of love."
"I counsel you against your impatience, my lady," Thekk chided.
"Aye, mother," Stonehelm agreed quietly. He could have snapped any man's neck with his bare hands easily but in his mother's presence the lordling was no mightier than a mouse. "The Iron Hills need me now. Erebor's got Thorin a good long while. I hope. And maybe his sons."
Alfhilde only snorted quietly. "Our wee gardener queen should have had this figured long ago if she is such an earthy sort- ye can water all ye like but if the soil's barren as a mountainside's, nothing's wont to grow."
Meisar watched, smarting, from across the dais at Alfhilde and her quick hands, her cowed advisers, and Stonehelm, wriggling the best he could under his mother's thumb. "I was to believe they thought his mountain cursed and wouldn't come near it," Meisar observed quietly to Thorin, as they took more mead and venison, Alfhilde ordering the stewards about.
"When its king was slain on the battlefield, before his own coronation," Thorin grumbled. "It was a different time."
"Yes," Meisar said heavily, with some sarcasm. "When you were dead."
"Setting up pens for their war pigs in the old treasure halls, I can see it now," Gloin muttered sharply to Thorin.
"Is not somewhat appropriate?" Thorin intoned.
"No," came Meisar's stout reply over the two of them. "It is not."
"Adyum, what is the matter?" Thorin queried gently.
She jerked her head toward Aroin and her glowering attendants. "She looks at me as if I am some horrid creature to be mocked. I cannot tolerate her haughtiness."
"None will mock you within my halls," Thorin assured quietly. "And nobody in the Iron Hills can stomach her either. You're in good company."
"I am without a beard and without a child. Of course they mock me. She the worst."
"'Aglâna," Thorin soothed quietly.
"It can wound like a sword," Meisar muttered. "You wouldn't know."
She looked around for Freyda but she had gone off with Dwalin already. Freyda would have split her lip and wiped that haughty smirk from her if she had heard. But Thorin had freed Dwalin to her and took the time to bond with his cousin. Stonehelm drifted away from his mother and toward him. Meisar excused herself to sit with Emli when she begged her over.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Alfhilde move from her seat toward Thorin like a snake in the grass.
"I thought, whilst we are here, that a formal contract ought be drawn and signed, m'king, naming my son the heir presumptive."
"It shall be done," she heard Thorin say.
"Most gracious, my king. I shall have his lords at the ceremony as witnesses then and-"
"It will be done, alas, privately so, ezbad," Thorin interjected gently.
"Privately?"
"I think it would come off an unkind gesture to the queen, for a matter long decided anyway, and signed, in your own halls," Thorin suggested diplomatically. "Nonetheless you have my assurances it shall be signed and sealed with my signet. A copy, if you will, to be kept here in Erebor. Lest anyone doubt."
.
The morning couldn't have come any more swiftly. At dawn the chaos of the Iron Hills regiments and stewards packaging up the baggage train in many shouts and grunts woke all the city and brought them to the gates to watch. Their aurochs, boars, goats and war-pigs were brought in droves from the stables, fed and watered, the Iron Hills dwarves deftly getting the armor onto the beasts.
Alfhilde moved among her women and ignored Meisar's, scolding and berating her young maids for their yawning. She combed their hair and beards hard where she found them unkempt in the slightest, even so early in the morning. One of the girls began to weep from the tugging. Faring better, Gunhild pinched her mouth to keep herself from squealing with delight when Emli told her to keep the garnet necklace as a gift. Gimli had not said a word to her at dinner or at the breaking of their fast with the main delegation. Meisar wondered if it was a bribe or a consolatory prize.
Stonehelm knelt before Meisar and kissed her hand when his drawn-out farewells and embraces with Thorin had ended. "Glad I am to have known ye now my queen, and seen for my own self the happiness ye have given to my cousin. Ye have made me happy also, that I might call ye kinswoman." Stonehelm rose and pleaded an embrace from her, which she obliged. "And yer son that I may someday call king, I give my hopes for also." His hazel eyes were warm and just against hers when he stood back, fierce when summoned to be, she imagined, but a boy's eyes nonetheless, good-natured and trusting.
"You have your father's tenacity, Thorin Stonehelm, truly, and I shall love you all my days for it," Meisar said, embracing him again. "I hope you shall marry well someday, and our children be as close as your father and Thorin were. I would like that."
"Aye, I would too," Stonehelm agreed. Meisar could see his mother's lips tighten behind him, and in her chest felt a hot swell of rage, and pride.
.
In their chambers and waiting on Thorin later, Meisar put off her mantle, releasing the heat that had built in her heavy clothes even in the chill above the mountain. The fur was hot when she touched it. She took off her crown and it too was hot with shame. The metal could have melted on her forehead.
She would have cried but her women were with her, and even their presence was overbearing, and she had felt the searing hot shame of ghost tears from the night previous, shed in their presence, to her wounded pride. They will never see me cry, no. Not even them. Never again.
"Are you alright? You look as if you will faint," Eda inquired. Virta touched her forehead and drew away when Meisar winced at her.
"Tired is all, Eda. It's been a long few days."
Freyda stumbled in last, her bodice only partway laced over her kirtle, and about her neck a rosy collar, still smarting, that would be a shade more royal in the morn.
"Take care not to dishonor yourself, Freyda," she murmured under her breath, chidingly. Freyda lowered her head catching hers in the mirror, red at the whites and over their hooded lids from crying and rubbing.
"None dishonorable my queen," Freyda sputtered off. "It's not... is it?"
"Oh aye, and what is it? Siv demanded. Meisar gave her a withering look but she ignored it, clacking her feet down on the floor from where they'd been propped on the table.
"Not what you imagine!" Freyda came back.
Siv waved off her gaping at the mouth with indignity. "I know that face, that rosy tint. You've been ridden hard and put away wet like one of Stonehelm's goats and more than once," Siv clucked. "Let's not be coy now, love."
"The goats of the Iron Hills know such fear as we never have then," Eda tried to warm Meisar, further tensing as she was.
"On the other hand, they respect their boars in the morning," Meisar retorted icily.
"You are all a might uncouth!" Freyda crossed her arms over them. "Not any of your business, none of you."
"You'll get a swelt up belly on ye soon if you're not careful," Eda warned. She eyed Meisar apologetically. "'Tis is no unkindness to you, my queen."
"None at all," Meisar whispered. She stood up suddenly. "Scolding me like a child on the dangers of magic, Damn her name, I shall use whatever it is I please now! Siv, felt a quill and ink."
Siv brought the utensils and sat at the writing desk. Meisar gently edged her out of the seat. "On second thought, my dear, I shall conduct this one myself. It is my business, I'm afraid."
As the tears and desperation swelled up in her chest and on the edge of her eyes, the ladies adjured with quiet fear of this now. She heard the outer door open and close gently beyond the bedchamber doors.
"Leave us," he begged quietly of the rest of them. The dwarrowdams filing out pattered swiftly and there was just Thorin then, closing the door, the piglet shirking back to his bed in the darkened corner. Then sweeping her up from her seat into the warmth and ferocious shaking of his arms.
"I am sorry, jewel of mine. I am so sorry..."
.
-bashud- banners of
-Iraknadad- Male Cousin
-Biratakhsigi buhhu- Forming his own company (coming to adulthood)
-Natâh- Alms
-Ainâth- Girls
-Aglâna- Ladies' Talk/Gossip
- ufuntai- too wide/thick
- ubunhai- too common/usual/plebian
- udurjai- too curious/queer/strange
-Ezbad- Noble Lady
-Ahrâk- Arrogance
-Ukhthaz- Endurer
--Khuzd lulkhul ma taktibi amthâg nutuhbujbu khuzd murd takhafi kharshu bark- A foolish dwarf does not find an insult, neither does a dead dwarf feel the bite of the axe