The Blood Dimmed Tide
In Cavern's Shade: 38th Chapter
"To realize that all your life—you know,
all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain—
it was all the same thing.
It was all the same dream.
A dream that you had inside a locked room.
A dream about being a person.
And like a lot of dreams there's a monster at the end of it."
- Rust Cole, True Detective
Author's note: Warning! This chapter contains graphic depictions of violence.
Sorry that this took forever guys. I had a lot of really bad stuff happen in my personal life and it delayed the chapter for quite some time. I promise I will get to my messages soon. :) Thanks so much for reading! We're almost at the end now! The next chapter is almost completely written at 20-25 pages so hopefully I should have it up in the next few weeks. My goal is to finish this fic, including the epilogue (which is completely written) by December 31st.
Luna: Thanks so much! Sorry for all the sadness! Believe me, I cry too. I promise they'll have joy again one day.
Ithiliel: Wow, thank you! I'm not a big fan of Celebrimbor either ;) but he gives me some really interesting material to play with...especially in the next book. I feel bad for Venessiel too. She made some bad choices but a lot of things that happened were outside of her control and other people made a lot of bad choices too. I really enjoy writing gray characters like this. Did you really draw it! I would love to see. Yeah, Celeborn was just having some amnesia because he lost so much blood but he's recovering now, somewhat.
It was with a tinge of shame that Galadriel had secretly filled the shallow silver bowl with water from a fountain, glancing about furtively as she carried it back with her, and it was only when she at last returned to their chambers and placed it on the table before her that she released the breath she had been unknowingly holding. In the months following the slaughter, efforts to clean the streams and fountains of Menegroth that provided the capital with water had proven an arduous task, especially considering how few now remained to do it; water had thus become a scarce resource, too precious to waste, and she knew that Celeborn would consider this wasteful.
Still…she had to know, felt so deeply compelled and, more than that, she felt that if there was anything she missed…any missing piece of this macabre puzzle that she had failed to see, she would never be able to forgive herself. Already the guilt sat heavy in her heart, guilt that she had realized things too late, that Thingol had perhaps been drawing his dying breaths when at last everything had fallen into place in her mind. For a century she had seen that vision, and for a century its meaning had evaded her…until it had been too late.
It was ancient magic, primitive in a way, yet difficult to achieve and powerful beyond reckoning, some would say pagan, a defiance of the Valar. The water had stilled in the bowl, crystal clear, and her own reflection looked back at her. When she had stood beneath the Mindon in Tirion how could even she, gifted with prescience, have imagined that all of this would come to pass? Even Melian had been unable to see it. She drew a deep shuddering breath and then released it, clasping her hands in her lap. How many more times, she wondered, will I lose my home?
Valinor she had left by choice, but this time it felt all the more bitter because Doriath was the home she had chosen, the home she had fought for, the one that she herself had helped to build. Now it was all slipping away like sand in an hourglass and she was powerless to stop it - the same way she had been powerless against Fëanor's prying hands and conniving words, the same way she had been powerless to defend her mother's kin on the docks of Alqualondë.
Celeborn was fighting a war he could not win, the futility of it dragging him down, drowning him, and she felt powerless to help him even as she felt powerless to help herself, hiding away the emotions that tore at her, threatening to rip her open. She could not afford to cave, not now, not when he needed her the most. But, such thoughts were certainly not going to make this any easier. She turned her eyes towards the shallow bowl of water again and, again, took a deep breath. She had watched Melian do this many a time. You're not ready yet, the queen had laughed with a shake of her raven head. This is powerful, too powerful; it will drain you of your strength.
And do my visions not do the same? She had asked, ever impatient. It had never been in her to watch and learn.
Not like this, Melian had said, her eyes sparkling. This is different. The earth does not know you well enough yet and so she will not reveal her secrets to you. You must wait until the proper time.
And when will I know it is the proper time? She had pushed.
When I tell you that it is, Melian had replied, ever cryptic.
But Melian was gone now and she had taken that knowledge with her. And yet she had felt it that night of the slaughter, when she had set her hand in Celeborn's. She had felt something change in that instant, as if she could feel the heart of the earth beating within her own, as if the soil and water now knew her scent. She had asked Celeborn about it one evening and he had stared at her, puzzled, before she realized that of course this earth had been in his blood since birth. He knew nothing other than that; for him that was the way it has always been.
I'm not ready, she thought with grave uncertainty as she gazed upon the shallow silver dish, and yet the thought of not knowing would drive her mad if she did not dare to try this.
Why this way? She had asked Melian and the queen had only given her a bemused smile, as if there was some great secret she was missing out on.
The water will temper your strength, channel the foresight; you will not have to expend as much energy and the visions will be more distinct, clearer. The queen had replied after a pause.
Then why not teach me now? She had pushed once more. Wouldn't it be better that way?
This time Melian's reply had come swiftly, with nary a glimmer of doubt. Are you prepared for what you might see, even if it is the deaths of those you love? That had silenced her effectively and, timidly, reprimanded, she had folded her hands in her lap and never asked again.
Now her hands shook as she folded them in her lap. "Am I ready?" She asked the silence, her voice barely a whisper, and silence was her reply, the water still and quiet. Melian wasn't coming back. There would be no miracle in this darkest hour, no salvation from what doom awaited them. She felt that darkness settle heavily upon her heart like a stone, crushing her beneath its weight. She had known that the water would not reflect Melian's face and yet there had been some wild and frail hope beating in her heart that it would. But all that she saw reflected back at her was her own face: a woman full grown and yet she felt as if she were no more than a child. What good was her power if she had not the strength to protect what she loved, as Melian had? She needed something, something, anything, some hope that it was not all over, that there was still a chance, a chance for hope, for happiness, that not everything would end in the ruin that Mandos had foreseen.
She took a deep shuddering breath, blinking away tears, and then lowered her head, breathing softly across the surface, watching as thin clouds of white smoke began to rise, her fingers gripping the edge of the table as she gazed into the water. The surface shivered. Please, she thought, begging silently for the water to show her what would happen, to reveal whether they could escape, if there was some way out. Please… the surface rippled again and then she felt as if she were floating facedown in a lake, the room having faded away completely.
She could feel her heart thundering, pounding a mad staccato in her chest. All was black and then a pair of eyes opened before her - her own eyes, and she stared back at herself. All flashed black again and then she was merely sitting at the table, clutching its edges with white-knuckled fingers, smoke still rising slowly from the shallow silver dish, trembling in the wake of her abject failure.
"I hope you're planning on doing something useful with that water," Celeborn's voice, low and cold with a rumble of latent anger in its depths, met her ears as she heard him enter, passing behind where she sat without another word or even a glance, stripping off his leather armor with quick, angry motions as he disappeared into the next room.
Galadriel sat perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe out of fear that her entire world would shatter to pieces about her, trying to remind herself that she must not give in to it, that she must stay calm for his sake, that now was the moment when he needed more than ever for her to be the strong one. But she couldn't. How could she, when even her own foresight refused to heed her will? How could she when the doom of Mandos was closing about their necks like a noose?
With a scream of futile rage she took up the silver basin and flung it, the water arching through the air in a clear and graceful stream before she heard the basin clatter and echo against the wall as it fell to the floor, as she fell to her knees, shaking and sobbing as if the tears couldn't come fast enough, drawing great shuddering breaths that wracked her entire body. "Galadriel!" She heard him cry, his voice thick with anxiety, then running footsteps and she saw his boots appear before her.
"I'm sorry," she gasped, her chest tight as if she could not draw enough air, and she raised her eyes to see him standing before her, his face oddly expressionless, his eyes blank and unfocused, almost as if he were looking through her to the other side at something she could not see. "I'm sorry I couldn't see it," she stammered between great gasps of air. "I'm sorry I was too late. I'm sorry for the curse I've brought down on you. I'm sorry I can't fill Melian's place." The tears flowed freely from her eyes and, shaking, she raised a trembling hand to wipe them away.
"You have nothing to be sorry for," Celeborn murmured into his hair, sinking to the floor and gathering her into his arms. "It isn't your fault. I didn't mean it. I'm sorry." Galadriel could feel him trembling as he held her, could feel the wetness of his tears in her hair, and for some reason she found comfort in knowing that even in fear she was not alone.
Some days it seemed that anger was the only thing that sustained him: pulsing through him hot as fire, throbbing deep in his veins, it fueled him over the long and lonely months where the people prepared for the journey. Despite the fact that their population had been horribly depleted, all of Menegroth's citizens were working as hard as possible to prepare for the great migration. The kitchens worked both night and day to prepare enough food to sustain the people on the exodus while the forges worked tirelessly to craft armor for the surviving soldiers and wardens.
"No sign of movement on the borders so far, Your Royal Highness," Glindor, Celeborn's lieutenant, said as they bent over a large table spread with maps in the center of the great hall. "I think it is safe to say that Beren, the Ents, and the Green Elves successfully routed the dwarves. Indeed, Naugladir himself was slain. They will almost certainly not return."
"Still no word from Beren and Lúthien?" Celeborn asked, his mind distracted as, with his index finger, he traced the line of the Sirion to its mouth.
"No Sir," Glindor said, "nothing, save that Lúthien wears the Silmaril."
Celeborn curled his fingers into a fist and pressed his knuckles down into the table. "She should know better than to invite their wrath," he murmured.
"Sir?" Glindor asked, not having heard him, but Celeborn shook his head.
"We must away from here as soon as possible," he said, looking up at the hall filled with people, the noisy hubbub of conversation and of people moving here and there reaching his ears. It seemed the whole city had come to dwell here in the great hall. Many, he suspected, could not bear to return to the homes where their loved ones had perished. He glanced over towards a far corner where Galadriel sat with many of the women, their fingers nimbly flying over the strings of their looms, preparing clothes for the journey.
His eyes met hers for a moment as he looked up and he saw her visibly stiffen, saw her purse her lips and the strange emotions flit through her eyes. Things had not been the same between them since the dwarves had come…no, longer than that…since the failed wedding. Though in sleep they lay side by side, mere inches between them, their bed had become cold and passionless; an inch could be a mile depending upon the map used to read it, and their hearts were many leagues apart. Yet it was not for lack of love that it was so. In fact, he rather suspected it was the depth of the love they felt for each other that had created this strange distance between them, the growing fear of what doom might be coming upon them and the futility of their efforts to prevent it. He felt his heart cry out, reaching for hers along that invisible thread that connected them, but he quieted it quickly, not wishing her to hear it and be pained.
He looked back down at the map. The irony was not lost on him that he felt so comfortable speaking his fears and concerns to Glindor and so uncomfortable talking to his own betrothed about them. Thingol has not invested thousands of years of love and affection into him the way he did with you, Galadriel's words of many years ago rang in his mind and he pushed them away, clearing his mind of thoughts before opening his eyes again. He did not know when he had closed them. The lines of the map stared up at him, black and stark against the white of the parchment. The plains, the forests, the mountains all looked so small from here and yet he knew what a difficult journey awaited them, the vast stretches of wilderness they would have to traverse with children and wagons in tow, the orcs, and wolves, and foul beasts that roamed those lands.
"Sir?" He must have been quiet for some time because Glindor seemed nervous.
"How much longer until we are ready to leave?" He asked quietly. The room seemed to have grown louder and he had to listen hard to hear Glindor's answer, though he stood at his side.
"Within a month," Glindor replied. "All is nearly ready."
"Good," Celeborn said. "It is better we do not travel in the winter. It would be slow going through the snow. But we shall have to find a way to cross the rivers."
"And where, exactly, do you think you will be going?" An unfamiliar voice rang out.
Celeborn stiffened, feeling a chill run down his spine, and straightened, turning to find standing before him a tall, dark-haired elf. He was young still, thin, yet unable to fill out the his tall frame, and the fine and regal clothes he wore seemed somewhat out of place on such a young elf, as did the aura of power he had attempted to project with his question, as if he wore a heavy mantle that he was not used to bearing.
"Dior," Celeborn said, surprised, for it was impossible that he should be anyone else. The memory of Thingol and Melian, of Beren and Lúthien was present in the handsome lines of his face, the raven black of his long straight hair, the shining blue of his eyes. Celeborn's eyes drifted to the silver-haired woman who stood at Dior's side, a newborn baby with hair of gray so deep it was nearly black in her arms and two dark-haired twin boys hiding behind her skirts. It had been many years since last he had seen Nimloth.
"Prince Celeborn, I presume," Dior said, but his eyes held none of Beren's kindness, nor any of Thingol's humor.
"I am, at your service," Celeborn replied, clasping his hands before him as he surveyed the train of courtiers that Dior and Nimloth had brought with them.
"You would do well to address me as is proper," Dior said brusquely, "and speaking of service. I have come to assume my grandfather's throne. Doriath thanks you for your services as Prince Regent but they will no longer be necessary."
"Your Majesty," Celeborn said with a small bow of acknowledgment, tight lipped, feeling very much as though he would like to tell Dior what he really thought of him. Galathil's warning of several years ago did indeed prove apt and, though he had only known Thingol's heir but a few moments, he found that he did not like him at all. His eyes met Nimloth's but she only looked away, feigning interest in her baby.
He felt a delicate hand slip into his, Galadriel's, and turned to look at her, surprised at the sudden show of intimacy from her. "Your Majesty," she said, with a deep curtsey to Dior and Nimloth. "We had no word that you were coming but it is nevertheless a very happy surprise and we are pleased to welcome you to Menegroth and to welcome your reign." Dior merely nodded stiffly before Galadriel continued. "May I inquire as to the health of your parents?" She raised her eyes to Dior's with a polite smile.
"Ill, I'm afraid," Dior said stiffly, as though he did not know what to make of the situation. "We would have come a year earlier, after the dwarves had been slain, were it not for their illness."
"I am very sorry to hear it," Galadriel said. "They have always been very dear to us."
Dior was silent for a moment after that, chewing the inside of his cheek, then he turned his quick eyes to Celeborn once more and said, "I presume that this is Galadriel, the Noldo."
"My consort, and ambassador to the Noldor," Celeborn replied coldly. "And she is able to speak for herself." Dior bristled visibly at the remark, his shoulders growing stiff, and Celeborn felt Galadriel clench his hand tightly. He felt some mild regret for having undone what efforts she had made to smooth over the tense situation, but his dislike of Dior had already grown very strong and he had not appreciated the way that he had referred to Galadriel.
"Is this the state I find my grandfather's kingdom in?" Dior said, drawing himself up to his full height. He was still not as tall as Celeborn. "This palace is in ruins. The paths through the forest are overgrown and the wardens sparse. Now I arrive in Thingol's great hall and find it is little more than a refugee camp!"
"The people are weary and too few to sustain the kingdom," Celeborn retorted. "And there is no safety here, not anymore, with Melian's girdle gone. It is only a matter of time before the sons of Fëanor come to seek their revenge."
"Yes, I presumed from the state of things that you were running away," Dior said, raising a dark brow.
"This is the time for practicality, not pride," Celeborn interrupted him. "To stay here is folly and certain death. If we can meet with Círdan's people at Balar we may be able to journey eastward and establish new realms there, far away from the ruin that is most assuredly coming."
"The ruin that is most assuredly coming!" Dior laughed and shook his head as if he pitied them. "And who told you this foul fantasy?" His eyes drifted towards Galadriel, and Celeborn understood well the implication. "Doriath has stood for thousands of years as a bulwark against Bauglir and I do not mean to abandon my grandfather's kingdom nor the heritage of our people. She will stand yet. We will make her great again and there will be no room in my new realm for those who are not willing to help her reclaim her glory."
"This is folly!" Celeborn cried. "You would lead these people to their deaths for your pride and ignorance, because you are too young to know what true danger is!"
"Mind your tongue!" Dior bellowed, his blue eyes sparking with anger, his hand flying out to grip the front of Celeborn's tunic. Galadriel saw the flash of anger in Celeborn's eyes in that moment and her heart leapt in fear that he might strike the king, but the moment passed and he remained silent, though Dior, at least, seemed shaken by the Prince's unspoken defiance. "Mind your tongue," Dior said again, quietly this time, his voice suddenly uncertain as he released his hold on Celeborn's tunic and stepped back, his eyes lingering on his silver hair. Celeborn met his gaze unflinchingly.
"Take your…consort…and adjourn to your chambers," Dior said to Celeborn, tight-lipped, before he turned to his servants. "I want these halls cleared! This is no market, nor a place for vagabonds to loiter. This is the king's great hall and I will have it looking as such before sunrise!"
Celeborn felt Galadriel's hand clench tightly about his once more but he turned away from her to where Galathil had approached Nimloth and was speaking to her in hushed tones. He could see the unshed tears brimming in his niece's eyes and heard her whisper. "You ought to remind my uncle who Thingol's heir is! Do you not understand the position that my husband is in?"
"Nimloth," Galathil whispered, "your uncle is right. It is unsafe here and the people do not stay willingly. There are too many dark memories…" his voice cracked, "…memories of those we lost…"
"Come," Galadriel whispered, her hand on Celeborn's elbow, leading him from the hall. "It would be better if we were away from here." He went willingly with her, if only to be away from Dior, but the walk back to their quarters seemed interminable and Galadriel could feel could feel that he was shaking.
Dior's reign proved to be no more auspicious in the following months than it had from the first and it was with a heavy heart that Galadriel reached up to clasp a glimmering silver strand laced with sparkling violet amethysts about her throat. Nervously she ran her fingers over the gemstones, swallowing hard, taking a deep breath.
"Are you not ready yet?" Celeborn asked, appearing suddenly in the doorway wearing the beginning of a frown. She started up from the vanity perhaps a bit faster than was wise and accidentally set it to wobbling, forced to reach out and steady a bottle of scented water before it toppled over.
"Yes…yes I believe I'm ready," she murmured, casting her eyes down at the voluminous skirt of her silver gown and smoothing her hands over the silk. But everything felt wrong about tonight. Celeborn was tense, had been tense ever since Dior's arrival a year before, and she could hardly blame him. Dior had a penchant for wanting to oversee every minute detail of the kingdom's workings and goings on and Celeborn chafed under such authority.
Nor had things been particularly good for her either as of late. The tides of political opinion and public sentiment had gradually been shifting since Thingol's death and most particularly since the attack by the dwarves but now, with Dior's arrival, they seemed to be accelerating even more and suspicion and distrust of outsiders was at an all time high in the kingdom. She had begun to notice the way that elves who had previously been friendly with her now eyed her as though she were keeping secrets. What was more, old political agendas that had surfaced centuries ago at the zenith of discord between the Sindar and the Noldor were now being bandied about in every day conversation. There were many now who spoke openly not only of expelling the Noldor from the kingdom, but of tightening strictures on the green elves and Avari as well.
"We don't have to stay all evening," Celeborn said, his words clipped and his tone anxious. "We'll just stay long enough to show our faces…" his words drifted off. It was clear he was thinking of something else, but Galadriel was glad for what he had said. The sooner they could leave, the happier she would be.
"Very well," she murmured, tidying her skirts before she took the arm he offered her. This should all have been second nature, given how many times she had entered the great hall on the arm of her betrothed, but it felt now as if something was gravely amiss and she could not help but notice the covert glances that were thrown in her direction or the way that Celeborn drew her in close, a certain protectiveness settling about him as of a man who fears what little he has will soon be taken from him.
"The King is not here, not yet," she murmured as they moved slowly amongst the courtiers, inclining their heads graciously at the bows made to them, but some tension was nearly palpable in the room, a tension that seemed to have been building for centuries but was now boiling to a head.
"No, not yet," Celeborn replied in a voice that indicated his mind was elsewhere, and as his fingers tightened around her waist, drawing her into the dance, she looked into his eyes and saw some strange confluence of sadness and concern there.
"You are worried," she murmured, as they began to weave their way amongst other dancing couples. He looked away for a brief moment and then back at her.
"Can you feel it?" He asked her in a whisper, voice thick with worry.
"Yes…but I can't quite put my finger on it…" she began but he interrupted.
"They don't want us here," he said and Galadriel felt her heart shudder to a stop.
"They don't want me here," Galadriel replied and then, in an instant so brief that had she but blinked she might have missed it, she thought she saw his heart break, like a bow that had been held interminably until the tension became too great and the string snapped, shattering the wood.
"I want you here," Celeborn said, drawing her so close that her face was nestled in the shoulder of his tunic and she felt his hand gentle against the back of her head. But, she could hear the whispers as they moved through the hall, feel their eyes upon her, heavy as millstones.
It isn't right, the mingling of Noldor and Sindar.
This was what started all this trouble in the first place. If they had never come to our lands Doriath would not be in her current predicament.
They're all greedy, the lot of them. How much longer will it be before they turn their swords on us? They did it to the Teleri. It is only a matter of time.
And how can her loyalty be guaranteed? Noldorin witch! She has beguiled our prince and how easily he falls into her snare!
Thingol was too soft on such matters. Doriath is a Sindarin kingdom and she should be for the Sindar. What need have we of the counsel of foreigners?
Dior's policies in that regard are sound. He heralds a new dawn for Doriath and here the prince was trying to convince us to abandon our kingdom, to exile ourselves in the east, to take a once great people and make us into nothing more than homeless wanderers.
It was her doing no doubt… The whispers reverberated around them, drifting through ears and out of them, winding their way through the music,
"We should go," Celeborn whispered, his fingers tight like iron on her hand, and suddenly Galadriel realized what it was that sounded so strange about his voice – it was fear – and his fear rattled her heart, for Celeborn never feared.
But just as he said it, a hush ran through the hall like a current of lightening, more powerful in its silence than a thousand words. They turned, hearts quaking in mutual terror, and saw that Dior had arrived, climbing the dais where Thingol had once sat upon his throne and taking the seat his grandfather had commanded so naturally. Yet there was no hesitation now in Dior's stride, but the confidence of a man who is certain that he has triumphed, for about his neck was clasped the Nauglamir and, set in its center, blazing like a star, the Silmaril.
"Today," Dior began, his voice booming through the caverns, "heralds a new day for this kingdom, a new dawn for Doriath! No longer will we hide in our caves, subject to the wills and whims of foreign princes." The air seemed charged with energy, the people beginning to chatter excitedly at the proclamation of their King. Dior glanced around his hall, his shoulders set proudly, his head held high, his eyes coming at last to rest upon Celeborn and Galadriel.
"Long has Doriath bent to the will of naysayers who do not place their faith in her strength, who would rather abandon these magnificent halls of my grandfather to wreck and ruin, who listen to and abide by the counsel of foreign tongues. But from this day forth Doriath shall be for the Sindar and we shall make her great again as she was of old! Too long has Beleriand been overrun by Noldorin princes who stole the homes of our people, purporting to fight a war against Bauglir! But what good have they done? Still Bauglir reigns in the north! I say it is time for Sindarin might to assert itself! It is time at last for our people to reclaim what is ours!"
"He is mad," Galadriel murmured, her heart pounding with fear as she clutched at Celeborn's hand as though it was the sole anchor of sanity in the world, "all of this is impossible."
"He is telling them what they want to hear," Celeborn replied. "Come, let us go. There is nothing we can do here." His grip on her hand was like a vice as he pulled her from the hall, and she wasn't sure if it was his hand or hers that was trembling.
Somehow they made their way through the inky black labyrinthine halls of Menegroth, clutching at the stone with a certain desperation, and Galadriel could feel Celeborn's panic bleeding through to her, could taste the despair that drove him to seek cool, fresh air. It was a sorrow she felt most keenly, the sorrow she had tasted in the bitter nights of the Helcaraxë when hope seemed so frail, the sorrow of dreams bastardized by fate, the numb lack of feeling that made the heart ring as hollow as a vesper bell, the happiness that seemed nothing more but a phantasmal falsehood of yester year that taunted and mocked like some sinister specter of what might have been, the cruelty of adulthood gained in the crucible of war.
She could feel it all, pounding in his veins as if it were his very life's blood, and she welcomed that fear, drawing it within her own heart so that she might lessen his burden and take it upon herself. And then at last, just when they seemed on the verge of being swallowed by some gaping void, they at last burst out of the gates into the cool air of the night beneath a sky twinkling with infinite stars, not stopping until they had reached the great tree, Neldoreth.
Celeborn pressed his forehead there against the cool bark, his hands trembling, his shoulders heaving as Galadriel gathered him into her arms, and then she heard his voice in her mind for the first time, clearer than a bell: it will never end. And she did not pause to ponder how this should be possible, but drew him as close as she was able, sinking with him to the lush grass at the base of the tree, her face pressed to his and their tears mingling, slipping together like a confluence of streams joining into a river.
"You are my heart," he whispered, his voice thick with conviction, as ever, and as ever she knew that whatever Celeborn said to her he meant it with all that he was, with every fiber of his being; it was the reason she loved him. "You are my heart and I cannot live without my heart," he gasped and she tasted the bitter salt of their tears as she took great, heaving sobs.
She wanted to comfort him, to say something that would lessen the hurt, and yet she knew that there was nothing she could say that could take away the pain, or stop the inevitable weight that moved upon them, or lessen the grief that filled her heart as she knew what he must do, must say. "Say it…" she whispered. "Say it. I already know." But it took some time before he could staunch his tears enough to speak and, when he did speak his voice was hoarse.
"I cannot marry you," he gasped, cradling her face in his hands, his green eyes gazing full into hers, filled with pain. "As long as you are by my side," he began quietly, "I will always be suspect in the minds of my people. Already this has come to pass. Now the Silmaril is here and death is assured. When Dior falls, as he most assuredly will, who will lead them if not I? Galathil they love but he has not the heart or mind of a king. Oropher they do not trust because of the wrongs his wife has committed, nor has he the patience or wisdom to lead them. There is no one else to safeguard them." He paused, struggling with the words that he knew he must say.
"It is not for lack of love that I ask this of you," he said, "but precisely because I love you that I must do this. This is who I am, Galadriel, for all the pain of it, for whatever doom awaits me, I cannot be untrue to myself; to do so would to be untrue to you. I will not be as Fëanor. I will not demand of you an oath that might drive you into harm's way and will certainly bring you great unhappiness, nor will I be as Fëanor's sons, swearing myself to that which I cannot fulfill and which brings with it only suffering, for I wish you only happiness and yet I cannot give it to you…I see it now clearly as I never could before. Perhaps I was blinded by hope, by dreams rooted in fantasy rather than reality. I thought that I could make them understand. I thought that given time, this world could accept us and the love that we bear each other. But now I see that it is not so, that no matter how long we may live…"
"…we will be torn apart over and over again," Galadriel whispered, finishing his thought for him because she already knew in her heart what he would say, already knew because the same thoughts had infected her mind like a pestilence. "How many more times will competing loyalties and duties, differing obligations, and hopes, and dreams, divide us, cause enmity between us, turn us against each other?" He bowed his head.
"You know me, Galadriel, better than anyone," me whispered, meeting her gaze. "You know I would fight it were there any other way, but I will not fight it at your expense or at the expense of others."
"I know," Galadriel said, "and I love you for it. All my life, Celeborn, I have lived under the rule of princes who would tear each other and their houses apart all for the sake of themselves and their pride…but you…" her lip trembled and she fell silent, unable to continue.
He gathered her into his arms and she felt his heart beating against her own, the warmth of him that surrounded her, the safety of his arms. "I love you," he whispered, "and I always will, to the end of my days, however few or many they may be."
"I know," she said, not because she did not love him as well, she did and she knew she always would, but because she knew that he needed to hear it, needed to hear her acknowledgment that she understood it was not for lack of love that they must be parted. "I know, Celeborn, I think I've always known it would come to this, somehow, only…only I thought…hoped…there might be some other way."
"As did I," Celeborn murmured, drawing her close, pressing his forehead against hers and twining his fingers in her hair. "Or I would never have done you the injury of offering a proposal I cannot fulfill. Can you forgive me for it?"
"You are already forgiven a thousand times over," Galadriel said, feeling his tears fall to her face, mingling with her own. "How could I not forgive my own heart?" They clung to each other in their grief, overwhelmed by the pain of it, but at last Celeborn drew back, cupping her face in his hands, and asked, "where will you go?"
"To Gondolin," she told him, "to live with my cousins. They will welcome me happily and it will be good to see them again after so many long years." He nodded, unable to bring himself to speak. Galadriel too felt her words falter and it was some time before she could revive them.
"You must stay alive, Celeborn, for their sake you must," she implored him, wrapping her arms about him, feeling the familiarity of his breathing against her own, and she felt him press a kiss to the top of her head as she buried her face in his chest.
But they both knew they could delay no longer, that their time was now swiftly expiring like sand in an hourglass, and at last Celeborn drew back, the dreaded question on his lips, but he fixed his gaze upon hers as he asked it, determined not to falter now. "Will you release me from this betrothal, Galadriel?"
The silence hung thick between them for a moment before at last she replied. It was the question that she had known was coming, only she had wanted to live in that moment before he asked it forever, but now the moment had passed and, dreams shattered, the truth of the world stared into the depths of her.
"I release you," she said, tears streaming down her face as, weeping, he gathered her in his arms, holding her tightly. "I release you."
"I must admit I was surprised to receive your resignation," Dior remarked, "though not particularly displeased. In my estimation you have made a wise choice and one, I think, that will be of great benefit to both of our peoples. What you have learned here of Middle Earth you might share with the people of Gondolin and mayhap their endeavors in these lands will reap great benefits because of your guidance. But you will benefit as well I think, for amongst the Sindar you could never have become what you might amongst the Noldor."
"Yes, indeed that is so," Galadriel replied, feeling a greater heaviness than she had ever known. She knew he was right, that amongst the Sindar she could never have become more than a prince's wife at best, but amongst her own people she might rise higher, might become someone truly powerful. Her own people would follow her if she set out to found her own kingdom. Even if they loved her no more than the Sindar did, they at least owed her their fealty, their loyalty, and bonds of loyalty were not something the Noldor took lightly. All of her dreams lay before her but they seemed so empty now, so dull and gray, like an old book: the cracked and torn binding no longer some decorative device, but merely a shell that held together worn pages inscribed with ink long faded, barely legible in some places, completely rubbed out in others.
"It will be good," she said, trying to seem hopeful about her imminent journey, "to see my cousins again. Long have I dwelled in Doriath and I have nearly forgotten their faces." She lapsed into silence. She had been trying to make herself believe that this was what she wanted but the charade was as false to her as it was to Dior and he sighed.
"Lady Galadriel…" he said, his voice sinking to a more intimate tone rather than a courtly one. "I know you bear me no great love, nor will I do you the injustice of pretending to be a friend, but I know your feelings better than you might think. All Doriath praises the love of my parents, and yet I who knew them best saw most clearly the price they paid for that love, and the toll of blood and violence that this very kingdom exacted upon them for it. " He sighed heavily.
"People may say what they wish about my marriage, that it was hastily done and unplanned, but is it any wonder that looking upon my own parents, I wanted neither a protracted and arduous courtship nor a spouse who would call into question my right to my throne? It is painful yes, but if you have not my love you most certainly have my respect. You are doing yourself a service, your people a service, and what children you may have as well. This is a queenly thing that you have done."
"I thank Your Majesty for your kind words," Galadriel said, bowing low. "And I shall ever be grateful to Doriath for housing me and caring for me in my time of need. May it be so that there is ever friendship between the houses of Elwë and Finarfin and I shall carry your messages of good will with me to the people of Gondolin."
"Then may it be so," Dior said, "and may you go in peace and find joy in the open arms of your kinsmen."
"With your leave," she bowed low again and Dior graciously inclined his head before she turned and made her way from the hall, walking slowly because she wanted to remember with clarity and commit to memory every detail of these halls that she would see no more. And then there was also the reason that, upon leaving this hall, she must bid farewell to Celeborn.
She could not help thinking that it might very well be their final farewell, that when the sons of Fëanor came, and they would most assuredly come, they would kill him. For Celeborn could not be persuaded to leave, that she knew, and so she did not speak of it to him. He knew just as surely as she what fate awaited him and she tried to make her peace with it by telling herself that if there was ever a fitting way for Celeborn to die it would be in defense of his people. The thought caused her heart to tremble in her chest and she drew a deep breath, willing the tears down as she passed out of the king's great hall and into the labyrinthine corridors of Menegroth's royal district.
Her journey was arrested by the arrival of the Queen's retinue who had appeared in the main avenue of the royal district, headed towards the audience hall from which Galadriel had just come. Dior's still brief reign was already marked by a certain baroque taste and Galadriel had noted the new ornate livery of the guards, certain touches to the palace – exotic ornamental fish in the ponds, tapestries encrusted with gemstones and pearls – things Thingol would have laughed at.
Nimloth was dressed in a long sort of robe composed of many layers of richly embroidered silk, the train of it trailing far behind her. Her silver hair was styled in ornate braids bound with silver and pearl ornaments that jingled as she walked, her slender wrists and fingers decorated with an abundance of bangles and rings, and about her neck, clasped in the embrace of the Nauglamir, was the Silmaril that Lúthien had taken from Morgoth's crown. Its light cast an eerie glow about the avenue and illuminated Nimloth's face in such a way that it accentuated the shadows, making her look weary and far older than her half century. Her ladies were dressed in the same fashion as she was.
It was not, Galadriel noted, as if Dior was trying to imitate a Noldorin court, but rather as if he was creating in parallel some Sindarin equivalence to the opulence of Noldorin princes. The queen raised an elegant hand, bringing her ornately armored ceremonial guards to a halt and her ladies along with her. Galadriel herself was dressed in a heavy Noldorin gown in compliance with the code of dress that Dior had implemented for his audience hall, and she gathered the skirt around her as she stepped to the side and bowed low before the queen. But the Queen seemed to have business with her, for she did not continue, but turned to face Galadriel, her young babe, Elwing, held in her arms.
"Lady Galadriel," she said by way of greeting, and Galadriel rose in response, "I have heard that you will be leaving us shortly."
"On the morrow, Your Majesty, good fortune permitting," Galadriel replied. The queen turned away for a moment, tending to the babe in her arms who had begun to fuss, and turned back once she was soothed. Galadriel knew that Nimloth had certainly not had the intent of angering her, and yet she felt irrational fury rising in her chest as she looked upon this young queen with her babe in arm. Nimloth had not even reached her first century and yet she had accomplished everything that Galadriel had hoped for: a respectable marriage, three secure heirs for her husband's throne, and a queenship.
At any other time Galadriel might not have been so upset to be greeted by such a sight, but now, in the winter of her failure and the dissolution of her engagement, the sight was almost too much to bear. "I am certain that the King has already told you," Nimloth said pleasantly, "but I would also like to wish you well and a safe journey. You have served Doriath loyally for many years and we are very grateful for that service."
"The honor was mine," Galadriel said, bowing low again. She dared not say anything else, afraid that all of her anger at the injustice of the world, all of her fury that the people of Doriath had hardly proved any more open-minded than the Noldor, would come billowing out.
"I shall come by in a few hours, if you will grant me the pleasure," Nimloth said. "For my ladies and I have prepared lembas for you as a parting gift and I should like to bestow it upon you myself."
"I would be pleased, Your Majesty," Galadriel made reply, though she felt anything but pleased. She was loathe to take any reminders of Doriath with her to Gondolin, anything that would reopen wounds she was trying so hard to close.
"Until then," the Queen said with a pleasant little smile and nod of her head before her populous retinue swept off once more towards the King's audience chamber.
Galadriel stood and continued on her way, but even her thoughts of Nimloth had not been enough to displace her melancholy at being parted from Celeborn for what was likely to be forever. If he perishes then mayhap I shall pass as well, she thought as she pondered that instant when the fragile thread between them would be cut and how, in that moment she would know beyond any doubt that he was gone to Mandos' halls and would be reborn in Aman…Aman where she could never follow, where the Valar themselves had placed a ban upon her return. But in Mandos we might be together, she thought taking a deep breath, as two shades, yes, but in Mandos what would there be to keep us apart? There are no loyalties there, no feuding kin, no oaths that destroy hearts just as surely as they do bodies.
She reached up, feeling the gathering moisture in her eyes and wiped it away. She had heard of those who wasted away at the death of their not the last child of Finarfin's house? Surely death could not be so terrible as this crucible of horror called an earth, as the carnage of Alqualondë, as bearing witness to the deaths of all those she had ever loved. She tried to absolve herself of such morbid thoughts, reasoning that of course Celeborn would wish her to find happiness, but it was difficult to believe that such a thing was possible.
She had arrived at last and raised a trembling hand to the door, pushing it open and stepping inside. "My Lady!" The page seemed surprised by her state and she did not doubt how wretched she looked from being on the verge of tears for so long. "Might I offer you some refreshment?"
"No, no thank you," she said quietly, shaking her head as she wrapped her arms around herself. "Where has his Highness gone?"
"I do not rightly know, Lady," the boy replied. "He left suddenly upon speaking to a warden who brought him some message. I do not know when he plans to return." Galadriel nodded, a sudden irrational spark of anger igniting in her heart. She had wanted to make her farewells and leave as quickly as possible but now she would have to wait, and the longer she waited the deeper the pain grew.
"Very well," she said with a sigh, "see that you inform me if you hear aught of him."
"Indeed I shall," the boy said with a short bow and Galadriel passed within to the main rooms where she found Paniel kneeling on the floor, folding the last of her clothes and carefully packing them into the half dozen trunks that sat open around the room. Paniel…one more reminder of Doriath she would be taking with her, but the handmaiden had offered to go and Galadriel had not wanted to refuse her and leave her to her death here in this city.
"Would you like me to hit him for you?" Paniel asked with a wry little grin.
"It's none of your business," Galadriel snapped, heat blossoming in her chest, and Paniel merely raised both of her pale eyebrows and said nothing more. She felt wretched for snapping then but somehow the anger gave her something to hold onto and she didn't quite know what to do with herself save pace, which only increased her irritation, and so she adjourned to her wardrobe and dressed in her traveling clothes. They were rather ornate and would be well suited to Gondolin save for the fact that they were old and the style outdated. She doubted the Noldor wore clothes of this style anymore. The last she had worn such things had been when she had ousted her cousins from Nargothrond.
The breeches were of deep blue broadcloth and the boots of soft, warm brown leather. She pulled on the elegant white shirt of soft cotton and overtop of it the tunic of white silk embroidered with gold thread. Her hair she plaited into a long braid before pinning it with pearls into a low bun at the nape of her neck. They were the garments of her own people and yet, as she pinned the heavy cape of deep blue, embroidered with the white and gold sigil of her father's house, at her throat, the clothes felt unspeakably foreign.
With trembling fingers she reached for the handmirror that sat upon her vanity and held it before her. The person she was there seemed so unrecognizable and she could not help but recall that first week in Doriath when Melian's handmaidens had dressed her in Sindarin dancing clothes, the way she had looked in the mirror that night and found herself in awe of who she might become. It was not to be, she reminded herself, hands trembling as she pushed the mirror back onto the vanity, her breathing grown fast and irregular.
She closed her eyes, trying to calm herself, trying to remember the last time she had been with him, the way his lips felt against hers, the feel of his skin on hers, the touch of his fingers, the depth of his eyes. And then she tried to imagine never again knowing his touch. It all seemed unreal. But dwelling on such thoughts, she knew, would bring no good. Pushing them from her mind she turned, picking up her knife belt from the tidy armor rack, buckling it about her waist. But something was missing…
"Paniel?" She said quietly, confused, and then stepped out once more into the main chamber. "Paniel!"
"Yes?" The woman looked up from the chests that occupied her attention.
"Why is Celeborn's armor gone?" Galadriel asked, some sick foreboding rising in her chest. "Did he take it with him?"
"I believe so," Paniel replied, "but I don't know why. He didn't seem concerned."
Galadriel could feel a thick blackness like oil spreading through her mind, weighing her down, and she grasped at the wall, trying to steady herself. "Galadriel!" She could hear Paniel's voice as if from underwater and she must have lost consciousness for a moment because in the next instant she awoke to find herself crumpled on the floor, Paniel standing over her, shaking her. And just then the ground began to vibrate as their ears rang with the deep, booming peal of the bells in the deep. An eerie and ominous silence followed.
"We're under attack," Paniel whispered.
"They're here," Galadriel said, meeting her handmaiden's eyes. She had never seen Paniel look frightened before but she did now, her eyes wide with fear, and Galadriel was just as frightened, more so perhaps. Only she had seen the horror that her cousins were capable of unleashing and she did not doubt that their anger and frustration had grown over the long centuries in which the Silmarils had lain far out of their reach.
"Is he here," Paniel said and Galadriel turned back to her, watching the way her eyes flickered in the dim lantern light, her pupils contracting as her eyes grew dark with anger, "Curufin?"
"Almost certainly," Galadriel replied. Paniel was silent for a moment before she spoke again.
"I have never asked such a thing of anyone but…" She began.
"He will not leave here with his life," Galadriel said in a low voice, reaching out to take the Sinda's hand, determination resonating in every fiber of her heart. "Whether by my hand or another's I swear that he shall fall today. This oath I make to you and this oath I shall keep." Paniel grasped her hand tightly for a moment before they rose.
"I need you to gather the women and children somewhere safe," Galadriel said. "I will find my cousin Maedhros and try to reason with him, to gain safe passage out of the city for them. He is not so cold-hearted as the others but I do not know for certain that he can make them obey his will."
Paniel nodded, "the laundries," she said. "I'll take them to the laundries. There will be room enough to hide them there and it will likely escape notice for some time."
"Hurry then," Galadriel bid her. "I do not yet know if they have managed to breach the gates but you must hide them before they make their way this deep into the city. Take these," she unbuckled her knife belt and forced it into Paniel's hands. Paniel nodded and buckled the knife belt about her waist before she drew Galadriel into a sudden and bone-crushing hug. A moment later she was gone, and as the door shut behind her, Galadriel wondered if she would ever see her again.
"Reports of shapes moving through the mist, nothing more," Glindor murmured, his voice nervous as he and Celeborn crouched in the top branches of Neldoreth. This winter was a bitter one, even for elves, with frigid winds whipping down from the north and snow falling in thick gusts that reduced visibility to near nothing. Celeborn squinted, blinking the snow from his eyelashes as he shifted in his perch, his armor creaking as he moved. He had donned it as a precaution and now he found himself glad that he had, for some ominous feeling lay heavy upon his heart now and he knew his lieutenant felt it as well.
"And nothing more was seen?" He asked again.
"No, your Highness," Glindor replied once more and Celeborn chewed idly at his lip. It bothered him, bothered him very much that the snow was falling so thickly. It would provide excellent cover for any who might seek to draw near, guarding against even the keen eyes of the Sindar. Celeborn shrugged, rolling his shoulders, feeling the back of his neck prickle at the chill wind.
I wonder if all of her trunks are packed. The thought had welled up unbidden in his mind and he cleared his throat, trying to dispel the sudden tightness that seemed to grip it. He hated the thought of letting her leave Doriath in this blizzard and his mind drifted to the nightmares she still sometimes had of the cold of the Helcaraxë. And when she reached Gondolin…who would be there to comfort her, to hold her in the depths of the night when she awoke, trembling, because the cold haunted her memory. I should tell her to wait until spring, he thought, but he knew if he did he would never find the strength again to send her away. It was the same reason that upon rising this morning he had sworn to himself that he would not kiss her when she left, not even once more, for if he did he knew it would never end there, he knew he could not stop himself.
"Your Highness?" He heard Glindor's questioning voice and knew he must have drifted away in his thoughts.
"They saw nothing more?" He asked to cover his lapse of attention. Dammit! He'd already asked that – twice! "I mean…" he stammered. She would be packing her things, all of the delicate little things that signified her presence, all of the ephemera he treasured in secret simply because it belonged to her, because wherever her filigree haircombs, and haphazardly stacked jars of rouge, and neatly placed golden slippers were, so too was… and his rooms would seem all the more empty for the lack of them, for lack of her.
His gaze drifted out over the forest as he struggled to focus his mind, forcing himself to recall his battle training, sweeping his eyes back and forth over the land before them. Any soldier worth his salt knew your own eyes could play tricks on you, that the mind was made so that it filtered out anything that was amiss, replaced what was actually before you with what it remembered from the past.
Am I really seeing what is before me, or is it all merely the past coiled back upon itself so that whatever I have lived before I will be doomed to live over and over and over again? There – movement in the gusts of snow. His grip tightened on the frigid wood of the tree's branches. He was certain he'd seen something.
"Sir?" Glindor murmured.
"There between the trees," Celeborn said, pointing. "I saw something move."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure." Now his senses were on full alert but the snow in the dusk of gathering night made seeing almost impossible and he squinted, peering through the mist of white snowflakes. All he could see were shapes and shadow, yet they lay still…silent…
"There!" Glindor hissed and Celeborn turned to where his lieutenant was pointing. "I'm certain," Glindor said. "I'm sure I saw it move."
"What did you see?" Celeborn asked, heart pounding like a hammer; he was sure he'd seen it too just now.
"Like a…like a banner perhaps…fluttering in the breeze…" Glindor began, but he needed say nothing more before a familiar noise reached their ears, a keen, piercing whistle that signaled an inbound arrow.
"DOWN!" Celeborn cried, shoving Glindor hard in the back and the two of them fell from the top of Neldoreth to land on the frozen ground. It was not an easy fall, given that Neldoreth was the tallest beech in the whole forest and given that the soil was hard with cold, and Celeborn landed with a thud that rattled his bones and took the breath from him momentarily. However; it was a far better fate than what would have awaited them. With a loud thwack, a flaming, oil-soaked arrow buried itself into the tree and the whole thing immediately burst into roaring flames, the dry wood of winter especially susceptible to the spread of fire.
"Run!" He shouted, pulling a still-dazed Glindor up from the ground as soon as he was able to catch his breath again. "Into the city! Run!" And then he was pushing the lieutenant ahead of him, feet pounding across the frozen ground, bruised lungs straining against the frigid air, his heart thudding a dull beat in his chest. He and his wardens came gasping through the city gates, trembling, and not entirely from the cold.
"Muster the soldiers and alert the king," he shouted to Glindor. "Close and bar the gates!" He cried to the guards, who quickly leapt to their task, but even as the great gates of Menegroth began to close, he could see them coming through the white fog of winter, a massive army, and just barely visible through the falling snow, the banner of Fëanor.
Slipping the little fruit knife that Celeborn had bought her so long ago into her pocket, Galadriel pushed her way out into the halls of Menegroth to find they were even more of a disaster than she had imagined they could be. They were packed with elves rushing here and there, or rather, trying to rush. It was impossible in this massive press of people to get anywhere quickly. Some were dragging belongings behind them and at any other time Galadriel might have scoffed at what seemed a blatant display of materialism in the face of death, but she could see the practicality in it now, though it was still useless. The winter outside was the bitterest that Doriath had seen in centuries and she knew it was no accident that her cousins had come at this time. Whomever they did not manage to kill would have to survive against all odds out in the wild.
And all of the preparations she and Celeborn had made, all of the cloaks, all of the food…it had all been for nothing, all because of Dior! She cursed him in her heart, feeling the warm flush of anger upon her face. Maybe there would be time…time at least to retrieve the cloaks…somehow she doubted it. And yet dwelling on that thought gave her something to think about other than the horrifying whisper that pulled at her heart, the one that said, Celeborn is in grave danger.
She shut her eyes against that thought, feeling the beginning of tears pull at her eyes as she was buffeted about by the jostling crowd. He must have gone to the gates. Someone must have seen them coming. It was his duty, she knew, his duty to defend his people until his dying breath. And she would not have loved him if he had been the sort of man to flee from his duty, just as he himself had said, yet the cold realization of what that duty meant shattered her heart into a thousand pieces like a delicate glass tumbling to its death upon the stone floor.
She tried to push the thoughts away, knowing they would do her no good, knowing she could do Celeborn no good if she allowed such melancholy to overcome her judgment. She had to focus now on getting his people away from this place and so she must, absolutely must find some way to get the cloaks and food to them so that they could survive the journey to the mouths of Sirion. She reached up to wipe the tears away but, just as she did, she found her arm caught in a tight grip and looked up from the floor to find an unfamiliar face before her, some man she did not know, yet his eyes were full of malice.
"Here she is!" He cried. "Our prince's whore!" And Galadriel saw other untrusting eyes turn towards her, felt the press of hands upon her as she was forced back into the wall. She had only been thinking of the danger her cousins posed, and so she had never considered that the Sindar might turn on her, though now, now that she felt the cold steel of a blade pressed to her throat, now it all made sense. Many of the people stopped and stared, but to her horror none of them rose to her aid.
"Let go of me," she said, her heart trembling in her chest. "You have no quarrel with me."
"Haven't we?" The man who held her said.
"I think we have," said another, and soon several others had chimed in.
"They're at the gates now, that's what we heard. What if your people manage to breach our gates? We'll have a wolf in our midst then, when you turn on us."
"They're not my people!" Galadriel cried, knowing it would do no good to instigate a physical struggle. "They hate me and I hate them! They want nothing more than to kill the man I love…"
"Do you really love him?" Someone sneered. "You're just like the rest of your lot, a power-hungry, thieving Noldo. All you desire is the silver crown of Doriath on your golden head and the only way for you to ever get a crown is through marriage."
"That isn't true," Galadriel replied, feeling the knife digging into her neck, the trickle of blood that was now running down her throat.
"I say we slit her open," said another. "If elves are killing elves now then why shouldn't we take our vengeance?"
"Unhand her!" Galadriel heard the cry of a familiar voice and breathed a heaving sigh of relief as the knife was pulled away from her throat. "Unhand her!" Nimloth cried again, pushing her way through the crowd, her face streaked with the dried salt of tears, her baby clutched in her arms. "Galadriel are you alright?" The young queen asked, drawing a handkerchief from her bodice and dabbing at the trail of blood.
"Yes, yes I think so," Galadriel nodded, blinking away tears as she pressed a hand to her chest, feeling her heart racing. She hadn't realized how frightened she'd been, not until Nimloth's arrival.
"How dare you?" Nimloth cried, turning to the citizens who stood about. "She has lived among us years uncounted, trusted by your prince and by Thingol and Melian, friend of Lúthien who was the forbearer of your King. What right have you?" The spark of her Sindarin fire was enough to engender shame in the hearts of those who stood there and, bowing and mumbling their apologies, they began once more to move through the halls.
"It's all a horrid mess isn't it?" Nimloth whispered, turning back to Galadriel, her eyes wet with tears yet unshed, dabbing at the blood again. "They've breached the gates you know…" her lip trembled for a moment before she managed to gather her courage again. "We're all going to die."
"Celeborn!" Galadriel gasped, feeling sick, but Nimloth only shook her head.
"I don't know Galadriel, I don't know where he is," she said, tears trickling down her cheeks now, but Galadriel reached out and took her hand, wiping away her own tears.
"You don't have to, Nimloth,"she said. "Come with me. I'm going to try to get the women and children out…"
"They won't let me leave, Galadriel," she said, shaking her head, eyes rimmed red. "They'll never let me leave; you know it as well as I. And…" she paused, "and even if they would I wouldn't go. Dior is determined to stay, to fight until the end, and I shall stay by his side, loyal to the last."
"He betrayed you!" Galadriel said, face flushing red with anger. "He doomed us all to death when he could have prevented it. Even now, perhaps if he surrendered the Silmaril…"
"You know he never will!" Nimloth said, her voice filled with passion, her eyes aflame. "I have begged him countless times, Galadriel, and he will not listen to me!"
"Then leave him to his own fate," Galadriel implored her. "It does not have to be your fate as well!"
"And would you leave Celeborn to his death, even if you were furious with him, even if it were his own doing?" Nimloth said and Galadriel fell silent, for she knew the answer as well as Nimloth did.
"Then Nimloth, think of your children," she begged her squeezing her hands. "Think of what is best for them."
"I have," Nimloth said, pushing the bundle she held into Galadriel's arms. "Take her, Galadriel, I beg of you. There's a chance, maybe…" she looked up into Galadriel's eyes, taking a deep breath. "There's a chance they'll let you out, that you will be allowed to leave here with your life. You are their kin after all. Lie to them, say she's yours, do whatever it takes, I beg you, only save my daughter's life. I know I have no right to ask you this, but for her sake I do ask it."
"Your sons?" Galadriel asked, clutching the baby tightly to her.
"I thought it best to send them all separately," Nimloth said. "A…better…a better chance that one will survive. My handmaidens have them. But please, Galadriel, please swear…"
Galadriel swallowed hard, throat tight, tears falling freely now, and nodded. "I will," she said. "I will not allow them to harm her. I will not allow her to fall into their hands. I swear it to you."
Nimloth nodded, allowing herself one heaving sob as she drew Galadriel into her arms and Galadriel could feel that she was trembling with fear. "Thank you…" Nimloth whispered into her ear and then, "was that all true, what you told me when I was a child, or was it a fairy tale? Is there really a city built of pearls, with sand strewn with jewels?"
"Yes, it is true," Galadriel replied, her tears falling to glimmer in the queen's silver hair. "My mother's city, a peaceful city."
"Then I shall go there when Mandos releases me," Nimloth whispered, "and mayhap we shall meet again on that golden strand." With that she was gone, turning and pushing her way back through the teeming masses before Galadriel could say anything else, as if she feared her courage would fail her if she did not go immediately.
"FALL BACK!" Celeborn cried as the great wooden doors splintered beneath the force of the iron battering ram, shards of wood as long as a full grown elf was tall flying through the air with immense force. "Fall back!" It was a futile battle and he knew it, but they had no choice except to fight, trapped here now like fish in a net. Menegroth's caves had always provided them safety, but now they were to be the death of them, a hole from which there was no escape.
They gathered at his cries, taking their formations at the entrance to the city, sharp spears bristling, thousands of arrows nocked and ready, but he could sense the desperation running through them like a poison and knew that they, like he, knew they were fighting against impossible odds. He was hardly a green soldier, but something about this battle twisted his stomach into knots.
"Sir!" Glindor had returned and Celeborn felt his hand on his shoulder, heard his voice in his ear, a whisper. "The King will not come."
"Will not come?" Celeborn asked, his heart smoldering with sudden anger, turning to face his lieutenant. "And why?"
"He did not say, Your Highness," Glindor replied, his eyes filled with nearly as much anger as Celeborn.
"It's that cursed rock," Celeborn said, swearing an oath so filthy it would have made orcs cringe, heart heaving with rage. He turned, stalking back and forth for a moment before he pulled his great war bow from its place at his back and strung an arrow. "Very well then," he said with a jerk of his head, eyes meeting Glindor's. "To Mandos's Halls with the King. Let him die on his throne if he wants. As for us, we shall defend our kingdom to the last."
A fatalistic grin spread across Glindor's face as he pulled his great bow from his back. "That is what I was hoping you'd say Sir. It has been an honor serving with you."
"The honor is mine," Celeborn said, gripping the short lieutenant's hand firmly before he turned to the troops.
"You fight now for your kingdom, your family, your home!" He cried to the army of Doriath, every muscle in his body quaking now with anger. "Show our enemy no mercy, for we shall not be shown any! Be brave, as true Sindar, and if it is your time to journey to Mandos's halls then do not fear, but sing your war song and go as a hero returning to his home! I am with you to the last!" He punctuated his sentence with a gesture signifying that they loose their bows and a hail of arrows went careening in a deadly wind towards the shattered gates, felling the Noldorin soldiers who had begun to spill through them.
"Stand strong!" He cried as a volley of arrows descended upon them, several of them glancing off of his armor. He might have had more caution for his life if he had not been so furious with Dior, with the sons of Fëanor, with fate itself, if he had had more to lose. And, as the soldiers rushed forward, he drew his great battle axe, the heft of it familiar in his hands, relishing and anticipating, as any experienced soldier did, the meeting of armies, even as he acknowledged in his heart the grimness of the task before him.
The memory of Mablung filled his mind, the way his friend had begged for death in the end and how he had given it to him, the pain of it, that was an echo of what he had felt so long ago beneath the starlit battlefields of Beleriand, the pain of ending the life of another elf. And these too were no different, he reminded himself, they were not his friends as Mablung had been, nor were they twisted and made horrific as those elves who had been sculpted into orcs, but they were elves all the same, elves who had fallen into Bauglir's net, the same as them all.
They were charging forward now, their feet carrying them ever closer to the Noldorin army, and then, like waves breaking upon the shore, they crashed into one another with the thunder of steel on steel. Knowing that he had to kill lest he be killed did not make it any easier for Celeborn to sink the blade of his axe into a dark-haired Noldorin soldier, nor to watch the spirit leave his eyes as he fell.
Through the raging battle he could see the sons of Fëanor in their magnificent glittering mail, so much stronger than the armor of leather, and bone, and metal that he wore. Their standards were thrust high in the air, billowing in the winter's air that gusted in through the ruined city gates, snow sweeping in with the chill winds, a blanket of white that fell and melted in the hot red blood of Sindar and Noldor alike. The blood of their people flowed together in a confluence of separate lives made alike by the final arbiter of death.
What good would it have been? He thought. What good would it have been for us to marry in a world such as this, a world where our families will be eternally at war, where our kinsmen cut each other down as if they are little more than wild animals, where the grueling heritage of murder and bloodletting and hatred would be our only inheritance?
A despondence such as he had never felt before occupied his heart. He felt more badly shaken than he ever had since that day he had first discovered how the orcs had come to be and he had to concentrate to keep his hands steady, to keep his mind sharp. He pivoted, bringing his blade swinging around so fast that it sang as it cleaved through the air and found a home in the back of another golden-mailed soldier. He pulled it free as the man fell, trying to quell the horror that filled his heart.
But Galadriel…His eyes found the forms of her cousins once more, watched the near mechanical way that they hewed down those before them, killers accustomed to killing, and then he knew, knew in his heart of hearts with utmost certainty that they would not stop with the Sindar, just as they had not stopped with the Teleri, that no one was safe from beasts such as these, that when it came to it they would kill the Noldor as well if they had to.
He supposed that in the secret recesses of his mind he had thought that if Galadriel bore no association with him then they would spare her for the sake of kinship, though he knew they bore the House of Finarfin no love, but now he saw that it was not so, for he knew Galadriel better than anyone and, most of all, he knew that for all her pride, for all her faults, she would defend what he loved to her dying breath. And if she defied them, as she most certainly would, then they would kill her, he was sure of it.
Those inexperienced in battle often underestimated the strength it took to prolong a fight, underestimated the strength it took to bear a heavy weapon, to swing it countless times over and over again, to move at the peak of physical exertion, to keep the mind constantly sharp and aware. Celeborn had been a soldier now for nearly 2,000 years and yet he could feel that even his strength was beginning to fail, his parries becoming slower, his movements less agile, his strikes less accurate. But, at the sudden realization that Galadriel would die along with the rest of them if he did not do something, anything to stop this, he saw clearly for the first time that everything he loved in her he loved because he had loved it first in Doriath, in his own people. No, she was not a Sinda, but what did it matter? The threads of her soul were woven of the same stuff from which this kingdom was made.
And then he knew with pure conviction that he must, must, must find her and that he must, must, must marry her whether in this life or the next. Even if he had to defy the Valar themselves he would find her again, tear her from the Halls of Mandos if he had to. He had not the Maian blood of Lúthien, nor a voice to charm even the ears of Námo, but he would find some way, some impossible way to find her again. He had thought that it would be impossible for him to rebuild with her at his side but now he saw that it would be impossible without her, that if he could not save her then all of it, everything he had ever loved, would be lost and there would never, in all the ages of Arda, be any way to repair it.
The battle raged on around him, impossible to win, the Sindarin soldiers falling like leaves in the depth of autumn, but he felt now the fire burning in his heart and now, now that he knew there was no chance for salvation, not even for Galadriel, he knew that he was holding nothing back and now, now that there was no fear in his heart, he found what strength he had held in reserve. If he were to die then he would not die as Thingol had, nor as the sons of Fëanor, thrall to a bit of crystal, nor would he die as an orc, chained and twisted in Belegur's dark halls. If he were to die then he would die as Lúthien had at the first, with love in his heart, loyalty on his breast, and a song on his lips, defiant to the last.
"MAEDHROS!" He roared into the great din of slaughter. "You can kill us, but at least we shall not die as you, at least we shall not die as slaves!" He started the song out low, a solitary voice, but Doriath's soldiers joined in until the chorus filled the hall, until the walls of stone echoed with a thousand upon a thousand voices, until the earth itself trembled beneath their strength.
We circle round, we circle round,
The boundaries of the earth.
Wearing our long wing feathers as we fly,
Wearing out long wing feathers as we fly.
We circle round, we circle round,
The boundaries of the sky.
It was with a sigh of relief that Galadriel at last arrived at the laundries. The crowds streaming through the corridors had made the going difficult and she could hear the fighting growing closer, the clashing sound of metal on metal and muffled shouts in both Sindarin and Quenya filtering down from the corridors above them. But the laundries were pitch black and, as she entered…
"Stop right there!" A voice growled as a candle was thrust into her face and, for the second time that evening she found the blade of a knife pressed to her throat, some dark sense of foreboding made her feel as though it might not be the last.
"Oh, you," Paniel said, pulling the knife away and rolling her eyes.
"Well you seem unhappy," Galadriel snapped, still startled by the blade she had been met with.
"Disappointed is more like it," Paniel retorted. "I thought I was finally about to shed some Feanorian blood."
"Well maybe you'll have your chance yet," Galadriel replied as Paniel ushered her in. There in the laundries were hundreds of women and children, huddled in the dim light of the solitary taper that Paniel held in her hand, staring at Galadriel with frightened and distrustful eyes. But, to Galadriel's great relief, she saw that each of them was clothed in a warm cape.
"The cloaks!" She exclaimed in surprise and Paniel shrugged.
"The girls from the laundries are reliable," she said. "I made them all run to fetch them."
"The food as well?" Galadriel asked and Paniel nodded.
"There was quite a bit of dried deer meat in the cellars, and piles of lembas in the kitchens. I assume it was the lembas the Queen meant to gift to you. Hope you don't mind."
"Not at all," Galadriel said with a shake of her head. "I'm quite glad for it."
"Well I saved some for you," Paniel said gruffly, forcing a packet of it into Galadriel's arms and she took it, struggling to hold both it and the baby. "The princess?" Her handmaiden asked, eyes lingering on the child.
"Yes," Galadriel said.
"Then they're…"
"I don't know. But they certainly aren't leaving here…" Their hushed conversation was brought to a halt by the sound of shouts, running feet, and the din of weapons in the corridors directly above the laundry. The women began to chatter as they pulled their children close, fear evident in their hushed voices.
"Quiet!" Paniel snapped. Grabbing Galadriel's hand, she pulled her down to the floor with her, beside another woman carrying a baby in her arms, a woman with tangled, matted, greasy hair, wearing simple brown homespun, her face dirtied with soot.
"Venessiel!" Galadriel gasped before Paniel snuffed out the candle, plunging them into darkness.
She felt a tentative hand on her shoulder and then heard Venessiel whisper, her voice trembling, "have you heard aught of Oropher?"
"Nothing," Galadriel replied, shifting Elwing to one arm so that she could reach out with her other hand to squeeze Venessiel's gently.
They sat for a long while in the dark and silence, the hours seeming interminable as the sounds of the battle raged on over their heads. The noises were just faint enough that they could not discern whose voices they might be, but the words they managed to glean from the shouts in Sindarin and Quenya were enough for them to know that it was not the Sindar who would have the triumph that day. The shrieks of those who were slain filled them with terror, as did the scraping sounds of blade meeting blade, and Galadriel knew that each woman there was wondering the same thing: if those whose death cries they could hear were their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons.
But the women remained silent, knowing their survival depended upon it, the only noise that of suppressed sobs. Galadriel could not bear it either and closed her eyes, the warmth of Elwing at her breast some small comfort as she pressed a gentle kiss to the soft, dark silver fluff of hair on the baby's head. Elwing stirred, oblivious in her slumber to the death and suffering that surrounded her.
With every second that passed Galadriel grew ever the more frightened that Celeborn must have fallen and she hated this waiting precisely because it gave her ample time to dwell on such dark thoughts. Surely it was impossible that he were alive. The severely depleted forces of Doriath could never stand against the combined might of her cousins' armies. And she knew Celeborn, knew he would be on the front lines, knew that he would challenge any of her cousins directly. It wasn't that she thought him a weaker fighter, indeed, she was certain that he could hold his own against them, but she knew that he could never fight all six of them at once; no one could. What was more, she was certain that they were determined to kill him, that none of the members of the royal family would be leaving alive if her cousins could help it and Celeborn…with his silver hair…would make an obvious target.
She choked back the tears that threatened to fall, the few that escaped her eyes tumbling to the tightly swaddled babe in her arms as her heart trembled in fear. Time seemed as if it had stopped and she knew not how many hours had passed, but those hours seemed unbearable, as if they would never end. And then…worse than the screams was the sudden silence that signified the battle had almost certainly come to an end, the silence that signified that, after so many thousands of years, Doriath had at last fallen. It was as if everything had suddenly gone hollow, as if time had stopped and they had lost any bearing of where they were or when.
That was when they began to hear it, faint but sure; the sound of Quenya drifted through the silence of the laundries, echoing against the stone of the walls, growing closer and closer, and a near palpable tremor of terror ran like a current through the woman and children gathered there huddled in the dark.
"What are they saying?" Paniel whispered, her hand clutched tightly about Galadriel's wrist, and Galadriel could feel Venessiel pressed against her other side, holding her babe so tightly in her arms that it seemed nearly as if she would smother her.
"The princes, Dior's sons, have been captured by Celegorm," Galadriel whispered as quietly as she was able. "They know there's a princess. They're searching for Elwing." She looked down in the elfling in her arms, holding her tightly, her heart constricted with worry.
"Have they said aught of Oropher?" Venessiel murmured, her voice broken and frail.
"Nothing," Galadriel said, listening closely. "Nothing of Celeborn or Galathil either. I do not know…" The voices were drawing closer and she lapsed into silence. They could hear the footsteps now, cold echoes on the stone of the bathhouse floor and she recalled the surface of the water in Alqualondë, swimming with blood and gore. She swallowed hard to keep down the bile that threatened to rise in her throat, glancing down at the babe in her arms, brushing back the downy dark silver fluff of her hair.
Celeborn, they had said nothing of him. She felt her heart clench in terror in her chest at the thought that he might be lying dead in these halls of stone, deep in these dark pits away from the stars and the trees that he loved so well. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to banish the images. Even if he is dead I will beg them…she thought, I will beg them to let me give him a proper burial. The panic rose in her chest, suffocating her, and she took a deep breath, pushing it back down. This was not the time to panic; she could not afford it. Fate had moved upon him.
The footsteps drew nearer, sharp and purposeful strides across the stone floor. They were leaving the bathhouses now. Soon they would come to the laundries. Soon they would find them. They had all known this moment would come and yet they feared it all the same. The tension in the room was nearly palpable, crawling across their skin like spiders and Galadriel could feel Venessiel trembling against her, hear the quiet tears that some of the women shed. And just then Elwing began to cry, loud squalling shrieks that resonated throughout the caverns.
"Shh!" Galadriel tried to quiet her, holding her close, rocking her in her arms, wiping away the tears that fell from small, frightened eyes, her heart hammering in her chest with fear, feeling as if it would leap out of her throat. But it was no use. Elwing did not cease her weeping and her tears had incited panic in the women gathered there so that they too began to weep and shout in fright.
The soldiers had already heard them and came running, their boots beating a sharp staccato across the ground, the sound of metal on metal as they drew their swords prompting the women to shriek in terror and rise to their feet.
"Stay calm!" Galadriel cried. "Stay calm!"
"Why should we trust the Noldorin bitch?" Somebody shouted. "She means to sell us out to them and save her own skin!"
"I mean to save your lives!" Galadriel retorted, her heart burning with equal parts fear and anger.
"She's a traitor to her own kin! Let us hand her over to them and save ourselves!" Someone else shouted.
"She is no such thing!" Venessiel cried. "If there is any here who is traitor it is I!"
At that the women broke into an uproar, shouting and pushing one another, but the struggle was quickly brought to an end by the arrival of the Feanorian soldiers, who cast the light of their lanterns into the room, illuminating a myriad of frightened and panicked faces. The people settled just as quickly as they had acted out, brought to heel by the wave of terror that coursed through them at the sight of Noldorin soldiers in full armor stained with the blood of Doriath's people, swords drawn and at the ready.
Galadriel's heart sank as she saw that none of her cousins were among them. These were nameless and faceless soldiers who knew her not at all, nor she them. The one who appeared to be their captain glanced around the room, taking in the sight before him with cold, calculating eyes, his gaze landing upon Galadriel for a moment before he turned to his lieutenant and muttered in Quenya, "kill them all. They may be hiding the princess among them."
"But Sir, our Lord Maedhros is already furious with our Lord Celegorm for sending the princes off with…" the lieutenant protested and Galadriel saw her chance.
"I am Artanis, daughter of Arafinwe, King of the Noldor in Aman, and of Eärwen of Alqualondë, Princess of the Noldor, Teleri, and Vanyar, and kinswoman to your Lords," she said in Quenya, stepping forward into the lantern light. "I am the wife of Celeborn of Doriath, Prince of Doriath and of the Sindar, who is the father of this, my child, in whose veins also runs the blood of Finwë, my forbearer and that of your Lords." Her gaze was keen and piercing, fixed upon their eyes, commanding them to obey her.
The eyes of the captain and his lieutenant had turned fully upon her now and she struggled to hide the fear that penetrated deep to the marrow of her bones. Fear was a luxury she could not afford now. Now she must be strong, now she must be Finwë's granddaughter and the daughter of her mother and father. She recalled the look in her mother's eyes on the day that Fëanor had threatened Fingolfin before the doors of her grandfather's house, how she had known in that moment that her mother would have killed any who tried to harm her, kin or no.
It was the same feeling that she felt flowing through her veins now and she knew she would protect these people at all costs, no matter their personal prejudices against her, because of her love for this kingdom and of her love for its prince, who held his people so close in his heart, and not least of all because she was determined to ever set herself against the sons of Fëanor, to defy them in all their endeavors, and to protect those they sought to harm.
"I command you to take me to your Lord Maedhros," she said. "You have my word that none here will make any attempt on your lives or seek to escape. We are only women and children with nothing to hide who seek to gain safe passage to the Mouths of Sirion where Cirdan, fast friend of our kinsman Turgon resides. Ever has Cirdan given good council to the Noldor."
"Not to the sons of Fëanor," the Captain said, no hint of compassion in his eyes.
"Sir, how much angrier will our Lord Maedhros be if any harm comes to the children here?" The lieutenant muttered to his commander, clearly trying to keep his voice low so that Galadriel could not hear him but in the confined space such efforts were of little use. "We will fall from his favor as did Celegorm's soldiers." Galadriel could feel her heart shuddering in her chest. She dared not ask what Celegorm had done to Dior's twin sons but what allusions she had heard did not bode well at all and in her heart of hearts she feared the children had been slain. It should not have been such a shock when she bore in mind that she had seen them murder pregnant women in Alqualondë and children as well but perhaps it was so that there are things with which the soul cannot acquaint itself, even given long familiarity.
"I command you take me to my kinsman," she said again, "and those here gathered with me as well. You may set a guard about us and I swear to you upon my house and upon the House of Finwë that none here shall seek to escape or hinder you in any way." The commanders gave her no answer but gathered together, discussing the matter in quiet conversation from which she could only glean snippets of meaning. The women waited with baited breath, the tension in the room thicker than air.
"Very well," the captain said curtly, turning back to them. "We shall allow our Lord to determine your fate. You will come with us immediately and we shall set a guard about you. But mark my words: if any of you try to escape or seek to do any harm to my soldiers you will all pay for it with your lives immediately. Is that clear?"
"It is," Galadriel replied. "You have my most sincere gratitude and I am certain you shall have your Lord's as well." Having so said, she turned to the women and children gathered there, her heart hammering in her chest. She wished she could be more certain that they would not seek to escape but she rather felt as though she had a hostile mob at her back, a mob whose obedience would decide her fate as well as their own.
"I have known Maedhros all of my life," she said to them, "and what mercy may be had will certainly come from him." A sea of cold, hard, untrusting eyes stared back at her. She wanted so badly to beg them, plead with them, to remind them that she loved their prince, that she had lived in this kingdom for centuries, but she knew that what trust they had had for her, which had been spare to start, was diminished now to nothing. In this crucible of death and bloodshed into which they had been plunged, she was to them no different than her kinsmen who had murdered their friends, husbands, brothers, fathers, children and she could not blame them for their misgivings, still recalled the faces of the Teleri who had struck out at her in terror, not knowing whether to trust her as a friend or despise her as a foe. And had we had children it would have been the same for them, the thought rose unbidden to her mind. They would ever have been torn between Sindar and Noldor, ever both friend and foe, never fully loved, never fully trusted. She gathered her courage against the darkness stirring in her heart.
"If you wish to stay and die then I will not stop you," she said, turning fierce eyes upon them, hoping against hope that if she could not inspire trust in them, she could at least inspire that Sindarin stubbornness, "but if you wish to live then you will come with me." The women glanced around at each other, speaking in hushed murmurs before they turned back to her, each of them resolved to go forward. Taking a deep breath, Galadriel turned back to the captain, nodding her assent, and the guards circled around them as they slowly began to filter from the laundries.
Galadriel pressed a soft kiss to Elwing's forehead as they walked, hushing the fussy babe. "Do you…have you heard aught of my husband?" She asked the captain and he glanced at her uneasily.
"I could not say," he told her. "I would not know him if I saw him."
"He…he has silver hair," Galadriel said, her heart palpitating in fear. She wanted to know the answer, to know if Celeborn was still alive, and yet she feared what answer she might receive. Reaching out to him through their bond was no good. The palace was so full of fear and panic that she could not tell his from anyone else's.
"I do not know," the soldier replied gruffly, clearly wishing to put an end to this conversation, and Galadriel complied.
"Please," she heard Venessiel's frantic whisper and turned to look at her. She was struggling to hold her babe while also pressing young Thranduil's face into the skirts of her gown, trying to shield him from the carnage through which they were now slowly making their way. But Venessiel was speaking to Paniel and not to her. "Please," she said, "I cannot manage them both." Paniel nodded silently and picked Thranduil up, pressing his face into his shoulder so that he would not see the bodies.
Galadriel gradually became aware that they were leading them back to the gates and, as they approached the gates, so did the carnage grown. At first they stepped over a few bodies, then dozens, then hundreds. And then it happened, the moment that Galadriel had begun with creeping dread to realize was inevitable: one of the women shrieked and then fell, sobbing, beside a Sindarin soldier who had fallen face up, his armor stained with his own blood, his eyes cold and dead, frozen in shock. The woman clutched his body to her, rocking back and forth, tears spilling in an endless stream from her eyes as inhuman shrieks poured from her throat.
"What is she saying?" The captain demanded, clearly nervous, grabbing at Galadriel's arm and shaking her roughly.
"He is her husband," Galadriel told him, translating the Doriathrin into Quenya, her heart boiling at disgust that these soldiers could not even speak the language of those they had murdered, knowing only standard Sindarin. But her throat was choked with tears and at the sight they began to spill from her eyes at last. Would she find Celeborn's body? It could have been any of them there kneeling on the cold hard ground, any of them clutching to their breast the corpse of their beloved.
"We don't have time for this! We still have not recovered the Silmaril," the Captain snapped at one of his lieutenants as several of the woman attempted to placate the forlorn widow. There was some desperation growing now amongst the women as they realized what Galadriel had: that they too might be forced to walk by the bodies of their loved ones. In the matter of an instant, one of the soldiers had taken the woman by her hair and in the next instant, with the flash of his sword, her head hung bodiless in the air before the soldier dropped it beside her corpse.
"See? We have reunited them," the captain said curtly. "Now move before I regret this whole foolish idea." Galadriel felt as if she was about to be sick as the soldiers dug the butts of their spears into the backs of those who lingered, and as she glanced around she saw the women all moved in obedient compliance, what fight had been in them now broken, silent tears streaming down their faces, hands and bodies trembling violently from sheer terror. Never in her life had Galadriel witnessed with such stark clarity the breaking of a people's spirit as in that moment when she had seen the Sindarin spirit broken, and the thought brought the tears pouring down her face as dry, croaking sobs escaped her throat.
The slap across her face came suddenly, stinging, burning, and it left her ears ringing for a moment. "You'll be next if you can't keep quiet, kinswoman or no," the captain said. "Can't you see that I am trying to do a job here?" Galadriel heard a barely audible intake of breath from the army of women that marched at her back and felt Paniel's hand briefly grip her elbow. They were passing now by more of the dead and in every moment she heard the strangled gasps of women who dared not stop, forced to step over the bodies of those they loved.
And in every instant she felt sick with fear that they would round the next corner or the next and she would see him there, fallen, his green eyes gone lifeless, his silver hair stained red in the blood of his people. Never more would she see that grin of his, familiarly confident, as if he knew some secret he could be persuaded to tell, just perhaps. Never more would she see that mischievous glimmer in his eyes, or the way that his emotions ran through them with perfect clarity, the anger to move mountains, the compassion to do the same.
With Celeborn there was never a doubt, never a doubt that whatever he felt, he felt it fully down to the marrow of his bones, to the fiber of his heart's core. He swore no oaths, but there was never a doubt, not even the glimmer of a doubt, that whatever promises he had made he would keep, that whatever he had said he would do he absolutely would. With Celeborn there was no confusion, no uncertainty about him, her sole point of clarity, as true and steadfast as the north star, in this world where everything was uncertain, where everything she had ever known had been thrown into a gyre of chaos.
I will come back to you, always, he had whispered on the night she had first come to his bed, as soft candlelight and fingertips had traced pathways in wonder over the smooth but scarred world of skin. She had not understood at the time that he was telling her he loved her. She had not understood that he was telling her they would be parted, again and again, that this world would tear them apart. For all her prescience she had not been able to see what he had from the first. He sees things that others do not, Melian had told her long ago. All her foresight had not been able to discern what his wisdom had. As she had sought to bend the future to her will it had been flowing through him freely, like the depths of a river, the currents of the ocean moving in the deep, the wind that gusted unstopped and unstoppable across the plains of the earth.
And she knew, knew beyond any doubt, that she must, absolutely must shepherd these people to safety, barter for their free passage from this city with every resource at her disposal. If he was dead then this would be her last and greatest act of love for him and, once the people had escaped, she would kill her cousins, every last one in vengeance for what they had done, for the lives they had destroyed, not least of all her own.
Night had passed into day and it was the blinding light of the early morning sun pouring in through the open gates of Menegroth that first alerted her that they were nearing their destination. Galadriel drew a deep, shuddering breath as she saw them standing there, the unmistakable red of Maedhros's hair and, at his side, the stormy face of Curufin the mad, their once-bright armor smeared with blood and gore.
"What is this?" She heard Maedhros ask, his voice tense, as the captain strode ahead, approaching him, and then she saw his eyes settle on her with a sort of sad surprise. She had known Maedhros since she was a girl, long enough to know regret when she saw it in his eyes.
"Artanis…I…" Maedhros said softly as she approached, the woman and children huddling into the wide expanse of the entryway, seeming so small now beside the massive stone trees that towered up to the impossibly high ceiling.
"What?" She said, her voice trembling with anger, her eyes filled with tears. "You didn't think I'd be here? You knew I was here, Maedhros." He was silent, a strange mixture of regret and resolution in his eyes, the eyes of a man who despises what he is doing but does it nevertheless.
"Your…you child?" He asked with a strange sort of hope, a kinsman's greeting, but Galadriel drew back, clutching the baby to her.
"Tell me if her father still lives!" Galadriel demanded, her voice harsh and hoarse, her eyes flashing in pain and anger as she met Maedhros's gaze.
"I do not know," Maedhros told her, "but you know I could not promise you his safety even if I did know. He is the heir of Doriath…surely you must understand…we cannot allow him to live."
"The heir? So have you killed Dior's children then?" She hurled the accusation at him like a missile.
"It was an accident!" Maedhros replied, seeming to realize as soon as he said it that he shouldn't have let it slip. Galadriel could hear startled gasps and sobs at her back in response to the terrible news.
"An accident! Do not try to play the innocent, Maedhros, when you have slaughtered…"
"You fool!" Curufin wailed, turning his mad copper eyes upon his brother. "Playing in pity! Why tell them anything at all? Have done with them all now and we'll rid the world of their thieving race!"
"I WILL NOT condone the slaughter of any more children, Curufin!" Maedhros roared, turning furious eyes on his brother, his chest heaving in anger, having lost his cool for a revealing moment, and Galadriel realized with relief that her cousins were not nearly as united as they might wish to seem. That would give her some leverage, a quarrel to exploit.
"What did you think you were doing when you sought to sack a kingdom then?" Curufin sneered but Maedhros ignored him.
"You seek safe passage for the women and children, yes?" Maedhros said, speaking in a low, quick voice. He was clearly nervous and Galadriel could only presume that it had a great deal to do with the fact that they had apparently not yet discovered the Silmaril. Her mind flitted briefly back to Nimloth, just now realizing that she had not been wearing the Silmaril at the last. She had assumed that Dior had taken it from her, but if Dior and Nimloth were slain then surely the Feanorians would have found it by now unless it had been hidden very cleverly.
"I do," she replied. "They will cause you no trouble. Only allow them to journey unhindered to the Mouths of Sirion. Cirdan is no threat to you and is a friend of our cousin Turgon."
"She's playing at something," Curufin whispered, his unnerving eyes settling upon her, a sour grin twisting its way across her lips. "I say we cut her babe to pieces unless she tells us what it is."
"This child is your kin, with the blood of Finwë running through her veins!" Maedhros rounded upon Curufin again. "I will hear no such talk from you of slaughtering those who bear our grandfather's blood!"
"This child is an abomination," Curufin spat, "the blood of Finwë polluted by that of a Moriquendë. And she has committed miscegeny by lying with one of the Sindar, by bearing a child of polluted blood. Let her pay for it in her blood and the blood of her child."
"There is no reason…" Maedhros began, but Curufin interrupted him.
"By all means, Maedhros, my soft-hearted brother," he said, "let them go. But you are a fool if you have not already discerned that they must certainly be hiding the princess among them. This is why our lovely cousin seeks safe passage." The hall fell silent and, slowly, Maedhros turned his eyes back to Galadriel.
"Is it true, Galadriel?" He asked and she could see in his eyes that he knew it was, that the question was nothing more than a courtesy.
"I…" Galadriel began, trying to think of some plausible way to deny it. But then she heard someone else step forward.
"The…the Princess is here…" Venessiel stammered, holding out her own baby girl in trembling hands. A great cry rose up as the women realized what she was doing but none spoke to give away the secret of it.
"Venessiel, no!" Galadriel cried, her eyes frantic with worry. Surely her cousins would not allow this child to live. There had to be some other way…
"Perhaps the rest of you wish to die!" Venessiel shrieked, turning on the women. "But I am not about to die for the sake of the child of a king who could not protect us in the end! It is a simple matter of one life against many!"
"You traitor!" Paniel shrieked, playing into the farce, the other women joining in, shrieking in feigned anger. "A traitor once is a traitor twice!"
"A wise choice," Curufin said with a disconcerting smile, quickly snatching up the baby. "A girl," he remarked, prying at the folds of the blankets, and pulling the swaddling cloth back from the baby's head, "and dark of hair as the boys were."
"And who are you that you were entrusted with the royal child?" Maedhros asked as the vehement cries of the women resounded all about them.
"I am the wife of Oropher, Prince of Doriath," Venessiel replied and Maedhros and Curufin exchanged uneasy looks.
"She could be with child," Curufin muttered to his brother in Quenya, "a contender for the throne, some vestige of the Sindarin monarchy for the people to cling to and raise up in rebellion."
"As could our cousin," Maedhros replied.
"And yet the child of Oropher would bear us no relation, nor can we keep watch over the mother. Artanis is of our kin and so would her child be as much of her mother's house as of her father's. Take her with us. We shall see soon enough if she carries his child."
"And if she does what would you then suggest?" Maedhros asked, his auburn brows dipping into a scowl.
"Whatever seems appropriate," Curufin grinned. "Kill the brat, raise it amongst the Noldor. We have now the opportunity to end the entire Sindarin line, to take our vengeance for the wrongs and slights that Thingol showed to us for so many centuries, to avenge their theft of our Silmaril."
"And this child of hers?" Maedhros growled at his brother, gesturing towards the babe in Galadriel's arms.
"What sort of life could my child possibly lead amongst your people?" Galadriel interrupted. "She would be scorned, mocked…let me send her with her father's people that she may at least not be forced to live among those who mean to slay her father."
"Send her with her father's people so that they may raise her up as their figurehead, foment insurrection against…" Curufin retorted.
"A girl!" Galadriel cried. "A baby girl. What harm can a baby girl do you? Nor will the Sindar raise up as their leader a child with half Noldorin blood, most especially not after the events of today." Sometimes the greatest way to dispel suspicion was with a flood of truth. "You told me once, Maedhros," she said, tears spilling silently from her eyes as she turned to her cousin, "that the match was ill-fated, that I ought to think twice, that his people could never come to love me no matter how much he did…and you were right. The child I have born him will never, can never be of any threat to you, only do not make me raise her in the houses of those who slew her father and her father's kin, I beg of you!"
"We owe her nothing and no kindness!" Curufin snarled. "Either kill the child or bring it with us. Why should we be forced to make concessions when it was her choice to breed with a dark elf?"
"I will not raise my daughter among those who slaughtered her kin!" Galadriel cried, her eyes glinting with tears and anger. "I would rather she be dead and I along with her than see her raised in your house!"
"Then I shall gladly grant your wish!" Curufin shrieked, shifting the babe he held to one arm and drawing his sword. Galadriel stumbled backward but Maedhros, in a sudden fury, grasped his brother by the collar of his tunic.
"For the last time I tell you, we shall not shed the blood of the descendants of Finwë," he growled, his voice low and dangerous. And, despite whatever madness it was that possessed him, Curufin seemed to deem it better to heed his brother's words rather than defy him, slinking back into submission like a snake slithering beneath a rock. But Galadriel, heart hammering in her chest, sensed her moment of opportunity, when the brothers were most divided and at the height of desperation: for there was yet one thing they had not found.
"The Silmaril," she choked, "I will take you to the Silmaril if you only let my child go."
"And how do we know that you are telling the truth?" Maedhros asked her, but Galadriel sensed the urgency in his voice. She knew they had must have slain Dior and Nimloth and yet they had not yet found the stone, not yet, if they had then they would not have detained them like this. They would either have let them go or slain them all; she was willing to stake her life on it.
"You don't," she replied, voice trembling with fright, "but if I am lying then I will forfeit to you my life, only let my daughter go free."
"Take us to the Silmaril and then we shall let you daughter go free," Curufin said, a dangerously benign smile upon his face.
"I do not trust you," Galadriel said. "Allow her to go first and then I shall take you to the Silmaril." She saw Curufin's grip tighten around the hilt of his sword.
"If she lies then I kill her," Curufin murmured. Maedhros hesitated, his eyes deeply sad, gazing into hers, but the choice was clear and Galadriel knew it as well as he did.
"Very well," Maedhros said, his voice soft, strangled. "If she lies you may kill her." A pleased smile twisted its way across Curufin's face. "Go," Maedhros said to Galadriel, his voice soft and pained, "give her to whomever you trust. You have my word that we shall do her no harm." Galadriel nodded stiffly, turning and approaching Paniel, her heart shuddering as she realized how fortunate it was that Venessiel had given Thranduil over to her care. The boy would escape unscathed and undetected.
"Care for her as if she were your own," she whispered, pressing the child into her handmaiden's arms. Paniel nodded stiffly but said nothing else, merely reaching down to run a comforting hand through young Thranduil's hair. The boy toddled on chubby legs, clutching at her skirts, too young to realize the danger and death that surrounded him. Galadriel bent to press one last kiss to Elwing's warm little forehead and then turned back to her cousins, tears burning in her eyes.
With a nod from Maedhros, the guards at the gates parted and, slowly, the crowd of women and children began to make their way out of Menegroth. "You!" Maedhros cried, gesturing towards Venessiel, and the woman stopped, returning to stand at Galadriel's side, both of the women knowing what was to come. "Kneel," Maedhros instructed.
"Maedhros don't, please…" Galadriel began, tears pouring from her eyes.
"It has to be this way, don't you see?" Venessiel said, reaching out briefly to squeeze Galadriel's hand before she did as she had been bid, kneeling on the earth before them.
"Pity to waste her, she could be beautiful if she were cleaned up a bit," Curufin commented, earning himself a glare from his older brother.
"We will do only what is necessary, but we will not torture unnecessarily, not as Celegorm did," Maedhros told him quietly as he drew his sword. "You may be permitted a blindfold, if you prefer," he said then to Venessiel, his voice not unkind, but tempered with the reality of what he must do.
"I am a Sinda and I will greet death with my eyes open," Venessiel replied. Galadriel could see that she was fighting to remain calm, to be brave in the face of death, tears building in her eyes that she refused to let fall, her clasped hands trembling.
"As you wish," Maedhros said, touching his blade to the back of her neck. Galadriel was determined that she would not do Venessiel the injustice of looking away and she breathed a silent prayer to Eru as she heard the gates of Menegroth close once more. The refugees were gone. Maedhros drew back his sword, the blade glinting fiercely in the dim torchlight, and then brought it swinging neatly through the air, severing Venessiel's head from her shoulders in a single, clean stroke. It rolled the floor as her body collapsed, lifeless eyes staring up at the dark heavens. Galadriel clasped a hand over her mouth, stomach heaving, dry retching sounds escaping her throat as she stumbled backwards.
"Oh don't be so dramatic about it, Artanis," Curufin commented dryly while Maedhros bent to wipe clean the blade of his sword. "You've seen death before." She had not been watching him, distracted by what Maedhros was doing, but she saw now that the baby's face had purpled and Curufin withdrew his hand from the blankets, bending to place the strangled babe beside the body of her mother. "This is the natural order of things."
"There is nothing natural about it!" Galadriel stammered, her lips trembling in fright, frantically trying to wipe away tears. No matter how many times she saw death it horrified her all the same.
"I am sorry that we had to do it," Maedhros said gently, stepping forward as if to take her hands, but Galadriel shrank away.
"Sorry?" She cried. "You're not sorry! You're monsters, the lot of you! And you, Maedhros, acting as if your sympathy and your sadness makes you any better than HIM!" She pointed a trembling finger at grinning Curufin.
"You wouldn't understand," Maedhros replied coldly.
"Oh I understand perfectly well," Galadriel spat, but Maedhros turned away, saying nothing, and Curufin stepped forward, gesturing to a squadron of soldiers.
"Come now pretty cousin," he sneered. "You made us a promise. I expect you to keep it." She felt the sharp prick of her cousin's blade in her back and grudgingly took a step forward. In truth she had no idea where the Silmaril was and she was beginning to wonder if Curufin suspected that. What she was certain of was that he intended to kill her, whether she could find the stone or not. As they descended through the winding avenues of Menegroth she could feel her doom closing about her like a cage. She had to find some way…some way to kill him…kill them all…and then she would find Celeborn, had to find Celeborn…it was the only thought that kept her going.
"Artanis! Artanis, look here!" She heard Curufin's laughter from behind her and turned with dread in her heart to see him pull a corpse up into a sitting position by her dark, bloodstained hair. He shook his hand, causing the girl's head to limply sway from side to side: her throat had been slit. Curufin laughed again, as if it were some great joke, his eyes filled with perverse excitement. "Did you know her? Did you?"
"No," Galadriel whispered, feeling as if she needed to vomit more than she needed air. "No I didn't."
"Ah well," Curufin said with a broad smile. "Perhaps next time we'll have more luck." Galadriel wrapped her arms tightly about herself, turning and hurrying forward through the corridors. She didn't know where she was leading them, only that she must stall her cousin for as long as she was able, until she could think of some way to escape or kill him. But he had brought six soldiers with them and she could not fathom how she could defeat all of them in addition to Curufin.
"I won't do it right away, you know," Curufin purred into her ear as he came to walk beside her, wrapping an arm about her waist and pulling her close. "I promise you we'll have some fun before your death." He bent then, suddenly distracted, turning over a body, but Galadriel kept walking.
"Stop her!" She heard Curufin cry angrily and momentarily found blades pressed to her back. Reluctantly she turned, goaded back to Curufin's side by the spears of the guards…five? She could have sworn there had been six guards only a moment earlier.
"This man, did you know him?" Curufin grinned, the chestnut brown hair of a man clutched in his fist as he sat the corpse upright. A baker: she had not known his name, but she had known his face, still remembered the smell of the sweet rolls filled with chestnuts that he had sold at the festivals.
"No, I didn't," she replied, her voice hoarse, tears starting at the corners of her eyes, but she didn't want to give Curufin the satisfaction of her weeping or the validation of his macabre little game. Her cousin frowned, clearly displeased, and he threw the corpse back to the ground, kicking it fiercely over and over in a childish display of anger, shrieking. The way that he grew calm again so suddenly, as if nothing had happened, was unsettling, and he came to walk at her side yet again, the touch of his hand on her waist making her skin crawl.
"I do wish you'd hurry, Artanis," he said as they began to walk again. "I've left you a little present you see, but if we're not quick about finding that Silmaril I'm worried he'll die before we get to enjoy him."
"What do you mean?" She gasped, coming to a sudden halt, her heart thudding with a dull pain in her chest.
"That silver-haired Moriquende husband of yours," Curufin said, fixing his eyes upon hers, joy glimmering in their depths. "I've bound him somewhere for you to find and I cut him, not enough to kill him of course, well not right away…but he'll bleed out if we're not quick about things, and that would ruin all the fun of watching you try to save him."
"You're lying," Galadriel said, needing to believe it was a lie, but her heart trembled in her chest as she reached out to Celeborn through their bond and felt…nothing. "You're lying. It's not true!" She said, wanting to be strong but realizing that Curufin must be able to see the desperation in her eyes.
"Well that's just a chance you'll have to take," Curufin said, as if he were explaining a difficult concept to a child. "I wonder how much blood he has in him. I wonder if it will all run out before you take me to that Silmaril. You want to hurry, don't you…Galadriel?" The name stung now, that beautiful name that Celeborn had given her, and she wondered if she would ever again hear it from his lips.
"Yes, I want to hurry," she said, taking a step forward, and then another, each step seeming a monumental task. She wracked her mind, trying to think of where the stone could be. Even if Celeborn were already dead she would rather turn over the stone and lose her life beside his corpse than risk never seeing him again.
"Oh one more thing!" Curufin cried with glee and, steeling herself for the worst, she turned. "Did you know her?" He was holding up a Sindarin maid, her eyes filmy with the white of death, her skin the perfect white of snow, her lips as red as the dried blood that coated her chin, her long, silken, black hair clutched in his bloody fist: Silevren, the dancer.
"Did you?" He asked again, shaking the body.
"No," Galadriel replied, pulling herself up to her full height. "No I didn't." She refused to give him the satisfaction. If she was to die by his blade then she would defy him to the last, refuse to indulge his fantasies, refuse to allow this macabre puppetry of the dead. Curufin stared at her for a while longer, a curious smile on his face.
"I think you're lying," he purred, standing, placing his fingers beneath her chin, forcing her to look into his mad eyes. "You betrayer of kin…blood traitor!" His voice rose to a wail and then fell low again. "You owed my father your allegiance, you, a are nothing but the fourth born daughter of a third born son.
"Then I most certainly owe nothing to a fifth born son!" Galadriel snarled. The blow that Curufin struck with the palm of his hand against her face caused her hearing to go for a moment, nothing more than a high pitched whistle ringing in her ears.
"I think you're a lying whore," Curufin growled. "And do you know what the only thing a whore is good for is?" But Galadriel was distracted, looking over his shoulder. One…two…three…where had the rest of Curufin's guards gone?
Then, with the sudden gust like a thundercloud breaking upon an open plain, the hall was eclipsed by a blinding flash of silver, silver blades that easily and quickly opened the throats of the three remaining guards, silver mail that glimmered in the dim torchlight…silver hair like a shower of stars… Celeborn. Galadriel felt a massive wave of relief wash over her, taking a quick step back, away from Curufin as dual twin blades flew towards him, but her cousin was quicker, pivoting, pulling her in front of him like a shield as his hand wrapped tightly around her throat.
Celeborn's knives stopped a hair's breadth from her face as she met his startled gaze, both of them wide-eyed, panting, she with fear and he with the exertion it had taken to halt his blow. "Pity," Curufin laughed, speaking to Celeborn as he pulled her backwards against him even more tightly, his breath hot against her ear. "I assure you I would have had the greatest sympathy for you had you slain her." His hand was closing tightly about her throat and Galadriel gasped for air. If only she could get to the knife in her pocket, if only… With the guards dead now she could do it. She was close enough to him, close enough that she could deal a fatal blow, but she mustn't let him catch on to what she was doing.
"I knew you were lying," she tried to say, but her voice was nothing more than a croak.
"I was beginning to wonder when you'd show yourself, Celeborn. Here at last…here at last," Curufin purred, his voice low and quick with excitement. "I knew if I took her that you would follow. I knew you were watching. I can feel you…always feel you," he said to Celeborn. "Impressive knife work, I must say. Your true nature is baring itself at last, Sinda. But we're all animals, aren't we…underneath it all? You and I…we're not so different."
"We're nothing alike," Celeborn said, voice low, eyes burning with intensity as he stepped forward. Something in his eyes was different, and it only took Galadriel a moment to realize that he bore the same look of determination and horror in his gaze that she had felt so keenly on Alqualondë's docks. In the aftermath, in the cold squalling blizzards of the Helcaraxë she had thought to herself that there must come a time in any life or death struggle, when one abandons oneself to the utmost expense of force and strength, ignoring the costs of both body and mind until the struggle is finished.
She had seen it before in the eyes of women in childbed, and then again on Alqualondë's docks, and now here…in the eyes of her beloved. She knew by it that he would exert every last modicum of strength if he had to, if that is what it took for them both to survive. And suddenly, though surrounded by death and danger, though her cousin's hand was choking the life out of her, she felt strangely safe.
"Watch yourself now, Sindarin dog!" Curufin hissed, his voice a keening wail as he tightened his grip on Galadriel's throat. His fingers were pain, crushing, and she knew she would have a bruise if she survived this. Celeborn took a step back, sheathing his knives. "Do you see that, Artanis? Do you see how he obeys like the dog that he is?" Curufin laughed. "Do you know what I think I'll do? I think I'll mount his head on the wall like a stag, replace his eyes with glass ones, no, warg's eyes. Maybe if you're good I'll let you look at him when I let my soldiers take you."
"What is it that you want? Let us talk," Celeborn said calmly, holding out his empty hands. "Only name your price and I shall give it to you if you agree to let her go."
"Lay down your weapons," Curufin demanded and Celeborn obeyed, unbuckling his quiver and knife belt, laying his axe and bow aside. Galadriel felt a fierce vengeance burning in her heart, as if Celeborn is any less dangerous without weapons, she wanted to scoff at her cousin. "Now step forward," Curufin demanded, taking a step back, and Galadriel took advantage of the motion to slip her hand into the pocket of her breeches, her fingers resting against the cool bone of her knife's hilt. Curufin hadn't noticed. And to think that all those years ago she had told Celeborn he needn't buy this knife for her. She could feel her heart thundering in her chest as she met Celeborn's eyes, trying to tell him that she needed some distraction.
"And now, what is it you want?" Celeborn asked, his eyes shifting to Curufin's. Galadriel hoped they would hurry because she hadn't much air left and already she was growing light-headed, losing feeling in her limbs.
"A lock of your hair," Curufin murmured. "I let her go and, in return, you give me a lock of your hair." The world was beginning to darken, everything appearing before her eyes as flickering pricks of light, the world fading.
"And why?" Celeborn asked, seeming curious.
"Because I haven't one," Curufin replied. "My father did. He always carried it with him, a lock of his mother's hair, silver as the stars. It was his most treasured possession, the one thing he had to remember her by, but it burned along with him. "
"And you will let her go? You will promise me that she leaves her alive and unharmed?" Celeborn asked, his eyes fixed on Curufin's.
"I swear it on my father's name," Curufin said, keening desperation in his voice.
"Then I am yours," Celeborn said, holding out his arms. "Come and take what you will." Then Curufin slowly released her and stepped forward, reaching for Celeborn's hair, his hands moving to cradle the Sinda's face almost lovingly.
"I could have been something you know," he whispered, his eyes flickering to Celeborn's. "I could have been something like you…" A strange smile lit his face, a genuine one, his eyes looking into the beyond, as if he had been transported out of this world and into some other one, far away from blood, and danger, and death.
Taking a great gasping breath, Galadriel pulled her knife from her pocket and, in one swift movement, drove the blade firmly into his lower back. Curufin twitched, a hoarse cry of surprise starting from his lips that was silenced as Celeborn reached out, taking his head between his hands, and twisted, breaking his neck with a loud crack.
For a moment still he stayed upright and then he fell, the lifeless dead fingers slipping from the silver hair in which they had been twined, the copper eyes staring into nothingness, his body crumpling to the ground, motionless. But, for a moment, as she stood shaking, holding the bloody knife in her hand, Galadriel almost imagined that this would be just one more of his jokes, that somehow, impossibly, he would rise, grinning that horrifying grin of his, and hew them both down.
But Celeborn reached out, frantically almost, and pulled her to him, holding her tightly in his arms, too tightly perhaps, his touch rough, but she found comfort in it, comfort in the warmth of him, comfort in the rise and fall of his chest beneath the press of her cheek, her tears falling like a river to wash away the blood that coated his armor as she drew in great, gasping breaths.
"I'm so sorry," he gasped. "I misjudge the distance…nearly killed you. I've been fighting for so many long hours now that my aim is not what it once was. And the bond, I knew you were trying to reach me for it but I couldn't reveal myself to you until the proper time, couldn't risk that he might catch on."
"I haven't a care in the world for that," she replied, "only that you are alive." She could feel his hands trembling as he wound his fingers in her hair, pressed her tight against him. There was some desperate and wild longing in the way he held her. "I thought you had been killed," she choked out, great sobs wracking her body now, causing her to shiver violently.
"I thought I would be," Celeborn gasped and he pulled her against him even tighter, rocking her back and forth in the cradle of his arms. "Valar, I thought I would be," the second time he whispered it and she felt the dampness of his tears against her hair. "I love you," he whispered into her ear, his breath hot against her skin. "I love you, Galadriel. In Ilúvatar's name I love you." Three times he said it, an echo of a marriage vow that had been sworn and then broken.
"I know, Celeborn, I know," she whispered, knowing it was what he needed to hear, but his words struck a dread chill into his heart, for it was not like him to voice such sentiments and she knew by it that he had indeed been in grave peril.
They held each other in that silent embrace for a moment and then in a gruff voice Celeborn said, "we should be going." It reminded her of what she had momentarily forgotten in her overwhelming relief at finding her alive: they were far from safe. He stepped back from her, a hint of embarrassment in his eyes, and cleared his throat.
"Where were you hidden?" Galadriel asked.
"I hid in the trees near the gates," he told her. "I thought to wait until the six of them were all in one place and then to kill them all at once."
"Then you saw all of it?" She asked.
"Yes," he told her, his hands trembling as he held hers. "Yes I saw all of it. You were so brave, Galadriel, so brave."
"I only wish there had been some way…" she began.
"She knew what would happen," Celeborn replied, smoothing her hair back from her face. "She knew the price she would pay and she made the sacrifice for Doriath's sake, for all of our sakes." Galadriel nodded, understanding it was so, even if her heart could not yet accept it.
"Is there no other way out?" She asked, her voice trembling with fear. Now their escape seemed so close at hand, and yet the near proximity of it made the possibility of being discovered all the more frightening, as if hope were being dangled just before their faces but could so easily be snatched away in an instant.
"No, just the one way," he told her. He paused, uncertain, as if he was afraid to ask. "Galathil…" he began but, unable to find the words, fell silent.
"I do not know," she told him, the familiar ache waking in her heart as she remembered Finrod, and Aegnor, and Angrod. Celeborn was silent for a moment before he nodded in decision.
"Then let us go," he said. "We haven't any time to lose." She nodded, gathering her resolution about her like a cloak, and then they were slowly making their way through the darkened corridors, stepping over bodies, sensitive to even the slightest sounds that reached their ears. More than once they ducked into a deserted corridor only to see a confused mouse scurry by. "We must return to my quarters," Celeborn whispered. "We'll never survive in the wild with no food and no warm clothes."
Fortunately they were not far from the royal district, but the journey was harrowing, and they were nearly there when a troop of soldiers rounded the opposite corner, causing them to duck into an alcove, holding one another close, holding even their breath so that they would not be discovered. The soldiers passed so near that Galadriel could have reached out and touched them and, when they were gone, they peered out very carefully, making sure that the corridor was completely clear before they continued on their journey.
When at last they managed to reach Celeborn's rooms they entered with blades drawn, half expecting to find soldiers waiting for them, but the rooms were empty and silent. "Hurry," Celeborn whispered once they were sure that all was clear, and then they busied themselves with changing into winter clothes and cloaks, filling rucksacks with dried bear meat and blankets. Galadriel withdrew the crumpled packet of lembas that Paniel had given her from her pocket and stuffed it into the bag before closing it and strapping on her knife belt, quiver, and bow. Nervous, she stood, slinging the pack over her shoulder and gripping her spear tightly.
"Just one more thing," Celeborn said quietly before he disappeared down the corridor to the greenhouse. He returned a moment later bearing a handful of seeds. "Do you have something?" He asked, his eyes, full of sorrow, looking up at hers.
"Yes," she breathed, hurriedly emptying a little jewelry box, casting the diamonds aside and offering it to him. He dumped the contents of his palm into the box and Galadriel flicked the clasp closed before she stowed it securely away in her pack. "They will grow," she said, taking his hands in hers and he nodded, drawing her close, brushing his thumb across her cheek as he turned her face up towards him.
"Once for luck?" He asked her softly, eyes questioning, but Galadriel had already brought her lips to his, drinking deep the taste of him, of life and hope, feeling the world about her grow as if it were itself some woodland pine, branches reaching up to the heavens, as if the stars themselves were spring blossoms opening to new life. His lips were warm, and firm, and impatient against hers, his hands trembling at her waist with the passion suppressed so common to men in battle and she knew that no matter how many times she kissed him it would never, never, never be enough. She would never be satisfied, would always be left wanting, and it made the longing all the more sweet and all the more bitter, the longing that had been woven into her life from the start, that had led her here to middle earth, filled with impossible desires, that had led her here to him, this impossible love, and that had bound them together inextricably, one to the other, with bonds that ran deeper than the foundations of Arda.
"There is no use fighting it, Galadriel," he said when they pulled apart at last, breathing hard. "Fate itself cannot separate us. I suppose everyone else will have no choice but to grow used to it." And she thought for an instant that, even amidst all this sadness, she had seen the ghost of a wry grin flit across his lips.
"Yes they must," she whispered, brushing her lips against his once more. They drew apart, still in awe of each other, hands trembling not with fear now, but with determination.
"I've lived in these caves nearly my whole life," Celeborn whispered, his eyes filled with conviction as he met her gaze. "I know them better than anyone and I will get us out of here, Galadriel, I swear it to you."
"I know," she said, taking his hand and, walking together down the corridor, they made their way out into the halls. The torches had burned down, casting eerie shadows about the maze-like corridors, illuminating pools of thick, black, congealing blood and corpses gone stiff, their unseeing eyes gazing up at a ceiling that had once reflected the night sky. It had only been a few years ago that the magic of Menegroth had still been thriving, but now it seemed like a lifetime had come and gone.
These halls of wonder had once enchanted her, but now they seemed like a trap as they slowly made their way through them. For some time they were able to move quickly, for no others were present, but suddenly she felt Celeborn's arm grasp hers, pulling her into a deserted corridor. He flattened himself against the wall, blending effortlessly into the shadows, and Galadriel followed his lead, breathing shallowly as a group of the Feanorian soldiers ran by in the intersecting corridor ahead, their armor echoing strangely in the silent halls. They waited in the shadows with baited breath before Celeborn slowly inched forward and checked the corridor, motioned to her that it was clear and they turned into the intersecting lane.
But Galadriel's breath caught in her throat as she heard voices and running footsteps from behind them and, heart pounding, she pulled Celeborn back into the corridor from which they had just come. "Don't be sparing!" She heard a soldier cry in Quenya and the acrid stench of strong oil burned at her nostrils.
"They're coming this way!" She hissed, and indeed they were. A dark haired elf rounded the corner and plunged into Celeborn's knife, looking down as it sank deep into his gut. The second found his end upon the razor sharp edge of her spear as Galadriel brought it slashing across his chest. Celeborn bent, wiping his knife on the dead elf's clothes and returned it to his belt. Then, with an ease that did not signify the weight of the weapon, he took his great battle axe from his back just as two more soldiers rounded the corner.
He quickly parried the sword of one and countered, to no avail, before he turned to block the thrust of the other. The elf opened his mouth to shout for reinforcements but Galadriel silenced him by severing his neck. The axe flashed through the air again and Celeborn brought the butt of it into the stomach of the other elf, knocking the wind out of him. But the dark haired elf wrenched the axe from the Sinda's grip and sent it skittering across the floor. Grabbing Celeborn by the neck, he threw the silver haired elf to the ground and punched him squarely in the head.
Celeborn grabbed the Noldo by the tunic and twisted, trying to wrench free of the grasp in which he was caught and the Noldo struggled to reach a knife tucked into his belt but Celeborn caught his arm and rolled him over, pinning him. His hands went to the Noldo's throat, choking the air out of him. His face turned red as he gasped for air, struggling to pull Celeborn's hands from his throat, but Celeborn was bigger, stronger, more accustomed to fighting, and he slowly choked the life out of the dark haired elf until body went limp as Galadriel skewered the last of the soldiers upon her golden spear.
"Oil," she gasped as Celeborn stumbled to his feet. "Oil, Celeborn. They mean to burn us out."
"We're not far," he gasped, still breathing heavily from the exertion of the skirmish. "We must hurry." They darted down the silent corridor, staying in the shadows, and there they were before them, the massive trees of the great hall. Galadriel breathed a sigh of relief as they flattened themselves against the wall.
"Keep a watch out behind," she whispered as she peered around the corner. They were so close now, so very close, but she hardly dared to imagine that escape was possible, hardly dared to put her faith in happiness that could so easily be snatched away.
"What do you see?" Celeborn asked her.
"Maedhros and Maglor," she whispered. "I don't know where the youngest is…but they must have found Curufin's body by now, and I haven't the faintest clue what has become of Celegorm and Caranthir."
"Dead by Dior's hand, or so I heard," Celeborn whispered. Galadriel swallowed hard, feeling as if her entire body was far too hot, sweat running down her back though it was the dead of winter.
"There's more guards now than when I was here earlier," she said. There were far more in fact, nearly a whole army, and she could not fathom how it would be possible to get past them.
"We need only get into the trees for now," Celeborn said, seeming to have sensed her thoughts, and she nodded. The trees weren't far…they had only to wait until no one was looking and then…
"Now!" She hissed, darting from the passageway to sprint madly towards the massive stone pillars. Celeborn overtook her, reaching them first, pulling himself by handholds so small that no inexperienced climber could ever hope to scale the massive tree. Galadriel followed behind him but, even with all the training he had given her, she was not as adept as him and he had to reach down periodically to pull her up. She had never climbed this high before in the stone trees of Menegroth and they really seemed as interminable as they looked. By the time they reached the leaves, the people below looked as small as ants and Galadriel breathed a sigh of relief as she realized that they had not been noticed.
They continued up the bole, slower now that they were afforded the cover of the foliage and Galadriel could not help but notice how realistic the leaves looked, even this close, how they almost seemed to move. At last they reached the top and still the ceiling of the cave was so high above that it was as dark as the night sky, equally as far away. They crept from tree to tree, slowly moving closer and closer to the gates, stopping when they could see them, their hearts sinking as they saw what stood in the mouth of the cave: a phalanx of golden-mailed soldiers bearing Maedhros's banner. They waited there in silence; there were no words that needed to be said, no words that could assuage the suffocation of hope. The gates were too heavily guarded; escape was impossible.
Notes: One. More. Chapter. Left!