Dreams and hopes and ambitions had all failed, and in his second life Celebrimbor found himself lost.
He had long ago refused the belief that one could only create a single Great Work, refused in principle that he could never surpass the Three, and yet now had not the stomach to attempt a project far lesser; his hands quaked to bind Song into matter, and he gave himself instead to thought experiments and observations and theories, and he scorned himself for his lack of ambition.
It was in part that scorn, and the ambition for ambition to return, that led him to benighted Avathar, the land where the great Spider herself had once dwelt, Ungoliant the Consumer.
It was some decades into the Fourth Age of Arda and Celebrimbor had come to Tirion for a series of academic conferences. He took the opportunity to spend time with an old friend, Rodhiniel of Menegroth, and one day after a morning symposium, they went to their usual restaurant for lunch.
"I met someone interesting the other day," Rodhiniel said casually, dunking a thin slice of beef in the spicy-red broth to cook. "Or someone with an interesting proposition, rather. Have you heard of Avathar?"
Celebrimbor swallowed the piece of bamboo shoot he was eating before answering. "I have seen maps of the Blessed Realms as well as heard tales of Ungoliant, so yes, I have heard of it."
"Is the land of the Spider properly part of the Blessed Realms? Not being particularly Blessed."
He felt the start of a headache coming on. Rodhiniel was a dear friend and it had been a joy to find her in Aman. They had known each other for many long years and both been among the founding members of the Mírdain. But he was tired that day — he had been tired since arriving in Tirion — and had little patience for conversational games.
"Well, Avathar's not part of Middle-earth and as it is on the same land mass as Valinor, I would consider it to be part of Aman. Why do you mention it?"
"Because there is a group of people — a cult of Este, mostly Vanyarin; they call themselves the Ashtandiri in the dialect they use — who want to make it blessed. I met one of them recently when I was in Tol Eressea, a woman by the name of Anathau. She was most interested when she heard I was one of the Ringmakers and said she believed we shared a mission." She looked straight at him for a moment, a sheen to her eyes, before casting them away and dipping her beef in chili oil.
After a moment, when she was done chewing and Celebrimbor had not spoken, Rodhiniel said, "'Healed and renewed,' was the phrase Anathau used."
Healed and renewed, Celebrimbor thought. We once tried to restore to health that which had been hurt too, a long time ago and far away. And it all came to failure.
But he answered, "A Vanyarin priestess believes we share a mission. I am skeptical, having been informed many times that our mission was challenging the gods."
Rodhiniel grimaced and took a sip of water. "And we thought we were working with an emissary of those gods. Not that the identity of that so-called emissary helps our reputation! But no, Mithrandir introduced us; Anathau knew of the Three and wishes to know how a craftsperson and not a mystic would approach the problem of how to heal a tortured land. We've been invited to join her people in Avathar. Well, I was invited, and any of my colleagues, so you're invited too."
"What, does she think your mere presence will 'heal and renew' that land?"
"I think she wishes another perspective, perhaps, another approach; the land, apparently, is still sick. Maybe songs and paeans to the Valar have run their course. I thought of you because it seems to be an interesting land. I am given to understand that the flora, fauna, and fungi are unlike anything seen before in Aman or Middle-earth."
"Are they." Celebrimbor fished out a now-cooked dumpling from the soup and stared at it.
"And it'll be nice going on a field expedition again," said Rodhiniel cheerfully. "Plus it removes you from Tirion — you'll provoke another Kinslaying the way you keep insulting other people's research; maybe don't say next time that a loremaster's life's work was completely wasted. You can insult a spider instead."
Celebrimbor looked up, indignant. "What, I did Haldon a favor! That life's work of his built upon a faulty foundation. He should be thankful that I showed him his errors so that he doesn't need to waste the rest of eternity."
"As I said, remove you from Tirion before you provoke another Kinslaying. And don't you want to go on a field expedition? Think of all you could see!"
"I do not," Celebrimbor answered. "I prefer having a proper bed and a proper bath and a fully stocked laboratory, not a tent and collapsible furniture."
She shrugged. "You've survived far worse conditions. Collapsible beds or no, we both know you'll come with me."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, you will," said Rodhiniel. "The Vanya I talked to, Anathau, said that the land is filled with living trees that look like no tree extant today and that there are no bony animals that crawl on land. She has little knowledge of deep lore and did not say this, but I think it may be a place of living fossils."
Celebrimbor sighed inwardly, realizing he likely would go. "You can investigate and send me letters detailing what you see."
"Or you can come with and see yourself. What have you done these past few decades other than squabble with a whole host of loremasters? It will be good for you, getting away from that — and there are few people in Avathar: doesn't that entice you?"
"Few people," Celebrimbor said, "but many spiders." But he thought of how tired he was in Tirion, the ennui that had filled him for the past decades. Perhaps he did need something new; perhaps there was still work to be done in the world. "Fine. I'll go with you."
Celebrimbor appropriated one of Tirion's air-ships — his distant claim to royalty had its benefits and Finarfin was fond of indulging him — and he and Rodhiniel had an easy flight to Avathar. They landed on a broad sandy beach and Celebrimbor was hit with the salty smell of the ocean as soon as he opened the hold.
"Greetings!" Rodhiniel called from alongside him, for there was a small group of people approaching the air-ship. Most them had the golden hair of the Vanyar, and there was a quick round of introductions that Celebrimbor only half-listened to. He let the others unload the air-ship and turned to survey the area. At first glance, it was like any other sandy shore that gave way to wetland: high tide, likely, by the absence of any tidal pools. But there was something about the feel of the land that was off. It was not that it was foul; it was nothing like Beleriand in its last days, polluted by Morgoth, and yet there was something alien. The land did not see him, Celebrimbor realized after a moment. The sand and plants and whatever life lurked in the waters: they did not greet him. The Eldar had never lived here, and never made friends with the trees nor sung to the rocks, and so the trees and rocks did not know them.
But if the land did not speak, the Eldar there did and welcomed them well; Celebrimbor and Rodhiniel soon settled in. He found he did not regret coming; he might once have scorned the Ashtandiri for their service to a Vala but instead found himself holding them in high esteem, and it was impossible not to respect Anathau their leader, for there was wisdom in her Tree-lit eyes and hers was the solemn presence of one who had seen the hurts of the world. She had been at Cleansing of Angband and yet held strong to estel, the imagination of what goodness might come.
"Avathar was never touched by the holy Light of the Trees, or if it was, the Spider supped on it till Light came no more," Anathau said one day. "There is much here that was ancient before Yavanna brought forth her great work. But I do believe the light of their fruit brings some healing, some sustenance, and that there is more alive here than once was."
"The sun also makes it easier to see, which I appreciate," said Rodhiniel. "I think Avathar was… held back in some ways, a place of what was in the past, the long eons over which the Holy Ones shaped Arda, before our forebearers awoke at Cuiviénen."
It was true enough, thought Celebrimbor, the ecosystem was fossil assemblage come to life. In the stagnant lagoon by the Ashtandiri's camp lived fishes without jaws, and ones with bones like armor, but only insects dwelt above the water, and the vascular plants threw off spores, not seeds.
He said, "Perhaps Ungoliant — Ingalyatta in your tongue, Anathau — ate the passage of time itself here. I have seen a very similar assemblage of plants and animals preserved in rocks. It was a site in Middle-earth, Sad-na-Ngendaich in the Emyn Uial, unfortunately now inaccessible to us. The fossils there bore some resemblance to the environment here: seedless plants and no bony life on land, and the flora in particular was of a similar shape. It must have been a strange place and not too dissimilar to here. Aside from the spiders."
"Yes," Rodhiniel agreed, "But the spiders make it stranger. There is death here, but it does not give back much. You know, while I would have greatly preferred not to die, it does please me that my body decomposed, as happens to all corpses — well, perhaps not yours, Celebrimbor, who knows exactly what happened to your be-bannered one; maybe it was kept preserved in some storage room in Barad-Dûr" — he raised an eyebrow at her, and she grinned back — "I do hope the worms enjoyed mine, and that its proteins and lipids and minerals were used to sustain the life of others. It brings my heart comfort that in some way I yet remain in the land across the dread Sea. But if I died here… I do not think my body would be recycled, but buried only, or disappeared into the belly of a spider."
Celebrimbor thought her likely correct: in Avathar when dead trees fell to the ground they did not decompose but were crushed, smothered, consumed by that which grew around them, or other trees that fell atop them, or by the millipedes that burrowed into them, or by the spiders that covered fallen branches in their webs and ate whatever life remained and rendered it unmade. It was a curious phenomenon, how the lifeless wood itself did not decay. Aside from the spiders, it might be genuinely natural.
"There was no true decomposition in Aman before the loss of the Trees," said Rodhiniel. "I do wish I could have observed the ecosystems then myself."
"That is not entirely true," Anathau said. "Rather decay did not run wild, but was controlled by Ivanna-she-of-Life and Arama-he-of-Death…"
Yavanna and Orome, the gods of all things that eat, of nature red in tooth and claw, thought Celebrimbor, and thought of dead uncles and werewolves.
But Anathau was still speaking. "What need had Avathar for decomposition if Ingalyatta ate all that came before her?"
"I suppose we should be glad that she ate herself too," Celebrimbor said. "Though interestingly, and applicably, there are depositions laid down in Middle-earth of tree trunks that show no signs of breaking down or decay, just like here. My working hypothesis is that the fungi that eat lignin had not yet come into being. I wonder if we—"
"You shall not introduce your fungi into this land, Chalharikker." Anathau's voice was almost severe. "Avathar is unclean and unwholesome, but it should not be altered in its fundamental character. Destroying what is unique to it is not our goal: we shall instead help it learn what it might be in a healed world."
As was his wont, within the season Celebrimbor grew weary of the company of others and wished for just his own. He set off into the forest to explore, alone, partly to take notes and samples of what he found and partly for some time to himself, telling the others he would return in perhaps a fortnight.
He followed the shore north on the first day but on the next turned inland towards the Pelóri, the mountains blue and far on the western horizon. The shoreline was populated by mosses and liverworts, but further from the shore a forest sprung: there were tall ferns and taller trees that resembled cypresses, and their mighty roots dug deep into the rock and cracked it. The air grew cooler than it ought to be, and it seeped like oil over his bones but its hanging scent was pleasantly resinous, dry and dark and cool, not unlike myrrh but not like it either. He wandered among trees so tall that their tops could not be seen through the thick mist that veiled their crowns. Celebrimbor had seen similar trees, leaves and bark and wood preserved in stone, and was near-certain that the trees were amuntesáni, living versions of the dawn-pines that were the first trees in the fossil record. They were straight and proud, graceful leaves on heavy fronds murmuring when they swayed in the wind.
The days passed by uneventfully enough. Celebrimbor went slowly and would stop for hours at a time to sketch the fascinating plants, taking impressions of their fronds or spores, and jotted notes down in his usual shorthand, Cirth and Tengwar mixed together. But other times he merely sat and listened to the trees as they signed. They did not seem aware of his presence, even when he sang to them. Celebrimbor was not given to loneliness but pangs of it struck at him: the land lived but it saw him not.
Four days into his walk, perhaps two dozen leagues from the outpost, something caught his mind. He stopped suddenly, some strange otherworldly spirit not far calling out aimless and faint, and it reminded him of what some of his people called the Song of the Ainur, what he himself perceived as faint fractals and equations. And it was… familiar, far too familiar. He did not know whether the inchoate feeling welling up inside him was terror or the aching knowledge that what had once been was forever lost.
His heart pounded; he scrambled back and nearly fell, but stopped himself from fleeing further and reached out, cautious and apprehensive, with the senses of the soul. No, the spirit did feel familiar, but it was different too, not the spirit he had known of old.
It's not him, he thought, not Sauron, and he did not know what he felt to realize that.
Perhaps it were some other Maia of Morgoth, or perhaps one of Aule's, caught up in this Avathar and changed by it, perhaps something half-eaten by the spiders. Or perhaps he was wrong and it was…
He thought about leaving. But Celebrimbor rarely bothered to leaven curiosity with self-preservation. He stood up and went ahead.
The trees were overgrown, close together, and an oily darkness lay in the humid air; by the foul feel, Celebrimbor thought that if it were a Maia that lay ahead it must be one of Morgoth's. He came to a place where tattered remains of webs hung from branches like a thick veil. A host of small spiders with red carapaces gathered before them, swarming like ants, but when he pushed aside the webs to see what lay behind some force came out and the spiders skittered away.
In the clearing was a smoke-shrouded column of flame, ever shifting but ever cylindrical, and within it were veins of black and gold that shone with a foul glow. The horsetails and tree branches it touched were darkened and dripped smoky ichor, but had not caught afire. And, and...
Oh, but how wrong had he been earlier. It was not some unknown spirit, but one terrifyingly familiar. He knew what it was; he knew it to be Sauron, and by its mindless presence he knew it did not know itself.
It did not seem to take note of him, and Celebrimbor fled as fast as he could, uncaring of the webs that clung to him and the spiders that crunched under his step.
He stopped when he reached a grey-green stream and bent over, shaking and nauseous, and waited for the black fear to clear from his heart.
Celebrimbor returned to the camp. Time passed, but it was not weightless; his mood was unaltered, still grim and turned inward.
One day Rodhiniel asked what troubled his mind.
"I have been thinking," he answered, "of what might have been and now can never be. Nienna's domain, if you will, not Este's."
She eyed him. "Oh. You're thinking of Eregion, are you not."
He was not; he was thinking of Sauron. He did not say so.
She went to throw her arm over his shoulder, but let it drop when he shied away, quickly hidden concern on her usually merry face. "That it was destroyed and its people dead and our dream with it is not your fault. You're hardly blameless in all things, but you bear no blame for Eregion's fall, nor my death or the deaths of others he killed. That Sauron betrayed our fellowship and made war upon our people is on his soul, or whatever passes as a soul for the Ainur, not yours nor mine."
Celebrimbor glared a bit. "I am well aware of that. I regret nothing of what I did in my life. Maybe some of the particulars, perhaps, but not the path I walked. If Sauron…" He closed his eyes and swallowed what he would have said: He could have been better than what he was, he could have saved himself, but that is on him. His fate is the one he chose. I owe him nothing.
He opened his eyes and smiled. "And it is past and I am well, if you worry. If things hurt at times, it is no great grief, and do not all who dwell in this Arda have grief? Sometimes great, and sometimes small, and sometimes both, and mine is a smaller one I think, for I did nothing wrong, and not all can say that."
"One of these years you might want to rethink your self-righteousness," she said huffily. "You've always been more than willing to rethink theories and hypotheses, but have you once admitted a moral fault? Besides, being friends with and then murdered by Sauron after you watched him destroy our city and kill me and our colleagues must count as at least a moderate grief."
Celebrimbor in truth could not deny the last and not even the first, for the memory of the days of Nargothrond came to him. He did not challenge her but said, "Well, if it helps, it is not to say I don't have some regrets, and embarrassing ones at that — remember the trend for hair dyes in all the colors of the visual spectrum?"
A look of horror spread over Rodhiniel's face. She ran a hand protectively over her thick black hair; Celebrimbor remembered how she had bleached it till it lost all integrity. "I had managed to completely forget that, thank you ever so much for reminding me. I think my hair is still angry for how I ruined beyond repair the protein bonds of its ancestors by bleaching it. I had to cut my hair as short as yours is now, so terrible was the damage."
He smirked and opened his mouth to reply, but stopped as a reflective look spread over her face.
"I never told you this," she said after a long while, words clipped. "But I do have one great regret. I was away from Menegroth when the Hadhodrim of Nogrod attacked. But I was there when the Kinslayers came, and I— I hid myself away, cowered rather than fought. I heard shouts and the clash of arms, and screams of pain and fear, and I stayed concealed under blankets in a closet."
"Rodhiniel…"
"I told myself it would not have been better for me to die," she said, eyes fixed on the ground. "And I'm glad I did not. I told myself too that I would have been of no help to anyone, and that is likely true too. But I will forever know this about myself: I am someone who hid rather than confront evil in defense of others."
She let out a shuddering sigh. "In a way I was relieved, those last few years in Ost-in-Edhil, knowing that this time I would stand and fight. And when the end came, I did not cower, and when my spear broke I drew my sword and when I died the hilt was in my hand and the blade in the neck of an orc. Not that death and killing is ever good, but if I know that I am someone who could fail to confront death in defense of others, I know too that I became someone who can stand and fight and die for what I believe is right.
"And yet… we set out to heal the world, Celebrimbor, and what became of us?"
"Death," he said soberly, "and the knowledge that whatever might be preserved, Arda Hastaina is a place of entropy and fading and there are things that can never be reversed. But I still believe, Rodhiniel, that the past need not define us nor choose what we do next, and I still believe in our old mission, to heal the world and help it keep what is good in it. That such a task may be impossible does not mean that we should not attempt to make the lands of Arda, and all that exist within Ea, better, happier, more blessed."
Rodhiniel smiled, almost shy. "Perhaps nothing good will last, but it does not make the pursuit less necessary: I still believe in it too," she said, her voice quiet as if confiding a secret, but then she laughed. "Else I would not be here, far away from the comforts of home and a fully equipped workroom!"
"Field expeditions have their downsides," said Celebrimbor, dourly, for he too missed both comforts and an actual smithy. "Pity they're occasionally unavoidable. At least the company's not bad, well, aside from having to listen to you grouse."
She grinned. "True enough, the company's mostly tolerable. It's been good, working with the Ashtandiri; in truth, better than I thought. When they asked for our technical expertise I was wary of working with a Vala-cult. I remember the War, and how Ulmo drowned Beleriand in those great, consuming waves, how Aule broke apart its rocks such that the liquid stone, that lifeblood of Ambar: it spilled out and Beleriand bled out. Morgoth's corruption or not, it would have been inhabitable with a little work. But I suppose Este's more innocuous than some of her kind. And the Tauzhelya are lovely people, our dreams the same though the methods different. It's a useful perspective, how they view entropy, marring, hastale, as a thing of Song and Story, not as a law of the physical world."
Hastale, Celebrimbor thought, and did not reply. Hastaina helme, rákinar véri. He had told Sauron once that he meant to arrest and reverse entropy and instead they had broken all bonds of friendship and love, and brought ruin to Eregion.
And yet there was still hope of healing: Arda Alahasta sí vanwa. Nai envinyatuvalves.
Celebrimbor returned to the grove where he had found Sauron, against the wisdom of his heart. But he never let wisdom sway him when he was curious, and curiosity and the knowledge that he would forever wonder if he did not investigate further drove him on.
This time Sauron was something that approximated flesh. As Celebrimbor watched, the spirit flowed into something like the shape of a body, oozing together. It brought itself to have four limbs, and even lumps that might have been hands, but no feet, and the swelling on the top of the torso had no eyes. The outline of its form was blurred, fading into the fetid air around it, and it was not able to hold its shape for long — an arm disappeared and then another grew from the place where a hip might have been; there was a furred tail that disappeared, then a fanged mouth in its chest that ate a leg and then ate itself.
Its mind was flung open. Perhaps Sauron could no longer close it, perhaps it no longer knew what was self and what was other; its thoughts, such as they were, as spoken words.
But though he perceived the being did not know itself, it knew him, and it came closer without moving its body, and it spoke words that waved jagged in the air, for all that it lacked a mouth.
"I know you," it cried. "Thief! Betrayer!"
"We both of us were," said Celebrimbor coldly, and wondered if it would understand.
"I killed you… Thief! You would have taken it from me, my precious!"
A loss unbearable suffused the grove, and it hurt. Celebrimbor closed his eyes against it, and he felt how the only thing beloved was cut from and out of him, and then, when at the last it came within his reach, it fell away, and into fire, a gold circle dissolving as it melted into the burning blood of the earth: everything was lost.
The loss was agonizing, and agony. Two voices cried out with a long wail, and then one voice in the grove grew small, tiny: "It's lost, it's gone, it's gone. Where is it? And you, you were taken too. What did I do?"
What passed as Sauron's arms grew three misshapen fingers that reached for Celebrimbor's hands. "Your hands… I remember. Why did I… But you deserved it! Thief! Thief!"
Celebrimbor did not pull his hands away, but instead grasped the other's tighter, hard enough to hurt if indeed it could be hurt, and dug his nails into flesh. A fell fury welled up inside him. "You vivisected my hands: do you remember that? You tore my mind and body alike into shreds. You murdered me, as you murdered so many others. Cruel one, foul one, abhorred one. Stinker."
"I killed you…"
Celebrimbor wrenched his hands away; his anger had passed as quickly as it had come, and he was left with cold exhaustion and sour sadness.
"You did," he agreed, and he turned, and he left the other and left the foul glade, shoving aside dry branches like claws that grasped and clutched at him. When Celebrimbor looked down, he saw thick pale sap under his fingernails; he thought of how he owed Sauron nothing, and remembered.
He could not stop weeping, though the sobs hurt in his broken ribs, and he could not stop shaking, for all that it set his torn muscles to agony. Stars save him, spiders slay him, but he had given up the last of Seven; he would — he would… He could not do this any longer. It had to end; he could not give up the Three but he could no more.
Sauron was holding him close, murmuring temptations in his ears. Celebrimbor laid his head on that warm chest, its steady heartbeat soothing. His breath and mind both calmed.
"Annatar," he rasped — some time ago, a day perhaps, or a week, the screams that came from his throat had shredded his vocal cords. "Be silent. There is only one more gift I want, and I beg for it. Please kill me."
Sauron's hold tightened, but he did not speak and Celebrimbor went on, choking on the words he must wring from his tongue. He did not think he could bear to look at Sauron.
"You say I betrayed you: I did, and happily. I forsook our friendship. I had told you that whatever you asked of me I would give: I make myself a liar. I forged the Three as a defense against what you would do to the world. I gave up my body rather than give them to your hands. I used myself and your covetous desire for my Rings to keep you in this burnt city as long as I could, to give my kin time to rally their forces, time I hope for the Númenóreans to come, for I would see your armies destroyed and your kingdom cast down. There is nothing more I want than to see you defeated, see you thrown into darkness and unbeing."
He drew a breath and strength from the solid warmth of Sauron's body against his own, and found the will to shift and straddle his lap, draping his arms with their boneless fingers around Sauron's neck.
"Abhorred one, there is nothing more I hate than thee."
There was some dark flame building in Sauron's eyes, but Celebrimbor smiled. He leaned in, Sauron's breath soft on his face.
"O Gorthaur lord of ruin, I know thee, and I know the doom that thou hast brought upon thyself: thou hast created the very means of thy destruction, and thou wilt turn to naught but scattered ashes, till all that thou didst and all that thou wert become utterly forgotten. Thou hast betrayed all that thou claimedst to hold dear, this fair world not least, and I shall rejoice when thy chosen fate cometh to pass."
It was hard to hold his head up; he rested it against Sauron's.
"Yet traitor though thou art," he whispered, "we were friends once. For the sake of what we then shared, for the sake of what was between us, me and thee and no other, I beseech thee: please let me die. Thou hast given me so much. It is such a small gift I ask for now, and the last. I am so sorry."
The last thing he said was, "Annatar, if you ever loved me, kill me."
Sauron's hands clenched around his hips, hard enough that the fingers broke through the skin and bored into the bone beneath, let their mouths linger against each other's as Celebrimbor choked and gasped for air.
But then Sauron pulled back a little. He grasped Celebrimbor's chin in his hand and looked at him for a long searching moment.
Sauron spoke, voice soft, "Once dearest, now betrayer, you have not earned such a mercy, not yet," and shoved him onto the floor. An agony beyond compare swept through Celebrimbor's body. Later in Mandos he would think that Sauron had reached into his brain and filled with fire every pathway between every neuron, but in that moment he was incapable of thought and did not think again till the last few moments before his death.
No, he owed Sauron nothing.
He left Avathar very soon after.
Celebrimbor went to Anda-Falas, the town his cousin Celebrían had built on Tol Eressea, where she and Elrond dwelt, and where Celebrimbor lived more often than not. He had considered finding some place to keep to himself and was wary of staying with Celebrían, who knew him well, and who had known Sauron, and who might perceive what — who — troubled him, but in a few turns of Arda around the sun it would be a full great year since she had learned of her daughter's choice. Her grief would then be sharp in her heart, and if he could give his dear cousin even the smallest of comforts, he would be there for her.
Celebrían was greatly pleased to see him, and her husband smiled, and the three of them spent several pleasant hours together in the gardens, gossiping and speaking of news.
But when dressing for dinner later, he reflexively reached for a ring and stopped, and sat down, sudden and graceless.
He took Annatar's hand and held out a ring, sliding it on Annatar's finger. The first of the Nine, the first of the masterworks of this craft, and greatness lay ahead.
"Annatar," Celebrimbor said slowly. "What I see before us, before us all… This may lead to what we both dream of, healing, and preservation of what is good. Melding of the deep lore of the Eldar and the knowledge of one of those who sang this world into being…"
He took a breath. "And yet, that is not the greatest gift the Lord of Gifts offers, for he has brought his own self to this city." To me, he did not say.
Annatar took his right hand and entwined their fingers. "And nothing is owed — Lord of Gifts received I am now too. I wonder, what would you give me if I ask?"
"These days I find," said Celebrimbor, "that there is very little I would not give you. No, nothing at all would I keep, not if it is you who ask."
Annatar's lips parted and his breath caught. He paused for a long moment then reached out to touch his face. "Celebrimbor, friend of my heart…"
But then he let his hand drop, and stepped back, and they spoke of other things.
Celebrimbor wore several rings that evening to prove to himself that he could, and drank too much, and if anyone noticed that he was unmerry they said nothing.
A few weeks later Celebrían found him sulking under a tree in the garden, a jug of wine next to him.
"You look like one of Elrond's mortal relatives after a long festival night!" She laughed at him. "How much have you had to drink?"
"Enough to drown all my great regrets in, for the inevitable, inescapable river of time has made a wreck of all my dreams and hopes and ambitions," Celebrimbor said, sour, and wondered if he truly looked so bad.
She sighed, and sat down cross-legged beside him, but her voice was playful. "Well, that's a poor attempt at poetry! But I shan't have you grump alone."
Celebrimbor made a face and passed her the jug. She took a long gulp and winked at him. "Uncouth I know, but you won't betray my rudeness."
He smiled a bit at that, wanly.
She tilted her head back and hummed a note; the perfume from the champaca tree he was leaning against grew heavy in the air and pale petals fell around them.
"It is a lovely evening," said Celebrían, "and look! The stars are making their nightly debut in the sky!"
"Ha," Celebrimbor said with no humor. "What are the stars: nothing but old light. And how many are now dead, with only their last echoing cries reaching us?"
Celebrían rolled her eyes. "I think it marvelous that we see the light of fire so distant and ancient – how mighty they are, and how fair! And if they are dead, their memory lives on in our sight. And if we see a star's death, in dim fading or in great brightness that rivals the moon before it extinguish, then we will remember it in our charts and memories."
She twisted the jug of wine in her hands; it was pottery, glazed with an intricate design in many colors of a metallic sheen.
"Eosin," said Celebrían, and glanced at Celebrimbor out of the side of her eyes. "Your grandmother gave it to me when she came with Finrod to Eressea once."
He eyed her himself, mistrusting where she wished to lead the conversation, but answered.
"I assume you're referring to Nerdanel? She is my grandmother, I suppose, and I've met her a few times, but when I think 'grandmother' it is Laerlin, mother of my mother; my father never spoke of his own mother and I never thought to ask. You've felt the same strangeness here that I feel, people bound to you by kinship but not knowledge. But I suppose I know rather more of our shared family than you do, for all that many of our Finwean kin I met only briefly."
"A family that came to unknow itself," she said quietly. "Three cousins I knew, and I saw two dead. Though the third I married!"
Celebrimbor laughed. He had been surprised to learn that Celebrían had married Elrond, such different personalities they were, but seeing them together they fit very well.
"Little remained of those descended from Finwe, and of your father's family him and that husband of yours only." He smiled at her. "And yet no less loved, perhaps more loved. You and your parents are so very dear to me."
"Well I should be! I'm glad you admit it. Yet… Celebrimbor, I think you should talk to Nerdanel."
"We have talked," he said defensively. "And we did speak once of my father and uncle." Briefly, he did not add.
She rolled her eyes. "'Once,' of course. She is your family, you know."
"But is she?" asked Celebrimbor. "In ancestry, yes, but not in heart. I have a family. My mother and her kin, and, as I said, you and Galadriel and Celeborn, and now Elrond, as we learn each other as we did not do in my previous life. And Finrod and Finarfin — and see, I only met him in Valinor, so don't berate me for being unwilling to grow close to new people."
"Honorary Arafinwean, you!" She laughed at him. "But do not say you and Nerdanel have no common bonds. I told her as much, and also said that you are stubborn and that she should seek you out."
Celebrimbor tipped his head back to stare at the stars and cast his mind back to the last days with his father, how his Oath consumed him, how Curufin cut all that was good out of him. There was another who had done the same, one far more abhorrent than his father but closer to his heart; his father he had as good as forgotten, so long ago had Curufin died and so full had Celebrimbor's life been since then. It was not Curufin who troubled Celebrimbor's mind and thought.
"I'm not sure we do have loved ones in common," he said. "I once loved my father and uncle, but are those the sons Nerdanel knew? She knew Curufinwe and Tyelkormo; Curufin and Celegorm lived in a new land, my father with a spouse and child of his own. And bound by an Oath. And… I never knew them when they were not kinslayers and traitors. Nerdanel was parted from them before they killed people in Alqualonde and burned ships at Losgar. She did not see how her sons fought the Enemy of the world with valor nor how they made themselves evil. But that was all very long ago and I cannot say they still trouble my mind. And I do wonder — does she resent me, that I have returned and her sons may never?"
"Which is why you two should talk, and to your last point, no. I wondered the same, so I asked her outright. You can do that, you know, ask people. But you're evading the question, since you know full well where I am going with this. Have you spoke to her about Feanor?"
He had indeed known where she was going, and now that they arrived stiffened.
"It might be good for you," she continued. "She loved Feanor once. Perhaps still does."
Celebrimbor considered not answering. But Celebrían was a persistent person, and she would continue regardless, and he loved her as he would a sister, so he said, "Whatever evil he did, Feanor was no Sauron."
"Ah, and thus we arrive on what I think ails you so. Cousin… I was not the only one struck by sadness a long year ago, when the Ring was destroyed and my daughter made her Choice."
I am once more a traitor, thought Celebrimbor, though this time to the world and not him who deserved betrayal, for despite everything he still pains me so.
"There is no shame in grief for your Arwen," he said softly. Celebrían had, since he arrived, been cheerful and shown no sign of the pain that he knew must be stirring in her heart; if she wished to speak with him, he would listen.
She frowned at him, and smoothed her hand along the soft moss they sat on. "You think that matters? Tyelpe, I knew Annatar; I liked him. I mourn for his deeds, I mourn for him, and all that he might have been, and all that you lost. It is not wrong to mourn, not wrong to be saddened, and I will not stand for you to reproach yourself, not for that. You can grieve, and to me at least show that grief."
"Then let yourself do the same," he answered. "I came to Eressea to be here for you, most dear cousin, for I know whom it was that you yourself lost."
"Yes," she said, grumpy. "Everyone knows whom Elrond and myself and our sons lost, and everyone has plans to descend upon my home – I fear some will need to stay in tents outside for lack of rooms. It isn't a family reunion!"
"Should I leave?" he asked, only half in jest, but smiled when she hit his arm lightly.
"No, not you," Celebrían said, "you would have…"
She paused for a long moment, and when he turned his head to look at her there was a sheen in her silver-blue eyes.
"You would have liked her, my dear Arwen," said Celebrían wistfully. "She had the calm temperament of Elrond, but she was not a scholar of lore like him, nor a healer: she was an artist. Great skill lay in her hands and she was wise in the deep arts. She knew the workings of the world, saw the patterns and connections between all things.
"She made her choice, and for a great love. But she would have been so happy here, had she not met her Estel. I could never truly teach her what she needed to be taught, for even without she surpassed my skill. I looked forward so much to introducing the both of you, to see her learn from those skilled in curwe and nolwe. She made great things; in Aman she would have made greater still and I, even now, a great year later, I mourn so that I will never see her again. Oh, but I miss her, my daughter!"
She wept at that, and Celebrimbor threw his arm around her and held her close. It was nothing he had not heard before from her, but it still grieved him, his friend's grief.
Sooner than he had expected, Celebrían dried her eyes and smiled, still leaning on him. "But such it is in this Arda Marred; I have lost those I love before, and perhaps shall again, for even the land of the gods is unfree of pain. Elrond and I knew what may come when we decided to bring children into this world and we still did so with great joy, and I would never wish it otherwise. I begrudge Arwen nothing, and now as the years pass I am glad of her joy too, and take pride in her great courage. I just wish… I bid farewell to her, I am told, when I left for Aman, but I have no memory of it. I wish I could tell her again that I love her, that her last sight of me would not have been of her mother sick unto death, that I said goodbye one final time."
"I wish you had too," he told her, and thought of how he had said no such thing to Sauron. He had been awake and aware at his death, but had not spoken and not desired to. I too wish I said goodbye, he thought, wistful. Celebrimbor had few regrets or recriminations, but perhaps this was a very small one. I should have liked to bid my once-friend farewell, knowing as I did the destruction that he would bring — has brought — upon himself.
He felt tears come to his own eyes. He had known the instant the One Ring was destroyed, and Sauron with it: a part of him had rejoiced; the world had been saved! But he could not be in the company of those celebrating with unalloyed joy in their hearts, the bells ringing, laughter and exultant voices in the streets, and Celebrían likewise. She had told him of the great fear that had arisen from the hidden places in her heart and choked her throat, for her children's choice had come upon them, the Doom of the Peredhil had then been at hand. She had spoken it to him, what she hid from others, and in return he had said to her: I am once more a traitor. I could never wish the end be different, but there is no delight in my heart.
As Celebrían had then, she now took his hand. "Tyelpe, my dear one, how the world gives us cause to weep!"
He said nothing in return, but sank down and rested his head upon Celebrían's lap, sighed as she stroked his hair. He considered telling her of Sauron amidst the spiders. She would understand him. But if he told her, he would also need to beg her to keep his secret, and that burden he did not wish to lay upon her; and perhaps this was too something that he wished to turn over, to ponder in his own mind, and hide from all others.
She began to sing softly, a lullaby, and he let it soothe him.
Celebrían stopped singing and said, "Cousin, will you talk to me? I have my beloved to lean on when I sorrow, as he has me, and Mother too. But I know how you hide things in your heart. Sometimes it helps to share."
He sighed and twisted the rings on his hands, all crystal and metal and nothing else.
"I do miss him at times," said Celebrimbor after some silence. "Usually when I would have liked to hear his thoughts on some project of mine. And at times I forget and feel a deep, fond affection. And then I remember."
"Like a lovely white fog clearing from a valley only to reveal a massacre," she said.
Inwardly, Celebrimbor winced. That such things had been, that Celebrían had seen such things. He had heard of the wars of Angmar and how a Ringbearer's might had cast down Rhudaur and Cardolan and Arthedain, and broken and scattered the peoples of Arnor. More ill deeds of Sauron's, the corruption of those who bore the Nine and the evils done by his servant.
"I fear him too," he continued, and remembered the mindless black terror that had washed over him in Avathar. "Though perhaps less than I might. I have it easier than you, I think: my mind recalls, but this body of mine has no memory of torment."
He laughed bitterly. "He made his choice, yet I still wish we'd... in better times... Isn't that terrible of me?"
"I wish you had too," she said, and he knew her words themselves were a lie, but also that there was a truth behind them, and they sat for a time without speaking as she continued stroking his hair.
But she didn't keep her silence long — she had never been able to. "Also, I won't have you say that you're terrible! I don't think you are, and you know I'm always right. I mean, your taste is terrible (though Annatar was very attractive), but it could be worse — you could have been like poor Finduilas and fallen in love with Túrin Turambar, and that would just be deeply embarrassing. Well, tragic too, but you know what I mean. Besides, everyone who's not me has tastes that are occasionally embarrassing or dreadful. Elrond likes rutabagas, how disgusting is that? In Mithlond, they consider whitefish soaked in lye a delicacy. Elulindo likes those rotten eggs they bury in ash. And have you seen Finrod's ruby-and-emerald-encrusted jacket?"
Celebrimbor's mood lightened a bit, and he shifted to look up at her; in the wan light the silvered scars on her neck were visible. "Everyone who's not you?" he teased. "I remember that chartreuse dress you had and how you paired it with an amethyst girdle once: appalling!"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Celebrían said loftily. "Are you sure you weren't cursed with that affliction that some Edain have, where they can't see certain colors?"
"An affliction you've personal experience with, hmm? And yéni eggs are quite good; you're missing out."
"Ick. I think not; you can keep your rotten food. But cousin," she said, now serious, "I would not have done anything different, nor wish a different fate for my daughter, and I have pain but no true regrets. Do you?"
Celebrimbor paused for a moment then spoke, slow and certain. "No. I would not have done different, knowing only what I did then. And… I did love him once, and once upon a time Sauron loved me back."
It was not a revelation as such, what he had told Celebrían, but rather a truth that he had long ago pushed from his thoughts: I loved Sauron; and: Sauron loved me. It did not help, and now it stirred not sadness in his heart but a bitterness, now not for what Sauron had done to his city, to Eregion, to the world, but what he had done to himself, how he had destroyed the person that Celebrimbor had loved.
Celebrimbor had many memories of Sauron, and most of them good, and they bubbled up inside him. They had known each other for over three great years, and most of that time as friends, colleagues. It was together that they had reached the heights of their art. What Sauron had done at the end did not mean that their friendship had been false; he had seen inside Sauron's mind, or whatever passed as such among the Ainur, and knew it to be real. What had happened could not be undone, murder and conquest and the great evils committed against the world and those who lived in it. But neither could be undone the friendship that had grown between them, Celebrimbor and the lieutenant of Morgoth.
He will always be someone who killed me, he thought. He will always be someone who was my friend.
He owed Sauron nothing beyond condemnation and yet gave him secrecy, and did not speak to anyone of the broken creature he had found amidst the spiders.
He could not stop thinking of him.
Author's Notes:
Avathar, the land where Ungoliant lived before she ate the Trees, is modeled after late-Devonian forests.
The unfamiliar words are either from Tolkien's conlangs or a conlanged Vanyarin language of mine that the Vanyarin characters speak.
Conlang translations below:
Ashtandiri - a Vanyarin cult devoted to Este. The name comes from standard Q Estenduri, or servants of Este (called Ashta here). Pronounced [aʃtaˌndiɾi]
Ingalyatta - Ungoliant. Pronounced [iŋgaʎaˌt:a]
Ivanna - Yavanna. Pronounced [iˌvan:a]
Arama - Orome. Pronounced [ˌaɾama]
Chalharikker - Celebrimbor. Pronounced [ʧaɬaɾiˌk:eɾ]
Tauzhalya - "people of the heights," from Standard Q tárielie. The Vanyarin sub-group that most of the Ashtandiri come from. The language they speak is Tauzhalamba. Pronounced [ta͡uʒaˌʎa] and [ta͡uʒalaˌmba]
Tolkien's conlangs:
Sad-na-Ngendaich - "place of stony-bones," a made-up fossil assemblage in the Emyn Uial, which itself is a set of low mountains/high hills near Nenuial.
Amuntesáne - 'dawn-pine.' An Archaeopteris, the first truly tall tree. The plural is amuntesáni.
Arda Hastaina - Arda Marred.
Hastale - marring
Hastaina helme, rákinar véri. Arda Alahasta sí vanwa. Nai envinyatuvalves. - "Friendship marred, bonds broken. Arda Unmarred is now lost. May we renew it." Arda Alahasta seems to refer to Arda as it was before the fall; Arda Envinyanta as the world renewed or healed. Theoretically these lines are in Quenya since Celebrimbor and Rodhiniel are speaking in Sindarin and it's the usual language he thinks in, but mostly it's self-indulgence.
Anda-Falas is a non-canonical town that I had Celebrían build after she arrived in Valinor; it's on Tol Eressea. (There is an Andafalasse, the Quenya form of the more common Anfalas, but that's a region in Gondor.) The name means "long-beach" and its beach is used as an airplane runway, the Elves in my head-canon having invented air travel.
Tyelpe - a non-canonical nickname for Celebrimbor, from Tyelperinquar, one possible version of Celebrimbor's name in Quenya.
Great year, long year - the English translations I'm using for Quenya yén (pl. yéni). A period of 144 years. The Elves appear to use this to divide time rather than our century.
