Chapter 26: "A Gem of Clear, Green Glass."
Elrohir drew his cloak close as he stepped from his room. Though freed of his sickbed with his shoulder well on the mend, he had found the cold got into his bones more easily since his return from the Unseen that even the enchanted weave of Lórien could not dispel.
In the world beyond, winter was tightening its grip. Within Moria, it had already invaded. The light from the high windows sickened by mid-morning and vanished before the first stars emerged. When there were stars. The fire in the high hall burned the day long, and though the Dwarves kindled many a lamp, their flameless, unmoving glow did not warm.
He met Rammas on her way to the healing wing and asked for the loan of her lamp. She agreed though not without prevailing on him—again—to visit when he might.
Elrohir demurred. He would come as he was able or if anything changed. Haldir slept. He would not know his company or lack thereof nor would he thank them for neglecting their watchfulness. (A fact which had not deterred Rammas from all but taking up residence within his sickroom, nor the others from paying their respects over the past sennight).
This elicited a rather too-knowing look, but she gave over the lamp willingly enough.
Escaping swiftly into the high hall, he tried to ignore the prickle of her glance between his shoulder blades, the ember burning his gut that drove him far from that corridor of high white stone as if it were the bowels of Angband. Haldir lived, yes, but whether he would wake was no longer in their hands. If he did not—until he woke—there was work to be done. A company to order. A mysterious informer to find. An enemy to watch. And wringing hands at a bedside accomplished nothing save to burden one with grief before its time.
If only Calen had been free to accompany him and distract him with his usual barrage of questions and good cheer, but Angren had poached him to test the strength of his mending bones in the empty hall they had commandeered for training. The silgol had insisted on some resumption of routine, and Elrohir did not protest. He would join them later, once his task was done.
He set out past the high hall with its burning hearth; it was mostly empty this time of day. He had not seen their host again. Balin had been shut up with his counsellors the past few days.
Off the lord's council chambers, a flight of once-white steps rose up to a gallery he had taken note of yesterday. From floor to ceiling, it was carved in runes that gave the lamplight back in silver glints and shimmers. Ithildin. Beautifully rendered. Though the Dwarves were hardly likely to etch their shadowier dealings into their walls, Elrohir examined them anyway though at first fruitlessly for the runes were so ancient and faded or written in so archaic a mode, he could not read them. Only further down did they take on the familiar curves and angles of the cirth:
THRÓR, SON OF DÁIN I
2790
It was written in ornate gold instead of silver.
More runes followed: rank upon orderly rank of them, marching down the east end of the gallery, curving away into darkness. Like the white trees encircling Cerin Amroth.
Halfway down, Elrohir traced the edges of FLÓI, ORC-SLAYER, 2989 with a forefinger. Arms clashed. Battle cries rang out, echoing dimly. Khazad ai-menu! Then a piercing pain behind the shoulder.
"I had always heard the warrior sons of Elrond preferred a blade to more scholarly pursuits," said a voice behind him. "But, perhaps, the tales misspoke."
Elrohir snatched his hand free of the stone's record of sorrow. They had not been forbidden to explore, precisely, only cautioned against venturing too far beyond the watch-lamps for there. Walls still needed shoring, roofs repair, even in the Twenty-First Hall.
"Forgive me, Master Ori. I meant no trespass."
Only Elrohir's long lessons in diplomacy and statecraft had prevented him gaping openly when he had first seen Ori without his helm. They had met only once and then briefly while Ori and the rest of Thorin Oakenshield's companions had been guests in his own father's halls while on their quest to roust a dragon and retrieve the jewel of their fathers. The Dwarf he had met then had been young, merry, and possessed of a rich and glowing chestnut beard almost to his belt buckle.
Now, Ori's cheeks and chin were naked, patchy scraps clinging either side of his jaw all that remained. Lines traced finely down either side of his revealed mouth, and his eyes though still twinkling lacked some of their former luster. How a span of mere decades could so utterly alter face and form, Elrohir still struggled to fathom though he had more dealings than most with mortal folk.
"There is none, Master Elrohir," Ori returned with a smile that at least retained its old brightness. "You do them honor. More ought to remember our fallen."
A grunt behind him suggested his graciousness was not shared by all. Lurking at his shoulder, as always, stood the glowering form of Frár. The Dwarf captain had not warmed to the elvish company in the slightest since accosting them on the doorstep though Elrohir had treated him with nothing but courtesy. And stayed out of his way.
"Permit me to congratulate you on your recovery, my lord," Ori said with a slight bow. "I trust the accommodations have been to your liking?"
"Thank you. We have been afforded every comfort—more than many of us have known even at home. Let it never be said Dwarves are grasping or ungracious hosts!"
"And your comrade?" Ori asked though his gaze remained on the far end of the gallery as if he were listening hard for a sound far away or deep under the earth. "How does he fare?"
"The same." Eager to steer the conversation from the subject of grief, he went on, "The magnificence of your dwellings defy song. I daresay even our minstrels in the Hall of Fire would struggle to find words. My own woeful tale-telling will fall utterly short."
"Ha! And you have seen little but our larder and council chambers. Follow me, and I will show you something worthy of such flattery."
So readily presented an opportunity could hardly be dismissed. Elrohir followed Ori down a cross-corridor. Frár murmured something in their tongue to which Ori replied with an impatient flick of his fingers. What need Ori had of such a shadow in his own halls? Or, perhaps, Frár was meant to ensure his silence?
"I am attempting to write a history of our folk in these halls," Ori said over his shoulder to Elrohir, but the glint in his eye was for Frár. "We may labor in the dark, but our struggles, our victories should not be left forever there too. Nor those who had a hand in its making."
He paused at the turn of the corridor, almost absentmindedly, and stroked a name there in the corner, the carving so fresh, swarf remained in some of the letters' grooves.
OÍN, SON OF GRÓIN
2994
"There is greatness as well as grief," Ori said. But the grief lingered still for any to see. Elrohir did not pry. Such sorrows ought remain one's own, not for a stranger's curiosity.
Ori shook himself free of the carven letters and beckoned Elrohir on.
From his belt Frár withdrew a small, silver key and twisted it into a join in the wall. Runes flared bright in the shape of a door, smaller than Elrohir had come to expect, then the stone slab sank backward through a gap, revealing an inner chamber. He expected a rush of dust and dimness, the mustiness of age, yet the air lay light and sweet against his face.
"You are the first of your folk to walk here since the days of Eregion," Ori said, gesturing for Elrohir to precede him.
The room was larger than its little door revealed. Dim, but not dark.
Morning streamed though an oculus in the roof high above and lit upon the waters of a softly trilling fountain. In niches along the rounded walls, helms and breastplates stood upright, awaiting the call to arms, even if the spears they held wanted sharpening or some of the axe-blades were chipped. Piled high about the room were wooden chests, some open, unveiling circlets, brooches, torcs, coins. Pearl. Beryl. Adamant. Emerald. Diamond. The light fractured in soft, jeweled tones. Oddly out of place amongst the rest, an axe-blade, its handle broken off a fingers-length below the shoulder, rested on a dusty velvet pillow near the chamber's heart.
For all its ancient pageantry and undoubtable wealth though, the gilt adorning many of the chests had peeled in places. The marble underfoot was worn and scuffed. Damp had bleached the tapestries and banners hanging from the pillars, blurring the images of Durin the Deathless. The whole bespoke former grandeur gone to seed; the dearest treasures squirreled away tight as a nut in its shell against further loss.
Ori led the way towards the fountain. "This may interest you. We have not seen its like since friendship still stood between our folk and the Elves of Eregion—the Noldor do not make such anymore. I suspect it was crafted by Celebrimbor himself. The artifice he used is quite distinct—"
Beside the fountain stood a statue: an elf-woman rendered in lovely proportions of onyx, the style, indeed, of Eregion make. Her face, tilting over one shoulder, glowed where the light brushed it, and the little gems in the depths of her eyes and scattered diamonds amid her raiment twinkled and flashed as if, were the right tune played, she would leap from her seat and dance. Come and see, said her secret smile. She held one arm close against her girdle, the fingers outspread in a curling invitation.
And cradled in her palm was the Elessar.
The angle of the statue's hand permitted him the barest glimpse through its perfect clearness. The banner caught through its facets leaped with color and flame, every thread taut, the gilt a-gleam. No trace of damp or age.
The ground dropped beneath Elrohir's feet, dizziness swooping over him as if all the blood had been pulled from his head down to his heels. An involuntary noise escaped his throat, and his fingers half-rose, trembling. The last thing she had touched this side of the sea…What his comrades had died to defend…
He might have guessed: the strange lightness of heart, the freshened air when they had entered this closed room. A 'matter of great import and interest' to the Elves, Aragorn had said. How, even without his father's skill, he had plunged into the Unseen and found Haldir's fëa on the verge of the Qalvanda Road. Haldir himself had even scolded Rammas for mentioning Celebrimbor's jewel. The Elessar is as lost as your Silmarils.
Even Aragorn's missive at the Eyrie had told him outright of their pursuit without so many words:
Tracking the Sun in his galleon
Through the pathless firmament
Til his light grew old in abysses cold
And his eager flame was spent.
In other tellings of Eärendil's voyage, the gem the Mariner bore with him across the Bent Seas had been green before it was white.
I have been so blind.
"Marvelous isn't it?" Ori was saying, his voice hollow and distant. "A gem of clear green glass, one would think it. Thin and delicate as a rose petal, yet strong enough to hold the light of the spring Sun in its youth. I believe it is made of vírin, the secret of its making known only to those who learned the skill directly of Aulë or were graced with his favor. So rare its like can no longer be found in Middle-earth. Save here."
The Dwarf was watching him, a quiet, almost expectant, expression on his face a beard could no longer conceal.
"The Elessar has been lost for centuries." The light of it hurt Elrohir's eyes, but he did not look away. "How did you come by it?"
Frár thumped the handle of his axe on the floor. "It is a weregild, rightfully seized. Plunderers have no right to ill-gotten gains."
Plunderers?
"I thought that was why you had come, why you did not speak wholly of your errand to Balin," Ori said. "After all, you arrived in the company of the one we took it from."
Elrohir's lips were numb. Zuraz. "I sought only my foster brother."
"I'm surprised to find a son of Elrond embroiled in so black a business, in such company," said Ori, his face no longer so kindly.
The snap of a lock cut through the ringing in Elrohir's ears. Frár was standing before the treasury door, his axe drawn, the butt resting between his boots, his hands perched on the handle. An uneasy, prickling feeling tickled across Elrohir's nape. What unlucky fellow would choose to fasten the treasury door from the inside?
He had left his sword in his rooms out of respect for his hosts, even his arsigil. And though some of the statuary bore spear or axe, none lay within grasp. Ori had laid his trap well.
"I remember enough of our history to know the dangers of a locked treasury," he said, shifting his weight and line of sight so the fountain sang reassuringly at his back, and he could keep an eye on both the door, its armed guard, and Ori, who was watching him mournfully. "I am no thief. You need not fear for your treasures, however gotten."
Ori took a step forward, a hand raised placatingly. "We mean you no harm nor any of your companions. This is the only way we could speak freely."
"Forgive me for finding it difficult to listen to talk of freedom when your guard stands armed before a locked door." Elrohir stepped around Ori and strode back the length of the hall towards Frár. "Let me pass."
"A messenger has come," Ori called after him. "From Below."
Elrohir stopped cold.
"You must have made quite a nuisance of yourselves to Raguk. I have seldom seen such a high price proffered for a few lost travelers and a defector. What do you suppose Balin has been shut up in his chambers, debating these last days? All of it is talk of what to do with you. Our folk still remember the old grudges: some of them, the same that persuaded Balin to seize Moria in the first place, are now clamoring that we ought to appease Dol Guldur and give you over."
"He would evade one war with the Orcs and cause another with the Elves. Neither the Golden Wood nor Imladris would stand for that."
Ori snorted impatiently. "Of course not. Nor would Balin accept even a king's ransom if it meant harm to a guest. Particularly when the price would be paid out of our own coffers. But if we give them no answer by the dark moon, they will come for you. We are too few here to risk open war. I would not have what befell the Eyrie fall on us."
Elrohir shut his eyes. Ash and embers whirled across the black on the inside of his lids. With an effort, he faced Ori. "What would you suggest then?"
"Tomorrow is the Feast of Durin, and there will be merrymaking in the halls. Balin intends to take a trusted few and go down to Mirrormere to seek the guidance of our Fathers. If you meet me at the Chamber of Marzabul, I can get you out by secret ways. It will be a night of full moon, good for travel, once you reach the Gates."
"You would risk your kinsmen's lives and Dol Guldur's wrath for us. Why? We are strangers to you."
"A Dwarf pays his debts." Ori touched his chin, flinched, and lowered his hand to his side. He stooped beside the fountain where it fell into a pool lined in more silver runes. Though the morning sky shone bright above, it betrayed not so much as a glimmer from its depths.
"May I ask something of you?"
"Name it."
"I have heard it said that the Lady of the Wood is gifted with foresight, that in still waters she sees things past, present, or yet to come." Ori gazed into the depths of the pool as if he would read the water's secrets. "I wondered if her kinsman might share in her gift. If you might look and see what will become of our great undertaking."
'Undertaking' had an undertone of 'folly' beneath it.
"If you had asked for the sword of my knighthood, I would have given it and gladly. Anything but that." Elrohir joined Ori in the circle of sunlight but avoided the eye of the dark water, the shimmer of silver dancing across its surface. The chill deepened in his bones though it was not cold. "I fear such visions are not within my power. Nor would you wish to see what I could show."
Ori nodded as if he had expected as much.
Frár drew out his silver key and unlocked the door.
Notes
On vírin
From the Book of Lost Tales: Part 1
"Aulë …called… to him certain of those Eldar of his household who were of the Noldoli of old and had consorted with the jewel-makers. Now these revealed to him much store of crystals and delicate glasses that Fëanor and his sons had laid up in secret places…and with the aid of those Elves and of Varda of the stars…he brought to being a substance thin as a petal of a rose, clear as the most transparent elfin glass, and very smooth, yet might Aulë of his skill bend it and fashion it, and naming it he called it vírin."