Chapter 52: Hyellë-Vírin

Chapter Text

Thank you to my brilliant beta, Anarithilien.

Also to the many many people leaving comments, reviews and kudos. Keekercat (keep sending those pics please) Golden, chasingbluefish, Pame, Starfox 5000, samui, LayneWolf, twinjay, (we have passed the 1000 comments on Archive and are on almost 10000 hits On Faerie, my dear friends, Narya, Naledi, Gabriel and Spiced Wine, and on ffnet my dear friends Freddie, Raider-K, nako, Alanic, Mirrodance, Nelya, SparkyTAs, Melusine. Thank you all.

Apologies this has taken so long- was trying to work out what the Three were up to- now I know!

Alarca: like code, the Rings are most like micro-computers packed with a technology that we don't have.

Astra: atoms

Helyanwë: the spectrum

Hyellë: Glass, but the Glass that the Mirror is made of.

Hyellë-Vírin: the Three's name for themselves

Ilwenta: The light splitting into pencil beams of light is the copper-plate test in Quantum Physics

Lia: threads

Óromardë-Curvë: The High Hall of Knowledge. This was the hall in which Erestor and Glorfindel found the other surviving Mirror in Through a Glass Darkly, set in Phellanthir.

Ontanë: the Three's name for Celebrimbor, meaning Creator or Origin.

Tunmalómë: dark power (i.e.: dark matter/dark energy)

Tyelpë: Familiar form of Celebrimor's name.

Vasar: veil (surface of the Glass) that quantum mechanics uses to show how particles do not behave as expected. (short version!) I have no doubt that Annatar would have been able to show Celebrimbor this. The copper sheen on the mirrors is a ME version of the experiment.

Yôzâira: Gift of Longing, the name the Nazgûl have used to Elrohir for Legolas. Here the Three are also using it.

CHAPTER 53: The Hyellë-Vírin

Between the Tower of Ecthelion and the King's Palace was the famed Great Library of Minas Tirith. It was here that Gandalf had come when he first suspected that the magic ring Bilbo had found in the Misty Mountains was indeed Ash Nazg.

Now Brinan Tarinhir, the King's chief archivist, walked slowly between the neatly stacked shelves, dust motes floating in the still and silent air on sunbeams that came through the high leaded windows of the library. The oak floor was carpeted with thick silk rugs, from Far Harad it was said, that muffled all sound. Only the soothing ruffle of a page turned occasionally or the scratching of a pen on parchment disturbed the peace.

With Brinan was Elrond, the Lord of Imladris. His silk robes surrused as they walked past the single scholar, Idhren, who lifted his eyes briefly, but his gaze was elsewhere, far away in Time and Place, dreaming of long ago Beleriand, Brinan knew, for this particular scholar was a man obsessed. Amusement flickered through him briefly that here, beside Brinan, was a living memory of all those distant times and places, and yet Idhren had not even noticed. But Brinan was a little relieved to be honest for the great and wise Lord Elrond was getting fractionally impatient and quickly, he turned his attention back to his companion. The Elf lord's calm grey eyes which had been so serene when he first appeared, were narrow and intent now, insistent. It had been an hour only, and Brinan was becoming agitated for the elf-lord insisted that here in the library was a book that Brinan knew did not exist.

Brinan had had his clerks running up and down ladders to the topmost shelves, and scurrying and groveling amongst the dusty scrolls beneath shelves and in carved wooden boxes. Brinan himself had carefully consulted his meticulous catalogue and found nothing that met Elrond's description; if such a book existed, Brinan would have known and had his hand upon it in an instant.

'Perhaps what you seek is not here,' the librarian asked mildly.

'No,' the lord said again, scanning the high shelves and titles of this fifteenth row of books. It was the third time they had searched this row. 'I know it is here.'

'My lord, something from Eregion, you say?' Brinan said and he prided himself upon his perfect pronunciation. 'Ost-in-Edhel no less. I promise you, I would know if such a precious work were here.'

Not for the first time the Lord Elrond had turned a steely eye upon him in spite of the gracious smile and patient voice. 'And I promise you, that it is HERE.' Elrond seemed suddenly rather imposing and Brinan remembered the stories of Beleriand, how Elrond had been kidnapped by the terrible, mad sons of the disgraced Fëanor, how the man beside him had led the Last Alliance as the Herald of Gil-Galad, which meant he had ridden alone to the Black Gate and demanded treaty with Sauron. That he had accompanied Isildur to the depths of Mount Doom and been denied. Brinan swallowed and wondered what manner of Man Isildur had been to refuse Elrond.

'It must be hidden,' Elrond said, turning impatiently, and his sharp grey eyes darted around and up and back the way they had come to the long, long rows, the high, beautifully kept shelves. 'Is this really all there is?'

'My lord, you have seen everything.' The librarian said more humbly. 'There is the archive of course, but that is just full of old useless texts. Mostly from the time of the steward, Pelendur, a rather dull period.'

But Elrond turned to him, a gleam in his eyes. 'Archive? Yes. Of course. Where is it?'

'This way. I am sorry I did not think of it before, my lord.' Brinan gave a short relieved laugh and led the great man towards the small, arched doorway that was half hidden by the curling stone staircase that led to the upper story. They had only just descended the same staircase from the section on Second Age history and Brinan shook his head at himself for his stupidity in not suggesting the archive before now, but somehow his mind had slid over it, as if a glamour were cast.

He showed the lord into the small, cramped rooms that were the archive. Here, in the deep archives beneath the library it was darker, and the books, scrolls and maps were dusty with neglect and forgotten. It smelled slightly musty and the daylight that filtered through the high, narrow window was faint and thin, more cellar than library.

Brinan led Elrond over the threshold, the stone step worn thin with the thousands of feet over the ages, for this is where the library itself had begun. Elrond's eyes were alight with interest and his gaze darted over the dusty tomes and scrolls and books hither and thither.

'You can leave me now,' he told the librarian rather brusquely. 'You have helped me enough and I know that what I seek is in here. Thank you.'

Brinan hesitated. He could not deny his curiosity and opened his mouth to speak, to ask if he could not be of further help, but the Elf-lord turned a gaze of fierce possessiveness upon him and Brinan positively quailed.

'I will leave you then, my lord. Please, call me if I can help.' He bowed and, stumbling against the threshold, he backed out quickly. Later he thought it was like an encounter with a mountain lion, the suppressed violence, the sense that with one swipe Elrond could have killed him. He was not the only one to feel overwhelmed by the presence of the legends that they found in their city, as if the Gods had descended and walked amongst them. Leaning against the wall for a moment, he breathed hard, feeling like he had escaped.

He frowned slightly for it seemed to him that a voice like the wind, great gusts of storm at sea, seemed to speak: Here….Here…It is here!

The voice pulled at him, tugging him forwards so he clutched at the wall to resist, but he heard Elrond moving things in haste as if he were following the insistence of the voice too.

And then it stopped and there was a scraping of wood on stone as something was moved, and then something else. Brinan bit his lip, wanting to go back in but the voice was in his head again, a breath so deep, so full of yearning that his heart filled with longing and he had to back away, for he could not bear it. Like a rush of wind, the salt tang of the Sea on his lips, the sound of the wind in sails. He cried out, and stumbled away.

-o-o-o-o

Inside the archive are millions of marks and words, scratched, etched, embossed on parchment and leather and vellum. Vilya rushes through them, her awareness skimming over them like a swallow over wheat fields, searching, scanning, lightly brushing for the familiar signal in the magnetic fields that pulls her towards this place. Ontanë's signature is here, somewhere…and then she feels it, the familiar pull of energy in her own being.

There! It catches her in its forcefield. Vilya brushes over the words and marks lightly, trembling with excitement.

It is here! Ontanë!

Ontanë is here!

She feels her sisters' voices reach up and join hers, arcing light and energy through the thick stone that was as nothing to their power. Their triumph ululates through the darkening skies and flings energy out to the distant stars.

Joyelationglory! We have found him! We have found Ontanë!

This time it is different. This time Khamûl will not stop us. This time he will not destroy the Hyellë. He will not release the Beast of the World. This time the Yôzâira comes. Perhaps this time, he does not die.

Nenya surges about her Queen, Artanis, who lifts her head slowly, searching for Vilya. It is she who will see it done. They know and fill her heart with longing for her child and love and exhilaration so that her quick and agile mind speeds to the Hyellë, knows what is needed and awaits the instruction that Elrond now has in his possession.

0o0o

On the top of a stack of dusty books piled carelessly in a dim corner of the Archive, a book had been left open as if someone had been reading it and been called away, never to return. Or suddenly interrupted. A stain like rust blotted the open page…

Carefully Elrond lifted it from the pile, one finger marking the page and, heart pounding with excitement and loss, he turned to the cover. Dust lay thickly upon it and he wiped the blood-red leather to see its maker's mark, a single Tengwar mark, Calma and above it, Feänor's star. Sarmë Teúcaremmar Telperinquar it read.

His heart thumped in his chest. Seeing the flowing, elegant script of Celebrimbor's own hand plunged him back in time so he did not see the thin sunlight filter through the narrow window high up in the thick stone wall, or the dust motes that floated in the air. He was seeing another time, another place, long ago in Lindon, when Gil-Galad had been High King and his cousin, Celebrimbor had presented himself in a manner that only a Feänorian could, as Elrond knew all too well and the mannerisms and physical similarity to his beloved, long lost foster father was both a joy and cause of pain.

Celebrimbor had sought him out later.

'Elrond Maglorion,' Elrond had said defiantly in response to Celebrimbor's careful greeting. A blazing smile had flashed over the austerely handsome face that was so like Maedhros' that Elrond caught his breath.

Vilya tugged at him, dragging him back to the present, the book. Here was the Feänorian heresy, the secrets and the forbidden knowledge of Celebrimbor, hidden long years in the deep archives of the White City. Vilya vibrated with trembling excitement and Elrond saw that she had long known of this book and that it had been lost for long years.

Stolen, she whispered. Taken. Hidden so the knowledge was lost.

Elrond had no doubt that the rust-coloured mark on the page was old blood, but whose? For someone must have taken this book with them before the sack of the city, for not a single soul survived once Sauron's forces had arrayed at the city perimeter. Perhaps the book had been on its way to the southern havens and the Sea? How it came to be here in the deep archives of Minas Tirith Elrond had no idea. And Vilya was still now, quiescent on his hand, but she was waiting.

His hands brushed over the red leather cover and turned back to the page that had been open, reverently, carefully, for the book was very, very old and the pages light, the ink faded to sepia. He read:

'…See how the mechanism is unlocked by the Hyellë-Vírin…'

There was an illustration that was unmistakably, the Mirror.

He had found it. A shock trembled through him, realisation that he had stumbled upon the secrets of the Mirror. That he could unlock the mechanism that it so clearly was, to the Dark. Until now, Galadriel's ambition had been merely that. Now suddenly, it was a possibility.

Vilya's light poured over the pages and something happened; lines of coloured light struck out from the book like structures, spread and built, constructed an arena of light in which Elrond stood astonished. Immediately in front of him the air trembled and flickered as if something disturbed it and there appeared a form, which resolved into a figure, tall, broad-shouldered, long bronze hair pulled back into the high tail of the warrior. At first, the face was indistinguishable but that proud carriage, the line of his stance was so familiar that Elrond gasped in shock and grief.

'Tyelpë!' Elrond staggered forward, unbelieving, unbearably hoping. Was this his cousin returned somehow from the dead?

He reached out but his hand passed through the image and with crushing disbelief he saw that it was only an image, somehow, amazingly, constructed from the beams of light emitting from the pages of the book.

'Are you here? Are you speaking to me from Mandos? Surely this is not possible!' Elrond gasped, clutching the edge of the book with bitter grief.

The image flickered, faded.

'No! Don't leave me!' Elrond reached out with Vilya and the image suddenly strengthened and there was Celebrimbor, looking straight at him, his eyes fixed upon Elrond as if he actually saw him, one hand extended as if to demonstrate something.

'…and so it is that tumnalómë itself is…somehow engaged by the Hyellë-vírin…' It was Celebrimbor's own voice Elrond heard with astonishment. Brilliant, wonderful Tyelpë! He wondered if it was Vilya who had unlocked this.

'…Much as the Palantri, my grandfather's prototypes, do,' Celebrimbor's image was saying and Elrond had to force himself to attend for he was so distracted by the mere sound of his old friend's rich voice.

Celebrimbor turned and gestured towards something that was at first hidden and then became clear. His voice faded suddenly and the image flickered but something else was happening around him. Elrond stared. Suddenly the images whirled and magnified, light beams shot across the cramped room, lit up the stacked scrolls and books and lost tales. But then something strange happened: the light seemed to solidify around him, expand and Elrond found himself actually standing in the great Óromardë-curvë of Phellenthir, its tall bronze-encased Mirrors lined the hall, the copper coating on each one glowed golden.

'These Hyellë are the same material as the Palantri, but thinner and so the Vasar itself is thinner,' Celebrimbor was saying.

Vasar? thought Elrond. Veil. The 'veil' is thinner in the Glass than in the Palantri?

But just then Celebrimbor turned back, his mouth crooked up in a lop-sided, impossibly smug grin that Elrond remembered so well when he had done something others thought impossible. It hurt unbearably to see it.

Sudden light glinted and Elrond saw that upon Celebrimbor's hand he wore all Three Rings. Light cut across them and as if ignited by the light, waves of energy and light exploded from the Rings and leapt from one mirror to the next, a cascade of particles lit blue and red and white from the Three and then united into one stream of diamond-white light, which seemed, not to bounce off the Mirrors, but be absorbed, somehow. And then quite suddenly, the whole Hall was filled with colour, vertical bars of blushing pink, deep amber-red, rich golden-yellow like the setting sun, jade-green, azure, indigo-violet.

Elrond remembered the same thing happening the last time he had seen Celebrimbor. He had been there, in the high hall, this inner temple, and the light had filtered through prisms of glass. It had had this strange effect on light so as to split it into vertical bars of colour. Celebrimbor had talked about this endlessly; he said it was important why the light spilt into bars, why it did not simply split into the spectrum, the helyanwë, how it could be understood. He had wanted to harness it somehow as Fëanor had done with the Palantri.

It seemed that he had been successful.

Celebrimbor's image flickered and Vilya poured her own energy into the book and the image glimmered and became strong once more. 'But this is not the wonder,' Celebrimbor's voice continued. 'This is merely Ilweranta. The colours are simply a manifestation of the wonder I have discovered.'

Celebrimbor held out his hand as if Elrond and he were present and merely passing the time of day, and Elrond could not help but reach out and Vilya leaned yearning towards the extended hand upon which her own image gleamed. Less advanced people would call it magic, thought Elrond.

'…the light energy astra can be divided in this way, with the greatest intensity achieved by focusing the astra here,' Celebrimbor said, and then he sketched in the air and a series of numbers and symbols in a complex equation appeared as if he wrote in chalk upon a board. The numbers glittered and hung in the air like stars. Elrond narrowed his eyes to catch the numbers and as he absorbed their meaning, his mouth opened slightly as he realised the import of what Celebrimbor was suggesting.

'No…it cannot be…'

Celebrimbor's image smiled as if he knew. Then he sketched more notation in the air and Elrond watched closely, frowning, wondering if Celebrimbor could truly be right.

'The difficulty has been applying this to transparent materials, which leads me to my new invention, the Hyellë.'

Hyellë. The Glass, thought Elrond. And the Hyellë-Vírin is his name for the Three. A collective. Singular, not plural. They were, as Elrond had suspected, one single mechanism of which there were three parts. Separately they were powerful but together, united in one purpose, they were unimaginable. Capable of all that Galadriel envisaged.

Not for the first time, Elrond hesitated, the huge significance of what she proposed was overwhelming. Then it had seemed huge, significant, but only vaguely possible. But now with the reality of what Celebrimbor said he had achieved, Elrond was afraid.

'And so we come to the Vírin,' Celebrimbor said and laid one hand proudly over the Three that gleamed on his own hand. Narya's crimson fire suffused the light around Celebrimbor, and then shot through with diamond white and blue. 'Where the Palantri are densely packed astra that use alarca to engage with tumnalómë, the Hyellë are less dense, the particles more widely distributed so in truth the Palantri are rudimentary. They can only open Space. The Hyellë contain Space and Time. The Hyellë-Vírin can unlock both, unravel all those lia, those threads.'

Something shifted in his understanding then although he did not have the words to articulate it, and his mind only grasped at what Celebrimbor was explaining. But he understood that somehow Vilya, his own Vilya, was amplified by the other Vilya. Somehow her power had intensified and deepened by being in the presence of Celebrimbor's Vilya. Because at this moment, Vilya existed both now and in his present, and in the moment of the Past captured by Celebrimbor. At the same time. It was not merely a record, like a painting, he realised: Celebrimbor's Vilya actually existed in this moment too.

He grappled with understanding, thinking of Galadriel's Mirror, lesser than the Great Hyellë, but nonetheless powerful indeed. For in Galadriel's Mirror could be seen Past, Present and all the futures. All the Pasts. All the Presents.

If the Three together were so powerful, Elrond wondered what would they be if they connected with their own selves in the Past and future. And not just a fixed point in the past, but EVERY point in the past. And suddenly he understood why it was a Hall of Mirrors, not only for the light experiment, and because the Vasra was thinner in this material, but because of the amplification that was possible for the Hyellë-Vírin.

Was it enough to defeat Morgoth? Was this the Dagor Dagoreth?

Elrond was suddenly very afraid. Abruptly he slammed the book shut and leaned on it as if he might lock away the knowledge he now had, as if he might forget everything he had learned. After all, it had not saved Celebrimbor. Had he attempted to turn back time and failed? Had he tried to free Maedhros and it gone wrong?

But Vilya turned her attention to Elrond then as she felt his hesitation. A force so strong, too intense, wrapped about him, like an Oath that the Three had sworn, to fulfill their creator's dream of unlocking the Glass and opening the portals of Time. He was propelled outwards, and found himself striding purposefully towards the Tower of Ecthelion, where the Glass was.

0o0o

The Hyellë-Vírin swirl and entwine and interface. Alarca buzz and pop. Calculations, numbers, whizz through the long tendrils they wind about each other. Equations, long, complex. They unravel.

They know where they are going, what they are doing now. This time it is different, they tell themselves. This time, Khamûl will not escape. This time we will seize Aícanaro first, before he can destroy everything, before he can release the storm, the violence and destruction that lurks within. This time Yôzaîra's coming may be in time. Maybe this time he will not be too early, too late? Maybe this time, he will survive? Maybe this time… This time…This time…

Aícanaro, a single force of astra that alone can break the Hyellë. In this, Aícanaro is their enemy. And they dare not destroy Aícanaro for it has been foretold that Aícanaro would destroy Morgoth.

This time, they tell themselves, the Hyellë will not break. This time, the Vírin WILL unravel the threads of Time and Space, put everything right, release the kindred of Ontanë as he desired, bring back Ontanë as they yearned for.

Nenya moves first. She is inexorable. And when impediments move to intercept her, she simply removes all thought from their minds and leaves them standing numbly as she passes, like a dream. And when she has gone, they still stand staring, unseeing, unthinking. Until they blink and look about in confusion.

The Hyellë-Vírin swirl about each other, calculating, evaluating, assessing, quantifying the risk…Nenya is with the Hyellë, Vilya has the Sarmë Teúcaremmar. Narya must guard them against Aícanaro, against Khamûl who will try to stop them.

0o0o0o

At the back of the cell, the dim light that filtered through the narrow arrow slit fell upon the dull surface of the Glass. So ordinary it appeared, and were it not for the fine bronze etching on the frame, so clearly Celebrimbor's hand, it would be nothing.

And Galadriel's face appeared in it. Thin and pale, paler than her wont. Her hair was flat against her skull and her eyes were dark and lusterless. She looked ill and her hand went to her cheek instinctively. But her own Mirror showed her True Self often enough that the shock disappeared quickly and she shook her head and moved back, away from the immediate orbit of the Glass.

Her presence in the Mirror was like a pebble dropped into the Dark, a ripple growing outwards from the Mirror itself. Something was moving in the Dark. Far away. Leviathan, monumental awareness had already fallen upon the faint glow of daylight. Insignificant except that it was light in this deep, eternal immeasurable Dark.

Nenya fell about her like a cloak, hiding her.

Bring Aícanaro that we have him safe, his dark sorcerous magic must be quelled, his teeth pulled until we have need of him. Khamûl destroyed.

Whatever the cost, whatever the sacrifice.

Galadriel turned slightly so that her white silk dress turned about her and pooled at her feet, her long hair gleamed in the weak sunlight that penetrated the Tower's long slitted windows. She awaited Mithrandir, and Elrond who she knew had found the secrets of the Glass. She waited for Narya and Vilya. She was Nenya. Nenya was she. There was no difference between them now and all her purpose was that of the Three.

A thrill of fire lit the edges of the sky, not lightning but something more controlled. Something that had been leashed to the Will of the Bearer. That was Narya. Her Power was of Fire, of the cracking open of energy, and it was Vilya, Air, that ignited Narya, and as long as Vilya fed Narya, she would burn enough energy for Nenya to wield with her forensic light, so the Hyellë would yield, open and then… oh, then, the multiple possibilities of Time would start to unravel and she, Galadriel, would wield Power undreamt of even by Feanor himself. Her lips parted in an ecstasy and her eyes were blown wide with possibility.

So she waited for the Hyellë-Vírin and they hastened towards her.

0o0o0o

In the garden of the House of the Fellowship, the blackbird was singing cheerfully. Blossom had fallen from the apple tree and now fat little buds were swelling along its branches that would become apples in the Autumn. Pippin was regaling Gandalf with a long, rather improbable story about the benefits of pipeweed and Gandalf, happy to be beguiled, was nodding along encouragingly and grunting in the right places.

Frodo sat in a basket chair listening, with Lobelia curled contentedly on his lap. A slight smile was on his still wan little face but his cheeks were getting rounder and more hobbit-like. Merry was lying on his front on a check blanket nearby, his knees bent so his hairy feet swung to and fro as he picked the petals off a daisy.

'I am afraid to say that you have got that wrong, Pip,' said Merry, not looking up from his daisy. 'Longbottom Leaf IS very good, but there is another leaf even better.'

There was a cry of mild outrage from his companions but he looked up. 'Well you haven't even tried this. And when you do, I guarantee, you will declare it the King of Pipeweed. It's from Khand and I bought some when I went into the market with Legolas before he and Gimli went off on their camping trip. If you are very nice to me, I might let you have a puff of it later.'

'I might have already tried it,' Pippin confessed guiltily. 'I have….' He turned suddenly towards Gandalf alarmed. 'Gandalf?'

For the Wizard had suddenly put down his pipe and his face was terrible. Slowly he rose to his feet and the mantle of him as an old Man fell away like a robe to reveal who he truly was. White power shimmered in the air and his hair was long skeins of silk and floated about him as if he were submerged in water. His face, oh, his face was beautiful and wise and terrible with fear.

'Gandalf!' Frodo half rose, turning away with his hand in front of his face as if he sought to protect himself from the blinding light.

But the Wizard gathered his white robes about himself, veiling the truth of who he was, and he was just Gandalf again. But the fear had not left him.

Sam had just emerged from the house, tray in his hands laden with tea and toast and scones and cream and jam.

'I must go,' Gandalf said tersely and ignoring the Hobbits completely, he shucked up his robes over one arm and strode swiftly from the garden, skirting the wall of the house to the front gate and left it clanging back and forth as he burst into the city.

0o0o