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They had discussed it, early on, when Annatar had first taught him of a way to imbue power into objects of pure enough make, a way to trap magic into metal.
“Something elegant, symbolic would be appropriate. A crown, or a necklace, for example.”
Celebrimbor had thought of a shining carcanet about a delicate throat, thought of high halls and gleaming caverns drowned in blood and scorched in flame, thought of terrible light set in pale gold, set in black iron.
“No. Not a necklace. Nor a crown, either.”
Annatar had watched him, a knowing look in his eye. “Perhaps, then, something less… ostentatious?”
This plan of theirs, an attempt to bring glory to all the lands of Middle-earth, to bring peace, he knew it had to be handled carefully. Many of the realms of Men mistrusted still the power of the Elves, and as for the Eldar themselves- well. They had long memories.
Celebrimbor had wanted their gifts to the world to be unmistakeable symbols of friendship. Unity, even. A demonstration of faithfulness.
“Such is the nature of the bonds that tie us to each other. None of us are ever truly free, not while we still bear love in our hearts. It is our duty to forsake them not, no matter how dark the road may become. No matter how dark its end.”
The words of a long-dead king. The last ones Celebrimbor had ever heard him speak.
He thought of promises made and oaths kept. Of endings and beginnings.
“Rings,” he had said. “Let us make rings.”
Annatar had smiled slowly. “A most apt choice. Rings it shall be.”
○
He finds it is the smaller betrayals that seem to cut the deepest. He remembers all the shared moments, the confessed secrets, the quiet intimacies. How he must have laughed at me. What a fool I was, for thinking –
It is a conscious effort, every time, to keep from sinking into the spirals of despair that threaten to swallow him whole. War is coming, there is work to be done, preparations to be made. He cannot afford to wallow in self-pity, cannot allow his people to see him brought so low. The betrayal has hit all of them hard, they do not deserve to be failed by yet another that they look to for leadership.
Yet still, he cannot stop the dreams. The dreams are the worst of all. In them, Annatar is always there, smiling, reaching out to take his hand, embracing him. Sometimes they are on the streets of Ost-in-Edhil, walking together under a darkened sky, those amber eyes glimmering in the starlight. Sometimes they are in the forge - working on some project that is a muddied combination of past works and the new, fevered imaginings of his unconscious mind - perhaps laughing over a shared joke. Sometimes they are in bed, bodies pressed so close it is as if they strive to become a single being. In all of them, he is content.
He never remembers until after he wakes.
He knows, in a quiet, yet entirely absolute sort of way, that repairing his mistake will cost him his life, and more. In truth, Celebrimbor, or at least a greater part of him (the best parts, he thinks, the parts that might have mattered), ended the moment he finally understood what had been done. The moment he realised the magnitude of his error, the depths of evil wrought by his own hand. The moment blind confusion, then terrified disbelief, unravelled into sickening comprehension, crumbling, sliding, tipping him into the bottomless chasm that had always been waiting beneath the perfectly crafted illusion, now laid bare.
(He had never stopped falling.)
The agony of it had been obliterating, collapsing him to his very foundations. It was a vanquishing flood. A cleansing flame.
Celebrimbor had thought he understood hatred. He had thought he knew rage.
He had thought many things.
Distantly, as though through a great fog, as if from another life, he remembers. Eyes like stars in a face so like his own, twisted by madness into something utterly beyond his comprehension, mere child as he had been.
(Shadow, and flame.)
Would he burn, too, he wonders, when the end finally came?
But, of course, he knows the answer. There is no kindling left to ignite. Celebrimbor has already burned.
Last of his bloodline. Alone. Accursed.
All he has left is destruction.
○
He knew his enemy would come after the Three. He would view their creation as betrayal. That Celebrimbor had dared to make them alone, without his supervision, dared to deviate from the methods he had been taught and attempt something new, something of his own. He had worried, at the time, that Annatar would be angry with him when he returned, angry for rushing ahead, taking risks, for not discussing it with him first, but he had been so excited, so caught up in his inspiration, knowing that he was on the cusp of creating something far greater than any of his works that had come before. He had hoped Annatar would understand that.
Celebrimbor had planned to gift Narya to him.
Simplest of the Three, yet no less elegant than the others, it was a solid band of gold set with the most perfect ruby in the Gwaith-i-Mírdain’s peerless collection. Once upon a time, in another land, another world, such a ring, worn on the right index finger, might have been considered the most princely of marriage bands. Indeed, long ago a prince of the Noldor had proudly born a ring of strikingly similar style, before he had torn it from his finger in rage and thrown it over the edge of a bloodstained ship into a restless, hungry sea.
Celebrimbor had not consciously intended to emulate it. In truth, there was probably little resemblance beyond the colouring. The details of his father’s wedding ring had long ago faded from his memory - just like the details of his mother’s face.
Galadriel is far, far kinder than he expects her to be. Far kinder than she ought to be.
Facing her again, after, is one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do. He very nearly turns and runs back out of the room as soon as he enters. There are no words to express the depths of his remorse, nothing he can say to excuse or justify himself, to make any of this seem better.
(There is no making this better.)
He will never be worthy of her forgiveness. Yet she gives it to him anyway.
“Tyelperinquar,” she says, quietly, when he has stared at her helplessly for countless minutes, trying and failing to speak, “there was no way you could have known. We all underestimated him.”
“If… if I had only listened to you, if I had sent him away –”
Galadriel sighs, sadly. “You were never going to do that Tyelpë, were you? I see that now. I thought you could not see the shadow in him that I did, that Artanáro did. I thought you blind to it. But you were not so blind, were you?”
Celebrimbor thinks of eyes like embers, flickering. A smile so perfect it could only have been designed to be so. A tale he had known from the start to be a lie. An emissary of the Valar, sent to help bring the glory of Aman to its exiles that remained in Middle-earth? Of course he had not believed it, Annatar had known he had not believed it.
(He had known.)
There had been darkness there, yes, Celebrimbor had seen it. And he had thought he recognised it, a cousin of the same darkness that hid in himself.
“You knew he was not who he seemed,” Galadriel continues, “and yet you chose to trust him anyway. Tyelpë – listen to me,” – for Celebrimbor has dropped his face into his palms at this – “I have had much time to reflect on this. You were right to do so. You were right to choose faith over suspicion. It is I who was blinded.”
Celebrimbor looks at her in some disbelief. “I have ruined us. My life’s work, my city, my people, all tainted. I will leave this world a worse place than I found it. It would have been better if -”
“Tyelperinquar,” she says, stern now. “I will not hear your self-pity. You must be strong. We all must be. We will face this, and we will overcome it. He is not yet beyond defeat.”
He gifts Nenya to her, then. He thinks, perhaps, it was always meant for her to bear. Mithril and adamant, gleaming like starlight reflected in clear water, arguably the most beautiful of the Three, she accepts it with sombre grace, harkening carefully to his warning to never put it on.
“He will be able to sense you if you do, perhaps wield his power through you. It is not worth the risk. But, perhaps,” if we succeed, once he is gone, he thinks but does not dare say, “perhaps one day you may find it of use.”
Celebrimbor knows he is for nothing but ruin now, but he senses Galadriel’s story is far from over. Whatever happens, she is built to endure.
At her suggestion he sends Vilya to the High King in Lindon. Ereinion is an old friend, drawn distant in recent years at what he now recognises as Annatar’s working. How foolish, how conceited he had been, to truly believe that the King was wary of the Lord of Eregion’s increasing power, feared that Celebrimbor might move to usurp him!
Celebrimbor had laughed at the idea, at the time, when Annatar had murmured it to him, equally amused, watching Ereinion’s stormy face distantly from across the feasting hall, on the High King’s last visit to Eregion. They had chuckled at the absurdity of it, at how the King must be succumbing to insecurity, to jealousy, now Ost-in-Edhil had grown to without doubt the greatest city of the Eldar east of the sea.
Now, he wonders how far he might have fallen, had Annatar thought it useful to push him.
So, he sends Vilya as a gift and a quiet apology for things left unsaid. Mightiest of the Three, bright and proud, sapphire and platinum, unarguably the adornment of a King. There is no small chance that Ereinion will refuse it, cast it into the sea or attempt to destroy it, and Celebrimbor decides that he will not argue with such a choice. The Ring of Air’s fate lies with the High King now, to do with as he will.
He keeps Narya for himself.
Even though he dares not put it on, he carries it with him always, a reminder of his greatest moment and his worst, all in one.
Every day the enemy’s forces creep closer. Without reinforcements, he knows there is no way the city will be able to withstand a direct attack. Soon, he thinks, soon, this will be over.
It is a tricky thing, then, when the armies halt mere miles from the city, when a message comes, telling him Ost-in-Edhil will be spared, telling him battle may yet be avoided, if Narya is only given up.
It is a trap, his old friend Erestor warns him, he will take the ring and then raze the city anyway, and Celebrimbor is inclined to agree. His enemy is not one to leave behind loose threads, and a free city of Noldor craftsmen, betrayal burning in their hearts, many of them veterans of ancient wars, is far more than just that.
And yet.
He also believes that his enemy is not one to take by force what might otherwise be given willingly. If there is even the smallest piece of Annatar left in him- if even a single moment in all those long centuries was real-
What a terrible choice, to weigh the certainty of losing Narya, of seeing it turned to ill ends, against the slim chance of his people’s survival.
And so he deliberates. Hesitates.
It is a surprise to them both, him and the enemy, when Elrond’s forces come, more even than he thought possible, and then he thinks perhaps just this once the Valar might have smiled on him. Perhaps, just this once, he will not have to choose.
Seeing the new threat, the enemy attacks without delay, and, one way or another, he senses that his reckoning draws close.
○
They tell him the battle is won. They tell him, my lord, Gorthaur has been captured alive. Celebrimbor had not seen it, surrounded as he was in the centre of the city, steeling himself to make his final stand, when the cries started to go out, among the darkly uniformed throngs of Orcs and Men, who scattered, terrified, like leaves in the wind, and among his own people, chasing after them, disbelieving, jubilant, pinning the last of the enemy’s forces between their blades and Elrond’s. For some reason, for him, the jubilation does not come. Despite their victory, despite achieving the goal he has pursued so single-mindedly, he cannot help but feel… hollow. Unfinished, like a piece of music missing that last resolving note.
It is not over yet.
(Will it ever be?)
Celebrimbor thinks he is prepared to face him again. He tells himself he will be firm, in control, he will not rage, he will not scream, he will not weep, he will not lay hands on his prisoner and hurt like some deep, monstrous thing inside him so desperately desires to. He is not sure he entirely convinces himself.
An old, disused workshop has been converted into a prison cell, heavy iron bars set across the door and six guards stationed outside. Celebrimbor is informed that the prisoner has been co-operative, has not resisted, yet the guards still look deeply uneasy at their assignment. He does not blame them. Even Annatar as he knew him would not have been subdued by a single barred door and six blades, much less the horror out of legend, the unspeakably cruel, shapeshifting lord of Tol-in-Gaurhoth himself. Either his power has become greatly diminished, or he is allowing himself to remain imprisoned.
One of the guards unbars the door while another hands him the heavy iron key, hand trembling.
The old wood creaks quietly as it swings open, and there, on the other side –
His hair, once a pale gold, now bleached to the white of ash. Of bone. His eyes seem more hollowed than Celebrimbor remembers, though they still glow like molten iron. And his face –
Celebrimbor cannot hide from the bolt of agony that shoots through him at seeing that familiar, once-beloved face again, like a white-hot spear thrust suddenly through his core, wrenching at his insides, drawing a pained gasp from his lips.
He knows he has already faltered, allowed the enemy to sense his weakness, the strength of the emotions he cannot quite master, and he braces himself for venomous mockery, cold spite. Braces himself to feel the strength of that dark and terrible hatred that now sits deep in his heart where affection once bloomed, reflected back at him.
Instead, the figure sat chained in the centre of his makeshift cell merely gazes up at him quietly, expression closed and unreadable. His head tilts ever so slightly to one side. A trickle of blood runs down his face from a wound high on his temple that stains a patch of his hair deep crimson.
“Hello, Celebrimbor.”
Celebrimbor exhales heavily, shuddering to hear his name in that soft, measured voice once again. This is not Annatar, he tries to remind himself. Annatar was never real. This is your enemy.
He closes the door behind him and squares his shoulders. “Gorthaur,” he says, and is relieved to hear his voice does not waver, “your armies are defeated. Your plans are in ruin. You have failed. You will be held here, now, until it is decided how best you should answer for your crimes against the free peoples of Middle-earth.”
The prisoner inclines his head slightly, an admission. “So I understand.” A ghost of a smile crosses his lips. “Well done, Tyelpë. It seems I underestimated you.” A flicker of golden eyes, dilated in the darkness of the room.
“I suppose you are here to ask me about the One?”
Glancing down, Celebrimbor notices, abruptly, and with a dispassionate sort of horror, that Annatar is missing his right hand. A makeshift bandage has been wrapped, somewhat carelessly, about the remains of his wrist, the fabric already soaked through with blood. They had told him, of course, that the enemy’s ring had been removed from his possession when he was taken prisoner, but Celebrimbor had not quite considered the manner in which this had been achieved until it was now staring him in the face.
Annatar notices him looking and raises his severed arm, the shackle around his opposite wrist clinking as he moves. “Your king’s herald’s work. Not his finest, I’m afraid to say. He made rather a mess of it.”
“You should be grateful he did not remove your head instead,” Celebrimbor replies, recovering himself, “as may yet be your fate.”
“Would you like that?” That smile again. “You do want me dead, don’t you, Celebrimbor?”
“I don’t know what I want,” Celebrimbor says before he can stop himself, only realising as he says it that it is true. Until a moment ago, he could have named his desire easily: death, both mine and his. Oblivion. An ending. But now?
Something cold seems to trickle down the back of his neck, an unpleasant shiver. He tries to ignore it.
Annatar hums thoughtfully in response, the corner of his mouth still turned upward. Blood is drying on his cheek. “Well, I am at your mercy here. Without my ring my power is greatly reduced, you see. I am powerless to escape, so you may as well reassure your guards. They all seem a little stressed.”
That is one explanation, certainly. Impossible to tell how much truth there is to it without understanding how, exactly, the One works. To create something capable of overpowering even the Three, it should not have been possible, not by Celebrimbor’s understanding of ring-lore. There must be so much Annatar never told him.
Clearing his throat, Celebrimbor turns to retrieve a plain wooden chair propped over a workbench in the corner of the room. He sets it down across from the prisoner, far enough to be safely out of reach but not so far as to appear intimidated; sits, carefully. He is not without his own injuries.
“Why should I believe you? There are many among us who say you are too dangerous to be allowed to live. It would be in your interest to have us believe that removing your ring has rendered you impotent.”
“In my interest it may be, but that does not make it untrue. Tell me, if I were capable of escaping, why would I not have done so already? Why would I not have reclaimed what is mine and fled in order to regroup with what remains of my forces?” Annatar folds his knees and rests his head on his remaining hand, still looking unconcerned at the situation he finds himself in, as if they are merely debating some contentious academic topic, or discussing how best to resolve a setback in their work. As if nothing has changed.
The dried blood cracks and smears.
“I have learned,” says Celebrimbor quietly, “not to make assumptions about what your intentions might be.”
At this, Annatar breaks into laughter that sounds genuine. “Fair enough! I suppose I deserve that.” He shifts to lean against the wall behind him. “Very well then,” he says, softer, still amused. “What must I do to convince you?”
Celebrimbor sighs, leaning back in the chair, mirroring Annatar’s posture, reaching into his pocket. Narya glints in his hand as he pulls it out, opening his palm and tilting it to display it to Annatar, whose gaze fixes on it the moment it becomes visible. He waits a moment, but the other makes no comment, no movement beyond the careful, slightly too regular blinking of his eyes. His face is, if possible, even more inscrutable than before.
“The Three were forged by my hand alone. Tell me how your ring can still have dominion over them. Tell me how I may undo such a spell.”
Annatar’s tongue swipes over his lower lip. He glances up through his eyelashes. “You weren’t supposed to make those you know, Tyelpë.”
Celebrimbor thinks that perhaps now the anger will come, at being presented with evidence of Celebrimbor’s failure to conform to his meticulous plans. He finds that he wants the anger to come. Wants Annatar to lose his composure, spring from the floor and attempt to wrest Narya from him. Craves the descent into violence, physicality, the abandonment of their thin pretence at civility.
Annatar still does not move. Watching. Celebrimbor clenches his jaw, knowing the other will be able to read his thoughts on his face as clearly as if he had spoken them aloud.
“Tell me,” Annatar murmurs, so quiet that Celebrimbor is forced to lean in closer to make out the words, “if our positions were reversed, if it were you chained here on the floor and I who asked you to disclose, under threat of death or worse, the secrets of your greatest creations. Would you give them to me?”
Celebrimbor doesn’t know. He wants to say, no, never, but as he sits there watching Annatar, rage and pain bubbling in his stomach, mixing, transmuting into something new, as Annatar watches him, gaze unflinching, his glib demeanour now replaced with a quiet intensity, he remembers a time he would have thought himself utterly incapable of ever collaborating with his greatest enemy. Of ever loving him.
And then, there it is - just when he thought the fall was over, just when he thought he knew the worst of himself, the most terrible realisation of them all. I love him still.
(I never stopped.)
(I love him. I want to rend him limb from limb. I want to see the helpless terror in his eyes before I tear them out. I want to obliterate him.
No.
I want to consume him.)
Celebrimbor no longer trusts himself to know what he is and is not capable of.
○
Elrond is waiting for him in the council chamber upstairs. He is pacing up and down, clutching a bundle of cloth in his hands, noticeably bloodstained. Celebrimbor doesn’t need to ask what it is. A little of the tension dissipates from his shoulders when he sees Celebrimbor in the doorway, as if the worst of his fears have been alleviated. He stills in his pacing, expectant, watching as Celebrimbor circles the table to stand across from him.
“Well? Is it- is the spell reversible? Can the ring’s power be dismantled?” Elrond’s hands, still gloved, twist around the soiled cloth, gripping it tighter.
“I am not yet sure,” Celebrimbor answers, truthfully. He extends his right hand. “May I?”
“You know I will tell you nothing”, Annatar had said. “Not freely, at least. I wonder, if your noble High King will authorise the use of torture to try and obtain the information you seek. Or will you even bother asking his permission? You were never one to let such obstacles impede you in the pursuit of knowledge, were you, Tyelpë?”
Elrond hesitates. Then he shakes his head, very slightly, as if to clear it, and places the bundle on the table, unwrapping it.
Annatar had not lied – it had been far from a clean cut. In fact, it looks like it had taken more than one blow to sever the hand, shards of bone peeking out from the jagged remains of the wrist and yet more fragments littering the inside of the cloth. The skin is already grey, lifeless, the fingers stiff. Celebrimbor remembers what they had once felt like entwined with his. He wishes he had been the one to sever them.
And there it is, caked in dried blood yet still glinting slightly in the afternoon light. The simplest of golden bands, unadorned, almost shockingly plain, encircling the index finger. Looking at it makes his gut churn.
“Sorry,” says Elrond, bizarrely, almost automatically, “I should probably have, ah, removed it. Taken it to be cleaned. I just- well. It seemed a bad idea to let it out of my sight.” He is still grasping the edge of the cloth, holding on. Celebrimbor finds himself tamping down a strange wave of irritation.
He steps forward, waving Elrond away. “Do not trouble yourself. I will see to it. Go, you look like you are in need of rest,” for the herald does indeed look tired, still wearing most of his armour, the worst of the dirt and blood wiped away but dark circles ringing his eyes, “you have done all of us a great service today. I can take care of things from here.”
Elrond does not move.
He frowns instead, reluctant, shifting his weight from one foot to another. He looks from Celebrimbor to the bundle on the table. “What do you plan to do with it?”
Celebrimbor glances at him, irritation flaring again from somewhere in himself he cannot identify. It has been a very long day.
“Ought that to be any concern of yours? This is my area of expertise. By rights the ring is mine.”
He looks back to the table, reaches out. With one hand he grasps the mangled wrist, while with the other he liberates the ring from its former bearer. The dead skin is cold. The ring feels warm.
Elrond’s hand closes on his arm. His grip is strong. Celebrimbor knows he is stronger.
For a span of heartbeats, the room is still.
“Celebrimbor.” The herald’s face is pale and drawn. “It is dangerous, you know this. I do not think any of us ought to be handling it.”
“And what would you know of it? Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing? Do you think-” he watches Elrond flinch at the intensity of his words, draw back slightly, but it is as if it is happening at a great distance, happening to someone other than him. His head feels foggy.
“You do not trust me. You think me still in thrall to him, that because we- because I-,” through ringing ears he hears his voice crack, “- you suspect I will return it to him.”
(Do you think I would EVER-)
“No. Celebrimbor, no, that is not what I-” Elrond’s eyes have gone wide, staring, as he trails off. He looks afraid. Distantly, Celebrimbor wonders what his own face must show. If Elrond doesn’t back off, if he doesn’t stop pushing him-
Elrond takes a careful, steady breath. Lets go of his arm. Steps back, visibly shaken.
“Alright. Alright. I apologise. I didn’t mean to imply – well. Nevermind. You are right, it is none of my concern. I shall- I shall leave you to your work.”
The herald hovers, for a moment, looking as if he is working up the nerve to say something else. Then he shakes his head, pressing his lips together, and strides from the room, leaving Celebrimbor to his own devices.
○
He knows that the enchantments on his forge pale in comparison to those enmeshed in that small golden band (how can it be so small?), but still, it is a place to start. He doesn’t need Annatar. He will uncover the ring’s secrets on his own.
Or so he hopes.
No tool in his entire workshop can in any way damage the ring, no spell can penetrate beneath its surface. The application of heat reveals burning letters, the etchings of that terrible recitation, but apart from that the ring is utterly unresponsive to him. He tries more and more complex incantations, ever riskier experiments, as day blends into night, blends into day again; he labours, unsleeping, uneating. Slowly, eventually, he is forced to an unhappy conclusion. The ring cannot be unmade by any power less than its own, nor can its secrets be extracted by any amount of force. Its maker has made sure of that.
Its maker, who lies now in chains mere streets away. Celebrimbor thinks, perhaps he could be persuaded to destroy it, perhaps he could be forced, but he knows it is a fool’s hope. Besides, if he brought the ring anywhere near Annatar-
Ereinion would never allow it. And if he disobeyed him, attempted such a plan anyway, Elrond would think himself vindicated. If he failed, if the enemy overpowered him, he would be a traitor twice over.
So. The One remains, and with it, his Three (supposed to be his greatest work, his legacy) are forever tainted.
It is over.
(It is just begun.)
He holds the ring in his hand, where it does not burn him even though it is fresh from the heat of the coals. The glowing letters sting at his eyes. He cannot look away.
The ring cannot be unmade by any power less than its own. But, perhaps-
Perhaps his greatest work is not behind him yet.
Celebrimbor watches the markings, once red as flame, slowly fade from the surface of the gold. Then he slips the ring onto his index finger.