Chapter Text
Deep within the green, shadowed vale, beneath the western slopes of the Misty Mountains, where the summits above stand tall as silent guardians and the waters cry loudly the song of the making of the world, there is a sanctuary and refuge: the Last Homely House East of the Sea. Deep within this refuge that clings, steadfast, to the hills and spills merrily into the hollow, there is a chamber: a place of rest curated perfectly for its inhabitant. The chamber is Erestor’s and Erestor lies quietly within.
The sanctuary is known commonly as Imladris, or Rivendell, named for the cleft into which its first inhabitants stumbled, footsore (newly made refugees, all), but Erestor has always preferred Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva, the House of Lost Mirth, for so it seems to him. The weak grow strong here; the despairing, hopeful; and light and song stubbornly refuse to subsumption by a world grown dark, hostile, and mean. Some of Ost-in-Edhil’s aspiration and splendour are captured in Rivendell’s spirit, though in a softer form. His people, fading slowly from the tale of this world, are not diminished in the valley’s embrace, but fulgent and bright, undimmed. So it usually seems.
On this particular day, to Erestor, such a vision feels thin and delicate,: a glass orb dropped from the hand, careening toward marble floors, waiting to shatter. Mirth is far from reach. His own sanctuary within a sanctuary, arranged just so, feels stuffy and close. He aches to be free of it. On a day such as this, however, though such a course is possible, it would not be wise.
“You were missed at council,” Elrond remarks as he crosses the threshold. “Fare you ill?”
Within these rooms Elrond has been a healer, a brother, a confidant…even a brokenhearted mess, but rarely is the Lord of Imladris seen within.He leaves his silver circlet at the door, metaphorically speaking. Today, he comes as a friend. Erestor does not conceal from Elrond what he hides, at least in part, from most. Elrond has seen him at his worst and needs no shielding. “I have had better days.”
“Ah, Elrond says, coming to sit beside Erestor, not on the comfortable chair placed obliquely beside the bed, but on the bed itself. Over the course of a thousand days much like this one, Elrond has come to understand that the precise quality of bitterness behind Erestor’s answer communicates far more than the words themselves. “What is the worst of it?” he asks. “Body, or mind?”
“Mind,” Erestor answers with a sigh.
There is a meadow, high upon one of the ridges overlooking this valley that Erestor loves. Harebells and crocus bloom a riot of purple to carpet the grassy slopes, and the scents of juniper and pine linger in the air. Above, the firmament stretches high and wide, more vast and complete in the lofts of the foothills than in the valley, as if a giant had stretched sky like a coverlet over the land. Erestor can only reach it on good days, if he plans carefully, budgeting strength as a steward might grain in times of scarcity. Such a hike is an expense that he can seldom afford. It has been many years now, since last he stood on that ridge. On days like today, Erestor fears he never will again.
Elrond says nothing; he knows he need not. With his long legs gathered in a tangle of acute angles that push the skirts of his robes askew, he looks as undignified as Erestor currently feels. It is disarming.
“I resent this,” Erestor confides. He has done many times before and will do many times more. These are not the apologetic, tearful confessions of one who is certain they should bear their load in silence, but invectives spat with bile. Once, Erestor had apologised for the venom unleashed upon his Lord and friend, knowing it unfair. Elrond had only laughed, informed Erestor that he bore his tribulations with more grace than some he had known, and told him dignity was not dependent on how meekly one suffered. Erestor has not asked to be pardoned for grumbling about his infirmity since.
“Could I ease you?” Elrond asks.
“Sing us away from this room.”
“Where do you wish to go?”
“Wherever you please.”
In song, Elrond takes Erestor to places far from this valley. Many of them his chief counsellor’s feet have never trod. Rivendell’s Lord does not perform often in the Hall of Fire any more—he used to once, in happier times—but sings freely in these rooms, when their confines press in, suddenly suffocatingly small, and Erestor is too depleted to seek succour among the woodlands of the valley. His words weave a spell of escape that is not otherwise possible. Today, they fly west, over the Blue Mountains, to Lindon of old, where the light came dappled and golden through canopies of elm. This surprises Erestor little, for Gil-Galad has been on both of their minds much since realisations about the One Ring came to the fore.
“It has been long since I walked beneath those trees,” he says. There was a time before he grew ill, short yet sweet, when travel between Lindon and Imladris was common as nails and Erestor roamed the land as freely as any elf might. Neither duty nor infirmity constrained him then.
“You could do, if you wished,” Elrond says. “The way grows more dangerous, it is true, but not yet so perilous, I think, that it could not be managed once you are recovered sufficiently. That part of Lindon is not an unreasonably long diversion from Mithlond, should you have it in your heart to walk its forests again.”
There is a growing understanding among the Eldar of Imladris that to sail West is an inevitability with all the weight of sunrise and the turning of seasons. The call of the sea grows loud in elven hearts in these latter days, beckoning. Many have already departed. It may take half an age, perhaps, before all travel that road, but sooner, rather than later, all the radiance of the Eldar will grace a shore strange and new to Elrond and Erestor both. Mithlond, these days, is but a stop on the road. Erestor and Elrond have spent many hours speculating on what reprieve he might find in the Blessed Realm, but Erestor is far from ready to forsake these outer lands yet. “My place remains here.”
“So be it.” Elrond smiles a complicated little smile, and the gratitude in his declaration has all the gravitas of a Doom given voice.
In the valley, evening comes early. The sun disappears behind the shoulders of the hills long before its rays forsake the peaks above; doubly premature in winter, when the watery light of chill, clouded days lands weakly on the sill, and seems to remain no longer than a stranger passing through the land. Today, though Imladris has descended into the depths of December, Anor is defiant and bright, as if she too cries ‘fie’ to the gathering dark and would lend her support to their efforts to deny it. Somewhere to the south a fellowship of nine carrying all their hope, against Erestor’s good sense, will be glad of her unreasonable warmth as they make toward Eregion and the mountain passes.
Erestor turns his face toward the window and lets bright sunlight soak his skin. Seldom does it snow in Imladris, but on such a day in Eregion the ground would glitter white as if scraps of cut diamond were scattered liberally across hill and dell, and berries on the holly trees would draw the eye, redder than rubies amide leaves of emerald. Blue and green against the pale, grey sill glint a cluster of old malachite and azurite pieces, worn smooth by his own hands. They are a poor substitute.
“Something has caught your mind’s gaze,” Elrond remarks.
“Did you ever see the House of the Mírdain?” he asks.
“I did.”
“I recall her laden with snow: blanketed all in queenly white with dapples of naked stone where the forge-fires burned hot within. Ost-in-Edhil was something to behold on such a day. I have not seen that city, of its lands, since their sacking. Though long have I wanted, I have not found it within me to make the journey.” Erestor has not travelled more than two days’ walk from the valley since the beginning of the Third Age.
“It is a fair place, even now.”
“So your sons tell me: overgrown with life of a different kind where once I lived mine. I wish to walk its rugged slopes with my own feet, to touch those old stones with my own hands! Far more than I crave the shade of Lindon’s elm-woods.” To Erestor this seems, by now, an impossible dream.
But to Elrond, who has seen the seemingly impossible come to fruition more than once in his lifetime, that hope need not yet be abandoned. “The chance may yet come.”
✧
Erestor was little more than a youth when Ost-in-Edhil fell and Eregion laid waste. He had been in the hills, sent abroad chasing mineral deposits prized as pigments, when frightened elves from Hollin’s countryside began to flee into their fastness. They remained long in the mountains together watching the siege unfold from afar. Erestor recalls how strange and disjointed it felt to do so. Great billows of smoke that curled lazily upward through the sky seemed to him an incongruously soft thing to flow from the destruction below.
Elrond recalls the youth with a boyish softness still in the curve of his cheeks and a determination in his gait, approaching, cool-headed and decisive, with a scattering of the dispossessed trailing behind, come to join the growing flock fleeing north. His value quickly became evident, for even then Erestor had a talent for shepherding people and finding novel solutions to need. He became invaluable in the early days within the valley, when the mundane requirements of survival became critical, yet most of those who had come from Lindon remained occupied with defence. Erestor slipped into the role without being asked, simply because he could weigh myriad factors in mind at once and owned a calm enough demeanour not to provoke the fearful to aggression.
Come the end of the war, with most of Eriador in ruin, Lindon rebuilding, and the newly made stronghold of Imladris under hasty construction, the distribution of resources became a complex puzzle requiring constant resolving for many years. Erestor throve. Elrond recalls the keen-eyed elf, who had by now grown into his easy self-assurance, eagerly volunteering to run correspondence to Forlond, for he had heard the stonemasons there had pioneered a technique that could be employed for significant gains in efficiency. It was not long after he returned, enthusiastically waving a short treatise on the method as he marched into Elrond’s chambers, that misfortune befell, forcing an acquaintance between them that would grow close as the years marched on.
Urgent summons came late one afternoon. A hidden fault had caused rock to crack and slide at the site of the half-built west wing, destabilising the wall above. Elrond recalls wondering, given the description provided him, whether the soul of the elf trapped beneath tumbled stone would still cling to their body by the time he arrived. Bright blood flecked the elf’s pale face, like holly berries scattered in the snow, and the hollow of his neck drew in alarmingly as he laboured to breathe. Erestor recalls a distant awareness of his chest stripped bare, the cool, firm pressure of Elrond’s hand against his naked, battered skin, a sharp, penetrating sensation between his ribs, and then a sudden ease returning to his breath.
Many weeks later, when broken ribs had healed and skin knit back together, Erestor demanded of Elrond, “Why does strength fail me still? All my wounds are healed,” and Elrond could give no satisfactory answer. Confounded, Imladris’s Lord pursued the problem with curiosity and stubbornness worthy of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, though he applied himself to healing rather than jewel-craft. Erestor, assured at least of regular company, if not healing, and as bored as a Noldo could be, had begun turning his mind to the minor challenges of governance Elrond would let slip as he attempted to solve the problem of Erestor’s persistent exhaustion. Before Elrond realised what was happening, Erestor had begun to re-shape Rivendell’s systems of governance from the ground up.
✧
On the day that word reaches Rivendell, months later, of Aragorn’s wholly unanticipated victory on the fields of Cormallen, Erestor is in the library. He seeks an early First Age inventory detailing stock brought from Aman for a traveller attempting to deduce what cultivars might survive the journey over Belegaer. A headache lingers behind his eyes and presses sharply at his eardrums, and a sluggishness has come over his mind like fingers of fog rising from the valley floor as sun warms the ground, clawing at and obscuring the clear, morning air. Knowing he will soon be forced either to retreat to his chambers or bear the consequences of not doing so for days, Erestor is surly. Glorfindel does not deserve the snappishness in his tone as he barks, “What is it?”
“Glad tidings,” Glorfindel responds with undiminished joy, all too used to Erestor’s poor temper. He well knows the ugly mood appears when Erestor is more unwell than usual and does not hold it against him. Such sharp words have grown easier for him to brush aside with time. “Sauron has fallen, and the ring-bearer, against all odds, lives.”
“That is welcome news, indeed,” Erestor agrees, bracing himself on a shelf against a growing light-headedness that has nothing to do with the happy shock of Glorfindel’s announcement.
“You are wanted by Master Elrond. Rivendell will shortly make its response.”
“How desperately am I needed?”
“Not so badly that you cannot first take an hour or two to rest, I deem,” Glorfindel judges, eyeing Erestor with a knowing look and coming to stand near with an arm proffered. “Shall I accompany you to your rooms before I convey to our Lord your intent to join him when you are able?” Glorfindel has long since mastered the art of providing his strength of body as support without it seeming awkward or strange. There is no pity in the gesture, only a friendly practicality.
Erestor sighs and waves him away. “I am sure Elrond’s need of you is greater than mine, my Lord of the Golden Flower,” he says, invoking Glorfindel’s title in order to stress his friend’s importance in such counsels. “I shall manage well enough.”
When, later, Erestor plasters a mask of calm attentiveness over the vestiges of his headache, and strides into the council chambers, feeling somewhat improved but not entirely well, he is greeted with a sudden turning of heads. Elrond, who seems caught between unbounded joy and deepest sorrow, meets his eyes. “What would you say, Chief Counsellor, to a spot of travel?”
Erestor is so surprised that his knees almost buckle.
“Is it wise that you go?” Glorfindel asks afterwards, when all talk is done and the necessary arrangements for Arwen’s escort to Minas Tirith decided upon, catching him alone as moonlight filters in grey beams through lancet windows. “No one will think less of you, should you remain behind.”
“I want this,” Erestor insists.
“The way is no safer now than two seasons ago, when Elrond had us meticulously scout out all paths and surrounds in preparation for the Fellowship’s departure. We may no longer need fear wraiths, but there are other dangers in the wilds.”
“Your meaning, Glorfindel?”
“One cannot always stop on the road, should they take ill, particularly through the mountains. And if you were to come across goblins or the like, what then?”
“You think I am weak.”
“Of course not.” Glorfindel shifts nervously so that a moonbeam casts over his worried face. “I only wonder if the cost this journey may exact from you is more than you can reasonably pay, and if you could adequately defend yourself, if the need arose.”
“I know my own limits,” Erestor hisses.
Glorfindel, however, recalls a time before Erestor’s new limits had been discovered, when he had pushed and pushed to regain his strength. There had been weeks, after that, when he was too ill to rise at all, and months following when a simple bath, or to sit out in the great hall for a meal, was all he could manage in a day. “I do not wish to see you harmed, nor as hopelessly miserable as you were when your ailment first began.”
The hand Erestor brings to rest on Glorfindel’s arm is firm, and bright is the moonlight reflecting in his earnest eyes. “You think I do? Trust me in this!”
Glorfindel, against what he believes to be his better judgement, swallows back further argument and nods.
✧
Centuries have passed since Erestor last left this valley and he is, in truth, as nervous as the horse shying beneath him as the part waits, patiently, for Arwen and Elrond to mount. He is well enough—as well as this body can be—but that is no guarantee that he shall remain so for the duration of their travel. They make for Lothlórien, then Minas Tirith beyond. The realm of Lord Celeborn and Lady Galadriel, is a calculated recuperation point along the road and a fail safe, should he have need to abandon plans to accompany Elrond to his daughter’s wedding and their inevitable parting.
“Is all well?” Glorfindel asks from atop Asfaloth, who, of course, behaves perfectly, eyeing the dancing feet of Erestor’s steed.
Erestor fixes him with a determined look.
“Set a gentle pace,” Elrond calls out from the rear. “We have no need of haste.” As their horses find an easy walking gait, Elrond comes alongside Erestor and claps him genially on the shoulder.
“Master Elrond,” Erestor greets him with a polite nod.
“Chief Counsellor,” Elrond returns in kind. “A fine day to set out, wouldn’t you agree?”
It is late April. The spring rains and growing warmth have melted snows in the mountains, swelling the Bruinen and its tributaries until their churning bellies spilled over their banks. Gorse flowers turn Rivendell’s slopes sunshine yellow beneath skies of zinc, and clouds of warm breath condense before him in the cool, morning air. “As fine as could be hoped for.”
Elrond leans in close, and with lowered voice promises, “We will halt if required, as often as necessary. You need only ask.”
“My thanks.” Erestor hopes that it will not be needful to call on that pledge very often.
“Be sure you do ask,” Glorfindel urges as Elrond canters to the front of the column. “It is an offer meant to be taken up, not merely a politeness.”
“I know. You need not worry for me. All will be well,” Erestor reassures him and hopes that he speaks true.
The land is rough this side of the mountains, so close to their feet, and it is only after two weeks of slow, hard travel that the land begins to rise toward Hollin ridge. Erestor, who, though tired, has managed thus far to pace himself adequately enough, is moments away from requesting a rest when Elrond, who rides at the front, raises his arm. Horses snort and flick their tales as their riders bring them to a halt. Cupping his hands to his mouth, Elrond calls back, “Erestor!” then beckons him forth. He picks his way carefully through the scrubby growth to the side of the path—little more than a deer track at this point—past his kindred, some with confused looks and some with knowing smiles.
“Who better to lead us,” Elrond declares when he arrives at the head, “than one who called these lands home.”
That is how Erestor comes first to the top of the ridge and guides the house of Rivendell into the lands of his birth. Eregion spreads before him, brown and bare after the snow, broken here and there by holly trees with proud crowns of green. Erestor, the stoic bedrock of Imladris’s council, steady through many hard years despite trial and infirmity, surveys the rich landscape before him and begins quietly to weep.
✧
Elrond purposes to make for the pass of Caradhras, which, with luck, will have cleared sufficiently of snow drifts for the company to navigate without undue toil. First, however, a diversion is called for. The tale of the Rings began in Eregion, in the great forges of Ost-in-Edhil under the skillful hands and eyes of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain and their chief, Celebrimbor. It is only fitting that Ost-in-Edhil should come into the tale again, at the end.
Ivy now coats many of the buildings left half-standing, creeping along great swathes of mossy stone walls. Erestor runs a light hand along stones that were once the House of the Mírdain. Long ago, the Lord of Eregion strode through these streets, tall and proud. He spoke to Erestor only once. Skittering along in a mirthful hubbub, as young children are wont to do, Erestor had slipped on a patch of ice that had hardened beneath the eaves in this very spot one winter. Celebrimbor, halting his purposeful stride, had set Erestor on his feet, brushed hair from his brow and admonished with a twinkle in his eyes, “Careful, young one,” before carrying on. Many such ghosts of memory crowd among the ruins. The life of the Eldar has departed this place, though the stones remember it still, and that of wild Endor thrums through vibrant and strong. Erestor can feel it. With his palm to the stones he knows there are roots creeping down below, pushing shoots through cracks in the paved paths to seek the sun. A stiff breeze sets a whisper chasing through the ivy leaves, tickling his fingers. Life goes on around him, while he stands still in its midst.
“A tharni* for your thoughts,” Glorfindel interrupts and Erestor looks up sharply. Inside the ruin, where an alcove of the building’s great entrance hall remains largely intact, Elrond lays an engraved hammer on a bed of sable velvet woven by Arwen, in tribute to Eregion’s late Lord, and to all those who have fought the darkness since, for their hope is at last realised. Celebrimbor remains a bright star among their people, aspiring and clever, brave to the last, and no less dear for the shortcoming that brought Ost-in-Edhil to her knees in the end. His craft and courage protected Imladris for over an age: a bright flash of blue on Elrond’s finger, worn openly for the first time. Vilya’s power begins to wane, yet it has enough strength, still, to preserve the reminder laid here for generations to come.
“I was thinking,” Erestor answers slowly, “of change.”
They do not belong to each other any longer—Ost-in-Edhil and Erestor—not as they once did, when the exuberance of youth spilled from him like sparkling waters from the fountains in the city square. Beside the silver hammer he lays a neat line of azurite and malachite, and they seem dim, there in the shadow of old stone. There is a youth, bright and well, and a city, tall and proud that he mourns in that moment, and watches pass, like golden leaves fallen into a swift stream, borne quickly away. Erestor likes who that youth became, mostly, despite the shortcomings of infirmity. A singular stone remains, heavy, in his pocket, one faced smoothed under his thumb.
The house of Rivendell make their camp on the banks of the Sirannon that afternoon, away from the dead stones and the unbearable life they support. Elrond twirls a dagger, twisting its hilt while the point turns in the dirt, as he and Erestor sit staring at the trick that is now the sum total of the dwindled river. His eyes are conflicted. “Was it what you hoped, returning here?” he asks.
“I did not come with expectations,” Erestor answers.
“None at all?”
“I hoped for a completion, I suppose,” he admits. “When I left Ost-in-Edhil, all those years ago, all was well. I had every expectation of returning. Now, I have.”
“Sauron had declared himself by that time. You must have had some idea that conflict was at least a possibility.”
“I was young. I had known only peace. Besides, the common folk knew little of the cares of those who ruled, if they did not want their cares known. We trusted to the strength of our city—which, I may remind you, had ‘fortress’ in its name—and its Lord.”
Persistently, the feeble stream of river babbles on, covering the silence between them as the shadows lengthen and the air grows cold. Erestor considers moving toward the huddle of tents in which Glorfindel has set a bed for him, and the cheery fires, over which an evening meal is being prepared, but, after the exertion and emotion of the day, the noise and business of company would be too much. A weight has settled into Erestor’s bones and his senses turn every touch, sight, and sound into a clamour, rattling through his over-sensitive nervous system like the clanking of hammer against anvil. It is better to stay with Elrond, in the quiet.
Elrond sighs and lets the dagger drop. “Perhaps even Celebrimbor had not fully realised the immediacy of the danger. It was believed evil had been banished at the end of the First Age, with the casting of Morgoth beyond the Doors of Night. It seems naive now, but we were a younger people in those days, less world-wise, even after centuries of war. They were dark days, when that illusion shattered and only grim reality remained.”
“Dark,” Erestor agrees, “but long gone. We have laid that danger to rest, at long last.
“That we have,” Elrond agrees.
Neither are so foolish as to believe evil vanquished forever with Sauron gone. Both have lived through enough fluctuations between dark and light to know it is not so. Arda is marred; the evidence can be found in a myriad of unpleasant realities, some of which Erestor carries in his own sinews. The saga of the Rings has come to its completion, and the world turns on: day to night, dark to light.
In the morning, pale sunbeams paint the brown land with apricot hues. Erestor presses on through fatigue that catches at his aching limbs like pools of honey, slowing him, as they break camp. High above, the ruined city seems lonely and forlorn. It is no longer a question waiting for answer, not a wound for binding, only a place for old bones to rest, untroubled. They move on.
✧ ✧ ✧