Atandil by Eilinel's Ghost  

---

20. Far Have You Roamed

Balan felt a twinge in his chest as he looked out over them, first of pride in his son’s work, and then of loss—that this land which held his early love for Nóm had been changed now beyond return.

Bëor and Gildor travel to Estolad while Finrod is occupied in Doriath. The two discuss their similar griefs and Bëor must face seeing his people - and his eldest son - for the first time since passing down the clan's leadership.

---

312th YEAR OF THE SUN, SUMMER
Estolad

---

The fields stretched out before them, a sea of purple rippling against their horses’ legs. They had been golden the first time he saw them, when his people threaded their way along the faint trails with Nóm at their head—his own gold blending with the sunset and the rolling flax, as though all the world had turned molten. Balan walked in awe at his side then, Baran at his right, and the hope dancing before them had leapt forward in this same vast, unending expanse.

But it was blooming flax that swayed in the breeze as he and Gildor rode through the meadows, and the barley was now a swath of green. 

And beyond that, the palisade cut a dark line against the river. 

Balan drew a hand along his face. A cold knot had settled in the pit of his stomach, growing ever tighter as they moved across the plains—and there was another league still, or more, of riding in full view of the settlement before he would learn what form of his son awaited him. He shuddered and shifted in the saddle.

They had camped beside Aros and Celon the previous night and in the gloaming beside the rivers’ confluence he had plunged both head and shoulders beneath the current, scrubbing the dust and sweat from his scalp and lingering till his breath was gone; then he rose up, gasping, with Celon’s water once again running down across his lips.

There was an outcropping of rock at the intersection point, a line of jagged knots like the spine of some ancient sea-beast, curled at the meeting of the rivers. An unnerving thing to set their camp beside, he joked when Nóm had chosen the place on the journey west. It unnerved him still more on a second viewing. Like so much of this path it was a mirror of that former road, glimpses of his departure reflected as Elmorë’s feet retraced their steps and drew him ever nearer the fields of Estolad. Hunger for that reunion consumed him; dread of it ran through his every fiber.

Would he know his son still? Or would the year’s absence have frozen that parting shock into estrangement?

It had been on that same riverbank where he remembered the little otter, his legs dangled in that same current when the gasping remorse first washed over him. Or no, it had been further down the shore, by the carpet of moss where he nearly slipped when stumbling from the waterside in search of the toy. It had been Nóm who sat where Balan plunged his head into the river, and the grey eyes had danced bright alongside the sun’s reflection while he drew handfuls of water to wet and braid his hair. It had been Nóm whose arms wrapped about him through the long night and held the shattering at bay. And it was Nóm whose embrace was far from him now, arms and heart alike shrouded behind the giddy haze of Doriath. 

He shivered and shifted in the saddle. It had been a relief that morning when they turned into the river bend and were at last out from the shadow of those eaves. All the days they rode along the Aros, he had felt that the trees were watching him, looming from the far side of the river and leaving the back of his neck prickling. He had scowled across the water at their boughs, glaring as though his sheer indignation might force them to yield and return the king to his side. 

“Ingoldo has told me that we bear a similar wound.” Gildor’s voice was quiet as it broke through his reverie, hesitant but tumbling swift along the breeze and Balan glanced toward him in query. His companion’s knuckles were white about his horse’s reins and his eyes were fixed on the settlement, gauging its distance with the air of one who, having steeled himself for a conversation nevertheless delays it until the last possible moment. “That is, he has told me your parents too were taken from you,” he murmured in hasty clarification, then the grey eyes flickered and glanced over to meet his own. “I hope he did not trespass upon your confidence in the telling?”

“Nay, not a bit of it.” Balan slowed Elmorë’s gait and held his eye with a reassuring smile. The boy looked lost against the wide expanse, small and forlorn despite the confidence of his seat—a boy he ever thought him, though Gildor too had known the world ere Balan’s own kind awakened—and he felt the urge to reach out and rest a hand in comfort upon the nape of his neck, as though Gildor was one of his sons. “I was older by my people’s reckoning than you by yours,” he said quietly as Gildor dropped his own horse’s pace to match, “less than a year shy of my apfsael—how would you call it, a coming of age perhaps? It is the rite by which my people mark our passage out of childhood or into full membership within the clan.”

“Yes, we would call it so.” Gildor hesitated as though a further question lingered, but no words formed and he pressed his lips together once more.

 “My people dwell in many factions east of the mountains,” Balan said after a pause, answering what was not asked, and he drew back on the reins to slow their pace even further, “some nomadic as we’ve been, others who held in fixed villages and lands since before I knew the world; and there is strife between many of them. My own people had taken a rest from our wanderings and dwelt for a time in the same valley. It must have been nearly a decade all told—the last of my childhood and all of my adolescence—and I find those tall grasses and ash trees still sway through my dreams. I’d gone with my uncle one morning to trade with another clan on the far side of the fell, and as we climbed it again that evening, we saw the clouds glowing red in the dusk. We thought it was the brush of sunset at first and marveled at its beauty, but it wasn’t long before we scented the smoke and knew it for what it was.” He fell quiet for a moment, then continued on with an effort. “It was a party of raiders, we guessed, some one of the roving bands that lived on pillaging, though we never learned for certain. They’d plundered the village and made off with whatever animals they didn’t kill, then fired the unharvested crops and left the village to burn with the dead. By the time we reached it, the fires raged too tall for us to do anything but sit through the night and watch while it all fell to ash. By morning, the remainder of our folk had found us and we passed through the embers together, salvaging what little remained—mostly bones, collected and named where possible, then laid to rest in the meadow beside the stream. I was never certain which were my father’s, but we found his knife and his ring in the rubble and knew he must have been among those we buried. I still wear them,” he added, laying one hand upon the ox horn hilt at his waist and raising the other to indicate the iron band about his middle finger. “My mother’s body was outside our home, burned, but there were two garnet earrings with the body and so we knew her. After that, we never held permanent dwellings—we might remain a year or two in one place, but rarely any longer than that, not till Nóm found us and stilled our feet here beside the Celon.” The calls of linnets warbled in the flax around them and Balan watched as a murmuration passed winding toward the river. Then after a moment he added in a near-whisper, “It never eases, does it?”

“No,” Gildor said. “It does not.”

They were quiet again, then after a time Balan ventured tentatively, “Do you think of it often?”

Gildor hesitated, then nodded. “I lived only because they lay on either side of me.” His fingers continued to fiddle at the reins—an echo of the king, Balan noted with affection—and his voice grew tight as he pressed on. “They slipped from me while I slept on, sheltered by their warmth, and I knew it not till the sounds of the readying host woke me. Even then I did not believe it, or rather I refused to let myself consider it. Their faces were so peaceful that I thought…I clung to the hope that so long as I did not move or try to wake them, I could believe them sleeping still.” He paused to let the wind pass through his lungs, steadying him as his hands returned to their restless pattern. “It was Ingoldo’s cry that broke the illusion. He had come to seek my father when we were not among the others of our company and of course he knew the truth of it at once.” 

“Yes, he has told me of it,” Balan stepped in when Gildor’s words faltered, “and of the years that followed. No child should ever find themselves in such a place,” he added, thinking of Baran’s hands gripping the rough-hewn pole of Esrid’s bier, and his eyes fell again on the nearing settlement. Would Baran have heard by now of his approach? Would he be waiting at the barrier to greet him? Or, more likely, would he remain in the Hall, chieftain instead of son, a lord awaiting his vassal’s report?

“I have been angry now for many years.” Gildor’s voice held all the bitterness Balan dared not utter, and he shuddered to feel it resonate through his bones. “Others I knew lost one parent or the other on the ice, but how could both have gone from me at once? Did one spirit feel the other’s departure and follow for love of it? Did mine, lingering in the exile they chose, bear no staying weight?” 

Balan’s heart blenched and he shifted in the saddle. This is the whim you choose above your sons? Above your duty? Estreth’s voice cut through his memory, sharp as the day he walked out through these same fields, and he felt a twinge of affinity with Inglor’s corpse upon the ice. If it lay within his power, would he not follow Nóm’s spirit too on whatever road it led? Would he remember to reckon first the tally of what he left? 

“Can you remember them?” The question pulled him back from his brooding, the earnest curiosity of Gildor’s demeanor once more reminding him of his own youngest son.

“My mother and father? Aye, though not as I once did. There are many ways I carry them with me—my father’s ring and knife as I told you, my mother’s knowledge. She was among the Wise of my people and taught me all I know of our lore, including the story of Aelthes that you favor, and nearly all those I’ve passed on to my lord. But now…well, now I find their memories have gone slippery. I see them in snatches at the corners of my eyes, but they fade when I turn toward them, or if I look too closely at their faces, there’s nothing but a blur.” He paused for a moment, then glanced at the sharp profile outlined against the sunset beside him. “Can you?”

“Not as I would. I have scattered recollections, like shards of a painted glass, but that is not as my people are meant to remember—holding the past pristine, treasuring what is gone and bearing its living memory forward through the years. But I remember warmth. Music. My father singing. He sang often before the Darkening, but my mother would only hum while about her work, the melody like bees buzzing through a garden, ever present and weaving in and out with the rhythm of her hammer. She was a stone carver, which is how she knew my father, for Ingo met her while about his own learning and my father would visit while he worked.” The brittle melancholy seemed to have eased as they spoke and a laugh escaped him. “And now I’ve shown you my hypocrisy—for they left Aman as much for Ingoldo’s sake as from any rebellion of their own, and yet my anger does not burn toward him. It will in its time, he tells me, but I believe him not.”

Balan chuckled. “Nor will my own fury hold long against him—no matter how he might provoke it.”

Gildor snorted. “Sorely indeed, I should think.”

“Should you, lad?” Balan glanced at him in amusement, a brow lifted in query. “And how so?”

To this he received only another laugh in reply, silvery and melodious and melding into song as the other trotted ahead, his voice trailing back in the breeze,

“O! Merry is love
and sweet is its physic
in spring by the waters,
in summer’s sweet music.

O! Tarry not, heart,
but join in the singing:
the water is warm,
the music is ringing!

O! Why is he brooding,
the king in his chambers?
Wherefore is he—“

“Impertinent cub!” Balan cut him off hastily. “My lord should set you as jester,” he added with a laugh, then yielded at last to familiarity and cuffed him lightly as he would Baran or Belen. “You’ve a pungent enough wit.” But despite his grin, Balan’s face had gone ruddy at the last stanza and he loosed Elmorë into a swift canter before the melody could resume, Gildor’s laughter rippling after him once again as his own horse leapt forward to keep pace. 

Acid shot through his stomach at the realization that the other was privy to the truth and he felt his ears burning with the shame of the spurned. For Gildor knew that truth as well if he had paired it thus with sorely provoked fury. Impertinent indeed, he thought again, and hoped the galloping wind had eased the unwonted color in his cheeks. And did Nóm realize his foster-son knew of the infatuation? Surely not, he concluded, recalling the haste with which he had ever released him whenever Gildor or one of the others drew near—and for a moment found his heart touched that the boy was free with him in ways he dared not tease the king.

The low palisade was clear before them now as their horses flew forward through the linseed blossoms, for in his haste to avoid the remainder of the song, Balan had forgotten his apprehension and already they had nearly overtaken the bordering stream. It glistened in the falling sun, light dancing from every ripple, and in the shallows alongside the ford a group of children were playing, kicking great splashes and shrieking with laughter as they chased each other through the water. The light danced upon them as well, shimmering like gems from the droplets caught within their hair. Was the foremost there Sichar’s boy? He could not be, surely. Hûl had hardly reached Balan’s hip when he rode out from Estolad the previous spring and this lanky child was nearly as tall as Avina. But nay, he could see that it was, and that must be his younger brother beside him—a babe in arms when he had left. Avina too retained little of the round-faced child he remembered from that first winter beside the Celon.

“Dára!” She had sighted him now and waved her arms in excitement, splashing toward the path as the horses approached. “Dar Bëor!”

“Haelis, Avina!” Balan lifted his hand toward her in return as he slowed Elmorë to a trot and passed into the ford. “Hûl!” He smiled again as Sichar’s boy ran to join her. “Sama goleins.”

“Sama goleins, dára.”

Balan’s throat tightened at their greetings and he urged Elmorë forward onto the bank before they saw the sudden wash of feeling across his face. Baran and Belen had run in this same play through streams long gone from his recollection, Sichar and Galla chasing at their heels and little Sabil watching in disapproval from the shore. Now Sichar’s sons splashed through the ankle-deep water and Sabil was to wed with his own.

“Haelis, Esa!” he called back over his shoulder to the third child, then raised his palm again in parting as Gildor’s horse clambered up the bank after him and joined him on the well-trodden path. They were trotting past arrays of huts now, distributed throughout the nearer fields with crops and pens scattered in clusters around them. It was nearly unrecognizable from the hastily constructed encampment he remembered. Each plot was laid out along an orderly grid, weaving with the curves of the land, and the trailing creeks had been coaxed to run like veins between them. It was a marvel what Baran had managed in a turn of the seasons. Of course, the methodical structure was only true of these nearest the palisade, but already there were signs that work had begun to shape the further fields after the same design.

Balan felt a twinge in his chest as he looked out over them, first of pride in his son’s work, and then of loss—that this land which held his early love for Nóm had been changed now beyond return. It was strange, he thought, that what they saw before them should lie nearer to Gildor’s memory of Estolad than to his own. A shiver rolled along his shoulders and he was cold, even beneath the late evening sun.

This was to have been his own duty. He was meant to serve them till his final breath, as his father had done, as had his father’s father, as had all those who went before him. 

Even the means of his return was wrong, drifting here upon the work of another’s legs. Where was the path against his feet? Where the ache in his heels, in the balls of his feet, in the depths of his hips? Where was Melishk’s voice guiding him from the trodden clay?

Balan drew back on the reins, slowing the stallion to a halt, then slipped from his back to let his soles meet the packed earth. “I’ve no grudge, you know, it’s only custom,” he murmured as he unhooked the halter and looped it among the saddle bags, even as Nóm had done when they set out a year before. “Come, night sky,” he added, reaching out to run a hand over the velvety nose, and the ghost of a smile played at his lips, “walk with me. We will return together as we left.”

It was steadying to have the ground beneath him, firm and familiar against his feet. He knew himself walking like this, his legs swinging easily into the old rhythm and dispelling the fear that this intoxication had muddled some core part of him. He wished now that he had carried Baran’s little otter with him instead of leaving it nestled on the shelf in Nargothrond, so that he might hold it in hand when he greeted his son, that Baran too might remember when he saw it clutched within his father’s palm. He shivered despite the evening’s warmth and clung to Nóm’s reassurances—other feuds had been mended before now, other sons had forgiven their fathers.

“I know that Belen did not tell me all.” His voice drifted out haltingly, his own delayed query now unavoidable, and Gildor glanced toward him in surprise. “I do not hold it against him, he was torn between loves and sought to spare me pain. But because of it I know little of how it stands with his brother.” He walked a few more paces in silence, then fixed his eyes on the ground ahead of him and pressed forward. “You’ve no cause to spare my heart, Gildor—tell me truly, what awaits me here?”

Gildor hesitated. “It is not my custom to bear tales,” he said at last, “and half-news is a dangerous gift, for oft is truth bent unwitting when one speaks outside the fullness of knowledge.” 

“The king’s student indeed,” Balan chuckled, wry and resigned, and cast a sidelong grin at his companion. 

“So I am.” Gildor’s own smile darted back in kind and there was sympathy in his gaze as he slid from his own horse’s back to walk beside him. “But it is for the king’s sake too that I will risk some small accounting, strange though that may seem. When I met him in the winter months, your son bore much anger, as I see in your face you have guessed already—both toward you for the initial break and, to a lesser extent, toward his brother for heeding your summons. I will not hide from you that they argued ere we set out, nor that Belen rode against his brother’s wishes.” Again he hesitated, and shifted uncomfortably as he walked. Then he seemed to come to a decision and filled his lungs, pressing on with an effort. “But if I am to speak thus plainly of his ire, I feel myself bound to speak too of what his brother told me on our road to Nargothrond, and it is in this that I fear I may break confidence. Yet to do otherwise is to leave you with a false understanding, and I deem that may cause the greater harm, for he told me that his brother’s grief was more plain in these arguments than his anger, that it was love for you that brought on his fury and that he had wept even as they quarreled—and indeed I can tell you of my own witness that there was no guile in his eye when he told Belen to greet you with his love. Be of good hope, my friend,” Gildor added when grief tightened across the other’s face. “Far deeper than this are the rifts that have been mended between father and son—it may be that winter’s anger too has been thawed with the spring. But now ask no more of me. Already I have spoken beyond what is prudent and my heart fears lest I set your path to ill through unwary speech.”

“I thank you, it is kindly said,” Balan managed at last, but his voice grew flat as they came around the last bend and the palisade gate lay in full view before them, and with it a cluster of people gathered upon the path—Eimet and Masci, Meyla and several others—shouting greetings as they approached. “But it is of no matter. He has not come, nor has his brother; and that, it seems, is to be my answer.”

“Bëor, that does not—”

But the other had already quickened his pace and was striding toward the little group, plunging his grief beneath the brightness of their welcome, arms flung wide and grinning despite himself as first one friend and then another pulled him into the riot of embraces. It was a clamor, merry and impossible to follow, and for a moment his melancholy was overrun by the exuberance of it. Meyla’s arms were about his neck now, a quick kiss on each cheek before she laughed and held him at arms length for inspection—as though she was aunt or mother and not his younger by two score years. Gods all, how long since his own tongue had been the common language about him? The wordplay of Eimet’s joke washed over him, warm as sunlight, and his heart ached at the sound. He was home, here amidst the cadence of his childhood, here in the rough affection of Masci’s grip upon his shoulder, in the damp splotch across his side where Avina’s sprint from the stream had caught up at last and collided against him in greeting.

He stammered out answers as best he could through the jumble and laughter, the steady stream of questions each layered incomprehensibly over the other and impossible to follow, till at last Eimet caught his arm and hauled him forward through the gate.

“Come, truant, you’ve dawdled long enough here. Baran will be in the Hall yet, I’d wager, and cross if he finds we’ve not brought him word.”

Balan’s face lifted. “He knows not that I’ve come?”

“Aye doubtless he knows, but not that you’ve reached the fence. Hûl!” he called as the boy ducked through the wicket and darted after Avina. “Come take their horses to water and bring the bags after us to the Hall. Follow me,” Eimet stepped aside, allowing the stallion to pass around them before drawing Balan onward, “though I dare say it’s not so much changed that you’ll have forgotten the way. You as well, my good princeling,” he added, beckoning to Gildor with a grin. “They’ll be relieved to learn this time you’ve brought back one of our own rather than summoning another away.”

“Small merit to me,” Gildor laughed in unsteady Taliska. “As Bëor’s friend I’ve ridden, not an overseer—he’d have come even without a shepherd.”

Eimet snorted and glanced at Balan with a sidelong grin. “Baran’s japes have long tongues.”

“Or my pride long ears.” Balan retorted with a mirrored chuckle, then blinked as the curve of the river flashed with the sunset’s reflection. The Celon! His pulse quickened to see it stretched there before him, rolling wide and supple through the meadow. Those fields at least had remained unchanged in the intervening months, the water’s green borders still waving in the breeze and summoning his heart to lie once more along the riverside, Nóm’s warmth beside him and the intoxication of a snowdrop’s fragrance dancing through his senses. 

The lack of Nóm’s steady presence against his thought was an unlooked for consequence of their parted ways. It had faltered nearly as soon as he and Gildor bade the others farewell and grew fainter with each step toward the edge of the Girdle’s haze, till nothing was left at all, save a brief brush that first night. Lovers in soul…his spirit reached out in yearning. He felt unmoored without the other’s touch, dizzy, the foundation of his thought cold. It was unnerving to return here bearing that same gnawing emptiness that had plagued him in the weeks before his departure, and it was a conscious effort to hold down the rising dread that lurked in its wake.

He passed now through the rows of huts as one half in a dream. Some he knew at once, but a thicket of new structures had leapt up in the intervening year and left the settlement nearly unrecognizable. Here was one of the hastily erected storerooms, now turned to a shelter for some of the smaller herds. There a larger byre, which spoke to the new cattle Belen had told him drew their plows. And on this hither side, the little slope leading down to the well. The stone ledge had been built out to encompass the whole, the original wooden frame reinforced with rock and clay. Nóm’s carved hound remained, Balan noted with a smile and a quick stab of longing. The boulder had been shifted to make room for the new swath of paving stones, but its opened mouth still smiled, its tongue still lolled in search of the water trough. 

And there was his own old hut. Balan’s stomach lurched as it came into view. It was little changed from what he could see, though it was flanked now by two sturdy structures, each more than twice its size. These were plank-walled rather than the woven hazel and daub that crafted the original settlement; and beneath the thatch of the nearest, skeins of freshly dyed wool had been strung from the eaves to dry, while on the perpendicular wall, madder-red linen flapped in the wind. Beyond this, piles of bulrushes had been laid out to dry on strung netting, and a boy was making his way along one edge, trimming the brown ends and cutting each to size.

Hathus’ forge was past these, and this too was as he remembered it—low mudbrick walls, the angled overhang which still sat cockeyed from the haste of its construction, a scattered array of tools hanging from the rafters. He clenched his jaw as a lump grew in his throat. 

Eimet had been keeping up a steady stream of conversation while they walked and Balan found himself struggling to follow, nodding and mumbling brief replies as his eyes darted through the sprawling settlement. He gathered them hungrily, each detail he had hardly noticed throughout the previous decades, now desperately dear and filling his heart nearly to bursting. 

His people. His home. 

They had passed the forge now and were nearing the green, memory whispering up from the ground with every step—drums and bone flutes in the glow of the Longest Night, Estreth’s laughter, the arch of her brows wry then and not yet turned on him in fury, Belen leaping masked over the fires, his own joy to see him whole. Baran’s face in the firelight, boyish and smiling while Balan raised a cup in blessing…

Leader truly in spirit, as chieftain you shall be in blood. The lump in Balan’s throat grew thicker as he remembered the words rolling from his lips, the warmth of the spiced mead upon his tongue. Kind as you are valiant, son of my wandering. 

His breath caught in a gasp. They had passed round the grandfather oak and the new Hall lay sprawling before them, tall and imposing against the darkening sky. The golden thatch shone red in the sunset’s last light and Balan found himself squinting against the brilliance as he stopped mid-step, staring at the structure before him in awe. They had built longhouses before in their wandering, indeed there had been one in the village where Balan spent his youth, but this was another thing entirely. It followed the same pattern as their earlier halls, but Baran had broadened it and introduced new height, adding a wide overhang as well that looped around the full perimeter. Sturdy trunks had been shaped into pillars along the edge of this and the two foremost, nearly twice the thickness of their fellows, showed the beginnings of carved patterns twisting about their circumference. It was majestic—and his heart strained with pride that none of it was of his own doing. Baran had designed it from the start. He had begged his father to be entrusted with the task when they first laid out the hasty settlement and worked all throughout the long first winter to lay out plans in the back corner of the little hut. But even the intricacy of those clay tablets had not prepared him for the detail and size of the building before him. 

Eimet laughed as he glanced back over his shoulder and saw his charge standing slack-jawed at the edge of the green. “Aye, your lad set us quite the task in that,” he said, looking from Balan to the Hall with a grin. “But glad we are of it now, and all proud to have been in the making of it.”

“As you should be,” Balan murmured, his eyes taking in the carvings that also decorated the tie beam and lintel as he began once more to move forward across the green. “I’ve never seen its like.”

“Nor had we till he set us to raising it. But he had every detail in his head, clear as day.”

Balan chuckled. “Aye, so I remember. A whole night he spent trying to make me understand how he could eliminate the chief post if he planked the outer walls and bound the collar ties in a different way. I never did follow it.”

“No more did I—but we’ve done it nonetheless. It’s all held in the bearing posts and the walls. Not a center post in sight.”

“Then all hail to Baran’s collar ties. Perhaps I’ll understand them at last now that—” Balan broke off with a hiss, for Baran himself had emerged from the door, dressed in the same madder-red cloth that hung beside their old home, with the chieftain’s torque gleaming about his neck, the bronze carefully polished, the emblem worn with pride. He stopped abruptly at the sight of his father and the two men stood frozen, eyes locked, and the sudden pounding of Balan’s heart left his senses reeling. This vision had appeared without warning, his own beautiful boy, that same head which once rested soft and tiny within his palm now held high with command upon his brow, and all Balan’s practiced words dried up before the sight.

How readily authority sat on him! How easy his confidence, how natural his bearing—a lord at his threshold with the great Hall towering behind him—and Balan’s heart swelled with pride; and in the secret, hushed part of him where she dwelt still, he saw Esrid’s smile as well, the way her eyes would shine if she too could see their boy standing so. A tremor rippled along his own lips and he pressed them together, attempting to hold the emotion at bay as he stepped forward hesitantly and began to close the distance between them.

Gods all, how he longed to reach out and gather him in his arms, to clasp him close as he had clung to Belen in the woods above Nargothrond. Oh, my son… 

But his steps faltered as he neared and his mouth turned dry. Would Baran welcome such a greeting now? Or would it be a slap at his son’s dignity to approach with familiarity first instead of deference? It would be a slight to his leadership, surely, after how they parted. An indication that Balan still considered himself outside of Baran’s authority. He remembered his own first years as chieftain, awkward and uncertain, feeling ever caught between his youth and the authority he was meant to grasp. He remembered too his uncle, his mother’s brother, taking a knee before the gathered kindred with wells of kindness in his eyes, setting his lips to the ground at Balan’s feet and marking him with the formal obeisance of their people ere any doubt could take root. 

And then without thought he felt his own posture bend, his own knees seek the clay path before his son. He would do his duty now as Bero had done beside the village ashes, and all his people would know the pride he held in his son’s command. He crossed his arms upon his chest. 

“Don’t!” Baran’s voice was a choked whisper and his grasp fumbled for his father’s shoulder. He caught a handful of shirt instead and dragged him upward in entreaty. “Have I offended you, vatta?”

Balan staggered back to his feet, his heart pounding and hot nausea rising through his gut. It was all wrong, of course it was all wrong. What folly had possessed him that he thought this would ease a rift and not rend it? “No,” he stammered at last, staring helplessly at his son. “No, I—“

“Vatta!” Belen’s voice tore through the air, then Belen himself came into view, sprinting from the far side of the settlement and barreling into his father’s arms. 

“Bel!” For a moment he staggered backwards with the force of the collision, then found his breath and folded his son in his arms with all the desperate affection he had doubted a moment before.

“I’d ridden Kaseis to the north fields or I’d have been with Eimet to meet you.” Belen’s embrace was tight, but his eyes darted apprehensively toward his brother as though taking a swift assessment of what damage may have occurred already in his absence. “You’ve made quick time!”

“Aye.” Balan managed a smile as Belen drew back, this second meeting a reverse of their first with his son now the one taking him by the shoulders and looking him over for any change. “The days were mild and Gildor a good guide.”

“So he is.” Belen turned to his friend with a grin and clasped his arm in greeting. “And swifter about it when he’s no need to fish anyone from a river.”

 Gildor laughed, and his answering grin was merry. “Well met to you, Belen.”

“Well met,” Belen echoed, and embraced him before turning back to his father. “We didn’t expect you till the morning at least.”

“We rode with the sunrise. I was eager to see you—and your brother.” Balan’s eyes once again sought his elder son, but the other’s face was unreadable.

“As were we for your return,” Baran said, and he smiled, though its warmth did not reach his eyes. “But come, the meal has only just begun. We didn’t hear of your approach until after the meat was laid out or we’d have held it for your arrival.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. It was thoughtless of me to push on with such poor timing.” Of course. The feasts of Iuthap that heralded midsummer, each beginning with the last light of day, and in the complications of their journey and doubt of his own welcome, Balan had overlooked that their arrival would fall in the midst of these. Guilt crawled along his neck as he followed his sons over the threshold. How had it slipped his mind so quickly? He had marked these customs each year of his life till the last—the threshing dances, the longest night, turning day with its green garlands and raucous sprints, midsummer and the sun goddess’ bounty when they threaded golden calendula in their hair and Esrid and her sister would turn their people’s whirling dance till the last of the sunset’s light…

Remember who you are. The memory of Baran’s parting words drummed in time with his footsteps, and Balan once again clenched his nails against his palm—both distraction and some whim of self-reprimand for his inattention. But as they passed the first partition wall, his grip fell slack and he drew up short, awestruck.

“Gods all…” he breathed, his eyes wide as they took in the expanse of the room. It was twice the breadth of any they had built ere now, with beams leaping up from the timbered walls and disappearing within the shadow and thatch. A large hearth had been constructed in the center of the room, while raised platforms ran the length of each side, already nearly filled with those gathering for the meal. The higher of these, set along the northern wall, bore a row of five tables with benches placed at their back, while the lower was lined with pelts and woven rugs where the larger share of people sat. A bustle of merry conversation rumbled across these, while the last light of evening gleamed through the southern windows and cast beams from the upper wall to the floor. 

“How now, vatta?” Belen caught his arm with a laugh and hooked it within his own as he drew him forward. “I’ve seen you gape less at your pillared caverns than this.”

“Aye,” Balan breathed, his eyes passing along the wall to his right, which had been whitewashed with linseed oil paint and showed the beginnings of rudimentary figures depicted along its length. “But those were not hewn by my own people, nor drawn by my own sons…”

“And so the skill did not surprise him.” Baran glanced back at his brother and though his voice moved with a jest’s cadence, Balan flinched at the words.

“Nay, I looked on those halls with a stranger’s wonder,” he said. “This holds my reverence.”

Belen watched him with a curious expression, somewhere between warmth and wistful reflection. “Your face is as I pictured it,” he said at last, and there was a quick press of his fingers where they gripped Balan’s arm. “We held a feast when the main structure was finished and all the while I imagined what you would have thought of it.” He grinned and bumped his shoulder affectionately against his father’s. “I was right.”

Balan was silent. He reached out to press his son’s hand in return, but found any reply choked in his throat. It was here Bel said they had passed the Longest Night, was it not? Here where the memorial for the dead had reminded his boy of that lingering absence he knew not how to mark. Balan cast his eyes about the room, attempting to discern where the empty plate and chalice might have been set. There, of course, opposite the high seat where the bear’s pelt was now spread, where Hathus sat in the place of honor with Alna upon one knee, laughing at some antic of Fina’s and sipping from the horn of ale in his hand. There had been pensive sorrow in Belen’s voice, the same as in the winter when he had confessed that conflicted mourning, and Balan’s heart was stung by the sound. 

But Belen was grinning now, Esrid’s smile warm as Iuthap’s light upon his face, and he tugged at Balan’s arm when he lagged. “This way, vatta,” he said, drawing him forward onto the taller platform. 

Baran was there already, standing behind the chief table with one hand fidgeting at his sash and the other resting atop the foremost seat, a sturdy oak chair draped in sheepskin and carved with braided patterns along both stile and arms. He looked momentarily lost despite his poise, a boy still amid this great Hall he had built, and once again Balan hardly held back the impulse to fold him close within his arms. Instead, he risked a tentative smile when their eyes met, and to his surprise saw the cold stoicism falter, his son’s features soften. It was only a brief glimpse before the mask was set again, but it sowed a new kernel of truth through Gildor’s words and for the first time Balan let himself ponder whether they had been more than a kindly meant fabrication.

“You’ll have my place.” Belen drew out the chair at his brother’s right, one of three placed along the chief table, and steered Balan toward it. “It will be tight with both of us on this side together,” he added apologetically, dragging a small barrel to the foot of the table to serve as his own seat and the grin flashed out again as he perched atop it. ”But I won’t mind it if it doesn’t bother you.”

“Nay, lad, not a bit.” He reached out to rest his hand briefly behind Belen’s neck, the old gestures of affection as easy here as they were fraught toward his brother, and he felt himself steadied by the familiarity. 

“You should not keep them waiting longer.” Estreth’s voice cut like ice through Balan’s musings and he looked sharply to his left, knowing even as he did so that the words were not for him. She was seated just beyond Baran in the table’s third chair, one arm resting upon the table and her eyes set firmly on her nephew’s face. “Not if you wished to keep the iuthan bida. The light is fading fast.”

He saw Baran nod out of the corner of his eye, but Balan’s own gaze did not shift from Estreth. Her expression was sharp, taut and unreadable in the firelight, and he found himself unsettled by the sight of grey strands running though her hair. She had always remained in stasis in his mind, the girl tucked under Esrid’s arm in the days following Geberic’s death, fierce-eyed and determined; or the woman at his side when it was Esrid’s death that left them unmoored, those same eyes following after him and holding him to his duty. But like Belen, she too was less recognizable in the intervening year and it left him with an inexplicable sense of dread. Or no, had his memory played him false in this as well and merged her memory with that of her sister? Hair ever jet-dark, eyes warm, features soft and rounded rather than this keen expression before him…gods all, he had. She was little changed after all, only the brush of grey standing out in difference—and he felt a fool to have been surprised by it. Surrounded by the fixity of Nóm’s people, some unconscious part of him expected to return home and find it still in the moment he had left it. But he had dwelt longer away from Celon’s shores now than beside them and the reality of that distance settled over him, cold and heavy.

Baran was filling a drinking bowl from the wooden bottle that sat in the center of the table, globed and carved with symbols of the gods around its sides. The mouth was rimmed with a rare portion of silver, crafted into a six-point that wrapped like fingers about the vessel’s curve, and the mead ran out from it like new honey. It was the same ritual Balan himself had performed each year, but in Baran’s hands it seemed to hold a new weight, a solemn rite that matched the dignity of the Hall and brought the gathered crowd to silence. 

So engrossed was he in watching his son that he flinched in surprise when Hathus’ spear struck six beats upon the wooden floor. This was yet another change, he noted, for in all their previous longhouses the floor had been made of packed clay. Here in Baran’s hall it was lined with wide planks fitted carefully between the raised benches.

“Radiance of Iuthap, guide our way.” Hathus stood just opposite the high seat with his chief warriors gathered about him and his voice was resonant within the timbered walls. “Sight of Iuthap, mark our path with truth. Beneath the sun we have grown and prospered, and beneath your dance our journey is formed from clay unto clay. Set us in the path of wisdom here at the seasons’ height where the sun’s light holds all the world under her reign.”

Sei lagjan an staiga nóman…Balan mouthed the words silently, repeating it over and again as Hathus continued the litany—set us in the path of wisdom, set us in Nóm’s path. It was half-sacrilege, his drifting prayer, contrary both to his gods and the king’s own propriety. Nay, Balan, no god am I. It was the first time he had seen the earnest flush rise in Nóm’s cheeks, trickle up along his ears. He had laughed at Balan’s reverence beside Thalos’ waters, dismissing it with a smile and a brief flash of trepidation. Do not tease me so or I will grow insufferable. Balan too had laughed and never spoken so again, but both knew there had been naught of jesting in that early veneration—nor was there now in this new invocation. Sei lagjan an staiga Nóman…

“…even now as we stand in the warmth of your remembrance.”

“Radiance of Iuthap, guide our way.” The crowd responded in one voice and Balan came back to himself with a start. He had lost the ritual’s thread while his thoughts wandered and quickly cast about to recall his place.

“Sight of Iuthap,” the people recited again, “mark our path with truth.”

Of course, Hathus had finished his final words and this was the hallowing of the cup. “Light of Iuthap, bless—” The words rolled from his lips without thinking, resounding in a decades-long reflex through the quiet of the Hall, and it was only when he heard Baran’s voice lifted in unison that he realized the gaffe and stammered into silence.

“Light of Iuthap,” his son began again, carefully reining in his glance of annoyance, “bless our gathered kindred here at the waxing of your reign.” 

Estreth’s eyes had turned on him. Balan could feel the indignation like heat against his skin and dared not look toward her, but fixed his gaze instead on the wooden plate before him.

“Light of Iuthap, bless this cup that we may set our sight by your sight, for our days are numbered in the steps of your dance.” Baran raised the bowl into a last shaft of light spilling from the far windows, holding it cupped within his palms. “By the sun’s blessing we drink to her. In the sun’s blessing we find our path set.” He bowed once, bringing his own head briefly into the same bright wash before lifting the drink to his lips. For a long moment he let the silence hang heavy between them, then turned formally toward his father and held out the bowl. “From day’s rise to day’s rising,” he said and Balan winced at the brittle civility in his tone.

“May you be found in goodness and in peace.” He reached out to take the vessel in his hands and at last forced himself to look up and meet his son’s eyes. Shame’s nausea rose at once, for gone was the softened countenance of a few moments past and in its place the sharp mask had risen once more. Balan’s gaze faltered and his eyes fell as he brought the bowl to his own lips, sipping from the midsummer mead beneath the same beams where a year before he had passed the chieftain’s torque into his child’s hands and watched this mask harden upon his face. Sei lagjan an staiga Nóman…

The phrase echoed bitterly now and his knuckles whitened about the bowl as he turned, passing it into Belen’s hands.

“From day’s rise to day’s rising,” he murmured, his voice faltering as he saw the tense line of his shoulders, the boy's eyes wide and watching them both in concern. 

But at once Belen attempted a smile, brushing his fingers reassuringly against his father’s as he took the vessel and raised it in salute. “May you be found in goodness and in peace,” he said, then drank.

❈❈❈

There were flagstones along the threshold, pieced together in precise patterns that reminded him of the dark shale his mother had once set in the ground before their own door. These, however, were made of thick rock, wide and carefully shaped with corners rounded and runes of protection carved along each edge. Balan paused as he reached the last of these and looked out over the settlement. Dawn had crept in with the weary relief that heralds the sleepless, grey and heavy, and mist still lingered like fleece about the trees and fields.

A few hours’ sleep was more than expected at the outset, he reflected with grim optimism and rubbed one hand against his eyes. Everything in him had been restless—even exhaustion had done little to ease the anxious hum when he retreated from the feast and stretched across the bed. He could not stay still. Lying at rest, his mind assessed each moment since his arrival, repeated every fault and blunder. Pacing, he found every step left him increasingly convinced of his own imposition. At last he began looking through the room’s contents, embroidered hangings covering the walls, a little collection of stones, items stashed along the many shelves—anchored shelves held fast to the walls, no longer the hanging rope and board he remembered—other miscellany scattered upon the table or floor or window sill, a small bowl of apples, a pile of wood beside the clay hearth. But even in this he found each new item dogged him in accusation for his unfamiliarity, for it was Belen’s room they had given him. 

The residential quarter was a low structure, sprawling perpendicular to the eastern end of the Hall with one passage running the full length and rooms facing out from it toward the open fields. Of these, Baran had noted when he and Belen guided him through the new construction, only the first two were structurally completed. The third remained empty. It was walled in and partially timbered, but as yet served merely to house spare supplies. Balan had tried not to hear an edge in his son’s tone. He knew well enough why the design had been drawn up with three rooms, and why the last had been left unfinished. But he had pressed this aside, smiling as the various features were pointed out to him while they walked, little innovations in the structure, the meticulous carvings that had begun adorning the pillars and beams throughout the hall. Baran listed them off with seeming disinterest, as though grasping at the nearest safe topic of conversation.

But Belen had laughed at the careful indifference in his brother’s voice and bumped his shoulder against the other’s with an affectionate grin. “He’d have you believe it’s as mundane a task as sowing or shearing, but proud as a plumed jay he is. You should have seen him when he finished the fore-lintel carvings.”

“I was relieved to have it over with. The balance was unpleasant.”

“Ignore him. He grinned more than when he bested Hathus in the throw.” Belen had glanced warmly at his brother as he spoke. “And well he should—it’s fine work.”

“Don’t play the fool, Bel, they’re nothing compared to what he sees in Nóm’s caves.”

Balan flinched and pressed his fingers to his eyes once more. It was pointless to keep going over each exchange as though that would somehow show him a remedy. Time would be the only physic here, if physic there was. He stepped off the flagstones and rounded the corner, following the line of the hall till he stood beneath a tall ash tree, wide as the span of his arms and soaring out in curving branches, each as thick as a trunk. For a moment he stood looking up into the expanse, then turned his attention to the ground and scuffed his boot through the grass and soil till he found the place he recalled—a flat stone resting more or less level between two roots.

The altar his grandmother built had been raised, he remembered as he knelt and brushed the dirt away, a little stack of shale behind their hut with a likeness of Melishk balanced at its crest. He had ground his heel into the charred remains of the goddess when they gathered bones from the village, kicking at it till his mother’s brother pulled him away in fear that his fury would call down further hardship.

Earth or altar, it mattered little. His gods would hardly heed his prayer now, regardless of the means, for any piety had been neglected when he chose to break from his people’s path. When was the last time he had sought them in earnest? He grimaced and drew out a small figure which he then set upright upon the stone.

It was laughably small, he thought, crudely cut and out of place beside the dignity of the wide ash tree. Though there was little surprise in that, after all; he had carved for expedience, not detail, a means to pass the night. But the likeness before him was recognizable enough for the purpose, arms wrapped in the customary embrace, hair encircling her face with its tendrils radiating outward in mimicked light. Iuthap, placed on a rock before the towering ash and draped with the dawn. 

He had pulled the chunk of wood from a pile beside Belen’s hearth, halfway through the night and desperate. His thoughts would not slow, he could not sit, he could not walk, he could not sleep, he could not abide with himself, he could not escape himself. Light of Iuthap, bless our gathered kindred…He had slammed his palms against the beam over the hearth, then turned and rummaged through the firewood until he found a branch that would suit. If it was in prayer to Iuthap that he had misstepped, perhaps it was in prayer too that he might mend it. 

Balan brushed aside the remaining dirt from the stone and sat back on his heels, uncovering a little clay bowl and blowing gently to reignite the ember inside. This he placed on the stone before the carving, then drew a small knob of incense from within his sash and placed it carefully atop the coal.

“Blessed Iuthap, queen of every dawn,” he murmured under his breath as the thin strand of smoke began to rise, “may my prayer find favor and my words rise to you. O great one, may it please you to look kindly upon the hope of my heart.”

And was that Nóm or was it resolution with his son? He balked for a moment, watching the white trail curl into the air, and tried to remember which hope had been foremost in his thought when he spoke the words. No, Iuthap was not fickle as Fon would be; sun was a constant, fire leapt and darted with an imp’s mischief, burning the hand as gladly as it would warm it. But the goddess would not make merry with such trickery.

The scent of balsam resin muddled his memory through a litany of former prayers. When was it that he had brought himself to offer incense again after the village burned? That had been balsam too, a short year after he was wed, set before Melishk as the prayers poured fervently from his lips. Esrid had told him the evening before that she was with child, and in that mingled joy and fear his agnosticism had faltered and he fell in penitence before Weiv’s intricate clay likeness of the goddess. And so he had done every day after till Baran’s birth, waking each morning to offer entreaties while Esrid slept, then returning when she woke to set his ear to her belly and feel the fluttering movements against his cheek. He had laughed the first time a solid kick caught him unawares, running his palm over the taut skin and singing as his own mother had, may peace ever lie down beside you, may I in wisdom’s arm’s find you…and so Baran had known his voice when he emerged into the world at last, tiny fists clenched and yelling with all his might, and in the weary first months would calm nearly at once when Balan held him tucked against his chest and sang those same melodies till he slept.

“Blessed Iuthap,” he began again, tears stinging the corners of his eyes as he whispered this new plea, “queen of every dawn—”

The sound of sliding wood came abruptly behind him and he glanced back, startled. It was only the shutters of the nearest window, he realized, shamefaced at his alarm. A hand was all that showed on the far side of the beams, reaching up from below to push the panel aside before disappearing once more into the shadows. This was followed at once by a groan of protest as the light fell through the open slats, then a rustle of cloth, an unintelligible grumble. Baran, he recognized with brief amusement—how often he had heard that same complaint when he tried to shift his eldest from sleep.

“Brute.” Baran’s voice was muffled, sheltered undoubtedly beneath a pillow. “Put the sun away, I don’t want it.”

“Scorning a goddess? And on her feast day no less.” Sabil’s voice now, low and amused. “You’ve some gall.” There was another rustle, then a squawk.

“Alright! Leave off, I yield,” Baran’s words were garbled with laughter. “Leave off, I said. I’m awake.”

The hint of a smile played at Balan’s lips at the exchange and he reached out to turn the bowl over on the stone, then retrieved the little figurine and shifted by degrees, attempting to move away in silence.

“You’d think you were about to face thieves’ lashes, by the look of you,” Sabil chuckled, “not rising to go about a celebration.”

“Mmph. I’d take the lashes sooner than spend another hour watching him mince his knife through every bite like he’s one of the damned Nómin.”

Balan froze halfway up from the ground, caught both by dread’s curiosity and by the concurrent realization that there was no angle from which he could rise without alerting the two of his presence. And to do so after Baran’s last words seemed, he told himself, needlessly unkind.

“Don’t be petty.”

“Petty?” Baran snorted. “We’re not meant to have two chieftains at once. There’s good reason it’s not been done before—none of our customs fit within it.”

“And it’s not been done now. You are chieftain—none of your people think otherwise. He’s given it over to you in full.”

“Aye. And then greets me by mocking it, goes on as though the rites are still his…”

Balan felt the tightness rising through his throat again as his son’s voice grew in vehemence. So that was what he had seen in the gesture—ridicule and not honor, a sham and not a father’s pride. He clenched his jaws against the protest that welled up within him and lowered himself carefully back to the ground. It was cruel to listen like this, unintentioned as it was. The room’s western corner was only a few strides away; he could crawl, perhaps, and move along the undergrowth until he was safely out of view.

“He’s led the iuthan bida for more years than we’ve lived, Baran. It was habit, not spite.”

“I know.” Baran’s voice had grown muffled again and Balan could see the familiar gesture in the sound—hands pressed over his face, a moment to resettle his will, the fingers trailing down and falling away once more. “I do know it. I—gods all, I rushed out the moment I heard and would have run to the fence like a boy in search of him if he hadn’t reached the Hall already…but then he had that damned shirt and Nóm’s device on my grandfather’s knife, and greeted me like his master not his son…”

Balan looked down in bewilderment. He had not bothered to change amid the sleepless night and the shirt hung about his shoulders still, a pale bluish green—like the Sea, Nóm had said when he gave it to him, and Balan loved it all the more on that count—with tiny kelp fronds stitched in gold and green about the hems. He had chosen it without thought the morning before, rummaging through the clean items in his pack and drawing out the first his hand touched. Gods of vengeance, was every choice to go amiss? 

He was to the corner, out of sight at last, and drew himself stiffly to his feet. For a moment he lingered still, torn between the itch to listen further and learn the extent of the rift and the overwhelming compulsion to run; but flight pulled the harder and he dipped into the angle between the living quarters and the Hall, and found himself face to face with Estreth.

“Gods all!” he hissed with a start and felt his color rise at her look of cool evaluation. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.” 

He swore under his breath and tried not to avert his gaze. The voices still drifted through the air, but they had grown quiet since the outburst and he could no longer discern any words within their cadence. That was for the best, Balan told himself, pressing down his frustration and resisting the urge to slip back around the corner. What he had heard had been accidental. It had been unavoidable. He shifted uncomfortably under Estreth’s appraisal and forced himself not to look away. 

“You’d best come with me,” she said at last, the set of her lips somewhere between resentment and pity, and he followed her without question toward the village.

❈❈❈

Estreth’s hut was little changed from Balan’s memory of the previous spring, and this he found to be an unexpected comfort. The same rugs covered the packed clay floor, woven with the bright patterns of her people’s craft. The same thicket of herbs and blossoms hung drying from the far rafters beneath the thatch. The same table sprawled along the wall to their left, rough-hewn and scattered with a flotsam of small pots and pestles and bowls of half-ground seeds. 

She crossed at once to the hearth and squatted beside the circle of stones, raking the coals into the center and feeding them from a basket of twigs and dried thistle heads. “Come in if you wish,” she said, sparing him a sharp glance before returning her attention to the kindling, “or don’t. But you needn't linger on the threshold, I would like the light.”

Balan stepped aside apologetically and moved to stand near the hanging shelves instead. Estreth’s hands flew deftly about the little hearth, snapping twigs to size, adding a broken log, then another, blowing the embers back into flame. 

“The covered one there,” she said shortly, nodding toward the shelf beside him. 

Balan followed her gaze and retrieved a clay crock, three-legged and bulbous with a chipped lid resting over the mouth. He carried this to the hearth and set it over the stacked kindling, which had begun crackling merrily and was now spreading its flames to the rest of the pile. 

“It won’t need long,” she added, “it’s a small portion remaining.”

“You needn’t feed me, Estreth, I can wait till bread is laid in the Hall.”

“I know.” She rose and crossed to the table, then uncovered a coarse loaf and cut a chunk from one side, setting it tersely in a bowl. “Take the gesture while I’ve an inclination to offer it.”

He shifted uncomfortably as she returned to the fire, tangling one hand in the back of his hair and looking down at the dancing flames, their crackling punctuated only by the sound of a wooden spoon scraping along the sides of the crock. “I’m glad to find this still as I remembered it,” he said at last. “I’d have thought Baran would have moved you to the Hall instead.”

“He would have if I’d agreed to it.”

“Ah.” The ghost of a grin twitched at Balan’s lips. “But as it is, you’ve no stomach for my leftovers?”

Estreth glanced at him under her brows, but let the joke lie pointedly unanswered. 

There was a long silence then, and gradually Balan let his eyes resume their exploration of the hut. Once within, it had quickly become apparent that more alterations were undertaken than he initially thought. A grain ark sat where the bedroll had been, a new layer of daub had been spread over the walls—smoother this time and freshly whitewashed, and a doorway had been cut in the further wall, leading to an additional room beyond. Balan moved slowly toward this last, for the opening was covered with a cluster of strung beads, both clay and wood painted brightly and swaying in the breeze, and his hand reached out impulsively, the beads passing like water through his fingers. An involuntary sob caught in his throat.

“They are her work, not mine.” Estreth had glanced back at the sound and now sat watching him with one arm propped over her knee even as her sister had once done.

“I know them.” His voice was husky as his fingers traced along the patterns, their brilliant reds and yellows and trails of woad blue reminding him sharply of Belen’s embroidery. It never ceased to startle him when these echoes of her leaped from their boys; the lines of her determination mirrored in Baran’s frown, her laugh rolling from Belen’s lips, especially these little unlooked for bequests. He turned a speckled oval between his fingers and tried not to think of the cluster she had woven in her hair the day they were wed. Those had been blue as well, striking against the jet black braids, and he had worn one of them on a cord about his neck for years until it shattered in a fall. “I’ve dreamed of her all through these months, more than since Bel was a boy.” He was surprised to hear the words slip from him, hoarse and barely audible even in the stillness of the hut. “She sits by me while I sleep, sets my hand in hers, and I wake with the brush of her kiss still warm against my lips.”

“Balan…”

“I’ve mourned her afresh this past year and it’s seemed as new a wound as the morning that hillside passed from our sight.” There was a laden pause, then he shook his head and passed his hands over his face. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear this from me. Let me say instead I’m glad you’ve hung it now—I regret having hidden it away as I did.”

Estreth rose and watched him in silence, then gave a brief nod and turned to retrieve the bowl, filling it with broth from the pot and placing it once more on the table. “Sit.” She pushed a stool toward the open space with her foot, but the ice had gone from her voice now and there was almost an air of welcome in the gesture. 

Balan crossed to the seat as directed, breaking a piece from the bread and dipping it into the broth. “Thank you,” he said after a few bites, a tentative smile spreading over his lips. “I’ve missed the taste of our own food.”

She snorted and filled his cup from a nearby ewer. “As you’ve missed a hard bedroll, I suppose, or waking before the winter’s dawn.”

“I have.” He grinned up at her, accepting the proffered drink and taking a long draught. She had placed crushed lemon balm within the jar, as was ever her way, and the flavor weaving through the water made him ache with the taste of home.

“Liar.”

“Aye, a bit.” He turned his attention back to the broth and bread. “I’ve not missed sleeping on stones, but I think most days about this broth and Meyla’s mutton pottage. And khüld and bread…”

“You sound far too hopeful,” she retorted. “Broth I’ll grant you, but you’ve a far road before khüld yet.” 

“Fair enough.” He broke off another bite of bread and felt the knot in his chest begin to ease. The old look of teasing had returned to her eyes and he had seen the hint of a smile when she turned away. “How much of the king’s gold would I need to pilfer, do you think, for Liuvar to let me barter the spices from him?”

“More than you’d dare, that’s for certain.” Estreth filled her own bowl with broth and carried it back to the table, resting her back against the wall and sipping carefully as she watched him. “So he will be trailing after you, I take it?”

“Aye. He meant to arrive when I did, but I doubt he’ll be more than another day, perhaps two.”

“Hmph. Then I owe Baran the return of his good hunting knife.” She took another sip of broth, then looked at him with a raised brow. “How did you mislay him?”

Balan glanced up at her, a brief ripple of annoyance crossing his features, both at the wager and at the prospect of confessing the failed journey. “Diplomacy,” he managed at last, half-obscured behind another sip of broth.

“I thought diplomacy was a duty you could only fulfill at his side. Or have we been led by a falsehood these many months gone?”

“It was no falsehood. This parting was in service of the same.” Balan fidgeted beneath her scrutiny and knew his irritation was growing plain. “Elu Thingol holds his borders against any of our kind,” he mumbled at last, “and will not suffer any passage without persuasion.”

“And so the pet was dismissed at the borders.” She moved to fill her own cup and the twinge of a smile crossed her lips.

“I took my own leave or he’d not have gone a step further.” Balan drained the remaining broth from his bowl. “We need his intercession too dearly to let him make a principle of my passage.”

“Intercession for what? That we might bind ourselves to another’s rule? Be gathered in as so many pups for the lordly ones to see which might grow useful in the hunt?” She watched him darkly. “We’ve not come through the years of wandering, through blood and trial, to resign our peace to another’s tending—not to the forest tyrant nor to the cold pride of the seven brothers, nor yet to the honeyed hand that feeds you.”

“Can you think him so mercenary?”

“I think he recked little of what his whim would cost when he coaxed you beneath the hills.”

“Nay, you hold him answerable for my own debts. He made no demand for service, put forward no expectation of anything save friendship between our peoples—don’t scoff! It was I who begged him to take me on, begged him over and again until he granted it.” 

Estreth turned to fill her own cup and disdain creased her face. “Melishk formed your spine of sand.”

“And your show of hospitality wears thin.”

“It was threadbare from the start.”

Once again, Balan drew his hands over his face, the exhaustion of the previous night pressing in at the sides of his eyes, then leaned in to rest against the table and took a deep breath. “He will not hold a record of aid to leverage some later advantage, if that is what you fear.”

She snorted. “I fear ambition, not leverage.”

“Nóm will not—”

“Leave his pet name at my threshold. He’s earned it not of me.”

“Whereas I’ve earned any names I may be given?”

“You’ll not warm your pity at my hearth, Bëor.” She crossed to the fire as she spoke and scooped a handful of wood ash from the cooled edge, then dusted it over the empty bowls. “This was what you wanted.”

“Was it?”

She made no reply, but poured a splash of water into each and began scrubbing the wood vehemently with a cloth. 

“I don’t know what it was I wanted.” He rested his forehead wearily against his palms. “To go on unchanged, I think, all of us as we were—together here and content. A naive wish. He was always meant to leave at some point.”

“And you were not.”

“No,” he assented quietly. “No, I was not.”

There was a long silence. Estreth set aside the cloth and rinsed the bowls in a nearby pail, then turned them over on the table to dry and rested her own palms against its edge. “Far have you roamed,” she murmured at last, her voice half-chanting in its cadence as she recited the old tale. “Far have you roamed, Otker the wanderer, and deep in the dread wood have your straying feet ventured.”

“As water from spring-wells pours into vessels…”

Her knuckles whitened around the tabletop. “I do not think I will ever forgive you.”

“I know it.”

“What was it for?” she hissed after a pause, and her arms shook with the grief of her fury. 

Balan shook his head helplessly and could not reply.

“Then why do you go on as his tame hound?”

“Why do you go on without a husband?”

Estreth’s eyes flashed but the retort caught in her throat as she heard the sudden roughness in his voice and with a wash of cold recognized it for what it was—not the sharpness of scorn, but pain grasping desperately at some guessed kinship. She stared at him incredulously and he could not hold her gaze, but stood and crossed to peer through the door.

“I hear riders.”

“Balan, you fool.”

“Yes, I know.” The pity in her eyes cut more sharply than all the previous scorn and he flinched, reaching out to grip the door frame.

“Does he know?”

“They are drawing near,” he said, then glanced back at her with a bitter smile and was gone.

---

Chapter End Notes

TALISKA INVENTIONS
For the most part, all faux-Taliska is loosely inspired by or modeled on Germanic-Gothic
Dára: lord or chieftain. Also seen in the form “dar” when it is used as a prefix or paired with the individuals name (as in Dar Baran etc).
haelis: hello, greetings

sama goleins: good greetings
vatta: father
iuthan bida: sun’s blessing/sun’s prayer
Sei lagjan an staiga nóman: set us in the path of wisdom
Nóm: Wisdom, the name given by the Atani to Finrod

MISC NOTES
- Otker the wanderer: see Atanatárissë, chapter 4 and the myth of the ghomennin