Northern Stars by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 3

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“Ship ahead! Due east, captain!” The lookout’s voice is bright with joy, a world away from when this call last went up.

Glorfindel knows that Elrohir’s eyes are on him, and he makes sure to smile.

Even so, Elrohir’s jaw clenches. He sits cross-legged, his back against the mizzen, with a lapful of coiled hithlain and the gentle northern sun pouring gold over his craggy hair. That morning Galdor set him to unlaying rope for splicing, but now the marlinspike stills in his white-knuckled grip. The red-sailed Corsair ship will haunt him for a long time yet.

Galdor sees it, too. “This one is good news, lad!” he says with a grin, and bends down to relieve Elrohir of both spike and cordage. “Come and see for yourself!”

Galdor leads Elrohir up aloft, to the topmost yard, so he can see the Elf-ship with his own eyes.

Elrohir carefully heaves himself up onto the yard behind Galdor’s loose and easy leap. For a moment he crouches upon it to steady himself, leaning his weight against the mast as the ship heels and the waves roll white-capped far beneath.

A few weeks ago he would have been stuck there, the memory of his plunge into the sea too fresh to dare the walk along the spar. Galdor has been patient, encouraging, and just enough of a playful tease to coax Elrohir into braving the walk, first along the lower yard with canvas strung beneath to catch him if he should fall. It did not take long, and now - be it with great care and no Falathrim flourishes whatsoever - Elrohir follows Galdor down the length of the yard and sits down beside him, winding his toes into the footrope to steady himself there.

Glorfindel pulls himself up the shrouds behind them.The three of them crowd on the narrow yard, and despite everything Glorfindel savours the thrill of riding wind and waves high above the swell.

The summer day is bright as a jewel, with foam flying before the Nemir’s swan-white bow as the hills of Lindon go speeding past. Beneath them the Gulf of Lune spreads like a dancing weave of azure and silver and that deep green of sea-glass. Dolphins leap by ship's bow, greeted like old friends by the crew, and a cloud of white seabirds trails in her wake.

The distant ship is little more than an outline, her proud masts drawn sharply against the sea’s blue shimmer.

Any sea-farer would know that shape, and Glorfindel laughs out loud for the sheer joy of it.

Círdan’s own four-master, the Laegrist, sails tall as white clouds against the sky, the light glinting star-bright off the pale wood of her outstretched wings. 

 

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“Ship ahead. Due west, captain!”

Elrond is on the quarterdeck, surrounded by the grey-clad cluster of Círdan’s officers when the call rings down  from the crow’s nest.

“Is it Galdor?” Círdan’s voice is tight with tension.

Silence as the lookout peers into the distance. Only the wind whistles in the rigging.

“Aye sir! It is the Nemir!”

Elrond stills, his hands clutching the mother-of-pearl inlay on the gunwale as he strains himself anew with his attempts to muster Vilya’s power and extend his senses to seek the song of Elrohir’s fëa, somewhere in the far blue distance at the meeting of sea and sky.

Valar, but he is tired!  After finally changing out of his roadstained riding clothes he spent the night tossing in the luxury of a guest cabin without catching true sleep. When restless uncertainty drove him up and out on deck with the sunrise, Círdan insisted on serving him a grilled sea bass that tasted of nothing.

Canissë and her Fëanorians are nowhere to be seen. Círdan summarily confined them to quarters the moment they came aboard. Elrond understands the necessity: many among the crew have lost kin at their hands. Even so, they were assigned but a single windowless cabin to share between them.

None have complained. Their very presence on board is the greatest concession the Shipwright has made since the Last Alliance, and the Fëanorians are wary of showing themselves ungrateful.

Elrond pitied them, when he went to see them in the morning, a circle of pale faces in the oil-lit twilight of their cabin, caught between the wordless loathing of the Falathrim and the misery of their own sea-longing, a knife-sharp yearning whetted by the cry of the trailing gulls, as desperately unfulfilled as ever.

The remainder of his escort is a little more at ease. Ardil, Borndis, and her folk are up on deck. Yesterday they were welcomed among the crew with wine and song, and they spent the night lodged in comfort. Today they stand like a grey-mantled island amidst the smooth flow of shipboard work.

From the corner of his eyes Elrond sees a slender shape lightly gain the quarterdeck stairs to stand beside him at the railing.

“All well, lord?” Even ancient Ardil shows the strain, by the unveiled eagerness in his eyes. “Any sign?”

Elrond battles a spiteful impulse to rebuke the fellow for daring to ask after his private osanwë with his son, even though he has no such thing.

He swallows his anger instead. Before their company rode out, Celebrían named the ancient Sinda Elrohir’s personal guard, and bid him not to let her son from his sight until his safe return to Imladris. Elrond’s choice for the position would have been different, but he let his  distraught wife have her wish.

Ardil is Celeborn’s oldest and most trusted captain, ever since their youth in sunken Beleriand. His loyalty to his lord’s beloved grandson will be absolute, and he has a kind heart, even if his dispatches to Celeborn reveal more of Imladris’ inner workings than Elrond finds comfortable.

“I do not know, Master Ardil,” he says honestly. “Not yet.”

Ardil knows he is pushing his luck. He gives a polite bow, and retreats.

Behind their backs, Círdan has called out orders for yet more sails. Up aloft the crew unfurl the great white sheets, and with a snap and billow the ship leaps westward into foam-flying speed.

Elrond turns around to face the crew once more, and finds pity in their eyes. The tension tightens in his throat until he feels he cannot breathe.

He flees up the shrouds into the rigging, heedless of his stiff muscles’ cry for rest, heaving himself up hand over hand away from their gazes. High up on the topmost yard he can see the white swan-ship at the edge of the bending sea.

He walks out to the yardarm, as sure and steady as if his last commission as shipboard surgeon was but yesterday, and stands holding on to a shroud as the spar bucks underfoot, his eyes on the Nemir.

Is Elrohir on board, or does he remain lost? Is he alive, dying, or Valar forbid, already dead and buried at sea?

He peers into the distance, frantic, but in the shimmering of the western horizon, the lines of the ship’s silhouette reveal nothing.

 

----

 

Like a swan soaring into flight, the Laegrist has unfurled her mighty sails to wing towards them. Now the shapes of her pennants can be traced against the sky.

“Look! The Star!” calls someone from one of the mizzen yards.

She has come close enough to discern her colours.

Glorfindel leans forward, hanging from one of the shrouds by one hand, the other shielding his straining eyes from the midday sun.

Atop the Laegrist’s mainmast, Mithlond’s white swan on an azure field cracks in the west wind, but that is not why Galdor is laughing, merry and clear as a silver bell as below them the crew bursts into cheers.

Glorfindel sits awestruck, unable to grasp the reality in front of his eyes.

The foremast flies the device of Imladris. The six-pointed star shimmers silver on midnight blue.

Elrond has come for his son.

This cannot be, and yet somehow, it is. Maybe with Ulmo’s grace Elrond changed himself into a seabird like his mother once did, to speed from Imladris to the Havens on swift white wings.

“Look, Elrohir! The Star of Eärendil! Your father has come!” Galdor throws his arms around Glorfindel and Elrohir both, and for a moment Glorfindel feels only wild joy as he, too, laughs like a man reprieved from the scaffold.

Between them Elrohir sits very still, his eyes fixed on the distant ship. Glorfindel cannot tell what lies behind his eyes.

Galdor only stops laughing long enough to call down to his first mate. “Alphalas! Quickly now, fetch the star and hoist it!”

He needs not say more. Almost a year ago, while they rushed the Nemir to readiness for this perilous quest, Galdor and Alphalas gave thought to packing a pennant with the emblem of Eärendil’s House. Now that Elrond’s son is secured and the journey’s end in sight, they raise it beside the colours of Lindon.

 

----

 

Elrond cannot breathe.

The Nemir’s mainmast flies only the Shipwright’s device. The sight of the lone white-and blue pennant hits him like a fist to the face.

Valar, no!

But then, as he looks on, another flag is hoisted. He watches the pennant rise and unfold in the breeze, snapping against the Nemir’s masts.

The Star of Eärendil.

Elrohir.

That distant ship has returned from afar, and it carries his son.

Elrond teeters atop the yard, one hand clenched about a rope, the other hanging by his side, motionless as beneath him the Laegrist explodes into a wild rush of joy.

The ship’s bell bursts into peals of silver laughter, the crew into a deafening chorus of cheers and hurrays. The Falathrim are singing, the warriors of Imladris are a tight knot of embraces. Ardil - Ardil!- scrubs a hand over his eyes.

Elrond does no such thing. He summons Vilya’s power to send his spirit searching across the distance to Elrohir.

And he finds.

It is all he can do not to plummet down from the yard.

Even from here Elrond can feel him like he can sense the sun through closed eyelids.That sweet, longed-for light of Elrohir’s fëa is a beacon against the empty sea.  His son is alive, and he is here.

As the pennant reaches the top of the Nemir’s foremast, across the water rings the silver tolling of her ship’s bell. Galdor and his crew return in triumph, bearing Elrond’s son. 

The bells on both ships are ringing now, their crews singing hymns to Ulmo and Elbereth.

Elrond presses his free hand against his eyes. He must not weep, not even for joy. The long road and his tiredness he must cast behind him, forgotten. Soon he will stand before Elrohir, and he must give whatever his son needs from him.