Pallando and the Lost Realm of Palisor by Ilkorindrim  

Travels in the Emyn Uial

Fainn and Pallando travel over the Dwarf Bridge on the River Lhun, and come up into Emyn Uial, until they reach Lake Nenuial, where Pallando looks for the remnants of Galadriel and Celeborn's halls. 

It was two more days to muster the company of Dwarves in the end, but then they set out. A great number of Dwarves from the countryside, almost a thousand, watched them go, and many brought gifts of food and provisions for the travelers on their journeys, as well as old weapons. Unlike the swiftness of the council, these gifts had to be accepted with ceremony, and thus it was almost midday when the small army of Dwarves finally left, coming down from the mountain to the crossroads, while the children walked with them, playing in the rocks beside the road. Then they passed beyond their kindred and set out on the ancient road going East. 

Before them the great valley of Lhun opened, falling slowly over the downs until it came to the river, which they could but dimly perceive as a murmur of a line in the land far off. But then the land rose again, up to the Emyn Uial, which rolled blue and purple away in the distance, and the lake was hidden within them. The Road stretched out before them. 

If the Dwarves were bemused to have a Wizard in their company they gave no sign of it, and treated him like any other soldier, despite his blue habit, and lack of weapons. Although none had spoken of it, all seemed aware that he was not entirely the old man he appeared to be, and they gave great respect to him. The days were bright and happy, and they were in high spirits. The realm of Gil-galad was still near, and it had been many centuries since evil had dwelled in the North. Thus they had no fear of enemies, although a nameless dread sometimes crept up on them, when they remembered the peril from the South. Still, no such evil had yet come to the valley of the Lhun! 

It was nearly a week when they came to the river, being six nights since they set out from Dolmed. There they found the bridge, being built in the fashion of the Dwarves in the elder years before the rising of the Moon. All one, great smooth piece of stone it was, rising in an arch that pinched in a sloped triangle, before plunging down to reach the other side of the river. So steep it was that into its path were cut shallow shelves of stone that served as stairs for the travelers, who climbed slowly up to reach its great summit, easily a quarter of the height of Mount Dolmed itself. How the ancestors of the Dwarves had built this bridge none now could say — some speculated they had a stonecraft that could work molten rock itself, but it was lost. From the summit of the great arch of the bridge the host looked out and beheld the Lhun falling to meet the gulf beneath them. From afar they could see Dolmed on the right, still wreathed in his clouds, and on the left, just a bit below the elevation of the Emyn Uial, they could see the headwaters of Nenduin, which ran down from the hills into the Lhun many leagues below them.  This climbed steeply up into the hills, but closer to them they could see its fords near the foothills of Uial. There the river ran shallow and flat for nearly a league, but there it was very wide, and it was filled with smooth round stones. Before them, at the edge of the valley, dimly, the towers of Mithlond could be seen. 

“How great indeed,” said Fainn, “were the Mothers and Fathers of the Dwarves, who raised this mountain about the river!” Then they went down the other side, slowly stepping from shelf to shelf. 

They came now to the green vale before Emyn Uial and it was a wide and fair country, filled with pines and tall grasses which rose in the hills between the Lhun and the Nenduin, and it was unpeopled. They spent three days there, hunting the game that ran between the tall trees, and eating the berries that grew scattered throughout the hills. They were so enamored with this land that they tarried there too long, and then disaster struck. A storm came out of the hills, and it did not cease, day or night. They were drenched, miserable and cold, and they were unable to cure or dry most of the game they had caught. Worse, when they came to the river, they found that the previously shallow ford was now in flood, and therefore impassable without boats — and out of the question for a horse like Nasmith. 

After more than a day of rain Pallando suggested leaving the road and traveling Northeast, skirting around the headwaters of the Nenduin and coming to Lake Nenduial from the North. It would mean reaching the Emyn Uial off road, which would be difficult, but would only add a few days to their journey, by Pallando’s count, as it would bring them closer to the North of the Lake anyways. Miserable and dejected, Fainn and the company agreed. The country was wide enough that they could make their way upstream with little trouble, but the turf, before beautiful with tall grasses, now turned to mud beneath their feet, and made every step torturous. 

The rain continued for two more days. When it finished, the Nenduial was still a raging torrent to their right, although they were close to its headwaters, or so Fainn judged from what he remembered from the bridge, and they were almost in the Emyn Uial. They came up finally through a shallow valley between two great downs on the third day after they left the ford. The Sun was rising before them, and as steam rose from the grasses they began to have a concept of warmth and dryness again. Against the sun they climbed slowly into the hills which had seemed purple at a distance but now were green and fair. Then they were in the North Downs.

It was in the evening of that day that they finally saw the Lake, although it was still more than a day’s journey away. It glittered, blue and emerald beneath them, although around it the tops of the hills were bare and covered with jagged grey stones which tumbled down to the heath around the lake. The purple flowers of the heather was in bloom, and the hills were dotted with juniper bushes also in flower, so the purple and yellow mingled on the heath, in spite of the foreboding hills. On the East the land gave way, and the Baranduin flowed down from the lake into the distant country to the East and South.

“We made good time,” said Fainn, coming up beside Pallando. “Our detour at the ford only cost us an extra day, I think. We should be back to the road in no time.”

“I wonder,” said Pallando, “where I shall find our loremaster. Tell me Fainn, do you know where the elves Galadriel and Celeborn made their dwellings on this lake?”

Fainn shook his head. “I know not, nor do I know those names other than that I know elves once dwelled here, but that was in the time of my great-grandfather, and is but a memory. But I do know that kindred ever looks towards the West, as it is in Lindon — few of them live on our side of the valley, desiring always to look West towards the Sun as it sets in the Sea. Therefore, I imagine they settled on the East side of the Lake.”

Two days later they came down to the North point of Lake Nenuial, where it came together in a small and narrow port. While it was not a wide Lake it was long, and one could not see its far shore from the North, seeing only the hills as they came down to the shore and then widened. The Lake began, snake-like, and then opened out into what seemed to be a vast, freshwater sea. Its blue-green waters gave off an eerie glow. There was no sign of any habitation.

But here they found the road again, which went just North above the Lake before continuing East. It ran parallel to the Baranduin, and then continued North over the downs, making for Mount Gundabad. “For of old,” said Fainn, “the Dwarves would gather there in the greatest council of them all, at the place where Durin the Deathless first arose.”

Unfortunately that was not the route the company purposed to take now, as Khazad-dum lay in the South. Thus, there was already some question for whether they should follow the road, and for how long. At the council they had agreed to make camp at the lake, and as Pallando had business here anyways, they decided to make for the Eastern shore and establish themselves there while they decided which was the best road to take. During this time Pallando would seek out any sign of Daeron, to get his counsel on the journey to the East.

By nightfall on the 13^th day since they had set out from the ruins of Belegost, the company came out of the Emyn Uial to the eastern shores of lake Nenuial. A flat plain, scattered with copses of trees, greeted them. To the West the lake itself, wide and vast, opened its sea-green shores before the smatterings of yellow and purple on the hills across the far shore. Out of the lake flowed the river. They camped by its shore. 

The next morning, Pallando arose with the dawn to find all the land about the lake filled with mist. He stepped forth from his camp beneath one of the tall beeches on the plain, and began to walk lightly in the tall grasses, seeking to come near to the Lake. But the mists blocked the view of the far shore, and even of the near shore beyond the middle distance, and he could not easily see where any Elven dwelling might be. So he began to wander along the shoreline, seeking for some sign of habitation.

Now it had been several centuries in the years of men since Galadriel and Celeborn had dwelled on that lake. Still, the Elves do not build their realms lightly, and they tend to last, even long after their masters have walked away. So Pallando walked to the South and North along the Lake, seeking any sign of habitation — any tower of the High Elves in Lindon, or tree-dwelling of the Grey or Green Elves. Yet there was none. And when he had spent several hours walking, and the Sun had risen and the mist had cleared, he saw with a keen eye the far side of the Lake, and beheld nothing there either. Then he began to despar, thinking the realm was well-hidden, and that the King must have been mistaken, and it was abandoned. He retraced his steps and came back to the river and, dejected, began to walk back towards the camp of the Dwarves. 

Along the way he followed the river Baranduin, which came down out of the Lake with many rapids, and swiftly, and all at once gave way to falls. Pallando was reminded of the legendary Gates of Sirion in the world of old, and then he thought at once of Nargothrond, the hidden realm of Finrod Felagund. 

All at once he beheld where the realm must be, for even as Galadriel had been brother to the most noble Finrod, she would perhaps have built her dwelling on Nenuial in the same manner in honor of her sibling. He began to search then, behind the falls, for a secret door. This did not avail him: the walls behind each waterfall were stout, simple, unadorned stone. 

He came then to a fall which plunged suddenly over a rim of cliffs into a circular basin which was deeper than the rest of the river which continued. Here, then, he thought was an abnormality, but if it was a gate it required him to get wet. He hung his blue habit on the branches of the nearest tree and, stripping down as much as he was able, threw himself down into the kettle beneath the waterfall and dove under. 

It was deep and cold, and the current pulled him down. He realized at once that he may have made a fatal error, and that the cauldron could conceal rapids that might take him to his death. He swam down. The walls at the side of the stone cauldron were smooth, and the rock was a grey-green that faded at times to black. He felt with his fingers and found a hole that had clearly been bored into the side by hammer and chisel. Running swiftly out of air, he pulled himself into it, fumbling his way down the passage until, straining for breath, he came up within a subterranean chamber. 

Here was indeed a cave in the image of Menegroth. Its columns rose in the shapes of branching trees, and its stone lattice-work was carved in the image of buckthorn. Pallando rose out of the circular pool clad only in his white undergarments, and gazed upon the remnants of what had been a fair hall with many pillars, leading to a further gate beyond set into the far wall. The gate was adorned with images of ivy, and it was slightly ajar. Passages lead away on the right and left to either side. 

Blessing his good luck in finding the passage, but regretting the absence of his staff, Pallando decided to chance the main entrance to the halls of Nenuiel, seeing as it was open. He was unsure whether this was a sign of habitation or abandonment. 

Behind the door he found himself facing three halls, of which the one before him opened out into yet another forecourt with columns. This, at the end, had two thrones set on either side, presumably for the Lord and Lady. He stepped forward into the hall, beholding as he did so images of Finrod Felagund and Turgon of Nevrast flanking him on either side. Yet there was no sign that any yet dwelled in these caves.