Three Black Islands by Idrils Scribe  

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1. Ost-in-Edhil

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'In Eregion long ago many Elven-rings were made, magic rings as you call them, and they were... of various kinds: some more potent and some less. The lesser rings were only essays in the craft before it was full-grown, and to the Elven-smiths they were but trifles — yet still to my mind dangerous for mortals.'

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 2, The Shadow of the Past

Ost-in-Edhil, Eregion. Midwinter of the year 1499 of the Second Age

“Too weak!” Prince Telperinquar of Eregion snaps a brown-edged petal off the tiger lily and crumples it between his fingers. The juices smell of decay.

The costly Valinórean bloom was forced from imported bulbs in the Mírdain’s heated hothouses. A vision of tropical beauty when he laid it under its crystal dome ten years ago. Now the vibrant orange and blue have faded into dullness.

Telperinquar sighs. Only ten of Middle-earth’s fleeting sun-years. Not at all like the eternal, deathless flowering of Valinor. Not at all.

Failure, once again.

He picks up one of the pair of rings set beside it on a silk cushion, and holds it up before the window. Middle-earth’s pale winter sun catches the ruby inset, washing the velvet and gold leaf panelling of Telperinquar’s study in bars of red. A thousand eight-pointed stars set aflame.

“Weak indeed.” Annatar slides off His chair and extends a long-fingered hand to lift the second ring. “These rings do preserve living matter, but a mere decade is nothing.”

Aulë’s Maia has clad Himself in splendour to match the Gwaith-i-Mírdain’s tastes. The perfect, symmetrical face eclipses even the fairest Elf. Hair of the exact golden shade to match the eyes. A body of such strong, masculine beauty it might have been precision-aimed at Telperinquar’s basest desires.

“These rings were but trials,” he says quickly, eager to distract himself. “We must improve the design yet again.”

Glad to face away from Annatar he turns to his desk, rolls open a scroll filled with equations, and hangs it from the ivory display stand, scouring the calculations once more in search of some flaw.

“But I do not see how!” he exclaims, hating how he sounds like a petulant apprentice. “The Song of Making was pitch perfect for the rings’ resonance, and the ruthenium alloy oxidized upon tempering as we calculated. Why do these rings not arrest entropy?”

“The truly great Maker must look beyond the mundane.”

Annatar rounds the desk, placing Himself back into Telperinquar’s line of sight. A long-fingered hand emerges from a draped silk sleeve to tap the perfect, rose-tinted lips. The muscles of His forearm ripple beneath golden skin.

“What do you mean?” Telperinquar stutters, dropping his eyes back to the scroll.

“There is one forge in Middle-earth where we might glean the secrets of that art.”

Telperinquar’s head whips up. What lesser smith has surpassed Fëanáro’s grandson?

“A great forge, though it lies in ruin.”

Only then does Telperinquar understand. Shameful relief at finding himself the greatest still floods him before the full horror of Annatar’s idea poisons it.

“Are you mad?” he gasps.

“Not mad, my prince” Annatar smiles that golden smile. “Merely brave. Only the daring may create true greatness.”

“What would you hope to find in that cursed place?”

“The secret of halting entropy is known to a select few.” Annatar drops his voice to a conspiratorial tone, so Telperinquar must lean in to hear. “None but a Vala might wield such power.”

Under His luxurious perfume of frankincense from Far Harad, Annatar smells of the forge - hot metal and a hint of sulphur. The scent rouses Telperinquar’s hot blood. He must keep that shameful lust off the surface of his mind, lest Annatar read it. With a desperate act of will he presses it down and slows his heart’s sudden frantic hammering.

Annatar gives no sign of having heard. “I once studied those crafts in Aulë’s Halls, but the Great Smith’s counsel now lies beyond My reach.” He pauses a moment while his golden gaze pierces Telperinquar like a hot blade. “Another Vala has done it here, in Middle-earth.”

He need not say who.

Morgoth, the Black Foe.

Morgoth once performed morbid experimentations that tore the very fabric of Eä, bending and breaking the Eru-given laws of physics.

Telperinquar stands stricken. He should now utter an indignant refusal. And yet, he does not wish to see the esteem in that golden gaze turn to disappointment.

“The peaks of Thangorodrim must still stand amidst the frozen wastes,” Annatar continues. “We must find them, and search the ruins of Angband beneath. We can glean priceless knowledge from the remains of Melkor’s laboratory. Perhaps even his log books.”

Morgoth’s own laboratory logs. Annnatar’s idea is horror and madness both, and Telperinquar must now tell him so. 

“The high king forbids all expeditions to Thangorodrim,” he stutters instead.

“Such laws protect the weak and ignorant from their own folly.” Annatar steps forward and lays a hand on Telperinquar’s arm, leaning in as if disclosing some great intimacy. “We are neither, you and I. As men of science, what use have we for legalism?”

Telperinquar’s skin burns with that touch.

Annatar smiles, baring snow-white teeth. “Surely young Artanáro would not dare hinder you, Fëanáro’s heir?”

He uses High King Gil-galad’s father-name as if they are intimate friends. Telperinquar knows they are no longer. Annatar arrived in Eregion on the heels of a stern royal warning, delivered by Elrond.

It makes Annatar’s tale of a falling-out, a case of spite on Artanáro’s part, sound all the more believable. Artanáro sent his royal herald to smear a former friend over a mere personal quarrel, and Telperinquar thinks less of him for it. Those who wish to claim kingship should not indulge in petty grudges.

“He will not hinder me,” Telperinquar agrees. The authority of Nolofinwë’s heir over the Fëanorian Prince of Eregion is shaky, at best.

Still, open defiance of a royal edict might prove a step too far.

“We might feign a different purpose as our cover,” Annatar says. “Another survey perhaps? The Mírdain are forever in need of rare earth elements, and Forochel is rich in neodymium.”

“None of my Mírdain will agree to this.”

“We do not need them!” Annatar says quickly. “And they should not share in knowledge so perilous. We alone need to know. “

Telperinquar shakes his head. “Just the two of us can hardly pretend to be a mining expedition.”

“True. Then let us stay as close to the truth as possible,” Annatar suggests at once. The mark of a skilled liar, but Telperinquar dismisses the thought. “We will pass near the magnetic North Pole. Tell Artanáro that we need to conduct experiments in ringcraft there. He knows so little of the art that he will believe it at once.”

Telperinquar hesitates, but then he must concede he likes this little white lie. A fool’s errand after magnetism would be a fine red herring to throw at the High King. Telperinquar was not the one to start this distrust between Eregion and Lindon: ever since Annatar’s arrival, the king has been planting his spies among the Mírdain.

“Agreed,” Telperinquar says eagerly. “We shall go next summer.”

“I thank you, my prince, for your wise and generous commitment to the advancement of science.” Annatar’s smile as he stands there before the sunlit window is a vision of masculine beauty, pure gold backlit in yet more gold.

Telperinquar’s mouth is suddenly dry, his body aflame. He saves his decency with a quick turn to the sideboard, where he busies himself with a crystal decanter of miruvorë and two glasses while he wrestles for control.

He has regained a semblance of mastery when he turns around to offer Annatar a glass of golden liquid.

“To the success of our expedition!” Telperinquar raises his glass.

Annatar smiles that golden smile, and clinks his own against it with a slow and deliberate motion. “To our partnership.”

Telperinquar almost chokes on his drink, and makes a desperate grab for the bell cord.  He is rescued by the swift appearance of a liveried footman.

“Summon the council,” Telperinquar orders, only a little hoarsely. “I have an announcement to make.”

“Aye, my prince."

The footman bows and makes to withdraw, but Annatar stays him with a wave at the wilted lily. “And throw out that flower.”

----

“Have you considered that Ereinion and Elrond might be right?” Netyarë bends in a rustle of brocade skirts to smell a flowering branch of snow-white lairëlossë. “What if Annatar is not Aulë’s emissary after all?”

As Telperinquar’s chief counsellor, she gets to be frank with him. She straightens herself, and to give him time to think she looks up to the great crystal dome of the hothouse sparkling overhead. The snow melts off it so the winter sun can reach the plants below unhindered.

Standing here amidst the flowers, she might believe herself in one of Tírion’s pleasure gardens. Walkways lined with Yavannamirë in perfect golden bloom radiate from the greenhouse’s center like spokes from a wheel. Between lie beds of fragrant lissuin, artful trellisses laden with flowering bougainvillea and hibiscus. Priceless three-coloured carp lazily wheel through the lotus pond. 

She knows this place for the illusion it is - beneath their feet lies the great hypocaust, fed by Dwarf-mined coal from Khazad-dûm. But a single day of starving the furnace and frost will kill these painstakingly reared Valinórean plants.

And all things in Middle-earth must one day perish. She imagines the dome in ruin, its roof beams bare as the ribs of a dead dragon with a scatter of shattered crystal beneath. The carp frozen solid in their pond. Windblown snow whips the skeletal limbs of the dead lairëlossë.

“Where else would he be from?” Telperinquar turns into a lane lined with Nessamelda in glazed planters, and Netyarë falls into step beside him.

She eyes him. “You know.”

Fëanáro’s grandson has his grandfather’s looks. That same handsome face, that tall and broad-shouldered figure, and his sea-grey eyes carry that same hungry intensity that marked Féanáro and Curufinwë both.

The most eligible bachelor in Middle-earth, save perhaps the High King himself. Women flock to Telperinquar, but even in these days of peace and prosperity the Prince of Eregion remains unwed. Married to his craft, some say. Other, less charitable tongues wag in different directions. Ones that will beget no heirs.

Netyarë has caught Telperinquar’s eyes lingering on Annatar’s gold-skinned fána longer than might be called polite, or friendly. She can only hope the infatuation does not cloud his judgement.

Telperinquar cuts her off as if he read the thought. “Annatar’s art is so great, it cannot spring from any but Aulë.”

“Then how come I never met him at the forges of Aulë in Aman?” Netyarë demands, “or under the banner of Aulë’s folk, when the Host of the Valar marched against Morgoth?”

“I asked him that very question,” Celebrimbor says quickly. “Annatar has devoted himself to Middle-earth, ordering its chaos. He has wandered long and far in that great work.”

“And you believe him?”

Telperinquar shakes his head, suddenly frantic. “Do you not understand the nature of what he offers? To bend the very laws of physics! Who but Aulë might grant such power?”

They have reached the heart of the garden. There, at the wheel’s axis from which all paths radiate, stands Telperinquar’s finest work.

Fëanáro took a cutting from the White Tree before he left darkened Tírion. He used the sword he had raised for his terrible Oath but moments before. The Great Square beneath Mindon Eldalieva was filled with torches, the air gravid with smoke and anger as Fëanáro took his blade to Galathilion, and carried the hacked branch away beside his banner.

All care was taken with water and nutrients to coax the cutting to grow roots, but under Yavanna’s wrath it withered and died in mere hours. High King Féanáro’s kingdom in Middle-earth would have no White Tree.

The eye alone cannot distinguish Telperinquar’s work from the real thing. Standing in a planter made of mithril etched with the Star, the White Tree of Eregion looks alive down to the last pearl-white petal. Only touch reveals the smooth hardness of metal and gems.

Telperinquar strokes a jade leaf. “Annatar knows the secret of halting entropy, and by that we may vanquish the decay of Middle-earth. We will keep all things fresh and undying even in these mortal lands.” He pauses. “As it should be.”

Netyarë knows his mind. Many things might become as they should be. A sovereign Fëanorian princedom in Eregion, its power and wealth rivalling Tírion itself. Let Nolofinwë’s grandson sit on his empty title! The true High king of the Noldor in Middle-earth shall be from Fëanáro’s House.

Telperinquar is so eager. Too eager.

“This expedition is perilous,” Netyarë attempts another warning. “Even if Annatar proves a true Aulendil, he leads you to a dreadful place. You know what force was unleashed there.”

She cannot bring herself to utter the name. Angband, the iron jail. Specter of horror for all the Eldar.

“It has been over a thousand years,” Telperinquar says very calmly.

“Not long enough, Tyelpë. The danger remains.”

He scoffs. “I am no sickly Mortal to whither from it. And think of what we stand to gain!”

Rings of Power. Jewels made to vanquish entropy, so the Elves might perfectly preserve all things. Not the vitality of Mortal races, where new life springs forth from the withering of the old, but an eternal standstill created by artifice. The circle of Middle-earth’s seasons frozen at the height of a deathless summer.

Embalmed. She shudders.

“How we still long for Valinor! That is our curse,” she mutters.

“Oh, Netyarë!” Telperinquar lies a hand on her shoulder in comfort. Where he chose to stay in Middle-earth, Netyarë had no choice in the matter. A kinslayer and an exile she remains.

“Why return to Tírion in sackcloth and ashes?” Telperinquar comforts, “to spend eternity as Arafinwë’s subjects? Are things not better here, in our own free city?”

“Is it right, what we are attempting?” she answers question with question, her doubt clear in her mind.

“What is wrong with preservation? Surely death and decay are not right?”

Spoken like a true Fëanorian, like his father and his grandfather before him. Sometimes wrong, never in doubt.

“Perhaps for Middle-earth, they are?”  she protests, searching for words to express the unease growing in her heart.

Even as she speaks, she can tell she chose wrong. Open opposition only ever served to fix the Fëanorians firmer upon their chosen course. 

“Middle-earth shall become what we make it.” Telperinquar smiles. “And we shall surpass even the bliss of Valinor, for here we are our own masters.”

It was in Eregion that the counsels of Sauron were most gladly received, for in that land the Noldor desired ever to increase the skill and subtlety of their works.... Therefore they hearkened to Sauron, and they learned of him many things, for his knowledge was great. In those days the smiths of Ost-in-Edhil surpassed all that they had contrived before; and they took thought, and they made Rings of Power. But Sauron guided their labours, and he was aware of all that they did; for his desire was to set a bond upon the Elves and to bring them under his vigilance.

The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age