Under Agate Skies by Isilme_among_the_stars  

Deep within the green, shadowed vale, beneath the western slopes of the Misty Mountains, where the summits above stand tall as silent guardians and the waters cry loudly the song of the making of the world, there is a sanctuary and refuge: the Last Homely House East of the Sea. Deep within this refuge that clings, steadfast, to the hills and spills merrily into the hollow, there is a chamber: a place of rest curated perfectly for its inhabitant. The chamber is Erestor’s and Erestor lies quietly within.

The sanctuary is known commonly as Imladris, or Rivendell, named for the cleft into which its first inhabitants stumbled, footsore (newly made refugees, all), but Erestor has always preferred Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva, the House of Lost Mirth, for so it seems to him. The weak grow strong here; the despairing, hopeful; and light and song stubbornly refuse to subsumption by a world grown dark, hostile, and mean. Some of Ost-in-Edhil’s aspiration and splendour are captured in Rivendell’s spirit, though in a softer form. His people, fading slowly from the tale of this world, are not diminished in the valley’s embrace, but fulgent and bright, undimmed. So it usually seems.

On this particular day, to Erestor, such a vision feels thin and delicate,: a glass orb dropped from the hand, careening toward marble floors, waiting to shatter. Mirth is far from reach. His own sanctuary within a sanctuary, arranged just so, feels stuffy and close. He aches to be free of it. On a day such as this, however, though such a course is possible, it would not be wise.

“You were missed at council,” Elrond remarks as he crosses the threshold. “Fare you ill?”

Within these rooms Elrond has been a healer, a brother, a confidant…even a brokenhearted mess, but rarely is the Lord of Imladris seen within.He leaves his silver circlet at the door, metaphorically speaking. Today, he comes as a friend. Erestor does not conceal from Elrond what he hides, at least in part, from most. Elrond has seen him at his worst and needs no shielding. “I have had better days.”

“Ah, Elrond says, coming to sit beside Erestor, not on the comfortable chair placed obliquely beside the bed, but on the bed itself. Over the course of a thousand days much like this one, Elrond has come to understand that the precise quality of bitterness behind Erestor’s answer communicates far more than the words themselves. “What is the worst of it?” he asks. “Body, or mind?”

“Mind,” Erestor answers with a sigh.

There is a meadow, high upon one of the ridges overlooking this valley that Erestor loves. Harebells and crocus bloom a riot of purple to carpet the grassy slopes, and the scents of juniper and pine linger in the air. Above, the firmament stretches high and wide, more vast and complete in the lofts of the foothills than in the valley, as if a giant had stretched sky like a coverlet over the land. Erestor can only reach it on good days, if he plans carefully, budgeting strength as a steward might grain in times of scarcity. Such a hike is an expense that he can seldom afford. It has been many years now, since last he stood on that ridge. On days like today, Erestor fears he never will again.

Elrond says nothing; he knows he need not. With his long legs gathered in a tangle of acute angles that push the skirts of his robes askew, he looks as undignified as Erestor currently feels. It is disarming.

“I resent this,” Erestor confides. He has done many times before and will do many times more. These are not the apologetic, tearful confessions of one who is certain they should bear their load in silence, but invectives spat with bile. Once, Erestor had apologised for the venom unleashed upon his Lord and friend, knowing it unfair. Elrond had only laughed, informed Erestor that he bore his tribulations with more grace than some he had known, and told him dignity was not dependent on how meekly one suffered. Erestor has not asked to be pardoned for grumbling about his infirmity since.

“Could I ease you?” Elrond asks.

“Sing us away from this room.”

“Where do you wish to go?”

“Wherever you please.”

In song, Elrond takes Erestor to places far from this valley. Many of them his chief counsellor’s feet have never trod. Rivendell’s Lord does not perform often in the Hall of Fire any more—he used to once, in happier times—but sings freely in these rooms, when their confines press in, suddenly suffocatingly small, and Erestor is too depleted to seek succour among the woodlands of the valley. His words weave a spell of escape that is not otherwise possible. Today, they fly west, over the Blue Mountains, to Lindon of old, where the light came dappled and golden through canopies of elm. This surprises Erestor little, for Gil-Galad has been on both of their minds much since realisations about the One Ring came to the fore.

“It has been long since I walked beneath those trees,” he says. There was a time before he grew ill, short yet sweet, when travel between Lindon and Imladris was common as nails and Erestor roamed the land as freely as any elf might. Neither duty nor infirmity constrained him then.

“You could do, if you wished,” Elrond says. “The way grows more dangerous, it is true, but not yet so perilous, I think, that it could not be managed once you are recovered sufficiently. That part of Lindon is not an unreasonably long diversion from Mithlond, should you have it in your heart to walk its forests again.”

There is a growing understanding among the Eldar of Imladris that to sail West is an inevitability with all the weight of sunrise and the turning of seasons. The call of the sea grows loud in elven hearts in these latter days, beckoning. Many have already departed. It may take half an age, perhaps, before all travel that road, but sooner, rather than later, all the radiance of the Eldar will grace a shore strange and new to Elrond and Erestor both. Mithlond, these days, is but a stop on the road. Erestor and Elrond have spent many hours speculating on what reprieve he might find in the Blessed Realm, but Erestor is far from ready to forsake these outer lands yet. “My place remains here.”

“So be it.” Elrond smiles a complicated little smile, and the gratitude in his declaration has all the gravitas of a Doom given voice.

In the valley, evening comes early. The sun disappears behind the shoulders of the hills long before its rays forsake the peaks above; doubly premature in winter, when the watery light of chill, clouded days lands weakly on the sill, and seems to remain no longer than a stranger passing through the land. Today, though Imladris has descended into the depths of December, Anor is defiant and bright, as if she too cries ‘fie’ to the gathering dark and would lend her support to their efforts to deny it. Somewhere to the south a fellowship of nine carrying all their hope, against Erestor’s good sense, will be glad of her unreasonable warmth as they make toward Eregion and the mountain passes.

Erestor turns his face toward the window and lets bright sunlight soak his skin. Seldom does it snow in Imladris, but on such a day in Eregion the ground would glitter white as if scraps of cut diamond were scattered liberally across hill and dell, and berries on the holly trees would draw the eye, redder than rubies amide leaves of emerald. Blue and green against the pale, grey sill glint a cluster of old malachite and azurite pieces, worn smooth by his own hands. They are a poor substitute.

“Something has caught your mind’s gaze,” Elrond remarks.

“Did you ever see the House of the Mírdain?” he asks.

“I did.”

“I recall her laden with snow: blanketed all in queenly white with dapples of naked stone where the forge-fires burned hot within. Ost-in-Edhil was something to behold on such a day. I have not seen that city, of its lands, since their sacking. Though long have I wanted, I have not found it within me to make the journey.” Erestor has not travelled more than two days’ walk from the valley since the beginning of the Third Age.

“It is a fair place, even now.”

“So your sons tell me: overgrown with life of a different kind where once I lived mine. I wish to walk its rugged slopes with my own feet, to touch those old stones with my own hands! Far more than I crave the shade of Lindon’s elm-woods.” To Erestor this seems, by now, an impossible dream.

But to Elrond, who has seen the seemingly impossible come to fruition more than once in his lifetime, that hope need not yet be abandoned. “The chance may yet come.”

✧ 

Erestor was little more than a youth when Ost-in-Edhil fell and Eregion laid waste. He had been in the hills, sent abroad chasing mineral deposits prized as pigments, when frightened elves from Hollin’s countryside began to flee into their fastness. They remained long in the mountains together watching the siege unfold from afar. Erestor recalls how strange and disjointed it felt to do so. Great billows of smoke that curled lazily upward through the sky seemed to him an incongruously soft thing to flow from the destruction below.

Elrond recalls the youth with a boyish softness still in the curve of his cheeks and a determination in his gait, approaching, cool-headed and decisive, with a scattering of the dispossessed trailing behind, come to join the growing flock fleeing north. His value quickly became evident, for even then Erestor had a talent for shepherding people and finding novel solutions to need. He became invaluable in the early days within the valley, when the mundane requirements of survival became critical, yet most of those who had come from Lindon remained occupied with defence. Erestor slipped into the role without being asked, simply because he could weigh myriad factors in mind at once and owned a calm enough demeanour not to provoke the fearful to aggression.

Come the end of the war, with most of Eriador in ruin, Lindon rebuilding, and the newly made stronghold of Imladris under hasty construction, the distribution of resources became a complex puzzle requiring constant resolving for many years. Erestor throve. Elrond recalls the keen-eyed elf, who had by now grown into his easy self-assurance, eagerly volunteering to run correspondence to Forlond, for he had heard the stonemasons there had pioneered a technique that could be employed for significant gains in efficiency. It was not long after he returned, enthusiastically waving a short treatise on the method as he marched into Elrond’s chambers, that misfortune befell, forcing an acquaintance between them that would grow close as the years marched on.

Urgent summons came late one afternoon. A hidden fault had caused rock to crack and slide at the site of the half-built west wing, destabilising the wall above. Elrond recalls wondering, given the description provided him, whether the soul of the elf trapped beneath tumbled stone would still cling to their body by the time he arrived. Bright blood flecked the elf’s pale face, like holly berries scattered in the snow, and the hollow of his neck drew in alarmingly as he laboured to breathe. Erestor recalls a distant awareness of his chest stripped bare, the cool, firm pressure of Elrond’s hand against his naked, battered skin, a sharp, penetrating sensation between his ribs, and then a sudden ease returning to his breath.

Many weeks later, when broken ribs had healed and skin knit back together, Erestor demanded of Elrond, “Why does strength fail me still? All my wounds are healed,” and Elrond could give no satisfactory answer. Confounded, Imladris’s Lord pursued the problem with curiosity and stubbornness worthy of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, though he applied himself to healing rather than jewel-craft. Erestor, assured at least of regular company, if not healing, and as bored as a Noldo could be, had begun turning his mind to the minor challenges of governance Elrond would let slip as he attempted to solve the problem of Erestor’s persistent exhaustion. Before Elrond realised what was happening, Erestor had begun to re-shape Rivendell’s systems of governance from the ground up.

✧ 

On the day that word reaches Rivendell, months later, of Aragorn’s wholly unanticipated victory on the fields of Cormallen, Erestor is in the library. He seeks an early First Age inventory detailing stock brought from Aman for a traveller attempting to deduce what cultivars might survive the journey over Belegaer. A headache lingers behind his eyes and presses sharply at his eardrums, and a sluggishness has come over his mind like fingers of fog rising from the valley floor as sun warms the ground, clawing at and obscuring the clear, morning air. Knowing he will soon be forced either to retreat to his chambers or bear the consequences of not doing so for days, Erestor is surly. Glorfindel does not deserve the snappishness in his tone as he barks, “What is it?”

“Glad tidings,” Glorfindel responds with undiminished joy, all too used to Erestor’s poor temper. He well knows the ugly mood appears when Erestor is more unwell than usual and does not hold it against him. Such sharp words have grown easier for him to brush aside with time. “Sauron has fallen, and the ring-bearer, against all odds, lives.”

“That is welcome news, indeed,” Erestor agrees, bracing himself on a shelf against a growing light-headedness that has nothing to do with the happy shock of Glorfindel’s announcement.

“You are wanted by Master Elrond. Rivendell will shortly make its response.”

“How desperately am I needed?”

“Not so badly that you cannot first take an hour or two to rest, I deem,” Glorfindel judges, eyeing Erestor with a knowing look and coming to stand near with an arm proffered. “Shall I accompany you to your rooms before I convey to our Lord your intent to join him when you are able?” Glorfindel has long since mastered the art of providing his strength of body as support without it seeming awkward or strange. There is no pity in the gesture, only a friendly practicality.

Erestor sighs and waves him away. “I am sure Elrond’s need of you is greater than mine, my Lord of the Golden Flower,” he says, invoking Glorfindel’s title in order to stress his friend’s importance in such counsels. “I shall manage well enough.”

When, later, Erestor plasters a mask of calm attentiveness over the vestiges of his headache, and strides into the council chambers, feeling somewhat improved but not entirely well, he is greeted with a sudden turning of heads. Elrond, who seems caught between unbounded joy and deepest sorrow, meets his eyes. “What would you say, Chief Counsellor, to a spot of travel?”

Erestor is so surprised that his knees almost buckle.

“Is it wise that you go?” Glorfindel asks afterwards, when all talk is done and the necessary arrangements for Arwen’s escort to Minas Tirith decided upon, catching him alone as moonlight filters in grey beams through lancet windows. “No one will think less of you, should you remain behind.”

“I want this,” Erestor insists.

“The way is no safer now than two seasons ago, when Elrond had us meticulously scout out all paths and surrounds in preparation for the Fellowship’s departure. We may no longer need fear wraiths, but there are other dangers in the wilds.”

“Your meaning, Glorfindel?”

“One cannot always stop on the road, should they take ill, particularly through the mountains. And if you were to come across goblins or the like, what then?”

“You think I am weak.”

“Of course not.” Glorfindel shifts nervously so that a moonbeam casts over his worried face. “I only wonder if the cost this journey may exact from you is more than you can reasonably pay, and if you could adequately defend yourself, if the need arose.”

“I know my own limits,” Erestor hisses.

Glorfindel, however, recalls a time before Erestor’s new limits had been discovered, when he had pushed and pushed to regain his strength. There had been weeks, after that, when he was too ill to rise at all, and months following when a simple bath, or to sit out in the great hall for a meal, was all he could manage in a day. “I do not wish to see you harmed, nor as hopelessly miserable as you were when your ailment first began.”

The hand Erestor brings to rest on Glorfindel’s arm is firm, and bright is the moonlight reflecting in his earnest eyes. “You think I do? Trust me in this!”

Glorfindel, against what he believes to be his better judgement, swallows back further argument and nods.

✧ 

Centuries have passed since Erestor last left this valley and he is, in truth, as nervous as the horse shying beneath him as the part waits, patiently, for Arwen and Elrond to mount. He is well enough—as well as this body can be—but that is no guarantee that he shall remain so for the duration of their travel. They make for Lothlórien, then Minas Tirith beyond. The realm of Lord Celeborn and Lady Galadriel, is a calculated recuperation point along the road and a fail safe, should he have need to abandon plans to accompany Elrond to his daughter’s wedding and their inevitable parting.

“Is all well?” Glorfindel asks from atop Asfaloth, who, of course, behaves perfectly, eyeing the dancing feet of Erestor’s steed.

Erestor fixes him with a determined look.

“Set a gentle pace,” Elrond calls out from the rear. “We have no need of haste.” As their horses find an easy walking gait, Elrond comes alongside Erestor and claps him genially on the shoulder.

“Master Elrond,” Erestor greets him with a polite nod.

“Chief Counsellor,” Elrond returns in kind. “A fine day to set out, wouldn’t you agree?”

It is late April. The spring rains and growing warmth have melted snows in the mountains, swelling the Bruinen and its tributaries until their churning bellies spilled over their banks. Gorse flowers turn Rivendell’s slopes sunshine yellow beneath skies of zinc, and clouds of warm breath condense before him in the cool, morning air. “As fine as could be hoped for.”

Elrond leans in close, and with lowered voice promises, “We will halt if required, as often as necessary. You need only ask.”

“My thanks.” Erestor hopes that it will not be needful to call on that pledge very often.

“Be sure you do ask,” Glorfindel urges as Elrond canters to the front of the column. “It is an offer meant to be taken up, not merely a politeness.”

“I know. You need not worry for me. All will be well,” Erestor reassures him and hopes that he speaks true.

The land is rough this side of the mountains, so close to their feet, and it is only after two weeks of slow, hard travel that the land begins to rise toward Hollin ridge. Erestor, who, though tired, has managed thus far to pace himself adequately enough, is moments away from requesting a rest when Elrond, who rides at the front, raises his arm. Horses snort and flick their tales as their riders bring them to a halt. Cupping his hands to his mouth, Elrond calls back, “Erestor!” then beckons him forth. He picks his way carefully through the scrubby growth to the side of the path—little more than a deer track at this point—past his kindred, some with confused looks and some with knowing smiles.

“Who better to lead us,” Elrond declares when he arrives at the head, “than one who called these lands home.”

That is how Erestor comes first to the top of the ridge and guides the house of Rivendell into the lands of his birth. Eregion spreads before him, brown and bare after the snow, broken here and there by holly trees with proud crowns of green. Erestor, the stoic bedrock of Imladris’s council, steady through many hard years despite trial and infirmity, surveys the rich landscape before him and begins quietly to weep.

✧ 

Elrond purposes to make for the pass of Caradhras, which, with luck, will have cleared sufficiently of snow drifts for the company to navigate without undue toil. First, however, a diversion is called for. The tale of the Rings began in Eregion, in the great forges of Ost-in-Edhil under the skillful hands and eyes of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain and their chief, Celebrimbor. It is only fitting that Ost-in-Edhil should come into the tale again, at the end.

Ivy now coats many of the buildings left half-standing, creeping along great swathes of mossy stone walls. Erestor runs a light hand along stones that were once the House of the Mírdain. Long ago, the Lord of Eregion strode through these streets, tall and proud. He spoke to Erestor only once. Skittering along in a mirthful hubbub, as young children are wont to do, Erestor had slipped on a patch of ice that had hardened beneath the eaves in this very spot one winter. Celebrimbor, halting his purposeful stride, had set Erestor on his feet, brushed hair from his brow and admonished with a twinkle in his eyes, “Careful, young one,” before carrying on. Many such ghosts of memory crowd among the ruins. The life of the Eldar has departed this place, though the stones remember it still, and that of wild Endor thrums through vibrant and strong. Erestor can feel it. With his palm to the stones he knows there are roots creeping down below, pushing shoots through cracks in the paved paths to seek the sun. A stiff breeze sets a whisper chasing through the ivy leaves, tickling his fingers. Life goes on around him, while he stands still in its midst.

“A tharni* for your thoughts,” Glorfindel interrupts and Erestor looks up sharply. Inside the ruin, where an alcove of the building’s great entrance hall remains largely intact, Elrond lays an engraved hammer on a bed of sable velvet woven by Arwen, in tribute to Eregion’s late Lord, and to all those who have fought the darkness since, for their hope is at last realised. Celebrimbor remains a bright star among their people, aspiring and clever, brave to the last, and no less dear for the shortcoming that brought Ost-in-Edhil to her knees in the end. His craft and courage protected Imladris for over an age: a bright flash of blue on Elrond’s finger, worn openly for the first time. Vilya’s power begins to wane, yet it has enough strength, still, to preserve the reminder laid here for generations to come.

“I was thinking,” Erestor answers slowly, “of change.”

They do not belong to each other any longer—Ost-in-Edhil and Erestor—not as they once did, when the exuberance of youth spilled from him like sparkling waters from the fountains in the city square. Beside the silver hammer he lays a neat line of azurite and malachite, and they seem dim, there in the shadow of old stone. There is a youth, bright and well, and a city, tall and proud that he mourns in that moment, and watches pass, like golden leaves fallen into a swift stream, borne quickly away. Erestor likes who that youth became, mostly, despite the shortcomings of infirmity. A singular stone remains, heavy, in his pocket, one faced smoothed under his thumb.

The house of Rivendell make their camp on the banks of the Sirannon that afternoon, away from the dead stones and the unbearable life they support. Elrond twirls a dagger, twisting its hilt while the point turns in the dirt, as he and Erestor sit staring at the trick that is now the sum total of the dwindled river. His eyes are conflicted. “Was it what you hoped, returning here?” he asks.

“I did not come with expectations,” Erestor answers.

“None at all?”

“I hoped for a completion, I suppose,” he admits. “When I left Ost-in-Edhil, all those years ago, all was well. I had every expectation of returning. Now, I have.”

“Sauron had declared himself by that time. You must have had some idea that conflict was at least a possibility.”

“I was young. I had known only peace. Besides, the common folk knew little of the cares of those who ruled, if they did not want their cares known. We trusted to the strength of our city—which, I may remind you, had ‘fortress’ in its name—and its Lord.”

Persistently, the feeble stream of river babbles on, covering the silence between them as the shadows lengthen and the air grows cold. Erestor considers moving toward the huddle of tents in which Glorfindel has set a bed for him, and the cheery fires, over which an evening meal is being prepared, but, after the exertion and emotion of the day, the noise and business of company would be too much. A weight has settled into Erestor’s bones and his senses turn every touch, sight, and sound into a clamour, rattling through his over-sensitive nervous system like the clanking of hammer against anvil. It is better to stay with Elrond, in the quiet.

Elrond sighs and lets the dagger drop. “Perhaps even Celebrimbor had not fully realised the immediacy of the danger. It was believed evil had been banished at the end of the First Age, with the casting of Morgoth beyond the Doors of Night. It seems naive now, but we were a younger people in those days, less world-wise, even after centuries of war. They were dark days, when that illusion shattered and only grim reality remained.”

“Dark,” Erestor agrees, “but long gone. We have laid that danger to rest, at long last.

“That we have,” Elrond agrees.

Neither are so foolish as to believe evil vanquished forever with Sauron gone. Both have lived through enough fluctuations between dark and light to know it is not so. Arda is marred; the evidence can be found in a myriad of unpleasant realities, some of which Erestor carries in his own sinews. The saga of the Rings has come to its completion, and the world turns on: day to night, dark to light.

In the morning, pale sunbeams paint the brown land with apricot hues. Erestor presses on through fatigue that catches at his aching limbs like pools of honey, slowing him, as they break camp. High above, the ruined city seems lonely and forlorn. It is no longer a question waiting for answer, not a wound for binding, only a place for old bones to rest, untroubled. They move on.

✧ ✧ ✧ 

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“You are ready, then?” Arwen asks.

Fair Eregion has been kind these last days. Skies patterned like blue lace agate crown the land as drifts of thick, white cloud streak horizontally through the firmament. The days are warm, the nights mild, and the land yields readily of its bounty. Erestor ladles a helping of tender braised rabbit, flavoured with wild garlic and sorrel, and passes it to her. Three days of stillness—not a whit of strenuous effort among them—have done much to restore him. In the distance Caradhras and Celebdil loom large, nestling a difficult path between. Therein lies a challenge Erestor cannot imagine his ever-infirm body equal to, and yet, with his strength returning toward its meagre peak, the time is as good as any to dare it. By his side, Glorfindel stills, listening attentively for an answer.

“I am,” he says.

“I am not sure ada is,” Arwen says in a falsely conversational tone.

Though the High Pass north of Rivendell is most often favoured by travellers seeking passage into Rhovanion, the Redhorn Gate leads more directly to Lothlórien, and Arwen has traversed it many times in her comings and goings between them. Elladan and Elrohir stalked the pass near obsessively for a century after their mother met with trouble upon it. Sorrow still steeps in the memories that the mountain path unlocks, though facing it has become easier for them over time. Elrond, however, bound for so long to duty and Imladris both, has traversed it little this age, and goes to meet further sorrow east of the mountains.

“We shall fortify him, Evenstar,” promises Glorfindel softly, taking her chin between thumb and forefinger like he used when she was but a child. “Is that not so, Chief Counsellor?”

“Your father,” Erestor says, “cannot be defeated by memory and stone. Ah, if you had seen him in the Second Age! Like a storm in shining armour, he was, faster than lightning and fiercer than thunder. We lived through darker days than this and saw the dawn. He shall meet the sun in the east, as will we all.”

Glorfindel nods. “Erestor speaks true. And it is a glad day coming, is it not?”

Arwen smiles shyly. “It is. Though a day of joy mingled with grief, for ada.”

“As have many days been in his long life, Arwen. Grief does not lessen joy, nor make such days any less worth living.” Erestor knows this truth well. His own griefs have been smaller, perhaps, but they have also been constant: a trickle of minor losses steadily flowing past that, accumulated, could fill an ocean. Each drowse-sodden day spent blanketed in his chambers was one that could not be lived under the sun; each muddled hour eaten by fogged thoughts one that stole the chance of intelligent debate, acquisition of lore, or intricate creation. And yet, such days have oft been touched by kindness.

The stars are bright on the eve of their climb, and the world about them still. There is a peace that belies the hardship that must follow in the morn. Elrond, in a rare performative mood, sits by the fire and sends melodies shivering into the night air. Their refrains – some wistful, some bright – rise hopefully into star-spangled sodalite-dark skies, for who among them knows better than he who has lived through more tragedies than most can imagine how to keep the darkness at bay. Erestor sits by his side, a steady, dependable presence, and listens.

In the morning, Elrond is as outwardly cheerful as any other in the party. Riding up to Erestor, who still fiddles with the last of his gear, he asks, cocking his head toward the mountains, “Is your strength sufficient?” His words cloud in the chill early-morning air, but there is no condescension in them.

“So far as I can tell,” Erestor answers honestly. His strength is ever an unknown. It can be budgeted and tracked, but never wholly predicted.

Elrond dismounts, whispering words of staying to his courser and begins coaxing tack onto Erestor’s rouncey. “We will see you to the other side,” he promises, “even should it run short. My Lord of the Golden Flower shall surely roast my sorry rump if I do not.”

From behind a patch of fern over yonder, a mirthful chuckle sounds. “He surely will.” Glorfindel has ever had exceptional hearing.

Smiling, Erestor clasps Elrond’s arm gratefully and vows, “And we will see you safely through, in turn.” It is not strength of arms that Erestor offers, as Elrond well knows—Glorfindel more than covers that need, and Erestor was never an accomplished warrior, even in his energetic youth—but a personal refuge in which Elrond need not pretend the storms of life shake him not.

They meet the road rising before them, one golden head and two dark, side by side.

✧ 

Redhorn’s paths are steep and broken; passable, but difficult, and demanding far more effort than even the rough land between Imladris and Hollin ridge. Often, Erestor is forced to dismount and lead his horse, picking paths carefully past tumbled boulders, or around sudden, deep breaks in the road. The expenditure weighs on him until it feels as if heavy bags of scree were fastened to his ankles, and his feet drag clumsily over the uneven terrain. More than once, Erestor stumbles, and is righted by one companion or another. The cost, he is painfully aware, shall be exacted from him in bedridden days and the clouding of all reasoned thought should the present strain continue for long. There is, however, little choice: to go back is as costly an endeavour as forward, and to stop indefinitely in the pass is no choice at all. Trudging up another steep rise, he drags sharp, painful breaths into a tight chest and begins to cough.

“Ada,” Arwen calls, the sound of her voice coming from somewhere over his left shoulder, “is there a place we can safely rest?”

Elrond must be a furlong or so ahead. Erestor long ago fell back from the lead and now labours near the middle of the company. Glorfindel, who has taken on the role of rearguard, sees to it Erestor is never allowed to trail behind, last of the company, no matter how slow he becomes.

“The path widens around the bend,” Elrond calls back. “We halt there.”

Arwen’s steady hand takes the reins from his own worryingly trembling grasp, and reaching the appointed place, Erestor lowers himself to sit where cliff-face meets ledge and breathes through the nausea of exertion which threatens to rise in his gullet.

“How do you fare?” Elrond asks, kneeling to rest a cool palm against his clammy forehead.

“Poorly,” Erestor admits, “but I have some distance in me yet, if it is needful.” A flask of miruvor is pushed into his hands and Erestor sips at it cautiously.

“And if you push on now, how shall we find your reserves tomorrow?”

“Diminished.”

“Significantly so, I suspect?”

Erestor nods.

“It is not needful,” Elrond decides.

A grumbling over lost daylight hours starts up when it becomes apparent to all and sundry that the company halts for the day. One hard look from Glorfindel as he jogs up to join them has it quickly suppressed, but not before guilt settles heavily over Erestor’s shoulders. Though it frustrates him still, Erestor has come to accept the impact his infirmity has on him, but it is quite another thing when others must bear consequences, even when they do so graciously.

“Pay them no heed,” Glorfindel says, quite pointedly. “They do not have the right of things.”

Before long, the sun dips low, blazoning snow-tipped peaks in startling contrast as it courts the horizon: Caradhras’s reds bright against burgundy behind, and Celebdil’s slate grey ahead turned to glowing argent. The wide ridge, furnished with a natural alcove hollowed into its north-eastern side, proves an advantageous resting place, sheltering the travellers from strong winds that whistle past. Overhead the patches of clear sky are a richer, deeper, blue than the azurite Erestor thumbs idly in his pocket through the cold hours. The irony, he has found, of the kind of exhaustion that plagues him, is that it often pushes slumber far away, like a tired child refusing to lay down in their bed. Unsleeping, too, is Elrond, who comes quietly to rest beside him under the deep skies.

“What is on your mind?” Erestor asks.

“I wonder, sometimes,” Elrond whispers in return, “where the point of ambush was. Celebrían could not well remember, afterwards, and there was no sign left to be read, the next a scouting party was sent to clear the road.”

“Does it matter, in the end?”

“It would not, except that I cannot let it go.”

“For fear of the past repeating?”

“No.” The wind pauses as Elrond does, ceasing its moaning for a perfectly still moment before the sound of it shrieks past their shelter with renewed fervour. Elrond is silent for longer. “I think,” he posits, “that it is, rather, a need to understand. I never did, fully. All this time, and I still cannot fathom out my wife’s pain. What I can understand, I can heal.”

“Not everything,” Erestor says with a wry twist of his lips. Neither of them have been able to cure him, though both understand far more than they used to. “You cannot fix everything.”

“Not everything,” Elrond agrees with an apologetic look.

“That was not a complaint,” Erestor clarifies. “Some things we simply do not have the power to change. Infirmity, the architecture of our hearts… Sometimes all chances breed ill and we must simply endure.”

Before them, Arwen, who sleeps curled on her side, shifts and sighs. Midnight hair comes loose from its ties to obscure her fair face. Erestor gazes with affection upon her, who has been almost as a daughter to him, at times.

Elrond follows his gaze. “Some chances also breed good,” he says in a voice jagged with an obstinate desire to find gold in a circumstance that would have many on their knees, weeping at the unfairness of the world.

“The two are not mutually exclusive,” Erestor remarks.

Before the sun rises, Erestor is on his feet, continuing on. This stretch is blessedly kinder than the last, if only by virtue of gradients that tend toward gentler inclines. Much of the distance remains unattainable on horseback, as great layers of rock spill over the mountainside like unruly books and scrolls in need of re-shelving. Erestor, too, feels himself a precarious construction of parchment, ready to collapse. After a second day of sheer plod that extends past sundown, he casts himself face down upon the stones of a large cave in which the company shelters with little care beyond the pressing need to lay his body down. Since noon the overwhelming desire to cease moving has grown like a storm, gravid with the promise of deluge, and now the clouds have broken. He cannot rise, even to feed himself. Glorfindel gently rolls him onto his side and slides a bundled cloak under his cheek to cushion his head, before leading Asfaloth and Erestor’s rouncey away to be fed. Arwen presses lembas into his palm; there the bread stays, uneaten, for nigh an hour.

“Are you going to eat?” Glorfindel asks, lowering himself to peer into Erestor’s face.

Erestor groans, coaxes his fingers to his mouth and forces himself to chew.

“We have pushed you too far.”

This present state, though it is miserable, is far from the worst Erestor has felt. “Perhaps. We should reach the Dimrill Stair tomorrow. I can endure.” Privately, he wonders if by the time they reach that steep decline, he shall have the strength left to find a way down under his own power.

Glorfindel snorts. “Own you any regrets?”

Erestor chokes on his Lembas, suppresses a laugh, and uses a portion of his meagre store of strength to kick Glorfindel weakly in the shin.

That night, beyond exhausted, Erestor sleeps as if he were a Man, almost dead to the world and all its cares. It is enough that in the morning he can rise, shakily, and trudge on. Sourly, he squints through a golden post-dawn glare at the young elf walking just ahead with a lightness still in their step, as if this whole journey were nought but a pleasant stroll.

Midway through the third hour of the third day, an arrow comes whistling past Erestor’s ear and clatters against the mountainside to his left. Cries of “Yrch!” and “retreat” drift back from those at the head along with distinct sounds of an affray. The ambush point is cleverly chosen: the company is strung out and vulnerable. Erestor finds himself backing along a narrow ridge, dreadfully exposed and with no defence but to keep moving and hope. A second arrow finds its mark in the saddle bags of the sumpter behind him, tearing the fabric and spilling a cascade of barley grain across the path. The animal snorts fearfully and looks wildly about with wide eyes.

“Steady,” Erestor soothes, and coaxes her to step backward, acutely aware all the while that his own mount is beginning to shy as those ahead press back. It is an anxious walk to the wide ledge behind, drawn out in an eternity of fearful steps, pressed close to the cliff face with the threat of two thousand pounds of jittery horseflesh a more immediate threat than the occasional arrow whistling his way. Reaching the ledge improves little. Orcs are upon him before he knows the relief of solid footing beneath his boots: a half-score of them, pouring from a crevice hidden in the rock face. The entire shelf of rock is already a confusion of Eldar, beast and orc. Erestor is thrown roughly against a boulder by gauntleted elven hands, and reins are shoved toward him.

“Take the horses, Counsellor,” a soldier commands.

The animals are spooked. They stamp and twist, seeking to bolt. Erestor darts away from a flying hoof as he takes the proffered tack and ducks as the soldier’s dirk, hastily drawn, meets an orc scimitar inches from his face. Dust hangs in the air, disturbed by hoof and boot alike, thicker than the clouds of smoke that once billowed from a burning city as Erestor watched. Through the murk Erestor spies a glint as light catches on the head of a hunting spear lashed near the sumpter’s rump. He grasps for it, tugging desperately at ties to free the weapon while his eyes scan rapidly shifting shapes in the dust. Before him the horse shifts, and kicks, little reassured by his voice, catching him with a cracking blow as the spear finally comes free.

Erestor falls to his knees, feeling only vaguely the pain radiating from his side as his awareness narrows to the task at hand: hold the reins, keep the orcs back. He clutches at the spear, planting its butt on the hard ground and angling it toward the skirmish that rages back and forth before him, taking care to keep the point clear of his equine charges. Danger lends a strength to his arms that tightens muscles, and though he shakes, the spear is held fast.

A sorry creature in worn rags comes too close and he jabs threateningly, forcing them to step back into a soldier, who meets them with her blade. Erestor pants, and resettles his shaft, which trembles now like a slender branch in the wind. His strength ebbs, but so does the fight, and as the grunts and clashes of battle fade away, Erestor drops his weapon with a clang.

Someone comes to settle the horses, soothing them with low, gentle words as they ease reins from his locked, nerveless fingers. “Counsellor?”

“See to the horses,” he bids.

With the animals now a safe distance away, Erestor slides to the ground and lays curled around a sharp pain in his left side. The sun glares, bright in his eyes. He grits his teeth and grinds his forehead into the gravelly rock beneath and groans. Elven voices shout, calling and answering with tones of desperation and relief, their sounds pressing in against Erestor’s ears, resounding in his head like the pounding of great war-drums, and through the noise permeates a carmine pulse as his side and head begin to throb.

After some time, a hand alights on his shoulder and Elrond’s concerned voice slips softly into his ear. “Erestor?”

“Arwen?” he asks. “Glorfindel?”

“Unharmed.”

“Good. See to those who bleed,” he orders, grasping for the threads of an old, familiar role in such circumstances: shepherding those more given to frantic fear than he. “I am bruised, but whole.”

Elrond chuckles in nervous relief to hear Erestor speak thus. “There are few,” he says. “A few light gashes only, and one arrow wound, but it is minor.”

“Then go and bind them, my Lord.” It is only when an expanse of warm felted wool is draped over his back and shoulders that Erestor realises how badly he is shaking. The stones are cold, as is the air, and though the Eldar are by and large impervious to the insults of temperatures so far from Arda’s extremes, Erestor, with his flagging strength, feels the chill bitterly.

“They are well tended,” Elrond reassures him. “I am not the only skilled healer among us. Let me see to you.”

Miruvor is once more pressed to his lips and a mouthful of the sweet cordial, gulped down awkwardly, warms him. Gentle hands roll him onto his back, then probe at his side with fingers slipped beneath tunic and shirt to find the hot, throbbing flesh beneath. Erestor flinches. Fabric is lifted and chill air burns against his skin.

“A broken rib or two,” Elrond declares, “but nothing so bad as that which you endured in the Second Age. Can you walk?”

The very thought makes him dizzy; all his strength has fled. Erestor groans and squeezes his eyes shut.

“Erestor!” Glorfindel’s clear, ringing voice, heavy with concern, cuts through the dark behind his eyelids and he blinks them open. Glorfindel’s golden hair tangles about a face flecked with spatters of shining black that stand out against his fair skin. He hurries closer on light feet, bending one knee to take his hand.

“Fret not, I am mostly unharmed,” Erestor says, adding for Elrond’s benefit, “though I do not suppose I can stand, let along walk.”

“Elrond, we must move on,” Glorfindel urges. “All signs suggest these are not the only band of desperate creatures in these mountains.”

Elrond nods. “Let us get you into a saddle, then,” he says to Erestor. “We are not far from the Dimrill Stair, if I am right, and I want us well out of the pass by nightfall.”

Even atop sure and steady Asfaloth, led by Glorfindel’s expert hand, the day passes in an agony of jolts and bumps as they traverse rocky trails and amble along narrow switchbacks. Sometimes, when forced to dismount over particularly difficult terrain, Erestor only manages to navigate the path with his arm slung over Glorfindel’s strong shoulders and his friend’s sturdy grip bearing most all of his weight. Dusk spreads across the sky like a bruise as they reach the Mirrormere. Erestor, so depleted that he now needs to be held in the saddle, rests his head against Glorfindel’s shoulder, who rides behind with an arm about his waist, and falls into a fitful doze. Dimrill Dale passes by in flashes of deep green and slate grey haze, as the rush of the Celebrant fills Erestor’s ears and drowns out thought. By the time they reach the forest, Erestor has ceased to hear it, and marks not the blessed, welcoming cover of trees, nor Glorfindel’s murmured prayer of thanks to Elbereth.

✧ ✧ ✧ 

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“It was foolish to bring him,” Erestor hears a deep, feminine voice say.

“That judgement is not yours to make,” Elrond replies.

Erestor is warm, and though pain throbs and radiates through his body still, it is not so unbearable here, in what seems a nest of soft, yielding cushion and cloth, compared to the saddle.

“I know of his condition, Elrond,” the female voice—Galadriel—goes on, condescendingly. “Did you consider that travel would test his limits past breaking point?”

Elrond exhales through his nose, short and sharp. In each other’s presence, sometimes, Elrond and Galadriel roll back the years and regress to the people they were in the First Age: fiery, shorter of patience, and stripped of the stately grace both have curated over the last six millennia. By the sound, Elrond strives to contain the impulse, bundling frustration tightly behind his words. “Do you think me so careless? Had we not encountered orcs in the mountains, he would have been tried, but not unduly so.”

There is a tense pause. Galadriel’s reply, when it comes, remains quietly furious, though restrained. “If there is one thing you are not, Elrond, it is careless, but you well knew the risk. You should not have taken it. It is he that suffers for that mistake.”

“He can hear every word you both speak,” Erestor intercedes, “and wishes it known that he makes his own decisions, foolish or otherwise.” With an effort, his eyes open blearily to dapples of olivine light. We reached the forest, he notes with relief.

“You are as foolish as one another,” Galadriel accuses. “Drink,” she tells Erestor, raising him up slightly and pressing a cup to his lips. “You have grown dehydrated.” The water is sweet and refreshing.

No matter how determinedly he strives, Erestor’s leaden limbs refuse to move. He cannot take the cup in his hands as he wishes. “How long have I slept?”

“Through the night and a better part of the day,” Elrond answers. “It is mid-afternoon. You woke briefly upon our arrival in Caras Galadhon at noon, moving from saddle to bed.” Erestor does not recall it, but that is not terribly unusual. On the worst of days time fritters away, barely remembered hours eaten by exhaustion. It is unsettling, but the disturbance is one he has learned to live with. How much of this day he will be able to recall a week hence is impossible to say.

“Eat,” Elrond urges, offering a spoonful of porridge made with ground mallorn nuts and the healthful grain usually baked into lembas. Five mouthfuls are all Erestor manages before he grows too weary to take any more.

—

East of the Misty Mountains, in a spearhead of golden forest where the violence of Wilderland is kept at bay by the vigilance and strength of the Galadhrim, lies Lothlórien. Like Imladris, it is a refuge of a kind, the beating heart of Elvendom in Middle Earth. Here, in the city ruled by Celeborn and Galadriel that sprawls from flet to flet throughout the Golden Wood, is a place of beauty, peaceful and bright, that the marching of time changes not.

Well below the great, arching canopy, among sweet swards of green littered with dainty, golden and white flowers, a pavilion has been raised for Erestor, and Erestor rests fitfully within.

“How do you fare?” inquires Celeborn.

Erestor, who has recently achieved the victory of a near upright posture after days of semi-recumbency at best, curls his mouth into an ironic smile. Ignoring the waves of dizziness threatening to necessitate a fully reclined state, he answers, “I am improving.”

“I am glad to hear it.” The Lord of Lothlórien does not leave his mantle of office at the entrance, as Elrond does, but his presence, though proper, is kind and unwearying.

Speaking, Erestor soon finds, is a mistake. His recent meal of bilberries, currants, and mallorn nuts makes a second, unwanted appearance. Celeborn quickly positions a basin to save the bedclothes while Erestor reflexively braces his aching ribs. “Do you always suffer thus, after such exertions?” he asks, setting the basin and its undesirable contents aside so that he might help a defeated Erestor lower himself once more.

“I usually avoid such exertions,” Erestor says, once the roof of the pavilion has clarified from a nauseous blur to its usual hatched weave and he is confident all that will escape from his open mouth is his voice.

Lord Celeborn and Lady Galadriel are more than mere acquaintances to Erestor, nor is he a stranger to them. They have traded stratagem, discussed matters of import to their respective populations at length, and enjoyed intelligent small talk on a great variety of topics. Never before, however, have either seen him so desperately unwell.

“That seems wise,” Celeborn remarks, adding carefully, “Have you not thought to seek succour across the sea?”

Erestor sighs. It is a conversation he has had before, more times than he would like, and not all interlocutors approach the topic with a curiosity respectful and mutual, as Elrond does. It is astounding, really, how opinionated many elves can be about bodies and maladies not their own, and how forcefully they will assert unwanted solutions. Though Erestor had not supposed Celeborn would number among them, for a moment he fears judgement, and an attempt to corral him towards ends he wants not. He answers firmly, “I was born in the shadow of the Misty Mountains. I am not yet ready to forsake my home.”

Judgement does not come. Instead, Celeborn slowly nods. “Neither, I think, am I. Though I do not expect Galadriel shall linger long in these lands with Sauron defeated, and his fortresses thrown down at last. There are many her heart aches to re-unite with in the West.”

“I do not believe Elrond shall linger, either, even with Arwen firmly bound to these shores,” Erestor divulges.

“No,” Celeborn agrees. “He has hinted as much. Do you intend to travel on to Minas Tirith?” Celeborn does him the courtesy of not questioning, either in word or expression, whether Erestor will be capable of such a feat when Arwen’s escort departs in four days.

“Yes, if I am able.”

“Very well. Then I shall leave you to rest. I would succour you, in any way I can, and see you healed and refreshed. Is there anything to be done?”

There is not, beyond what has already been given. Rest and time, in quantities extremely disproportionate to the inciting exertion, remain the only reliable remedies. The dreary wait may be maddening, but it is a frustration that Erestor is unfortunately accustomed to. “I have been well provided for, my Lord. You have my thanks.”

—

Lothlórien is strangely restorative in a way that differs from Imladris. Rivendell holds one close, comforting and uplifting like a warm fire, a good tale and fine, spiced mead. Lothlórien, by contrast, seems to nudge one out of the turning of time, coaxing them back to an era and place where decay and fading were not a feature of the world. Erestor has no duty to fulfil in the great city, not a single one. Between the house of Rivendell and the many from Lothlórien who will be joining their train, Caras Galadhon is flush with capable personages who joyfully carry out the meagre responsibilities Elrond had assigned to him during their travel. The one duty Erestor had taken for himself, care of Elrond, has been neatly assumed by a surfeit of law family and longtime acquaintances from Celeborn’s court. Most gatherings, whether social or pertaining to matters of state, take part high in the treetops, and Erestor, relegated to ground level, attends none and tries not to feel bitterly about this isolating state of affairs. He could not partake, even if determined to do so—too many Eldar in one place remain overwhelming during a worsening of his illness such as this—but this fact does not lessen the sting of exclusion, when much of Rivendell remains open to him in such a state, even if he cannot bear communal spaces for long.

On the day before Arwen’s escort is due to leave, by now able to walk a level half mile continuously without overwhelming vertigo or breathtaking exhaustion, Erestor takes advantage of what stamina he has regained. He ambles slowly through the trees for a time, listening to the tinkling flow of brooks and streams as they wend their way patiently toward Celebrant. Over their waters the trees bend, and in their branches can be heard birdsong: a rich chorus of many varied piping voices. These silver streams are not said to ease weariness as Nimrodel is. All the same he slips his feet into the waters and feels their cool embrace. Over pebble and stone they flow as smoothly as molten silver. Erestor’s thoughts turn from mountains and endings and begin to vibrate instead with music and linger on the ambiguous oddity of the passage of time. Turning back toward his pavilion, he revels in the beam of light that has cut through the clouds in his mind after a week of haze mercilessly choking intelligent thought.

He almost trips over Glorfindel, who kneels close by the entrance, carefully arranging Erestor’s chattels and fitting them in his bags. Tenuous, half-concluded threads of thought dissolve and are gone before he can grasp at them. They will not be caught again easily. Travel will numb his mind with the fog that comes with effort soon enough. Irritated, Erestor turns to Glorfindel and snaps, “What are you doing?”

“Helping,” Glorfindel answers matter-of-factly. “Well I know you, Chief Counsellor, and there is not a chance in Irmo’s wildest dreams you wish to remain behind. Yet I doubt you have much strength to spare. And I am familiar with your organisational preferences.”

“Glorfindel,” Erestor warns, as the bubble of peace he had drawn around himself begins to dissolve under the weight of his friend’s well-meaning, yet unwelcome, intrusion. “Had I wished for assistance packing my own things, I could have asked.”

To his credit, Glorfindel, detecting the mounting irritation in Erestor’s tone, pauses and turns to face him with an appropriately chastised look. “I apologise. I, too, could have asked.”

“You are right in one thing,” Erestor says, kneeling heavily and taking a rumpled shirt from Glorfindel’s hand.

“Is that so?”

“I do not intend to be left behind.”

This amuses Glorfindel, who chuckles heartily. Erestor is nothing if not predictable in his wilfulness, though long years of infirmity have forced him to tame that particular trait, imbuing it with a stubborn patience that makes him a formidable force in the council room.

“I will not object to your assistance,” Erestor concedes, tapping one of the bags, “if you let me lead.”

“You are determined, then?”

Erestor smiles his most stubborn smile.

A flash of undisguised concern is evident in the furrowing of Glorfindel’s brow as he sighs. That he feels conflicted is plain, yet his words are soft and sincere. “I do not think it wise, and yet, you have my support. Most certainly I shall not like the consequences, but neither must I live through them. I do not understand your choice, and yet I shall be there, for the rest of the journey and beyond, even should you become bedridden for months after.”

In truth, Glorfindel understands Erestor’s reasons better than he professes to. Well he is acquainted with the steady and intimate friendship Erestor shares with the Lord of Imladris. He bears witness, more than most, to the caring reciprocity within, and would be less shocked to find the sky torn from its high seat in the heavens than for Erestor to spurn Elrond in a time of vulnerability. What he can neither fathom nor approve, is what seems to him an unhealthy determination to remain personally present in this endeavour despite heavy cost when there are others capable and willing to provide succour. Much affection does Erestor hold for Arwen also, and yet, a few additional months in her company, marred by the miserable toll of travel, seem scarce worth the outlay to Glorfindel. 

What he can never know is the sting of missing a thousand significant moments, of being persistently sidelined from life’s adventures, of knowing all the ways in which he cannot be dependable, and watching with self-deprecating melancholy as those he loves arrange themselves to meet their need elsewhere. Ever self-sufficient, ever sacrificial Glorfindel might not baulk so if he had known such dratted helplessness too.

When the houses of Rivendell and Lothlórien set out the next day, travel, resumed before Erestor has the strength to absorb its demands adequately, is a sore trial. His broken ribs burn. Each bounce in his rouncey’s gait feels as a wicked needle stabbed into his side, breathtakingly sharp, and repeated over and over as if Erestor were no more than cloth to be sewn. He does not pity the cloth. It, at least, cannot feel the insult of the stitches forced through its weave. Worse still, even the moderate walking pace that has been set has him nauseous and light-headed. After an hour of Erestor wincing and clenching his fist around the saddle horn as if gripping it could lessen his pain, Glorfindel proposes a trade.

“I am well,” Erestor hisses before Glorfindel can utter a word, having read the compassion writ on his face. He has steeled himself for the trials of the day, but this overly plain expression of care threatens to render his resolve brittle, like poorly tempered metal.

“As I can see,” Glorfindel remarks drily. “I only thought you might appreciate a smoother ride. Asfaloth will gladly bear you.”

Gratefully, Erestor accepts. The white steed’s ambling gait is much kinder on his healing injury. Despite this, hours spent in the saddle stretch on long and uncomfortably. Finding his mood increasingly fractious, Erestor remains silent, biting back bitter words that his travelling companions deserve not. By the time that lengthening shadows and honeyed skies herald the late afternoon, and the company halts, Erestor feels little more than an abused sack of grain draped miserably over the saddle.

Quietly, Glorfindel arranges matters so that there is nothing Erestor must do except dismount, eat his fill of an evening meal cooked by others, and seek repose. Stretched out in the cool shade of a beech, the bustle and business going on about him as tents are raised, Erestor weeps exhausted tears. There is no holding them back, as much as he might resent their flow.

“Are you troubled?” Glorfindel asks, handing him something fragrant and warm, steaming in its bowl, that Erestor finds he has little taste for.

“No, only worn. And I feel of no use, which I little like.”

“Rest,” Glorfindel soothes. “I will see to all else. If you can find one person in this entire camp who will argue for your uselessness, not against, I shall be very surprised. No one need prove their worth with deeds at all times. You will recover yourself again, in time.”

It is a slippery sentiment to hold in mind, yet Erestor tries. Thumbing the piece of azurite still kept in his pocket, thoughts of its dormant potential tumble through his mind. It was destined for grand purposes once, to colour the end of a fine artist’s brush, to paint sun-bathed seas and twilit skies. That, it never did. And yet, as the worn-smooth faces attest, it has not been without use. Metal, perhaps, provides a better analogy to cling to. For a damaged sword blade may be annealed and reformed into something new, and a bronze pot dented beyond use melted and recast.

That night he dreams of his mother collecting scraps of precious metals from forge-room floors in Eregion. Carefully her deft fingers sort twists and splinters. Staring into the flickering flames of the fire by which he sleeps, Erestor sees her melt and recast them into ingots, ready and waiting to be used. Visions of his father follow, his indigo-stained hands lowering lengths of linen into a bath of madder. The fibres, he explains, must rest in the dye for a time, before they emerge rich red and ready to be sewn.

Erestor rises late. The next day is much the same as the last, and so the days go on.

—

Summer creeps steadily toward the land as Erestor stands at the threshold between Lothlórien’s bounds and the wide world, gazing across the polished-sheen waters of the Limlight to the weary miles ahead as the large company begins to ford the river. Gone are misty, chill mornings of spring, replaced by balmy warmth, like to a workshop with kindled forge. The sky shining jubilantly above is fluorite-clear and very bright. Minas Tirith seems impossibly far.

“Strange,” Celeborn muses beside him, “to bask in the first blush of summer when in my heart it is Winter that approaches, for Lothlórien, my home.”

Plagued, already, by sour awareness of the dread days of exhaustion yet to come, and sympathetic to the dissonance of bleakness set against warmth, Erestor offers a grim smile in solidarity.

“You put on a stoic face, Erestor, yet I think you are not quite so recovered as you wish to seem. This journey is a sore trial, I believe.”

“I have no wish to bemoan that which I have, of my own free will, chosen.”

“No, and yet, if I am not mistaken, you teeter on the edge of despair at the thought of the road stretching before your feet. I am well acquainted with failing hope, Counsellor. I was there when Eregion fell, and Doriath long before. Too many times have I seen the look you presently wear on the faces of others.”

“And yet, walk this road I will.”

“The famous determination of Rivendell’s Chief Counsellor turns to problems other than matters of state, I see,” Celeborn jests lightly, wearing a fond expression as he produces a vial, filled with ground, organic matter that Erestor does not recognise. “I offered, some days ago, to help you if I might. This will not serve to restore you, but may hold off the effects of depletion, for a time, until you are better placed to shoulder them. If relied upon too heavily, it can cause one to spend their strength more quickly than they ought. However, if used sparingly, it may render the journey tolerable, and allow your full presence upon our arrival. Elrond will not offer it, for he is already wracked with guilt regarding your present sufferings, and nor will Galadriel, for she holds to the opinion that you both acted in folly and will not enable what she sees as further foolishness. Both were of a mind to order you remain behind, and might have, if it were not for Lord Glorfindel.”

“And yet, you offer it.”

“You are equipped to make your own decisions, foolish or otherwise, are you not? And, I would not see you suffer for them needlessly, nor your goals thwarted.”

“My thanks,” says Erestor, accepting the gift and tucking it securely away. He does not think to use it, for he trusts Elrond too well to gainsay his wisdom so lightly, and yet there is a comfort in possession of an aid that might be tried at the uttermost end of need.

—

The procession of the combined houses of Rivendell and Lothlórien, owing to its great size, moves at a stately pace. But travel, no matter how slow, does not afford Erestor the rest his body requires. He stagnates, like a still pond caught in an algae’s chokehold, and cannot renew even a small portion of strength. Each day remains a miserable plod. Sunup to sundown Erestor takes to the saddle and shelters within the fuzzy hollows of his mind, taking little notice of the world as it passes. The cost of each small endeavour magnifies, but Erestor has little capacity to recalculate, let alone budget, and with every action haemorrhages strength. On the worst of days, laying aside his dignity, he cedes to Glorfindel, who sits behind the saddle as a bolster so that he need no longer hold the weight of his body upright alone. Erestor’s mood becomes bleak as slate, and that bleakness is unyielding as granite.

Still, there are beautiful moments. Once his ribs are sufficiently improved, Erestor rides ahead on some days, bargaining on expending more energy per mile in trade for less hours in the saddle. It helps. On one such afternoon, as the hot wind blows from the south, Erestor lays with Elrond amid the long, golden grasses of the Wold as waves ripple through their stalks, rendering them a living sea. They peer up at clouds huddling in turquoise skies, like crystobalite clusters in obsidian, and laugh like children.

“I am glad you are here,” Elrond says. “Though I don’t know that I should be.”

“I am glad to have come,” Erestor assures him, squeezing his arm, and self-blame softens from Elrond’s eyes.

Arwen, having thoroughly had her fill of fawning attention, convinces Glorfindel to race through the rippling grass seas one day and Erestor watches as their hair trails behind like golden and sable pennons. Asfaloth flies past Arwen’s palfrey each and every time but neither pay this much mind, for the true joy is in carefree hours which stream exultantly past as warm and wild as the wind.

Flushed and happy, Arwen catches Erestor’s wistful smile. “’Tis a shame you cannot join us.”

Oh, how good it once felt to gallop carefree across fields and hills. Such pleasure is indeed a shame to forgo, and yet, it is no small thing to find himself in the wide world. And if the joys Erestor grasps must in part be vicarious, they are no less precious. Near veraciously Erestor answers, “For once, Evenstar, I am in the midst of things and find myself content.”

Bolstered at the last by Celeborn’s gift, Erestor rides beside Glorfindel under sapphire skies on Midsummer’s Eve, sitting tall and proud in his saddle. Down the Northway toward Minas Tirith they come. Before them golden light from the West burnishes the white city in bronze and flickers along the silver banner Elladan and Elrohir bear as it flutters in the cool breeze. The scent of summer blossoms carries in the air. Erestor can think of nothing so fitting as the city walls draw near and he turns to watch Arwen approach. Her hair is set with white gems that shine in the gloaming, first of all the stars that will soon bloom with the approaching night. Aragorn, tall and regal and with a look of such affection on his face that it is lit with more warmth than the boughs of the trees in the enchanted hour following dawn, takes her hand in his own. There are many prominent guests for the new King to greet, but he does not spurn Erestor even so.

As a boy Aragorn learned more than kindness on Elrond’s knee and has more than a fleeting acquaintance with Erestor’s troubles. “Are you well, Erestor?” he asks with lowered voice after an official greeting. His keen healer’s eyes do not miss the pallor that no medicine, no matter how helpful, can hide.

“Well enough. Though I find myself much depleted by the road, it lightens my heart to see you happy and whole.”

“The weariness of the road I know too well. My heart, also, lightens at our meeting, but my friend, it would have caused no offence should you have stayed in Rivendell. I would not see you suffer on my behalf, nor Arwen’s.”

“When our Estel and Evenstar are to be wed? I have forgone so much in this lifetime. Not this, Estel. Not this.”

There is a sadness in Aragorn’s smile alongside appreciation, come to rest comfortably in the crags worn into his wise face from his own years of trial and hardship. “Then let us be glad,” he says. Aragorn, like he, chooses joy, and does so not lightly, but with grit-toothed determination. Such happinesses as can be claimed in these newborn days of peace are bedfellows with sorrow. United in intimate understanding, they clasp hands and Aragorn moves on, leading his guests through the ruined lower terraces toward the shining heights of Minas Anor that even now catch the very last light of the setting sun.

—

“It is done,” Elrond breathes from his position beside Erestor on the wide, comfortable bed that the fine hospitality of Gondor has allotted Rivendell’s Chief Counsellor. He speaks quietly in deference to the pain that grips Erestor like a vice at the temples and pounds like a battering ram behind his eyes. It is an affliction he shares with half of Gondor, though unlike they, Erestor has not come by it through the imbibing of ales, wines and various other fermented drinks during days of celebration. It is a familiar agony that makes a home in his skull when his fund of strength has been overdrawn, borrowed for too long from the allotment for days to come. He has not slept for some time. It matters not that weariness towers over him as inescapable as Mindolluin’s height; whenever he tries to chase it, sleep slips away, elusive as shadows in the night.

Erestor cannot quite tell from Elrond’s tone which weighs more heavily upon him: exhausted relief at the completion of his bittersweet task, or grief. Nominally, his presence is to ensure Erestor’s needs are seen to now that the long, weary months of travel begin to exact their toll. However, it is plain to him that Elrond seeks solace of his own account, in a place where he is unlikely to be disturbed.

“So it is,” Erestor replies.

This room is not so suited to his needs as his own chamber in Rivendell, generously appointed though it is. Elrond has already had a low table dragged beside the bed, that Erestor might have access to much of what he requires without the need to rise. Elrond’s silver circlet lays upon it, alongside Erestor’s own finery haphazardly discarded. The finely wrought precious metals appear incongruous laid alongside fortifying foods, Erestor’s travelling water-skin, a decanter of the Dúnedain’s answer to miruvor and a basin of washing water. Shakily, Erestor pours a measure of the heady, yet reviving drink and passes it to his friend.

“I feel,” Elrond says, as he accepts the small crystal goblet, “as if I had come to an unexpected stop. We have reached an end — that is plain — yet my heart had expected the path to go on for some miles.”

“That is a sentiment I can well sympathise with.” Erestor thinks of Ost-in-Edhil, and how it lodged within his soul for centuries after his path turned unexpectedly away, and how his heart made a home anew. How much harder it must be to hold space in a soul for the love of one’s child, knowing that space shall never, in all eternity, be filled again.

“What now shall I do with my restless feet?”

“They will find a new path. And the heart may grieve, but yet will it find unexpected joy and kindness along the road. You are not one to let hope remain unkindled.”

“No,” Elrond agrees, though tears glisten in his eyes, caught by a glimmer of starlight that comes softly through the open window with a summer breeze.

“Could I ease you?” Erestor asks.

“Sing us away from this room,” Elrond requests. Erestor does, and though his voice is but a rough whisper that falters here and there, he lays down a rich mosaic from the many paths they both have known. They soar over sparkling mid-winter snowdrifts in the hills about Hollin, dash through bright wild-flower laden fields high above Rivendell, walk beneath the elms of Lindon and rest under the golden mallorn in Lothlórien. Elrond joins his clear voice to the song and Erestor finds, after that, that all paths lead inexorably toward the sea.

✧ ✧ ✧ 

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On a windy day in March, Erestor lays swathed in the dim reaches of his chamber. Over a year has passed since the journey that brought him, Elrond’s household, and the battered remains of the fellowship of the ring home from Minas Tirith to Rivendell. Time has not yet undone the damage to his health that travel wrought and on this particular day, Erestor wonders if it ever will. He is quick to spiral into exhaustion now; it takes so very little. After a single, ill-advised night in the Hall of Fire that stretched on too close to dawn, he finds himself once more able to endure only one small excursion from his rooms each day.

“What will it be?” Glorfindel asks. His feet pad softly across the stone floor and curtains are thrown back from the window. Cool, grey light leaks inside. Behind the panes branches dance in the gusty air, sending kaleidoscopes of bright green leaves and dusky blossoms dancing through pale blue and grey skies.

“Might we venture outside? I wish to breathe the fresh air beyond these walls.”

“That is well,” Glorfindel remarks, coming near. “Master Elrond hoped for your company, and he is little inclined to abide the indoors of late.” Patiently, he drags a brush through Erestor’s long, thick hair and secures it in a tight weave that the wind might not tease it badly. Combing out tangles has been difficult for him to endure of late, bringing on awful headaches.

“Is he well, Glorfindel?” Elrond dispenses his duties as flawlessly as ever, but for one such as he that means little. Lordship is embedded in the very grain of his timbre, such that nothing short of the direst of circumstances could tarnish his amiable public facade.

“No, Erestor, I do not believe he is.”

The spring morning is wild with motion. The sharp bite of sweet, cool air in his lungs invigorates even Erestor’s beleaguered body. He sits beside Elrond on a carven bench where the garden opens to woodland, a shawl wrapped about his shoulders. Bird-calls sound above the distant chatter of the Bruinen and the shushing of wind as it upsets the leaves of gnarled beeches and stately oaks. On the forest floor serpentine-hued greenfinches forage in the company of bramblings with their brindled backs and carnelian breasts. Erestor savours their high, vibrato calls and is glad of his choice, even though the bathhouse would have been a sensible one; a sheen of sweat and oil has settled, rancid and uncomfortable, over his skin. His scalp prickles and his skin has begun to itch. A pity both needs could not be satisfied this day.

“Come with me,” Elrond says. Into the West, he means, having made no secret of his firming resolve to sail. Only one question now remains.

“When will you go?” Erestor asks.

“In September, I think.”

“September?”

“I wish for one more summer,” Elrond admits, with a small, crooked smile.

“Why?” Erestor asks, curiously.

“I want to walk through the high fields on the ridges as they burgeon with wildflowers in all of their myriad colours, see apples swell on the trees that Celebrían planted in the orchard long ago, and taste their sweetness once more as autumn arrives. I want to score these things, indelibly, into my memory.”

“Are they not irrevocably writ there already?”

Elrond shrugs. “Perhaps.”

This land is not so easy to forsake. It is their home. Peace must be made with its loss. Erestor knows this well. Elrond is close enough, almost, to kiss the resigned acceptance he needs in order to do so. Erestor has not yet found his. This land has not released its hold on him, and the sea does not sing strongly in his heart. “I will not come. Not yet.”

“Even now?” Elrond asks, surprised. “When most of those who still abide with us make ready to depart, at last. When—” When his body fails him, yet again. Elrond does not say it, but he looks quickly away and Erestor knows he thinks it all the same. He affords Erestor the dignity of leaving the words unspoken, at least. They have covered this ground thoroughly before. Elrond has never sought to coerce him, and that he comes so dangerously close to doing so now betrays something of the Lord of Imladris’s state of mind. It is as Glorfindel supposed. He is not wholly well. “I only wonder why.”

“Your heart,” Erestor tells him, “has turned all to seawater and far, distant shores, and your longing resounds with the cries of gulls. But mine is as green as the holly growing in Eregion, my lungs swell even now with the scent of juniper and pine drifting down from the high ridges above, and my blood sings with the sweet sight of harebells under the wide open sky. The iron and mithril and gems that twist like a spine through the Misty Mountains are in my bones, Elrond! And Rivendell is the fire warming my soul. I am not ready to leave my home.”

“So be it,” Elrond says with shining eyes. “I will miss you dearly.”

“And I you,” Erestor returns, taking Elrond’s hand in his own. And because they are alone before the uncaring forest and the vast sky, Elrond allows himself to weep. Because Elrond is dear to him, Erestor draws him near and endeavours not to shudder as Elrond raises his hand to run distracted, self-soothing strokes along his prickling scalp.

“Oh, this has become terribly oily,” Elrond remarks absently. “Shall I have a warm basin sent up to your room this evening along with someone to help you wash it?” And they both laugh through their tears.

✧ 

September brings with it a raft of companions and the promise of change. Rivendell resembles nothing so much as a hive of busy bees as all the requisite preparations are made for the departure of a sizeable swathe of her population. Many from Lothlórien have come, who will accompany them to the Grey Havens and beyond. Galadriel finds Erestor in the midst of a passionate debate with Rivendell’s seneschal. They argue back and forth regarding the most efficient and fair re-distribution of duties with a majority of those currently fulfilling essential roles soon to depart. There is a healthy flush to his cheeks and a lively animation to his movement as he gesticulates toward the West Wing, suggesting it could be functionally closed to reduce required upkeep. He is well this day, and with returning strength comes fervour. Gone is the despondency that lurked beneath the Chief Counsellor’s stubborn determination on the road to Minas Tirith two years ago.

Galadriel draws near and the debate stutters to a standstill. She clears her throat self-consciously. “I believe I judged you unfairly, Chief Counsellor. You are certainly determined, but no fool, I think. Let it not be said that the Lady of Lothlórien is too headstrong to offer apology for her discourtesy.” Though the apology comes late, Erestor does not find it difficult to receive. Galadriel’s pride may cause her to misstep occasionally, but she is sincere, and had offered her care without comment or condescension on a number of occasions between the gap of Rohan and the Redhorn Pass, while their respective houses journeyed together.

“The former Lady of Lothlórien, I hear,” Erestor says with a wry smile.

“I am merely Galadriel now, I suppose.”

“Galadriel, princess of the houses of Finwë and Olwë, and Doriathrin royalty by rite of marriage,” scoffs Erestor genially. “And, I hear, kin by some vague connexion to High King Ingwë too. Is there any royal house you do not represent, my Lady?”

Galadriel’s laugh is bright and genuine.

It warms Erestor’s heart. “Your apology is accepted.”

“Good,” Galadriel says with finality, and launches into a lengthy explanation of the intricate social connections, rivalries, and talents of the Galadhrim set to join their Lord Celeborn as he relocates to Imladris. Half of Rivendell’s staffing challenges are on their way to being solved before she finishes talking.

Glorfindel exclaims in mock shock, looking up from his seat by the window, “Are the Galadhrim so complex as all that?” Already, Erestor knows, he will have ear-marked half a dozen likely captains to assist in the post-war recovery effort he is tasked with coordinating.

“I’m afraid so, my Lord,” the Lady teases. “Not all elves can be reduced to a simple equation of loyalty and courage, such as your good self.”

Peace has restored an ease and geniality to their communing such as was once enjoyed in the early Third Age, before such gatherings became fraught with discussions of military threat and conflict. Alas, it is not to last, for the day of parting draws near. New confidences are forged and responsibilities handed over. Celeborn seeks out Erestor one busy afternoon and draws him aside, for they too must come to an understanding if they are to govern well together.

“I must confess myself surprised at your decision to take up residence among the less than peaceable Noldor,” Erestor says.

At this, Celeborn chuckles. “You must not forget I dwelt in Eregion for many long years. And have you not met my wife?”

“Why have you come?” Erestor asks. In the absence of Elrond, the governance of Rivendell would have fallen to his sons, and would thus have remained largely on the shoulders of Erestor, who has been capably stewarding its affairs for much of the sanctuary’s existence. Elladan and Elrohir are bright, brave, and capable, but would have leaned more heavily on Erestor than their father did, at least at first. Now, however, Celeborn is set to take on a high position. Erestor wonders if he has been weighed, measured, and found wanting, or at the least unreliable enough, due to the unpredictable nature of his health, to fill the role.

“Truth be told,” Celeborn admits, “it is family that draws me. I crave closeness to my grandsons. And I find I tire of the woods of Lórien, without the light of Galadriel to brighten them. They fade, now, lacking the sustaining force of Nenya.” Celeborn’s stately face looks more wistful and weary than Erestor has yet seen it, as an aged statue eroded by time and overgrown with ivy. “Besides,” he goes on, “I grow weary, too, of Lordship. Rather than remain in Caras Galadhon and govern alone, it shall be a pleasure to share the burden with one so capable as yourself. Your company will indeed be a comfort to me.”

“I believe we shall be a comfort to one another.”

It rains on the day that Elrond and Galadriel leave. A constant crackle of myriad droplets beats against the flagstones. The eaves drip. Elrond looks up to the graphite-dark skies as rivulets run down his hood and stream from his brow and says, “How fitting.” The sky weeps, but Elrond does not, having spent his tears in the hills above Edoras some years earlier at another parting. There Arwen had kissed the salt from his cheeks and Elrond had wiped his daughter’s tears softly away with his thumbs. Erestor is not dry-eyed, and neither is Glorfindel beside him. For, though they will unite with their friends again, still it is bitter to be parted.

It is an underwhelming sunderance, in the end. Elrond mounts his horse with no more ceremony than had his leavetaking been merely for a pleasurable afternoon ride. While Galadriel stoops in her saddle to embrace Celeborn one last time, Elrond turns toward Erestor and Glorfindel. “Until we meet again, on the other side of the sea,” he says, clasping their hands. Then he turns, coaxes his mount to an unhurried walk and is gone from the valley. A great procession follows. Slowly the echo of hooves clattering against the road fades and the last sight of the company is swallowed by distant rain.

“Well, Chief Counsellor,” Celeborn says, turning his back on the road and setting his sights toward Rivendell’s merry sprawl. “There is much to be done.”

Deep within the green, shadowed vale, beneath the western slopes of the Misty Mountains, where an undimmed remnant of the Eldar still cling, steadfast, to the hills and spill their songs merrily into the valley, there is a sanctuary and refuge. It will not remain forever, for as surely as the summits above shall endure as silent guardians for countless ages of the world, so too are its people ever drawn westward, to the sea. And yet, while it stands, the weak shall grow strong here, the despairing, hopeful, and light and song shall live on, radiating into a vibrant world that resists all things dark, hostile, and mean.

On this particular day, to Erestor, the promise it represents feels solid as rock and as precious as rubies. He is not always well, nor does hope always wax so strongly in his heart, but Rivendell continues to nurture him on the best and worst of days, and all those in between. Soon enough, he too will journey to Mithlond, seeking passage on a ship, never to return. But until that day, though the walls of the sanctuary may at times feel stuffy and close, Erestor will rest easily in the refuge he has found in its halls, and meet the challenges as they come, with patience and determination.

✧ ✧ ✧ 

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