Under Agate Skies by Isilme_among_the_stars  

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Redhorn Pass

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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.

✧ ✧ ✧