Chapter Text
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
(W. B. Yeats, ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’)
The smith’s people spoke of their queen still. He knew this well enough, although he never heard it - there were too many sudden hushes when he approached, too many briefly shot glances they thought he couldn’t see. But none of them asked him where she had gone and none of them asked him when she might return.
“I heard it otherwise. I heard that several of our people did ask you, and your reaction was such that no-one dared again.”
“And how do you expect me to tell a story if you want me to take account of anything everyone may ever have said? It doesn’t matter.”
“Someone told Elrond. Later, when -”
“It doesn’t matter, elf, leave it be.” He lifts her hand to his lips, pressing a line of kisses along her fingertips. “I should have kept him in that cell.”
As harvest approached, he realised they were waiting for her. She had always been there for harvest. She helped with the work, for even though Pelargir’s population had grown greatly all hands were still needed at harvest and even the children worked in the fields. Every year she was there for the celebrations when the work was done, when there was dancing and feasting and joy late into the night. Every year, she made flower crowns to place on the heads of newly-wed couples. That she should be gone for a time in summer was only to be expected, and that there should be some rumoured conflict with her husband – well, that too had happened before. But always, always she came home for harvest.
So now they expected she would come back as she always did, riding in from the west. They expected that whatever argument she had had with their king would be put aside; that she would come home and she would dance at the harvest feast and the strange tense feeling that had settled over Pelargir like sea-fog would be gone, and all would be well again.
This was never said to him. Even those closest to her, Bronwyn and Arondir, who knew more than they should about her leaving; had in some sense permitted her to leave (although he kept his anger about this constrained, knowing who had taken her and knowing there was little that either of them could have done); there was a careful balance of silence around the subject. The others, all the people of Pelargir, seemed to know without needing to be instructed in it that he had no wish to hear her name.
And yet, he would not have her forgotten. Her cape covered her throne as it sat empty beside his, the sigil of Finarfin blazing out. Her crown sat beside him. Her knife he wore at his own side, unsure still when or how he might use it but certain regardless that he would need it to hand when the opportunity arose. Her horse was kept well and cared for and none were permitted to ride it. At any time she could have walked back into Pelargir and found their city awaiting her, her name held silent on its lips.
She never came. No word from her, no sign. Not a letter, a note; not a promise.
It was enough to consider his pact with Gil-galad and the elves broken already, truly, and he had enjoyed considering what he might do about that, at times when his duties allowed. But harvest was busy and left little time for such daydreams. Pelargir might have a powerful king, but not one so thoughtless of his people that he would not work alongside them when every hand was needed.
The weather stayed fine, that first year without her. The crops were bountiful. And at the great feast, he lifted his glass to a hall of people watching him and said “To Galadriel, wherever she is,” and felt the tremor of her name pass through the crowd.
“I missed it,” she says. “Pelargir itself and all our people there. I was afraid for them and I missed them too.”
“And me.”
“Not you.”
“You did.” Forehead against hers, a teasing, nuzzling laugh. “Just a little, you did, you did.”
“Not you. No. I was…” It is easy to dismiss him for he would give up pushing at her before too long, she knows; for all the bluff and confidence in his voice now he would be happy if neither of them spoke about this time at all. But she must say what is true. She must know what the truth sounds like, on her tongue and in her mind. She has made her decision.
“A little,” she says. “I missed what I had hoped you could be. I missed believing that there might come a time I could trust you.”
She doesn’t intend it to sound as sharp as it does, but there is truth in what she says without thinking as much as there is in what she considers. His lips press into a thin line and he rolls back, away from her.
It was a fresh bright morning when they set off for Eregion, she and Elrond and the High King and a retinue that seemed to her excessive but that made for an enjoyably broad band of companions. This far north autumn was already near and the air was chill despite the sunshine. Galadriel was ready before all the others, and was already waiting in the courtyard looking down at the mist-covered bay below when the horses were brought over.
“Yours,” one of the stablehands said, handing Galadriel the reins of a mahogany-dark bay with its long mane bound up with flowers. Galadriel might be a soldier but this was not yet a war expedition. “Her name is Morilindë.”
The horse pressed her head against Galadriel’s side, and Galadriel rubbed at her shoulder and spoke quietly of soft green paths and easy journeys and the joy of running fast over the open plains. Around them the courtyard grew noisier as others arrived, calling greetings to each other, swinging bags and bedrolls into position behind saddles.
She thought that Elrond would come with the High King but instead he arrived alone. He greeted the horse before her, running one ear through his hand. “Morilindë, keep her safe,” he said, and then to Galadriel, “A good horse. You can trust her.”
“I wish I had been able to bring my mare from Pelargir. I told her to go to the elves.” A familiar sorrow swept through her and she busied herself with checking the packs, needlessly adjusting one buckle. “I half feared the High King might ask you to stay behind here.”
“Oh, there’s enough aspiring diplomats here who are fully capable of spending a few weeks overseeing arguments over who scuffed the paint on whose fishing boat.” He ran his hand down the horse’s neck. “Are you sure. I know you’ll say you are, but please, Galadriel, think about this before answering. Are you truly, truly sure this is what you want to do?”
“We spoke about this before.”
“Yes, we did, and since then you’ve been – I don’t know. Single-minded. It’s -” A quick glance over her shoulder, and his voice quietened a little. “You have agreed to everything and you have not challenged a single thing and it is not like you. No-one here questions your sense of duty and me least of all, you know that. But I worry that you are treating this as some punishment you must endure.”
She quieted him with a hand on his arm, and leaned in until their bowed foreheads pressed together. “You worry too much, my friend.”
“And yet you aren’t disagreeing with me.”
No; but it was hard to describe how she truly felt. There was a joy and a lightness in her heart, a certainty that whatever she had sacrificed to gain this new sense of purpose was worth it. She was eager to be gone, and not in order to leave Lindon behind but so that she might finally, finally act again, and cease this interminable waiting.
“Would you prefer that I argued with the High King again?” she said, seeing her growing smile reflected in his own.
“Very much no. I only want to know that you are happy.”
A voice called out from the other side of the courtyard, “Herald Elrond!”
“I need to be a soldier,” she said. “That is my happiness. Now go and find your horse or you truly will be left behind.”
He shook his head, resigned, and put a hand over hers as it rested on his forearm. “You need be nothing but yourself.”
As they left the city the sound of the horses’ hooves was muffled in fallen leaves. There was a thin, shrill cry of birds in the distance, and the road ahead of them empty and the horizon vast. She rode at the High King’s side with her head high and proud, and felt her heart sing, and found herself not even wishing to look back.
The smith did not sleep in the days after the feast. He did not seem to need sleep as much, now; without her he was both weaker and stronger. At night he sat on her terrace where weeds now grew up between flagstones, and watched the stars, and thought of how cold the wind had been on the bleak plains in the north after his master was taken back to Valinor.
“Your master.”
“Well, because.” He plays at the corner of the sheet, running it through his fingers again and again. “In years before the sun and the moon. He was. That’s how I thought of him.”
And hadn’t he been so faithful, so loyal, so good. Hadn’t he been the best and most careful servant. Hadn’t he spent long nights then staring up at the dark sky thinking of his master in Valinor bathed in the light of the Trees: in some position of pretended servitude no doubt, working away at small and thankless crafts, but walking among bright grasses and shining stone. Being called brother; being welcomed home.
“And when I was gone? How did you think of him then?”
He does not know how to answer.
The warrior’s knife belted at his side felt more of an anchor to her than anything else – a charmed talisman, perhaps, a great and magical treasure. And he knew that whatever else she might miss she would certainly resent having to leave this behind. The rings, though, had done little since she had left. The harvest might have been good, Pelargir might still stand strong, but he was reasonably sure that with hers far distant and its wearer opposed to him his too would cease its protective effect.
He had been too careless; he had moved in haste, but in the wrong direction. It should never, never have come to this. He had told her once that he would see his realms crumble and fall into the sea before he’d lose her, and he had meant it. Now where was he? Lost and betrayed and left behind, a city that stood firm and a queen that was gone.
The smith looked to the north, then to the south. To the north lay the lands of the elves: her Silvan companions in Dor-en-Rían, the Sindar in Edhellond, and beyond them the kingdoms of the Noldor. To the south, clans and kingdoms of men, scattered across the lands in a fine but strengthening web of alliances.
He turned the ring on his finger, letting himself sink into the form of it, the shape, the shine. He said her name, and then he said: It’s harvest. You missed harvest.
And this time, she answered.
Galadriel lay beside the dying embers of a campfire, pleasantly filled with food and song and company. She was determinedly not thinking of the last time she had come this way at the side of a creature calling itself a king; nor of all the times before that with soldiers at her side and a hard and bitter course ahead of them. This time she had furled herself tight into the constraints of duty, resolved to stay within the course set for her. She would be an arrow, swift and sharp.
Elrond still seemed uneasy with her decision or what he suspected might lie behind it. He was cautious with her, careful, each apparently casual question a test to soothe his own mind. But even he was calming with time, reassured by her certainty: I need to be a soldier again, Elrond. I need to fight him. I need this more than I need anything else.
They were making good time to Eregion. She still knew little of what awaited them there, other than Mithrandir and others of the Istari she had yet to meet; Celebrimbor, to whom she had not spoken since he arrived in Lindon with Sauron those years before; and something hidden, some information she was yet to learn. Gil-galad had made it clear he would not speak of it until they arrived and she had accepted this without argument. In the meantime, she had not lost the joy of being with her own people once again and even the knowledge that war most likely lay ahead and all her mistakes behind could not shake that. They sang old songs and shared tales that left her laughing almost too hard to speak. She had forgotten what a gifted mimic Elrond could be and watching his face change and his voice drop a tone into Círdan’s exaggerated weariness was a bright treasure.
And then, almost lost to sleep, safe and settled under the star-bright sky, his voice once again speaking to her of harvest.
It shocked her, more so than it should. It seemed to her that it was not him calling to her this time but Pelargir itself. She thought, no, and curled herself tighter in the pleasant fog of early dreams, but this time it was not enough. Her memories whirled around her like dancers, dragging her into their wake. She could keep him out but she knew Pelargir would haunt her all the rest of the night and long beyond.
And… perhaps she could know more, this way. What soldier refuses a chance to see the enemy’s plans?
She thought of the clearing in which they rested and rebuilt it in her mind, without the others and the campfire, without even her bedroll. She had learned how to do this well enough over the years; he had even taught her himself a little. The ring cooled her hand with its soothing touch.
“Sauron,” she said, and he was there before her.
It seemed he was not expecting it. His eyes widened, guarded, as if he thought this some kind of trick. For a moment she saw herself through his eyes: alone curled on forest leaves, barefoot, clad only in a simple sleeping gown for sleep.
“Galadriel,” he said. “My light.” And she saw the tremble in his hand as he reached for her, understood his fear that she might break away and cast him from her mind at any moment, and felt herself pleased.
“Tell me you have not harmed Pelargir,” she said. “Tell me you have brought no ill fortune to any of our people, in the city or in my own lands.”
“I swear it.” A hand on hers, lifting her to her feet. He felt so warm it was almost real, the strange music of their rings singing in harmony to weave this world of illusion around them. “Galadriel, come home.”
“I have no home.”
“That’s not so.”
“You took my home.”
He took a strand of her hair, coiling it around and around his finger. “You are angry with me still,” he said. “You have been listening to people you should not trust.”
“And I should trust you?”
“Many things would be simpler if you would trust me.” When she looked away he caught her chin, lifting it so that her eyes met his. “Come home. This is all so needless.”
“Have you forgotten what you did to me?”
He smiled, bleak and humourless. “No.”
“When I come back to Pelargir it will be with an army.”
“You will look so glorious. I can see it now. And then will I have to beg you to spare Pelargir?” His hand at the back of her neck, now, pressing her insistently closer. “Perhaps you will defeat me and your soldiers will have me dragged before you and thrown at your feet. I would be your helpless prisoner. Would you like that?”
“Do you think this a game?”
“Come home. Come back and it can be as if all of this never happened. I will make amends for my, for – I was thoughtless. You had angered me and I could not allow you to ruin what I was trying to build but when you come back I will make amends for it, I promise you.”
“What are you doing in the east?”
“East.” She could sense his annoyance even through the strange, tense air of this vision.
“Tell me the truth. Tell me what you are doing with the orcs.”
Again he took a length of her hair, bringing it round to her chest, this time stroking it gently between thumb and forefinger. “I’ve never lied to you, Galadriel.”
“I saw it in the palantir.” Even to think of it sickened her. The form of them, the sound, grotesque hands shaking weapons towards the darkened sky. “They were chanting an oath of loyalty in the Black Speech. To you, to your master. Will you deny it?”
“They are…” She saw the hardness in his face, around his jaw; the barely kept-in anger. “No, I won’t deny it, but what do you expect of me? It takes a long time to teach orcs new things. It doesn’t matter. They’re temporary. I need to fix a few things and then you can have a Middle-earth free of orcs if you want. You can kill them yourself when I’m done. My gift.”
“What do you seek to do with them now?”
At that he tipped up his chin, looking down at her, smug, and she knew the time for anything he might offer was gone. “My beloved traitor. This can all wait, Galadriel. Come home to me first.”
Pointless, all of this. And yet in some way perhaps there was a use in it after all, for if she could not gain any new information about his plans she could at least have this certainty about his intentions. That should in itself have been an ending, a cut sharp and clean; and yet it was not. “Traitor?” she said. “You betrayed me, you betrayed me, how can you talk to me of my home after all you have done? How can you imagine I could ever return to be at your side now that you have proven to me what you are?”
And there, finally, she saw him shaken enough that the shell of self-satisfied pride cracked. “No, Galadriel. You know what I am. You have seen my work. You would not disregard all of that for the sake of a few small things, done for good, done to protect -”
“As you protected me?”
She watched his hand fold and unfold into a fist around her hair. “I would have come back.”
“You imprisoned me inside my mind, my fears, I told you I feared being alone on the raft, you knew, I told you when I was lying in your bed beside you and you kept that and you used it and you betrayed me and now I am to believe you are not precisely what I knew you to be all along?”
Something in his eyes reminded her of an animal caught in a trap. “Let me make amends.”
“Nothing you could do would make amends.”
“Come home and I will give you anything you might want.”
“It was never my home. It was a cage and you my captor.” She grabbed his hand at the wrist, pulling it down and away from her, and forced back his mind with the smooth shield of her own, and sent him out and away into nothingness as she pulled herself from sleep.
Galadriel awoke under the trees surrounded by her sleeping companions. She could see Elrond’s dark hair beside her, his face turned away. All was quiet but for the crackle of the fire and the low murmur of those still awake. She stared up at the sky and thought, for the first time in years, of her days spent on Numenor; how the sun had beat down on the water, and how she had trained those young soldiers in the market square, a laughing, bluffing brave army in waiting.
The smith was – nowhere, for a while. The comforting and familiar blankness came and he drew it around him. Then steadily, slowly, grew the sounds that had found him again and again after all these long ages, seeping through the cracks in any armour he ever wore. Screams and echoes, and a hammer striking down against an anvil; the hiss of hot steel quenched in water; an uneven step dragging closer and closer, the ever-wounded foot scraping on the stone floor outside his cell. The laughter of orcs gathering to watch.
Sometimes it was pain, inescapable and terrible, coursing through him like fire as he turned from one form to another to another to another and the manacles and his master’s grip held him firm.
Sometimes it was pity, and that was worse.
His master’s hands were ever burned from the Silmarils but they could be soft all the same and the heat in them something close to soothing. His voice, lowered to a hush: my precious, my precious, my most beautiful creation, did you forget whose you were?
And -
And it didn’t matter for there he was back in Pelargir, the firm stone of the terrace around him, Galadriel’s knife in his hands held so tightly that the pattern of the hilt was printed into his palm. The sun was almost above the horizon.
When the city awoke he would begin making preparations to leave. He would not go north, not yet. He would take the steward’s son and leave the steward guarding his city, and he would go south. It was tiresome and he had no wish to be away but there were things to put in motion there before his greater work could continue.
South, first. South, and then east, where the clouds were already beginning to glow with the first light of dawn.