Ionnath Estel
Part 5
Posted: April 13, 2007
Title: Ionnath-Estel (The Sons of Hope)
Author: Kenaz
*****
Elladan cut a piece of boar and absently pushed it about on his plate. He was not particularly hungry—the meat had come after a heavy furmity and poached quail eggs, and even now the servants were bearing platters of fruits and sweets to the table—but if his mouth were full, he could not be expected to speak, so he brought the morsel to his lips and chewed it. Thoroughly.
A full nine days and nights had fallen between Elladan’s arrival and the new moon, and on this, the last of those nights, Elladan had been subjected to all manner of tedium in the form of an overlong feast at King Amroth’s table. Though no one had called it anything other than a salutatory repast in honor of their arrival, the presence of so many anxious young maids in their most feminine frippery accompanied by obsequious dames and sires spoke loudly to an ulterior agenda at work: the Noldorin exiles of Eregion, as well as some Sindarin families who claimed tenuous kinship to his grandsire’s line, all had a keen desire to shore up their lost prestige, and how better than to strike a marriage match with the House of Elrond?
He was, his mother had assured him once the full horror of it dawned, too young to worry over matters of matrimony, but they could not insult the king’s hospitality. So Elladan soldiered on with due grace, and the politesse he had been raised with soon flowed easily from his tongue. The young maids so enthusiastically foisted upon him by the hopeful gentry were uniformly attractive in a bland, serviceable way, but being even younger than he, they filled the overdrawn gaps in the conversation with vapid giggles and looks of doe-eyed stupefaction. Now and then, one lass in particular, a dark-haired maid of Noldorin extraction, would attempt to surreptitiously stifle a yawn. Elladan felt that he was as much on display as the boar stuffed and trussed on the table, and when he saw the mercenary hunger in their parents’ eyes, he knew his feeling was not far off.
One, a merchant who claimed distant relation to some member of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, brought both a daughter and a son, clearly hoping to bolster his odds. Each member of his family was bedecked in filigree and jewels, as if to bear out the legitimacy of his heritage.
“My great-uncle fought alongside your lord grandsire when he lead his sortie, I must humbly admit,” he blurted without preamble, turning his eyes down modestly, though Elladan thought the gesture rehearsed; nothing about this Elf was the least bit humble.
“It is difficult to find good blood and good breeding here,” his lady wife added disdainfully, stretching her swanlike neck to display the latticework of gold and emeralds that graced it. She turned and patted her son lightly on the shoulder, prompting him to straighten his back, which had become hunched territorially over his trencher once a slab of the boar had been set upon it. He dutifully regained his posture, though his eyes remained set on his dinner, as if some brigand might step up and rob him of his portion.
The merchant nodded enthusiastically. “Our Silvan cousins are kind folk, and hardy, but their ways are… well, not like our own. The Noldor and Sindar were gifted by Ilúvatar with greater skill and wisdom,” he expounded. “I would not like to see my children lose their traditions because they have been unduly influenced by their rustic kin.”
The king cleared his throat conspicuously and the merchant, realizing his misstep sank back contritely into his chair. The conversation stumbled to a halt.
“Your 'rustic kin’ took you in at my father’s behest when Ost-in-Edhil fell. Fell, if I recall,” and here the king looked pointedly at Celeborn, “because your relation and his ilk in the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, for all their good blood and good breeding, failed to see Annatar for what he was. In their cupidity, they brought ruin upon themselves.”
A satisfied smirk danced across his grandsire’s lips, but Celeborn was not one to bandy words with lackwits, and so he let his silence underscore Amroth’s chastisement. Truth be told, Elladan was surprised the king had been so gracious; he knew from his mother and his granddame that the king had long courted a Silvan maid, though what had become of their courtship he did not know, for she clearly did not reside with him, and for all the rings he wore upon his hands, a betrothal band was not one of them. Elladan knew he would not have taken kindly to a slight against his beloved’s kin, if he ever had a beloved. Not, he amended, that his beloved would ever bear any resemblance to any of the insipid dainties posed around this table.
The discomfiting quiet was disrupted by the squeak and grunt of the king’s chair as he pushed it decisively away from the table, and the patter of feet on the flagstones as those congregated rose for his departure.
“Pardon me,” he addressed them, “I shall return after I have taken some air. Please continue with your meal.”
Only the merchant’s son, who had barely paused in his chewing while King Amroth took his leave, hearkened to the royal request. It might have been a dreadful (but welcome) end to a tiresome evening had the king’s minstrels not immediately filed into the hall and begun to play. By the time the table had been cleared, the guests had migrated toward the other end of the hall and paired off for dancing. The tune the musicians had chosen was a current favorite in Imladris, and Elladan knew it, and the dance that went with it, quite well.
Another Noldorin Elf stepped forward, tugging his daughter with him. It was the maid who had earlier been yawning. She was by far the prettiest of the lot, and had the grace to look discomfited. She curtseyed demurely as her father urged her forward.
“Would you care to dance with my Melindë, my young lord?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Elladan replied, and bowed to her with what he hoped passed for gallantry. He and Elrohir had sat in on many state dinners in Imladris, but they had never yet been called upon to dance with the guests. He had watched Glorfindel, who he knew to be no lover of women, make even the most stately matriarch blush with pleasure at his attentions, which never strayed to the lecherous or the obsequious. He had clearly elevated the management of feminine wiles to an art, and Elladan found himself wishing he had been a less diffident student. Unable to see a purpose in such delicate diplomacy as a courtly dance, he had always rolled his eyes and scoffed inaudibly with disdain; a gesture inevitably followed by a sharp poke from his brother, who was ever his better in matters such as these.
“This will be our lot some day, and that day will come sooner than you think,” Elrohir would say. Not, Elladan consoled himself, that Elrohir had been any more enthusiastic about the prospect.
“You must find this dreadfully dull,” a lilting voice whispered, and his eyes darted back to the maid whose hand was raised and pressed lightly against his own in the posture of the dance. “I imagine you must have banquets like this every night in Imladris.” They circled the room, bowing and curtsying to the other couples as the steps dictated. The lass, Melindë, smiled at him sympathetically.
Elladan returned the expression benignly and swept her forward. “Not so many as you might imagine. King Amroth was very generous to show us such hospitality.”
Melindë giggled as he turned her about. “You looked like a deer hemmed in by hunters! I thought you might try to leap over the table to escape!”
Elladan gave a true smile then. “Was I so transparent? I suppose I have much to practice, then. Yes, in truth I would much rather be riding or hunting.”
“And I would much rather be tending to my needlework, or reading, so we are even.” Her face clouded briefly. “Are you truly here to hunt a bride, milord?”
Elladan wondered at her sudden concern. “No. My parents would have me choose my own mate, in my own time. Certainly not before my fiftieth year, and that is still some time away.” He could see her relax with his admission, and decided to tease her as she seemed sporting. “I see you are relieved. Do I make such a dismal prospect?”
Melindë blushed furiously. “Oh, milord! I did not mean an insult!”
Elladan laughed to allay her embarrassment. “I am sorry. I could not resist a bit of japing. This whole evening has been too rigid for my taste.”
Melindë relaxed in earnest and laughed with him. “I am sure you will make a fine match,” she told him confidentially, “but my heart is spoken for, by one of the cooks who oversaw our repast tonight.”
“Perhaps I should have checked my meat for poison,” Elladan quipped, and Melindë laughed again, a bright sound.
“Nay, he is not of a jealous persuasion. My mother is fond of him, but my father thinks a cook below our station. And he is not of Noldor blood, which only fuels my father’s obstinacy. At least he is a Sinda. Otherwise, it would certainly go ill for us.”
Elladan frowned. “And if he were Silvan, what of it? Do the Sindar and Noldor here truly look down so on their Galadhrim cousins?”
Melindë gave an apologetic nod. “Not all think in that way, but many do. And there are likewise many Silvans who wish that we had never come here. They believe that we brought war and strife to Lothlorien which they had not known before us, and they paint us all with the brush of the kinslayers. Why, there are some Wood-elves living in enclaves in the western edges of the forest who will not traffic with us at all. They will not even speak in our tongue.”
Elladan considered this with no little consternation. Imladris was a crucible of all the tribes of the Quendi on Middle-earth, from the Valinor-born Noldor to the Teleri of the Havens; exiles of Doriath dwelled there, as did those from Gondolin and Eregion. Only the Silvan folk were not counted among the valley’s residents. But Haldir had never shown him any ill will for his heritage, and Haldir was the only Silvan Elf he knew.
“Will your father forbid you to marry him?”
Melindë looked down at her feet. “He might try. But once I have reached my fiftieth year, we will marry whether he wills it or no. Perhaps my mother will soften him before then.”
It was a sobering thought, and the rest of their dance was subdued. Melindë said little else, her thoughts clearly drifting away to the kitchens. After he had taken his turn with the other maids and the dances became more lively, he slipped off for a bit of relief on one of Amroth’s gracious balconies. The moonless night was interrupted by the soft glow of lanterns in the trees and along the pathways, making the vast expanse of the wood he could see from his vantage point appear like an extension of the sky. He stepped closer to the balustrade to breathe in the summer air and his ears caught a new strain of music filtering through the trees, a jaunty refrain:
‘Neath the mallorn and the rowan-tree
From the hazel and the yew
We sight our foe unerringly
And our bolts fly straight and true!
The din-hordes stray, oh, far away
For at Lorien’s eaves they die!
Aye, at Lorien’s eaves they die!
Swiftly do our arrows sail
To guard our kith and kin
We are ready to lay down our lives
For beloved Lórien!
Oh, the archers of the Golden Wood
Will ever heed the call!
Our foes do know that Lórien’s leaves
Will never lightly fall!
Elladan smiled and cocked his head, imagining he could pick out Haldir’s voice from the throng, though he had never heard him sing.
“The guard is changing. The old patrol returns.”
Elladan startled at the voice, and turned to find himself face to face with Amroth, who was half reclined on a stone bench with a gilded chalice in his hand. Blushing, Elladan dropped to one knee and begged forgiveness for the disturbance, but Amroth laid a finger across his lips and gently prompted him to his feet.
“Hush, child.” His smile was a study in collusion. “We are not yet missed and might have a moment’s reprieve if we are quiet.”
Elladan smiled gratefully and approached the balustrade again. He leaned against the stone and stared out into the night. Here and there, elves were strolling on the illuminated paths, but he saw no sign of the Galadhrim guardians in their greys. They were as invisible in the night as they had been in the trees.
“This is the liveliest you have looked all evening. Could it be I have a burgeoning warrior in my midst? Does the martial song call to you?” The king’s brow was speculatively arched.
Elladan blushed, embarrassed by his avidity. “Nay. Well, perhaps… I do wish to be a warrior… but tonight it is simply…” he stammered nervously. “My friend returns with the guard. I am eager to see him. That is all.”
“Indeed?”
Elladan was unnerved by the weight of the king’s appraisal. He knew the solitary word contained the expectation of explanation.
“His name is Haldir, my liege. We have been acquainted since my first visit here.”
The king squinted for a moment, and Elladan imagined him mentally eyeing the lines of his troops. An expression Elladan could not quite determine flickered across his face and then vanished. He smiled, then, with recognition.
“Ah! I know now of whom you speak. He is a good sort, your Haldir. He shows great promise.”
Elladan beamed at the king’s assessment, eager to relay the compliment to Haldir, who would no doubt be both pleased and abashed.
They stood in silence for a spell, Elladan panning the dark below for some glimpse, however brief, of his friend, and Amroth lost to his own thoughts, surveying his shadowed domain.
“I hope you can forgive me for this interminable event,” he said at last, his voice sonorous and low. “I would not have singled you out had my advisors not clamored for it so loudly. I remember when my own sire deemed it time to marry me off. I must have danced with every eligible maid in the entire wood, and then with an entire passel of them imported from Eryn Galen with the express intention of making me a good wife! I found the whole affair to be a misery. But it is a burden to be borne. If you can comport yourself graciously, you will insinuate yourself into their hearts even as you decline their hands. ‘Tis one of those tiresome lessons of statecraft no one warns you about until you are neck-deep in fawning maids and their acquisitive kin.”
Elladan chuckled quietly. Here, behind the heavy draperies that separated the balcony from the great hall, the King of Lorien lost the formality he showed at his table. His charisma was potent; an instant in his presence and one wanted nothing more to know and to please him. But in these close quarters, Elladan sensed his restlessness. As he spoke, his left hand sought the forefinger of his right, giving it a discrete tug that seemed like a habitual gesture.
“Nay,” the King said simply when his astute eyes caught the flicker of Elladan’s gaze over his naked finger. “He never did succeed in foisting me off.” His smile, as he turned to look out into the tenebrous shapes of the night-dark trees, was reflective and subdued. He turned back once more to Elladan. “One must follow the heart in these matters, no matter what politics demand.”
“And that,” he said, rising from the bench and turning Elladan toward the break in the curtains, “is my last treatise on the subject. Come, young one. Back into the fray you go.”
You will wear a rut in the ground from all this ridiculous pacing, Elladan chided himself.
His mother had expressed a similar concern for the floorboards in his chambers that morning, but he had been unable to sit still and she had finally sent him off to look for Haldir with an exasperated sigh.
Now, nearing the barracks where they had agreed to meet, he rehearsed his greeting over and over again. It no longer felt easy or natural to run up leaping and barking like a puppy as he had done as a child. He found himself too late awash in empathy for Elrohir’s quandary when Gildor had come home, and wished he had been more gentle with his brother in those final weeks, though there was nothing for it now. He heard Haldir’s voice and flattened himself up against a tree, unprepared to meet him just yet. He forced out a resolute breath, and readied himself to march headlong into the breach. He stopped dead, however, when he saw a slender young maid rush up and clasp Haldir’s hands. She stretched up on the tips of her toes and kissed his cheek, and Elladan saw him smile at her attention.
She was tall and lithe, dressed in the demure drape of a traditional Silvan gown. Her hair was the color of ripe wheat and braided to her waist with elanor blooms entwined in the plaits. He also could not help but notice, curse it all, that her bosom was full and pert and her legs long as a deer’s beneath her heavy skirts. His stomach plummeted. Of course Haldir would have a sweetheart. He was past his fiftieth year, and the Silvans often wed as soon as they had grown. He had seen no betrothal band on Haldir’s finger, but then, it had not occurred to him to look.
He watched with mounting discouragement as they bent their heads together in conversation, and she took up Haldir’s hands in hers. Whatever Haldir said next, however, seemed to disappoint her, for her smile vanished. She nodded passively, her gaze turned demurely down, and then offered him her cheek. He bussed it swiftly, and she mustered up a final smile for him before she turned on prim feet and hurried away.
Haldir’s expression, when Elladan could at last see it, was unreadable, and Elladan tried to balm himself with the fact that Haldir had not watched her depart. He had, in fact, rather quickly turned away from her. But it was a small consolation to his embarrassment, and when Haldir at last took note of him and called out to him with genuine cheer, he could not help holding himself a bit aloof, leaving his friend wondering over the unusually frosty greeting.
“How have you passed your time so far?” Haldir asked after an awkward moment, and Elladan knew it would be unfair for him to remain sullen if he had not the courage to discuss the reason for his mood with Haldir.
“I went fishing with my grandsire and explored some on my own. Last night there was a feast in King Amroth’s hall to celebrate our arrival.”
“It must have been a grand affair,” Haldir said wistfully.
Elladan gave a dismissive shrug. “It was dull. Most of these things are.”
“I would not know,” Haldir admitted, gazing beyond Elladan to the great mallorn that rose up on Cerin Amroth. “I have never been beyond the foot of the tree.” The corners of his mouth turned down. “You are used to such things, though, I imagine.”
Elladan silently rebuked himself for his nonchalance, thinking he must have sounded terribly arrogant. He was reminded sharply of the time he inadvertently belittled Haldir’s new bow, and how much his incautious words had stung his friend. It was simply so easy to forget how different their lives were, and their experiences, when they walked together and talked with such ease.
“Really, it was overlong and dull. I would rather have been here to see your return.”
A strange look appeared on Haldir’s face and was just as quickly gone, shuttered away behind a bland smile, and Elladan rushed to speak again, fearing he had once more unwittingly bumbled. “I heard your patrol singing. I looked, but in the dark I could not see you. Any of you.”
Haldir burst into a blithe refrain:
“Oh, the archers of the Golden Wood
Will ever heed the call!
Our foes do know that Lórien’s leaves
Will never lightly fall!”
Elladan clapped appreciatively when Haldir had finished. His voice had been sure and resonant, if not terribly dulcet, and Elladan knew he would ever more be able to single it out from any others. “King Amroth says you show great promise.” He could not resist beaming as he delivered the royal commendation.
Haldir’s eyes widened and he barked out a laugh of surprise. “Truly, he said that of me? I am amazed he even knows who I am. I am only a novice, and I have not yet distinguished myself.”
Though he downplayed his achievements, Elladan could tell that he was inwardly glowing at the praise, and he was glad that he had been its messenger. They remained caught in their shared smile for a long moment, until at last Haldir chuckled again to dispel the intangible web that seemed to hold them.
“I… I do not know what you were of a mind to do today, but there is someone I would like for you to meet, someone who is most beloved to me.”
Elladan’s smile faded, and Haldir looked at him with confusion and concern. “I hope you do not mind… it will not take long.” His voice was hesitant now. “It is only that I am smitten beyond reason, and I think you will quickly see why.”
I know, and I have already seen why, Elladan thought bitterly, struggling to look gracious.
Haldir ignored his silence and gestured with his head toward a path that ran west from the barracks. He walked with a brisk stride and Elladan stretched his legs to keep apace. They followed the path to a stream and then over a footbridge and further still until they reached the foot of a mallorn encircled by a narrow staircase. Haldir took the stairs two by two.
"In all your visits, you have never been inside my home. It will seem sadly modest to you, I warn."
His home? Elladan was confounded. He knew enough of Silvan custom from Haldir’s own lips to know that no Silvan maid would leave her parents’ home until she was wed. Could it be that Haldir had taken a wife and failed even to mention it to him? He felt ill with the thought.
Haldir gestured for silence and opened the door as softly as he could, but a feminine voice called out to them.
"Do not bother keeping quiet! He does not sleep. I begin to dread that he ever will."
"Noseep!" A high-pitched voice sang an affirmation from within.
As Elladan stepped over the threshold, a slender Elf-woman, graceful as a birch, rose from a quaintly carved settle. This was not the young maid he had seen before. Her dress was plain but handsomely made in a deep grey-blue that matched her eyes—and Haldir's. On the floor beside her sat a small, plump elfling, legs splayed out in front of him, chewing the foot of a cloth poppet.
"Welcome to our home, my lord Elladan. I am pleased to finally meet you. I am Rían."
There was no doubt that she was Haldir's mother, for he shared her smile as well as her eyes. Elladan gave her a neat bow, sudden elation suffusing him, and watched as Haldir leaned over the child whose arms were now raised in an unsubtle demand to be held. Haldir obliged, tossing him lightly in the air as he hoisted him up off the floor, and the little one chirped with glee. The tiniest twinge of jealousy beset him when Haldir put his lips to the babe's curly crown and closed his eyes to inhale the milk-sweet scent.
"Hadee," the little one cooed, and grasped for a lock of Haldir's hair.
"Elladan, this is my brother, Rúmil. Rúmil," he whispered in a tiny leaf-like ear, "this is my dear friend, Elladan."
Rúmil regarded him with interest for a moment. "Eddan," he confirmed, and then appeared to remember he had dropped his poppet and squirmed in Haldir's arms, reaching down for the neglected toy. Haldir plucked it up for him, and he chattered like a fledgling in its nest for a few moments, engrossing himself in lively conversation with his stuffed friend before commencing to chew on its sodden foot again.
"He has not yet passed his first year," Haldir told him as he bounced his brother on his hip, beaming with as much pride as if the child had been his own. "He was born just as the first snow came."
"Aye," Haldir’s mother smiled tiredly, "and he is lively as a squirrel.”
“This is why I am not living in the barracks at present,” Haldir admitted. “Orophin is too much the bachelor to return to the family home, but not I. I cannot bear to be parted from the imp. Father and Orophin dote on him, to be sure,” he said, fierce pride in his voice, “but the second word he spoke was my name. Aye, Squirrel?”
“Aya!” the mite crowed.
“We can take him for a bit, Nennë,” Haldir offered. “You most certainly deserve a rest. Come, wee bairn!” He spun around and Rúmil squealed in delight. “I have promised Elladan adventures and adventures he shall have. Let us away!”
And with that, the motley trio was off, bathed in the warm glow of camaraderie and summer, in search of enjoyable diversions with which to while away their days.
*****
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