A Thousand Winds that Blow - Chapter Seventeen

[starspray]

Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: M
Characters: Celegorm, Daeron, Elured, Elurin
Warnings: Violence/Injuries
Summary: When uneasy dreams bring him back into Beleriand, Daeron finds a pair of twins who have lost their home, and an enemy who has lost himself. The Shadow's reach is growing ever longer, and if they are to survive, they must do it together.
Note: Title from the poem "Immortality" by Clare Harner. Written for the Scavenger Hunt SWG challenge; you can see the prompts in the notes over there.

First Chapter / Previous Chapter / 

 

The twins left with Nellas two days after she returned. It was very quiet with them gone, and it grated. Daeron wasn’t speaking to him, though he also didn’t go off alone, which was something. 

There wasn’t much to do, either. They had plenty of stores for the winter, and with the twins gone there were no lessons or practices to oversee. Lossenol would have liked to practice himself, but Daeron still wouldn’t give his weapons back, and he couldn’t figure out where they’d been hidden. His mind kept returning to the boy he’d killed, full of questions that could never be answered—what his name was, why exactly he had been sent east, what he had expected to find, what would have happened if he had managed to escape and return west over the mountains. Whether he had family—whether they would be wondering what had happened to him. 

He went back to the grave most days. There wasn’t anything to say—but it felt wrong to just leave it unattended. So he went and added another stone or two to the small cairn, or placed fresh flowers on top of them, and then went back home. 

Daeron also didn’t come to bed at night, and Lossenol had no idea if or when he was actually sleeping. The worry overtook the frustration, and two days into Nellas and the twins’ absence Lossenol dragged himself out of bed after a restless night and went to find Daeron playing his flute for the goats. When the goats got bored and wandered off, Lossenol sat on the grass beside him and said, “I thought we agreed that whatever happens, we face it together.”

“We didn’t,” Daeron said without looking at him. “You said that, and I didn’t argue one way or the other.”

“Daeron—”

“I told the songbirds that I won’t leave unless I absolutely must. I spoke without thinking, by the river, but I did mean it. I won’t be the reason any of you get hurt—”

“That’s not how this works.”

“And you’re the expert, are you?”

Lossenol opened his mouth, and then closed it again, a little startled at how badly those words stung. “That’s not fair,” he said finally.

Daeron sighed. “No, it’s not. I’m sorry.” But he still didn’t look up. His fingers moved absently over his flute, picking out a silent tune. “But we did agree that keeping Eluréd and Elurín safe is the most important thing. I won’t promise never to leave if someday my presence puts them in danger. But I did tell Eluréd that if I must leave, I will try to come back.”

“Will you promise me that you’ll come back?” Lossenol asked.

“We can’t cling too tightly to each other, Lossë. When it all goes wrong—”

“That’s why we need to hold tightly.”

“It just makes it harder to do what’s necessary.”

“No, it doesn’t. You just think things are necessary that aren’t.”

Daeron dropped his flute and rubbed his hands over his face. “This is pointless. We aren’t ever going to agree. I don’t want to leave you, and I don’t want to die, but as far as I can tell both of those things are inevitable—”

“That’s what we disagree on,” Lossenol said. 

“So if I try to make you promise not to die, not to throw yourself into a fight you can’t win because you think—”

“That’s different.”

“No it’s not! I’m still not a healer, Lossë! What happens when you are injured in a way I can’t fix?”

“I’m already injured in a way you couldn’t fix,” he said, gesturing at his eye. “I’m dealing with it. I also got my skull bashed in and you fixed that—”

“I could fix it then, maybe, but I don’t think I could now! Not when I forgot everything about healing that I do know when I saw you—” Daeron’s voice broke, and he got to his feet. “If I’m not to leave, you aren’t to take such risks.”

“I didn’t intend to take that one.”

“Well, don’t do it again!” Daeron stalked off, and over his shoulder he added, “And I’m still not giving you back your sword!”

Lossenol snarled his frustration to the grass and pushed himself to his feet. If he couldn’t go swing his sword at nothing, he could find something to make or fix that required a hammer. Maybe that would make him feel better.

Nellas and the twins returned after several weeks, as frost edged the leaves in the morning and Daeron withdrew even more into himself—his usual bad autumn habits returning with a vengeance now that his fears of Angband had been reawakened. But the day after everyone was safely back at home, Lossenol found all his weapons in their proper places, as though they’d never been moved at all. 

He took that to mean Daeron wouldn’t object if he took the warning to the dwarves, and so he started packing. “Where are you going?” Elurín asked.

“You took word to Nenuial, and I’m going to the mountains,” said Lossenol as he unsheathed his sword, making sure whatever Daeron had done hadn’t damaged it somehow. He slid it back and hooked it to his belt. “I’ll be quick—be back before the first snows.”

“Are you two still angry?”

“No. I’m not, anyway.” Lossenol kissed his forehead. “Stick close to home, all right?”

“Please be careful.”

“I will, I promise.”

The trip to the mountains was quiet; most of the birds had flown south for the winter, and as he made his way up the road he saw no other travelers, east or west. Halli was at the outpost, and he did not look surprised at the news. “It was only a matter of time,” he said. “But he won’t be taking anything back home with him, at least.”

“No,” said Lossenol. “I don’t think we need to worry about an army just yet.”

“Orcs can dig tunnels, just as Dwarves can,” said Halli. “Or they might just march around the northern end of the mountains. It might take them some time, and maybe they won’t bother if none of their scouts come back to tell them it’s worth it—but we’d all be fools not to prepare for it.”

“Is there anything you can tell me?”

“No, nothing new. It’s all bad, and getting worse.”

“Do your wise ones still say to watch the stars?”

Halli snorted. “Kóri told you that, did he? Aye, there’s still talk of watching the stars, though for what, I can’t say. The stars have naught to do with Mahal.”

“Mahal is one of the Powers, akin to she who made the stars,” Lossenol said. 

“And all of them are safe somewhere over the Sea, content to sit idly by while the rest of the world slowly crumbles. Maybe you Elves and some like Kóri find some comfort in believing they care—”

“If I had that kind of faith, I’d still be back across the Sea myself,” said Lossenol. “I don’t know what I believe anymore—just that I don’t want to give up.”

“I’ll be very happy to be proven wrong,” said Halli. “Anyway—thank you for the warning. We’ll send our own folk into the mountains, as we can spare them.”

“Thank you.”

“Lossenol,” Halli said as he turned away. When Lossenol looked back he asked, “Why did you cross the Sea?”

“Morgoth destroyed the only home I’d ever known,” he said after a moment. He didn’t remember it, but the words felt true as he spoke them. “I was angry. I’m still angry—angrier, even—I’m tired of every good thing I find being torn from my grasp.”

Halli held up his mug in a wry toast. “So are we all.”

When he drew near home, he found that he could feel, much more strongly than before, when he passed through the borders of Daeron’s Girdle. It made the hair on his arms stand up, and he wondered what Melian’s had been like if this was but a limited imitation. The air didn’t actually change, but something felt like it did. It was comforting, in a way, being so surrounded by Daeron’s power. Another change was that Eluréd and Elurín could now sense someone coming through the Girdle the same way that Daeron could, and they met Lossenol in the woods. “How was it?” Eluréd asked as Lossenol wrapped an arm around each of them. 

“Quiet. Spoke to Halli—he reminded me that goblins can dig tunnels, and we should be watchful for more than just scouts. But not yet, I think,” he added quickly. “They’re sending scouts for a reason—they won’t send an army until they know what they’re going to be dealing with. Or at least that’s what I would do.”

“But you’re clever,” said Elurín.

“So is the Enemy, Elurín. We’re safe for now, but we can’t count on it lasting.” They’d be lucky to get another five or ten years, Lossenol thought. It wasn't something he’d say aloud, and it made something under his ribs ache with a longing he didn’t fully understand and wouldn’t be able to put into words even if he tried.

Daeron was with Nellas when they arrived at home, sitting by the hearth and putting together what looked like a small loom. They were talking quietly, looking serious. Daeron glanced up, gaze sweeping up and down Lossenol, before he offered a small smile and turned back to what he had been doing. 

They didn’t talk about the scouts again, or about anyone leaving. Daeron hardly spoke to Lossenol at all, withdrawing and growing very quiet through that winter, and he sang very little; it was Eluréd and Elurín who made most of the music that passed the long dark evenings, and Nellas who told stories. By spring Daeron was more his usual self—but although they still did not speak of why, both Lossenol and Nellas went out to patrol the forests again, sooner than Lossenol had originally planned. They found nothing, but fear had come back to stay, overshadowing all their happiness. 

By the time Lossenol and Nellas got back from the spring scouting the forest was awash in new green growth and flowers. It was late, for they had been close enough that they hadn’t wanted to stop and make camp, and they found everyone already asleep. Or at least in bed. Lossenol stepped into the bedroom and Daeron sat up with a gasp. “It’s only me,” he said. 

“Oh.” Daeron breathed a sigh and rubbed at his eyes. “Did you find anything?”

“No. It’s all quiet. How is it here?”

“Also quiet.”

Lossenol changed into his sleeping clothes and combed out his hair, and then slid under the blankets. Instead of keeping his distance, as he had for months, he rolled over and wrapped his arm around Daeron, burying his face in his hair. “What do I have to do to make you stop being angry with me?”

Daeron sighed again. “I’m not angry, Lossë.” He rolled over so they were facing one another. “I’m just afraid.”

“You’re not still planning to leave—”

“I’m not going to leave. I don’t want to leave. I just—”

“If we part ways, none of us make it,” Lossenol said. 

It was hard to see Daeron’s face in the dark, and then he hid it entirely when he tucked himself against Lossenol’s chest, pressing his face into his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But if we are parted—if I do have to leave you, or if something else happens, I—I do promise that I’ll do everything in my power to come back. I promised the twins, and now I promise you.”

That was as good as it was going to get. Daeron was never going to promise not to leave, whatever happened. “Leaving has to be the last resort,” Lossenol said aloud. “Only if it’s certain that staying puts the twins in danger.”

“Or you,” Daeron said.

“No, I—”

“I will not be the thing that gets you killed, Lossenol. Not any of you.”

“Well, I’m not going to just stand by and let you get killed, either.”

Daeron shuddered in his arms, and Lossenol felt his fingernails dig into his shoulders for a moment. “Then I suppose we’ll remain at this stalemate until—something happens, one way or the other.”

“I suppose so.” Lossenol tightened his own arms around Daeron. He was determined to win this argument in the end, though. Whatever happened—none of them were going to lose anyone else. Not while he could still wield a sword. “Next summer I want to take the twins to Nenuial—for a longer visit than usual. I can’t teach them everything they need to know here.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Fighting on horseback, for one. Fighting with other people—and strategy, and defense, and—all kinds of things. They can learn more of healing there, too. Aereth already offered to teach them all she knows.”

Daeron was silent for a long time. Then he said, “Yes, all right. And Nellas wants to take them to stay with Goldberry for a while, sometime. I just wish they weren’t growing so fast.”

“It might be a blessing,” Lossenol said. “The Enemy isn’t idle. They need to be ready.”

“I know. I still hate it. Do you think we should remove to Nenuial entirely?”

“No. Not yet.” They still had too many secrets—and this place was home, the only home the twins had ever really known, the only home he could remember, and Lossenol was reluctant to leave it. He wanted to delay the inevitable as long as possible.

The years slipped by, swift and steady as the currents of the Lhûn—five years, then ten, then twenty—and as no other threats arose they were all able to set aside most of the fear. Eluréd and Elurín grew quickly, taller than Lossenol or Daeron, though not—according to Daeron—as tall as Elu Thingol himself. Lossenol kept training them in all the weapons he knew how to use, and they learned other things from the Men and Elves and Dwarves as they spent more time by Lake Nenuial. They learned to ride horses and sail small boats across the lake, and to fight on horseback and on the water as well as on land; they learned healing and herblore. Little Mithon too grew up, and was soon married with a family of his own. Small groups of both Elves and Men trickled over the mountains, often sent by the Dwarves to Lossenol and Daeron for shelter and guidance before they escaped farther east. Lossenol watched Daeron go stiff and quiet every time someone new came up the path, but none of them were ever anything but what they said they were. Sometimes they saw signs of scouts out of the north and west, near the mountains or in the woods, but none ever came as close as that first boy to finding them, and whether they made it back to report on what they found, Lossenol couldn’t guess. The Ents that wandered through, tending to the trees, never indicated concern, but he didn’t like it.

Dreams of waves and birds continued to plague the twins every so often—Eluréd more than Elurín—and Daeron started to grow uneasy again too as time went on. “I was mistaken before,” he told Lossenol one evening as they brought in laundry that had been hung out all afternoon to dry. “When I said it felt as though the world was holding its breath. It was only inhaling, then. Now it feels like the breath is being held—and I still do not know what will happen when it is released.”

“Are you having dreams too?” Lossenol had dreamed a few times over the last couple of years of that beautiful and blinding light, waking with both a throbbing headache and a conviction that he needed to pass back over the mountains immediately, after almost a decade without such nightmares. The feeling had faded with the pain, but the memory of them both lingered, and filled him with unease. He hadn’t been able to hide the headaches, but he hadn't spoken of the other feelings to Daeron. It frightened him too much. 

“No,” Daeron said as he folded a blanket. “The Music is different, though—the echoes in the Lhûn. It isn’t anything I have ever heard before. I just…” He trailed off, frowning, and turned toward the river. Lossenol followed his gaze, and saw Elurín emerging from the woods. “What is it, birdie?”

“Nellas wants us to come out to the river.”

“What, right now?”

“There’s something she wants to show us. She seemed very serious.”

Lossenol glanced at Daeron, who frowned, but neither of them protested further. Instead they set the laundry aside and joined Elurín. He was almost too tall for Lossenol to easily put an arm around his shoulders. “You all right, Elurín?”

“Yes, of course,” said Elurín, but he didn’t smile. 

By the river the trees fell away, and it was easier to see the stars. They found Eluréd standing beside Nellas, a hand over his mouth as he stared at the western horizon. Nellas was also looking that way, eyes wide. “Look!” she said, pointing. Lossenol followed her finger, and blinked. Beside him Elurín sucked in a sharp breath, and Daeron went very still. 

There was a new star, brighter than any of the others. It hovered over the horizon, and—and he knew that light. He had seen that light before. He dreamed of that light. His head started to ache, the way it hadn’t in years—a sharp throbbing taking up residence behind his temples. 

Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean—

“That’s the Silmaril,” Elurín said in a low voice. “That’s…that’s not possible.”

“Are you sure?” Daeron asked. 

“You don’t forget that Light after you’ve seen it, even once.”

“Kóri—Kóri said once—” Lossenol’s head ached so badly he could hardly speak. He turned away from the bright new star on the horizon, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. He could hardly think. 

Neither law, nor love, nor league of swords—

“Lossë?” Daeron caught his wrists. “Your head? Come sit down. What did Kóri say?”

“Their w-wise ones, he said—said to watch the s-stars.” He sat down hard on the flat stones that lined the river. The water flowed along beside them, a quiet rushing sound that was almost soothing. “Is this—”

Woe unto world’s end!

“It feels like the change we’ve been waiting for,” Daeron said softly as he knelt down with him. “The Valar are moving—you were right, Lossë, when you spoke of them before, do you remember?”

“Birds, stars, waves. Manwë, Varda, Ulmo.” The words felt clumsy in his mouth; he was dizzy and vaguely sick and he didn’t understand why. It had been years since he’d felt this bad. “Did—did they put—”

“No!” Elurín cried suddenly. Lossenol jerked his head up and regretted it immediately when the pain spiked. Elurín had rounded on Eluréd, suddenly furious. “No, you’re wrong this time—”

“Elurín,” Nellas began, reaching for him.

“No, she’s not—she can’t just be gone!”

Eluréd said something too quietly for Lossenol to hear, but Elurín did not seem to be listening. He stormed away instead, off into the trees and away from home. Eluréd started to go after him, but Nellas stopped him and went instead. 

“Eluréd,” Daeron said when they were alone, “come here, birdie. What did you see?”

When Eluréd came to sit between them his face was wet, and he was shaking all over. “I just—Elwing, she—she’s gone. She—I don’t know if she’s alive, or—but she’s never coming back—not to Middle-earth.”

“Oh, Eluréd.” Lossenol held out his arms and Eluréd fell into them, breaking into horrible, wrenching sobs. Daeron stroked his hair as Lossenol rubbed his back. There wasn’t really anything either of them could say. Eluréd and Elurín had been counting on someday reuniting with their sister somehow, in spite of the ever-growing danger. It was the one thing they had always hoped for, the one thing they wanted above all else.

“I’m sorry,” Daeron murmured. “I’m so sorry. We would have taken you to her if we could, Eluréd.”

“I kn-know,” Eluréd choked out. “Just…I don’t…I don’t understand.”

“Nor do I,” said Daeron. “There are ways to try to find out—the Dwarves might have had news, or perhaps Iarwain or Goldberry might be able to tell us something. They often know unexpected things.”

“Can we go to them?” Eluréd asked, voice small, sounding so much younger than he really was. “Please?”

“Yes,” Daeron said, “yes of course. But not right away. Lossë, you need to go home and lie down, and when Elurín returns—”

“Lossë?” Eluréd sat up. “Your head hurts? I’m sorry, are—”

“I’ll be fine.” Lossenol thumbed a tear from his cheek. “Don’t worry about me.”

“That’s not how this works,” Daeron said pointedly. Lossenol tried to glare, but above Daeron’s head the Silmaril shone and he couldn’t look at it without feeling like a knife was stabbing through his bad eye. “Come on. We don’t need to stay out here—the new star isn’t going anywhere, I think.”

Eluréd got to his feet and pulled Lossenol up after him. The world pitched around him and he closed his eyes. “This is worse than usual,” he heard Eluréd say. 

“Feels l-like when Medlinel…” Lossenol began, but couldn’t quite finish. 

“I’ll sing it away when we get home,” said Daeron. 

“I knew I didn’t like her,” Eluréd muttered. 

“It wasn’t her fault,” Daeron said. “I told you then and I’ll tell you now—she’s a healer, and she wouldn’t harm someone on purpose no matter who it was or how she felt about them. Someone else did this to Lossenol.”

“I thought it was because there was a cave-in—”

“That too—maybe that all made it worse, I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Lossenol muttered, stumbling as they passed under the trees. It was a little easier to open his eyes there, but he still felt dizzy, and had to lean heavily on Eluréd. 

“Of course it matters!” Eluréd said vehemently. “Whoever did this—”

“Is probably dead,” Daeron said. “Though I have had the thought that it was the Girdle itself—if it was not dissolved entirely when Melian departed, but only broken and left to fade away on its own…”

They kept talking, Daeron distracting Eluréd with speculation about enchantments and what the Girdle of Melian might have become in her absence, but Lossenol stopped listening. It was a relief to get home and to lie down, finally, on soft pillows. Daeron smoothed his hair back, humming a quiet and familiar song that chased away the worst of the headache. Then he started to sing something else, something new, that dragged Lossenol down into a deep sleep where nothing hurt and there were no memories, good or bad, to trouble him at all.