A Lantern in the Dark

A LANTERN IN THE DARK – part 1


The depths of winter had come early to the north of Middle-earth, bringing some of the worst weather known to three generations of Men. For weeks now, icy winds had howled ceaselessly, bringing stinging rain, hail, and finally, the snow.

It was not the picture-pretty snow, redolent of families gathered close around a welcoming fire, the cold locked firmly without. This snow was companion to the dark things moving across the face of the land, the weather a mirror to the pain and despair that were starting once again to tighten their grip. There was a feeling shared by all of something moving inexorably closer, trailing clouds of horror in its wake.

Orc bands, bigger, stronger, more intelligent than ever before ranged across the countryside; wolves, wargs, and other fell beasts harassed settlements and the outskirts of towns. Mirkwood had become a place almost under siege, and deep within the shadows, Dol Guldor gave off a sense of unrelieved evil that was all but tangible.

Until recently, the snowline and the darkness had stopped briefly at a little-known Ford across the Bruinen, leaving the passage down to the Elven stronghold of Imladris, referred to by men as Rivendell, clear and for the most part dry.

However, on a day when the world beyond this border had been black, wind tossed, impassable by man or beast, Glorfindel, twice-born warrior and master of the defenses of the valley haven, out for a late morning stroll in company with his thoughts, found reason to bring an end to the unseasonable warmth and dryness taken for granted by most of the Elven inhabitants.

Making his way back to the house by way of the private garden previously cared for and enjoyed by Celebrían, a place still offering the feeling of stillness and mystery so like her former home in Lórien, he had spotted a huddle of velvet and silk under a tree. On closer inspection, this turned out to be the Lord of Imladris, lying curled upon the ground with eyes tightly closed, brow furrowed, hands clenched.

Experience, some of it bitter, much of it accompanied by loud words, told the golden haired Elf the story behind the picture. He settled down on the ground, lifting the head into his lap, and sat tidying the soft dark hair and gently massaging and loosening the tight hands while his aura surrounded the unconscious Elf, slowly drawing him back to the world. Eventually, eyes the colour of storm clouds opened and focused on his face.

"Glorfindel?"

He was obviously disoriented, and for the moment made no move to rise. Glorfindel weighed practicality against indignity as he contemplated picking up and carrying the noted healer, lore master and war hero through the grounds of his home to his rooms, and regretfully decided in favor of dignity.

It took Elrond a few minutes, lying cradled against Glorfindel, to collect himself. When he attempted to rise, he swayed slightly, his face pale, and had it not been for the firm arm around his shoulders, he would have fallen again.

"Can you walk, if I take your arm and pretend we are out for a turn around the gardens?" Glorfindel asked, knowing how important it would be to Elrond to keep this display of apparent weakness unnoticed.

Receiving a nod in reply, he brushed his companion down quickly, removing telltale leaves and grass, smoothing Elrond’s robes with a practiced hand before turning and heading slowly, arms linked, back to the house.

The private rooms of the Lord of Imladris were not any great distance away. Once inside, Glorfindel helped him to a chair, fussing with cushions and smoothing his hair back gently from his face. Then he stood back, crossed his strong arms over his muscular chest and lowered dark gold eyebrows in a rather good imitation of Elrond's own patented scowl.

"And now, you fey, unheeding creature, it ends!" he said firmly. He received a wry smile and a graceful gesture from one long hand in response and brushed both off impatiently.

"No," Glorfindel said deliberately. “Not again. This time is going to be different. You are not going to smile sweetly, apologize for worrying me, and then go your own stubborn way again. There will be no next time. It stops! What in the name of any and all of the Valar were you trying to do?"

Somehow, when confronted by the risks the dark-haired Elf was prepared to brave in the use of the awesome power he controlled, Glorfindel regularly found his habitual calm deserting him. Fear of the consequences to the one who was the center of his life spoke far louder than common sense or discretion at such times.

"I just wanted to hold the weather off for a little while longer, to give the apple trees a chance to finish fruiting..."

Elrond stopped the lame and rather hesitantly offered explanation because his seneschal had swung on his heel, and was now striding round the room.

"Oh yes, another good reason to kill yourself," Glorfindel said grimly. “The apples. And before that were the grapes - and then there was the warm weather for the new foal, and then you were worried about the river flooding - "

Tall, strongly built, his golden hair hanging in waves almost to his waist, he came and dropped down onto his knees before the effectively silenced dark haired Elf.

”I don’t know what your true reasons are, I don’t know what really compels you to this, but one day," he said, taking one of the beautiful, competent hands between both of his, "I am going to find you curled up on the ground, again, and I am going to kneel down and shake you, once again, and then I am going to find you aren't breathing..."

“The way in to Imladris has to stay open and accessible. I don’t know why, I just know that it must, and keeping the rain and snow at bay is the obvious way…”

The explanation faded off into silence as Glorfindel, golden Elf, warrior legend of three ages, leaned forward, resting his forehead against Elrond’s knee. The dark haired Elf put a hand under his lover’s chin and raised the unforgettable face, and looked wordlessly at the unshed tears of frustration and fear clinging to dark gold lashes, until Glorfindel pulled away from him almost crossly.

"You are going to kill yourself fighting nature, trying to hold back the world, " he said helplessly, rubbing a hand across his eyes. "Meanwhile, my troops can patrol our borders and you always know if anything comes near to crossing them. We can be prepared for any need that may arise - love, please, please, let the weather be. The road can be kept open by more physical means. I seldom ask anything of you, but you have told me yourself how hard this is becoming. Please let it be."

Elrond wiped the last tear away himself with a fingertip. "It does get harder and harder to stand against the flow of the world," he agreed, smiling slightly. He moved his hand to caress Glorfindel’s head, burrowing his fingers into the bright gold hair and then letting the heavy silk slide smoothly through them.

"Very well. For love of you, I will let the weather be. Now you," he smiled mischievously, "will do me the courtesy of telling everyone that they are going to be cold and wet, at your request. Is that fair?"

Glorfindel gave him a smile to light Elrond’s heart and turned his head to kiss the stroking hand. "As the price of your safety, that is more than fair," he said.

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Deep night, a glimmer of light from an unknown source. A room within the expanding dwelling place referred to by many as the Last Homely House. It was a pleasant room, disorderly in a comfortable sort of way, a pile of clothing on a chair, a small untidy bundle of books. Near the window stood an easel holding the beginnings of a painting. There were wall hangings, several of which had probably been there since childhood, cushions, drapes, a sense of home.

The sleeper in the bed opposite the window was moving slightly, head turning from side to side. His eyes were closed, a thing unknown in elven sleep, his shining dark hair was tumbled about his finely boned face. He moaned softly, then stiffened, frozen as though by fear. Suddenly, he flung an arm across his face, cried out, then lay still.

Time passed, then the sleeper sat slowly up, brushing hair from his face. He pulled his knees up to his chin, and his eyes, the exact shade of aged pewter, gazed sightlessly out the window. Once his breathing had settled and he was grounded once again within his surroundings, he rose from the bed.

Clad only in thin, pale blue sleep pants, he left the room and walked down the hall, one hand touching the wall lightly, keeping contact with its hard reality. Reaching the next door, he knocked softly waiting for it to open, waiting for his almost mirror image, who appeared, hair neatly braided for bed, wearing a warm-looking sleep shirt and a bemused expression.

“I had a dream,” Elrohir said shakily. “I have to tell Ada .We have to go beyond the river and fetch her, keep her safe.”

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Another room in the same house. Larger, airier, with thick drapes drawn against the night. A fire burnt low in the fire place, because the Lord of this refuge, having a share of mortal blood in his veins, felt the northern chill.

It was a room which had long been occupied, but only recently redecorated, jewel colours, textures, contrasts of wood and metal and stone speaking to a definite vision, not the haphazard accumulation of centuries. It was the room of a personality long restrained by the preferences of others, finally encouraged to free expression.

In the bed, two figures slowly writhed to a background of sighs and soft whispers, performing a dance older than time, more warming than any hearth fire. Smoke dark hair tangled with sun gold, hands, lips, searched, caressed, pleasured under the soft, bright covers. Firmly, needfully, the blonde urged the dark-haired Elf onto his back, drawing him into a deep, passionate kiss. Long legs were wrapped round his waist, both bodies started moving more urgently, in a manner more defined.

“Ada, Rohir says he has to talk to you.”

The room stilled, the two figures in the bed instantly motionless. The golden Elf finally drew back slightly to look down at his companion, summer blue eyes meeting long-lashed storm gray. They both turned slowly to look at the doorway, which, inexplicably, contained two figures, alike yet unalike.

Elrond, a veteran of ill-timed interruptions by his sons, though not, truth be told, in recent years, moved, insinuating Glorfindel off him and to the side, then propped himself up on an elbow, taking care to keep the covers around his body, and demanded evenly,

“Explain!”

“Rohir had a dream,” Elladan said softly, gesturing towards his brother, still clad in nothing save thin sleep pants and a fall of dark, flowing hair. “He says it can’t wait till morning.”

Elrond surveyed his younger son, the only one of his three children in whom the blood of their Maian ancestress ran clear and close to the surface, and gestured towards the bed. The only other time Elrohir had woken him agitated by a forewarning dream, it had revolved around a silver flower, bloodied and trampled within a cave.

That time, Glorfindel, the twins and companies of warriors from both Imladris and Lórien had ridden out at once, but reached the Redhorn Pass too late to save Celebrían from horrors only Elrond himself, as her healer, ever fully understood.

“Come,” he said briefly. The twins exchanged glances, then as one turned their pewter gaze to Glorfindel. Their father made a gesture of annoyance at them.

“You made no objection when I told you we were lovers; in fact you wished us well. What did you think we did in here at night – talked about our day and played chess? Grow up. Come here, child, and tell me your dream.”

Elrohir, his brother’s hand lightly supporting his arm, came over to the bed and curled onto it as he had since he was an Elfling. Elladan sat more sedately on the edge behind his brother, keeping his eyes carefully averted from Glorfindel’s naked chest.

Elrond took hold of one of his son’s long fingered, narrow hands, so like his own. There was, he noted with a little tug of tenderness, a scratch along the side, and faint paint stains on the fingers.

“Talk to me,” he encourage, keeping his voice soft. Behind him, Glorfindel moved slightly, settling against him, a hand resting lightly on his lover’s waist, silently supportive.

“They are out there all alone in the snow. They are being chased, and we need to help them,” Elrohir said in a distant voice, his eyes starting to lose focus, to look inward again. Elrond shook his hand lightly to keep his attention.

“Who? Where?” he asked, knowing that short, simple questions would be the easiest for his son to focus on. Elrohir shook his head hard, the hair flying, and shivered slightly. Glorfindel pulled the top cover loose and sat up to cover the young Elf with it, his touch firm, completely unembarrassed by his own nakedness.

Elrohir snuggled into the blanket. “I don’t know who they were,” he said softly. “There was fighting and there was blood and it was raining. Then I saw riders fleeing through the snow, pursued by a great shadow, and in their midst was a woman, and she was carrying a lantern.”

“A lantern?” Glorfindel looked at Elrond questioningly. “On horseback?”

“It’s a metaphor,” he answered distractedly. To his son, he said, “Did you know her face, did you hear anything?” Elrohir’s dreams were mainly pictures, but at times, he heard the odd word.

“No words,” he said, shaking his head. “But they were Men, Ada, not Elves. That is all I know. That, and,” he looked intently at his father, his face vulnerable in the faint light cast by the fire and the dim lamp beside the bed. “ I think they were trying to reach the Ford, but the snow is so thick, they may not find their way. And should they reach it, there will be no one to guide them. We have to go to them.”

On this last, he started to rise from the bed, his mind already on leaving the house, finding his horse, riding into the night. Elrond took a firm grip on his wrist and pulled him back sharply.

“Elrohir, there is no one out there now,” he said firmly. “I am certain of it. This is a thing still to come, it has all the marks on it, and when you are properly awake you will know that yourself. I think the main message is that we must keep the pass watched and open, and, so far as possible, the roads traversable, and the Orcs and other dark things out there contained.”

Elrohir stilled and studied his father, the only one beside his grandmother who understood the dreams and sometimes waking visions he had been heir to since childhood. Of the two, he far preferred his father’s common sense approach to the subject.

His grandmother used her Mirror as a tool to direct her visions. Meanwhile, like him, Elrond saw things unbidden, knew things with a certainty beyond knowledge. On the whole, if his father said it was not happening yet, Elrohir was more than prepared to believe him.

“But it will happen one day,” he said softly, slowly becoming aware that he was sitting in his father’s bedroom wearing sleep pants and a blanket, and that they had burst in without knocking and interrupted a very private and intimate moment.

”Whatever it is, it will happen.” Elrond agreed, part of his mind ranging free, trying to sense any unaccounted presence near the valley. But all he could feel were the distant movements of Orcs, far enough away to pose no threat.

“Nothing?” Glorfindel asked him quietly, knowing where his mind roamed when his eyes took on that peculiar silver hue. At the quick shake of the head, he leaned over and said to Elrohir, putting a hand lightly on the young Elf’s shoulder as he did so, “Your father will watch in his way, I in mine. Tomorrow I will double the guard on the pass, and tomorrow, too, I think we should start sending patrols to try and clear back the Orc packs. Were there many close by?”

This last was addressed to Elrond, whose ability to search out wandering followers of darkness within reach of Imladris held no awe or discomfort for one who had spent a childhood in company with Galadriel and her brothers, still less for one who had experienced the other side of death.

“They are out there,” Elrond confirmed, settling back against the pillows. Glorfindel had brought many gifts to their relationship but one of the greatest, though the Lord of Imladris preferred not to admit it, was the way he could take charge of a situation, make decisions. To be able to lean back and allow some one else to do so was pure, sheer luxury. “There seem more than normal, too, but not close. I doubt we are their intent.”

“Arathorn sent word asking if we would care to ride with his Dúnedain. They are driving back the packs that seem to have crossed the mountain of late,” Elladan volunteered. “Their numbers have increased again.”

Arathorn was the rather grim, humorless leader of the northern remnant of Men of the West, newly made chief and one to take his duties seriously. Elrond personally found him hard to like, but tolerated him as he had all the others of that line, the last thread that held him to Elros, his lost twin, whose grave lay deep under the ocean in the wreck of Númenor. He sighed and smiled wryly.

“Perhaps that would be a good course for you two. I think your brother needs to feel he is doing something useful,” he suggested. “When did he want you to join them?”

“We would have to ride tomorrow, I think,” Elladan said, considering. “I gathered you wanted us both home for the Winter Moon celebrations, though. You certainly complained loudly enough about our absence at Midsummer.”

“Don’t disrespect your father,” Glorfindel said absently, as he had since the twins were both old enough to speak. Pewter eyes flashed his way and he mentally cursed his tongue.

Since the first magical, unbelievable night he had bedded Elrond, Glorfindel had tried to stay aware of the fact that, for the twins, the comfortable relationship they had shared with their father’s seneschal all their lives had changed, become complicated.

Glorfindel was still their friend, some-time tutor, and advisor. He was still the master of the defenses of Imladris, and a warrior terrifying in his skill and courage. He still had their respect and their friendship. But he was now their father’s lover, and the easy interaction that had once existed between them was, for the moment, overlaid with conscious care for the right word, the uncontroversial response.

Accepting that what was done was done, he continued in a brisk tone. “I was going to ask you to take your turns patrolling, but you would be better employed aiding the Dúnedain to push the swine back further. If you leave tomorrow, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be back before the Winter Moon. How many Orcs can there be out there, anyway?”

Elladan had already risen, eager to get back to his room, away from the reality of a relationship that would always leave him feeling just a little uneasy, and about which, tonight, he had observed a little more than he really cared to know.

Elrond, who hoped that the current discomfort would all have settled down in another hundred years or so, had been staying clear of the conversation, but now he sat up and put an arm around his younger son, pulling him into a quick, rough hug while further ruffling his hair with his free hand.

“Put it to the back of your mind, Rohir. I think the dream was urgent, but not for tonight. You will know it when you see it. For now, do what can be done. Go and drive back the Orcs – help keep the road open.”

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Come morning the twins rode out, after a slightly awkward apology to their father for invading his privacy, and life in Imladris settled into a pattern of almost unconscious watchfulness.

Glorfindel, true to his word, increased patrols and kept a strong presence both on the King's Road, as it was still called, and at the final approach to Imladris. The patrols reported a definite increase in the number of Orcs encountered, but Imladris itself didn't appear to be their target, long and bitter experience having taught them that the Elf haven was best left well alone.

This had become especially so following the attack on the Lady of the valley's entourage, which had brought down on the head of any Orc unwary enough to find himself within range the full vengeance of her people, especially her sons. Cold-eyed mirror images of death they were, haunted by their memories of what they had found in the Orc nest within the lower reaches of the Redhorn Pass.

Within Imladris too, Elrond, descendant of Melian the Maia, offered protection in his own way to those under his care. No longer able to keep back the full might of winter, due to his promise to Glorfindel, he could, and did, still watch the borders and even beyond, looking for any trace of the unusual, and in particular anything that would resonate with the image from his son's dream - a woman on horseback, bearing a lantern.

To Glorfindel's query he simply said, "A lantern would be a sign, the uncovering of a secret, a message of hope, a weapon against the dark. What it would actually be,” he added, smiling and resting his head against his lover's shoulder, “we will know when it occurs. That is always the way of these things for Rohir and me."

"You knew when Celebrían fell into danger.” Glorfindel said this carefully, because Celebrían was still a subject that could bring shadows of despair back into Elrond's eyes, but Elrond merely shook his head and shrugged.

"The silver rose was her emblem, she was out somewhere on the road. That was as clear as a prediction could ever be. This is less obvious."

tbc