Chapter 25 ~ The Demands of Honor

“You cannot be seen with him, Legolas.  He is a nogoth.”

“I fear I have some very bad news for you, Luinar,” Legolas returned with thinly veiled sarcasm, not bothering to look away from his work of braiding a slender green ribbon into Calenmir’s silver-gold hair for that night, as the other had already done for him.  “All the mortal world has seen me with him.  From Rohan to Gondor, ‘Legolas and Gimli’ are part and parcel.”

“But that’s dreadful!” Luinar protested with considerable disgust, slouched rakishly over the divan beside the bookshelf.

“Oh, hush!” Legolas rounded on him with a vicious curl of his lip, for once void of any humor, not that Luinar offered it, though he did resist the overwhelming temptation to hurl an insult at him.  “Henceforth I shall not be responsible for whatever misfortune befalls the next who dares accuse me!  This is not treason; this is coalition!”

Luinar fell silent at the snappish rebuke though he was far from satisfied, blue eyes smoldering.  Anorrín said nothing as was his way, standing placidly in the corner lest he become a target for any stray frustrations, manifesting the sedate streak of Vanyarin Noldo in him.  Nervous Nilmar sat at the foot of the bed twisting his fingers in his raven half-silvan hair.  They all felt drawn to Legolas now that he had returned, but their presence only seemed to exacerbate the present problem.  The atmosphere was an awkward one.  Perhaps it was a mercy Duinen’s father had otherwise occupied him.  They had all donned their best colors already, for evening was drawing near.

Legolas strove for calm in the discontented silence that followed, deft fingers working almost blindly.  Here it was again.  Did they believe his final slip into ill humor was borne of nothing but stress?  Or did they suspect something greater?  Still, the sealonging was not to be wholly blamed for this mood.  It seemed he had at last taken all his frazzled nerves could gracefully endure.

“We worry for you,” Calenmir said for himself, judging his cousin’s agitation by the terse manhandling of his hair.  But now that Legolas had vented his pent-up tension, it was hoped he would be allowed to cool in peace.  “Now that the dwarf What's-his-Name has come with you to Lasgalen, will you be obliged to accompany him to Erebor?  That mountain is unkind to solitary Elves.”

“Calenmir,” Legolas assured him, kindred affection smoothing the irritation in his voice, “after the Eru-forsaken places I have seen and survived in the past year, Erebor will be child's play.”

“You say that now,” said Anorrín, garbed like the rest in the colors of his household, green and bold autumn saffron.  “Once alone behind their doors it may not seem so simple.”

“Always simple,” Legolas maintained, tying off Calenmir's ribbon.  “Not necessarily easy.  Smile for introductions, say ‘yes, my lord’, and remember to compliment the ladies.  How complicated could it be?”

Calenmir coughed discreetly.  “And have you ever seen a Dwarvish lady?” he asked pointedly.

“Never,” Legolas admitted in the same wary tone.

“Then I wish you the best of fortune in telling the difference.”

“You are going to go?” Nilmar asked apprehensively.  “Alone?”

“I can hardly do less, after I have asked the same of him.  Especially when we have muttonheads like Luinar in these halls,” Legolas said, waving a disdainful hand in his direction. 

“It is not as though they have not given us cause!” Luinar protested, sitting up as though he instinctively expected a row.

“Have they?!” Legolas challenged, driven again to the breaking point, the strain of the past several weeks at last finding an object.  “Have they?!  Did they fight with us or against us in Dale?  Have you any personal crow to pluck with any dwarf yet among the living, or is it merely because our fathers were wronged two Ages ago that you hold all their race in contempt?  You are a smart one, Luinar,” he said, “but you still have much to learn.”

“But you have known him so briefly,” Luinar counterchallenged, rising to his feet.  The two lifelong companions faced one another belligerently, raised as brothers and indeed very distantly akin as was intimated by the distinctive blonde complexion they shared, the vert and gold against the vert and indigo.  “They are an uncouth, fickle-minded clan.  You naturally assume everyone is worthy of some measure of dignity, but how can you fathom the unspeakable things that go on in the heart?” 

Anorrín straightened impulsively, Calenmir shrank back a pace, Nilmar turned deathly pale.

Legolas seethed at this jaundiced slight to Gimli's honor, his eyes ablaze with Thranduil's fire.  “Briefly, YES!” he snarled.  “But already he and I owe one another the debt of our lives ten times over!  We fought together, rode together, ate together, slept beneath each other’s watch!  Forgive me if I choose to honor that!  Or would you have us be guilty of the same treachery and ingratitude you would pin upon him?” 

“But you . . .” Luinar began bitterly.

“No!” Legolas silenced him with a vehement wave of his hand.  “No more!  I have heard enough!  I have only just returned from war and destruction, Moria and Mordor, opposition and inquisition, and now you would henpeck me to death!  Let me alone, for pity's sake!”

~ `*` ~ `*` ~ `*` ~

He looked like a dwarvish elvenlord.

Gimli observed himself in the mirror, not entirely unsatisfied with his stout tunic of deep green lined with forest brown, accented with artful overlays of silver-grey crushed velvet.  It had probably been hastily thrown together from several cannibalized garments, but even then it was a respectable piece of work.  Perhaps the elves’ skill lay with needles and not hammers.  He supposed would not mind wearing it for Legolas and Thranduil.  Still, he imagined he would die the laughingstock of the Mountain if any of his kin caught him so attired.  All the Powers forbid.

His beard was forked and braided in the old style.  He need not make any concessions there, he thought rather smugly, for the Elves knew not the first thing about it.  His hair was still a bit wild, but he thought nothing of it.  And speaking of hair . . .

His roughened hand slipped down to the slender pouch of dark leather on his belt, in which he had discovered, carefully attended and reposed, the three strands of gold granted him by the Lady.  Studded with diamonds that glinted like stars, he deemed it a worthy receptacle until he could arrange to enshrine it later in crystal.  Legolas thought of everything. 

Cautiously he opened the door into the corridor, but stopped when he heard a heated argument underway.  He plainly heard Legolas' voice rise above what he knew were bitter objections, though he understood not a word of it.  The Elf was in a mood, shouting down all dissent even as he left them, waving them off in disgusted frustration.

He soon appeared at Gimli's door to fetch him, a formidable figure of green and summer yellow, the accents of gold and silver lending him a subtle but  agitated shimmer in the light.  “Come,” he said, in an evident huff as he endeavored to forget the brouhaha in the hall.  “I would show you something.”

“Something fair of Elvendom?”

“No, I am afraid not.”

Gimli followed, piqued with curiosity.  Legolas led him purposefully from the more populated wings up an inclined passage, one not so well lighted as those they left.  There was no one to be seen here in the upper levels of Thranduil's caverns.  There was something unsettling in that, as he had no right idea where they were going.  But there was a calm assurance about the way Legolas carried himself now in the midst of his own world that was comforting at the same time.  As the light in the narrowing passage gradually dimmed, the Elf’s own glow brightened, almost as though he led him through the darkness from one threshold of life to another.  While Gimli’s imagination ran errant, it flitted through his mind that this was how he had always imagined the first moments after death; but even then he knew Legolas’ glow was not specifically borne of greater potency, but because constricted passages made him nervous.

At length he stopped outside one dark and forbidding door closed heavily against them, emblazoned deeply with a single black initial.  It was the same sign that adorned their banners, and that Gimli construed must stand for “Thranduil”, a chill pricking up his spine.  If any Dwarves had set foot here before, it was likely not of their own will.  The door was without latch or handle, but Legolas lay his palm against it and spoke a low-voiced password, pushing it aside.

Again, it opened into a room of darkness, but this darkness was chill and smelled of dust, gripping Gimli's heart with the same hushed reluctance that comes upon entering a tomb.  Legolas intoned yet another command as he swept silently inside, and at his voice the lamps glowed to languid life.

“This, Gimli,” he said, turned fey in the twilight, “is where my father lingers in his . . . darker moments.”

Gimli said nothing, for he felt as though he had entered a room where time itself was suspended.  He could feel the brooding presence of the Elvenking looming still about the entire place, revealed not as a tomb, but a trophy hall.  Thranduil’s lair.

The walls were hung thick with ghostly banners wreathed in shadow, not all of them elven.  The display upon the first wall included all the captured standards that had fallen prey to Thranduil's army; many were no more than orcish rags, but each rent and bloodstained scrap had been bought at a price.  Others flaunted strange badges, signs of wicked Men who had met their end upon elvish shafts through the past age and never returned from the depths of Mirkwood, earning for the forest a haunted name.  Some were ancient, those near the ceiling threadbare and threatening to fall to dust with the passage of the centuries.  Others were newer, the dark stains upon them fresher, all that remained now of Dol Guldur's last howling horde.  He could find no dwarvish heraldry among the spoils.

There upon low shelves were kept also a silent row of arrowheads, spearheads, and other grisly relics.  “Each one has its own tale,” Legolas said.  He took up a long and wicked barb, dark with age.  “Each one has left its mark upon him, and he remembers them all.”  He set it back then, its vague outline plainly seen in the grey dust that had long gathered there.

“And this,” he continued, taking up another, eyes hardening and shoulders stiffening, “was the bane of Queen Lindóriel.”  He held the barb of black obsidian between his thumb and forefinger, as though loath to handle it further, his lip curled in a stirring of old outraged contempt.  “And there is the shaft that felled her assailant.”  He indicated the solitary arrow mounted above.  It was the only one of them all to have retained its shaft and fletching through the long years, for it was plated in gold.

Legolas lay the offending weapon back in its place, and only in a brief glimpse did Gimli notice he had drawn blood, so great was his lasting indignation at the profanation of his mother.

After lingering there for a time, his words falling into dust and silence, Legolas turned away toward the back wall, which stood in even deeper shadow.  There on one side hung many of the banners of Lasgalen in victory.  Most were in a pitiful state, torn and bloodied, but still proud and kept in honor.  The evergreen and silver were in many shades of age, retired standards that had commanded the woodland battlegrounds.  But to the other side there hung another display beneath pennons of the same kind, but marked with a different letter.  From the sleeve of his robe Legolas produced a ragged handful of black and sedately hung his own acquisitions beneath his own device.  There was a smear of the White Hand upon a tatter from Helm's Deep, a wisp of ashen grey from the Pelennor, and a strip of the Red Eye from Mordor itself.

Gimli had no idea he had carried those all they way home.

He stood back after adding these to his morbid collection, a considerable tally of fallen orkish ranks, if no rival to his father's.  Gimli squirmed to see a small assortment of culpable arrowheads there as well.

“Now, Valar willing, this place is complete,” Legolas said, an unmistakable note of relief in his voice.  “I have seen enough of war. . . . But in truth I have no great hope of it.”

“Why so gloomy?” Gimli asked, his voice falling rather flat within the darkly caparisoned walls.  “It is not even a year yet since Cormallen.”

“Because there is no such thing as a lasting peace,” Legolas stated sadly, as though at last renouncing forever the vain hope that had never been realized.  “We have been betrayed before.  When Angband fell, the Elves thought the dark wars ended forever.  But then we had only to suffer beneath Sauron until we had spent ourselves in his defeat.  Now he is fallen, but other evils will come to supplant his foul memory.  One year or ten, they will pass all too quickly.  Peace after war is like crystal,” he decided.  “So long and costly in the making, so very easily broken.”

~ `*` ~ `*` ~ `*` ~

Alone in the Hall of Archives, Thranduil paced the floor softened by the dark carpets he had placed there himself, ceremonial robes of dark green and bold yellow swirling pensively around him.  Manbech_r and Erelas had been given their instructions, Brilthor was overseeing the pageantry preparations, the entire household was busily at work pulling together the last details to be ready at sunset.  Now he was given a precious moment of solitude to mull over the questions in his own mind, pressing issues that had haunted him all that day.  The calm chanting of the evensong by the choir was on the air, something he always found soothing, and would join when duty permitted.  He wished he could join them now. 

Why was it that every time he beheld a dwarf he heard the rapine and tasted the blood?  That had been two full Ages ago; why had he not shaken free of those rueful memories yet?  Because he did not wholly want to be free of them.  His grandsire, his mother’s brother, and countless others brutally slain in their own homes, the doom of Doriath begun and assured.  Seldom had he known any of the noegyth since that he did not suspect, for their ways were strange and alien to him, riding roughshod at will over the immutable laws of justice and honor that had stringently governed his own life, fostered in him from childhood. 

But now by those same stark principles he was called to accept that which he feared.  To arbitrarily turn Gimli away would be to favor blind national prejudice over what was undeniably right and just, in turn making himself no better than those he despised. “Hypocrite” was a stigma he would never wear.  Still, either choice demanded a compromise upon a lifetime.  A lesser king would have waved beneath the whims of the populace, which was unquestionably hostile at present.  It was politically wise, they would say, to set his own doubts aside for the sake of their favor; he was their king, and were not their interests his first duty?  Or did he have more regard for his own doubt than the will of his people?  But no, he would not be led about like a bull with a ring in his nose.  Never had Oropher’s son claimed to be a diplomat, for the murky waters of statesmanship were repugnant to him, the courtly evasions, denials, half-truths.  His reign had been brutally forthright, for he said what he meant and meant what he said without sparing the feelings of any dissenting faction that opposed him.  If he had bent his will to accommodate the masses they would have abandoned Greenwood centuries ago.  The reins were his.  A leader must lead, or what good is he? 

And not all Dwarves were blameworthy, he reasoned.  The Belegostrim had repudiated the Nogrodrim for their blood feud with the Elves of Doriath.  Dáin of Erebor had been truly a prince among the Gonnhirrim, with whom he had had no quarrel.  Perhaps Gimli was like to him.  It would do no harm to wait and see.

“The air roils with your unrest.” 

Thranduil glanced aside to see Coriel lurking in the doorway, lovely as always in her long gown of silken evergreen girt with silver leaves, her august bearing offset by a wan smile of kindred sympathy.  “The disquiet is enough to make one think a storm was upon us.”

“Is it indeed?”  Thranduil returned his cousin’s half-hearted smile, finding it easier now that he had temporarily decided his course.  “Come, Coriel.  I know when you would give me an unsolicited piece of your mind.  Let me have it.”

“Very well.”  Her tone fell, becoming dreadfully earnest.  “Be cautious, Thranduil, in how you deal with this protégé of Mithrandir.  Do not cloud your judgment with rancor.  Or have we not yet learned the peril of headstrong predilection?”

“What leads you to believe I intend to be severe toward the dwarf?”

“The Old Realm aside,” Coriel explained, pacing aimlessly into the room, “you still retain a less than favorable impression of his sire.  Moreover, you dislike the influence he wields over Legolas – do not try to deny it.”  Her fair smile broadened, and Thranduil saw misgiving melt into old confidence.  “But listen to me, trying to teach a panther the rules of the hunt.  I believe I know you better than that.”

“I should hope so.”  Thranduil took her strong hands in his own, planting a quick but deliberately indecorous kiss on her brow, as a brother would.  “You did not follow me all these years for nothing.”

~ `*` ~ `*` ~ `*` ~

Leaving the grim trophy hall, Gimli followed as Legolas led him back down into the mainstream branches.  After more twists and turns they stopped once again in the corridor.  Lifting a tapestry, Legolas slipped behind it, and after a moment had pushed inward a hidden door.  Gimli was reluctant for a moment to follow, but Legolas held the passage open for him.

“Come.  Do not tell my father I brought you here.”

There was a twinge of a smile in his voice, so with a quick glance around Gimli ducked inside after him.  Again, the room was dim, but he soon surmised why Thranduil would have preferred that this place be left unexplored.  He knew a treasury when he saw one.  Chests and crates were stacked and ordered along every wall, arranged beneath symbols that indicated their contents.  It was a smallish room compared to many, but none the lesser for it.

“So this is the Elvenking’s renowned hoard?” he asked, running a rough hand over a chest near him, wiping away dust.  It was great, but hardly legendary.

“No,” Legolas said with a quirky smile.  “This is mine.”

He retrieved the blue satchel of Celeborn's mithril, which he had stashed there before.  Then he pulled a key from his belt and crouched beside one of the larger strongboxes, working the lock with an authoritative air.  Everything here was his to dispense with as he pleased.  Gimli drew nearer, drawn irresistibly by the promise of what lay hidden within.

He was not disappointed.  It was not especially a marvel, for he had seen treasures before, but it was still a beautiful sight, the familiar gleam and sparkle in the lamplight. 

“What have I in here?” Legolas mused aloud, rummaging carefully through the tediously arranged articles, separated one kind from another by deliberate partitions.  “My lord Father has fostered something of the instincts of a pack rat, I am afraid.  Through necessity, I suppose, but his has become quite a collection.  And my portion seems to do little more than gather dust, though it will serve me well now in Ithilien.  Aha!”  With a short laugh of triumph he pulled out a costly chain of wrought gold cunningly set with diamonds and rubies, unabashedly of Dwarvish make and style.  “When I remembered this,” he said, offering it freely, “I knew it must have been meant for you.”

Now Gimli was indeed impressed, for such an ornament was fit for the King Under the Mountain himself.  It was heavy in his hands, for clearly no expense had been spared in its making.  How in Mahal's name had Thranduil ever gotten hold of it?  “To wear tonight?” he asked.

“To keep, and to do with what you will.” Legolas said.  “Consider it a gesture of goodwill between the Wood and the Mountain.”  He smiled, putting off his official attitude, crouching back upon his heels.  “After all I have put you through already, Gimli, I would like to give you something you can appreciate.”

“That you have, lad.”  It was a princely gift, and moreover one that was not merely an act of whimsy.  This was something he could wear among his own people and be proud of.  And he knew not quite what to say.  “That you have.”

“You have been wonderful thus far,” Legolas commended him, helping to arrange it impressively on his stout shoulders.  “And in that you have made this infinitely easier for me.  I know it has been a sacrifice.  Stay the course and we may even yet see our houses allied, for I swear I shall do no less for you.”

The next order of business was to present Celeborn's gifts to Thranduil.  More importantly, it seemed a second presentation of Gimli himself, a thought that twisted his stomach a bit as they set off down the corridors once more, notably depopulated as most everyone was occupied bringing the festival to timely fruition.  Legolas had mentioned that he had been accepted, “more or less.”  But that was small comfort.

Legolas seemed to know instinctively where to look for the king, if indeed he was not always fully aware of his father's whereabouts here at the epicenter of their power.  They found him in what seemed a library of sorts, more pleasant than the musty haunt above had been, but still more forbidding.  Gimli would sooner explore the den when the lynx himself was not within.  Voices sedate and fair were heard echoing softly in the corridors in rhythmic cadence, the evensong of the Elves, at once comforting and disquieting.

They entered to find the Elvenking seated behind an elaborately carven desk of dark hardwood, scribbling intently with a quill pen of a striped owl feather.  He looked up and rose to receive them in accord with the etiquette that governed elvish lords.  His sheer presence was still as intimidating as before, though it was more benign now. 

A rumbling snarl came from the dormant hearth where lay two more of the elvish wolves, two great heaps of silver with gleaming eyes of brown and blue, fangs barred.

“Glirhuin!” Thranduil growled back, “Argeleb, sedho.”  He did not mistake the chain Gimli wore, obscured though it was by beard – indeed it seemed for a moment that he had all the possessive perception of a dragon – but as it had been Legolas' gift, he could say nothing.  Nor would he. 

“Hir Adar,” Legolas greeted him formally with a slight bow.

“Ion nîn,” Thranduil acknowledged him in return.  “Hir Gimli o Aglarond.”  His reception this time was more courteous, but made it clear upon what terms he was receiving him.  Gimli was almost afraid to look him in the eye, but when he did there were none of the unsettling probings of before.  Thranduil was keeping his distance now, taking careful measure of his opponent. 

The Elvenking resumed his seat, thereby giving them leave to do the same.  Strangely, he seemed to Gimli's eyes even bigger when seated, his royal robes of dark green and yellow with shimmering traces of silver only augmenting the illusion, if an illusion it was.  His great mane of golden hair was still only loosely bound, lending him a fair and feral appearance, though not without a slender ribbon of green and silver snaking over his shoulder from where it was braided and tied unseen somewhere behind his ear.  At first glance Gimli would have scorned such frippery, but upon Thranduil he had to admit there was somehow nothing ridiculous about it.  Indeed, save for the ruling counterpart to Legolas’ silver ring upon his left hand and a slender band of gold upon his right, there was little ostentation upon him at all compared to the glittering lords of Rivendell.  His majesty was his own; competent, unpretentious, and uncompromisingly virile.

“Adar,” Legolas began, standing again.  “Celeborn sends this in gift from the conquest of the South.”

“Does he now,” Thranduil mused with an elegant half-smile, apparently pleased by the gesture.

Gimli waited with baited breath to witness the confirmation or refutation of another commonly known weakness of the Elvenking.  If silver and white gems held such sway over him as was rumored, his reaction to mithril was sure to be a singular one.  If his memory served him, Celeborn had meant it for both Legolas and his father, but Legolas freely set the whole of it down upon the desk before his lord once Thranduil had swept aside the paper he had been composing.

The intricate masterpieces of mithril that gradually gathered upon the desktop commanded the full attention of all.  It was true that Thranduil's eyes gleamed with a more avid interest than Legolas had seemed to harbor for them.  He clearly knew what they were worth, and his imperious attitude had lightened subtly to resemble more a youth during the holidays, but if Gimli had expected a manifestation of jealous greed he waited in vain.  Granted, these priceless treasures would not be easily parted from him, but he had no fear yet of that.

The Sereguren was displayed last of all, its light and slender detail and magnificence enough to sober even the Elvenking.  The sharp points of the leaves that formed the chain gleamed in the lamp and candlelight, the ruby at the center scattering a soft red glow.

“No, Legolas,” Thranduil said at last, in a tone akin to reverence.  “No.  This was given to you, well-bestowed and well-deserved.  I make no claim upon it.”

That alone would have made Gimli's jaw fall to his chest if he had not already been surprised so many times that day.  If only Glóin was here to see!  That single marvelous work of mithril was itself worth as much as all the rest combined, perhaps even equal the greater part of the wealth these Elves had amassed over the centuries, worthy to be counted foremost among the crown jewels of Lasgalen.  And Thranduil dared not touch it. 

It was not the first stirring of respect he had felt for that froward elvenlord.  Nor would it be the last.  By Durin’s beard, that Elf DID remind him of his mother!

“Lord Gimli,” Thranduil turned to him, once the mithril had been replaced and its spellbinding gleam removed from the table.  There were other more immediate issues to discuss now.  “Your status within our realm has been in some question of late.  I have thought of little else since we met this morning, and thus is my decision.”  He held up the page of elvish script that was essentially as unfathomable as the dark side of the moon to Gimli's mind.  “You are granted my safeguard as of tonight, to go whither you will while accompanied by one of my own, until I should choose to revoke it.  Legolas remains answerable for your conduct, and you are hereby made a ward of the crown.  Whilst extended our protection none may harm, hinder, or harass you in any way contrary to the standing law of Lasgalen or the express will of myself or of Legolas my son and Prince Regent.  Any who trespass against you will be brought to bear the suitable penalty, and likewise any breach of faith on your part will be justly chastised.  I alone retain full right to restrict, admonish, censor, and castigate at need and at will your words, deeds, comings and goings, as I deem necessary for the good of us all.”

Gimli smoldered in a tide of thwarted pride, but restrained it, though his approval was neither asked nor needed.  After all, he reminded himself, Thranduil was making many concessions of his own.  He could well have ordered him into what amounted to little less than loose incarceration while he stayed beneath his power.  It was clear that neither the elvenlord nor his guest yet knew rightly what to think of each other, but they were meeting now on the common ground of chastened pride. 

With a strong flourish, Thranduil swept his regnant signature over the page in ink of green so dark it was almost black, thereby committing himself to the guardianship of a dwarf-lord.

Times were changing.