Goldilocks and the Three Balrogs

Balrog the Second

A full week passed before Círdan’s idiosyncratic guides felt able to tear themselves away from the Grey Havens. Daylight had revealed a nondescript couple of dark-haired Elves, as strikingly ageless as Círdan the Shipwright and as devoid of Tree-light as newborn babes, otherwise unremarkable. Their tendency to appear and disappear without warning exasperated Glorfindel almost as much as it startled him, and if not for the weary grey Istar’s firm belief that Lord Círdan’s choice was inspired, he would have rejected the need for an escort entirely. As it was, the Istar had for some reason decided that this frivolous couple would be the perfect travelling companions on the long road to Imladris, and Glorfindel would have considered it beneath him by quite some way to quarrel with the judgement of both the Istar and Lord Círdan. So Melinna and Erestor it would be, and he would just have to hope that the couple were more competent on the road than their utter lack of seriousness in Mithlond suggested.

“Still,” he heard Melinna remark, emerging from Círdan’s house on the morning of their departure, “I do prefer to walk.”

“We’re riding!” snapped Glorfindel, having by now got hold of an up-to-date map of modern Middle-earth that showed precisely how far it was from Mithlond to Imladris. Certain comments dropped in conversation suggested that their guides had a decidedly vague relationship with time and he at least had no wish to take half a year getting to Imladris when they might be there well within a month. This week of preparations and delay and unexplained absences had dragged out long enough already. “That’s that!”

He had spoken automatically, occupied in checking that his horse, a sleek white mare, was securely saddled; as he straightened, he caught sight of the woman and blinked in surprise. She had exchanged her usual robes for greenish leggings and a short tunic, belted at the waist, over which was fastened a shadow-grey cloak that fell in silk-sheer folds and odd shimmers of colour to the ground. A long sword and a couple of knives in leather sheaths could be seen at her side and, as she turned, he caught sight of a bow and a quiver of black-feathered arrows on her back. Behind came Erestor, similarly dressed, glancing skywards as if to check the weather.

“Don’t stare,” chided Melinna, evidently amused. “The road’s not as safe as it could be, you know. Where’s your anonymous grey friend?”

On sight alone, Glorfindel would have taken her for a man. Social customs had clearly changed quite a lot since his death. No female would ever have dressed that way in Gondolin. She was even wearing an archer’s arm-guard!

He shook himself out of his shock. “With Círdan –”

“Both he and I are here,” came Lord Círdan’s deep voice from inside the house.

A moment later, the Shipwright strolled out into the sunshine with the Istar beside him. Some slight difference jarred; it took Glorfindel a moment to realise that while the old Istar was as grey and wrinkled as ever, any sense of weariness had melted away and a new light shone warmly under those bristling white eyebrows. He seemed to walk straighter and he moved more limberly as well. Beside this suddenly youthful greybeard, the smooth-skinned Shipwright appeared more ancient than ever.

“Erestor, Melinna –” said Círdan and bowed his silvered head in graceful acknowledgement. He carried a square pouch of black silk embroidered with gold patterns, the knotted drawstrings of which were sealed with red wax, and he held this out now to Glorfindel’s guides. “This visit has been short and your current errand is very much a favour to me. May I further ask that you carry my letters to Imladris?”

Erestor, who had been looking curiously at the grey-cloaked Istar, grinned and took the pouch without formality. “Of course. Topical for a change, I presume?”

“Quite so,” said Círdan with a slight smile. “I believe Lord Glorfindel may be trusted to ensure that your journey’s as swift as it can be. I have also a letter for the Lady Galadriel, should you chance to be visiting Lindórinand within the next century or so...”

The Lady Galadriel. That had to be Finarfin’s daughter, still dwelling in Middle-earth even after so many of her relatives had left it so violently. Her continued presence was not really a surprise, since Galadriel always had shared her family’s preference for domination in the shallows rather than cohabitation with fellows of equal size or greater in the deeps. Glorfindel had last encountered the lady before the building of Gondolin, when Turgon and Aredhel had wished to visit their cousins at Minas Tirith on the island that had become Tol-in-Gaurhoth. Lindórinand: where was that? A moment’s thought brought to mind a wooded region inhabited by a disparate set of Green-elves east of the Misty Mountains. Was this where Artanis Nerwen had finally established her domain?

The guides glanced at each other; Melinna shrugged. “I don’t see why not. We haven’t been that way for at least as long as we haven’t seen Goldberry and Iarwain. Might as well wander across the mountains after Imladris, since we’re going east anyway.”

Erestor wrinkled his nose. “Amroth and Nimrodel are so gloomy,” he observed with a hint of regret. “All that melodrama about rivers and the good old days and only speaking Silvan and not getting married because of – Melinna, remind me, why won’t she marry him?”

“I’m not sure there is a reason,” said Melinna. “She does look very pretty languishing beside her waterfall, though.”

“So she does,” said Erestor dryly and sighed. “I was looking forward to spending a while talking nonsense with Iarwain. I daresay that can wait, though.”

Lord Círdan was very nearly frowning. “If it happens to inconvenience you –”

“Oh, not at all,” said Melinna, bestowing upon the Shipwright a smile of such presumptuous graciousness that Glorfindel’s suppressed ill temper flared up at once. He was actually amazed when Círdan’s expression of concern cleared and was replaced by what seemed to be genuine relief. She went on, “We can always avoid Nimrodel and I’ve been meaning to visit Galadriel for a while, as it happens. Somehow we always miss their visits to Imladris. We met a mortal woman on the way here who had a recipe for an absolutely fast onion skin dye. Colourfast and lightfast. I was amazed. You can get such a good orange but it’s not normally lightfast at all. Galadriel’s bound to be interested.”

“She’s not going to show you how to weave her special cloth,” said Erestor, not quite under his breath. “Secret, you know. Can’t go sharing that.”

She made a face at him. “Maybe not this time. One day!”

“I think that perhaps a little more than thread goes into Galadriel’s web,” murmured Círdan the Shipwright, a glimmer of laughter in his eyes. “You may be forever disappointed.”

“Well, I know that. Still, it’s worth a try. So the letter, then –?”

“Of course. It’s hardly urgent, but I should be sorry if it fell into the wrong hands. Many thanks.”

“Not at all,” said Erestor, tucking the letter away with the sealed black-and-gold pouch of dispatches for Imladris. “We may even deliver it within the century!”

The highway that wandered east from the Grey Havens was broad and straight and beautifully paved for the first day’s ride, after which it began to deteriorate noticeably. The great stone slabs disappeared and the East Road was scarred by old wagon tracks that filled up with muddy water in the spring drizzle. When the grey-cloaked Istar asked their escort about this, he was told that Círdan the Shipwright was responsible for the upkeep of the Road up to that point, but that Círdan’s authority there gave way to that of the Dúnedain king of Arthedain, the current holder of which title was not particularly interested in keeping the Road paved through the Tower Hills and the White Downs. Furthermore, the Road might well deteriorate further as their journey progressed, since past the Baranduin River it served as the border first between Arthedain and Cardolan and then between Cardolan and Rhudaur, and all three kingdoms tended to disavow responsibility for its maintenance. On the other hand, after they crossed the River they should have plenty of opportunities to observe several excellent and rather heavily fortified Dúnedain strongholds in perfect working order on both sides of the Great East Road.

This comment, along with the rest of the explanation, was supplied by Erestor over a small fire on the second damp evening after their departure from Mithlond. The first night had been spent with a small outpost of Elves whose business it was to monitor the comings and goings along the Great Road within Círdan’s realm; but having left Círdan’s realm behind, it seemed clear that they would be sleeping under the stars as often as not. They had halted for the night in the shelter of a small thicket not far from the Road, at which point Erestor had begun to gather firewood and Melinna had disappeared. Glorfindel, aching from the long day’s ride through alien countryside, had by this point reached a grim determination not to put any questions at all to this exasperating couple, but the Istar had been surprised into wondering where the woman had gone. She was looking for game or edible plants, apparently, so that their provisions from Mithlond could be preserved for as long as possible. When asked why Melinna had gone and not Erestor, that gentleman had said lightly, “Oh, she’s better at foraging. Much less likely to get distracted by interesting caves and things. There was a time in Ered Luin –”

Glorfindel was not interested in other people’s adventures in Ered Luin. He ignored Erestor completely and went to see to the horses, bitterly reminded of his last journey without servants through the Encircling Mountains. There had been no Great Road through those mountains, paved or otherwise, and the days had been as icy as those terrible nights. By the time he had finished, a small fire was smouldering cheerily and Erestor was talking to the Istar about how much the Great Road had deteriorated since the disintegration of the Dúnedain kingdom of Arnor. “It’s not that long since the Road was paved from here to Bree –”

“Two centuries,” said Melinna, appearing unexpectedly in the gloom. She dropped a pair of young rabbits onto the grass beside him and added briefly, “Maybe longer.”

The Istar had jumped, openly startled, and Glorfindel was caught off guard despite himself. Erestor merely twisted his dark head round, eyebrows up, and picked up the limp rabbits. “That’s not so long. Is this all?”

“I thought you were hungry,” she retorted, laughing. “Back in a bit. I want to set snares.”

She disappeared again. The Istar sat back on his heels and drew in a meaningful breath.

“Well now,” he said and let it out again in a long whistle, combing his fingers through his great bush of a salt-and-pepper beard. Deep in the shadows of his craggy face, his youthful eyes gleamed with curiosity. “The lady moves quietly, doesn’t she?”

Erestor, who was already beginning to clean the coneys, shrugged. “Practice. Now when there was a king of Arnor...”

And so on. Glorfindel was as uninterested in Dúnedain kings as he was in Erestor’s adventures in Ered Luin, but since the Istar actually seemed to be listening, he did not bother to say so. He sprawled out on his bedroll with fire in his eyes and the fall of Gondolin in his head instead, while that cool voice whispered unheard the deeds of mortal Men somewhere on the utmost periphery of his understanding. In the dripping darkness beyond the circle of the fire, the thicket was full of uneasy rustles (but not the sobbing of the injured or bereaved) and periodically the long liquid warblings of a nightingale sweetened the night. Presently a savoury smell that suggested rabbit stew began to percolate through Glorfindel’s dim awareness of the world around him, at which point an account of the ongoing rivalry between Arthedain, Cardolan and Rhudaur ceased and Erestor was heard to say lightly, “There you are. Nice timing. Dinner’s ready.”

The woman Melinna had returned, of course. Food was dished out on tin plates; he ate without taste and heard their chatter without paying any real attention. The red glow of the fire cast strange shadows in the darkness. So had glowed the breath of Glaurung’s monstrous brood, the dragons of the north.

“You must have some name,” he heard Melinna saying to the grey-cloaked Istar, late in the night. “And if you don’t – make one up!”

The richness of the Istar’s voice suggested he was laughing. “That’d be dishonest. Couldn’t possibly.”

“If you’re not careful, we’ll give you one,” came Erestor’s voice lazily through the dark. “Can’t call you Stranger all the way to Imladris.”

“I’ll take whatever names I’m given. Now be kind and let an old man sleep!”

That remark was greeted with chuckles in which the Istar joined, but afterwards the conversation fell away into the whispering night. Glorfindel was too tired to be grateful and watched the dying fire until it collapsed into embers and ash. Possibly he slept, although he did not remember doing so. At one point he seemed to glimpse through blurred, half-open eyes a silent figure sitting alone and watchful in the night, but that might have been no more than a dream.

When the cold dawn came, and with it birdsong, he was as weary as he had been the previous evening and considerably stiffer. The Istar still snored quietly in his bedroll and Erestor was sitting under a nearby tree, idly occupying himself with a piece of wood and a sharp knife. Melinna was nowhere to be seen.

A piece of bread dipped in the remains of the previous night’s stew seemed to ease Glorfindel’s incipient headache. He went to check on the horses, moving carefully and stretching out the knots in his limbs as he did so. A breath of mist still clung in the air. He was aware suddenly of the vividness of his surroundings: the richness of the grass, pale lichen curling on dark trunks, spring-green leaves budding on the trees, the horses shifting and whuffling in the dawn. Patches of blue sky could be seen through branches and clouds. The mountains had been ice and stone, white and grey, at the height of summer.

Remembering that terrible escape through the Encircling Mountains, drowning in grief and desperately attempting to safeguard a disparate rabble of unprepared refugees with only a handful of soldiers, it came to him suddenly that the Istar had wanted his company and Círdan had then thrust an escort upon them precisely because the Road was not as safe as it seemed. The peacefulness of this thicket could well have turned out to be illusory and it had been unwise in the extreme to take it for granted. So much for their experienced escort!

So much for his own experience, too. Gondolin’s fall should have taught him not to take peacefulness for granted. He should have learned lessons about travelling through the wilderness from his own mistakes at Cirith Thoronath.

He was abruptly angry with himself. He said harshly aloud, “We should have set a watch. It could be dangerous.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” came Erestor’s voice behind him. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

Typically exasperating; startlingly reckless. What had Círdan seen in this couple?

He spun around and came back into the clearing, barely noticing that the grey-cloaked Istar was starting to wake up. “It should trouble you,” he said tightly, planting himself directly in front of Erestor. “I thought this Road was dangerous. What if Orcs found us?”

“You don’t see Orcs very often down this way,” the other Elf replied and held up a piece of wood whittled into the shape of a small bird, its wings half-spread. “Not bad, this. I may keep hold of it. Baby Lúthien – Elrond’s little Arwen, I mean – might like it.”

“Put that away and be serious, Valar curse you!” snapped Glorfindel, furious now with Erestor as well as himself. He pushed his hair angrily out of his face, aware suddenly that the dampness was making it curl. The grey Istar had propped himself up on one elbow and was staring blearily up at them. “You said the Road was dangerous!”

Erestor was turning the wooden bird over with his fingertips, examining it thoughtfully. “I’ll have to polish it,” he said under his breath and glanced upwards with half an amused smile. “Hm, dangerous? Círdan might have said that. Melinna did say it’s not as safe as it was, which is true. I may even have said it myself. That’s only in places, though. We’re perfectly safe here.”

“Varda Elbereth! How can you be sure if you don’t set a watch?”

“We sleep lightly,” Erestor said blandly, dark eyes laughing. “Don’t you?”

“Enough,” said Melinna, materialising with her usual lack of warning behind the tree. She unslung a leather satchel from around her shoulders and dropped it into Erestor’s lap, shaking her head disapprovingly as he tipped back his head to smile at her. “There’s enough for dinner, by the way. You can carry it. Now stop teasing Glorfindel just because you’re bored. It’s bad manners and there’s quite a long way to go before we reach Imladris.”

“So there is,” said Erestor, laughing, and came lithely to his feet with a mocking little bow for Glorfindel. “Forgive my levity, m’lord. We promised to see you safely to Imladris and so we shall. You needn’t worry about standing watch. If there’s any real danger, we’ll let you know.”

Glorfindel was enraged and outraged in equal measure by the sudden realisation that Erestor had indeed been teasing him. “Valar curse you!” he snapped and turned on his heel to stalk back to where the horses grazed beneath the trees.

No more was said about the matter then. When they made camp in an overhung gully on the eastern flank of the Tower Hills that evening, though, Glorfindel said flatly, “I’m going to take a watch tonight. Which one?”

He had expected resistance, or at least more of that unhelpful teasing before his assistance was accepted. He received instead a long, thoughtful look from Erestor. “Certainly. Do take first watch. You can wake me up at midnight.”

“Oh,” said Glorfindel, taken aback. “All right.”

He hesitated, feeling slightly foolish for no reason that he could quite pin down. “I thought – that is –”

Erestor’s dark eyes were laughing again. “I know,” he said sympathetically. “You thought I’d tell you not to bother. I might have done, but it seems to attract your attention to the present and Melinna informs me we should be trying to encourage that. Besides, I have no objection to letting a gentleman so eminently experienced as a Captain of Gondolin stand watch. Satisfied?”

“I – yes. What do you mean, it attracts my attention –?”

“Oh, come. You’ve barely looked around you since you stepped off that ship. Did you ever wonder where our grey friend’s companions went or what they were going there to do? Come to that, did you ever even bother to ask what they were called?”

He paused for a moment, possibly to let that sink in, and went on quite kindly, “Sometimes you look like you’ve just wandered out of the ruins of Gondolin. Not that I blame you for leaving yourself there; I don’t know how fast time passes in the Halls of Mandos, or how long it is since you were resurrected –”

“It doesn’t and a few weeks,” said Glorfindel shortly.

An expression of intense curiosity passed across Erestor’s face. He said lightly, “Some other time, I shall certainly ask you about that. It feels like a few weeks since Gondolin fell, then?”

“Yes.”

“Thought as much. If it helps, they built you a very nice cairn.”

“Not very much!” said Glorfindel, although he was obliged to laugh. “Did they?”

“Oh yes. Yellow flowers everywhere for My Lord of the House of the Golden Flower. I would suggest a trip up north just for the pleasure of walking on your own grave, but that part of the world was drowned during the War of Wrath.”

Glorfindel almost shuddered. “I can’t say I’m sorry.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Erestor with his amused half-smile. “I doubt you want to talk about it right now. Anyway, you’re welcome to take first watch and I really should sort out a fire. I already told our grey friend he needn’t bother standing watch – he doesn’t have our eyesight and he doesn’t have any problems with living in the present. I’ll let Melinna know when she gets back from foraging.”

The night passed without incident. Glorfindel was oddly glad of those hours spent awake under Elbereth’s stars and he reached a strange tranquillity, tracing those familiar patterns far overhead. Whatever might have happened in Middle-earth since his tumble into the darkness, the stars set long ago in the heavens by Elbereth Elentári would never change. There shone Alcarinquë; there Wilwarin fluttered; there was the belt of Menelmacar, a glimmering arc through the night. In the north swung the seven-starred sickle, Valacirca, a warning to Morgoth that had actually come true. Bizarre and unthinkable. Where was Middle-earth without such an enemy?

And there was the new star, Gil-Estel. Curumo had pointed it out from the swan-ship’s deck. Another bizarre development: Idril’s little Eärendil sailing the heavens with a Silmaril strapped to his forehead. Its brightness outshone even the stars of the Sickle of the Valar.

At midnight, having rather reluctantly allowed Erestor to take over the shift, he fell at once into a deep sleep that lasted until a nightingale’s liquid trill woke him in the morning. The Istar was stirring porridge over a glow of twigs amid the ashes of the previous evening’s campfire and Erestor had found a long stem of rowan that he seemed to be whittling into a walking stick. As Glorfindel yawned and started to unravel himself from his bedroll, Melinna came lightly up the gully, her satchel bulging with speckled feathers.

“I love travelling in the spring,” she said happily and tossed the satchel to Erestor, who peeked inside and widened his eyes into an impressed face. “The snares, not so much, but the hills are alive! I doubt we’ll go hungry on this little jaunt.”

“Jolly good,” said Erestor, satisfied. “Breakfast?”

The next few days were bright and breezy as they came down through the Far Downs and the chalky White Downs into the gentle hills. Sometimes they met people on the Road, both Elves and Men, and once a small caravan of Dwarves from Hadhodrond in the Misty Mountains. Most of the Elves and all of the Dwarves seemed to know their guides and such encounters usually resulted in some delay as greetings were exchanged. The Dwarves they met at sunset in a small human settlement clustered around a crossroads east of the White Downs; they shared a roomy inn overnight, which seemed to please the grey Istar, who spent the evening firmly ensconced by the fire encouraging the Dwarves to talk about mining and their customs and the history of Hadhodrond, which they called Khazad-dûm, and all manner of other things in which Glorfindel had no interest whatsoever. Both Melinna and Erestor were particularly elusive that evening, fluttering through the common room like moths and disappearing into the dark apparently as the mood struck them. For his part, Glorfindel would rather have slept on the ground beneath Elbereth Elentári’s stars than in a rustic room hemmed around by this hairy little crowd, and his star-struck tranquillity became increasingly ruffled as the night progressed.

In the morning, they parted from the Dwarves with goodwill, continuing east along the Road through the sparsely settled hills. Here and there were farmsteads, and sometimes also inns at those points where lesser tracks joined the Great Road. This stretch of the Road was a mess of churned-up mud, deeply rutted by farmers’ carts trundling between fields or to village markets, and their progress was slow enough to make Glorfindel seethe. They reached the Bridge of Stonebows across the Baranduin in a shower of spring rain.

“You know, we could just spend a few days with Iarwain and Goldberry along the way,” Erestor suggested as they rode across the bridge, looking wistfully south into the Old Forest where it crept up towards the Great Road. “It wouldn’t be much of a digression...”

Melinna raised her eyebrows and the Istar stroked his grey beard thoughtfully enough to be seriously considering the suggestion. “No!” said Glorfindel, well aware that a few days for their escort could quite easily stretch into a few weeks or even a few years. Erestor’s dark eyes turned thoughtfully towards him; he was on guard at once and said hastily, “No digressions. Who are these people anyway?”

“Goodness!” said Erestor, glancing at Melinna. “Did you hear that? He asked a question!”

She chuckled. “So he did. And maybe we’ll have time to answer it on the way to Bree. You know, I think the forest’s moved since we last came this way. Do you think it’ll retake the ground it held before the Dúnedain came?”

“We can but hope,” Erestor replied lightly. “No doubt Iarwain will do what he can.”

Past the Bridge of Stonebows, the Road wound through the levels and across the Barrow-downs with deep dikes running along either side. The Road itself was still pitted and full of cart tracks, but the steep stone walls of the dikes were in good condition and on the furthest sides grew sharp-thorned gorse hedges, high and green. As they rode onwards, Melinna and Erestor told them about Iarwain Ben-adar, who had once roamed like a spirit across all of Eriador before the Dúnedain had come during the Second Age and hacked the great forest to mere remnants. Now Iarwain lived with Goldberry the River-woman’s daughter under a hill in the Old Forest, where once had been buried the bones of a king on a bed of gold, and from time to time those unwary souls who strayed under the eaves of the gnarled old trees or found themselves in trouble nearby might come to be grateful for his assistance.

“Such as yourselves?” said Glorfindel, who had been listening despite himself.

“Us?” said Erestor, apparently surprised. “Goodness, no. The Old Forest doesn’t trouble us. It knows us too well.”

“Go there often, do you?”

“From time to time,” said Erestor and smiled. “I meant the trees remember us from the old days, back before the Dúnedain came. That’s all.”

Deep in the shadow of a high brown hill sprawled the town of Bree. They came to the West-gate with sunset at their backs and passed over the causeway that carried the Road across the deep dike with its thick hedge around the town. Bree bustled as much then as it had done at any point in its history, said their guides, who had apparently visited the town during earlier, less prosperous incarnations; it was mostly inhabited by stocky, brown-haired Bree-men and it sat tidily on the intersection of the Great East Road and the North Road, sited between Arthedain, Cardolan and Rhudaur both in geography and politics. Like the Great Road, Bree was held to be neutral ground, not least by the Bree-men themselves. At any given time, the town was awash with merchants and embassies from all three Dúnedain kingdoms, Elves on their way to the Grey Havens, Dwarves travelling to and from the mountains and other travellers passing through on their own business. As they struggled through the dark streets, Glorfindel was unavoidably reminded of Gondolin’s broad avenues, lined with flowering trees from whose slender branches had been suspended elven-lanterns to light the scented nights. There had been no jostling for space in the avenues of Gondolin, nor had any Elf ever cursed or spat in the mud. There had been no mud. The paths had been paved with white stone and polished by countless footsteps down through the long centuries.

He was still remembering Gondolin as they found an inn for the night and settled down in the smoky common room. His tower had been built of that same white stone; it had been pure and fine and perhaps more elegant than practical when the end came. Would the dragons have broken their teeth on black granite if they had walled up the city in that instead?

But his tower...

The last and lowest tower to be built. It had been tempting to begin his own home as soon as the king’s tower had been completed; he had known better. Sometimes a greater glory was to be found in humility. When at last he could climb to the top of his tower and gaze out over the white city shining in the starlight, the city of towers and fountains that his hands had built on Amon Gwareth as a memorial to Tirion upon Túna, its beauty had stolen away his breath. Ondolindë, the Rock of the Music of Water; in Sindarin Gondolin, the Hidden Rock. In Valinor all was beautiful; in Valinor all beauty was a gift of the Valar to Elves. Even the greatest craftsmen of the Noldor, Fëanor son of Finwë and Mahtan his teacher, had received their teaching from Aulë the Maker. Here was a beauty he had made, high in the desolate Valar-forsaken mountains, and here would come to live Turgon and Aredhel and Ecthelion and all the Elves who had resided in rocky Nevrast. Here was his home.

From the top of his tower, dazzled and revelling in that beauty, he had thrown up a paean to the night: a panegyric to lofty Varda who was Tintallë and Elbereth Gilthoniel the Star-Kindler, Elentári the Queen of the Stars, in whose glorious face still lived the light of Ilúvatar. Others, listening in the white streets below, had taken up the song. There had been singing and dancing all through that night of Gondolin’s completion; and in the morning, still enrapt, he had taken up a harp and written his paean on clean parchment as the first of many to be sung in Turgon’s city under the stars. Such had been the early days, those dangerous days when the Sun was new and the Noldor were newly come to a Middle-earth of Morgoth’s domination.

“He’s moping again,” he heard Melinna say critically, somewhere in the smoky, crowded present. “I don’t think it should be allowed. What shall we do?”

The Istar’s rich chuckle. “Get the Elf a drink?”

“Good idea. They brew rather a fine beer round these parts –”

“Beer!” said Glorfindel with a sudden, fierce scorn that jerked him out of long-gone Gondolin and left him neither there nor here, trapped in loss. “What is that? We made wine as white as uilos flowers and sweeter than dreams of Valinor! People used to weep when they drank it! They said it was made of starlight and Nienna’s tears! There are songs about uilos wine! And you want to give me some mortal drink, this beer?”

“Evidently not,” said Erestor dryly, leaning back in his chair. His face was in shadow, although Glorfindel could just see the amused curve of the other Elf’s mouth. “Quite right too. Beer’s not fine enough for m’lord of the Golden Flower. I don’t know what you were thinking, Melinna my love. What about brandy?”

“What about –” repeated Glorfindel, incredulous, and cracked into laughter, unable to help himself. He set his elbows on the rough table and laughed with his head in his hands until the tears ran cold down his wrists. Gone was Gondolin with its white towers; gone were the scented avenues, the paean-singers, the makers of uilos-white wine. The fountains had fallen; the people were dead. Gone were the Gondolindrim into the timeless, formless dark.

A glass of golden liquor was set down on the table before him. “Try it,” he heard Melinna say. “You never know. You might like it after all.”

She was right. He might.

It was a little while before his hands were steady enough to hold the glass. As he picked it up, he caught sight of them sitting silently round the rough table, all watching him. His vision blurred.

“It’s not –” he said helplessly and had to break off. The glass in his fingers shook. “You don’t understand. Ondolindë. Gondolin. I built that city. We thought we could stay there, stay safely, forever. It was so beautiful. So very beautiful...”

In the shadows, Erestor’s long form stirred. “Very sad –”

“Sad? Very sad?”

He was abruptly enraged again, jolting to his feet with a suddenness that splashed brandy across the table. “You think this is sad?” he demanded fiercely, glaring down at the other Elf. “It took us fifty-two years to build Gondolin! Fifty-two! Four centuries we lived there! We built the most beautiful city east of Valinor! The walls were white and the fountains shone and we danced in the starlight just as we did in the West before the Sun rose! You can’t understand what that means unless you lived then! And if we hadn’t been betrayed by that traitor Maeglin, we’d be dancing there now! I think that is a little more than sad!”

The common room had fallen silent. He tossed what remained of the brandy down his throat and slammed the glass down on the table, glaring around the room. Through the smoke, Men and Elves and Dwarves were suddenly concerned to avoid his eyes.

“I daresay you do,” Erestor replied evenly, motionless in the shadows. For once he seemed completely unamused and his tone was cool. “And I say – very sad. Gondolin was destroyed by its enemies, as it was doomed to be destroyed once Morgoth realised that Turgon was willing to be a nuisance to him. That’s sad and vaguely heroic. If anyone other than your Lady Idril had listened to Tuor, you might only have lost the buildings. That’s sadder and rather less heroic. If you think Gondolin was the most beautiful city in Middle-earth, you obviously never visited Menegroth – and Menegroth was sacked by its allies. Twice. Now that’s not just sad, that’s downright tragic!”

Whatever response Glorfindel might have received, he had not anticipated this. He sat down with a bump, staring at the other Elf. His anger had vanished somewhere into the smoky air.

“Menegroth,” he repeated, struck suddenly by that remarkable agelessness that both Erestor and Melinna wore so much more lightly than Círdan the Shipwright. They were both watching him thoughtfully now through the shadows, dark eyes as deep as the twilight during the ages of the stars, while the Istar tugged his grey beard and listened with obvious fascination. “You were alive to see Menegroth. You’re not Calaquendi. You’re Elwë Singollo’s folk?”

“We’re certainly not Calaquendi,” Melinna agreed with a curl of her mouth that suggested she was quite happy about this. “We aren’t even Elu Thingol’s folk, if you want to be precise. We are Dark Elves, though, proper Moriquendi born before the sunderings, and we certainly saw Menegroth.”

No wonder they seemed ageless. A couple born before the sunderings had some claim to consider Glorfindel young.

The grey Istar broke the silence that followed.

“Well,” he said, twinkling under his bristling eyebrows and shifting the rowan walking stick that Erestor had idly whittled some days past from hand to hand, “that does explain why Lord Círdan was so sure you should come with us. Such long lives must have seen a great many important events.”

That lightened the air at once, rather surprisingly. “Oh, we have!” said Melinna, sharing a glance with Erestor that brimmed with secret laughter. “Actually, you don’t know how much it explains. You really don’t!”