Envinyanta

Min 

Dark, curving lines swept grandiosely across the white expanse; the sheet of paper bore the legend 'Of the Life of King Elessar', a title which Elentirmo thought was particularly uninspiring, but remained, for want of a better. Certainly he could not write 'Of the Life of Great-Grandfather'.

His eyes wandered upwards, taking in the vast expanse of the library; the soaring, vaulted roof, devoid of any ornamentation or enhancement, the endless rows of books, the feeling of space and solemnity.

Nobody would disturb him here, at least. Few entered this room, now, except those with something pressing to look up, and they were uncommon.

His mind wandered, and simple musings about how to begin a treatise on a legendary figure shifted and changed, and he found himself wondering what the man had really been like.

Everyone knew of his reign; the great, glorious, long days of King Elessar, when the land had prospered and grown like never before, and, for all Elentirmo knew, the days when the sun had shone brighter than it did now.  Certainly the tales almost said as much.

And Elentirmo wondered what kind of a man could win the hand of Elrond's daughter.

He would have to be someone unusual, that was for sure; a man of extraordinary prowess and skill, and wiser than the norm. Certainly no common man would do.

But then again, one who succeeded in claiming the throne of Gondor could scarcely be a common man.

And Elentirmo, mulling over his ancestor, began to write.

Where did one begin when writing about a legend?

Did one go deep into his past, or gloss it over and concentrate on his most legendary days?

Certainly the beginning was not easy to write about, for to do a job properly, one had to go into every little nuance, and Elentirmo did not have them at his disposal.

The fact bothered him. Elentirmo liked to have every possible detail within reach before beginning on a project, and this one bothered him - there was so much known, yet so much left to know.

He could make it up, like others did; he could write a little fact, and embellish and drape it in flowery prose, but he would not. Prose was be clear-cut and incisive; leave the emotions and the adjectives to the bards and poets.

Elentirmo decided to begin where anyone would; at the beginning.

A sketchy and light background of the situation about a hundred years before the end of the Third Age; of the lost kingdom of Arnor, and the Dúnedain in the North, at the waning of their might.

It was certainly not enough; with unlimited time at his disposal, he would have gone deeper into this subject, perhaps even to the exclusion of the other, more pertinent facts, but he did not want to stray too much from the actual subject of his exposition, for a study of the conditions in the remote and almost-unreal North would not interest anyone in this City.

No, Elentirmo would have to make his tale of events brief, and to the point, and come down quickly to the hero's real tale, and its real beginnings far back in what seemed the mists of time.

But who to ask?

Elentirmo's great-grandfather had certainly died before he was born, and his Queen as well, though rumour had it that her brothers and her grandfather tarried still on Hither Shores, not leaving, and not choosing mortality. But Elentirmo doubted that, for why would they stay?

His son, Eldarion the sea-farer, had passed only recently, and Elentirmo had known him; a tall, proud, dark-haired man, quick to anger but quicker to laugh, and fierce even in age.

And now Elentirmo regretted not beginning his work sooner, for surely there could be no better person to ask about the deeds of the father than the son.

But the grandson would have to do, and Elentirmo resolved to ask his father as soon as he might.

-

A respectful entry, and a clumsy bow.

"Father."

Then a stumbling, halting, eager explanation of the situation, words almost tumbling over one another in their eagerness to be heard, and the king thinks gravely for a minute.

"What would you know, son?"

Everything," Elentirmo says earnestly. "What he was like, and what he did, and how his life was."

The king looks uncertain.

"I cannot tell you much, for there is much even I do not know. I fear that Elessar was known fully by Elessar alone."

Elentirmo looks disappointed, and his father notices.

"I shall try to find something that may be of interest to you," he says. "I myself have not fully explored my father's chamber; mayhap there might be more there than I see at first glance."

"How was he?" asks Elentirmo, oddly childish for a moment."Was Grandfather fond of him?"

The king laughs, an odd, almost bitter laugh.

"Fond! Fond, ay, and more than merely fond, for well I remember the nightmares he had after Elessar's passing. Once I heard him calling out in his sleep, in the dark watches of the night, and he said - " here the king stops suddenly.

"What did he say?"prompts Elentirmo impatiently.

"He said 'Atarinya'. That was all. One word, but it chilled me to the bone."

And the king is silent, treading in his mind the murky realms of memory.

Elentirmo bows again, still clumsy, and leaves the room swiftly.

When Elentirmo entered the library again, he was surprised to find someone already there.

A girl - slim, dark, small, probably Haradric, was sitting in a dim corner of the room, totally immersed in a large book.

He looked sharply at her, and she raised her gaze to meet his.

Then she looked down, abashed, and turned another page of her tome.

And so Elentirmo forgot about her, settling down at a desk thoroughly covered with the scraps he used to jot down whatever came to mind, and started his work again.

With mounting excitement he slit open the package his father had given him, and was pleased, though unsurprised, to discover that it contained several bound books, some in slightly worse condition than others. The fine handwriting in them was certainly Eldarion's.

He leafed through one. Some sentences he recognised immediately - clearly they had been taken from the City's historical narratives, and were nothing new to him. But others were more informally written, and clearly looked as though Eldarion had composed them himself, perhaps for the amusement of his son, or perhaps to set things down before memory passed out of reach.

And, face impassive, yet mind brimming over with excitement, Elentirmo began to read.

Author's Note: This story is highly experimental. Hopefully, the title will make sense by the end.

'Atarinya' means 'my father'. Quenya.

Atta

A tapestry hung on the wall opposite.

It was a magnificent piece of work, embroidered with skill; the Witch-King of Angmar, fell and menacing in his dark power, and the Lady Éowyn, a pale figure with long hair, and behind the Witch-King creeping up on him was one of the famous periannath.

Elentirmo paid it no attention, for he was reading, brow furrowed with concentration.

‘There came a day when I desired to see the Sea; and I convinced my father to let me go, and but gaze upon her shores, though truly I had more in mind than just that.

And of course it was some journey to the coast, but we worked out that I would be able to return on the twelfth day of Lótessë.

That day, my father waited.

Not just for a few minutes, pausing his duties for a little time and then returning home, that he would not, could not.

He stood outside, hour upon hour, wondering why I had not returned, waiting, and looking fiercely towards the harbour and the sea, even while standing in Minas Tirith, as though demanding fiercely of her why she had taken his son from him. He cancelled every appointment, every council, and stood outside, not caring that passers-by in the street muttered and pointed to see their King looking like that. That did not disturb him.

And when I did not return that night, so my mother said, he woke her from her dreams and asked her why.

When I did return, three days later than he had expected me, with the full joy of a voyage in my face, he said nothing of it, and praised me for succeeding, and remarked that I had found something to occupy my life.

So he was; and he could not have loved me more.’

-

Within the narrative, there were so many tales, and some tales were more than they seemed, for they contained fragments of others, the stories of a story.

It was these that Elentirmo found interesting, for some of them were in the perspective of unknown men; warriors, and men not in the histories.

Eldarion had taken great pains to research these unknowns; little details, their names, their lives, even their diaries.

‘It is daybreak, and now we are to ride to Gondor, but by a fearsome road. None of the Rohirrim will stir there, hardly any will even utter the name, and yet I go there.

Am I foolish?

Nay. For if I do not follow Aragorn in his hour of need, who then will?

But perhaps we will see our victory.

I must go. Perhaps I will get some rest tonight, but it is more likely that I will not.’

Beneath this, Eldarion had written ‘His name was Halbarad, and he was from the North, a great friend and distant kinsman of my father’s. He did not live to see what he had hoped to.’

Elentirmo shivered. Every man in Gondor knew that there had been deaths during the Great Wars, but they ignored them to make great songs and stories. Reading this, set down so simply, brought them closer than a hundred songs ever could.

Perhaps it was best that they were brushed aside lightly. They were not comforting, and awakened strange thoughts and feelings which could never be put to rest. 

On an impulse, Elentirmo looked up at the soaring ceiling above him, and wondered how the hands of Men could create such perfection. It was too high, too lovely, too ideal to reach out to in its lofty, remote flawlessness. 

In a way, it was very like Elessar.  Perfect, and ideal, matchless and unattainable.

He did not like the sense that there were things he could never reach. For he was yet young, and there was still time. Oh, there was plenty of time.

With an unreadable expression on his face, and something different in his manner – a new vigour, almost determination, he continued reading, and he was somewhat grim.

-

The account was in no particular order. Suddenly it leapt back to Elessar’s earlier days, as a young man on many journeys, then forwards again, to his rule in Minas Tirith. It was odd and disjointed, but it was, as far as Elentirmo knew, the truth, and that made it more important than anything else, organised or no.

Some parts moved away from Elessar altogether, dwelling for a time on Eldarion himself – his thoughts, his life.

Have you ever seen the sea?

She has many moods – at times she tosses like a caged beast, clawing against her shores to get out, and yet at others she is calm, like a neverending sheet of blue silk stretching out on the horizon, and yet is something more.

Ah, I cannot describe her as I would like.

Do you know the great cat-skins that the Haradrim sell here? ‘Tigers’, the creatures are called, I believe. Strange they are, and rumoured to be mightily ferocious, though I myself have not seen one in life. The sea can be like that sometimes, while at others she can be like the small kitten that curls up drowsily by a fire – though always somewhat remote, always unreal.

periannath - hobbits, halflings (Sindarin) 

atta (chapter title) - two (Quenya)

Interlude I

Excerpt from the speech made by the Scholar:

‘…It is with mixed emotions that I announce to you this, possibly our most important find – in a ruin nearby, which has been only recently explored, we have discovered a document which appears to be of considerable historical importance.

The writer is here named as one ‘Elentirmo’, the son of the King (or so it appears), and this might well be the truth – the document is dated to the year 203 of the Fourth Age of the Sun, which, though lost far-off in the mists of time now, is certainly sufficiently long ago for the king to still be the major head of state.

Their interest lies in the topic – they purport to describe the life of the first King of Gondor in the Fourth Age – most of you will recognise this as the period just after the legendary Ring-war.

Why do we believe this is genuine? The quality of the material written on, for one, which is unlike anything we use in these times; and the fact that names are written in the archaic style throughout.

These by themselves might not form any evidence; but the style in which these manuscripts are written, and the details which they reveal to us are both antique in the extreme, and researched to a degree which is impossible to fake convincingly.

They are, however, strange in the persistent motif of ‘Elves’ throughout the work. Elves, after all, are but beings in children’s  tales, and yet the writer of this work seems to have believed firmly in their existence, and gives us facts that support an old folk-tale – that the Kings of Gondor had elves in their ancestry.

We have long dismissed these stories; perhaps this, too needs to be looked into, though we are wary of giving undue credit to this one unverified source.

But now I know you are impatient to read this text yourselves; and so we are going to have a reading of the entire manuscript,

Now, if you will please look into the copies provided to you – let me take an opportunity to apologize for their weight – we can begin the reading…’

 -

The beginning is the place taking the most delicate care that the balance, the details are correct.

To tell of the life of Lord Elessar, then, you must first ensure that you place him in the right time – the end of the Third Age of the Sun.

And place him in his place – the wilds of the North, and Imladris. Do not be deceived by the fact that he ruled over Gondor – the North is ever his place.

You ask what he did? Many paths he walked, under many guises, and to tell of every one of them would take two or three lives, for often the tales of a deed are longer than the deed itself.

But I have time, yes, if not the oceans of time that I would want, and so I commence in the year 2931 of the Third Age, with the birth of a Hero…

Author's Note: This interlude is not a real chapter per se. It's a little scene to divert the reader's interest and allow them to see everything from a different perspective - and also a change from the rather philosophical point-of-view of Elentirmo.

Neldë

Picture this.

You will but be doing what I have done to write it, for I never saw the scene either. But I heard about it many times – once from the Lord Faramir, when I was a serious child of eight, and once from my mother, who had heard it from my father.

My father never spoke a word of this to me, except once – once, he mentioned his waiting, and he said that it was the hardest thing he had ever done.

The dark closes in around the city like a blanket, and my father sits atop the wall – sits, swinging his legs dangerously over the sheer drop beneath him, looking at the moon wistfully. 

He is waiting, and he thinks that the whole world waits with him – it must wait with him. How can it not?

War’s over; work’s done, but still he waits and frets – because he has laboured long so that he may reach this waiting.

He sits there, above the world, but he is still worried, brow furrowed, eyes wistful, looking out towards the West.

“Will they come?” he asks, and it is not difficult to guess who it is he means. “Will they come?”

His waiting was long, but they did come at last – ah, and while I do not know how he greeted my mother then, I can guess.

Do you then need any more proof of his love for her?

Of hers for him – why, she was less reticent than he, and sometimes she told me what she had never said to anyone else.

And she said, one summer’s day, when I was young and more interested in the butterflies that fluttered past us:

“Son of mine, when your father and I are gone, people will talk, and they will say that we never loved each other. Do not heed them! I believe I know something of your father’s feelings, but those I may not say; but here are mine, that you may tell anyone who asks you: I met him, and he was young and fair and gloriously alive. For years he toiled, and was no longer young – but he was alive, not as the crawling beetle is alive, but as the golden glory of the summer’s sun – fair and joyous and hopeful and glorious. I could not live without him.”

And I believed her.

It was dark, and still, and quiet as the Silent Street.

Nothing moved – nothing stirred, and even the sound of a drop of water would have disturbed the air like a thousand battering-rams pounding at the wall.

And in the library – the great, soaring-ceiling, dusty library – a single candle burnt, wavering but still bright, and the wax from it dripped slowly onto a table groaning with books.

Here, the stillness was not unusual. Nobody liked to stay here, except the old historians, as dusty as the tomes they read, and twice as dry.

For the library had one grave fault – it was the past. To the people, the past was old and grey and withered, and more than half a fairy-tale already. The living present was far more interesting, even though some still mourned the departure of the Elves over-Sea, and told tales of their deeds  in Beleriand, but less vehemently with each retelling, and only half-believing themselves.

And so the past was fated to die, not gloriously in a last brave stand, but slowly diminishing into faded, indistinguishable, dull grey, until nothing was left of it but a ghostly memory.

But what could people know of this now? Elrond had foreseen it; Elessar had guessed some part of it, but the wont of such declines was to be slow, slow and long, and the beginnings of it were barely seen. Gondor was great yet, and would remain so for some time to come.

Surely the common people, they who scorned the libraries and praised the king with the same breath, could not know.

Meanwhile, the library remained; now dark, and still, and filled with a cold silence, and Elentirmo’s soft breathing was scarce to be heard.

He slept, head rested on a pile of papers, weary yet unwilling to leave. He had work yet, and had not even known that he was tired – until he had fallen asleep.

The sky was lightening to grey now, in the first light from the east. It was strange, bitterly ironic that darkness could have come from the East where the Sun rose.

Outside, the first movements of a city, yawning and stretching as it woke. The crow of a cockerel, the cry of a merchant, the wail of an infant.

The sun rose swiftly now, brightening the sky from black to grey to rose to orange, and the bustle outside increased.

Another day, another time, the work’s never done.

And Elentirmo woke, and raised his head to look out of the window, gazing at the dawn with a sort of sleepy wonder.