Blood and Fire

1. It was all so beautiful

Dior could not believe such a thing – not even of Fëanor’s sons, who burned Olwë’s ships at Losgar! Of the Naugrim, certainly, but not of Elves...

 “They are our allies,” Dior had said. “They will not attack us.”

He sat enthroned in Thingol’s hall, a king beneath a forest of stone and gilded leaves. The branches were strung with the same gold lanterns that had been set there when Menegroth was first carved out of the caves beneath the stars. The light limned sculpted pillars, tracing the shapes of bark and tangling vines. Here a filigree butterfly alighted upon a pink flower; there crept a lizard into a bird’s silver nest, the eggs blue chunks of turquoise beneath fountaining water that glittered like tumbling stars. The colours of the tapestries glowed as if woven in recent weeks, not centuries before by Queen Melian’s hands.

The carvings had almost been restored. Sometimes people still spotted scratches and hollow sockets where precious stones had been gouged from their settings. The craftsmen would smooth over the damage and replace the lost gems with chips of coloured glass.

“They think me a child to be bullied. They are mistaken.”

His words fell like raindrops on dust, soft in the stillness.

There had been golden fountains in that hall once, and silver nightingales climbing over marble basins from which cool water spilled. The metal was gone now and the basins had been smashed by the plunderers after loot. Dior, coming later after the battle at Sarn Athrad, had seen the mess of shattered stone littering his forefather’s abandoned hall and had decided in his calm way that the ornaments would not be replaced. Doriath’s golden days were gone: murdered with Thingol, drowned with Thingol’s wealth beneath the Ascar. Dior’s silver era would still be glorious, but it might perhaps be less ornate.

Now mossy pools collected clear water beneath the pillars carved like beech trees. Minnows from the Esgalduin flitted under lily leaves and among the tiny gemlike frogs, not all of which were stone. Near the water and among the marble vines hovered bronze dragonflies set with blue glass. There were still silver nightingales here and there, clustered in the higher reaches of the stone forest and safe from thieving hands, but down below the stolen riches had been replaced by stone thrushes and squirrels flirting with their bushy tails. Once a treasure chest of a stone dream-forest laced with gold and silver in dazzling array, Menegroth these days had more in common with some sleepy green glen deep in the woods.

The Sindar still dressed like jewelled butterflies, though.

Elves were scattered throughout the length of the hall, standing in shadows or perching on seats disguised as broad branches and the trunks of felled trees. Oropher had come now and then to girdled Doriath during the long years of Thingol’s dominion and knew that in those days there would have been no space to move for bodies, Sindar sprawling over the marble floor and crammed into every available inch of space. Children would have been giggling together in the corners and playing noisy games until their parents hushed them so that the King might speak. There was no need for such measures now.

Oropher liked it better quieter. Thingol’s magnificence had become a hollow thing in recent times. On his rare visits, Oropher had delivered whatever news he brought to the King and Queen, renewed old friendships and departed those enchanted halls without regret. Girdled Doriath had been a glittering dream; Oropher prized the dangerous freedom of the rivers and green ungirdled woods.

Dior’s voice was remorseless, implacable.

“Let them claim Bauglir’s crown, if they must have a Silmaril. My parents did not brave Tol-in-Gaurhoth and Angband for their sake.”

It was hard to tell what his audience thought of this. The listening Sindar might have been statues draped in rainbow silks and satins in that stone forest, pale beneath the golden lanterns and the sculpted boughs. Oropher saw neither delight nor despair. Perhaps they felt none. Dior Aranel had come to them in the aftermath of the sack: their beloved Lúthien’s son, who sang like a nightingale and smiled with his mother’s starlit eyes. Around him Doriath would rise again, renewed and newly beautiful in the quiet way of woods and rivers. Dior was not a king in Elu Thingol’s mold, but he was their king now.

Under a spray of glass-green leaves, a shimmer of gold caught Oropher’s eye. The lady Galadriel had shaken her head, just once. Beside her stood Celeborn, his hand on her shoulder, watching Dior gravely.

There were others like them here and there, beside the mossy pools and under the bright tapestries. Thingol had been advised by Melian; Dior had a wider circle of counsellors, some from among the wisest Sindar and others, like Oropher, from elsewhere. Sometimes, like Thingol, Dior listened. The arguments over the stone had already taken place. Most were as expressionless as Galadriel or as solemn as Celeborn. Not far from Celeborn and his Noldorin bride sprawled the messengers who had first brought news of Thingol’s murder to Tol Galen. They were true Dark Elves, not even Sindar but hunters from high in Ered Luin who had once come wandering down from the mountains many ages ago and had roamed the world ever since. Oropher remembered their reaction to the news that an army of Naugrim had come swarming down onto Doriath. The woman had wept in a scatter of brief, angry tears; and then they had pledged themselves to Beren’s vengeance and gone with the Nandor to fight at Sarn Athrad. Afterwards, returning with Dior to Doriath, they had forsworn their wandering ways until such time as Dior should release them from his service. They did not look now as though they expected Dior’s service to endure much longer.

Dior arose. In the clear, unwavering light, he could have been stone himself.

“I shall not give up the jewel.”

... and so Dior perished.