Chapter IX: Bitter Premonitions

The full moon was high in the cool autumnal sky, and the vast fields of stars sang their sweet song of twilight. The Bruinen was laughing softly in the night, and beneath the canopy of crimson and gold and fiery orange now softened by darkness two lovers wandered. Arm in arm they walked barefooted on the grass, heads bowed together so the silver hair and the black mingled together. The lady spoke, her voice gentle and murmuring under the sound of rushing water. The war was over and the world was at peace, and the time had come for the battle-worn to find their rest. And one weary soldier had found his rest in her...

She was far younger than he, who was long past the age at which the Firstborn were wont to take a mate. He had thought himself beyond such yearnings, until he laid eyes upon her, the Elf-queen’s daughter. He had borne the memory of her beauty into the darkness of Mordor, and the promise of her love had sustained him through blood and fire and despair. He had come forth from the Black Land with the burden of leadership heavy upon his back and a deadly secret in his heart, but when he looked upon her the long years fell away from his eyes and his heart sang. For a little while when he was in her presence his cares were cast aside, and this night was theirs alone.

There was a great stone by the riverbank: a keepsake left behind by the forces that had thrust up the soaring mountains and carved out this hidden valley. It was five feet high at its lower edge, with a broad, smooth top that sloped gently towards the water. Laughing, the maiden plucked up her skirts and scaled the boulder, her bare feet finding crevices to bear her up. She stood atop the mighty rock, and raised her white arms towards the moonlight in a gesture of joyful abandon. Her hair glistened like a waterfall of mithril, and her eyes glittered as she beckoned to her suitor. Nimble as the night wind, he climbed up after her.

They stood briefly together, hands clasped to one another’s arms in a pantomime of unity. Then the lady pressed a palm to either side of the lord’s fair face – a face no longer sorrowful as the sight of her healed his spirit. Upon her forefinger glinted the token of their pledge, and in her eyes was reflected all the glory of Arda. He could smell the sweet fragrance of her breath as she rose upon her toes to kiss him tenderly. His hands found her waist and he drew her towards him. The trees whispered about them and their embrace, at once chaste and yet sublimely intimate, seemed to eclipse the night. The war was forgotten, the dead ceased to cry out to him, and the dreadful, furtive fear was banished. In that instant, there was no one in all the world but she: his wife to be, his silver queen, his heart’s ease.

The balmy heat of June replaced September’s sweetness, and the birches melted into bedposts as Elrond’s mind slipped back into the present. At this midnight hour the waning moon had not yet risen, but from his chair near the window he could see the distant stars. They were silent now, as if they, too, feared to wake the sleeping child in the bed. Estel was lying curled onto his side with his back to his guardian. Elrond’s keen Elven sight allowed him to note even in the darkness the way the vertebrae of his neck stood out against his skin. It was now the fifth night since Estel’s fever had been broken, and it seemed that, at last, he was going to make it through until dawn without revisiting the terrors of his illness. Perhaps tomorrow he could be moved back into his own room.

He was growing stronger each day: this afternoon he had spent six hours sitting up in bed, reading and talking with his mother and his guardian. Erestor had come up to sit with him for a while, and they had worked together on a mathematics lesson until Estel had started to drift off to sleep. He had rested until supper, when again he had awakened for a while to eat and to speak further with Elrond. He was able to take small amounts of solid food, provided it was not too rich. In another two or three days he would be well enough to be set in a chair for short periods of time, but already he had regained enough of his strength to begin to chafe at the enforced inactivity. As he continued to heal the chief difficulty would be in keeping his busy young mind occupied so that he did not overexert himself and hobble his recovery. There was only so much that his mother and Erestor could do to distract him.

Estel stirred in the bed, and Elrond held his breath. His left foot jerked up and his right jerked down, but then he fell still once more. Warily, Elrond exhaled.

The nightmares angered him. In the throes of the dreadful fever, Estel had been subjected to unspeakable horrors. The entire bitter history of his people had been thrust upon his febrile, tortured mind: spectres of death and darkness such as no child should ever behold had come to life within him. Yet there had been a chance, while he lay wracked with delirium, that the terrors might fade with the sickness. There had been a chance that he might forget. But now he was reliving them again and again in his dreams, and there was no hope that he would fail to recall them . In time, the dreams would cease and the details perhaps slip away, but the change these visions had wrought in him would remain. Estel had in one bitter stroke been robbed of both his health and his innocence. His health could and would be restored by tender care and watchful nursing, but the innocence was lost forever. Elrond could see that bitter truth in the sombre grey eyes that looked out from deeply shadowed sockets, and he could hear it in the hoarse, tremulous voice that tried so hard to sound merry. Estel had been thrust brutally forward towards adulthood, before he was ready, and the injustice of that infuriated the Elven lord and chilled him with the despair of failure.

There was a sharp, sudden intake of breath, and Estel’s back tensed. For a moment Elrond could not move, waiting for the tormented scream, the inevitable broken sob. Tonight, it did not come.

Tonight, Estel did not cry out.

He was awake, but he made no sound. His breathing was shallow and nearly as quiet as that of an Elf – a feat he had been practicing, but one that required immense concentration and control. He did not move, but there was no doubt: he had been visited once again by the bitter shadows of the past.

Elrond got to his feet and moved swiftly to the bed. He reached out a mournful hand and laid it upon Estel’s shoulder. The boy stiffened. For a moment they were frozen thus, and then the child began to tremble. Bone-deep concussions shook his frail frame, and his hand shot out to cling to his foster-father’s wrist, but still he was silent.

‘Estel,’ Elrond said softly. He eased himself down onto the mattress, his leg running the length of the child’s bony back. Carefully he guided Estel’s hand further up on his arm so that he could maintain his anxious hold while Elrond picked him up and drew him into his lap. He wrapped his free arm around the boy and looked down at him.

Estel was staring up at his dim silhouette with wide, wild eyes. Tears ran in twin rivulets down his cheeks, but he made no sound of terror. As Elrond looked at him he understood: the boy was exerting every effort to contain his fear. He was struggling to overcome it, to lock it away deep within him, and to bear it alone.

‘There is no need for that,’ Elrond whispered, stretching out a single finger to touch Estel’s cheek. ‘You do not need to bear this burden alone. You do not need to be strong now. There will be time enough for...’ He faltered as long years of labour and hardship stretched out before his Elven sight: darkness and cruelty and bitter winter snows. Loneliness and betrayal and the ever-present fear of discovery. Weariness and hunger, filth and toil and thankless travails; unending tests of body and spirit and will. Mistrust and ignominious mistreatment at the hands of those whose lives he safeguarded with his own. Cold sea water and remote, dispassionate starlight, and fire and darkness and unyielding burdens. Through it all, the haunting temptation of hearth and home, the siren song of a quiet life in the wooded valley... a life that the wanderer could never have. Unable to finish his sentence, Elrond repeated sorrowfully, ‘There will be time enough.’

A tiny sob tore free of the tightly-pressed lips, and Estel twisted in the Elf-lord’s lap, throwing his arms around Elrond’s neck and clinging tightly to him. He hid his face in his father’s hair and let the adult rock him soothingly. Yet that one sob was the only sound he made: he kept his mouth closed and his throat silent while the paroxysms of fear ebbed away and his pounding heart slowed in his chest.

‘I am sorry, Atarinya,’ he said at last, his voice raspy and weak but steady. He pulled away from Elrond’s chest, but did not slide from his lap nor attempt to loose the protective arms around him. ‘I cannot stop the dreams.’

‘Nor can I,’ Elrond said with bitter regret, producing a handkerchief and wiping away the tear-tracks. ‘Would that I could.’

‘They seem so real,’ Estel hissed, a shiver running up his spine. ‘If only they did not seem so real, I think I could bear it better.’

‘You bear it well enough,’ Elrond told him. ‘There is no shame in your fear: I am very proud of your courage.’

‘I do not think I am courageous,’ Estel said, casting his eyes away and hanging his head in shame. ‘Brave men do not wake weeping in the night.’

‘That is not true,’ said Elrond. He reached out to turn Estel’s face back towards his own. ‘I have known many brave Men, and many valiant Elves: heroes of song and legend. I have known those who defied Morgoth himself, and those who ventured into the Black Land and mounted the slopes of Orodrúin. I have known those who laughed in the face of death, and those who rose up from maiming and torment to fight once again, and this I can tell you truthfully. I have never known one who did not, at some grim time or another, wake weeping in the night. It is the lot of those who stand forth to defy the evil in the world that they will be wounded by it, and suffer for their gallant efforts.’

‘But I am not defying evil,’ muttered Estel, his self-disgust palpable. ‘I am only frightened of silly dreams. I am no better than a coward.’

‘They are not dreams,’ Elrond said. He had debated at great length whether he ought to reveal to Estel the nature of the visions that haunted him, and he had until this moment thought that to do so would be more traumatic than helpful. Now he was no longer so certain. He owed his son the truth.

Steeling his resolve, he proceeded to explain as objectively as he could. ‘These night terrors that plague you are not flights of fancy, nor are they the inventions of a fevered mind. You are reliving dark times, times when the machinations of the Enemy fell with sundering force upon the Second-born. Everything you have seen, and felt, and heard has happened – long years ago, maybe, and many hundreds of leagues away, but still they have come to pass. I do not know why you are visited by these apparitions, but they feel real because they are, or they were. You are not a coward. You are facing horrors that made grown Men quail and sights that turned my blood to ice. And each time you lie down to sleep, you risk these visions once again. That is the true test of courage: not whether one is afraid or no, but whether one has the strength to walk forward into terror by design.’

Estel swallowed painfully. ‘They’re real?’ he whispered. ‘The wild black water and the mountain of flame and the... the things in the winter night... they’re real?’

‘Things in the night...’ Elrond echoed, and his mind touched Estel. Terror and despair on the frozen winds... hollow hopelessness in the houseless hills... and far away the fell, screeching call of a winged beast. The folk of Arnor fled before the nameless fear, and few fled quickly enough. The Ularí, the Ringwraiths, swept across Eriador breathing death and ruin on the once-prosperous lands of the Dúnedain. And behind them came their captain, the Witch-King himself...

‘Yes, they are real,’ said Elrond sorrowfully, his voice breaking the binding spell of the memory. ‘There is much in this world that is fraught with evil and ugliness and despair. I have sheltered you from such things as best I could, but in the end I was doomed to fail. You no longer have the benefit of unawareness. I am sorry for that, and if there had been any way to guard you a little longer from these bleak truths I would have done it.’

‘What can I do?’ Estel asked. ‘How can I stop it?’

‘There is only one thing that any of us can do,’ Elrond told him. ‘Be true to yourself, and fight. Defy the evil and do not submit to it. While there are those who are willing to rage against it, the Darkness cannot prevail.’

‘How do I find the strength to fight?’ the child queried unsteadily.

‘You found it tonight,’ Elrond pointed out. ‘Your error was in trying to find it alone. There will be times in your life where you must face your fears without aid, when there is no one on hand to help. But I was here tonight, and I will be here for many nights more; indeed, for many years more I will be here to aid you whenever you have need. Do not bear your burdens alone: let me help you. What seems too heavy for a single back to bear may be light for two.’

‘Atarinya?’ Estel murmured at last.

‘My son?’

‘When I am grown, will you still help me bear my burdens?’ he asked, so softly that his voice was almost inaudible even to Elven ears.

‘Yes,’ Elrond promised. Whether the question sprung from some glimmer of foresight, or whether it was nothing more than a supplication for reassurance from a frightened child, he could answer it honestly. ‘When you are grown there will be times when you and I shall be far apart, and unable to sit together as we are now, but even then my heart shall be with you, and I shall help you bear your burdens as best I may. Though doom and death should separate us, and the Sundering Seas lie between, my heart shall be with you.’

‘And mine with you,’ said Estel gravely. He could not see the long labours that lay before him, nor could he appreciate the peril that his guardian foresaw, but this was not the time to lay his doom upon him: that truth could wait. The Enemy’s curses had driven him nearer to inevitable adulthood, but he was still a child. When he came at last to the full flower of manhood there would be a day of reckoning, but Elrond was not prepared to think of that now.

Perhaps sensing his guardian’s grim thoughts, the boy drew close once more and embraced Elrond tightly. Then he planted a fond kiss on the Elf-lord’s cheekbone and rested his head somnolently upon his shoulder.

Elrond smiled into the darkness. ‘Now let us lie down,’ he said, easing Estel onto the cushions and covering him with the bedclothes. ‘You are still convalescing, and I grow weary of the long night. We would both benefit from the balm of sleep.’

Estel made no reply, for his eyelids were already heavy with exhaustion. Since the fever had broken he had not yet slept more than a few hours at a time, and Elrond no longer felt optimistic that the visions would soon fade. Still, the boy seemed prepared to face his fear yet again, and perhaps he could be warded from further incursions tonight. Elrond stretched out on top of the coverlet, his body pressed close to his child. He stroked the dark hair fondly, and closed his stinging eyes.

He had lost so much over the long centuries, and so many whom he had loved had passed away into the Twilight, but the weariness of the world had not yet entirely consumed his spirit, he realized with wonder and muted delight. Despite the struggles that the future held, there was still goodness and joy in Middle-earth. There were still things worthy of cherishing, and people who needed his love and his care. His daughter was far away, and his merry little twins had grown into hard and wrathful warriors, and the time would come when he would see Estel, too, take up arms and go forth into the shadows, but tonight in the wake of terror and evil there was peace. And at this moment, he realized as mortal sleep lulled him into unconsciousness, that was enough.