Chapter Text
Arwen opened her eyes in the heart of a dark wood, and for a moment she didn’t know whether she was dreaming or awake.
The trees were so thick the sky was almost invisible, a starry twilight-purple beyond the dark boughs. They were old trees, and the wood was full of their whispering. The grass Arwen was laying on was cushiony-deep, and starred and studded with white niphredil. There were white moths fluttering through the dark. It was very beautiful, but she knew from the first moment of consciousness that she was somewhere entirely foreign to her, somewhere she had never been before.
In Imladris there were trees and woods too, but it was a valley held in her father’s cupped hand, bounded and kept safe, and the trees knew it. Lothlórien was beautiful, and its trees were great and old indeed, but they were mellow. The songs of Elves had soaked deep into their bark and layered themselves into their growing, decade on decade, hundred-year upon hundred-year, and the trees sung them back. They were full of memory, and beauty, and sadness, for they remembered Elves who had sung to them and lived in their branches and yet taken ship over the sea, and they knew that those who lived and loved among them yet would one day take ship in turn.
These thick and ancient trees knew only their own songs, and those songs were very strange.
Was this Lasgalen? She had never been there, but she had heard it had been beautiful before the Shadow touched it. Perhaps it was beautiful yet.
If it was Lasgalen, there were worse things than moths to fear. There were spiders with a hundred eyes and poisonous stings, and betraying billows of sticky silk waiting to catch the unwary, and there were Orcs moving beneath the tree cover, and unnamed and unnumbered dark things and wrong things breeding and growing.
Whoever had taken her – had she been taken? – had seized her from her father’s house. She was still wearing one of her day-gowns, a lovely summer thing in gossamer silk that she would never wear for travel or on horseback, almost entirely useless to her outside the halls of Imladris. It was not even a dress for working in, and it offered little protection against the oncoming night. She had been left no weapon, either – that made sense – but whoever had left her in the clearing had not taken her chatelaine from her waist, which suggested a level of respect for her person that belied her abandonment here, or else fortunate ignorance.
What did she have, then? Her embroidery shears, wickedly sharp. A small paring knife, as might be used for fruit. Household seals and keys – less than useless. A needle-case and several spools of thread. A small silver vial of mirúvor, more a statement of her position as Elrond’s daughter than a tool. She was not a true healer, though she could put her hand to small hurts.
A silver thimble and a silver whistle, each chased with
decorative spirals and leaves, and a tiny purse of silver-mesh. Aragorn’s ring was still around her neck, tucked between her breasts. They had not despoiled her of it.
The knife and the shears were better than nothing - indeed, the shears would make a better defence than the knife, twisted apart, but that she would not do yet, lest she need them for their first purpose. She had some weapon, but she was cold, and lightless except for the faint and faraway stars, and she had no food, and nothing to drink but mirúvor, and to drink that lightly in place of water would be foolish.
Provisions for herself she might find. Somewhere there would be water, and there could not be only foul things in this wood. Something must be edible, or else Thranduil’s people – if this was Lasgalen – would be bound even tighter to Dale and through them to Erebor in trade than they already were. Dale, or Erebor – either might give her aid, and Erebor at least, for all the little love they bore Thranduil, would remember her father’s once-given succor to the company of Thorin.
It was growing darker, and the choice of whether to stay or to go on had to be made. There were unknown things in the trees, but there too was shelter, and perhaps aid. The persons who had brought her here might return, and that was an unknown. If they were friends, it would be better to wait; but she could not risk that guess, and so Arwen went on.
-
She moved deeper into the forest, hoping her senses would lead her truly, and the white moths continued to cluster around her like a cloud, trailing in her wake as she made careful, stealthy progress under the trees. The hems of trailing skirts she had pulled up between her legs and fastened at her waist for ease, but her slippers were too thin and fine for this kind of wood-work, and would not long stand it.
The very birdsong sounded strange to her ears. Could Lasgalen be so very different, even under the Shadow? It didn’t feel dark to her. There wasn’t the foul taint on the water and the air she had girded herself against every journey between Imladris and Lothlórien, the sickness deep in the soil and the feeling of too many things alive in the earth and in the rotting forest cover.
-
“Halt,” said someone unexpectedly, their voice slicing through the air; and there was a sword at her chin, and when she breathed out it kissed her throat. The white moths beat their wings in distress.
She hadn’t sensed him at all. How had she not sensed him?
“Who are you, elf-maid?” the Elf asked. His dark hair was in braids so tight that his eyes were tilted, cat-like, at the corners, and his face was as cold and hard as a helm-plate. Thranduil was supposed to be unduly hostile to strangers in his lands, but not to any of the Eldar, surely - not a woman alone. “What leave have you to be in these lands? How came you hence?”
“I don’t know,” Arwen said, and gesturing her intent first, lest the sword slip, put her hand to her waist and drew forth her father’s seal and held it out as a token.
It was a beautiful design, with a Second Age antiquity to it. The six-pointed star at its heart was Eärendil’s, but the burst-petals that surrounded it were Lúthien’s, and the eight-pointed stars in the black void between the petals of niphredil were half a nod to Gil-galad’s starry field, and another to Elrond’s fosterage, of which he had never spoken. It was statement enough to put them there.
Her own seal dangled from the same chain, smaller and more delicate. There, the eight-pointed stars had been changed for Finarfinwion sun-rays. Celeborn her grandfather thought there was too much Noldor altogether in her sigil, and that Elrond her father’s pairing of eight-rayed stars and flowers was unspeakable blasphemy.
The Elf seemed to share her grandfather’s opinion. Her own seal only drew a raised brow from him, but her father’s kindled hard-eyed fury.
“Golodh,” he said, and the sound was like spit.
“I am Sindar,” Arwen said. “In part, at least.”
“So say you,” he said, and looked her up and down. “We shall see what the King says.”
-
Her eyes he bound, and Arwen went with him blindly through the woods.
Her guide was very sure and very skilled, and with him leading, she did not stumble. How long she moved with him in the dark, she could not say, only that it seemed a very long time before they stopped the first time, and he gave her water before they moved again. There was a second stop where he met with some companion. They had a hushed conversation too softly for her to follow, and then there were two of them, one at each of her elbows. The journey was swifter after that, and there were moments where one or other swept her up into his arms entirely, and crossed whatever hazard had been deemed too dangerous for her to attempt on her feet.
Then – “Unhood her,” said her guide’s companion.
“That is my call to make, Cúthalion.”
“If she is kin, you would bring her blind before the King?”
“If she is not, you would bring her seeing into our halls? It is on me that the worst will fall if I have brought one of the golodh this deep!”
“Unhood her,” said the one called Cúthalion implacably. The cloth around her temples was loosened, and then fell away to her throat to rest where the blade had stung.
They were still in the forests, but now the trees were sparser, and the sky greater. Her guide was still cold and darkly furious, but his previously unseen companion was only stern. His hair was long and silver, like her grandfather’s, and his eyes seemed at least as old, which was almost impossible. They widened as he saw her full face unshielded.
“You see,” said her dark guide.
“I do,” said Cúthalion. Then, “When did you last eat, khíril? Allow me to give you my cloak, and to share food and drink with you.”
“You dare,” said the guide incredulously.
“Thank you,” Arwen said, with a composure that was in part her own, but owed much to many years at her grandmother’s side. Galadriel was not imperious: yet she was obeyed. It was less a matter of authority than the power she held but did not mention, and she did not command, only asked. The thick white cloak Cúthalion gave her was still warm from his body, and it was no help to Arwen’s dignity to shiver gratefully under it - but she was grateful. He gestured to the grass, and went to his haunches.
Arwen sat, more delicately, and with a grunt Dark-hair sat as well. The cloud of moths had long since been outrun by the pace these strangers had set, but now one came to settle on her shoulder, its white wings almost translucently fine, and as veined as white opal.
Cúthalion gave her another long look, and then gave another to the moth, as though he suspected it of conspiracy.
“You see,” said Dark-hair.
“Food,” said Cúthalion, ignoring him, and from the leather wallet at his waist he gave her way-bread. The seals on its wrappings were broken beyond hope of deciphering, but Arwen had heard of the fate of Thranduil’s queen. He could not have wed again, that was impossible. She knew he had sons, however, and perhaps one of them had wed. “Drink?”
“I gave her water,” Dark-hair said.
“That won’t do,” said Cúthalion, and got to his feet again. He came back with a strip of silver birch-bark. In his hands it was folded swiftly into a cup, and then he filled it with wine from a flask somewhere at his waist and gave it to her.
There were laws about sharing food and drink with strangers. He had taken a responsibility for her that Dark-hair had not – would not – and it was in his hands that her fate rested now. However hungry she was, Arwen met his eyes very deliberately before she ate or drank, to show that she understood and was entering into the compact of her own will. It was a knife that cut two ways. Cúthalion gave her a small nod back.
Dark-hair still had her knife, but he had left her shears at her belt. She had not used them against him, because he seemed her best and quickest path to food and shelter, so she had them yet. She did not think his companion would have left them to her, but neither did she think this was yet the moment to draw them.
“So, khíril,” Cúthalion said, once she had eaten and drunk her fill, and the cloak had stopped her shivering, and the white moths had come to settle around her like falling rose petals. “What is your name, and how came you here?”
Her mother had given her her name. Arwen was a name for a woman of her line, and from them. Celebrian wore for daily use a name given to her by her father, but her unutterable Quenya mother-name had the wen in it that linked her to her own mother. Galadriel had not likes to be called Nerwen even before she set foot in Middle-Earth, but it was her mother-name, and her own mother’s name had been Eärwen. Like links in a chain, it bound them, woman to woman back to the Swan-Maiden, a hidden and silent river running underground back to the source.
Arwen itself meant ‘noble woman’, the wen of the women of her family joining itself to the many Ars that rang like golden bells back through her grandmother’s line, male and female. Artanis-Galadriel, Artafindë-Finrod, Artaresto-Orodreth, Artanaro-Gil-gilad, Artanga-Angrod, Artambar-Aegnor, Arafinwë-Finarfin. Her name was as much her family’s as her own.
Arwen’s father had been the first to call her Undómiel, less a formal father-name – for he was not Noldorin in that way – than an epessë. She had been almost grown before she discovered that her father’s beloved twin, the uncle who had died a mortal death in a land that had been drowned by the sea long before Arwen was even born, had named his own only daughter Tindómiel, Star of the Morning, for Gil-Estel their grandfather, and for that bright and hopeful dawn in the star-shaped Land of Gift an Age before. Her father had never spoken of that, either.
“Arwen Undómiel,” Arwen said truthfully, and Cúthalion’s face did not change, but Dark-hair raised a brow. Either they had known her already from the seal, or it meant nothing - or it meant nothing more than a declaration of nobility, the title Cúthalion had already given her.
“Well, then, Lady Evening Star,” Cúthalion said. "Whence came you, and why?”
“That is more than I know myself,” Arwen said. “I came from Imladris, but how, I do not know.”
“And where is Imladris?” Dark-hair asked.
“You know very well! And if you do not, it is not for me to reveal it.”
Her guide-captors exchanged glances.
“You claim to be Sindar,” said Dark-hair. “Yet you move through the trees heavy as a golodh, and bear golodh tools at your waist, and there is a tang to your speech that is not natural to us.”
It would not be wholly polite to share her grandfather’s opinion of Lasgalen’s separatists. She knew Celeborn had loved Oropher as much as he had cursed him, and that there was much love in him for Elu Thingol’s Grey-elves wherever they yet lingered. Yet he had been known to speak of certain of Thranduil’s people as backwoods hicks, and of their uneducated accents, and gone Green-elf ways when they were annoying him particularly. She had never heard Celeborn refer to any Noldor as a golodh. He would rail against them, certainly, in stronger language than he would ever use for those of Lasgalen, for he loved them not, but not as golodhrim. That word was not permitted: not when his wife was Noldor, and there was Noldor blood in his beloved daughter and his beloved grandchildren.
So Arwen said nothing, but perhaps her face spoke for her, for Dark-hair glowered and Cúthalion looked faintly amused.
“If you will not answer us straight, you will answer to the King,” he said, and returned to his feet in one smooth ripple, like a spring released. He did not ask for his cloak back. “We had best keep going.”
“Hood her,” Dark-hair said, and then everything was dark again.
-
They did not unbind her eyes until they stopped a final time, and then it was in a place that echoed and there were voices around her like the murmuring hum of bees in the hive.
Arwen blinked at the sudden light, at the sudden and overwhelming strangeness.
“Aran,” said Dark-hair, and went to one knee. Cúthalion did not kneel, but his hand was still wrapped around Arwen’s upper arm, as though she might yet flee, or spring.
She was underground. She had known that already, from the changing feeling of the air, and the disappearance of her tree-sense, and the overwhelming sense of massed stone above and about her. And yet she might have been again opening her eyes in a strange forest. There were trees everywhere, and the small jewel-bright eyes of tiny creatures, and the sound of water.
But there were no trees. She couldn’t feel them, or hear the small pulsing hearts of hare and squirrel and fox. She might have taken it for some fell darkness of Sauron, a dead-alive mockery, but it was very beautiful to her eyes, and it still did not feel foul.
There were bright gems set like stars above her, and silver mirror speaking to silver mirror to fill the strange dead-tree hall with gentle light. Stars were something the wood-elves loved, perhaps more dearly even than the other Eldar did, but the level of detail and fabrication here was not something that made sense to her as their work, because they loved the work of Ivon Earth-queen far beyond any art of lesser devisers.
It was alive: but it was dead. It was beautiful and rich as a densely worked tapestry, as jewelled and as worked as Noldorin finery, but the style was something entirely different.
There were Elves as thick around her as the moths had been, staring.
And there was a king on his throne staring down at her, long silver hair falling from his shoulders like a great hoary waterfall, his brilliant starry eyes wide-open, and a jewel on his breast that burned with a brightness too painful to bear.
There was a woman by his side, and her face, radiant as one of the silver mirrors, outshone the jewel.
Arwen had heard that Thranduil kept great state in his underground halls, but this was not Thranduil. She had never met him, but she knew it could not be he. He was too ancient and too proud, and the light in his eyes was too like her grandmother’s.
The murmurs grew. Arwen caught only fragments of them: Meril? and golodh? and, again and again, overwhelmingly, Lúthien. Lúthien, Lúthien.
“Who are you?” asked Thingol Grey-mantle in his perfect antique Sindarin, his voice almost a whisper, and yet a whip.
And then a woman whispered in Arwen’s ear clear as a nightingale, although there was no woman there,
Welcome, little daughter.