Part 1
The depths of winter had come early to the north of Middle-earth, bringing some of the worst weather known to three generations of Men. For weeks now, icy winds had howled ceaselessly, bringing stinging rain, hail, and finally the snow.
This was not the picture-pretty snow associated with families gathered close around a welcoming fire, the cold locked firmly without. This snow was companion to the dark things moving across the face of the land, the weather a mirror to the pain and despair that were starting once again to tighten their grip. There was a feeling shared by all of something moving inexorably closer, a silent horror extending advance tendrils of terror.
Orc bands, bigger, stronger, more intelligent than ever before, ranged across the countryside; wolves, wargs, and other fell beasts harassed settlements and prowled the outskirts of larger towns. Mirkwood had become a kingdom under siege and from deep within the shadows, Dol Guldor emanated a sense of unrelieved evil that was all but tangible.
Until recently, the snowline and the darkness had stopped briefly at a little-known Ford across the Bruinen, leaving the passage down to the elven stronghold of Imladris, referred to by men as Rivendell, clear and for the most part dry. However, on a day when the world beyond this border had been black, wind tossed, all but impassable by man or beast, Glorfindel, twice-born warrior and master of the defenses of the valley haven, while out for a late morning stroll in company with his thoughts, found reason to bring an end to the unseasonably fair weather taken for granted by most of the inhabitants.
He was making his way back to the house by way of the private garden, originally laid out and loved by Celebrían, a place that still carried the sense of stillness and mystery so like her former home in Lórien, when he spotted a huddle of velvet and silk under a tree. On closer inspection, this turned out to be the Lord of Imladris, lying curled upon the ground with eyes tightly closed, brow furrowed, fisted hands clenching grass.
Experience, some of it bitter, much of it accompanied by loud words, told the golden haired elf the story behind this discovery. He settled down on the ground, gently opening the grasping hands and, lifting the head into his lap, sat tidying soft dark hair while his aura surrounded the unconscious elf, slowly drawing him back to the world. Eventually, eyes the colour of storm clouds opened and focused on his face.
“Glorfindel?”
He appeared disoriented, and for the moment made no move to rise. Glorfindel weighed practicality against indignity as he contemplated picking up the noted healer, lore master and war hero and carrying him through the grounds of his home to his rooms, and rather regretfully decided in favor of dignity.
It took Elrond a further few minutes lying cradled against Glorfindel to collect himself. When he attempted to rise he swayed slightly, his face pale, and had it not been for the firm arm around his shoulders he would have fallen again. “Can you manage to walk if I take your arm and pretend we were out for a turn around the gardens?” Glorfindel asked, knowing how important it would be to Elrond to make certain this display of apparent weakness passed unnoticed.
Receiving a nod in reply, he brushed his companion down quickly, removing telltale leaves and grass, and smoothed Elrond’s robes with a practiced hand before, arms linked, they turned and headed slowly back to the house.
The private rooms of the Lord of Imladris were no great distance away. Once inside, Glorfindel helped Elrond to a chair, then spent some time fussing with cushions, a cup of water, a warm wrap – the last item rejected with a touch of irritation, When he had finished he stood back, strong arms crossed over his muscular chest, with his dark gold eyebrows lowered in a rather good imitation of Elrond’s own patented scowl.
“And now, you fey, unheeding creature, it ends!” he said firmly.
He received a smile and a placating gesture from one long hand in response, and brushed both off impatiently. “No,” Glorfindel said deliberately. “Not again. This time is going to be different. You are not going to smile sweetly, apologize for worrying me, and then go your own stubborn way again. There will be no next time. It stops! What in the name of any and all of the Valar were you trying to do anyway?”
Somehow, when confronted by the risks the dark-haired Elf repeatedly braved in the exercise of the awesome power contained within the ring of Air, Glorfindel regularly found his habitual calm deserting him. Fear of the consequences to the one who was the centre of his life spoke far louder than discretion at such times.
”I was attempting to hold back the worst of the weather a while longer,” was the response, delivered with a not wholly convincing attempt at dignity. “The apples trees need time to finish fruiting…”
Elrond stopped the lame and rather hesitantly offered explanation because the blonde warrior had swung on his heel, and was now striding round the room.
“Oh yes, another good reason to kill yourself,” Glorfindel said grimly. “The apples. And before that were the young vines – and then there was the warm weather for the new foals, and then you were worried about the river flooding – ”
He came and dropped down onto his knees before the effectively silenced dark haired elf, his long, golden hair reaching almost to the floor.
”I don’t know what your true reasons are, I don’t understand what compels you to this, but one day,” he said, taking one of the beautiful, competent hands between both of his, “…one day, I am going to find you curled up on the ground, and I am going to kneel down and shake you once again, and then I am going to find you aren’t breathing…”
“The way into Imladris has to stay open and accessible. I don’t know why, I just know that it is vital, and keeping the rain and snow at bay is the obvious way…”
The explanation faded off into silence as Glorfindel, golden elf, warrior legend of three ages, leaned forward, resting his forehead against Elrond’s knee. The half-elf put a hand under his lover’s chin and raised the remarkable face and looked wordlessly at the unshed tears of frustration and possibly fear clinging to dark gold lashes, until Glorfindel pulled away from him almost crossly.
“You are going to kill yourself fighting nature, trying to hold back the world, ” he said angrily, rubbing a hand across his eyes. “Meanwhile, my troops can patrol our boundaries and you always know if anything comes near to crossing them. We can be prepared for any need that may arise – love, please, please, let the weather be. The road can be kept open by more physical means. I seldom ask anything of you, but you have told me yourself how difficult this is becoming. Please, let it be.”
Silence hung between them for a minute, with Glorfindel kneeling back on his heels, hands resting now on his thighs, waiting. Elrond reached down and touched damp eyelashes with a fingertip. “It does get harder and harder to stand against the flow of the world,” he admitted, smiling slightly. He moved his hand to caress Glorfindel’s head, burrowing his fingers into the bright gold hair and then letting the heavy silk slide smoothly through them.
“Very well. For love of you, I will let the weather be. Now you,” he added, and smiled mischievously, “will do me the courtesy of telling everyone that they are going to be cold and wet at your request. Is that fair?”
Glorfindel gave him a smile of uttermost sweetness, nodded and turned his head to kiss the stroking hand. “As the price of your safety, that is more than fair,” he agreed.
~*~*~*~
Deep night, a glimmer of light from an unknown source. A room within the expanding dwelling place referred to by many as the Last Homely House. It was a pleasant room, disorderly in a comfortable sort of way, a pile of clothing on a chair, a small, untidy bundle of books on the floor. Near the window stood an easel holding the beginnings of a painting. There were wall hangings, several of which had probably been there since the resident’s childhood, there were cushions, drapes, a sense of home.
The sleeper in the bed beneath the window was moving slightly, head turning from side to side. His eyes were closed, a thing unknown in elven sleep, his shining, dark hair was tumbled about his finely boned face. He moaned softly, then stiffened, frozen as though by fear. Suddenly he flung an arm across his face, cried out, then lay still.
Time passed, then the sleeper woke and sat up slowly, brushing hair from his face. He drew his knees up to his chin, and his eyes, the exact shade of aged pewter, gazed sightlessly out the window. Once his breathing had settled and he was grounded and awareness of his surroundings had returned, he rose from the bed.
Clad only in thin, pale blue sleep pants, he left the room and walked down the hall, one hand touching the wall lightly, keeping contact with its hard reality. Reaching the next door, he knocked softly, waiting for it to open, waiting for his almost mirror image, who appeared, hair neatly braided for bed, wearing a warm-looking sleep shirt and a bemused expression.
“I had a dream,” Elrohir said shakily. “I have to tell Ada. We have to go beyond the river and fetch her, keep her safe.”
~*~*~*~
Another room in the same house. Larger, airier, with thick drapes drawn against the night. A fire burnt low in the fire place, because the Lord of this refuge, having a share of mortal blood in his veins, felt the northern chill.
It was a room which had long been occupied, but only recently redecorated. There were jewel colours, textured contrasts of wood and metal and stone, speaking to a definite vision, not the haphazard accumulation of centuries. It was the room of a personality long restrained by the preferences of others, finally encouraged to free expression.
In the bed, two figures slowly writhed to a background of sighs and soft whispers, performing a dance older than time, more warming than any hearth fire. Smoke dark hair tangled with sun gold, hands, lips, searched, caressed, pleasured under the soft, bright covers. Firmly, needfully, the blonde drew the dark-haired elf into a deep, passionate kiss, before urging him over onto his stomach. Both bodies started moving more urgently, in a manner more defined, and the pitch of their breathing changed, increased, became harsher…
“Ada, Rohir says he has to talk to you.”
The room stilled, the two figures in the bed were instantly motionless. The golden elf finally drew back, moving to lie beside his companion, and they looked at one another, summer blue eyes meeting long-lashed storm grey. Then they both turned slowly to look at the doorway and at the two figures standing there, waiting.
Elrond, a veteran of ill-timed interruptions by his sons, though not, truth be told, in recent years, moved away slightly from Glorfindel, then propped himself up on an elbow, taking care to keep the covers around his body, and demanded evenly,
“Explain!”
“Rohir had a dream,” Elladan said softly, gesturing towards his brother, who was still clad in nothing save thin sleep pants and a fall of dark, flowing hair. “He says it can’t wait till morning.”
Elrond surveyed his younger son, the only one of his three children in whom the blood of their Maian ancestress ran clear and close to the surface, and gestured towards the bed. The other time Elrohir had woken him agitated by a forewarning dream, it had revolved around a pale flower, bloodied and trampled within a cave.
That time Glorfindel, the twins, and companies of warriors from both Imladris and Lórien had ridden out at once, but reached the Redhorn Pass too late to save Celebrían from horrors only Elrond himself, as her healer, ever fully understood.
“Come,” he said briefly. The twins exchanged glances, then as one turned their pewter gaze to Glorfindel. Their father made a gesture of annoyance at them.
“You made no objection when I told you we were lovers; in fact you wished us well. What did you think we did in here at night – talked about our day and played chess? Grow up. Come here, child, and tell me your dream.”
Elrohir, his brother’s hand lightly supporting his arm, came over to the bed and curled onto it as he had since he was an elfling. Elladan sat more sedately on the edge behind his brother, keeping his eyes carefully averted from Glorfindel’s naked chest.
Elrond took hold of one of his son’s long fingered, narrow hands, so like his own. There was, he noted with a little tug of tenderness, a scratch along the side, and faint paint stains on the fingers.
“Talk to me,” he encourage, keeping his voice soft. Behind him, Glorfindel settling against him, a hand resting lightly on his lover’s waist, silently supportive.
“They are out there all alone in the snow. They are being chased, and we need to help them,” Elrohir said in a distant voice, his eyes starting to lose focus, to look inward again. Elrond shook his hand lightly to keep his attention.
“Who? Where?” He knew that short, simple questions would be the easiest for his son to focus on. Elrohir shook his head hard, the hair flying, and shivered slightly. Glorfindel pulled the top cover loose and sat up to wrap it about the young elf, his touch firm, completely unembarrassed by his own nakedness.
Elrohir snuggled into the blanket. “I don’t know who they were,” he said softly. “There was fighting and there was blood and it was raining. Then I saw riders fleeing through the snow, pursued by a great shadow, and in their midst was a woman, and she was carrying a lantern.”
“A lantern?” Glorfindel looked at Elrond questioningly. “On horseback?”
“It’s a metaphor,” the half-elf answered distractedly. To his son, he said, “Did you know her face, did you hear anything?” Elrohir’s visions were mainly pictures, but he heard the occasional word.
“No words, no” he said, shaking his head. “But they were men, Ada, not elves. That is all I know. That, and,” he looked intently at his father, his face vulnerable in the faint light cast by the fire and the dim lamp beside the bed. “I think they were trying to reach the Ford, but the snow is so thick, they may not find their way. And should they reach it, there will be no one to guide them. We have to go to them.”
On this last, he started to rise from the bed, his mind already on leaving the house, finding his horse, riding into the night. Elrond took a firm grip on his wrist and pulled him back sharply.
“Elrohir, there is no one out there now,” he said firmly. “I am certain of it. This is a thing still to come, it has all the marks on it, and when you are properly awake you will know that for yourself. I think the main message is one I have already received – we must keep the pass watched and open, and, so far as possible, the roads traversable and free of orcs and other creatures of darkness.”
Elrohir stilled and studied his father, the only one beside his grandmother who fully understood the dreams and sometimes waking visions he had been heir to since childhood. Of the two, he far preferred his father’s common sense approach to the subject. His grandmother used her Mirror as a tool to direct her visions, meanwhile, like him, Elrond saw things unbidden, knew things with a certainty beyond knowledge. On the whole, if his father said it was not happening yet, Elrohir was more than prepared to believe him.
“But it will happen one day,” he said softly, slowly becoming aware that he was sitting in his father’s bedchamber wearing sleep pants and a blanket, and that they had burst in without knocking and interrupted a very private and intimate moment.
”Whatever it is, it will happen.” Elrond agreed, part of his mind ranging free, trying to sense any unaccounted presence near his valley. All he could feel were the distant movements of orcs, far enough away to pose no threat.
“Nothing?” Glorfindel asked him quietly, knowing where his mind roamed when his eyes took on that peculiar silver hue. At the quick shake of the dark head, he leaned over and said to Elrohir, putting a hand lightly on the young elf’s shoulder as he did so, “Your father will watch in his way, I in mine. Tomorrow I will double the guard on the pass, and tomorrow, too, I think we should start sending out patrols as a deterrent to any roving orc packs. Were there many close by?”
This last was addressed to Elrond, whose ability to search out any wandering followers of darkness within range of Imladris held no awe or discomfort for one who had spent his childhood in company with Galadriel and her brothers. Glorfindel, furthermore, had experienced the other side of death. He was no stranger to the uncommon.
“They are out there,” Elrond confirmed, tugging pillows into place and settling back against them. Glorfindel had brought many gifts to their relationship but one of the greatest, though the Lord of Imladris seldom admitted it, even to himself,, was the way he could take charge of a situation, make decisions. To be able to lean back and allow some one else to do so was a seldom-experienced luxury. “There seem more than normal, but not close. I doubt we are their target.”
“Arathorn sent word asking if we would care to ride with his Dúnedain,” Elladan volunteered. “Packs have begun crossing the mountains again, and his thought was to scour the passes.”
Arathorn was the rather grim, humourless leader of the northern remnant of the Men of the West, newly made chief and one to take his duties seriously. Elrond personally found him hard to like, but tolerated him as he had all the others of that line, the last thread that held him to Elros, his lost twin, whose grave lay deep under the ocean in the wreck of Númenor.
“Perhaps that would be a good course for you two,” he agreed. “I think your brother needs to feel he is doing something useful. When does Arathorn expect you to join them?”
“He wished us to ride no later than tomorrow, I think,” Elladan said, considering. “I assumed you wanted us both home for the Winter Moon celebrations, though. You certainly complained loudly enough about our absence at Midsummer.”
“Don’t disrespect your father,” Glorfindel said absently, as he had since the twins were both old enough to speak. Pewter eyes flashed his way and he mentally cursed his tongue. Since the first magical, unbelievable night he had bedded Elrond, Glorfindel had tried to remain aware of the fact that, for the twins, the lifelong relationship of respect and affection they had shared with him had changed, become complicated.
Glorfindel was still their friend, some-time tutor, and advisor. He was still the master of the defenses of Imladris, and a warrior terrifying in his skill and courage. He still had their admiration and their friendship. But he was now their father’s lover, and the easy interaction that had once existed between them was, for the moment, overlaid with conscious care for the right word, the uncontroversial response.
Accepting that what was done was done, he continued in a brisk tone. “I was going to ask you to take your turns patrolling because it would be good for morale, but you would be better employed aiding the Dúnedain.. If you leave tomorrow, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be back before the Winter Moon.”
Elladan had already risen, eager to get back to his room, away from the reality of a relationship that would always leave him feeling just a little uneasy, and about which, tonight, he had observed somewhat more than he really cared to know.
Elrond, who hoped that the current discomfort would have settled down and been all but forgotten in another hundred years or so, had been staying clear of the conversation, but now he sat up and put an arm around his younger son, pulling him into a quick, rough hug, his cheek against soft, disheveled hair.
“Put it to the back of your mind, Rohir. I think the dream was urgent, yes, but not for tonight. For now, do what can be done. Go ride with Arathorn, help keep the road open. It is the way of such things that you will only know its meaning at the appointed time.”
~*~*~*~
Come morning the twins rode out after a slightly awkward apology to their father for invading his privacy, and life in Imladris settled into a pattern of almost unconscious watchfulness.
Glorfindel, true to his word, increased patrols and kept a strong presence both on the King’s Road, as it was still called, and at the final approach to Imladris. The patrols reported a definite increase in the number of orcs encountered, but Imladris itself did not appear to be their target; long and bitter experience having taught these servants of darkness that the elf haven was best left well alone.
Within Imladris too, Elrond, descendant of Melian the Maia, offered protection in his own way to those under his care. No longer able to keep back the full might of winter, due to his promise to Glorfindel, he could, and did, still watch the borders and even beyond, looking for any trace of the unusual, and in particular anything that would resonate with the image from his son’s dream – a woman on horseback, bearing a lantern.
To Glorfindel’s query he simply shrugged and said, “A lantern would be a sign, the uncovering of a secret, a message of hope, a weapon against the dark. What it would actually be,” he added, smiling and resting his head against his lover’s shoulder, “we will know when it occurs. That is always the way of these things for Rohir as for me.”
“You knew when Celebrían fell into danger.” Glorfindel said this carefully, because Celebrían was still a subject that could bring shadows of pain and guilt back into Elrond’s eyes, but the half-elf merely shook his head and settled closer..
“The silver rose was her emblem, she was out somewhere on the road. That was as clear as a prediction could ever be,” he explained. “ This is less obvious.”
~*~*~*~*~
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Beta: Fimbrethiel