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Fëanor and his seven sons and their followers had arrived in their stolen white ships at what had seemed Beleriand’s darkest hour, and their arrival had come as a great balefire: a red blaze that touched the sky from west to east and filled hearts with fear until they saw the orcs flee before the newcomers. Then, for the first time since Denethor of the Green-elves died among the leaves, there had been a joyful victory in Beleriand.
So many Ages ago! Círdan could summon up Fëanor’s image behind his eyes even now, shining with glorious wrath. Memory wanted to darken that image, to paint it black with what he had learned later. But he had burned so brightly then, Finwë’s son who had seemed to come as an answer to a hopeless prayer, as proof that those who had been left behind had not passed out of the thought of the Valar entirely.
His sons had seemed to shine, too, in their gold and silver-washed mail, the light in their eyes sharper than starlight and fierce as fire.
Together they had broken Morgoth’s siege on the Falas, and the son with the bright blond braids had swung his horse to the left, taking a wing of shining warriors with him and disappearing into the darkness. Only later would Círdan realise that must have been Celegorm the Fair, who would become a name to frighten Sindar children. Was it after-knowledge that seemed to pick out tall Maedhros among the throng; which recalled how brightly his hair had burned in the doubled light of the torch in his hand bouncing back from his golden armour? He seemed to remember that the eldest of Fëanor’s sons had looked troubled, as though not yet fully present in this new nightmare world of snarling Orcish faces and black blood in the starlight.
They had come, saved Círdan’s people, and then ridden away to chase Morgoth’s army further north. Almost as soon as Fëanor had left, word had come back of his death, and another pyre had been lit high on the Ered Wethrim to fill the sky with bloody fire.
They had arrived with such promise, but the Fëanorians had only been a false hope, the fire on the shores of Losgar a false dawn.
True dawn had come with the Noldor who came later, over the ice. In the new moon and sun the people of Beleriand had seen the care of the Valar for their distant children, but that was not quite what the Lord of the Waters whispered to Círdan of their making.
But it was not the Lord of the Waters who whispered of murder and massacre: those whispers came softly at first, and then as the years went by, louder and louder, like a wave gathering power and height unto itself in the moment before it crashed to shore. Círdan had not wished them to be true. Finally, when rumour had taken firm shape, and could be denied no more, he sent word to Thingol, and from Thingol he learned that the kin he had watched depart for the West so long ago had fallen to Noldor swords on the far shores that had become their home, where he had so longed to follow them.
Later still, he would learn that even the Ice-Walkers had come from the West without leave, and under shadow.
No more ships came from the West. No help came as city after city fell, as great Calaquendi and Moriquendi kings and lords died one by one with their faces to the dark. It was already too late when the great new star blazed in the evening sky, its light purer and colder than all the others. Too late, when great white Swan-ships arrived at last with the Valar’s blessings from the West, their white sails washed yellow-gold with the dawn.
Eglarest was already ruined, and fair Brithombar fallen. Hithlum and Dor-lomin overrun, Dorthonion and Nargothrond razed by dragon-fire. Doriath and the Havens of Sirion had fallen to the same swords in the hands of the brightly-burning lords that had saved them all before the Sun rose.
Thingol his lord was dead, and Lúthien Tinúviel had gone beyond the world. Beleg the Fatherless and Mablung Heavy-Hand had been slain unjustly, and Dior the Beautiful, and fair white Nimloth.
Finrod Felagund, who had helped to build the towers of Brithombar with his own hands, had been torn to shreds in a tower he had built, too; and Fingolfin the Ice-Walker and Fingon the Valiant had each gone crashing into Morgoth’s darkness and been destroyed there.
Aiya eldalië ar atanatári utúlie'n aurë!
Turgon the Hidden King was dead, who had sent so many desperate messengers to Círdan over the years, each sailing into the West into oblivion, desperate or loyal enough to throw their lives away against the great indifference of the Shining Ones that were not Ulmo.
Eärendil, who Círdan had loved, and taught, had sailed away in the ship they had built together, a desperate hope hurled into that same impossibility. He never been seen again, and his wife Elwing had thrown herself into the sea. His small children had been stolen, his home burned.
Help had come from the West at last: but not in time for Beleriand.
-
By the Third Age, it was hardly a surprise that the next ships to come from the West were also late. Eregion had already fallen, and, in a great long welter of blood and mud and fire, in the long-fought Dagorlad, the dream of the Eldar in Middle Earth had died also. Bright Noldor in gilded armor had died there, and Sindar lords with Thingol’s name still on their lips, and Silvan elves countless as stars, dying as swiftly as moths; and Gil-gilad, who had brought them together and held them. Elendil had fallen, the last sprig of Elros’s line yet untainted, saved from the wreckage like the sun and the moon themselves had been saved from the Trees.
Yet now the Valar sent aid, in the shape of Men, from the West where Men themselves could never go.
Those who tried had already been drowned and damned for it. Centuries had had to pass before the traces of their ruin ceased to wash ashore regularly at the Havens, and even then, whenever there was a great storm, Ossë heaved and rolled and stirred pieces of that ruined world up from the deep to cast them upon the sand. Flotsam and jetsam, scarcely recognisable as what they had once been: a child’s bracelet. A perfect skull, overgrown with sea-shelled life. Innumerable broken pieces of bright blue glassware, the kind they had so loved in Andustar, worn soft at the edges but still chased here and there in gold script: Aiya Eärendil…
Sometimes there were things that seemed to have come from an older land drowned and lost. Pink pearls like the ones they had dived for in the waters around Balar. Ruined hunks of white stone, their carving polished almost away, that might have come from any of the great ruined towers of the Noldor cities. A battered sword, still sheathed, rotten with rust, that might have hung from the belt of a Sindar prince.
And now, from the West, came the strangers. One in white, sharp-eyed and straight-backed.
Two in blue, and with them an Elf as fair as the morning, golden as the Vanyar on the great swan-ships had been two Ages past.
Third, a man in brown who vanished into the undergrowth of Middle Earth’s forests beyond the ken of Círdan’s trackers.
Finally, a man in grey stepped off a white ship onto the grey flags of Mithlond Harbour, and looked around him at the quiet quays and deserted loggias of Gil-galad’s faded city, at its echoing towers, and smiled.
-
His was only the fourth ship ever to arrive in Mithlond from the West; quiet, deserted Mithlond, which rang now only with sea-song. It had been full of bright voices in the days when Lindon had been living. When Gil-gilad had ruled wisely in Forlindon, and boats had passed up and down the River Lune as frequently as gulls flew overhead.
These new ships from the West had come too late for Gil-gilad. Too late for Lindon. Too late for strange and curious Eregion, where for a brief time the doors of Ost-in-Edhil had been open to Noldor and Sindar alike, working together with less than perfect ease, but with great purpose; open to Dwarves and to Men as well, a new thing in an old land among the holly-trees. Too late for Celebrimbor, tortured and ruined and still triumphant.
The man in grey was leaning on a staff, his hands knotted with age. His eyes were the clear colour of the morning sky. His hair was grey, and so was his beard, which was almost as long as Círdan’s own, if not as well-tended. His gown was salt-stained and ragged-edged.
“And you are?” asked Círdan, who had good reason to doubt strangers who came in glory.
“I am the Grey Messenger,” said the man, and although his voice had the sound of age in it, there was a resonance beyond that, like the faint crystal sound of turning stars in the firmament above.
“And what message do you bring?”
The Grey Messenger regarded him from under thick white brows. “For you? Lord Círdan, the only message I hold for you is one you have ever heard; the charge laid upon you by the Lord of the Waters long ago, which is yours yet.”
-
Upstairs, in a room that had been a withdrawing-chamber in the days of Gil-galad’s court, they sat under a faded ceiling covered in painted stars and peeling silver-gilt, and Círdan studied this man who was no Man.
For four Ages of the world, he had cleaved to the living, breathing, changing land he had been born in, so long ago, to the music of water on stone. He might long for the far shore, but he could not sail until his work was done. Yet the ships that might pass beyond the world were not the only trust that had been given him.
They had not perceived the ring he wore, the first four strangers from the west. The first had been too sleek, too full of his own importance. The two in sea-blue had been bright and clever, but they had not seen it, either. The one in brown had been kindly, but it had been clear that he was not the one Círdan was waiting for.
This fifth stranger, however, said nothing, but his eyes snagged often on the red stone.
“Grey,” Círdan said, thoughtfully. “We have often worn the Mourning Lady’s colour in these lands, if we call on her less often than on Elbereth Gilthoniel.”
“Still she hears,” said the Messenger who wore her livery.
“Have you come to weep with us? You are rather late, if so.”
“I have come,” said the Messenger, “to help where I can. And to offer kindness where I might.”
“Help,” said Círdan. “A better word than aid, I think. And kindness a better word than salvation, or holy war, or the clean-up crew. Yet you seem to have mislaid your shining sword, your bright sails, and your sounding horns?”
The Messenger looked at his own ragged robe and at the gnarled staff propped beside his chair, and drew himself up a little. “One tries one’s best, Lord of the Havens.”
-
This last arrival from the West was in no great hurry to leave at once, as all his precursors had done, and showed instead a great willingness to sit in faded rooms overlooking the sea, drinking linden tea and eating biscuits. He drew Círdan out into conversation about Middle-Earth in its new Third Age, and listened silently to the bloody birth pangs of its beginning with eyes full of ancient kindness and sorrow.
He watched Círdan when he was working, his head tilted to the side. “A master-work,” he said, of the newest white ship, its spine and ribs taking shape like the monstrous skeleton of a great fish from the time of the Lamps. “They will sing of the work of your hands in Eldamar as long as Arda endures.”
They watched the evening star rise together in the evening. “Aiya Eärendil elenion ancalima,” said the Grey Messenger reverently, and fixed his eyes on it as though he could make out more than its distant cold light.
Círdan thought of a young boy with tousled hair like straw, running across the muddy silt-sand at the mouth of the Sirion and leaving tracks not unlike a bird’s; of a young man with clever hands, learning the craft of ship-building from him. A brave man, sailing into the West never to return, as others had done before him in vain. As so very many would after him, because of him.
“Elrond has no desire to take up the crown of the Noldor,” he told the Grey One when questioned. “He has not come to Mithlond since the king died. He will not come again until the end.”
“Perhaps he only needs the right encouragement,” said the Messenger, and looked around the silent city, with its muffled bells that had once rung in the breeze, its empty docks and its quiet halls, as though imagining them alive again.
As though the great ships from Númenor might arrive again on the horizon with their holds full of strange things and strange stories! As though Aldarion might once more swing down from the deck of one, laughing, the image of Eärendil with his tousled blond head and his bright blue eyes, bellowing already for Gil-galad. As though Gil-galad himself still held court in Lindon’s empty halls, filled again with life and music; as though he would ever again put aside his work for this newest and youngest of cousins, and come sweeping down the halls in his robes of state to greet him, his eyes shining and his dark hair a floating banner under his silver crown and Elrond on his heels…
“Elrond has burdens enough. Wisdom enough, too. Kingship brought little joy to the kings of his line, since before the sun’s first rising, and less still to the line of his brother, who were given to the sea.”
“It not joy I am speaking of, but need; for guidance and for wisdom, in war and in dark times.”
“And I am telling you: the Eldar of Middle-Earth have no need any longer for kings. I have sent more of my people West since Gil-galad fell than in half an Age before he died; and he has not been dead so very long. Our time here is coming to an end, it seems to me, and my charge as well.”
“And Finarfin’s daughter?”
“If you look for a queen in Artanís Nerwen,” said Círdan, “you will find one.”
One thick brow rose. “That sounds like a warning.”
-
Before the Dagorlad was won, Gil-galad had seemed to know something of how it would end. He had taken Vilya from his finger and given it to Elrond, and Narya he had given to Círdan. The signet of the line of Fingolfin the Ice-Walker, of the High Kings of the Noldor, he might have given to Elrond also, but as his fingers lingered regretfully over it, Elrond had stayed him with a glance. That ring had still been on Gil-galad’s hand when Sauron reached for him with his burning one, and with him, perhaps, had ended the Doom of the Noldor’s high kings.
Healing what was hurt; preserving what was left; remembering what was gone. Those had been Gil-galad’s best qualities as king in the long peace of the Second Age, and the ring Celebrimbor had made for him had been meant to refract them, the way a diamond caught and held light. That was Elrond’s inheritance.
The Elven warrior-king Nienna’s servant sought was already dead, and the Third Age would make no more.
-
“That is a fine ring you wear, my friend.”
It had taken the stranger many weeks to speak of it. Círdan turned his hand over to regard Narya as though for the first time. Such gem-work did not kindle his blood. He bore it only for Gil-galad, who he had loved as his own son, though he had known better than to give his heart to any of that line. He had seen them all come from the West, and he had seen them all die. All but Eärendil, who had been translated beyond the world, and who had deserved a warmer honour.
Narya was always warm. It glowered in its golden setting, a clot of blood in a slice of sunlight.
“It was never meant for my hand,” he said. “I believe Celebrimbor meant to wear it himself. It may have been in Fëanor that fire burned most fiercely, and in Fëanor’s voice that the power to move others to action was strongest, but those gifts lingered to the end in his line; although fire ceased to be a friend to them long before.”
The Messenger’s brows rose in respect, and there was none of the usual flinching at the name. “The power of Fëanor is no gift to wield lightly.”
“Celebrimbor was many things,” said Círdan, “and not all of them were wisely chosen. Yet he meant the Ring of Fire to be something far subtler than Fëanor Finwë’s son ever was. Narya will not kindle a sudden flame in others too swiftly, nor burn them as quickly to ashes; it is a coal, burning not brightly but long, made to warm hearts and not to scald them.”
The Grey One bend his head. “I regret I am too late to know its maker,” he said. “To know those already lost. Still I come in good time, I fear, to face again the shadow that was his doom as it gathers itself in might once more.”
Círdan had known it when the ships from the West began to arrive, though they came so quietly, with none of Eonwë’s trumpets. He had known even as he had seen Isildur turn over the ring of Sauron in his bloody fingers.
Oh, Thingol; dear his lord, whose silver blood from before the coming of the sun still ran in the mortal veins of fallen Númenor’s children. Who had died for peerless and perilous Noldor gem-work, when he might have instead lived all the Ages of the World with Melian beside him. That Doom, it seemed, was not yet done.
Three times he had seen an Age die, and yet his own work was not ended, and neither was the loss.
“How long do we have?”
The Grey Messenger spread his hands. “I cannot say. It is only a shadow and a whisper even yet, even in the sight and mind of those whose power and wisdom far exceeds my own. But shadows grow, and whispers swell. As you know, my friend.”
He had known in his heart when he had set eyes on the Grey Stranger and seen that strange knotting of mortal and immortal in him. He had seen Nienna’s servant, come in humbleness rather than glory, to help and to weep together. He had watched him delight in his first biscuit, and he had known what to do when the shadow came again.
He slid Narya from his finger and watched surprise wash like morning light over the Messenger’s face.
“It was made to be wielded by a counsellor,” Círdan warned. “Not a king. Never a king! Celebrimbor knew better than that. It was intended for guidance and for wisdom - in war, and in dark times.”
The Grey One did not reach for it, though one hand had risen from his lap, age-spotted and painfully Mannish, and hovered in the air. “I am not of the Eldar,” he said. “It was not meant for me.”
“I have seen kings and lords enough rise and fall to know that the right to an inherited Doom is no recommendation. I have seen every arrival from the West since Fëanor, who came blazing and ended in darkness; and in Narya, you see certain of his gifts as they might have been. It belongs, I think, to the hope from the West that he should have been; to one who might use it to bring light to the darkness of this land where the Valar themselves will not come.”
“Cannot come,” said Nienna’s servant, and took the flower of so much Noldor genius and pain from Círdan, who had never wanted it. “They do what they can, Lord of the Havens. As do we all.”
-
At the end of the Third Age, at the dawn of another, no more ships came West. One of Círdan's ships was going thither, almost the last to come from his hands: destined for the shores where the green sea played with scattered jewels on white sand, where the dead walked again, where there was an end to dying and to sickness.
Gandalf the White in his shining robes came riding into faded Mithlond, a blaze of brilliance on a fine white horse, as beautiful a steed as any Fëanor’s folk had brought over the sea. His beard was combed into a smooth silver fall, and a jewelled clasp held his spotless cloak closed. On his hand shone a ring red as blood, pulsing with warmth. It had for almost an Age helped him kindle hope in the places where it had all but died; it had helped him speak to great lords and kings and to the smallest of folk at the same time, and to move their hearts. And with them, the world had moved.
The shadow was gone, the ancient poison leached from the breast of Middle Earth. Not in time for any of the kingdoms Círdan had known, for any of the great men and women of the Eldar and the Edain he had loved, save the very last.
Still it was gone.
The last of the Ice-Walkers, Artanís Nerwen, came to Mithlond in white also, her hair like singing gold and silver in the sunshine and lovelier than any crown might have been. On her hand was a pale stone, cold and clear as Eärendil in the heavens.
And Elrond, sad and joyful at the same time, had come to Lindon again at last, where he had once been young, and happy, and served at Gil-galad’s side. He had always had one foot in the world of Men and one in the world of Elves. He had made the choice itself long ago, of course, but it was only now that he made the irrevocable journey from the familiar to the strange. On his hand the blue jewel was the colour of the sky just as the sun left it.
“My lord Círdan,” said Gandalf, who Círdan had been the first to call Mithrandir. He was Grey no longer, and his smile was like the dawn. “Lord of the Havens, I do believe your long charge is nearly over. We are almost the last, and soon you may take up again that journey that you began before the sun first rose, and which you stayed only for Elwë’s sake, and then at Lord Ulmo’s bidding. You have but tarried on this shore a while.”
“Too long,” Artanís said, turning her face to the horizon, and the light shone through her clear eyes and was caught there. “Too long; but now we sail at last for home.”
“‘Home’,” said Elrond, but he smiled.
“We are going to our rest,” said Gandalf, clad in Manwë’s colours from head to toe, eyes still Nienna’s grey. “There will be no more death, nor sorrow; not for you. Utúlie'n aurë! You have come at last to the end of loss.”