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The hall was not grand to her eyes, she who had seen the bright splendor of Tirion and Gondolin’s pale majesty. Still, after long nights spent sleeping upon the damp loam of the forest floor, even this low, dingy building seemed homely enough.
Its people had gathered in the courtyard before it, drawn by the clatter of her horse’s hooves and the shrill of her hunting horn. Pale, skinny Avari, blinking at her in silence and suspicion. Some had daggers at their belts and one man bore a sword but not a one of them carried themselves as a warrior.
“What is this place called?” she asked them.
The man with the sword answered her, “Nan Elmoth, Lady.” He was stern of voice, his head held proudly, though he did not meet her eyes. Many dark elves dreaded the light of Aman that burned there near as much as they feared Morgoth’s creatures.
“Are you lord here?” She dismounted with easy grace. Even afoot she was taller than he and she stood close enough that he had no choice but to look up at her.
“Yes, Lady. I am Eöl, kinsman of King Thingol.” He stepped back, quickly, and bowed.
Did he think invoking Elwë would warn her off? Quite the contrary. She grinned. “I am Aredhel Ar-Feiniel, daughter of High King Fingolfin, and I fear I must impose upon your hospitality. I have traveled a long and dangerous road to reach you and I find myself in need of succor.”
“We are honoured by your presence, Lady. Such comforts as my halls can provide are at your disposal,” he said. “Though I fear they will seem very little to one of your high lineage.” The words were spoken fairly but his face was cold and still he would not look at her.
She had been long in the forest without company and so it was, perhaps, understandable if she let her eyes stray down, to roam over his body as she had already explored his woods. He wore black mail that shone oddly in the twilight - Cousin Curufin would no doubt be fascinated but Aredhel herself was more concerned with the hard muscle that lay beneath. The dark lines of tattoos twined down his neck to vanish beneath the collar of his tunic - the Avari were so barbarous in some ways - and she wondered how far down they went and what they tasted of. Without that suspicious scowl, with his eyes glazed and that grim mouth gone slack, she thought he would look well indeed. “You wrong yourself, my lord,” she said. “What I see pleases me greatly.”
Eöl flushed, pink right to the tips of his long ears. He was pale, even for one of his people, and she thought she rather liked it; Bruises would show just as starkly as his blush.
Aredhel smiled wider to display all her fine, white teeth. “I think I shall enjoy my stay.”
***
“How long will you be gone?” Idril had asked before Aredhel set out, dabbling her bare feet in the courtyard fountain.
“No more than a few decades, I expect.” She dropped her saddlebags and sat down cross legged beside her niece. “I only want to stretch my legs. Visit Fingon. Break Celegorm’s nose again.”
“And get away from Father.” Idril kicked and bright jewels of water splattered the stone lip and both their skirts.
Aredhel shrugged. “He’s gotten so stuffy lately.”
“Well he’s king. Kings have to be stuffy.”
“Doubtful. What’s the point of having power if one doesn't enjoy the wielding of it? What good is a sword kept in its sheath? If I were queen of my own kingdom-” Aredhel flopped back so that her booted feet were in the water and her head cushioned by her saddlebags. “Now that is a thought. Perhaps I shall do more good out there than reminding our cousins of their place.”
“I’ve always admired your spirit, Aunt. You will be careful?”
“As careful as I ever am.” Aredhel sat up again to plant a farewell kiss upon Idril’s forehead. “Though I may be gone much longer than I had planned.”
***
Dinner was a torment. The food was adequate though too heavy on mushrooms for her tastes - she would have to hunt upon the morrow. The wine was unpleasantly earthy and likely also made from fungus but she drank it anyway, watching her host over the rim of her cup. He scarcely ate, watching her sidelong with those dark, dark eyes.
She made sure to only eat from the dishes that he had picked at, to refill her glass from the same flagon as he. She did not think he would be so ungracious as to attempt to drug or poison her but they were far from civilization and she had promised Idril she would be careful.
Caution did not come naturally though, not with her kingdom sat beside her close enough to touch. More than a kingdom - already she felt that there was more to Nan Elmoth, more to her host, than something to be ruled.
When he did not think she was looking Eöl bit nervously at his lower lip, the marks of his teeth a shocking blot of colour against the pallor of his face. She wanted, very badly, to put aside her wariness and kiss them away. Not yet, she told herself. Not until you are sure.
“You must be lonely here, so far from civilization,” she said, using the Quenya word; she was not sure that the Sindar had an equivalent.
“I like the quiet. I like my own council.”
“No children though? No wife to see to your needs?”
“My needs are few, Lady. I have my work and that suffices.” He still would not look into her eyes. She found the shyness rather charming.
“I suppose the king must visit often though? You are his kinsman after all.” She did not care for the cunning, sniping rhetoric of Gondolin’s court but her experiences there had left her more than a match for an Avari savage with no one but squirrels for company.
“Of course.” There was a hesitation there. A lie. “I have just finished a piece for him, actually. His people will be by to collect it within the week.”
“Then perhaps I shall stay until then. I’ve never before had the opportunity to send him my regards.”
“I...am not sure that that would be wise.”
“Would I be imposing? I should hate to take advantage.” Years ago when they had ridden in Oromë’s train, she and Celegorm had practiced their smiles in the mirror to ensure that they were suitably wolfish. Those youthful efforts were rewarded now when he flinched and looked down at the table, worrying at his lip again.
“Could it ever be said that the Noldor are an imposition?” he asked his plate. “Could I ever forbid a woman such as yourself what she desired?”
Ah but he was charming, that cool, smooth voice weaving seduction about every syllable. “You could try,” she said sweetly. Beneath the table she stretched out with one long leg to brush her toe against his knee. “Is there dessert?”
Disappointingly there was. The servants brought out bowls of berries, still beaded with dew, and honey harvested from the sleepy, black bees they kept in the hall’s overgrown orchard.
Eöl sat stone faced, even as she licked purple juice from her lips and sucked her sticky fingers clean, even as her foot slid higher, to brush the inside of his thigh, even as she lent across the table to speak into his ear. It were pierced with silver hoops in the manner of the dwarves. Barbaric but she couldn’t help wondering what it would feel like to take them between her teeth and tug. “You are a most accommodating host,” she told him, her breath stirring the loose tendrils of hair that had worked free of his braid. “Even to one come here unannounced and without gifts. The honour of my house demands that I ask; what would you have of me?”
“Peace, Lady. Peace is all I desire.”
“Aredhel. Please. And peace is easily granted.” She smiled more gently and, hesitant, he smiled back. It suited him better than his frowns, better than any other ornament. “Your lands, your people, all shall be safe.”
“You are gracious, La- Aredhel.”
“It sounds well upon your tongue.” Her foot slid even higher.
He rose abruptly. “Nan Elmoth has little to offer in the way of entertainments. Usually we retire early. If you have need of anything, Daeben will see to it.”
And she had thought he would play hard to get. “Do not fear, Eöl.” She rolled the name across her tongue as though it were another berry, sharp and sweet. “I am well able to entertain myself.”
***
As a girl Aredhel had not cared for tales of romance. She liked stories of the Outer Lands, as grim and gory as she could get, and, when adults refused to indulge them, she and Fingon would sneak into the palace library to steal a taste of horror.
Thingol and Melian’s story she knew well for he had been Grandfather's friend and she was beloved of Vána and Estë. And because it was one of those few stories of the Journey that adults were willing to tell. It had ended happily, after all. The Valar told them so.
They had not understood love then - Aredhel, who had never been able to sit still for more than ten minutes at a stretch, could think of nothing more boring than a hundred years of staring. Instead they made a game of it, a giggling ‘Melian’ stalking friends and cousins through the woods, once glance enough to freeze them in their tracks.
That had been a long time ago. She was a woman now and knew something of desire. Of the joy of a silence shared, a voice that could set her heart racing with just one word, a profile so finely shaped that she could spend an hour tracing it with her eyes. Of love as sharp and sudden as an arrow to the heart.
These were Melian’s woods and this was Thingol’s kinsman. Surely it was fate.
***
She had thought to wait until she was certain but her blood was up and ever had instinct guided her more surely than reason. Instead she paced the guest chambers only until the forest’s perpetual twilight had given way to true night and she was sure the servants were all abed.
The halls were not laid out as were the lord’s manses in Gondolin but she wandered the corridors only a little while before picking up his trail. She did not have Huan’s nose, or Celegorm’s for that matter, but she thought she could smell him in the air; hot metal, ash and honey. The bedroom door stood unbarred in invitation.
He was awake. She was used to hunting at night, shooting for the glimmer of stars reflected in her prey’s eyes, and in the darkness of his chamber she saw that same fearful light. She picked her way to the bed, movements slow and sure to keep her quarry from startling.
The bed frame creaked in protest as she climbed atop it but Eöl made no sound when she pulled back the covers and mounted him. He was burly for an Avari, arms corded with muscle from long hours in the forge. She though, she had the lean strength of a huntress and the light of the Trees burning within her. It took little effort to press him down into the mattress and, when his hands came up to clutch at her sides, to pin his wrists above his head.
She would not take a man who was wholly unwilling but a quick fumble between his legs told her what he wanted. No bedgames, no foreplay; she worked his cock with quick, rough strokes until he was hard enough to mount.
That set him to struggling again, straining against the grip of her hands and bucking beneath her, still silent but for the harsh rasp of his breath. She rode it out - she could wrestle Celegorm to a standstill and it was not her cousin that lay beneath her, gasping helplessly in her ear.
Eventually his strength came to its limits and he subsided, trembling with exertion or with need. She thought the latter for his body was still eager for her. Perhaps it was common to the Avari, not knowing how to admit what they wanted.
“All's well, all's well,” she said, gentle as she would be with a skittish horse. “You don’t have to pretend for me.” Not for the first time she wished for a light so that she might see him, flushed and gasping and disheveled, but she would not stop to fetch a candle. There would be other opportunities though, so many others, if things went as she willed.
She rode him slowly, coaxing his mouth open beneath her own. He was not the most considerate lover but she was so aroused she needed very little from him to find her release - the sweetness of his mouth, his body straining beneath hers, the warmth of him filling her - it was enough, more than enough.
Perhaps she was his first. There were many ways to take pleasure from another without invoking the bonds of marriage but the Avari were, after all, less civilized and perhaps they were unaware of such things. He would learn from her in time. They would learn from each other.
His release came after she had already found her satisfaction and so the first thing she felt, as the bond between them woke, was the echo of his pleasure. That was me, she thought, delighted. I did that to him. Through his eyes she saw herself, a fair white flame burning against the darkness of the room, searing back the shadows.
Reaching out, still lying atop him, holding him inside her, she pressed deeper into his mind. It felt so easy, so natural, like slipping into the pool that she had found at the forest’s heart. Cold and dark and clear it was, but all in turmoil, choppy with waves and strange things stirring in the depths.
She could not tell what was causing his distress. “Peace,” she said. “Peace, Husband.” Husband. She laughed at that, aloud in the dark room, and standing in the chill pool that was him.
Chill indeed. Beneath her his body had gone entirely still and within the pool grew colder, ice spreading across the surface. Filigrees of delicate frost crawled up her- legs? Did she have legs in this place? She decided that she did. Long, strong legs that had carried her across the Helcaraxë and would take no harm from hoarfrost. Her will was great and her spirit bright within her and the ice went dripping and then steaming from her skin. She turned her focus to the rest of the pool, the rest of him , and the ice was gone as though it had never been, the water still and clear once more.
Eöl - her husband - was still unmoving when she drew back into the world but his features had smoothed out, the fear and hurt gone from his face. He lay as one asleep. She kissed him upon the forehead and then drew his body close and slept herself.
***
Nan Elmoth was beautiful, even more pleasing to her than Oromë’s fair green forests back in Valinor. The great black trees were plush with velvet moss and frills of lacy fungus hung from every branch. Luminescent lichens shone in the twilight as though Varda herself had scattered tiny stars to light her way.
Aredhel did not love it only for its beauty though. She loved the way the paths twisted and turned back on themselves, shifting whenever she looked away - no chance of her growing bored of exploration! She loved the way her white raiment and bright spirit blazed against the trees, a flame that drew the things that stalked and chittered in the dark to her and to their deaths upon her blade.
Most of all she loved the thought that, back at their halls, her husband lay waiting. She had slipped from their bed while he was still asleep, touching lightly at his dreams to ensure that they were peaceful. The pool was still and she sent warm thoughts twisting through it, smiling when he sighed. It should have been alarming, how deeply she cared for this man that had been unknown to her less than a day before, but it felt utterly natural. Love was a strange and wondrous thing.
For love she would protect these lands. Dark things there were aplenty in Nan Elmoth and now that she was Lady here it fell to her to drive them off. She would do that duty well. She had hunted wolves and mountain lions and the great bears that dwelt upon the Ice. She had killed more orcs than she could count and more of her kin than she cared to.
The tracks she followed now she did not recognize - more than anything they were like those of some great bird. Heavier though than any bird she had ever seen for the footprints were pressed so deeply into the mud she could follow them ahorse, despite the poor light.
Fresh dung upon the trail told her that she hunted a carnivore and that it was very close. Close enough that she dismounted and left her horse tethered to a thicket so that it might break and run if necessary. Her mare, Rochallor’s get, was as fearless as her rider but less hardy and Aredhel would risk no harm to the one companion that had stayed true upon her journey from Gondolin.
Beside the pool of Gladuial, she ran her quarry to ground. Scaled and brightly feathered with ugly, stunted forelimbs, she found it bending awkwardly to dip its muzzle into the water. It drank like a bird, tipping its head back for every swallow, and she wondered what sorcery had made such a clumsy, implausible creature possible.
Despite its ungainliness, its hind legs were thick and muscled and every one of the teeth in its massive, reptilian head was as long as her forearm. Downwind as she was, she smelt the charnel house stink of it and pressed her sleeve to keep from gagging.
All of a sudden the forest stilled. The leaves stopped in their rustling, the ripples died upon the surface of the pool, and all the tiny things that crept and scuttled through the undergrowth halted for a moment. Nothing, she realised, as the beast’s nostrils twitched and flared, now kept her scent from it. The great head turned towards her slowly, the pupils of its yellow eyes constricting, water drooling from its jaws.
She cursed the wind. One person could not face such a creature alone; she needed dogs, nets, some idea of how it killed and how it died. What she had was a boar spear, no common sense to speak of, and the certainty all things died much the same. That would have to be enough.
It would try to bite first, she guessed, for those teeth could not just be for show, or it would try to run her down. She set her spear and set her feet, the spear’s butt and the heels of her boots digging deep into the loam.
One step towards her and then another. The waters in the pool trembled with its every impact.
A third step. The trees shuddered, sending dark leaves raining down upon them both.
It was gaining speed. Now it was closer she realised just how huge it was, near as great as Glaurung had been when her brother peppered him with arrows and sent him squalling back to his master. It always had galled her that she missed that fight. She raised her chin and tightened her grip, her lips peeling back to show it her own teeth.
A moment, just one, to wonder whether she had miscalculated and then it was upon her and it was far too late.
It bit down as she had predicted, driving itself onto her spear. The point of it pierced the back of creature’s throat, the crosspiece catching the full, thundering weight of the charge. The shaft jolted in her hands, the stout ash bending like a willow switch in her grip.
The spear splintered, snapped, and the beast bore down. But she was Aredhel Ar-Feiniel, princess of the House of Finwë. She was not her valiant brother but this ill-favoured creature was not a dragon and it would not be her death.
She threw herself into a backwards roll, moving with all the speed that could be expected of an Eldar princess, if somewhat less grace. Its teeth had caught her, tearing her sleeve and the skin beneath but she felt no pain from it. Dark earth smeared her garments and dead leaves tangled in her hair. She paid it all no mind. Cool mud oozed between her fingers and its blood was hot upon her face, upon her lips.
The broken haft of her spear was still in reach and she snached it up, drawing her hunting knife with her other hand.
Four feet of ash piercing its palette was apparently not enough to deter her quarry. It shook its head, dark blood splattering the dirt, and turned to face her again, fat tail scything through the undergrowth.
For all its head was larger than her whole body, it was not bright enough to change tactics. It charged again and this time she ran to meet it, laughing.
At the last moment, as it plunged its head forwards to bite, she drove her heels into the dirt, skidding to a halt so that its teeth closed where she would have been.
She leapt, kicking off hard against the sodden ground, and landed atop its head as it drew back. She stabbed down with both hands. Her knife cut but did not bite, skittering off the orbital bone. The jagged piece of wood though, that went deep. She felt - she heard - the eyeball burst and clear, sticky fluid splattered over her hand. Creatures as large as this died slowly and so she ran on, hopping down from its back and not halting until half the width of the clearing lay between them.
She watched its spasms slow and still, dancing from one foot to the other, skipping about the corpse. Her laughter echoed across the water for though she did not delight in death, there was glory in a victory earned, a battle well fought.
Her joy was contagious. Far away she felt her husband wake to it, sweat soaked, pulse fluttering. She felt confusion and fear, blunted yet by the care that she had taken the previous night. Abruptly she felt guilty. After the night that they had shared she should not have left him to wake alone. He must be wondering where she was, worried for her safety.
She sent warm feelings of reassurance through their bond and dressed her kill as quickly as she could. Far too large to carry with her but she could take the hide, the teeth, those monstrous claws. A haunch, perhaps, for though predators were rarely good to eat, the servants might know something they could do with it. Her horse was well used to the scent of blood and did not shy as she tied it all behind the saddle.
The image of him, still in their bed, waiting for her, swam before her eyes as she kicked her mare into the fasted trot she dared within these pathless woods.
The hall was very still when she clattered into the small courtyard but it seemed like that was always the case. She threw her horse’s reins to the first servant she came across and sprinted into the hall, not even pausing to brush her down or wash the blood of the hunt from off her hands.
The room was much as she had left it and her husband much as she had left him. He had not yet dressed but had the blankets wrapped about his waist in a charmingly inadequate attempt to preserve his modesty. She might have appreciated it more but there was a knife in his hand and in his heart was fear and anger and an awful twisting sickness. “What did you do?” he asked, voice soft with horror, and for a moment she did not know what he meant.
Of course. The blood. “It’s not mine,” she told him gently, reaching out with her hands and with her spirit to calm him, making him relax his desperate grip upon the blade. “Or very little of it is. I’m safe. All is well.”
“You married me,” he said hoarsely. So much meaning in those three small words.
“I did. You are fair, Eöl, fairer than you know and of a noble line. A worthy consort for a princess of the Noldor, no?”
He stared at her with those unreadable eyes and offered no reply. He still held the knife and, worried he might injure himself, she stepped forwards and caught his wrists.
“Don’t,” she said gently. “Put it down.” There was the pool and she reached out to trail her hand through its waters-
“Wait,” he said. He was so strange, so easily distressed, but still desperately appealing for all his eyes were wide and staring as a frightened deer. “Whatever you want. I will. You don’t need to- to-”
The knife hit the floor with a dull clatter and when she drew him into her arms he went easily. A hand beneath his chin, a moment’s hesitancy and he was kissing her, tentative but oh so sweet. She tugged the sheet from his grip and let it pool upon the floor around them.
Her hands left reddish smears upon his cheek, his hipbone, but she did not care and nor did he.
Surely that was love.