Erestor’s mission to find survivors was half-hearted. Although he would have been overjoyed to find someone alive in the rubble of the once glorious city, he was unsure of how he would get them back to the secret tunnels. Already he had dodged numerous orc hoards and had even slipped by Sauron on his way across the lesser marketplace. He knew that the oncoming dusk would aid him by allowing him to slide through shadows of a place he was familiar with, but night meant better cover for the orcs.
His secondary goal was to reach the House of the Golden Flower. If orcs had not yet pillaged the estate, there was a chance that Erestor would be able to open the doors of the stables and let the animals out. He had considered bringing Thrangorn along in case there were horses, but horses would get them only so far and cause far too much commotion for them not to be seen. Horses running wild, however, stood a chance of survival. Only some had been saddled for the battle that took place over the last few days, and those had perished in the fighting.
The ground was muddy, but showed no signs of orc tracks. Still, he entered cautiously. As expected, Erestor found several stalls of wide-eyed, agitated creatures. There were horses, as well as sheep, and a few goats. The cats had already run off, and the hounds had likely stayed by their masters, either dying by their sides or fleeing from the city. Erestor set to opening the pens quickly and driving the animals out. Freely they trotted and leaped away, and whether they survived in the surrounding woods or not Erestor would never know.
Once he had completed this task, Erestor made his way as swiftly as he could to the grand house. The estate and grounds had been shared by Glorfindel and Tuor after the building was completed. Erestor paused wistfully at the entrance before pulling the ajar doors fully open and letting himself in. White marble columns with hints of gold and ivory rose up from polished floors. The banners of the Golden Flower and the White Wing hung down from the vaulted ceiling, fringe just shy of brushing the floor. A box of arrows had been spilt down the steps of the otherwise pristine foyer, many of their white feathers crushed under the trampling of servants and lords alike as they raced out of the house. It was amazing to see that the structure had not been touched – no burns, no cracks in the bricks, not even blood on the walkway leading up to the door. Still, the silence was eerie.
Knowing exactly where he wanted to go, Erestor walked swiftly around the center stairwell and pushed open the doors that led to Glorfindel’s suite. Everything in the upper levels was utilized by the House of the Wing, while Glorfindel, despite having spent the money and used his land to build the estate, lived in meager accommodations on the first floor. In fact, the rooms he used were the ones that had originally been planned as servant quarters.
Erestor paused when he reached the doorway of the bedroom. The bed seemed so small, and in fact, it was built shorter than an average bed for an elf was. From counting the number of blocks on the quilt, the mattress spanned less than two meters. It was, however, wider than it was long.
Erestor knelt down beside the bed, and leaned down so that he could see beneath it. A box was positioned on the floor almost at the center. Stretching his arm out, his fingers touched the corner of the box. He strained, his shoulder rubbing against the bed frame as he managed to get his thumbnail under the lid and yanked it a little closer. His fingers rubbed against the top of the box, unable to grasp it.
Now down on his stomach, Erestor strained get to the box. “How did you...” he muttered as he tried again. The box slid further away when he grabbed for it. Erestor stood up, and looked down at the bed. The riddle read, he smiled sadly and then lifted the mattress up. The box was exposed through the slats of the frame, and Erestor picked up while holding up the mattress with his shoulder.
He knocked the top of the box off haphazardly, revealing the contents. Rifling through them, he thought he knew what he was looking for – a green stone, hanging from a chain, a family heirloom that was not there. Disappointment was temporary, for something else caught his eye. A jewel, looking as if it contained fire within, rolled out from under a stack of letters and papers that were aged with time. Erestor picked it up, recognizing it immediately from another place and time. “How did you get here?” he wondered, his voice thick with emotion. He stepped back with the box and let the mattress fall back into place so that he could sit down on it.
There were numerous other small items in the box, among them a raggedy doll. It smelled of pine and earth, and was coming apart at the seams. Erestor picked her up from the miscellany and held her in his hand. “I wonder where you came from.” He set the doll aside and began to examine the rest of the contents more closely. Some of the items were as confounding as the doll; others were items that Erestor knew well. In the bottom of the box was a peculiar note, scribbled on a scrap of paper. It was a very odd thing, a crudely sketched out family tree, which Erestor recognized as being in his own hand. When he turned it over, he saw that it was written on the back of a piece of colorful paper used to wrap gifts for Tarnin Austa, when such an event still occurred on that holiday. He brushed the tears from his eyes as he recalled the moment...
“Good evening, Lord Erestor.”
“Good evening!” Erestor had just sat down at one of the long tables. They were crude, and had benches alongside them instead of chairs, but they were cozy and welcome after an evening of dancing. The city was not yet built completely, with only two finished gates surrounding the realm. Nonetheless, it was not a night to worry about the lack of plumbing or the lack of housing or the lack of security, but instead a time for relaxation. A server came to the table, and Erestor lifted an empty wooden goblet to be filled. The blond who had sat down opposite him shook his head and lifted up his open palm when the server offered wine to him as well. As they were left alone, Erestor lifted his goblet up. “Cheers!”
“Cheers.” The blond waited for Erestor to set his drink back down before he said, “You do not remember me, do you.”
Erestor tried to tame his smirk, but failed miserably. “I fear you are correct, friend. I am certain I have seen you about, and—“
“Lord Ecthelion introduced us when you arrived.”
“And... you work in his house,” guessed Erestor.
The blond shook his head.
“You... you happen to be related?”
There was a wide grin, and the blond twirled a lock of his hair.
“Alright, that must not be it. I must apologize; I have a terrible memory for names.”
“Glorfindel.”
“Oh! Yes... oh, and you were trying to give me a hint as to your name.”
Glorfindel smiled brightly. “Now that you know, it will be hard for you to forget. So few have so accurate a namesake as I.” For emphasis, he fluffed out the waves of gold that flowed over his shoulder.
“How true. And might I be so bold as to ask, for it is on my mind now as it was when we first met, are you of Vanyarin heritage?”
“It was what my mother claimed.” The smile faded, and he fell momentarily silent as a minstrel with all the flair and folly of a jester skipped up to their table and held out a brightly wrapped cracker to the pair.
“With compliments from the King,” he announced, placing the bright red object onto the table. The paper was shiny, made glossy from a special paint that coated each one. The minstrel still held a plethora of them in his basket – indigo, bronze, lime, and red.
Glorfindel frowned as he picked up the cracker by one end. “What, no gold?”
“No gold; you have enough of that, my friend.” The minstrel tugged on an errant curl that hung off the side of Glorfindel’s forehead. “Red is divine.”
“Red is not my favorite.” Glorfindel held the cracker up so that the other frilled end was pointed towards Erestor. “Let us hope luck favors you.”
Erestor took hold of the other end and gave it a pull as Glorfindel did the same on his side. A fluff of paper remained stuck between Erestor’s fingers, while Glorfindel tried to collect up the little treasures that spilled into his lap. “I should have warned you that I never win these things.”
“Here.” Glorfindel set a handful of candy in front of Erestor, keeping only a few pieces for himself.
“Those are yours.” Erestor pushed the pile back across the table.
“I gave them to you.” There was a paper crown amid the confetti, which Glorfindel shook out and unfolded. “Besides, now I do not feel so overly bold in asking a favor of you.” He situated the red tissue crown on his head, and it slipped down over one ear.
“A favor from me? I doubt a scribe such as myself could offer much to a lord such as you.”
Glorfindel tilted his head to the side as he unwrapped one of the pieces of taffy. “I heard that you are familiar with the genealogy of the line of Finwe.”
“Somewhat.” Erestor had rolled the piece of paper he had been left with into a little ball. He had been worrying it between his fingers, and now smushed it flat and tossed it aside. “What do you want to know?”
“I was hoping that you might be able to sketch out a basic family tree or something.”
“I would assume that there are some books that are quite detailed and would have the information you seek in the library,” suggested Erestor.
“Unfortunately, I have not been able to find exactly what I have been looking for.” Glorfindel drew out a bottle of ink and a quill that had been carefully tucked away in the breast pocket of his vest before the night had begun. “If you have a few minutes to spare.”
“I do believe it is a crime to deny the request of a lord, especially one so simple as this.” Erestor pried the lid from the ink and dipped the quill. “You did not need to bring a new one on my account,” he said in reference to the writing instrument. He slid it expertly against the side of the jar. “Where to begin... Finwe himself, I suppose... have you brought any paper with you?”
“Paper... no, uhm... just a moment...” Glorfindel started to stand, but Erestor motioned him down with the feathered end of the quill.
Erestor pulled the remnants of the cracker across the table and unwrapped the colorful paper from the outside of the paper tube. “This will do nicely.” He smoothed it out and began to sketch out a rather crude yet accurate family tree. After a few minutes and adding a few swirling illuminations to various parts, he slid it across the table. “There you are.”
Glorfindel slid it back. “Would you mind reading it to me?”
The ink was being wiped from the quill as Erestor asked, “Had a bit much to drink tonight, m’lord?”
“No,” answered Glorfindel, slightly defensive. “I just need to be sure I am pronouncing the names correctly.”
“Alright.” Erestor got up and moved around the table so that he was on the same side that Glorfindel was on. They were so close that Erestor could hear Glorfindel’s breath against his ear and his right thigh was pressed against Glorfindel’s left. “At the top here, obviously, we have Finwe and his wives. Miriel is on this side, and Indis on the other. That makes everyone on this side a half-sibling of Feanor, while all of these names are half-cousins of everyone over here. And so, we have in order, Findis, Fingolfin, Faniel, Irime, Finarfin, and Finrun.”
“Wait...” Glorfindel stared at the sheet. “I thought... I thought Feanor had the most children.”
“Feanor had the most sons; he and his father had the same number of children,” explained Erestor.
“Some of those names I have never heard before.”
The quill and ink were again brought forth. Three of the names were underlined: Feanor, Fingolfin, and Finarfin. “These are the three everyone talks about. Do you know Lord Voronwe?”
“Of course,” said Glorfindel. “I actually I quite well with names,” he lightly joked.
Erestor smirked. “Excellent. Well, he is descended from Lady Irime. There is not much to be said of Findis or Faniel, and Finrun... I am not even sure if he knows what has gone on with his brothers,” mused Erestor. He shook his head. “Well, no, he must know.”
“Why would he not?” questioned Glorfindel.
“Finrun gave up the wealth and prosperity of his family when he was nearly upon his majority, and took the vows of a highly respected religious group. He lives a chaste, silent life, in poverty, in the heart of Valimar.” Erestor set the quill aside for a moment. “He only allowed a single visit once a year from his family – and a year in Valinor is twelve times the span of a year here.”
“How interesting. How do you know such intimate details?” wondered Glorfindel.
Erestor smiled. “I was a close family friend.”
“To which branch of the tree?”
The feathered tip of the quill touched Feanor’s name, and Erestor said, “His sons would call me uncle. Well, most of them did. Celegorm was always a little standoffish. If we move to the next generation, the sons of Feanor – you must know their names,” said Erestor nonchalantly.
“Well, I know some of them, but I never did pay much attention to which ones were which,” admitted Glorfindel.
“Spoken like a true Vanya,” commented Erestor. “Very well. We have Maedhros, then Maglor, followed by Celegorm, then Caranthir, and next Curufin. Then there are Amrod and Amras, though their mother called them both by the name Ambarussa.”
“A lovely name.” Glorfindel pointed to the other side. “And these?”
Erestor proceeded to name off all of the children of the children of Indis, sometimes stopping to tell another little tale or explain a name. Glorfindel listened attentively to Erestor’s every word.
“Because at the time you could not read them yourself at the time,” mumbled Erestor to himself. He folded up the paper and tucked it inside of the rag doll through one of the seams that was ripped open. The doll was shoved into his pocket, and he covered the box and slid it back under the bed before drying his eyes with the bed sheet. As he inhaled, the scent of Glorfindel was vibrant, and he had to stand up quickly and leave the room to keep from getting too emotional.
A smattering of arrows were gathered from the foyer as Erestor left the house. He had already taken a bow from a corpse down the road on his way in, and now searched as he left for other usable weapons. He tried not to look at the faces of the fallen as he passed through the market on his way back toward Duilin’s house, but now and then something would catch his eye and he would look and regret it. The girl who helped her mother sell eggs in the lesser market. Her blue kerchief, the one she always wore, was torn where the sword had cut through. The cobbler whose best work was done with leather. There was a gash from an axe across his leg, but that was not the blow that killed him. The fishmonger who also ran the little pub that he frequented more than he should have. Erestor swallowed back the bile that rose when he saw there were no eyes left in the peddler’s sockets. An arm – that was the worst image – an arm, in the middle of the roadway. It was torn right from someone’s body, the sleeve still wrapped around it. On one finger, a silver ring of betrothal. It was hard to tell if it belonged to someone young or old, to male or female, or to Noldo or Sinda, but the futility of the fighting those few days before finally got to him, and Erestor had to detour to the side of the road where a tent still stood, three of the four legs holding the flapping curtain off the ground. There he emptied the contents of his stomach onto the ground, though he could not recall eating since the evening before the celebration was to begin. The images of what he had seen swarmed in his mind, and he heaved again when the vision of the blond warrior whose body he had buried less than a day earlier came to mind, but his throat was dry and burned. He spat on the ground, and stood there for a few minutes to clear his head.
Once he regained his bearings, Erestor continued on. He jogged when he could, and hid when he had to. It took much longer than he would have liked, but he finally cleared the distance from the outskirts of Gondolin to the esteemed House of the Swallow.
This house, unlike Salgant’s, had been emptied of everyone. A fair number of the house had been seen fleeing with the refugees. It was unlikely that a large percentage had made it out, for the house was set near the center, and those from Glorfindel’s and Tuor’s houses stood a better chance being closer to the secret tunnel. Erestor found the hidden latch, and slid into the passageway, sealing his route behind him.
“Thrangorn?” Erestor walked down the passage, staying against the wall. It was silent, and the hallways that made up the hidden halls were dark. He set a sack of supplies that he had gathered near to the entrance and then continued to walk through, every few moments calling out for the butler.
Halfway through, he felt the distinct feeling that he was being watched. He took a few steps more, and then stopped and looked over his shoulder. The shadows were playing tricks on him, or else he was being followed. Erestor drew his sword but left it down at his side as he edged further along the passageway. Perhaps he was only being trailed from behind, and perhaps Thrangorn had heard and left back through the painting and was waiting safely within his ex-master’s house.
Or, maybe the orcs that were around the corner had captured him already.
Erestor raised his blade and swung it hard against the scimitar that flew at him. He managed to disarm the first orc, but another took the place of the first. Dual knives came toward his face, and he blocked them. By then the orcs that had been following were behind him, so he turned and took a blind swing at them. One he caught off-guard, and blood sprayed from a gash in his side. Erestor thrust the blade forward in hopes of taking out the injured orc, but the orc stumbled back, and the two who were now behind him easily attacked with fists.
The elven blade clattered to the ground, and Erestor fell down onto one knee. From his new position, he lunged at the injured orc, and knocked him off his feet. Behind him, another three orcs came around the corner. Moments later, he was restrained by them, their foul breath so close it was nauseating. “One against twenty? You might be brave, but then, you might be stupid.” The leader of the orc party looked Erestor over. For his part, Erestor struggled against his captors, not about to go down without a fight.
“You might as well save your strength.” The orcs around him chuckled. “Silly elf thinks he will free himself and kill us all.”
“I might!” spat out Erestor, and again, he was met with laughter. He landed a good kick to the shin of one of the orcs and smiled to himself. The smirk was quickly slapped off of his face.
“Feisty little elf. Might do well to learn some manners from the nice little elf we caught earlier.”
Erestor growled. It was obvious that Thrangorn had been captured before he arrived. He cursed his decision to go back to Glorfindel’s house. “I suppose you have already killed him just as you plan to kill me.”
“Kill you? Oh, no. Master Verdev likes to have souvenirs of the places he has been.” The orc smiled. “He likes variety. A troublemaker and a passive servant are just about his favorite types.”
Erestor sneered at them as he was forced to walk down the hall. More or less, he was dragged through the passageway, and back up the steps and into Salgant’s room. Once there, he found that there were orcs swarming all about. Thrangorn was sitting quietly on a chair with his hands folded in his lap as Erestor was thrown into the room and shoved to the floor. “Good to see you again,” he said as he lifted his head up.
Thrangorn gave a short nod. “Likewise, sir.”
“Stay down, prisoner!” barked a particularly nasty looking orc. He used his club to knock Erestor across the back, just in case he might have had any idea to stand up.
Erestor kept down on the ground, huddled off to the side as more orcs began to filter into the room. The sacking had already begun, for some of them were removing items of great worth from the dressers and cabinets.
“So, what happened?” asked Erestor, speaking in Quenya. He hoped that Thrangorn knew enough to respond. It was much more likely that the orcs knew Sindarin.
The chief servant of a Gondolin Lord would always be well-trained, and he twiddled his thumbs nervously as the orcs overturned tables and shoved his master’s corpse aside to check beneath the mattress for hidden treasures. “I was waiting for you, and I heard something in the master’s chambers. I came up to the top of the stairs – very quietly – and then... I am sorry, sir, but I sneezed.”
“You sneezed?”
“I am terribly sorry, sir! It came upon me unexpectedly! They heard and they rammed into the master’s artwork. By then, I was on my way through the passageway, but when I reached the other end I came out right into the room where there was a group of them lurking. I feel dreadful about it, sir!” Thrangorn hung his head shamefully. “I should have been more careful. If only I had stayed further down in the passageway. I am so sorry, sir.”
“Thrangorn, stop persecuting yourself over it. It might as well have been I who managed to get us caught. This place is crawling with orcs and dragons right now. I barely made it back myself.” He neglected to mention his own lack of discretion in going to look through Glorfindel’s room. “We might yet find a way to escape from this situation.”
A few of the orcs, who had until now ignored the pair of elves they had captured, began to laugh and chatter to one another using the black tongue of their master. One of them approached the pair and hauled Erestor off the floor, shoving him onto the bed to sit beside Salgant’s corpse. “You think you are going to escape? What will you do, fly out the window and over the seven gates you idiots built? They kept no one out, but they did a good job at keeping all of you in!”
As the orc moved away to examine something shiny that another one had found, Erestor gave Thrangorn a defeated look. “Alright, so some of them speak Quenya. I do not suppose you know any of the tribal Avarin languages or Lindalambė, do you?”
While Thrangorn shook his head, some of the orcs answered with ‘I speak Lindalambė’, or ‘Just talk in Sindarin so that we can all understand you’. Erestor, not about to allow the orcs their fun, began to speak to Thrangorn in utter nonsensical babble. A quick burst of farspeaking – ‘Just play along’ – was followed by a flood of complete jibberish.
“Hithnalatha thrassal lararthna nalithin; erlathonil ilinith el pherinetha glorinath.”
The orcs, one after another, turned to regard the elves rather oddly. It only stopped when the one who had hoisted Erestor off of the floor came up to him and slapped him back onto the floor with a swing of his arm. “On second thought, stay there and shut up unless you want me to cut your tongue out.”
Erestor crawled to the window and rested with his back against the wall while the ransacking continued. He darted his tongue out the side of his mouth and tasted blood. As he wiped it away, he looked around and shook his head. Hundreds of years of meticulous work were being destroyed in seconds, and Salgant was doing nothing but smiling about it.
Unforgivable by Zhie