Chapter Text
They left the moonlit mere behind, and the bear happily curled up next to it, sucking his paws. As they walked, clouds crept across the night sky, hiding the moon. Above them, shadowed leaves were rustling in a growing wind.
“Speak then,” Artanis commanded, when Beleg walked on in silence.
“Why were you seeking Celeborn?” Beleg asked, without answering her. This was the kind of conduct that she found difficult to deal with from Lúthien. Why could nobody answer a straightforward question?
Well, she could do so and perhaps he would return the courtesy.
“At the Feast of the New Leaves in the Hall of Pines — were you there? No? No matter. It came to the time of the calling of the challenges. After the King and Queen had spoken, Celeborn called for a hero to ride out and take the razor, scissors, and comb that were set long ago between the ears of the great Boar Trwyd by Oromë, Lord of the Hunt. So I did that.”
Beleg stopped in mid-stride and stared at her, half-moonlit through the leaf-dapple. “You did what?”
“I rode out to take the prize.” Artanis could not quite restrain her smile, but she was trying as hard as she could to make it not a smug one. “Here.”
She pulled the pouch from her belt, and pulled out a fine linen cloth. Unwrapping it, she held out the three tools: the comb, the razor, and the scissors.
They were quite plain, though well-made, and still had a few coarse boar-hairs threaded through them, but there was a glint to them, even after so long in Middle-earth, that said that these three things, long ago, had seen the light of the great Lamps, the unsullied light that had poured across the world before even the Trees of Light had been thought of.
“You killed the Boar Trwyd?” Beleg looked genuinely shaken.
Artanis laughed. “No. I could see he was a creature of Oromë. I am not one of his followers: in Valinor I studied with Aulë, and with Yavanna, but never with Oromë. Though, I think I have proved my hunting skills are not entirely lacking. I tracked him for nine days, and when I came up with him at last, I set a sleep upon him, and took the things while he snored. I don’t think he will miss them.”
“Well!” Beleg said, and set off again, walking more quickly, his crimson boots looking near black among the pale trunks. “The Boar Trwyd has carried those between his ears for as long as I can remember, and nobody has come up close enough to him to take them from him since long before the first moon-rise.”
“So,” Artanis said. “I have answered your questions, now, answer mine. What peril do you see that lies ahead of Celeborn? For he is my friend, and I would not see him hurt.”
“The peril lies within him,” Beleg said. “For Celeborn is not content within the Girdle of Doriath. He is always looking out and beyond, over the mountains, into the future, into the past. The Girdle will not hold a lord of Doriath who chooses to pass though it.”
“Why should it? Celeborn is very able.”
“I’ll not dispute that,” Beleg said, and frowned. “But where the authority of the Queen meets with other, darker powers...You know, Artanis, that I am captain of the March-wardens. I have seen many strange things upon the borders of Doriath, and heard reports of wilder things that I have not yet seen. If it were me, and I had passed the margins of Neldoreth and entered the mazes of Melian’s Girdle, then I would wish to have my friends come to help me.”
“So you do not know what you fear?”
“No. But when I got word that Celeborn had crossed Neldoreth, I came with all haste.” Beleg’s smile flashed in the shadowy gloom. “Of course, I didn’t know that one of the great princes of the Noldor had had the same idea, or perhaps I would not have troubled.”
From someone else, the gentle teasing might have raised her hackles, but from someone with Beleg’s depth of age and experience, Artanis was inclined to take it as a compliment.
“I don’t know this land, not yet,” she admitted. “I do not know how to judge what is rash, and what is not here.”
“What is rash to the Sindar may not seem rash to the Noldor,” Beleg said, and showed one tooth in another teasing smile. “Celeborn is able indeed, but I wish he would not go alone.” Beleg paused and turned his head, as if listening. “I can feel in the roots of the trees and the wind on my cheek that the borders of Doriath are rising in the north. Can you not feel it, Artanis?”
Artanis could feel it too: the branches above creaking as they moved in the growing gale. Clouds were scudding swift across the sky, and the moonlight danced with the swaying trees across the forest floor as the racing clouds and moving leaves cast wild shadows.
A fierce rain began, silver drops driving suddenly through the gaps in the trees and beating on their shoulders in the dark.
Artanis reached out., using all the arts that Melian had taught her. There was something there, like a gathering of threads, a knot in the distance, pulled taut.
They were moving fast now, Beleg leading the way, and to her surprise, Artanis found that even she must put every ounce of effort and concentration into keeping pace with him, while the silver droplets whirled past both of them, and the song of the forest was loud in their ears as they ran.
*****
The wind dropped, suddenly, and before them in the grey and misty dawn a tall stone loomed.
Beyond it the trees failed, and a dim grey mist filled the land, while above some way off, almost lost in the mist, Artanis could feel the jagged darkness of a mountain-slope.
On the slopes below the stone, almost lost in the roiling mist, the pale figure of a silver stag lay sprawled, as if it had fallen from the peak of the rock.
“Celeborn,” Beleg said, in a heavy voice. “Artanis, I...”
Artanis leapt swiftly down from the trees into the mist. She held back the mingled powers of the Girdle and nan Dungortheb, almost without thought as she ran, and flung her arms around the great stag.
It was Celeborn, and... it was not. The thick coat smelled musky, and was wet with dew. The eyes were almost closed, and looked glazed, and the horns... this was not an illusion. This was a true transformation, and she did not think it had happened willingly.
Beleg came forging through the coiled mists, head down and shoulders braced as if he were walking against the current of a deep river.
Together, they gathered up the stag and began to carry him. Every step was hard, as if the darkness in the valley was reluctant to let them go; as if the Girdle was reluctant to admit them. Though the sky was lightening to the East and above them on the northern border of Doriath, a stubborn darkness lay over the vale behind them, a darkness that had a hunger to it.
The stag was heavy. Perhaps it was only the trailing limbs and awkwardness of the horns that made it seem hard to move him. The grass underfoot was wet, and draped with fine cobwebs. Artanis swept them away with a foot.
Beleg shook his head. “Not her,” he said, in a low voice. Artanis’s thoughts fled at once to the terrible night that fell upon Valinor. She remembered the tales that Ungoliant had fled to Nan Dungortheb, and felt a sense of sudden creeping dread. She would have drawn sword, if she had a hand to spare.
“Not her, but her kinsfolk wander here, sometimes, and their lesser kin keep watch for them.” Beleg glanced north, to the darkness in the vale.
“The Sun is in the sky,” Artanis pointed out.
“We’d best not be still here when it sets,” Beleg agreed with a grim twist to his mouth.
At last, they struggled up past the tall stone, until they were past the first of the trees,and could hear birdsong again. They laid Celeborn’s still figure in a patch of morning sun. His eyelids fluttered, but his stag-form lay still.
“Has this ever happened before?” Artanis asked.
“You’d need to ask the Lady Melian,” Beleg replied, with a half-shrug. “They say she’s been teaching you her arts. You’ve heard nothing of such transformations, I take it? It will be a long walk back to Menegroth if we must needs carry him all the way.”
Artanis considered, going to her knees beside the silver stag. She touched its neck, its sharp silver cloven feet, and shook her head. “This is not Melian’s craft. I would rather have said that it was... Beleg, did Oromë ride the vale of Dungortheb in the far past?”
“Oromë’s hunters rode across all these lands, once,” Beleg answered, a smile beginning to tug at the corner of his mouth. “You met his boar not so far from here, didn’t you?”
From her belt pouch, Artanis pulled out the comb, the razor and the scissors, that for long years had been lodged between the ears of the Boar Trwyd.
With the razor, she cut the hair of the deer’s chin, and with the scissors, she trimmed the shaggy hair between its long ears, and then she took up the silver-glinting comb and ran it through the hair on the stag’s neck, and back, and legs.
As she combed, she sang the song the ents had taught her, and held in her mind bright images: Celeborn coming forward to greet her, when first she had come to Menegroth. Celeborn asking them eager questions about Aman, and about their journey across the Helcaraxë. Celeborn, crying out a challenge in the Hall of Pines, and meeting her eyes, as if daring her to take up the challenge and prove her worth before all of Doriath.
The stag’s eyes fluttered as she combed and sang, and then its face shifted, and the silver horns moved a little and became a shining cascade of hair about his shoulders and tangled in his fingers.
His eyes opened, and met hers. “Galadriel,” he said. “Galadriel! I slept, and looked back and I saw the Hunter riding. And I looked ahead, and I saw you, Galadriel.”
“There are other ways to look back, and forward and far afield,” she said, and took his reaching hand. “Less perilous ways, that do not lead to paths that even the Noldor would deem rash.”
Celeborn smiled.
“I met your challenge,” she said to him. “See! These are the things that Oromë left between the ears of the Boar Trwyd.”
Celeborn glanced at them, and back to her. “I knew you were the only one who would or could.”
Beleg interrupted them, pulling a soft grey cloak from his pack. “I think that perhaps, Celeborn, you should put this on. Artanis may not be troubled by the sight of your naked form, but if you plan to return to Menegroth, your current state is sure to cause gossip.”