Rating: R
Pairings: Elrond/group/ m/m, m/f.
Summary: Southern visitors to Rivendell bring news, old relationships shift and life moves into the Stirring Time of the year.
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Rivendell, in a time before the Great Ring's rediscovery...
Mist wreathed around the still figures in the courtyard entrance as Findalor stood with members of the household patrol, huddled against in chill gusts of wind. Torches and lanterns flickered in the late night air. The sound of their soft voices and the rustling of low branches filled with dying leaves was all that disturbed the stillness of the late night hour. Looking over his shoulder at the sound of a soft footstep he saw Elrond moving quietly across the pavement, loose robe flapping in the wind, dark hair rising and whipping behind him. Raising an arm in greeting Findalor saw the silent figure walk slowly beyond the courtyard and head down a little used path to the river's edge with no response.
Nodding to curious glances from the Household Guards, he remarked, "I'll go this time." Members of the guard often kept the Master of the House under careful watch during his impromptu strolls about the settlement, but they were always discreet, and always in the shadows. Elrond did not even pay attention to them anymore. Centuries of protective observation, starting during his life as a captive fosterling at the Court of Maglor, and continuing for his own protection at the Court of Gil-Galad, had made living under observation second nature to him.
Findalor moved through the heavy fog and mist, and started down the carved stone stairs in the damp night. His lantern flickered in the gusty breeze and he was forced to move slowly along the wet, moss covered steps as they curved down and around away from the courtyard and the Great House. He had a good idea where he was headed at this hour. The shadowy figure before him disappeared in the thickening fog. He was always amazed that Elrond could move with a sure step in the dark and damp without a lantern, but then again he was probably deep within that odd sleeping wakefulness that only the inner circle knew about. He moved through multiple realms of time and space in that state with uncanny ease and sureness.
Stepping carefully himself, he came to the landing and heard the river rushing noisily past as it hurried down its stony banks. Its song was loud and lusty as it splashed and gurgled down the channel. Looking around at the series of cave openings along the river's edge, he decided the passageway to his right was the one he should take. Passing under the low arch hidden by thick brush and overhanging branches, he entered the cave with its packed and damp sandy floor and rising ceiling. It was very still and quiet here after the sighing of the wind and the rush of the river outside. Distant echoes sounded while his ears strained to determine the direction he should take. The packed sand showed no footsteps in the darkness to guide him.
Continuing forward he walked up the rising floor and ducked under the lowering cave roof where sharp mineral deposits hung down low from the heavily veined surface. Passing through the tightest squeeze, he started down the sloping floor as the passage opened up again. Findalor had wondered when the siren song of Vilya might again call out in the night. As he grew closer to Galenbrethil and spent more time with her, he had dedicated a greater alertness to the Master of the House in response to this situation. He was torn between the physical and emotional love he had for his deepest comrades, and his growing bond with Galenbrethil. He knew Elrond blessed his new relationship and that he had relinquished his hold on their time and affections. Yet even with this blessing Findalor personally felt a greater dedication to his role as supporter of the Master of Imladris, and he felt an even greater desire to help ease the fearful burdens Elrond carried.
The lantern's light flashed back at him as veins of crystalline minerals caught the illumination and shot it around the passageway. He shuddered at the feeling that the strange light gave him, he was never comfortable here where thoughts were amplified and earth magic was very near the surface for any who were attuned to it. The deeper he went down the passage the more the walls glittered and flashed until he finally covered the lantern with its shade to prevent the reflections from blinding him. A sliver of light lit the path at his feet. The floor sloped down and turned until it headed back beneath the Great House, and under the riverbed. Few knew of the mystical chambers deep beneath the earth under the Great House's foundations and the river's stony channel.
Walking slowly but surely along the passage, Findalor had been along this path many times before in centuries past, and still he did not relish the trip. He alone of the Household Guards would follow Elrond down this dark passageway, the others always waited at the mouth of the cave. The hair on his arms and neck began to rise and he realized he was gritting his teeth. He always asked himself why he too did not just wait at the cave entrance, or just inside, but the strong magnetism of the mysterious place always drew him deep into the underground chambers. He was one of the few that knew of the small chamber at the end of the tunnel, and what it held. He was one of the few that knew what sometimes happened there in the dark hours of the morning.
The sparkling and flashing reflections from the mineral formations were even more mesmerizing in the dim light as he walked deeper underground and further back under the river's bed. He could see the endmost chamber's glittering light through the low arched entrance at the end of the passageway. The ceiling was lowering again and the walls narrowing, and they were at this point nearly all crystalline in structure. The encrusted spikes and crystals that formed the walls flashed through all the colors of the rainbow in the dim light.
He smiled as he realized his hand was unconsciously seeking his sword hilt, and he felt the familiar creeping feeling that moved across his skin. This final chamber was a nexus of earth and water energies, and other unknown influences, and the air itself fairly sparkled with power and energy. Vilya was housed in this small chamber, and it was bathed in its own mystical aura of power. He made it to the lighted arch and paused in the doorway. He squinted as his eyes grew accustomed to the strange flashing lights within.
The small chamber before him was completely covered in mineral spears and spikes, and in the low light from his lantern the crystalline surfaces reflected scintillating sparks of color and energy. His eyes adjusted the brighter level of light here; this room was always subtly lit by some mystical power emanating from within the crystals. He took in the scenario that he had observed before.
He remembered coming to this place the first time with Elrond, after the fateful battle at Dagorlad. Elrond had chosen this place during the building of Imladris to store the ring of power, Vilya. Returning the ring to the High King as they left Rivendell with the armies of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, Elrond had thought he was relieved of its care for a time. Oddly, Gil-galad had given it back to Elrond the night before the fateful battle where the King was stricken down by the power of Sauron. Elrond still wondered if it been a premonition on the King's part or if the action had been motivated by the ring itself.
Vilya was a heavier burden for Elrond to carry home after those tortured days and nights on the battlefield at Dagorlad. He had returned it to its holder on the mineral incrusted stand in a daze, and thought to leave it alone deep beneath the earth. Occasional need had driven him to wield its power, and it called to him now and then in the dark hours before the dawn, whispering sweet devotion and desire in the distant corners of his mind as he tossed with uneasy dreams. It did spread its healing and preservative powers to all in the Great House above and along the river valley. It stilled the process of natural decay and slowed time in the valley. It preserved them through time.
Findalor shivered, he hated the crawling feeling of surging energies across his skin, even in the tunnel, and only experience and a sense of duty kept him from fleeing back down the hallway to the fresh night air. He had actually felt the ring's power directly in the past. Galenbrethil confessed to him late one night that she had accidentally brushed the ring as it hung around Elrond's neck in the ragged and draining days after the dissolution of Sauron at Dagorlad. He had smiled as she related this long kept secret to him, and he confessed he too had touched it one night during a passionate embrace wreathed in madness. The shock of the touch had stunned him into silent stillness for some time, his daze unnoticed in the disoriented passage of time that surrounded them then. The experience seemed to fit into the flow of bizarre nights and days of that time, but he had learned then he wanted nothing to do with such a potent talisman. He truly appreciated what an enormous burden the ring would be for Elrond.
He told her that he was afterwards always careful to wrap Elrond's neck in a silken scarf to hide the ring from sight and prevent any further accidental contact by others. In his oblivion to the world at that time, Elrond had accepted the soft fabric and clung to it as a secure and comforting material thing. The fragile scarf frayed over the days and it flapped in the wind as he hammered away mindlessly at the stones of the tower of Barad-dur. Sweat and soot from the dirty air stained it, but it never left his neck until he had returned to Rivendell months later.
Lying across Findalor's chest in the late night hours as he spoke of the past, Galenbrethil had risen up with eyes wide and mouth open in amazement at his confession of contact with the ring. Of course the always-practical Findalor would think to simply cover the ring and preserve them all from its powerful effects. That simple and un-harmful act of common sense and preservation exemplified Findalor's true nature and innate wisdom to her. She had never wondered where that scarf had suddenly appeared from in the stress of those days, but she had blessed its protective covering many times.
Findalor saw that self-same fabric now lying across the column of glittering stone that stood before Elrond now. He had laid it there centuries ago, and there it remained. Its close proximity to the ring had preserved it long past the day it should have deteriorated and blown away as dust. Its stained green color dully reflected the rainbow of colors sparking around the room. The fringed ends lifted in a surge of energy and moved in unseen currents. Glittering and flashing in the dim light, the doomed ceiling and curved walls always made Findalor feel as if he were inside a crystalline ball.
Within the glittering doomed room Elrond stood silently before the low pillar of stone. Its surface flashed and glinted with embedded crystals and minerals. On the level surface at the top was a silvery Mithril stand with a short arm that held the golden chain and the ring Vilya suspended in space. The ring turned slowly in unfelt currents and its sapphire flashed with a brilliance that echoed the depths of the night sky and the deepest oceans. Findalor gave an involuntary shudder as he felt it call to him from across the room.
Its aura was one of strength and power and desire, and it carried promises of wishes granted. He felt himself stirring involuntarily as its energies reached him and wrapped him in an otherworldly caress. He stepped back into the hallway as the pressure within his leggings grew rapidly. Sexual stimulation was just one of the physical manifestations resulting from nearness to the ring on the occasions when it sought attention. When it was awake and lonely it called out to its Master and seduced anyone nearby with every promise of physical gratification and gain. Findalor stepped back again as he saw Elrond step forward. Enormous power shot through and through this space in aural streams of energy, and he saw Elrond's hair rise in strands and wreath around his head in the magical currents.
Elrond's eyes were dark and open, but unseeing in this realm of existence. Findalor dreaded to think what they saw in the other dimensions revealed to him as the Master of the Ring of Air. A glow flashed and sparked around Elrond as his unique aura merged and flowed together with that of the ring, and his loose robe moved in the random gusts and slid off his shoulders. Vilya's effects were not only sensual and emotional, but also cellular as well at that closeness. Regenerative power burned and coursed through anyone in proximity to the ring on these occasions.
As the ring's aura flowed over Elrond, every cell responded and renewed, his blood warmed and his skin burned, as did every breath, and the years seemed to drop away under the preservative powers of the ring. His robe twisted in a surge of energy and came loose; it fell away in a twist with the next swirling gust.
He stood naked and proud before the crystalline stand, challenging the power of the ring as its Master. Heart pounding, blood coursing and with every fiber of his being responding, he stood trembling in the exchange of energy and power with the Ring. Findalor marveled at how Elrond had survived these sessions so many times before, and had come out stronger, and still the Master each time. But how long could he maintain control in these darkening days?
With arms outreaching, hair rising in unseen currents, and fully erect, Elrond was the living embodiment of earthly fertility and natural power as the ring's aura surrounded him in whipping flows of crackling energies. Every nerve and cell was fully engaged in the sweetest caresses of supernatural pleasure and rebirth, his muscles trembled at the transformation and stood taught beneath his quivering skin. Findalor could feel the ring's sensuous powers as he stood in the passageway. His skin crawled and tingled even at this distance.
He fought his own desires and fears: the urge to run away down the long dark corridor, to cast off his clothing and give himself completely over to physical pleasure, and the most difficult, he fought the desire to simply lose his mind completely in the waves of power and otherworldly pleasures that lit the space before his eyes. He never fully realized that he too grew stronger and was renewed with each exposure to Vilya's power. He never realized his own personal strength of will during these sessions. He stepped back against the sharp points of the crystalline wall behind him for support. This painful position helped him to stay focused and alert, and kept him from being swept away in the emotions and energy currents swirling before him. He fought the sensual feelings that wrapped his being and called to him to give himself over to the lust and power of the ring. He took a deep breath and watched.
Elrond's slender fingers reached out, but they stopped just short of the ring flashing and turning slowly on its golden chain. The strong and scarred fingers grasped the ragged edges of the column instead, and Elrond shook his head once, twice and backed away in denial. A storm of sparks and energy surges flashed through their merged aural fields. He stepped back again and sunk to his knees with a deep groan. Palms hitting the dense damp sand, he collapsed forward and shot his release onto the ground with trembling shudder after shudder. His body knelt there trembling, his mind still engaged within the realm of the unconscious and tied to the otherworldly power of the ring. With a moan he rolled over into the sand and lay staring blankly upwards into the flashing crystals suspended from the ceiling.
Visits to the ring when it called to him always drained him absolutely due to the completely engaging aspects of their joining. His heart pounded as his blood raced through rejuvenated veins, his skin burned and his mind reeled. Every scar itched and burned as it further healed. The physical stimulation was complete and relentless; his release was draining. Exhausted from the strain, his mind reeled through the darkness left by the aural encounter with the ring. His dark hair lay across his face in damp strands as the flows of power diminished and disappeared. The chamber dimmed and the air grew still as the ring was satisfied with the response from its Master and it returned to a resting state.
Findalor wiped the sweat from his brow and stepped across the short space in the darkness. He pulled the robe up from the ground to drape across the pale shoulders on the ground before him. The air was suddenly chill and damp in its natural state. He had seen this terrifying union too many times to even think about the meaning now, he was concerned with reviving his friend after the ordeal.
Elrond had told him once that he only used the ring when he was completely prepared, and with the aid of other sages dwelling in Imladris. To bond with it and wield it was a joining of extreme measure, and control was uncertain at best. He swore to never be drawn into its power by its siren calls, and he had managed in these past centuries to deny it when it called him. He and the ring Vilya had an uncertain relationship, and he was always amazed at the power Celebrimbor had tapped in the making of the three Elven rings. Even Gandalf had no understanding of how the three Elven rings had been made to be so powerful.
Galadriel had one day seen in his mind the enormous power Vilya had over him, but she also sensed his great inner strength. She had nodded in grim understanding and compassion as she sat next to him and held his hand, and saw those visits to the ring in his mind. She knew the late night calls only too well herself, as Nenya lay beneath her magic mirror at the foot of the largest Mallorn tree, and sometimes called to her in the night as well. She too had been driven to her knees as she grappled with her ring's power and the unique pleasures of mastery. Elrond had gained greater stature in her eyes with her vision of his relationship with the ring Vilya.
In the cool darkness of the cave, Findalor gathered up the loose robe and got the lanky figure to his feet, and guided them out the arched doorway. He would have sealed the ring inside the chamber himself if he thought it would help; yet Elrond needed the ring as much as the ring needed Elrond, and it did preserve them all and the valley through the passage of time. Findalor only partly understood that service, but it was especially clear to him when Elves from Mirkwood called in the company of Legolas. Sunny Legolas was young and beautiful in his strength and intelligence, and lacked the hard look and rough edges of the others in his company. Findalor knew that their lives were difficult in the forest and they often stood in defense of their land from Orcs and bandits. But he thought he saw the draining effects of time in their faces as well. Their Elven settlement had no magical ring to preserve them through time.
He led a complaisant Elrond stumbling back down the passageway and he relished the feel of the cool fresh air as they neared the entrance to the cave. He could hear the river's clean and merry gurgle now and the wind sighing through the low branches nearby. He stopped them and pulled Elrond's robe around him and fastened it. He threw his own cloak around the still trembling figure and carefully guided them up the mossy steps to the courtyard. Erestor was waiting nervously at the foot of the stairs but Findalor's nod relieved his fears. He too knew of the secret hidden deep beneath the Great House. Galenbrethil was there was well waiting, she took in the vacant stare as Elrond recovered slowly. She moved to his left side to help guide them up the curving stairway.
Erestor set guards at the Master's chambers two doorways and left a message for Lindefal to just manage without them tomorrow for a while as Elrond recovered from the session. Lindefal had received that message before and would understand its meaning. Again, one of the mystical and magical events that preserved them all in Rivendell had occurred in the deep and dark night, unknown to most residents there. Again connections between friends and lovers had been tested and renewed, and life would continue in its slowly altered pace along the noisy river in the deep valley. Not only their own ring of love and devotion was strengthened that night, but also the lives of all in the valley were preserved and lengthened by the complex exchange of essences deep beneath the city. Rosy dawn lit the steps to the Master's chambers high above in the Great House.
The End
Continued in "Distant Evenings"
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