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“The Lord of Eregion,” Sauron said, enunciating very clearly in this fanciful elven tongue, “is still busy?”
“Since last week,” the servant said apologetically, catching some trace of rage on his tongue. “Perhaps you’d like to wait in the guest wing, sir?”
Sauron gritted his teeth.
--
As it happened, the only thing that could possibly have distracted Celebrimbor of Fëanor’s line from meeting his greatest collaborator and rival (depending, of course, on how one counted Narvi daughter of Varni) was the potential for a collaboration and rivalry already greater than any Celebrimbor had ever faced.
“You’re quite sure?” He asked Galadriel. “There’s no possibility it was another star?”
They both stared in silence a while longer at the star glass on the table between them. It was the fifth or sixth time he had asked the question, and Galadriel no longer judged it a good use of her time to reply.
“I suppose we could open it,” she said, reluctantly, “free the light and see where it goes.”
After a night of delirious crafting, half possessed by Irmo, she had produced this miracle of a work, and had fled, in something of a panic, to the home of her kinsman. He was the only person she knew who might have been able to identify on sight whether what she had made was technically a Silmaril.
“Isn’t opening the Silmarils supposed to occur at the end of days?”
“Not causatively,” she said.
“But we might very well need the light of this one, if all the stars go out.”
Galadriel felt a chill down her spine. “Catching the light of a Silmaril wouldn’t qualify as a fourth one, surely. They were special in other ways than merely the light they trapped.”
He shrugged. “Grandfather never revealed enough about their crafting for me to say. The vessel is different, certainly – the liquid attributes are new – but this is not the later light of sun or moon, nor is this one of Varda’s many stars. Our diffraction tests have proven that.”
“But if I made a Silmaril...”
If she had the power to make another Silmaril, then what was the point of any of it? She could have replicated one for Thingol and returned the original to its maker’s sons and averted hundreds of deaths. Thousands, if counting those killed by Morgoth in unguarded Beleriand.
“Well, it certainly isn’t half as powerful,” he agreed, “but we might extrapolate that the solid form is significantly denser than the liquid, and so a dense version of what you made would be essentially the same. If you don’t want responsibility for it, you might credit Irmo. Grandfather never credited any of the Valar, but, then, he never was particularly generous.”
“If this is a Silmaril then what I’ve done is essentially capturing the power of one thing to make another with the same property, without diminishing the first. It’s impossible. It defies the most basic laws of physics.”
“And when did Grandfather ever abide by any laws, of elves or the universe?” To Galadriel’s glare, Celebrimbor added, “look on the bright side: he would have been incredibly resentful to know that you, who always defied him, were also, in this matter at least, the closest he ever had to an equal.”
It was some consolation, but not much.
--
It was the work of some hours for Sauron to slip out of his luxurious guest suite and begin to contrive a new plan for meeting Eregion’s lord. He was busying himself in his workshop to avoid entertaining guests? So be it. Sauron was more than skilled enough to make himself at home in a workshop. Perhaps he would take a new guise, not as a favoured guest but instead an eager apprentice, willing to work his way up into his lord’s attention. Sauron knew, from personal experience, just how trusted a clever and eager apprentice could become.
First, though, he might as well make use of the current form. A little nosy snooping around his host’s workshops could not go amiss. It was always best to take a clear look at the competition.
--
“I do really think this is a bad idea,” Celebrimbor said, though his hands were steady on the tongs as he held the phial still and away from his body. They’d both put on padded vests and gloves, in case of explosions.
“And what better idea have you?” Galadriel focused on the song of Arda, and began to turn the top of the phial open with her spell.
“Perhaps Uncle Maglor?”
“I would not risk reactivating the Oath of Fëanor without having exhausted every possible alternative. The best-case scenario is that he would toss it into the sea and not kill me first!”
She flicked her wrist, twisting the cap the rest of the way off, just as the door creaked open.
“Don’t come in!” Celebrimbor ordered, thunderously as his uncle Celegorm, but it was too late.
The vial did not explode. That, at least, was a small mercy. Instead, the light rose, bright enough to fill the room, and then dimmed as it fled back to wherever it had come from and the phial grew empty.
The beautiful stranger screamed as though a thousand shards of glass had dug into his skin.
Galadriel met Celebrimbor’s eyes, signature cold fury plain across her face. Celebrimbor, for his part, felt strangely warm. It was a benediction to know that the light of a Silmaril, even close up, did not burn him as it had his kin. He was not damned. The revelation of what it meant that this fair fiend had screamed to see it was slower to come to his mind, and by the time he realized enough to begin lowering the phial, Galadriel had already moved.
She was a survivor of the Ice, of Beleriand. Even in this age of peace, Galadriel went nowhere unarmed, and the throwing knife from up her sleeve took the stranger in the arm. His form rippled like water struck by a stone, and Celebrimbor, dropping the phial to shatter on the ground, grabbed Galadriel’s other hand in his own. He let her take his power in the weaving of the spell. A witch of old, trained by Melian herself, it came easy to her to bind the intruder. If the chains were woven as much of the light and passion of Míriel’s line as the grace and honour of Indis’s, all to the good. What Celebrimbor had, that Fëanor never could have matched, was a willingness to learn from others. In another world it might have brought him doom but in this one he placed that trust in his cousin and followed her guidance.
The intruder hissed, more a cat than a wolf. His hands twisted into claws and a light grew in his eyes that was nothing like the wonder of the trees, deep red and burning. Celebrimbor drew his own dagger, and lost it almost immediately when Galadriel snatched it from his hand and leapt at the enemy, breaking his grip as she did so.
The spell fell away in pieces, rather than all at once, and that gave her all the time she needed to drive the blade directly into a glowing eye. This time, Celebrimbor was the one who shrieked.
And yet the intruder did not die. The fallen Maia – for this could be no other form of creature – melted, body warping around the knives, and dissolved into a cloud of volcanic ash, fleeing out the window. The red eyes, still suspended in the billowing smoke, burned directly into Celebrimbor’s soul with nothing but hate, pure and unadulterated.
“Which?” He whispered, cursing himself for his weakness. “Which of his followers takes such a form?”
Her hands stained with ash, Galadriel’s grip on his dagger revealed just the slightest tremor. “You saw the claws as well as I did. And which other has such mastery over his shape?”
Sauron, who had killed her brother and tortured Celebrimbor’s uncle. Few elves living had seen his face, and those who had would never have recognized him, thanks to his generally devious ways.
“Would you have known him, if the Silmaril light had not burned him?” He asked.
Celebrimbor had a horrible suspicion that he would not have. And he was certain that it was for him that Sauron had come. Who knew how long the Lord of Wolves had been in the city, watching over him? To his relief and fear both, Galadriel shook her head. She too could have been taken unawares.
Finrod would not have been so afraid as they were. Celebrimbor had dwelt many years with his cousin, and still often thought of him in moments where he wished to be a leader of elves. In honour of this memory, he forced a smile.
“Irmo truly does favour you, it seems. And me, by virtue of your presence. A more pious elf than I might suggest that you ought to offer him and Varda both many thanks.”
Impious herself, Galadriel snorted. “I was already thinking of moving to Lórien. How–”
They both froze again and looked at each other, considering the implications. More seriously, Celebrimbor repeated, “we ought to offer Irmo and Varda both thanks. Immediately. And send to Gil-galad. He did alert me to an envoy who might come my way, though he never showed up, and this intruder may well be the same. And if it truly is Sauron, then he should consult…”
His words died on his lips just as Galadriel’s had, and he said, “We are fools of the highest calibre. We had no need to open it, and no need of Maglor either.”
“Oh?”
“I am not the elf who was raised with the most frequent exposure to the light of a Silmaril. This very one, in fact. And there is only one amongst us with maiarin blood that might well have granted him insight into the quality of the spells.”
“Elrond.”
“Just so.”
“Perhaps,” Galadriel said, thoughtfully, “we ought to have slept before continuing our experimenting.”
Almost certainly they should have, and yet, in spite of the black stain on his floor and the hollow lightlessness of the shattered glass that had for a brief moment contained a fraction of eternity, Celebrimbor could be nothing but grateful.
Maybe, if he was lucky, Galadriel would show him her notes from making this not-Silmaril, and they could work together on making more. Or maybe she would be interested in his ideas about rings of power. He’d been wanting a partner on those.
Or maybe they should sleep before doing either of those things.