Queen of the Guarded Plain by Zopyrus

[zopyrus.livejournal.com]

Title: Queen of the Guarded Plain
Author Name: zopyrus
Prompt: "Spring surpassed his wildest hopes. His trees began to sprout and grow, as if time was in a hurry and wished to make one year do for twenty." (Return of the King,"The Grey Havens")
Summary: At the dawn of the First Age, the House of Finwë carves up the map. Galadriel discusses her family’s future with Edhellos and Finrod, and acquires a kingdom of her own.
Rating: General
Warnings: None

~~~

Galadriel had spent eight years of the Sun in warmth and peace: yet there was still nothing that could match the joy of sunlight on a spring morning.  The light poured through the eastern window, golden and warm, into the house of Edhellos, Galadriel’s kinswoman.  Edhellos had set out dried corn on the windowsill, and the songbirds outside cheeped merrily, fluttering their wings and flying to and fro with the seed.

Galadriel gazed not at the birds, but at a scrap of white silk in Edhellos’ hand.  It had been inked all over with unfamiliar silver runes.

Edhellos read it aloud:

“Queen Melian of Doriath to Lady Edhellos: Congratulations on your happy maternal state.  Best wishes for the birth of our newest relative.  Visit again soon!”

Edhellos laid a hand protectively over her midriff, and glanced at the nightingale who had brought the message.

“My compliments to your mistress,” said Edhellos, with as much dignity as a person could muster when talking to a bird.  “But how did she know?”

The nightingale trilled out a few notes, and cocked its head at her, unblinking.

Galadriel added, indignantly, “How indeed?  You’ve only just told me!”

Edhellos was one of Galadriel’s closest friends—and the wife of Galadriel’s brother, Angrod—but the news had come as a shock.  Edhellos was widely known for her wisdom and practicality; so her sudden decision to raise children in the shadow of Angband was hardly something a stranger would have anticipated.

Edhellos laughed, ruefully.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said.  “It isn’t the first time Queen Melian has sent me my own news.”

“I didn’t even know you corresponded with her,” said Galadriel.  Edhellos had met the Queen of Doriath on a diplomatic trip almost two years ago; but this was the first Galadriel had heard of a more personal connection.

Edhellos shrugged, modestly.  “We don’t talk about anything important.  Sometimes she sends me gifts, or little pieces of advice.  The seeds for the garden I planted last year were from her, and so is the spice I’ve been putting in the bread.”

Edhellos’ lembas had indeed tasted different lately.  Galadriel had noticed, but she had not wondered.  Next time, she would pay better attention.

Her sister-in-law coaxed Melian’s nightingale into her hand, and fed it a bit of corn.

“Fly back to your mistress, little one.  Give her my love and my thanks, and beg her understanding if I choose not to travel for the foreseeable future.”

The nightingale warbled at them, and flew from Edhellos’ hand.  Galadriel felt the rush of its tiny wings as it fluttered out the window, a dark streak in the bright morning air.

There were still a few lesser songbirds cheeping gauchely on the windowsill.  Edhellos gazed at them, a little scornfully.

“When I was a girl, my mother taught me the name and call of every bird that came into her garden,” she said.  “We have been here more than half a dozen years, yet I am still surprised by these new sparrows.  Their markings are different, and their call is a semi-tone too high.”

“I’m afraid I never paid enough attention to know the difference,” said Galadriel.  She had studied woodcraft in Aman, but her interest had been practical, not aesthetic.  She knew how to flush out quail and partridge, not how to distinguish between songbirds.

Edhellos snorted.  “Of course you did not.  When we were girls, such weightless matters never held your attention.  Why look at birds when you could be holed up in the forge, or the library?  You only came outside to hunt game, or run races.”

“Yes,” said Galadriel, mischievously. “And I finished those as quickly as possible!”

“Such humility,” said Edhellos, shaking her head.  She had been Galadriel’s rival in many of those races—and had gracefully placed second, many times.

Edhellos was still looking at the sparrows.

“When my son is born, the birds he knows will be these ones.  Their brighter cousins in Valinor will seem strange, if he ever sees them.”

“A son?” asked Galadriel.  “Do you know it is a boy?  Have you had true dreams?”

Edhellos shrugged.

“Who can be sure?  People say that motherhood brings greater foresight, but perhaps what I see is only my fancy.  I have seen nothing bad—but that just makes me think I must be wrong.”

Her hands twisted together in her lap.  For a moment, Galadriel’s friend looked almost vulnerable.

Galadriel wondered what comfort she could possibly offer.  In a way, her girlhood rival had beaten her at last.  How could Galadriel’s scant wisdom compare to the strength that would be required to raise a child in the wilds of Beleriand?

Her own dreams, of late, had been full of death: of enemies, kin, and strangers.  She had seen her friends die many times, but the locations were unspecific, and the time seemed far away.  Perhaps one of the strangers in her dreams was her nephew, all grown up.

“His childhood will be peaceful,” she said, willing the authority into her voice.

“Of course it will,” said Edhellos.  “We will make it so.”

That much, Galadriel could promise.

~~~

She found her oldest brother in his study, bent over a large map.  It was crisp and clean, with sharp corners.  There was green ink for the forests, and bright blue for the sea; and the artist had thoughtfully decorated his work with a gilded sun, setting in the West.  All in all, it was a lovely piece of craftsmanship.

Finrod scowled at it.

“I don’t understand why Laicolindo didn’t at least talk to Findekáno before he finished painting the Land of Shadow solid grey.  I understand the color symbolism, but a little more detail would have been helpful.”

Galadriel pulled up a chair, and leaned over her brother’s shoulder.  Master Laicolindo’s map barely depicted Dor Daedaloth at all: it was little more than a forbidding grey bar at the top of the page.  The rumored peaks of Thangorodrim, and the fortress of Angband behind them, were nowhere to be seen.

She was not convinced talking to Fingon would have helped, though.  He had certainly had a bird’s-eye view of the lands left off the map; but Galadriel doubted he had been thinking of cartography at the time.

“If only Morgoth’s holdings were really so small,” she murmured.  “Did your map-maker run out of room?”

“Who knows?  I suppose I shouldn’t blame him.  We can fill in the grey with our worst imaginings, and not be too wrong.”

Finrod must be exhausted: usually, he kept up an act of determined cheerfulness even around his sister, who knew better.  Today, he hadn’t even bothered to smile.

He sighed, and traced down the page with his finger, past the fields of Ard-galen, and tapped on a forested plateau.  It looked pleasant enough, until Galadriel read the text and realized it was above something called the Valley of Dreadful Death.

“Dorthonion,” said Finrod, in a disapproving tone.  “This is where our brothers want to live.”

“There are worse places,” said Galadriel.  “At least the mountains protect it.”

In the north, closest to Morgoth’s realms, the mountains looked a little too short and friendly; and to the south, the text read, “Mountains of Terror.”  But perhaps that was just more artistic incompetence.

“Further south would be safer,” Finrod insisted.  “There is empty land here, near Doriath.”

His hand brushed over the lower corner of the page: the fields of Talath Dirnen, above the River Narog.

“But Dorthonion must be held,” said Galadriel.  “Our half-cousins have already claimed the most dangerous lands, to the East.  We cannot hide, if they will not.”

“I know,” said Finrod.  “But has Angrod told you—”

Now she understood her brother’s preoccupation.  Poor Finrod.  Sometimes he had trouble remembering that his younger siblings were all, in fact, centuries old.

She nodded.  “This time next year, we’ll be travelling past the Mountains of Terror to visit our niece, or nephew.  Edhellos told me, this morning.  I’m surprised—but glad.”

Finrod turned from the map.

“I am glad, too,” he said.  “They both seem very happy.  I just don’t understand why they didn’t wait until things were more settled.”

Galadriel did not quite understand either; but it was done.  There was no sense in worrying about it now.

“We didn’t come here just for vengeance,” she said, firmly.  “We came here to live—as you have so often reminded me.  Angrod and Edhellos will be Lord and Lady of their own realm.  With two such fearless parents, their child will surely be a force to be reckoned with.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said.

They both glanced back at the map, and Galadriel steeled herself.  She had talked enough about other people’s problems for one day.

There was something she wanted for herself.

In Aman, she had longed of a kingdom of her own.  On the Ice, she had proved herself, and earned one.  Galadriel was the youngest of all her cousins, and so much of the map had already been parceled away: but Middle-earth was a big place.  There was plenty of it left.

“Which of these lands will be mine?”

Her brother did not seem at all surprised by her question—in fact, he brightened at her words.

“I assume you’ll go wherever you like,” he said, with fond confidence.  “But I hope you’ll stay near me.”

Finrod had already sent architects to his own chosen territory.  The Pass of Sirion was an important location—the only place for many leagues where the mountains broke, providing easy passage between Beleriand and the more dangerous lands above it.  But the island Finrod had chosen to live on was so very small.

Galadriel’s eye followed the painted line of the river, as it meandered down to the green wood in the middle of the page.  A great many of the artist’s blue lines seemed to lead to the same place: Doriath.

But why look there?  That land was more than occupied.  She shook her head, to clear it, and looked again.

There was another river that did not go through Doriath at all.

“You pointed out Talath Dirnen earlier,” she said.  “Edhellos and Angrod might not be interested—but I am.”

It was an open land: plains, not forests.  It would make for good farming, if Aunt Lalwen could be persuaded to give her the seed.  At last Galadriel would have the chance to order things as she wished, and stretch her wings.

Her thoughts must have shown on her face.  When she was a Queen, she would have to do something about that: but for now, she was happy enough to hear her brother, laughing at her eagerness.

“With my blessing, take it,” said Finrod.

~~~

Once the decision was made, things changed quickly.  Galadriel rode out with a scouting party to the land she had chosen, and made plans for roads, and towns.  As soon as she and her followers had installed themselves, she settled down to the business of ruling.

Many of Finrod’s supporters, with his encouragement, had elected to follow Galadriel.  Only warriors were asked for at Tol Sirion; while families, and skilled craftspeople, were instructed to settle in the south.  Somewhat to Galadriel’s surprise, a handful of her father’s former followers pledged themselves to her alone.  She was the youngest child of the youngest house of Finwë, but she had won many hearts on the Ice: and more folk than she had expected refused to be parted from her.

Her people planted orchards, and tamed the wild meadows into fruitful farmland.  Galadriel oversaw their work, and did her best to settle disputes wisely.  She distributed seed to her farmers, and organized war parties to guard their borders; and she kept her family informed about all her doings and discoveries.  Fingolfin occasionally sent instructions, and requests; Lalwen and Finrod sent gossip, and encouragement.

Edhellos wrote, too.  Her days were busy with her new child; but she knew Galadriel’s interests well, and spared her most of the details.  Most of her letters were full of interesting diplomatic and military matters, and Galadriel did her best to respond in kind.

All went well, but Galadriel was puzzled.  She was a queen at last, which she had long desired; but she sometimes felt she ought to be somewhere else.

Strangely, she never dreamed about her future in Talath Dirnen.  Galadriel had assumed, when she first arrived, that she would already be familiar with some of the landscape; that there would be an echo of recognition, when she saw her future home with her own eyes.  But the land was not familiar.  Despite her earlier confidence, and her people’s faith in her, she felt like a stranger in her own kingdom.

But Galadriel had grown used to dealing with the unfamiliar, so she put it from her mind.  There was too much to be done; and she did not like to base decisions on the flashes of foresight that sometimes came to her.  Unlike Edhellos, who was too straightforward for the nuances of dream interpretation, Galadriel was almost always aware when her dreams were true.  But her mother had cautioned her long ago that changing the future could be a messy business.

“If you know something is going to happen, you can plan how you will deal with it, or how to fix things when it is over,” Eärwen had said, when Galadriel’s childhood nightmares began.  “But if you change your life to stop what you have seen, you will only make yourself unhappy—and underprepared, when the worst happens after all.”

Galadriel had been too young, and too heedless, to ask her mother how she had acquired this knowledge.  How would Eärwen, born and raised in the peace of Valinor, have coped with the responsibilities her daughter now faced?  Had she ever tried to change the future, and failed?

Such thoughts sometimes made her wonder how things were at home.  She hoped her mother’s wisdom was being put to good use.  She hoped her parents had reconciled, and that they would find some measure of happiness in empty Tirion, or in desolate Alqualondë.  She had dreamed of them only once on the Ice, and then never again; but she prayed her mother sometimes dreamed of her.

The only person to whom Galadriel admitted her doubts was Celeborn.  He adored her, which meant that sometimes his advice had to be taken with a grain of salt; but he chose his words carefully, and always spoke the truth as he saw it.

"Tell me if I have this wrong," he said, as he ran the comb through her long hair.  "You are worried not because of a bad dream, but because you have not had one?"

"Yes," she said, relaxing under his touch.  "It sounds silly, even to me."

"No," said Celeborn.  "I don’t think it’s silly.  But I wish I knew more about your gift—that I could help you, not just reassure you."

"Everyone who knows more about it than I do stayed in Valinor."

"Maybe not," said Celeborn.  "All your relatives who knew more, certainly.  But the house of Finwe isn't the only family in Arda."

"We do seem to forget that sometimes, don't we?"

He laughed.  "Only sometimes.  Are there any women in your court that you could ask?  Perhaps you will find there was an expert in your retinue, all along."

"It isn't quite that simple," she said, regretfully.  "You're right, of course: there are other Eldar with foresight, and likely some Sindar as well; but when I was a child, my mother sent for every expert she could find, to help control my dreams.  If I had stayed, I would have gone to Lórien to study.  As it is, no one I've ever met can see as strongly as I do."

"Then you should search among the Sindar."

Galadriel doubted that people who had never even seen the Light of the Trees would be able to give her  advice.  But she knew Celeborn would call that pure snobbery—even if he did not say so aloud.  She held her tongue.

“What if we went to Doriath?”

Her lover did not quite succeed in keeping the hopefulness from his voice.  He had cousins in Doriath, whom he had never met.  When they first arrived in Beleriand, Galadriel had feared he would leave her, and rejoin his family.  But he had waited.

“Perhaps no Grey Elf will satisfy you, Alatáriellë: but if the stories are true, Queen Melian has foresight to rival your own.”

Galadriel thought of the nightingale that had visited her sister-in-law, and shivered.

“It is true,” she said, reluctantly.  “Perhaps she would consent to teach me.”

“But not yet,” Celeborn said, guessing her thought: not with any power, but because he knew her so well.

Galadriel hated to disappoint him.  But he guessed her thought again, and kissed her.

“Of course you can’t leave,” he said, gently.  “The planting season is almost upon us, and the weaver’s guild is having elections in a month.  If Halwen’s supporters gain too much power, they will ask you to re-write the tax laws on silk imports again.”

She laughed.  That was true enough.

He gazed at her solemnly.

“You are needed here, my Queen.”

“Yes,” she said.  “I have much to do, before we go.”

She was not done with Talath Dirnen: not yet.  Her plans had been years in the making, and she would see them through.

But when the time came, she would be ready to leave.

~~~

In the end, Melian waited almost fifty years to send the invitation.  Time passed differently for her than it did for Eru’s Children; and she was nothing, if not patient.

Melian often watched the young Noldorin queen, catching glimpses of her in dreams and in mirrors.  Their future was reflected in the still waters of her garden pools, and the dew on spiders’ webs.  Melian had listened eagerly, when little Edhellos spun tales of her people’s journey to Middle-earth: there was much to like about some of Doriath’s new neighbors, although poor Thingol’s wounded pride rather got in the way of an ordinary welcome party.

Of all the strangers Edhellos spoke of, Galadriel daughter of Eärwen was Melian’s favorite.  She thought long and hard about the best way to entice the girl to Doriath.  Should she introduce herself in a dream?  Perhaps rumor alone would suffice.  The Hidden Kingdom, full of secrets, guarded by shadowy enchantments and enormous spiders, should be enough to pique anyone’s curiosity.  But in the end, Melian realized she could count on something even simpler: boredom.

Young Galadriel was busy founding a kingdom, and that might keep her occupied for a while: but the girl had too many talents to be satisfied for long.  Melian had founded a kingdom, too, and when the first burst of pride and hard work had worn off, her mind had drifted on to better things.  Melian no longer cared for politics, or bureaucracy, or taxes.  She left all of those things to her husband.

Given the right incentive, Galadriel might be persuaded to give her little kingdom away—just as Melian had done.  Perhaps she had already grown tired of it, and would be interested in something new.

So Melian took up her silver pen, and a bit of fine, spider-woven silk.

“Queen Melian of Doriath to Queen Galadriel of the Guarded Plain,” she wrote.  “My lord Elu Thingol greatly desires the company of his family, and requests that you and your brothers might honor him with a visit, for as long as you so desire.  Tuilérë, the Equinox, is nearly upon us: will you celebrate the festival with us?

Melian’s nightingale flew obediently away.  She would have to remember to warn Thingol that they were expecting guests.

Soon Melian and Galadriel would speak at last: and the future would sort out itself.

~~~

Notes:

1.  There is no indication in canon that Galadriel ever ruled any of the kingdoms of Beleriand.  The land I have given her was part of Finrod’s enormous territory.  Yet the Grey Annals, intriguingly, don’t place her in Doriath until YS 52!  It is admittedly a little implausible that someone would found a kingdom only to abandon it after a couple of decades; but if Turgon can do it, so can Galadriel.

2.  I do REALLY LOVE the paragraph in Shibboleth of Fëanor where Tolkien brings up Orodreth only to compare him less favorably to Idril.  But for the purposes of this fic, I am ignoring the claim that he was born in Aman, and not in Middle-earth.    Maybe it was a scribal error.

3.  Edhellos the wife of Angrod (and mother of Orodreth) appears in Shibboleth of Fëanor.  Her name is given in both Quenya and Sindarin forms, which to me indicates that, unlike many Finwëan wives, she accompanied her husband to Middle-earth.

Finally, thank you to Suzelle for the beta!

Comments

[zopyrus.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I am very happy you liked Edhellos!