Far below the cresting hills, the grey ripples of Lake Evendim lapped the shore, and the afternoon sun cast lengthening shadows from the walls of Tham Ornen.
There was little of historical importance to recommend the ancient manor, and it was one of the last ruins in Parth Aduial that Elisende had marked on her wrinkled map. It had belonged to a prosperous enough family, yet one with fewer than its share of troublemakers, agitators, or the truly great. Until its sack after the fall of Arthedain, it enjoyed the happy situation of an ordinary and mundane existence, leaving it only a few passing notes in historical texts.
Yet the woman who now came there shared none of the quiet contentment that one can only assume must have characterised the inhabitants of the ancient manor. Day and night she tirelessly dug and studied, the circles under her eyes ever darker as she searched archives and ruins, trying with desperate energy to snatch the secrets of the past. But deeper and deeper they sank from her grasp in the waves of the waning age. Her mouth quirked into a wry smile at the metaphor. It was apt, for the sea stole again and again the works of the Edain. Now long under the waves had lain Númenor. Now the wide sea sundered men from the Eldar.
What it was she sought in the past she could not say. Though war had passed, and through great loss now it seemed the fortunes of Arnor renewed, little she hoped for in present or future. A lore-keeper she was, the past her failing charge.
Her inspection of the upper level was swift. Little remained of note—either reclaimed long ago by other Dúnedain, or lost to plunderers.
Entering one of the towers, she took narrow stairs downwards. The slivers of light that filtered down the stairway were insufficient for her to make out detail. She lit a lantern, revealing nothing in its warm orange glow but a broken cup and half rotted wood. She walked the perimeter of the chamber behind the decaying wood, just barely catching the outline of another door. Expecting nothing more than a cellar, she wrenched it open, straining, until at last it gave way, creating an opening just wide enough for the slender woman to slip through.
From the look of bare shelves and stone, she could have saved herself the effort. By the door she saw what looked to be a flat piece of scrap wood, and she turned it over. To her surprise it revealed an oil painting, strangely well preserved in the dark, dry closet.
She took it gingerly, grateful for the gloves that protected it from her bare hand, back to the stairs where the dim light could supplement the lantern. She set it in front of her, noting at a glance the deft use of the chiaroscuro style, although, as that style waxed and waned in popularity in the years, that observation aided her little in dating the painting.
She squinted in the low light, seeking some sign of the majesty of the past, but her breath caught. Those eyes, those eyes! Grey, not at all unusual with the dúnedain, but no, that was not all. The pale scar across the jaw, the eyebrows that drew too close together—she knew that face.
She tried to claw her mind away from the familiarity of that face. Clearly the painting dated from ere the fall of Arnor and the symbol of Tham Ornen was wrought in silver pinned on the man’s doublet. The man in that painting had lived and died long before her birth. But this could not be a stranger’s face.
A pain gripped her chest, and her breath was fitful and shallow. For it could easily be taken for Alphdir’s face that pleaded with her from the canvas. Nay—the expression was beyond pleading, of sorrow measurable and despair deep. The sorrow of the painting overwhelmed her mind’s eye. Never had she seen such anguish on her husband’s face, yet it so overtook her that she could no longer picture his smile, his tenderness, or that look of focus and joy as he sang songs in strange tongues.
Only grief, sorrow, and despair were left.
No dark lord had laid a curse on her father, of that she was reasonably certain. Yet some darkness turned all her striving to naught. Would he look at her like that if she could see him from beyond the grave? What sorrow she had caused by her own stupidity!
In a broken voice she croaked into the stale air, “Why do you taunt me? Why show me this strange and twisted image of one I loved?”
For it never occurred to her that it could be mere blind chance that this painting of an unremembered noble of Tham Ornen had stayed so long undisturbed.
Long she knelt in the white dust of the ages, until the stars spun in their spheres to the first cold light of dawn. At last she rose, and with eyes unfocused, and little expectation of comfort or answer she climbed the stairs, leaving behind the stale air.
Above her an albatross swooped low, and she looked up, startled. Eärendil’s star glittered, more brilliant by far than ever she had seen it—strangely bright—seeming to warm the grey light of dawn in its gleam.
