Revised Fic: Fire and Ice

[martasfic]

Title: Fire and Ice
Rating: PG, for themes related to death
Summary: In the Fourth Age, Barahir travels with his family to Rohan. (Originally posted in 2003, but now substantially revised.)
Word Count: 3,491



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NOTE: The LOTR prologue tells us that Barahir wrote a history of Aragorn and Arwen, an abridged version of which is included in the LOTR appendices. For the purposes of this story, all you need to know is that he is a grandson of Faramir and Éowyn.

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The king is dead. No, no, not that king; not Elessar. He still sits on his high throne in the City, hale as ever. But another king: Éomer of Rohan, peace be upon him. And I should be sad, I know; he was, after all, Grandmother's brother and by all accounts a great man. But I hardly knew him in life and can muster no great sorrow for his death. I weep no tears. There is a chill in the air of this northern land, and it seems to have settled around my very heart. I must remind myself that I hardly knew him, and that if others feel the pain more bitterly and show it more openly, that is no judgment against me.

Of course I met him once or twice. The roads are safer than they once were, and sometimes state business would call him to Gondor. On such occasions Grandmother would take us, my sister Morwen and I, to see the golden-haired giant of a man we were told was a kinsman. We'd leave Emyn Arnen, and cross the river, and after a few hours we'd see the City's spires. Then through the Rammas and the Seven Gates until at last we reached the Steward's House in the Citadel. A marvelous city, I'm sure, but I never really cared for it. It had beauty of a sort, but white and harsh; not green like the valleys that had birthed me.

When I think back to those trips to the too-grand halls, when I try to remember my great-uncle, what I remember most is his face. He had a noble forehead, a confident brow. There was no doubt, he was master of the situation, whatever the situation might be. And his eyes burned with a passion. I remember thinking he could be dangerous if ever that passion broke free. I remembered the songs of how he cried for wrath, for ruin and a red nightfall as a sea of orcs broke around him. Very dangerous, indeed! I had felt my neck-hair bristle at facing him, but had been careful not to tremble.

But I had never spent much time around him. Am I not the child of a younger son, scarcely counted as an heir in the great genealogies? No small wonder that a king brought by business of state from a far land should pass me by with only a cursory greeting. And, to be frank, I was not overeager to spend time before a king I barely knew. Minas Tirith had one advantage over Emyn Arnen, its libraries, and I always rushed off to spend my time there as soon as I was excused.

Morwen stayed in the house and so she saw more of the king. Grandmother often went riding with him, or walking along the battlements, and the king would bring Morwen sweets when they returned. She was fond of him. She had cried when the rider brought news of his death, though nothing to match Grandmother's tears. Her wails pierced the peace of Emyn Arnen like an Easterling's knife, and I could not comfort her. I held her hand and let her cry on my shoulder and promised her we would leave ere nightfall for Rohan, and I was sad for her – but not for my own sake.

We had indeed left that afternoon. It took us a fortnight to reach Edoras, for Morwen has not yet reached seven years and some of my cousins have children of their own younger than she; so much riding wore on them, and our camps were full of the sound of fussing babes. Yet at last we arrived; the Golden Hall gleamed in the late afternoon sun, and I knew we'd be leaving the cursed road behind soon enough. I did not expect to care much for the Rohirrim; those few I had met had been too quick to laugh, too bawdy in their songs and not at all to my liking. Yet at least in Edoras I would have a bed.

As we approached the gate Grandmother smiled down at me. "You will like Edoras better than Minas Tirith," she said to me as the guards opened the gates. "It's much greener, more like Ithilien." I was glad to see the faint smile in her eyes so I did not challenge her, though I doubted whether she judged well. The golden hall at the summit of the hill was impressive, yes, but the rest of the city seemed rather dingy. Low wooden houses with dark doors and thatched roofs; quite the opposite of Minas Tirith, but too much so, in my opinion. Still, this journey was not about pleasure, least of all mine, so I kept my thoughts to myself. We climbed the cobblestone road to Meduseld, at last making our way up the great steps and into the hall.







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Meduseld at least was more to my liking, a happy middle between the harsh architecture of Minas Tirith and the mean condition of the houses I'd seen on my ride through Edoras. And Grandmother was right that it reminded me of home; Grandfather did not sit on so rich a throne, of course, but the tapestries and carvings called to mind his halls. And the low fire was comforting in more ways than one, giving the room a cozy air and warming my near-frozen arms. Troll's breath, but Rohan was cold! I could not remember having felt so chilled in my whole life.

Grandfather and Elboron were walking toward the throne now. Mother hastily pushed my forward, to represent the third generation, I supposed – my male cousins were of age to serve with the rangers and had not come, so I would have to do – and so I scrambled after them. I matched my grandfather's and uncles bows, once to the king and again to the lady seated at his side. "Ic grete þe, cyning," Grandfather greeted them.

"Well met, Prince Faramir," the young king answered in the Common Tongue. "And thank you for the courtesy of using my tongue, though it is most unnecessary. The days are not so dark as they once were, and we welcome them more warmly than we once did. And few so much as the children of the hwitlæfdige, Éowyn." He let his eyes fall to the fire-hearth where the rest of our family stood, and I thought I saw his eyes grow softer when they fell on Grandmother. But then he turned his attention again to those of us standing before the throne.

"We will speak later of state matters," he said to Grandfather. "You have had a long journey, and I I would not ask you to represent your land until you have rested. But I would hear of my family." He and his wife rose quickly and walked toward us, and I hurried to bow before he might mistake my weariness for poor manners.

"It has been too long, Elboron," the king said, crossing his arm across his chest in the Gondorian fashion as he nodded to my uncle. Then his eyes fell on me, and I forced myself to meet his eyes. "And I greet you as well, though I do not know your name."

"Men nama is Barahir," I answered in what I hoped was flawless Rohirric. It seemed the proper thing to do somehow, but the new king's eyes shone with amusement again. Truly, these Rohirrim wore their hearts on their sleeves! Was he laughing at me, or did he offend his guests without even meaning to?

"Ic grete þe, Barahir," he said. "I see Éowyn has taught you well, though you bear your grandfather's unfortunate knack for mispronunciation."

I glanced nervously over at Grandfather, and was bemused to see him chuckling under his breath. This was the same man who sat so sternly in Ithilien's throne? But it seemed the Eorlingas's good cheer was catching. I knew I would be smiling soon, too, if I was not careful, but I fought against that; this man was an unknown entity to me, and I must not become too unguarded too quickly. "I shall try to improve that, hlaford," I said after a moment.

"Do not bother on our account," he said. He leaned close and whispered, as if it were a secret between conspirators, "You would laugh to hear my Sindarin, I pronounce it much worse than you do our tongue, and I have had many more years to practice." Something about his face struck me; the pouchy skin under his eyes perhaps. It looked like Morwen's when she cried too much, and I wondered what the king might be hiding behind his high spirits. One can use laughter as a shield, after all.

"I am called Elfwinë," he continued. "Your grandfather and uncle here will join me for a mug of mead, so we may share stories of our lands. Will you join us?"

I looked over at Grandfather, trying to discern his answer. The thought of an hour or more of close conversation with a king cowed me, the evening would be quite enough company and I longed to be away. But luck was with me. "You would spare me my daughter's harsh words," Grandfather said, "if you would excuse the lad. In Ithilien we do not encourage boys his age to drink such liquors, save on special occasions. And while meeting the king of Rohan certainly is a day of special note, he is still a boy and his mother might not approve."

Elfwinë nodded, understanding. "Then I shall see you at the feast tonight." He left the room with Grandfather and Elboron; I gratefully returned to the rest of my family and followed the servant out of the hall.







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Dinner was a lavish affair. The ale went a bit to my head, and with such a rich meal after so long on the road, I soon found it difficult to think clearly. As the night wore on the Eorlingas offered their toasts in louder and louder voices, and some went so far as to break into song – much too free, I thought, for they were honoring a foreign prince and were after all still mourning the old king's death. When I thought I could slip away unnoticed, I stood up from the table and made my way along the wall until I reached the passageway I thought led to our quarters.

Once I had left the feast hall, though, I found that I wasn't really tired. I really just wanted to breathe the night air, to clear my head from the exhilaration of the feast. I made my way through the labyrinth of corridors until at last I found a back door that opened onto the great porch.

It was more chilly than I had imagined, much colder than that afternoon, though I had scarcely thought that possible. A gust of wind swelled up, blowing my hair back from my face, and I found my mind clearing just as if I'd drank a cup of cold water. More than that, I found the numbness that had gripped me all through the journey lift a bit, so that I felt clearly for the first time in weeks. A good thing; the haze had not sat well with me. I let the wind blow past me until my cheeks felt raw from it, breathing in the air and watching my breath form like smoke-rings before my lips.

"If you want people to believe you are going to bed, you should at least make for the right corridor." I turned around quickly, and my shoulders slumped as I saw Grandfather standing in the doorway. Was he angry? It was hard to say. He sat down on a bench a few paces away, and I joined him.

"You don't like it here."

It was a statement, but like so much of what Grandfather said there was a question hidden inside, waiting to be found and addressed. "I like it well enough, I suppose," I said. "Meduseld at least is nice, it's a magnificent hall.

Grandfather fixed his gaze on me; even though I could see that he was tired, his eyes seemed to pierce me to the very soul. They were not as intent as Éomer's had been, not scary, but yet I still knew he would not be deceived. "You do not like the people," he clarified.

I thought for a moment. Was that true? I was not at ease with them, certainly, but did I dislike them? How could I, when I hardly knew them. And yet… "No, I don't suppose I do," I found myself saying. Those words had come almost of their own will; I certainly hadn't meant to say them. "The Rohirrim, they are so… exposed, I suppose, though that isn't quite the right word. What they feel, you can tell it right away. And that's dangerous. Isn't it?"

Grandfather nodded slowly. "It is, though not the only dangerous way to be." I looked at him quizzically, waiting for him to explain what he meant. But instead he asked a most peculiar question. "You have heard the stories, surely, of your Grandmother's and my roles in the War?"

What a foolish question! My nephew Borgil had heard those stories, and he was scarcely three. Yet something in Grandfather's gaze told me to tread lightly, so I answered plainly: "Yes, I've heard. Grandmother killed the Lord of the Nazgûl – "

"You say that name altogether too easily," Grandfather interrupted.

I felt my cheeks flush, not from the cold, but continued, "She fought him, and many men died but in the end you subdued the Shadow." I paused but decided to risk a more critical answer. "That is all I know for sure. I do not trust much of the songs sung by the minstrels, their words chosen more for rhyme than truth."

"Doubtless," Grandfather said. "But what do you know of my role? Certainly Gondor's greatest historians were eager to record my great deeds."

"You – you were ill, were you not?" I did not want to voice the thought that occurred to me, that my grandfather had done very little in that battle.

"Ill," he repeated, frowning as if the word left a bitter taste in his mouth. "I suppose you might call it that. There was something of an epidemic, a rot in the roots of the family tree you might say." He breathed in deeply, and if I had thought him capable of fluster, I would have thought he was trying to calm his nerves. "And what of the fire, and of the Rath Dínen gate-guard?"

"Just songs." Hadn't they been?

"Not all songs are pure lies." Grandfather lifted my chin so that I had to look into his eyes. "The War called for many deeds that strain what we would have deemed imaginable, before."

I wanted to look away but could not. Surely not…

"You mean that really happened? With Great-grandfather? He lit you on fire?"

Grandfather gave a bitter laugh, almost a bark. "No, of course not. He tried, surely, and he lit himself." His fingers grew tight around my chin, scratching my raw skin so I turned away from his grasp. Grandfather lowered his hand to the bench, but I found that now I could not look away. "He burned the House of the Stewards to the ground, and with it reduced a thousand years of proud history to ash. Such a waste! Monuments and markers, carvings commemorating great deeds, all crumbled and crushed beneath beneath a marble roof so that the whole lot had to be cleared away. They only salvaged the palantír, and even that bears the mark of that day."

I saw him twisting something absent-mindedly in his other hand: the rod of his stewardcy. Of a sudden I was reminded that my grandfather was no mean provincial lord but the steward of all Gondor as well. Not the ruling steward since the war, that much was true, but the king's return had not stolen the stewardship of its majesty. I wondered whether this rod was newly crafted since the war, or whether someone had retrieved it from the rubble.

"That fire was not started by wood and spark, Barahir. It started by ice." I quirked my head to the side as was my habit when I had a question I wasn't quite sure how to ask. "The whole cursed day was all fire and ice, come to think of it. You should appreciate the poetic qualities, you who love order. My brother was given to the water, and if my father had had his way, the fire would have consumed me and reduced me to earth. Instead, my father burned until he had no fuel left to give the blame, and I reclaimed the earth of Ithilien until it blossomed. And while I near burned on a fire started by ice, your grandmother drove away the icy chill of that one you named so easily, through the fire of her passion."

He talked like I had never heard him before, until I had had more than my fill, and it seemed he scarcely remembered I was there. He told me of the dark morning when he had arrived from Ithilien, and of the council that had pained him as much as any of Sauron's devices. Then there was the ill-fated defense of Osgiliath and the flight back to the Causeway Forts, and the tale of his last fight there. How icy had his fear been, when the Nazgûl had descended on him? Certainly it was a different type of ice than what I had endured these last few weeks. And to be delivered by his uncle into the arms of a madman!

"I do not remember what happened next, of course," Grandfather told me, and I found myself glad for that small mercy. "The Halfling told me what he saw, and Beregond likewise shared what he learned from the other guards, but I do not think they ever told me the full story. I doubt those hours can ever be truly captured and told to one who was not there. They said that my father went away for a while, and when he came back there was a mean ice in his gaze. He told his men to bundle me up and carry me to Rath Dínen, with wood and oil. The end had come, and we would meet our end together rather than wait for Sauron's hordes to exact our ruin."

Grandfather painted a picture with his words more fearful than what I had seen in the tapestries or heard for the minstrels. How would I react to the gate-guard dead at his post, his blood red against the white marble of the road leading down to the Hallows? Or the giant billowing house smoke as the House of the Stewards caved in atop Denethor? And then there was the news from beyond the Hallows. Even though Grandfather had not been there, his voice was thick and his eyes full of unshed tears as he told me of the old king – Éomer's uncle, who I had never met – struggling for breath under his horse. But he smiled through his sorrow: the flame of passion, a love that drove out fear, had undone the Nazgûl lord until his very soul melted away, so that no one else would ever wilt in his presence.

At last he stopped his tale. He was utterly exhausted, leaning back against the wall of Meduseld, his eyes closed. I took his large hand, scarred and calloused from a lifetime of labor in my own, and rubbed it to warm it. After a moment he leaned forward and kissed the top of my head. "Thank you, lad," he said. "But I suppose you have had quite enough of an old man's stories."

"Hardly stories, Grandfather," I answered. There was an earnestness, an honesty in my voice that caught me by surprise. Was it the ale and the heavy meal that had loosened my tongue and mind, or something else? This land seemed to change a person, though I couldn't quite see how. After a moment I shook my head, as if to clear my thoughts. There would be time enough to think over what Grandfather had said, but right now such analysis seemed beyond me.

"Are you ready for bed?" Grandfather asked at last. "I can help you find your room if you like."

I shook my head. "I am not that sleepy, truly, I just found the hall a bit boisterous. But I would like to go back in; it is too cold for my tastes."

Grandfather nodded at that. "Indeed; we Gondorians are poorly suited to such weather." They hurried back across the porch and pulled the door shut, leaving the merciless wind behind.







Translations

"Ic grete þe" translates as "I greet thee."
"Cyning" is the Old English equivalent of king.
"Hwitlæfdige" is my own inventions, but should mean "white lady."
"Men nama is" should properly be "Min nama is", or "My name is."