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The hill rose before them suddenly, a bony ridge that had appeared from nowhere and seemed likely to vanish once more. Elladan looked for the path, but the path seemed gone as quickly as the hill had appeared.
“There is something strange about this place,” Elrohir said from beside him, glancing warily around at their surroundings.
Indeed, if the sudden appearance of the hill had not been enough to suggest its more unusual features, the disappearance of the wolves who had stalked them for miles now would have been. Sauron’s loyal servants had followed them closely, doubtless hoping for the twins to lead them straight to Imladris, a boon both had been disinclined to grant him.
But the wolves had faded away back into the forest, as though they could not come any closer.
Elladan gripped his sword tighter as they heard whistling behind them.
“Is that a way to greet the one who has saved you?” a familiar voice called to them.
The twins turned as one, sheathing their swords, and Maglor appeared from a path neither had spotted before.
“Maglor,” Elrohir called out in surprise, Elladan echoing him. Then Elrohir continued, “We are grateful for your help, though we know not yet what force you have used to drive them away.”
Maglor came nearer, pulling them both into a hug before he answered, “Sauron’s servants are not welcome in my home, and his wolves are chief among those I would not welcome, even had they not been chasing you two.”
Elladan glanced around. The lack of visible house meant nothing, of course, but unlike the other hidden homes Elladan had visited through the years, there seemed nothing here but the hill.
“Your home?” he asked, still looking for any hints on the hill as to where it or the entrance was.
“I told you both I had a home, the last time you tried to keep me in Imladris under the belief I did not,” Maglor said.
“You did not tell us it was a hill,” Elrohir said in return.
Maglor laughed.
“Nay, but Astulat is not merely a hill,” Maglor said as he turned, hand brushing over a rock in the side of the hill so quickly that Elrohir and Elladan would have been unable to find it again if Maglor had not also taken care to point at the shrub nearest it. Their attention was focused more on the name Maglor had given the hill than on the entrance than to any of the other features surrounding the entrance.
“We have heard tales told of that name before. They say Astulat does not exist except on the tongues of drunken Hobbits who tell stories of hills that appear and disappear at will,” Elladan said. He followed Maglor in, Elrohir behind him, neither of them remarking on tunnels so tall inside the hill that they could only have been made with one elf still on Maglor’s mind.
“Do they? I suppose Isengrim did make it back to his family, if that is the case,” Maglor asked, and then he laughed again before either twin could question him about his encounter with a Hobbit. “Well, then, my tongue has caused legends to spread once more throughout these lands. My brothers would be pleased with that, at least.”
There were rooms in the sides of the hills, not the way Hobbit-holes had rooms, nor in the manner of the carven homes of Dwarves, nor even as the caves of Mirkwood were designed. Elladan felt they almost resembled Imladris or Lothlorien, and yet not those either. It was more as though he looked upon a reflection of how Valinor was now said to be cloaked from sight and reach, and yet these rooms allowed themselves to be glimpsed as the hill itself had.
“The rooms and hill recognize you both as welcome here,” Maglor said without turning around.
Elladan looked at his twin, grins on both their faces at the words, though neither saw a reason to speak of their relief at being welcomed here too, now that Maglor was ushering them into a kitchen and pressing hot cups of mulled wine into their hands.
If any elf was to take the description of Valinor and apply it to his own home, it would be Maglor, and it was good to know where he had finally made a home again.