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Celebrimbor was not at his forge.
Nor was he in the mess-hall where he usually ate, nor in his quarters overlooking the rivers’ confluence, nor in his workshop. At last Annatar returned to the mess-hall to ask Zarim, one of the dwarves with whom Celebrimbor regularly collaborated, if she had seen him. She shrugged.
“Wandered off toward the lorehalls about an hour ago. Some new project he’s working on, said he needed a space where he could do a lot of mathematics all at once.”
Sure enough, Annatar found his quarry in one of the rooms that doubled as a classroom and a sort of space for collaborative brainstorming. It was furnished with a variety of desks and drawing-boards and walled entirely with sliding panels of slate. Celebrimbor had shoved all the furniture to one side, and so far had covered one and a half sides of the room with chalk sketches and equations in the cramped tengwar he reverted to when drafting.
Annatar took it all in at a glance.
“That is quite a contraption you are designing.”
Celebrimbor, fully immersed, startled minutely. Then he turned around and grinned. “I was hoping to get a bit further along before showing it to you, but now you’re here, you may as well give me your thoughts. The inspiration for it came from the dwarves of Hadhodrond.”
“I had not thought the Khazad much interested in flight.”
“Not so much, no, but they are well versed in the mechanics of airflow. They use a similar device to measure pressure differentials in the deeper mineshafts. We were experimenting with those some months ago, and I found myself thinking it should be possible to do the same above ground. But it would take a far larger envelope to generate enough buoyancy to lift a person.”
Annatar stepped forward, scrutinising the chalk diagrams over Celebrimbor’s shoulder. He did not, strictly speaking, need to be closer to see them clearly; he could have plucked the meaning from the slate with his eyes closed simply by sensing for traces of limestone. But the slight flush that arose on Celebrimbor’s neck as he drew closer was worth it. Celebrimbor smelled faintly of limestone himself, and forge-smoke, and underneath that a hint of the pine oil he used to tame his hair. Annatar allowed himself a moment to savour the combination before speaking.
“And a far stronger source of heat.” He tried not to take too much satisfaction from the answering warmth the words brought to his companion’s skin, and kept his tone deliberately light. “Not impossible, though.”
“I think not. We would, however, need to account for the weight of the fuel as well as that of the fabric and cargo. And incorporate some sort of valve mechanism to release air from the top, or the pilot would be entirely at the mercy of wind and fuel supply.”
“Pah,” was Annatar’s only response to that. In his view the mercy of the winds, and by extension their lord in the West, had little to recommend it. Celebrimbor guessed at the unvoiced thought anyhow, slanting an amused glance in his direction.
“Come now, it’s not so bad. Manwë has been known, on occasion, to show some pity for the Noldor in our need.”
“You do not need him. You do not need any who chose to sunder themselves from Middle-earth. You need only your own ingenuity, and your faith that better can be born of this land no matter the wounds it has suffered.”
Celebrimbor turned completely toward him then. “Do you have any idea the effect you have, when you say things like that?”
His hair was dusted in chalk and escaping its braids, and there was another smudge of chalk at the corner of his nose, and his tunic was rumpled and shedding stray threads at the sleeve-hems, and his gaze was as bright as the fire at a mountain’s heart; bright as a comet. The force of his full attention, intense and undivided like a single-wavelength light beam, would have been enough to stop Annatar’s breath, if breathing were not an entirely superfluous activity for him. He wanted to turn Celebrimbor’s demand back on him: Do you have any idea the effect you have, looking like that?
Once, he would have hoarded that thought to himself. Such sentiments, if indulged at all, were to be jealously guarded lest they betray weakness. He was increasingly coming to suspect this had been a rather reductive way to look at things. Certain truths stood to offer more than lies or silence.
“Such fierceness suits you,” he said. “It is beautiful, as are you.”
Now warmth spread all the way to the roots of Celebrimbor’s hair, radiating close enough for Annatar to feel even though Celebrimbor’s face was too brown to show much of a blush. He seemed lost for words—and Annatar had not even had to dissemble to achieve it.
Then Celebrimbor spoke, quietly.
“Not only the land.”
At Annatar’s questioning look, he added, “Its people, too. Better can be born of the people of Middle-earth, no matter what we have suffered or… done, in the past.”
And there it was, closer to the surface than they had ever pushed it before. Oblique gibes at Manwë and Varda were one thing, but this was as good as saying it outright. Celebrimbor no longer merely suspected. He knew. At least, he knew that Annatar was not the emissary of the Valar he had claimed to be at Ost-in-Edhil’s gates. He knew enough for hypothesis to solidify into conviction: Annatar had served Morgoth instead.
What would he think if he knew the whole of it? If he learned that Annatar was not merely some lesser-order Umaia held captive in Morgoth’s thrall, but the one his people had called Gorthaur the Cruel, and Sauron the Abhorred? One of Celebrimbor’s own uncles had given Annatar that name. Would he still welcome Annatar’s insights into mathematics and energy dynamics? Would he still radiate that exquisite warmth at Annatar’s touch?
Celebrimbor of all his people had committed most wholly to second chances, to choosing trust. He had opened his gates and his workshops and his lorehalls, perhaps even his heart, where his kindred in Lindon and Lórinand had shut them in Annatar’s face. It was that precise weakness Annatar had been seeking, and hoped to exploit. Yet Celebrimbor’s city had flourished for it.
If he revealed himself, would Celebrimbor take it as betrayal or honesty? Would he cast him out or bid him stay? He could drop the semblance of Annatar, but what would remain? Sauron would hardly find safe harbour in a city of the Noldor. It had been an Age and more since anyone had known him as Mairon. But if there existed a person who could learn the truth of his past and still muster the faith—or the naïveté—to regard him with admiration rather than fear, it was the elf in front of him.
How tensile was that generosity of spirit, really? How far would it stretch, how much use would it endure, before it snapped? Annatar was almost tempted to test it; there came a point where theory could only take one so far, and true knowledge demanded empirics.
Celebrimbor was regarding him with uncharacteristic patience, awaiting his response.
In the end, he only reached out and plucked the chalk from Celebrimbor’s grip, ignoring his companion’s sharp intake of breath as their fingers brushed. “It still seems an impractical way to travel. You would have no assurance of actually reaching your intended destination.”
Celebrimbor sighed. “Not unless you called a wind specifically, but even without that you could take advantage of the way wind direction changes with altitude to make sure you were at least landing somewhere safe. It’s not as though Eregion has a great deal of treacherous terrain to worry about. Besides, not everything has to be practical. And not every journey needs a destination. Sometimes we simply set out, and see where we end up.”
“Mm.” He twirled the chalk idly between long fingers, then leaned past Celebrimbor to point at one of his diagrams. “You will not need so much fabric near the base. I can see why your first instinct would be a spherical envelope, but remember that the pressure differential will not be constant within. It will vary with altitude, and the curvature will be greatest where it is highest.” He tilted his head, then sketched out a differential equation and its graph, something like an inverted teardrop, beside it. “More like that. Approximating a spherical curve for the top half, but approaching the tangent nearer the weight-bearing container.”
It took Celebrimbor only a moment to verify Annatar’s equation before he nodded, appreciative. “Elegant. And you’re right, it will save on the fabric. I had thought to consult Durvi for that. They’ve been conducting some promising experiments with spider-silk, though at this scale we might have to make some compromises.”
“What were you planning for fuel?”
“Ah. Well.” Celebrimbor shot him a rueful grin. “I was planning to ask a Maia with self-professed talents in producing fire if he had anything to offer on that front.”
“Were you? A critic might deem that a rather lazy approach.” And given what Celebrimbor had made clear he knew, “Not to mention a risky one.”
“That critic would sorely undervalue the benefits of collaboration, then. We do better when we combine one another’s expertise.” He shrugged. “And I have had cause to be grateful for more than one risk taken on my behalf; poor repayment it would be if I took none on others’. Might the Maia have any ideas, while we’re on the subject?”
Annatar permitted himself a small smile. “He might, at that.”
***
He was, at heart, a being of thought and energy. Corporeal form was a matter of convenience, not necessity. There were of course benefits to wearing a façade others deemed beautiful, but if this body ever outweighed its utility, it would be the work of a moment to slough it off and take to the skies as the creature of spirit he truly was.
All of which was to say, Annatar hardly needed something so cumbrous as a balloon to fly.
And yet.
Eregion, spread beneath them, was beautiful. Its hillsides shone green with holly even as autumn drew to a close. They had drifted well east of Ost-in-Edhil, the spires of the city dwindling behind them and aglow in the morning light spilling over the mountaintops. Far below and off to their left, Annatar could see the great road that led from the elven city to the west-gate of Hadhodrond. Ahead, the mountains loomed, snow-covered crests piercing like carved diamonds through the fog that wreathed their middle altitudes.
Celebrimbor, eyes lit with exhilaration as he braced against the basket-wall with one hand gripping a cord of braided rope, was beautiful too. He had not been able to contain his joy as they lifted off, whooping like an elfling on a tree-swing as the ropes stretched and the wicker basket went airborne. “It works!” he'd cried. And then, again, as they cleared the roofs of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain's halls, “I can’t believe it! It works!”
“Of course it works,” Annatar had told him with some amusement, casting his voice to be audible through the wind even without raising it. “We took long enough designing it to make sure of that, and we both verified the pressure equations and weight ratios thrice over. Not to mention the hour you spent today at dawn testing wind speeds.”
“Knowing it and experiencing it are different, you know that,” retorted Celebrimbor.
It had taken them the better part of a month to refine the design, another for Celebrimbor and Durvi to settle on the fabric composition, and then a half-season before Durvi’s weavers produced enough of it for the project. Celebrimbor had insisted on working an eight-pointed star into the pattern of the cloth panels. Then, after everything had been assembled, they had been delayed another five days by a spate of gusty northerly winds. Annatar refused to attempt a flight in wind faster than an elf’s comfortable running speed. Triple-checked equations aside, the wicker basket would provide scant protection on a rough landing for Celebrimbor, who was corporeal very much by necessity and whose body seemed all the more fragile when Annatar imagined it in a crashing balloon.
They were drifting higher now, the flames Annatar had called to the burner pans some minutes before finally taking effect. Celebrimbor was quieter, but the excitement in his eyes had not faded though he’d narrowed them against the sun. His gaze roved over the mountains ahead and the green hills below, all his love for the land he had chosen and the connections he had forged across it written plainly upon his face. It was the sort of love that could lead a child of the Noldor and a veteran of Beleriand to open his home to the erstwhile servant of his greatest enemy.
It was the sort of love that held as much peril as promise.
They ascended into a cross-current, and the balloon veered westward again, caught by a chilly windstream coming off the mountain peaks. Annatar stepped back from the burners. “Give me your hands.”
“What?”
“You are shivering. Give me your hands.”
With some surprise Celebrimbor secured the parachute valve cord he’d been holding and extended them. Annatar yanked off Celebrimbor’s thin gloves impatiently—he should have known they’d be next to useless at this altitude—and covered his hands in his own, calling warmth to his palms with a thought.
Abruptly Celebrimbor’s shivering stopped. “Oh. That’s a useful trick.”
“We should descend, and find a place to land,” Annatar said, but neither he nor Celebrimbor made any move to pull the valve cord.
Slowly, eyes downcast, Celebrimbor turned his hands within Annatar’s grasp, until his palms were facing up and he could very gently clasp their hands together. What would Celebrimbor do, Annatar thought recklessly, if he told him now? What was the worst Celebrimbor could do, pitch him out of the basket? That was laughable.
“We have time,” murmured Celebrimbor, as though answering Annatar’s spoken and unspoken thoughts both. He returned his gaze toward the landscape beneath them, and then to Annatar’s face. His irises were the same grey as the fog wreathing the mountains. “It is worth it, isn’t it? To take the time for things like this.”
“Yes,” said Annatar, and carefully did not think about whether he was lying or not.
“A little longer, then?”
Annatar tightened his hold on Celebrimbor’s hands. “As long as you like.”