[Year 1155 of the Trees. Autumn. The banks of the Esgalduin, Eglador]
[Daeron POV]
The melody wouldn't come.
Daeron sat on a flat stone at the river's edge, harp across his knees, fingers resting on strings that refused to sing. He'd been working on a new composition for weeks now, a ballad about the Great Journey, but every arrangement felt hollow.
{image: Daeron}
As if the enormity of what his people had endured could be captured in rhyming couplets and tidy harmonies.
The Esgalduin murmured past his feet, silver-dark beneath the trees of Eglador. Somewhere upstream, a thrush sang three notes and fell silent.
Daeron's head snapped up. The voice came from the treeline, warm and unhurried, speaking Telerin with an accent he couldn't quite place.
"Greetings, mellon!"
A tall Quendi emerged from the shadows between two oaks. Silver-haired. Broad-shouldered. Dressed in clothing of unfamiliar cut, well-made but distinctly different from anything the Eglath or Falathrim wore. Leather and woven fabric in forest greens and earth browns, practical rather than decorative.
The stranger smiled easily. No weapon visible, hands open at his sides.
"I'm a traveler," he said. "Arrived from beyond the Ered Luin. My name is Talion."
Nandor, Daeron decided, studying the clothing and the accent. One of those who turned back during the Journey and settled east of the mountains.
They'd been appearing more frequently of late. Curious wanderers from the far side of the Ered Luin, drifting through the forests and coastlands of Beleriand with wide eyes and endless questions.
"Greetings to you as well, mellon." Daeron set aside his harp and rose. "I'm Daeron. Subject of King Elu Thingol. Court minstrel."
Talion's eyebrows rose. "A minstrel? Then you're exactly the person I hoped to find."
They fell into conversation the way travelers often did, trading news and stories like currency. Daeron spoke of Eglador, of the forests of Region and Neldoreth, of the king's halls and the beauty of Melian. He shared what any Eglath would share with a friendly stranger.
But Talion's questions had a different quality.
He asked about the land. Not vaguely, the way a poet might, but with precision. Rivers and their tributaries. Mountain passes and the roads between settlements.
Where the Falathrim built their harbors. How far north the Mithrim had settled. The architecture of Eglarest and Brithombar. How the Eglath organized their crafts, their governance, their defenses.
Daeron noticed. He was observant by nature, a minstrel's habit, watching people as closely as he listened to them. But the questions felt harmless. Genuine curiosity from someone who'd grown up in simpler circumstances and was marveling at the wider world.
He answered freely. What harm could it do? The Nandor were kin, after all. Teleri who'd chosen a different path.
"Your harp," Talion said, leaning forward. "The craftsmanship is remarkable. We have nothing like it east of the mountains."
"Círdan's people shaped the frame. The strings are my own work." Daeron ran his thumb across them, producing a shimmer of sound. "Would you like to hear something?"
"Very much."
So Daeron played. A song of starlight on the waters of Eglador, of ancient trees and the whisper of Melian's enchantment through the leaves. Talion listened with an intensity that bordered on reverence.
When the song ended, the Nandor sat in silence for a long moment.
"Beautiful," he said softly. "Your people have built something extraordinary here."
"We've had time." Daeron smiled. "And inspiration."
They parted warmly. Talion thanked him, shouldered his pack, and headed south along the riverbank.
Daeron watched him go, then returned to his composition. The melody still wouldn't come. But the encounter had planted something, a fragment of rhythm, a new phrase turning over in his mind.
He'd find it eventually. He always did.
What he didn't notice was that Talion, once out of sight beyond the bend in the river, changed direction entirely. Not south toward the Nandor settlements beyond the Ered Luin.
Southeast. Toward the great forest that no one entered.
Toward Taur-im-Duinath.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Interlude: The Travelers]
Talion was not the only one.
Throughout the autumn and winter that followed, travelers appeared across western and northern Beleriand. Silver-haired Quendi in simple garb, introducing themselves as Nandor from beyond the Blue Mountains, curious about the wider world.
They came to the harbors of the Falathrim, where they marveled at the ships and asked careful questions about navigation and harbor construction.
They appeared in the forests of Eglador, where they sat with hunters and craftsmen and absorbed everything they saw. A few even ventured north toward the cold shores where the Mithrim dwelt.
Their curiosity seemed bottomless. Architecture, sciences, crafts, culture, the organization of settlements, the techniques of metalwork and weaving. They asked, they listened, they committed everything to memory.
And then they left.
Gradually, the travelers grew fewer. Their visits became rarer, until one season they simply stopped appearing.
The Eglath, the Falathrim, and the Mithrim thought nothing of it. Wanderlust was natural among Quendi. Many felt the pull of distant horizons.
That these particular wanderers always departed southward, that their questions followed patterns too systematic for mere curiosity, that every one of them seemed to carry the quiet discipline of trained observers rather than idle tourists…
None of this registered.
The Teleri of Beleriand had their own concerns, their own kingdoms, their own slow and beautiful lives beneath the stars. A few odd Nandor passing through were hardly worth remembering.
Which was, of course, exactly the point.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Year 1155 of the Trees. Autumn. Taur-im-Duinath]
[Selas POV]
After the celebration of Ilvëa's Rite of Becoming, routine reclaimed us. The way it always did. Euphoria burned itself out, and reality reasserted its claim in the form of blisters, dirt, and the endless sound of shovels hitting earth.
But the scouts kept returning with maps. And those maps kept getting better.
I spread the latest batch across the council table, weighting the corners with stones, and studied what we'd assembled.
Our forest, Taur-im-Duinath, occupied the southeastern corner of Beleriand. A vast, ancient woodland bounded by rivers and mountains. To the south, between the forest's edge and the ocean coast, lay a narrow strip of open plains. To the east flowed the Gelion, the second great river of Beleriand, fed by six tributaries descending from the Ered Luin mountains. The Gelion originated far to the north and emptied into the ocean to the south. All the lands east of the Gelion, from the coast to the northernmost tributary, the Ascar, were called Ossiriand. The Land of Seven Rivers.
To the north, a long mountain ridge called the Andram, the Long Wall, separated our forest from the rest of Beleriand. The ridge terminated in the east at a prominent peak called Ramdal, the Wall's End.
Beyond a narrow valley-pass rose the broad, sloping hill of Amon Ereb, the Lonely Hill, which ended at the banks of the Gelion itself. In other words, the only land approach to our forest from the north funneled through a single valley between Ramdal and Amon Ereb.
A natural chokepoint. Any military planner's dream.
To the west, not far from our forest, flowed the Sirion, the greatest river in Beleriand. It emptied into the ocean at the Bay of Balar, forming a delta of small islands at its mouth. The Sirion's source lay far to the north, and countless tributaries fed it along its course.
The river passed beneath the Andram ridge through underground channels, emerging south of the ridge at a point called the Gates of Sirion. Roughly midway between the delta and the Gates, the river Narog joined the Sirion, and a forest called Nan-tathren, the Willow-land, had grown up around the confluence.
West of the Sirion stood the birch forests of Nimbrethil, and those lands bore the name Arvernien. The coastline there ran south to Cape Balar, then turned northward. The Bay of Balar itself was shielded from the open ocean by the large island of Balar.
North of the Andram ridge lay the various forests and rivers where Beleriand's other Quendi had established themselves. My brother Elu Thingol, Elwë Greycloak, ruled there with the Maia Melian over the Eglath, the Forsaken People.
In the future, they'd become the Iathrim, People of the Fence, and their kingdom Eglador would become Doriath. Their realm occupied the forests of Region and Neldoreth.
{ image: A map, if you look closely, you might notice a couple of spoilers. }
West of them, on the ocean coast in the land of Falas, my childhood friend Círdan the Shipwright, formerly Novë, led his Falathrim.
To the far north, near Lake Mithrim, dwelt the Mithrim elves.
To me and to the Avari, all these Beleriand Eldar were the Eglath. The Forsaken and Abandoned. Those who'd been left behind when the great island carried the Vanyar and Noldor to Aman.
All this intelligence came from our scouts, who made contact with Círdan's and Thingol's Teleri only in the north and west, well beyond the Andram ridge. Following standing orders, they posed as Nandor travelers. Simple, curious, utterly unremarkable.
Not one of them ever mentioned the Avari. Not one revealed our location. Not one broke cover.
The intelligence on resources and geography was equally thorough. Beyond our forest, we'd found significant mineral deposits in the Andram ridge, in Ramdal, in Amon Ereb, and in the Ered Luin.
As the construction crews continued their work, widening the Taurion and digging moats, they also excavated tunnels and underground passages extending to the base of the hill. These would serve as the foundations for future mines.
And the land surrounding our forest was generous. Fertile plains, river valleys, and open pastures stretched in every direction. Ossiriand alone was staggering, a paradise of diverse forests, abundant game, and seven rivers practically begging for irrigation.
Oh, the things I could do with that river system. An irrigation network between the tributaries, clear some forest for farmland, and you'd have a breadbasket capable of feeding a civilization ten times our size.
But not yet.
First things first.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Same period. Executive Council session]
[Selas POV]
"There's another matter."
Yalinim Vakniros straightened in his seat. He'd been waiting for the right moment, and the pause after the tools discussion felt like it.
Every eye at the table turned to him.
"Ilvëa became one of us through the Rite of Becoming," he began. "Nobody questions that. But her stories have planted something in our people."
Glances exchanged around the table. This was not news. The rumors had been circulating for weeks, growing louder with each telling.
If the abandoned Eldar could found their own kingdom and choose their own king…
If Elu Thingol, son of Enel, could wear a crown…
Then why couldn't we?
Yalinim met my gaze directly.
"The people are ready," he said. "They want their own state. With their own sovereign."
The word hung in the air. Sovereign.
Everyone was looking at me now. Waiting.
So it's finally here.
I'd known this was coming. Had been planning for it since before we crossed the Gelion. My decision to establish a proper state before pursuing marriage with Ilvëa, all of it pointed toward this moment.
But knowing something is coming and watching it arrive are different experiences.
I took a long breath.
"Agreed."
The collective exhale around the table was almost comical. They'd been bracing for an argument.
"Changes are needed," I continued. "But we're not going to copy what others have done. The Eglath chose their path. The Falathrim chose theirs. We'll build something of our own, informed by their experience but shaped by our needs."
Thoron leaned forward. "Meaning what, exactly?"
"Meaning I don't want us repeating other people's mistakes. We learn from what works elsewhere and discard what doesn't."
"So you've been thinking about this," Maethor said flatly.
"Since before we arrived here."
"Of course you have."
I pulled out the document I'd prepared. Pages of notes, structures, hierarchies, contingencies. Weeks of work, mostly done at night when the camp was quiet and my mind wouldn't shut up.
"Here's what I propose."
The council settled in. This was going to take a while.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[End of Chapter 13.1]
GLOSSARY
NEW CHARACTER
Daeron — Court minstrel of King Elu Thingol in Eglador. Encountered an Avari scout posing as a Nandor traveler, unknowingly providing intelligence about the Eglath kingdom.
PLACES
Ossiriand — "Land of Seven Rivers." Fertile region east of the Gelion, fed by six tributaries from the Ered Luin. Selas envisions it as a future breadbasket.
Andram — "The Long Wall." Mountain ridge north of Taur-im-Duinath, separating the Avari forest from the rest of Beleriand.
Ramdal — "Wall's End." Eastern peak of the Andram. Forms one side of a natural chokepoint into Taur-im-Duinath.
Amon Ereb — "The Lonely Hill." Rises beyond Ramdal at the Gelion's banks. Together with Ramdal, creates the only northern land approach to the forest.
Sirion — Greatest river of Beleriand. Passes beneath the Andram through underground channels called the Gates of Sirion.
Nan-tathren — "The Willow-land." Forest around the confluence of the Sirion and Narog rivers.
Nimbrethil — Birch forests west of the Sirion delta.
Arvernien — Coastal lands west of the Sirion, south to Cape Balar.
Balar — Large island shielding the Bay of Balar from the open ocean.
Falas — Coastal region where Círdan's Falathrim dwell.
Esgalduin — River in Eglador where Daeron encounters the Avari scout.
INTELLIGENCE
The Travelers — Avari scouts posing as Nandor wanderers from beyond the Ered Luin. Systematically gathered intelligence on Beleriand's geography, resources, settlements, and culture across multiple seasons. Visited the Falathrim, Eglath, and Mithrim without revealing the Avari's existence. Departed always southward toward Taur-im-Duinath.