The Face of Hope

A/N Amandil’s words are quoted from the Silmarillion and Captain Belzor is a character in Dwimordene’s story, “A Star to Steer Her By”.

Black winds beat against the ship’s sides in an endless squall, the same dreadful surge that had overwhelmed home more than a week before. Elendil, experienced sailor that he was, lost his footing as he stepped out of his cabin. The deck heaved as each wave struck and the ship’s timbers groaned with the strain.

He picked himself up, relieved that no one had seen him fall. The Faithful who had followed him and his sons had trusted them with their lives, their families, and everything that remained of their possessions; they wanted to believe that he was infallible. Their faith in him should have given him hope, but instead it crushed him more than the booming wind.

Over the last week, he had spoken to the passengers as rarely as he could manage. At least the miserable storm had kept them all below decks. As long as he didn’t look into their faces, he could try to ignore the fears that gnawed at him, or at least, not spread them among his people. If he couldn’t be a fearless and unerring leader in fact, at least he could leave them their illusion that they followed such a man.

He didn’t share the worries that flocked around him as thick and dark as the storm clouds. Either by chance or by doom, he and his tiny fleet of exiles, the flotsam of Numenor, might well dissolve before they reached a haven on the eastern shore. If the Valar could allow that, let all their preparations, the faith they’d kept at such cost, end in the same destruction that had taken all of their fellow countrymen, was it worth it? All the decisions he’d agonized over, all the chances he’d taken, seemed no greater than a floating gull’s feather on the spume.

As he shoved open the hatch, the howling of the wind drowned out the ship’s groans and his pointless thoughts. He seized the rope tied next to the hatch and used it to drag himself back to where the Captain stood at the helm. They had sailed together before many times. Of all the souls on the ship, Captain Halmir best understood his thoughts.

“It’s a wicked night. Lord Elendil,” Halmir greeted him. “My father used to say that in the old days, ‘the weather was ever apt to the needs and liking of men.’ If that was ever true, it is true no longer.”

“The rain has slacked some, at least. How many leagues do you think this storm extends, Captain? I’ve never seen such a tempest.” While the Captain seemed to speak over the wind easily, Elendil found that he had to lean in towards the other man to be heard.

“May Manwe be my witness, I’ve no idea. As it goes on and on, Lord, I begin to feel that it pursues us with an active ill-will. It’s certainly more than a natural storm.”

“There can be no doubt of that, but I did not think that it would last so long once we were out of Romenna. These waves rival Meneltarma in height.”

The Captain laughed at that. “My boy Beregond has been seasick for the greatest part of the journey. Imagine him, the son of seventeen generations of sailors, stuck in my cabin turning himself inside out with the heaves.” He stopped suddenly, shooting Elendil an almost guilty look.

Elendil read his old friend’s expression all too clearly, even through the mist of rain. Halmir had never been one to measure his words before he spoke, or regret them afterwards, but now he clearly wished to call them back. Halmir was lucky to have his son with him. Elendil had only the hope that his sons had found a safe path out of the heart of the storm – the bitter, skeptical hope of a man who has already seen all that he loves demolished.

Characteristically, Captain Halmir forged forward rather than yielding to the awkwardness of the moment. “I’m sure your sons are safe, Lord. The ships they sailed in are every bit as sturdy as my girl, here, and they have sound captains and crews. I trained Belzor myself, that’s helming your Anarion’s ship.”

“I only wish I knew,” Elendil sighed. “They call us the Faithful, but I find that I have very little faith left, and we have no stars to guide us.”

He stopped, hearing an echo of his father’s words at their last parting. Amandil had cautioned him, “But it is most like that you shall fly from the Land of the Star with no star to guide you; for that land is defiled. Then you shall lose all that you have loved, foretasting death in life, seeking a land of exile elsewhere.” His father Amandil had never returned. Elendil suspected that he had thrown his life away on a vain hope, and could only hope – a word that tasted sourer each time he said it – that Amandil’s words were not an omen for his sons. Had he merely repeated his father’s mistake, compounding it by wagering his sons’ lives along with his own?

“Couldn’t you know, Lord? You have the palantiri from the Eldar. You might be able to catch sight of Lord Isildur or Anarion in the stones.”

“I might see other things as well,” he muttered, mostly to himself. He had thought of the palantiri almost as soon as they had lost sight of his sons’ ships, but had been afraid to use them. The stones had originally been designed to look West; in the West the fires of Sauron had burned, and there the sea roiled over the dead of Numenor. He saw their faces nightly in his dreams and dreaded to see them in the palantiri as well.

The Captain coaxed on, oblivious to his Lord’s deeper thoughts. “Those stones were their final gift to us: they must have looked ahead and seen this very need. Why, the palantiri might even be meant to show you a way out of this storm.”

With that hope, though it felt as tenuous as the rest, Elendil could not argue. He made his way down to the hold. Ignoring the master stone in its double-sized crate, he retrieved one of the smaller palantiri. In his cabin, he sat with it in his lap and slowly unwrapped it.

Gazing into it, all he could see was a dark swirl moving slowly beneath the surface of the sphere. Was it working already? If so, all it showed him was the same dark clouds he could see from the deck. Anxiety had clenched his fingers on it, so he dropped it on his lap and used a moment to ease his breathing before trying again.

This time he spoke to it, “Show me my sons, palantir. Show me that all is not lost in this dreadful storm.”

The darkness in the stone contracted, like an eye in strong light, then began to whirl again with threads of color. Elendil bent over it, holding his breath. Slowly, a face formed inside it.

“Anarion?” he breathed. As the image became clearer, he realized that it wasn’t either of his sons. A man stared back at him with clear grey eyes. They and the cast of his features showed him clearly as a Numenorean, but Elendil could swear that he was not one of the Faithful. Grief and exhaustion had burned across the bones of that face as deeply as Elendil felt them in his own frame, but the man’s will burned clearer than his suffering, fierce and patient.

As he watched, the man raised the hilt of a sword before him. The man bore Narsil. Recognizing his own sword, Elendil glanced up reflexively to where the sword rested on its peg. It still hung there, where he had kept it in case the king or Sauron himself should try some last attack on him before he sailed. When he looked down again, the palantir was dark.

He mused for a while. Finally he spoke, testing the words as he said them, “Narsil shines in the man’s hand: He is the hope I sought.” Then he continued, certain of the truth, ” As he is my hope, so I shall name him: Estel.”