Title: Ihzûn Naur
Fandom: The Silmarillion
Rating: G
Length: 500
Content notes: Canonical character death
Author notes: Thanks go to Morgynleri for encouragement, and to Zana for helping make this much better than it might have been. Title is a combination of Khuzdul and Sindarin, meaning 'Veil of Fire'
Summary: In Eriador a veil of fire once hung in the space between tall stones


In Eriador a veil of fire once hung in the space between tall stones, a blue-white, iridescent waver in the air, nearly invisible in sunlight, hardly more in moonlight. Seen under star or cloud the sourceless, ceaseless flame shimmered with ripples of color at the edges, heat-sheen in the center like the inverse of an aurora. The back gate to Mandos' Halls, some called it, a short, straight road to stone and oblivion, at best to be appreciated for its strange beauty from careful distance, at worst to be avoided and ignored. Wonders enough were in the world without chancing the obviously uncanny. Or worse, chancing a Fëanorian's wrath, even so un-warlike a one as the first of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain.

The Maker's fire, the smiths called it, those initiate in the deeper, brighter, arcane and difficult lore of the shaping of things by will and effort, the transformations of elements, the joining and use of ice and fire. To them it was a tool, as well as a thing of beauty. The most skilled, daring, and careful of them — Elda and Khazad both — used it in their work and art. (As did a few with more luck than sense.) Jewels polished in the flame gleamed with more than gathered light, wire annealed in that heat made more than earthly music, mirrors silvered with its fire reflected more than sun or moon or star. It was a marvel of the city, in a city known for marvels, and a mark of the alliance between the peoples of Ost-in-Edhil and Durin's deep-delved mountain halls.

Two knew what it truly was: the Elf and Dwarrow to whom the spark had been given to use and tend, the promise and peril of it both. It grieved Aulë that there should be strife between his children and the Firstborn, thus he chose to encourage those rare partnerships as he might. These two carried his fire in their hearts, as he carried them. A spark to aid the Work was little enough, and might inspire more intercourse of art and skill, standing together rather than against.

That Narvi's bones rested not in the tomb carved for them, but had gone between the stones was a secret kept by his wife, his king, and Celebrimbor. That Annatar had tormented the knowledge of the Seven and Nine from the jewel-smith was known. That Celebrimbor had died rather than betray the Three was legendary. Indeed, the dark lord had killed him, yet none but the Maker whose hammer struck the spark that was the veil, and the one gone ahead, knew in whose arms Celebrimbor breathed his last, nor where. The curtain of white flame vanished with him when (broken, dying, steadfast beyond hope) he fell, passing through the fire, whence Sauron could not follow.

The stones still lament the smiths now gone, and remember the touch of the fire through which they passed. They will know that fire again, at the breaking of the world and its remaking.