Torrigan's Meeting with Gilgwath, the Dark and Ancient Smith
The Story Behind the Ancient Longsword of his Forefathers and How it Came to Be
"My Lord, over here," whispered a small, wheezing voice from the shadows beneath the walkway of the Hall of Fire, one of the few places in that great hall that wasn't awash with the red and gold light of the blazing hearths. Torrigan sought out the source of the voice, looking into the shade, his eyes adjusting to the dark. He noticed two small pinpricks of light, reflected from a pair of dark, beady eyes. As he peered into the shadow a figure stepped forward slowly. An aged dwarf with a crooked back and a short white beard, shuffled closer, naming himself Rhim, the trusted servant of he whose face Torrigan had seen in a dream on The Journey to Rivendell. He beckoned for Torrigan to follow him and he did, drawn by a sudden feeling of urgency.
The dwarf led him outside of the Last Homely House. Under the eaves of its rooves and in the reddening light of the falling sun, he explained that his Master had been watching him in thought since he was in Ost Guruth. The dwarf begged that Torrigan follow him and seek an audience with his Master. The dwarf led him to a small path on the far side of the Falls of Imladris, and to the entrance of a small cave. "I can go no further. Please, go on through the caves to Imlad Gelair. There my Master awaits your presence," said the dwarf, pausing for a moment before looking at Torrigan with his small, watering eyes, "Good luck!"
Torrigan walked through the passageway in the caves, filled with a sense of forboding, yet also urgent desire. He came into an open green area, filled with trees and great statues of elves surrounding a small lake. All were bathed in pale moonlight. Walking towards the centre of the sanctuary he stopped, scanning the dark vale for a sign of the elf he had dreamt of. A movement in the shadows, a ripple from the lakeside and Torrigan saw him, standing there beside the lake, silhouetted by the light of the moon.
"I would have you tell me why you sought my council," said he; ancient and firstborn. "I bade my servant await your coming, yet I need not have. I knew of your presence long before you reached the Bruinen. It was I who sheltered you as you rested on the banks." Torrigan looked up at the elf; staring into the pale, cold eyes, remembering the pale mist that surrounded them as they rested, shielding them from unwanted eyes.
The elf spoke again, "You seek knowledge I deem." It was not a question, merely a statement of what was already known. Torrigan breathed a single word, "Yes." He bowed low before the elf, who asked for his name. Torrigan replied, naming himself Dernfréa, as he had done for so many years. The elf gazed down at him with his cold, pale eyes and said, "I am Gilgwath, the Dark Smith of Tol Dem, I have lived long, and have the knowing of many things. How may I aid your search, son of Rohan?"
Torrigan grasped the hilt of his longsword, drawing it. The long blade flashed brightly in the moonlight and settled then into a soft white glow; the rippling steel mirroring the moonlight. The elf took the blade in his long-fingered hands. He turned it in over, held it close and examined the blade, whispering to himself softly, "This blade is old, Dernfréa." Torrigan bowed his head, murmering, "Yes my Lord, it is. I seek understanding of it."
The elf looked at it, raising an eyebrow as the moonlight seemed to come not only from the surface of the blade, but from within. He ran a hand along its hilt and then kneeled next to the lakeside, dipping the first foot of the blade in the water. The ancient elf watched the patterns described by the water on the radient blade, patterns that only he who was trained in the ancient arts could read. He stood, handing the sword back to Torrigan. He looked at him curiously and asked, "How did a man of Rohan come to own such a weapon as this?" Torrigan looked down at the sword, unable to hold the elf's keen gaze. He answered, memories flooding to him as he did so, "It is an heirloom of my family. Once found by my forefathers long ago, in the treasure hoard of Scatha the Worm, who was slain by Fram son of Frumgar. Passed down then through time, each generation adding to the hilt, finally coming to my father, where it was lost, but I found it once more."
"I suspect I know the nature of this blade," said the elf with a pause, turning to look across the lake. "Yes, I suspect I once knew its maker, and its true name." Torrigan looked down at his sword, turning it in his hand before saying, "I never knew its name. It has just always... been. It has never dulled, nor has it ever chipped or broken. As to its maker, I can only guess." Gilgwath turned to look at him, "Nor would it, Dernfréa. For it will cut all earthly steel as a scythe cuts grass. The blade is of elvish make, of that I am certain. The metal has been folded many, many times. It has survived the years remarkably well, and it has travelled very far." Torrigan nodded, saying, "Yes, with me and my forefathers." The elf looked at him for a moment before shaking his head, saying, "Nay, this sword was old when your forefathers first took possession of it. It is older than your Kingdom, older than this Age."
Torrigan looked at his sword in surprise, asking, "Who made it?" The elf paused for a time, growing still, seemingly lost in the memory of his past, seeing it all in his mind's eye. When he spoke again, his voice was imbued with a strange power. Torrigan felt enraptured by it, and saw in his mind's eye the very memories that Gilgwath had beheld millenia ago. "Blades such as these have not been made since before the upheaval that drowned the ancient kingdoms of the Eldar. In a land now beneath the grey Belgaer. The downfall of all Beleriand it was." Torrigan saw flashes of great waves, of lightning filled skies and the very foundations of the earth in tumult. The elf spoke on, "This sword outdates that. Your blade was forged long ago, in the smithies of the House of Eöl of Nan Elmoth, on the bounds of the Kingdom of Doriath." Torrigan saw then in his mind's eye a tall, dark elf garbed in ebony; a shadow bent over an anvil.
"Few of us dwelled there, beyond the protection of King Thingol and his Queen, but among us was one such who made that blade." Torrigan looked up and asked, in a voice filled with awe, "You yourself are one such smith?" and the elf replied, "That smith learned his craft from the same Master that taught me mine. Though I have not forged a single blade since," the elf's face darkened, "Since then." He turned to look once more across the lake and said, "My Master, Eöl, made few such blades, for they were long in the crafting and the work was... draining. The apprentice who was the maker of this blade only made one such to my knowledge."
The elf turned back to Torrigan, running a slender finger down the length of the sword before saying, "The steel is made in secret, from an iron that is not of this Middle-earth." Torrigan saw suddenly a night sky, and a flashing bolt of flame that tore it asunder. The elf nodded, aware of what Torrigan had seen. "Nightly I watch for them; the firesign. Fragments of ore are they, that traverse the curtain of Menel and at times fall... burning as they descend. Starmetal I call it, though my Master called it by another name." Torrigan blinked as the vision vanished, then asked, driven by a curiosity as burning as the falling star in his mind, "And what of its maker?"
The elf paused for a moment before speaking, once again filling Torrigan's mind with the visions of the past, "Angrenel. A name I have not spoken in many thousands of years. Angrenel forged your sword." The elf looked at Torrigan, his eyes shining with ancient memory, recalling such that he had not for eons, "He laboured long and unsleeping to make the most beautiful and deadly sword this world had yet known. He desired to match the terrible grace of Anglachel, the work of my Master." The elf took a breath, and in that moment Torrigan saw an elf, akin to Gilgwath, bent over a hot forge, a shining white brand in his hand. "Into the rod of starmetal he wove a thread of molten mithril. The ripples in the blade," the elf gestured to the interweaving lines of white, shining metal and the darker, "are an interaction between the metals, in the myriad of folding."
Torrigan looked at the blade, seeing each metal clearly for the first time. "It is beautiful. Like the ripples of a moving stream." The elf nodded and said, "Yes, the mithril shines through the starmetal's more somber hue. Just as you say; the light on the water." The elf then went on, his voice darkening and Torrigan felt a coldness in the air despite the balmy night, "The craft of making such weapons has always carried peril. Always there is a flaw, despite the beauty... but it is always not one the eye may see." Gilgwath's voice became colder and a shiver ran up Torrigan's spine as he said, "The blade is untouched though, no matter what I do to it." The elf fixed him with his gaze and spoke and again Torrigan's mind was filled with the elf's memory. "The doom follows the craft of my Master and any of his House."
The elf paused, deep in some memory, his eyes unfocused as he thought. "Angrenel was never tranquil. Ever was there a fire in him." Torrigan saw the elf raising the burning brand in his hand, he smelt the burning of flesh as the heat seared Angrenel at his forge. "It drove him and gave him passion for his work... but in the end, when he attempted to best the work of Eöl his Master, his fervour drove him to madness." The elf speaks bitterly, shaking his head. "In his extremity, he commited a terrible deed. Long was his work, and he was weary in body and mind. Only that can... no, not even that... can justify." Gilgwath shook his head and Torrigan, breathless, asked, "What did he do?"
The elf looked at Torrigan with eyes mixed with sadness and bitterness and said, "She was an elf maid of no great name or House. Her deeds will never be remembered. She was a humble servant in the House of Eöl, but her death... her death is remembered there." Gilgwath lay the tip of his finger on the point of the sword. Torrigan looked to it, his eyes widening as he sees suddenly a flash of blood, pain, sorrow and madness. "He killed her?" asked Torrigan, seeing and knowing at once the answer. The ancient elf gave a soft sigh and nodded, taking his finger from the sword. "White from the forge, the blade tempered and sharp, dreadful as the eye of Mandos himself... it was, in its finality, quenched, steaming in her beating breast." Torrigan was barely able to mouth his question when the elf answered, "None can say why. Even Angrenel knew not. He wept bitter tears for the deed, but they washed away not a drop from his crime. Eöl banished him from his House, to walk in exile, never to find solace ever in any of the living."
Gilgwath sighed and shook his head, looking to Torrigan before speaking. "The rest is rumour. Perhaps seeking to somehow undo his work Angrenel travelled east, the naked blade, unadorned without hilt or pommel, strapped to his back. He travelled far, to the land now known as Eregion and beyond. He found no peace, and the whispers on the wind that came to me say that he gave the sword unto the river that is now called Nimrodel, that flows in the Dimrill Dale. Perhaps he ended there also. No tale is told nor song sung of his final fate." Torrigan looked at his sword, the dawn's light catching the blade and making it shine, showing the long time they had spent talking. "Nimrodel is a fair river," continued the elf, "Ever an abode to the beneficent spirits, if the tales are true. His end would be fitting if he did throw himself into its swift current alongside the blade."
Torrigan stood still for a moment, locked in a vision of an elf, weeping, taking a dark sword and holding it above his head. Giving a final cry, he cast himself into the river with the blade. The vision ended as the elf disappeared beneath the swift moving current. Torrigan then looked to the elf, saying that which had dwelled in the back of his mind since he first heard of the sword's final quenching, "The blade, it has done some strange things before. I know not how to truly describe it, but... the blade has taken the blood of those I have killed with it." The elf looked aghast at Torrigan, crying, "What news is this? This I have not heard of. Man, you trouble me! Say on!" The elf suddenly looked taller, his figure great and lordly. The light of the dawn dimmed around all but the blade. Torrigan balked, looking down at his feet, speaking swiftly, "The blood, it flows into lines... like the veins from which they spilt. Then they seem to vanish, into the blade. As like water dripped onto a cloth."
The elf shook his head in displeasure, saying darkly, "Angrenel has given it a taste for blood from the moment of its creation in his mind. This is ill tidings, son of Rohan." The elf looked at the blade with a new gaze, something of awe, and, possibly, fear. "Ware how you wield that blade! For it may bite its owner, as readily as his foes. I had not heard this aforetime in the tale of Angrenduin, which is the Iron of the River in your tongue." Torrigan looked to the elf, matching his gaze, asking simply, "That is the name of it?" The elf nodded, answering, "It is. Sad news you bear me, son of Rohan. That a blade of such quality has fallen so."
Torrigan looked to his sword, the blade that had borne him through so much and said, "I have never sensed any malice from it. Except once, while I stood in the ruins of Fornost in the North. There it seemed a blade of ice in my hand. It chilled me to my very bones." The elf looked at his sword, then at him, saying, "Death is ever cold. And the blade remembers those it has sent to him." Gilgwath paused for a moment, thinking before continuing, "Perhaps the blade is not beyond redemption after all. The first two lives it took; an innocent elven maid, and a desperate elf, fey, in countenance for his act. He made his penance in the flowing water of the blessed stream. Perhaps something foul was washed away... in part if not in entire."
Torrigan looked at the elf, fire in his eyes, saying boldly, "I will see to it that it takes not the blood of the innocent ever again." The elf nodded slowly, before saying with great warning in his voice, "Perhaps it will be so. But beware, I say to you and all that you hold dear, heed these words... The ownership of this blade comes with a price. It is this: Judgement." The elf looked Torrigan dead in the eyes, and Torrigan looked back as the elf said, "Your own and that of your forefathers."
The elf sighed, closing his eyes. "You men, you tarry so briedly in this world for all your deeds. Who will wield that blade when you are gone I wonder... Would it be better that it had never been wrought? Wield it well, son of Rohan." Torrigan nodded and said, "I will leave it to my children. If I have none, I will hide it, so only a man of brave and noble heart can find it, as I once did. I will wield it well." The elf nodded and said, "Always remember the duality of that which you bear by your side. It is your judgement. See that it judges you well."
Torrigan kneeled, bending his knee before the ancient elf. Gilgwath bowed in return, whispering, "Gwathuin Nan Elmoth, gonathra le," And then in the common tongue, "Shades of Nan Elmoth, enfold thee." Torrigan stood and said in his own tongue, Rohirric, "Blessings be upon thee and thine, O' Ancient One." Then bowing once more he said in Westron, "I must return to my companions. I will tell them only what they need to know. My eternal thanks. Fare thee well my Lord." The elf held his hand aloft as Torrigan left the vale, returning to the valley of Imladris. As he walked down the tunnel he turned, hearing a sonorous voice echoe around him, "Namárië. Go well, son of Rohan." He walked into the sunshine on the other side and took a deep breath.
Torrigan took a better grip of his sword and then held it high, Angrenduin, Iron of the River, and it caught the sun's rays, shining with brightness and illuminating the grass and trees around him. He nodded, knowing then what his life's path was and knowing that fate had given him the gift to do what he must.
