Barahir
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The ash curled on the wind, and the scent of black smoke hang heavy in the air. Sweat dried on his brow, and his breaths came heavy and quick. He could not close his eyes without seeing flame and fire curling around his skin. So many lost. So many.
He cast a sidelong glance at the elven-lord he and his men had given their all to save. Finrod Felagund sat slumped in his saddle, cradling the singed wounds that coated his body. His armor, once shimmering and great, was burnt and singed, coated with mud and ash.
Barahir's mind flashed back to the moment, scant hours ago, when he had caught sight of the elf-lord's army, encircled by the hordes of orcs, of how something deep within him had called him to turn his forces around, called him to rush down into the vale and fight the elves free. He could not explain what had caused the sudden moment of kindness, but he could see the gratitude plainly engraved in the faces of each one of the elves trailing alongside their group.
All, that is, save Finrod. His face was a passive mask, and he seemed lost in thought.
As if he had read Barahir's thoughts, the elf-lord raised his head and spurred his horse towards Barahir's own.
"Hail, Edain." The Elf's voice was like a rolling wave of song. "I..."
The song halted for a long moment, then resumed, firmer than before. "I thank you. We all do. I would be long dead had you not come when you had. You owed me nothing, and yet you came. You knew me not, and yet you came."
The elf's emerald eyes met Barahir's own shimmering blue. "There are those among the Noldor who say that your kind is somehow less than us, that because your lives come and go in the span of mere decades, you are below us. Yet I have known elves, elves I held as brothers, who would have turned and left me to die."
The elf held out his hand. In his outstretched palm sat a ring, wreathed in silver, in the shape of two serpents coiling around one another, with a great emerald stone set between. It shone like the moon in the dim twilight.
"This is the Ring of my house, crafted across the sea in high Valinor. I give it to you now, a symbol of the bond forged between our houses, now and for all the days of Arda. Should a bearer of this ring come in an hour of need, I shall lend them all the aid it is in my power to give. So swears Finrod Finarfin's son in the name of his house."
There was a long moment of silence. The ash coiled on the wind. The smoke choked the sky.
Barahir took the ring.
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Beren
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Drop it.
He should simply drop it in.
Yet he did not. Perhaps some part of him could not. Beren turned over the ring in his hand for the hundredth time, his mind heavy with the weight of his choices.
He stood tall over the grave of his father Barahir. For years, he had defied the power of the Enemy, for years he had fought. And when he had fallen, the orcs had savaged his corpse and taken his hand and his Ring, Finrod's Ring. Beren, through trial and blood and steel, had won it back, and now stood over his father's grave, where Barahir the Great at last lay entombed in honor with his relics.
All, save one.
Beren looked at the Ring yet again, at the gleaming emerald set in silver. Where had the elves been, he wondered again, when Barahir fell? Where was Finrod Felagund when the orcs of Morgoth came?
Drop it, a part of him whispered.
He closed his fingers around the ring. He would keep it, yet, and see what paths fate brought him.
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Elwing
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The tears streamed down her face as she pulled her cloak tighter around her. Blood still spattered it--her father's blood, stained and dried. Her feet cracked and bled under her as she walked, yet she forced herself to keep moving.
The sons of Feanor had come in the night. They had fallen on Doriath with sword and flame, in their lust for their thrice-damned Silmarils, and the Oath they had sworn so long ago, to recover them all, wherever they might be. Their Oath had slaughtered her people. Their oath had made the rivers run red with blood.
Their oath had killed her father.
Her father, Dior Eluchil, King in Doriath that was. She remembered him still, bleeding and wounded as he had been. Turning aside from the battle for a moment's breath to see her to safety. Casting his stained cloak over her and pressing his ring into her hand before he turned away to die, die alone and outnumbered in the heart of his kingdom.
His ring.
She looked down at her hand and slowly uncurled her clenched fingers. There it lay, silver serpents winding around a shimmering green stone. The Ring of Barahir, that had been given to him by long-dead Finrod Felagund. It had been her fathers', and his father Beren's before him.
It would be her son's, as well, and his son's after him, and so on for a thousand lifetimes.
She swore it.
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Elros
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"I cannot."
His voice was firm, yet it wavered, as if it might crack if pressed.
His brother did not move. Instead he simply held out his hand. The ring shone in his palm, the ring of their mother Elwing and her father Dior before him, the ring of their ancestor Barahir in the days of Morgoth the Enemy.
Elros pressed again. "I cannot accept this. It is yours, by tradition and right of blood."
Elrond looked at him, and his brother's eyes gleamed with a deep sadness.
"Tradition? By tradition it has been passed down from father to son in the line of Barahir. By tradition it upholds the oath of Finrod. By tradition it is a relic of men. Yet I am no man, not anymore."
Elros could feel the unyielding truth of his brother's words. They were both Peredhil, half-elven, and theirs was the gift and the doom of the half-elven. They could choose, freely, to live eternal as elvenkind, or take upon themselves death, the doom of men, and live short, fleeting lives as mortals.
Elros, drawn always to mankind and his bond with the Edain through his mother's line, had chosen mortality. Yet his twin, his brother Elrond that he loved above all others, had chosen life unending as an Eldar. Eventually, they both knew, he would die. He would die, and they would be separated forever. Elrond, in death, would walk in Valinor, while Elros' spirit would go beyond the confines of the world and recieve the gift of Men.
And so Elrond, the eldest, was passing on to him the Ring. The great Ring, Barahir's Ring, that had been worn by Beren their grandfather in elder days.
He should take it, he knew, yet a part of him felt as if taking it meant accepting what they both knew. That in time, in a hundred years or two hundred or however many turns of winter and spring it took for his body to waste, they would be separated forever. And it hurt.
Oh, it hurt.
Tears streaking his cheeks, Elros closed his fingers around the Ring.
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Elendil
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The waves roiled and swelled, salt stinging his nose and flicking at his beard as he gazed out at the rapidly growing stretch of land before him. Underneath him, the boat rocked, tossed about by the oceans.
It still hurt to think about, still tore at his heart to remember. The cresting wave, great and terrible, that swallowed all he had ever known. The folly and arrogance, the black days that had let to great downfall. And worst of all, the bodies of his brother's and cousins, rotting under the softly rolling waves.
Numenor, greatest of all the realms of men, was gone. In a single moment, a single roaring deluge, the city of a thousand years was forever drowned. They had saved much, so very much, yet at the same time, so little. Of the nine hundred seeing-stones, seven remained. Of the great white tree that towered over the high towers of Elenna, naught but a sapling.
And of the relics of the old kings, of the heirlooms of the line of Elros?
Elendil looked down at his hand and twisted it on his finger, gazing wistfully at the gleaming emerald.
Naught. Naught remained but a scepter and a single ring, an ancient ring, the Ring of Barahir who lived when the world was young, the ring of Beren of whom the great songs were sung, the Ring of Elros his ancestor that had been the first of Numenor's High Kings, a hundred thousand lifetimes ago.
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Arvedui
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The bitter cold stung at his skin, biting through the thick furs he had piled around his body. The great elven ship before him gleamed in the dim sunlight, and he let hope, long thought lost, fill his heart again.
He was Arvedui, last of the Kings of Isildur's line. His realm had fallen, yet it might be restored. The Gondorians were coming, with their swords and banners. The Numenorean Realms-In-Exile would band together to oust Angmar, and Arnor might be rebuilt under him, under Arvedui that they had called the Last-King. He took a step forward, yet a hand on his shoulder stopped him.
"Southern-King." The old man's eyes bored into his. "Do not go."
The Lossoth, the people of this cold land, had warned him of the ship. They said Angmar's power was great, and the Witch-King's reach long.
"Friend. I must take my leave." Arvedui turned and looked upon the fur-bundled Northmen, who had given him food and shelter when he might have died.
"But I remember you. I thank you, and as a token of my thanks, I give you this." From his cloak, he drew the ring, and the emerald gleamed bright in the morning light.
"It is the Ring of Barahir, worn by my ancient forefather Elendil. It holds no power of its own, but in better days, it was a symbol of my house and the illustrious heritage that my line held. I give it to you now, as a thanks. The Dunedain will pay a great weregild for it in thanks, and I leave it with you so that you might know your aid is not forgotten."
With a smile, he pressed it into the old man's hand and turned for the ship.
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Elrond
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Elrond turned over the Ring in his hand, deep in thought.
It had been many long years since he held it last. It was an heirloom of the Dúnedain Chiefs of Arnor, and before them a relic of the Lossoth, and before that a heirloom in unbroken line from Elros his brother to the heirs of his heirs.
Now he held it here in Rivendell, along with the sword, the crown, and the scepter, holding them for their true owner. This boy, this Estel, or Aragorn as he was born, might yet be the one long fortold, he mused. The King, the first since Arvedui, the heir of Isildur.
The heir of Elros.
Elros, who was so long dead. Elros, whom he would never see again. Elros, into who's hand he had forced this very same ring all those countless centuries ago.
Elrond closed his fingers around the Ring and mourned. A selfish moment, in these dark times when others had lost so much and so many.
But had he not earned it?
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Aragorn
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He was dying.
He could hear the great silence as it stretched across the city. No horns blew, no bells rang.
He hated it. He was but one man, and why should all the world silence at his passing? His time had come, at last. Frodo and Sam had so long ago passed away, and now he could feel age weighing on him. He had been given a gift, the greatest gift, the gift of the Numenoreans, and his life had stretched long over the years.
But now it was time to rest.
He had sent away all others, save one. She had come, at last, her eyes red-rimmed from tears, yet still as beautiful as when he met her all those long centuries ago. Elrond's beloved Evenstar, that he had stolen from Rivendell. His Queen, that he loved above all others. She had given up life unending to be with him, and he, her.
"Arwen."
It was little but a whisper, yet she heard it, and smiled. She knelt at his side, and spoke.
"Do not leave me. You are my light. My hope. Without you all the world seems dark."
He smiled. Hope. Once, he had been the hope of all, in days long gone by. Once, when he was the boy he had been when he met her.
"Hope, as with all things, must pass. Would you have me rule until I was decrepit? Until my body toppled from the throne? Our son is young and hale. Let his time come."
"Oh, if this is the gift of men, it is a bitter one indeed."
"Yet is it not all the greater?"
"Perhaps."
He reached for her hand and clasped it in his own. On her finger glinted Barahir's ring, that he had given her in Lorien so long ago.
"I am the last of the Numenoreans, and the latest King of the Elder Days. To me has been given not only a span thrice that of mortal men, but the choice to go when I will, and give back the gift."
"Now, before I end. The Ring.."
She extended her hand, as if to offer it to him, but he turned it away.
"No. Take it with you. The Elder Days are done. I am yet the last of Barahir's line. The oath Finrod swore is fulfilled--the Houses of the Kings of the Noldor are gone now from Middle-Earth. Of them, you are the last. No more shall the ring of their bond be upheld by the Kings of Men. Take it with you, my Evenstar."
They spoke but a little more, but then, at last, the fated hour was come. He took her hand and kissed it, and even as he did so, fell at last into sleep.
And with the passing of King Elessar, so ended at last the line of Barahir, and the oath of Finrod that had endured ten thousand years. Arwen Undomiel set her son on the throne of Gondor and went in grief to Lorien, that was long abandoned, and dwelt mourning thereafter. And when at last she lay herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth, Barahir's Ring, the ring of Beren and Elros and Elendil, was lain with her, and passed out of the histories of the world.
