The Search for Utumno - Chapter 1

[Echthelion]

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The Search for Utumno

Chapter 1: Trading in Knowledge

Once the ancient skies of Endor lay cloaked in eternal twilight; neither dawn nor dusk heralded their coming ere the breaking of Telperion and Laurelin. When the envious malice of Melkor did mar the blessed perfection of Aman, the lights of the trees were thrust into the sky, guarded forever by Maiar ancient and strong, but mere servants when compared to the omnipotence of their masters, the Valar, children of Eru, who is called Ilúvatar. The ancient sea of blue and violet,glittering with the lights of stars afar, now only emerges at dawn and dusk, for the evening sky is home to Isil, and morning belongs to Anar. Now, Anar had begun his ascent to his full fiery height, slowly creeping over the eastern sky, breaching the peaks of the Walls of the Sun and scorching the skies with reddish-orange fire.

Such a time was always one of contemplation for the young dwarf Râladul, son of the dwarf Râlad of the line of Dvalin, brother of Durin, second of the seven dwarf lords forged by the mighty Lord of the Earth Aulë, whom the Dwarves call Mahal. As he sat upon the lush, grassy knoll gazing ever eastward, his young eyes, grey and hard as the stone that he and his ancestors have delved in the deepened halls of Tumunzahar, called Nogrod by the Noldor, drank in the fires of Anar. Of a score of hearty dwarven traders that accompanied the dwarven smith he was the only one who could not continue to sleep.

In this time of contemplation Râladul imagined what he would be rewarded with this day for the diligence of his hands. Looking upon his tough, wrinkled, and calloused palms, he heard the echoes of the ringing of his hammer, sparks striking his sweaty, black-bearded face every time he struck the short sword. When finally it had been completed, acrid steam rising up from the cooling trough beside his rune-covered anvil, Râladul looked upon the mithril blade with wonder, the wide shoulder of the blade just above the tang narrowing slightly in an hourglass-like shape, widening at the flat before narrowing yet again to form the hard, thrusting tip. He focused in on his fingers which gripped the etchers that carved the intricate knotwork along the fuller of the blade - ancient elven runes taught to him by his great-grandfather who learned from the Noldor – that infused it with an ancient magic. When finally the tang was inserted into the oaken hilt, the guard of the blade forming a pair of eagle’s wings forged of silver and inlaid with diamonds in each feather, and the pommel – an eagle’s claw clutching a sapphire with the circumference of a dwarven thumb – had been set, Râladul bathed the blade in freezing waters melted from the ice of the Dor Daidelos, the Region of Everlasting Cold, for a fortnight. When the bathing had been concluded, the Elven sigils glowed a crystalline blue, and the waters had been drunk by the blade itself. He named the blade Maegheled – Piercing Ice – and that would be his gift to the elves.