Chapter 434: Sea Maiar
The deep waters of Valinor were nothing like the dark, silent depths of Middle-earth's seas. Light was everywhere — glowing pearls and gemstones scattered across the ocean floor, and the water itself was clear enough that sunlight from the surface reached all the way down.
The seabed was beautiful. Schools of luminous fish moved through forests of coral, across wide meadows of swaying sea-grass, past formations of stone and crystal that rose in shapes no sculptor could have planned. The Oarni guided Kael through it all, pointing out what lay around them as they went.
"This was Uinen's garden," they explained. Every part of it.
Uinen was gentle by nature — fond of every creature that lived in the sea, and of the sea-grass, and of the ocean in all its moods. Her hair, it was said, spread through every body of water in the world, and could calm the waters when she willed it. Sailors prayed to her. The Teleri, who had built their lives around the sea, revered her deeply. The Númenóreans in their time had honoured her almost as they might honour a Vala.
But even Uinen's gentleness had its limits. After the Kinslaying at Alqualondë — the slaughter of Telerin sailors by the departing Noldor — she had wept for the dead, and then driven the sea into fury against the stolen ships, shattering many of them and drowning those aboard. She had also laid enchantments across the Enchanted Isles east of Aman, so that ships which tried to reach Valinor without the Valar's leave would lose their bearing and wander without finding land.
Ossë was a different matter. Where Uinen was consistently gentle, Ossë was harder to read. He had the breadth and warmth of the ocean in his better moods, and a genuine affection for the Teleri — he had taught them the art of shipbuilding, and helped them make the crossing to Valinor in the Elder Days. But there was also something in him that delighted in violence. He had once been turned by Melkor — Morgoth — and had rebelled against Ulmo, stirring the seas into destruction before Uinen brought him back. Even after his return, he retained a fondness for storms, for wrecked ships, for the sea at its most ungovernable.
Sailors feared him almost as much as they depended on him.
Kael followed the Oarni down and down until the seabed levelled out into a vast, tended expanse — a meadow of sea-grass, neatly kept, studded with sea stars, coral, pearls, and crystal formations. At its centre stood the Shell Palace: an enormous structure, ornate and glittering, its great columns of crystal set with softly glowing gemstones that lit the deep water around it in warm, steady colours.
Schools of fish hovered near the outer walls, drawn close but not quite daring to enter.
Around the palace, the Oarni sang. Some were tending the sea-grass, some herding fish, some weaving garments from sea-water spun into silver thread — all of them singing, their voices twining together in something that made the water around them feel slower and quieter. Their white hair drifted like flowers opening. Their tails, scaled in every colour, caught the faint light and scattered it.
Kael followed his guide inside.
The floors were laid with jade, the windows formed from sheets of crystal, every surface touched with gemstone and pearl. In the great hall, on twin thrones of coral, sat Ossë and Uinen.
Their forms were vast and uncertain at the edges — figures seated on thrones, but also presences that seemed to extend outward through the water in every direction, as though the entire ocean were their body and they merely happened to be gathered here at its centre. Looking at them directly was difficult. Light moved around them in the particular way it moves around things that are genuinely sacred, obscuring the details of their faces.
Ossë's power was wild — Kael could feel it even standing at the entrance of the hall, the force of it like a storm contained in a small space, ready at any moment to become something much larger. Uinen's was the opposite: still, pervasive, present the way deep water is present, without edge or announcement. Between them, the two forces made a complete thing, storm and calm, each holding the other in balance.
The pressure Kael felt walking in was considerable. Not hostility — simply the weight of the gap between his level and theirs. What he sensed from Ossë alone was noticeably greater than what he had felt from Gandalf in full power. Ossë stood, by Kael's estimation, near the very top of the Maiar — perhaps not far from Eönwë himself. This was the strongest being Kael had yet encountered directly, and he was under no illusion about what a confrontation would mean. There would be no contest.
He inclined his head with genuine respect.
"Lord Ossë, master of the seas. Lady Uinen, Lady of the Seas. It is a great honour to receive your invitation and to visit this beautiful place. I am Kael, a wizard from Middle-earth."
Ossë's eyes were the blue of deep ocean — a blue that looked as though it could contain an entire sea and still have room. When he spoke, his voice was measured and warm.
"Welcome, Kael. Your name has reached me many times over the years — carried by rivers from Middle-earth to the sea, and from the sea to me. I have been curious about you for a long while. When your ship entered my waters, I wished to invite you at that time. But the time did not feel right. When I heard you had come to the shore at Alqualondë, I thought the moment had come."
Uinen spoke next, her voice gentle and unhurried, the quality of it like rain falling on still water.
"Please, be at ease, wizard Kael. We dwell in Valinor, but we watch Middle-earth through the rivers that flow across it — they carry its news to us, as rivers carry everything eventually to the sea. We have known of you for some time. What you accomplished — defeating Sauron, and then achieving the elevation of your soul through your own power alone — that is not something we could hear of and simply set aside. We wished to meet you. I hope the invitation was not too abrupt."
Kael shook his head. "You are far too generous, both of you. The defeat of Sauron was not mine to claim — it belonged to all of Middle-earth, to everyone who stood against him. And whatever I've managed to achieve in my own strength has been more a matter of luck than anything worthy of praise."
"You are too modest," Ossë said, without sharpness but with clear disagreement. He regarded Kael with open appreciation. "Perhaps you are not aware of how you are spoken of here. In Valinor, you are not unknown. Among the Valar themselves, more than a few have taken notice of you. Lord Mandos has spoken of you with admiration — he has said that you will bring change to Arda unlike anything that has come before. And Manwë, King of the Valar, has spoken well of you more than once. It was he who approved your passage to Valinor."
Kael felt the ground shift somewhat beneath the ordinary meaning of the words. He had not expected this. That Manwë and Mandos — the King of the Valar and the lord of fate itself — had thoughts about him at all was difficult to take in.
Ossë seemed to read the surprise on his face.
"Do not let it weigh on you. To receive the favour of the Valar is an honour — it will give you standing here, and you will find that it earns you respect. But more than that—" he paused, something purposeful in his gaze "—it means you have a real chance of becoming an apprentice to one of the Valar. To study at their side. To learn from them directly." He let that sit for a moment. "That is not something that has ever been offered to a Maia or an Elf, however worthy. You would be the first."