Ezellohar

The mound

Ezellohar was a low green hill just outside the western gate of Valmar, beside the Ring of Doom at Máhanaxar. It was the most hallowed spot in Valinor, because on it grew the Two Trees, and everything else in the realm of the Valar was arranged in relation to them: the city at their side, the thrones of the Valar within their light, Tirion placed in the Calacirya so that the Eldar could see them, and the pass itself cut so that their light could reach the sea.

The Two Trees

When the Valar came to Aman, Yavanna sat on the mound and sang while the Valar listened, and Nienna watered the earth with her tears. Two shoots came up. The elder was Telperion, whose leaves were dark on top and silver beneath and whose flowers gave a silver light that fell as glimmering dew. The younger was Laurelin, whose leaves were edged with gold and whose clustered flowers shed a golden warmth and a rain of light. Each Tree waxed and waned over seven hours, and their cycles were set so that as one faded the other grew, giving an hour twice a day in which both lights were mingled. The Valar counted time from the first flowering of Telperion, and this reckoning was the Years of the Trees.

Varda gathered the dew of Telperion and the rain of Laurelin in great vats or wells beneath the mound, and these were the wells of light of Valinor, from which the Eldar drew water and by which the realm was lit even in the darker hours. From the dew of Telperion Varda made the new stars that greeted the Elves at their awakening. The Trees' light was the thing that made Valinor blessed, and it was the desire to hold it that led Fëanor to make the Silmarils, in which the mingled light was captured and preserved after its source was lost.

Telperion also had descendants. Yavanna made an image of it, Galathilion, for the Noldor of Tirion; a seedling of that, Celeborn, grew on Tol Eressëa, and from Celeborn came Nimloth, the White Tree of Númenor, whose line was the White Tree of Gondor. Laurelin left no such heir save the Sun.

The Darkening

Melkor, having fled the judgment of the Valar, went south to Avathar and there enlisted Ungoliant, promising her whatever she could devour. Wrapped in her darkness they climbed Hyarmentir and crossed the plain of Valinor while the Valar and the Eldar were at festival on Taniquetil. In the hour when the lights mingled Melkor came onto the mound and drove his spear into each Tree in turn, and Ungoliant set her mouth to the wounds and drank until the Trees were empty and their sap was poison in her. Then she drained the Wells of Varda dry, swelling to a monstrous size, and the darkness that spread from Ezellohar was not merely the absence of light but a thing with will in it, so that the Valar were blinded and Melkor escaped north to Formenos.

The last fruit and flower

The Valar gathered on the mound in the dark. Yavanna declared that she could not remake the Trees, but that with the light held in the Silmarils she might heal them before the roots died; Fëanor refused, and word came in that same hour that the jewels were already stolen. Yavanna and Nienna then laboured over the dead Trees, and though they could not revive them, Telperion put out a single last silver flower and Laurelin a single last golden fruit before they perished. Yavanna gave these to Aulë, who made vessels to hold and carry them, and Varda hallowed them and set them as lamps in the sky: the flower became the Moon, guided by Tilion, and the fruit the Sun, guided by Arien. The Moon rose first, as Fingolfin set foot on Middle-earth, and the Sun's first rising marked the beginning of the First Age. The dead trunks were left standing on the mound as a memorial of the bliss that had been lost.

Ezellohar lay in the eastern plain of Valinor, immediately west of the gate of Valmar and beside Máhanaxar, with Taniquetil to the east and the Calacirya beyond it, through which the Trees' light had passed to Túna and the sea.