That is not a commitment I can make without more information.

Not to tell anyone you don't have to, then.
We aren't affecting your gardens, so I'm confident that will be no one, and that if you think someone does need to know you won't tell anyone indiscreet.

I will certainly make the commitment that if there are reasons for secrecy I will take them very close to heart.

We have precious few capabilities the Enemy doesn't know about. The more people know, the more likely he is to find out through interrogation or spies. Your realm is safe enough that those apply less than they might elsewhere, but if not for that it would be more of a risk even to tell you.

Deep breath.

The Noldor are skilled at creating enchanted objects. Especially the Feanorians. I have a ring that deflects arrows, for instance.
We can, under some circumstances, copy attributes of environments and duplicate them elsewhere. In much the same way that we imitated heat from the first host's forges to help the second cross the Helcaraxe without freezing, we can use these pieces of ice to duplicate the fertile ground of your gardens and, when we return, encourage the plants in our greenhouses to grow.

And this ability is not known to the Enemy already?

It's not. Not unless his information sources are much better than we know.

How is that so, if he resided with them in Valinor?

They didn't invent it in Valinor.

It's a recent addition, and we hope to come up with more abilities he doesn't know about.

Doriath is entirely safe from the Enemy and I particularly am. If you are going to copy elements of my domain for the benefit of strangers, there is no safety interest served in keeping this from me.

Having seen your domain, I expect you're right.
But the Enemy is enough of a threat that it is more likely for people to seem safe than to be so, and at any rate we had not seen your realm when deciding secrecy would be first choice.

You had seen enough to make a better informed choice before copying, though.

To be honest, Your Majesty, I'm not sure we had. Doriath is hidden and secret but we found it, and of course we haven't seen your more forcible methods of defending it.

Well, you have afforded yourself the opportunity to become familiar with them, at least until we decide whether we are comfortable with the Noldor having copies of our gardens.

Completely non-fake surprise.

What would be the objection? It is the productivity being imitated, not the artistic merit.

You didn't ask our leave, you concealed much of their capabilities and could be concealing much more, it could fall into Enemy hands, the Enemy could have a means to use it to disrupt the safety of Doriath, there could be possibilities that do not immediately rise to mind because I have been given incomplete information both about your host and about this magic....

If it fell into Enemy hands it would be the same kind of catastrophe as anything else falling into Enemy hands, but could not lead back to Doriath. It would be like seeing that the people crossing the Ice weren't freezing and trying to learn anything about whichever fires they had drawn from.

Failing to ask your leave is entirely true. On that front, I apologize for giving offense.

I am not confident you are sufficiently informed about the capabilities of the Valar to confidently make such claims.

She kind of has a point. We do know about a particular capability they don't have, but can't admit that without mentioning magic.

Yeah. On the other hand I think we've just been arrested;  are we going to need to reveal magic anyway to leave?

Maybe. Rising to probably if we want to leave with more elementals than we've already got and definitely if we want to do that without being enemies.

We can ask for some time to think. She's a Maia, she can't mind that.

Now if we don't say something that looks like a bigger secret, we look even more evasive.

Asking anyway.

I would like your commitment that you will not do this again until we've discussed matters further, and not use power collected in Doriath until the nature of it has been better communicated.

Agreed.

We can still cut losses and run with what we've got, if we have to, we'd just have to come up with a safe partial answer to communicate first. If we do end up telling her...well, at least that keeps the spirit of the deal as well as the letter.

Yeah.

They are escorted back to their guest rooms. A few minutes after that, the guest rooms stop having a door.