Chapter 1: The Lion & the Unicorn were fighting for the Crown
Summary:
Maedhros contemplates the Gordian knot before him.
Notes:
Most non-canon names in this come from Chestnut_pod's Elvish name list or from realelvish.net. Those which do not are my attempts at name construction.
Click for chapter warnings:
Representation of the mindset of the aftermath of torture, including self-blame; allusions to rape of women & the silencing thereof.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Is the chair empty? Is the sword unswayed?
Is the King dead, the empire unpossessed?
What heir of York is there alive but we?
And who is England’s king but great York’s heir?
— Richard III, Act IV, Scene IV: Richard III, William Shakespeare
Darkness, at first. Then light, bright and everywhere.
**
The end of the world came silently, like a thief in the night. One night, the world stretched infinitely, laboriously on. Then it was over. Time had ended and the world would very soon. Not for the cicadas, who sang on, nor the frogs, who croaked, heedless. Not even for his brother, fast asleep at his side. Warm. Still. At least, he thought he was asleep. You could never tell with him. Eight hundred and thirty seven years, some long, some short, and his brother remained an impenetrable mystery to him. Warm, compassionate, and essentially false. He knew it, didn’t he? He knew it up there, on Thangorodrim. He had known it for five hundred and eighty seven years.
Maedhros closed his eyes and continued composing the letter begun forty, fifty, one hundred and forty four, five hundred and eighty seven years ago.
Some time in the past fortnight, his brother had changed the curtains.
They fluttered in the late afternoon breeze, gauzy, insubstantial. Yellow flowers. Crocuses, maybe. Something cheerful, like the sun outside. Not quite Laurelin, but not not quite Laurelin. Its rays fell in gentle golden pools across the counterpane. More flowers. A veritable meadow of flowers. Maedhros traced the outline of a bold and florid pale hibiscus. No. Meadow flowers were small. Bluebells. Snowdrops. Daisies. Tiny little nameless pink and orange and purple flowers, scattered amongst the long and untrimmed glass. Hibiscuses and geraniums belonged to trim and well-ordered gardens, like they had back home. Maglor had given him one. A garden, that is. Small, insubstantial. Big enough to fit in the window box. Aren’t they pretty, he said. Look at them, don’t they cheer you? Sure, said Maedhros. He was already fine, but he watered them dutifully every other day to satisfy his brother’s desire for normalcy. He couldn't say, Lauro I fucking hate gardening, you know this. His brother was trying. They were all trying. So he had a garden. Lilies, his brother said, you like lilies. He didn't particularly want to correct him and tell him they were tiger lilies, like the ones that grew in their not-a-grandmother’s garden. His brother didn't like thinking about these things, like how Maedhros didn't like thinking about gardens and flowers: niphredil, blossoming beneath their uncle's feet.
Niphredil, the sun, the eagle. Blessing after blessing. His uncle was a blessed man. His cousin was a blessed man. His cousin prayed and Manwë heard and answered. Blessed be Manwë, ever-wise and ever-good. So Maedhros was alive, dark and luckless in a room with flowery curtains and a flowery counterpane and he had to sleep every afternoon even when he wanted to get back to work, because this would upset everyone. He wasn’t even sleepy.
Maedhros glared at the cage in the far corner of his room. I don't want bloody plants, he must have said. I want my parrot . He missed that bedraggled nightmare. His brother was miraculous, but not enough of a miracle to pull a parrot out of nowhere. Maedhros glared at the budgerigar and the budgerigar glared back at him and as it did so, it wiggled its tail just so, squatted and seemingly, deliberately, released excreta on the bottom of its cage. Despite himself, Maedhros found himself sympathising with the poor creature. He thought about freeing it, putting it out of its misery, but that would just be another thing in the long list of things that would upset his beautiful, delicate, princely brother and his finely balanced agreements.
It would probably have upset his uncle too. His uncle disliked ugliness. One of those besetting Elvish sins. But it got you niphredil at your feet in reward and much more besides. He disliked ugliness enough to meekly accept the adulation of the Noldor; accept the Crown with caution. Wasn't it wonderful? He simply couldn't help it. None of them could, except Maedhros who was a luckless fool, alive because his uncle disliked ugliness. It had all worked out very well for his uncle. One could prod the horse, but if it kicked, then the horse was mad and had to be put down. His uncle said things like, we're glad you're alive and with us . Sincere, warm. But Maedhros knew better. Maedhros had thirty years to contemplate and map their lives out in painstaking detail. Only very rarely, on those days of pestilential black fog, Maedhros heard the Voice whispering to him. So Maedhros was sane, perfectly sane when he observed how well this turn of Fate served his uncle's ambitions, how well it served his cousin, how well it served their people and how completely it locked them out.
“You're being unkind.”
His brother stood, one delicate and slender hand on the back of a chair. Lute hands. Dexterous. Impatient. One finger tapped slightly against the dark wood. Maedhros leaned back on his heels, satisfied.
“Tell me it's untrue, then.”
“Uncle isn't father.”
“No.” Maedhros counted three rest beats for Maglor’s benefit. “He's far worse: he understands.*
“Is it so hard to imagine Finno is your friend?”
Thirty years had worn his brother like love wore at soft toys and carpets. This had neither made him wiser, nor rid him of sentimentalism. The friends of princes were rather more attached to the titles than to the titlebearers, even when they were princes themselves. Maybe especially when they were princes. Maglor had to know this. He had to know what their cousin's gesture meant. The story went around their camp within a week of Maedhros’ return. They were starting to call it the Curse of Míriel. Everything odd, everything peculiar about Fëanáro and his sons always came from Míriel. What did it makes Findekáno, he wondered. Blessed by Manwë. Anything, everything was blessed. Blessed by Manwë; cursed by Míriel, whose only fault was dying when she should have been happy.
“My friend, yes.” Maedhros clasped his hands behind his back. Straight. Tall. But not rigid. Rigid was frightening. Just enough to be military, disciplined. “But still a prince and his father's son, like I'm a king and my father’s son. The spirit might have been altruistic, but it doesn't make me any less indebted to him — or make it less of a diplomatic coup.”
Maglor sighed.
“Explain it to me, then.”
“Perhaps it was a gesture,” his brother conceded. “But one can’t rule out the possibility of earnestness.”
“So, Findekáno earnestly forgives us,” said Maedhros. “His rescue is a token of that earnest forgiveness. And it just so happens to conveniently end with me, the king, indebted to him and therefore, his father.”
“You treat it as though the debt is unpayable.”
“Isn’t it?”
“All debts can be paid off.”
His brother was impassioned. Maglor only ever was passionate when he was attempting to convince someone of something he didn’t truly believe. Himself, probably. He had to know Maedhros would never believe it.
“Is that what you’ve been doing?” said Maedhros. “Penny-pinching, bribing and accounting?”
Maglor looked him in the eye, even-keeled like one of the burning Teleri ships.
“I made sure we survived,” he said in a dangerously mild voice. “The results speak for themselves, even if you dislike it.”
The sentence let its shadow fall across Maedhros. Someone disliked it. Celegorm, most likely, proud to the very end. You don’t want to be like Celegorm . Maglor was always clever at that sort of thing.
“So we bribe our uncle.”
“If you must be crude.” His brother, now the longsuffering martyr. “They’re more beggars than we are. There’s plenty they need that we have; and we control the road.”
Maedhros turned his head to look out the window. The lake stretched out in a curved and glittering line before them, and alongside it, the eponymous road. A solitary heron stalked the shores. On the far end of that line lay the blur of wooden houses that once used to be theirs. Flags, pennants twinkled silver and gold and blue and green in the sun in perpetual reminder. There, the swell of hill and the long, wooden hall where they mourned their father, where Maedhros opened that letter and read it aloud to his brothers, when they —
But, of course, this was immaterial. Maedhros awoke in a familiar and yet unfamiliar hall, in a room that once was his own and now bore the colours his cousin adored. Gold, silver, blue. He thought it was a dream. Some lingering, guilty conscience, braiding together the past into the uncanny dreamworld where places were half and half, old and new. A room that was his, that was no longer his, like the mind and body that was his and no longer his. It was only when it refused to fade, even after pinching himself, even after resorting to the book of Rúmil’s aphorisms on the table next to him, that Maedhros realised the uncanny dream was reality and somehow, Fingon had his old rooms. Once it passed, Maedhros could see the tell-tale signs: furs that bore the verisimilitudinous signs of struggle rather than the luxuries of craft, the sparseness of the mantelpiece, the stiff sheets, the singular (not very well made) chair. Of course Maglor refused to leave the furniture behind. It was only right and even if they had committed an act of gross treason, they still deserved to have beautiful things.
“Alright then,” said Maedhros. “How would you price the cost of twelve hundred and fifty four lives?”
Fifty of the best stallions and mares, along with all goods and cattle Fingolfin’s people loaded onto the ships. Received with thanks, but not warmth. Enough froideur and the debt began to look impossible. Or rather, inevitable. Debts, mounting, up, up, up till it touched the Crown and said, look here, we saved your life and this is what we get? A kingdom for a king: but there was no precedent. No one had ever saved Finwë, who was fantastically good at saving himself, until he no longer was. So Maedhros couldn’t say, no, I paid it all off, go away . It wouldn't be fair. Or it wouldn't seem fair. It wasn't the sort of bargain any of them could calculate for. The world was too young to know that sort of thing.
The crown was one in a handful of creations left of his father. The rest were swords, helmets, armour, lamps, specialised equipment: the desiderata of war. Perhaps Finrod had something. Earrings, or a necklace. Something luxurious, pointless and pointed. It had to be pointed, if it survived the long march across the Ice. Finrod was very good at that sort of thing. Always something pointed, delivered with kindness and aggravating self-martyrdom. So common to the other side of the family.
The crown was pointed too, in its own way. Finwë-Ñolofinwë had a circlet, studded with diamonds and sapphires cut in cabochons and Finwë had never worn it. Finwë wore silver, engraved, carved, filigreed and studded with jewels. Fat diamonds and rubies that glowed with an inner light, the apotheosis of the Noldor at the height of their glory. Finwë had worn it, and so did Maedhros. Its jewels caught the moonlight now, throwing pinpoints of silvery light and a strange and cloudy grey across the room. His room. A new set of rooms. They were smaller than the last and when he told Maglor as much, Maglor gave him a wet-eyed, aggrieved look which spoke volumes that Maedhros chose to ignore.
Maedhros touched the crown with the tip of his finger and watched the beams of light oscillate and shimmer on the walls. He would have to sleep soon, or rest. And when he did —
The lights on the wall rippled as Maedhros turned the crown again. But it might have been the lake.
How strange to remember Tirion now, with all its petty and childish grudges. How odd to remember that last brewing fight, before his father surpassed them all. Curufin’s law-brother, threatening them all with revolt because some theatre refused to produce some silly opera and the workers and musicians went unpaid. Finwë paid, to keep the peace. So much keeping the peace. There were limits to keeping the peace. The absolute nerve, Maglor said angrily. Maedhros wisely said nothing about the many times Maglor had dragged their grandmother out to feed ghost stories to their cousins. Maybe it was because Nerdanel had caught him in the act and scolded him. Who stopped them from talking about their dead mothers except themselves? Maglor fumed. The musician, a Teleri woman, a nobody, was forced to leave the city and fade into obscurity because of the scandal. There was no point observing this to Maglor, when Maglor had worked himself into a rage. It was best to let obscurity swallow it all up.
But now, in the gem-lit moonlight rippling across the walls of his room, that obscurity melted away. Maedhros was back in Tirion, watching silver-blue light ripple across the chorus of dead women. They stood in faceless ranks, unadorned in white nightgowns. Their faces were waxy and very pale. Dead, he remembered thinking. Very dead. They floated, insubstantial. Black socks, Maldorë whispered to him, as they floated across the stage. How clever. But how much nicer to imagine the impossible: a dozen ghosts, suspended between the heavens and the earth. They sang with one voice. Shrill. Accusatory. Yes, accusatory was the word.
Behold us, they said. Behold our shame . What was it? Another, younger Maedhros watched in bafflement, wondering if it was the nightgowns. Maedhros, who was older now, and wiser, stared into anguished and overbright eyes that mirrored his own and understood.
CHORUS: Who will hear us in this golden city?
Who will see us in this city of stone?
Our cries rise and fall to the earth, unheard.
They look and do not see, they listen and do not hear.
In the land of plenty, the blessed live
Eyeless and untroubled.
In the land of the living, the dead
Cannot be suffered an afterlife.
“What do you want?” said Maedhros. “What do you mean?”
CHORUS: In the land of the living, the dead
Cannot be suffered an afterlife.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “Please leave.”
CHORUS: Listen, O Manwë! Hear us, O Varda!
Five long years has darkness held us captive;
Enslaved by malice that sleeps not, loves not,
Knows naught but despair’s working and its cause.
We are mothers, but not of children; wives,
But not of husbands.
In the land of the dead, the living
Can only be given to evil.
“Stop,” Maedhros cried. His words sliced sharply through the silence. “Those aren’t the words.”
CHORUS: In the land of the dead, the dead give birth to more death.
Shadows flickered rapidly through the bevelled light on his walls. They caught, along with Tilion’s light, which once had been Telperion’s light, in the translucent scarves that covered the women’s hair. A sudden single bright ray slashed across the mouth of one of the women and then it was gone. Maedhros shuddered at the bruised blue-grey lines. His own mouth had looked that way when he woke up in Fingon’s tent.
“I’m not dead,” he told them.
CHORUS: Hear O Star-Kindler, the fate of the lost:
For years we have laboured in deep darkness.
Civilisations are drawn forth from our loins.
Armies descend and feast on our flesh,
the living consume our souls,
and our children devour us.
In the land of the dead, the living
Cannot be suffered to live.
“No, no, no,” cried Maedhros. “The words are all wrong.”
Their ghostly faces surrounded him. This close, he could see their lank and oily hair. No graveworms. Too artistic for graveworms, like their chalky makeup that left their skin whole, instead of rotted through.
CHORUS: Tell us what we must sing, son of Fëanáro.
“Nobody knows what happened,” he said. “You’re women. You’re wives. Or you’re — daughters of the Allmother. You’re supposed to say you died in childbirth, you died in bed, your life was taken by inconsiderate, brutal husbands or fathers or too much darkness and hard work, or you’re supposed to say —”
How awful, said the Maldorë of his memory. Stamping out an innocent life like that. There were temple women who served the Allmother who prayed for the earth to bless them and were blessed with children instead. Such things, naturally, did not happen in Valinor. In Valinor, women only ever conceived when they desired it, no one’s eyes ever wandered from their spouse and no one ever did anything truly awful to each other. In Valinor, everything was just so, like Lauro’s flowery counterpane. Words did not exist to describe terrible things, until you visited Rúmil’s library and found some ancient book, or if Rúmil himself deigned to tell you, with a closed off expression.
“Rape,” said Maedhros, baldly.
CHORUS: Hear, O Kementari, your daughters’ cries!
By day, they plough our bodies with iron
In twilight, they sow us with steel and woe,
By night they reap us. They steal our harvest,
And our fields are burned and bared.
Torment is the reward of the meek.
In the land of the dead, the living
Are shackled and strung up,
Cattle for slaughter.
“No,” said Maedhros. “ I was strung up. You were —”
CHORUS: What happened to us, Son of Fëanáro?
“I’m alive,” he said.
CHORUS: You are dead.
Maedhros began to laugh.
“But unfortunately, I live,” he said, through the laughter. “The torments of the Moringotto are not of the flesh, but of the mind and spirit.”
CHORUS: The torturer’s devices are manifold, but singular is its purpose.
“Was it singular when he pinned me up on Thangorodrim for all the world to see and ignore?”
CHORUS: The torment of the body is the torment of the mind. The torment of the mind is the torment of the body .
“And yet, the torments of the body are not the same.”
CHORUS: In the land of the dead —
“Shut up,” roared Maedhros.
Silence poured in and filled the gap, followed by the sound of his hoarse, bedraggled breathing. The women did not breathe. Dead people didn’t need their lungs.
“I’ll finish it for you,” said Maedhros. “In the land of the dead, the tormented live quite happily till the living remind them this is no living.”
CHORUS: The torment of the mind is the torment of the body .
“I am not tormented,” said Maedhros. “I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.”
CHORUS: In the land of the living, the dead pretend to live .
“Get out!” shouted Maedhros. “Get out, get out!”
They were so close, the moonlight illuminated the individual waxy pores of their cheeks. He groped blindly for something to fling at them. No swords. Maglor laughed lightly when he said he ought to keep one. Goodness, Russo, you’d think we wanted to murder you in your sleep. No daggers. Healer’s orders. His hand closed around Finwë’s crown. The gemlight rippled, strobing brightly across their empty eyes and then they were gone. Maedhros was standing alone in a bright pool of Tilion’s light.
He sat down on the edge of his bed and held his head in both his hands.
**
Up on Thangorodrim’s heights, the world was simple. Maedhros was a tragedy. A cautionary tale, a forgotten tale, but an essentially tragic one; the sort that had pathos and made people shake their heads and say a fine young man and cut down in the prime of his life. Then they would go about their business and none of them would wonder if he ought to be rescued. It was impossible, after all. That was the tragedy. Poor Maedhros. Cut down in the prime of his life, forgotten and abandoned by his brother, the coward. Maglor the Meek . Maedhros surprised himself by snorting at the nickname when he heard it. Maglor winced, then gave Maedhros one of his dolefully guilty looks. That was also a tragedy. Poor Maglor, suffering for his brother’s sake and then suffering again, because Fingon had dared where had not. So tragic, unlike Maedhros.
Maedhros had lived and living was considerably less tragic than torture or death. People looked at him now and wondered, well, you lived . So it couldn’t be all that bad, could it, Nelyafinwë Maitimo Fëanárion? It couldn’t be all that bad if you lived and it couldn’t be all that bad if Fingon could rescue you single-handed. So really, the tragedy was the wasted time. The tragedy was Maglor the Meek. Really Russandol. The nerve of you. Returning and making things so complicated for everyone. You could have just been forgotten in peace. You could have been mad on Thangorodrim in peace. Instead he was here, inconveniently. Putting everyone’s nose out of joint. Mad and evidently so and every single Noldo watching him, wondering, because if it was bad, if it truly was bad, he ought to, should have been dead. Instead, he was inconvenient. He was alive.
**
Maedhros lay down and traced the flowers on his counterpane, fending off sleep for as long as it took the sun to rise again.
Notes:
This fic follows the chronography of events as outlined in The Grey Annals, in The War of the Jewels, in which there are ~2 years between Maedhros' rescue and his abdication.
Title of the fic is taken from Gramsci's Prison Notebooks: "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."
Chapter 2: Vivat in Aeternam
Summary:
Maedhros hatches a plan and goes to The ClubTM
Notes:
Click for chapter warnings
Flashbacks to torture, including both physical and psychological torture, some substance use, negative social attitudes towards the mentally ill, societal homophobia.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Sunlight was struggling wanly through the dark clouds stretching down from the north. It wormed its way in pale lines through the windows and across the dark stone floors until it landed on his uncle’s crown. Out of respect for age and wisdom and all those many virtues, Maedhros had left Finwë’s crown behind in its box and opted for his old copper circlet. It was the first thing his uncle noticed. His eyes flit there first, before falling to Maedhros’ face and probing. Maedhros briefly entertained the idea of making some gnomic, awful pronouncement, just to reassure his uncle that yes, beneath that beautiful exterior lurked the madman’s mind he feared. Maglor stepped on his cloak and ripped it before he could. Accidental to the uninitiated, and his uncle, and then they were all caught up in apologies. Oh my. Dripping with insincerity. How clumsy of me. Fingon’s eyes were twinkling and he would have laughed, if Turgon didn’t look annoyed by it all.
They left, eventually, to count horses. He could see their heads bobbing around in the courtyard below through the window. Maglor was gesturing enthusiastically. Expounding, almost certainly, on horse lineages and family trees and the delicate balance between equine incest and diversity. Maedhros never could understand the illogic of his brother’s diverging passions.
“You know,” said his uncle, following his line of sight, “Elenwë died on the Ice.”
“So I’ve heard,” Maedhros replied dryly. Turgon had developed a habit of hovering just outside his room and whispering, do you know what they did and my wife died to Fingon, who always said, placidly, yes, Turno, but he’s sick. It was how he forgave Maglor: Maglor turned to him with a comic roll of his eyes and said, meanly, always so dramatic.
“Poor girl,” said his uncle, ignoring him. “She used to be so full of life. Always ready with a laugh, and some silly joke at hand when we were getting high strung.”
“The cold is a cruel master.”
“The cold merely exists,” his uncle replied. “Now Elves, on the other hand —”
“Elves, of course, being capable of refined cruelties.”
“Have you seen a child mourn for their mother?”
Maedhros smiled. “You forget, dear uncle. I grew up with one.”
His uncle returned his smile thinly. “Then you’ll know how cruelly such deprivation can warp a person.”
“Indeed,” Maedhros replied. “Though I don’t recall anyone ever giving my father the best of their breeding stock to make up for his mother’s death.”
“No,” his uncle said bitterly. “Only every indulgence under Laurelin and Telperion — and the Crown.”
Silence hovered between them as they watched Maglor finish his performance. Irissë was saying something. She would have a dozen questions to ask, searching with near lawyerly care for some hole, some flaw in Maglor’s case. Maedhros was waiting for his uncle to ask the indelicate, ugly question. So easy, instead, to be a martyr. You could be beautiful and noble and brave and then everyone would give you everything you wanted. But you had to be beautiful and noble first. Finwë-Ñolofinwë was very good at that.
Maedhros wasn’t any longer, but Maedhros was very good at patience. Thirty years of torment were extremely instructive.
“Shall I speak plainly,” his uncle said, once the silence had become uncomfortably piercing.
“Surely mountainously, uncle?” said Maedhros. He turned his head in time to catch the fleeting annoyed expression before it was replaced by the patient, indulgent, patronising one. “Thirty years must have given you plenty of grief to dwell on.”
“Very well, since we’re being honest —” blame, shifted neatly from martyr to the person who made the mistake of pulling up the curtains and exposing the martyr’s act. “Not even ten thousand horses could repay the value of the lives lost on the Ice. You could give me your herds, your flocks, your cattle and all the jewels you carried forth from Valinor and it still would not be enough.”
“Each life is priceless,” Maedhros said with some irony.
“Precisely so.”
“And how may one quantify its value?” Maedhros smiled. “A lifetime’s lost wages? The eternity nipped short? Thirty years of lost time? Two long years, wearing on the flesh?”
“An impossible calculation.”
“Indeed,” Maedhros replied. “So impossible that, in fact, it might be simpler if I give you the Crown and declare the matter closed — isn’t it, Finwë-Ñolofinwë?”
“If you like.”
“But I don’t like. I’d much rather you ask. Then we might claim to be, er, speaking plainly, as you put it.”
“Very well, since you insist.” His uncle straightened, mirroring Maedhros’ own military stance. “Now, dear nephew, I have nothing but the greatest admiration for the strength of spirit needed to survive the Moringotto’s torments —”
He went on in this vein for several minutes and Maedhros let him. Once upon a time, he would have been angry. Not because the fire of life was strong in him, but because he was the sort of person to whom it would have mattered. Proud, yes, and so painfully innocent and naive. You had to be naive to care about the inane Elvish proclivity for gossip. No, none of them were immune, not even the pious Vanyar. Maybe especially not the pious Vanyar. Gossip was the grist, the raison d’etre of Eldamar’s Elves. They simply couldn’t get enough of it. They had very good reasons to do so: they had nothing else to do with their time.
Now, Maedhros regarded his uncle with a fond if distant smile. How sweet, how innocent to still worry about wagging tongues. Now torture: that was something to worry about. Morgoth’s ugly fortress was full of Elves, slaving their lives away in pure darkness. The average Noldo would not survive that overwhelming, totalising darkness or the endless sting of whips, or the hard, backbreaking labour. But then, the average Noldo wouldn’t have survived being strung up like tenderloin in a butcher’s window: total abjection for the whole world to look at and laugh. The average Noldo had too much delicacy.
The argument, as he understood it, was very simple. Maedhros was brave, very brave and truly, it was a miracle, a sign that he still lived. But Maedhros was damaged. Marred, perhaps. And people, such fools. They believe such nonsense about thralls, dear nephew, you wouldn’t believe. But his uncle did, of course, believe. At least a little. Everyone did, even Maglor. You’ve changed, said Amrod. You’re weird. Maedhros restrained the acerbic answer that came to him: thirty years of torture has a nasty habit of changing you, child. Now, Finwë-Ñolofinwë was only kindly reporting on what he’d heard, but of course he didn’t believe it. Neither did Fingon or Aredhel. (Turgon, Maedhros observed, was neatly missing from this equation, perhaps resolved neatly into the faceless, generic hoarde his uncle was reporting on.) Nevertheless, people talk. You know that den of vipers, Maitimo, well we carried it here with us. And that tiresome den of vipers, dear nephew, well they just don’t believe you’re free of Morgoth.
At last his uncle finished with an expectant look. Maedhros was simply grateful for all the awful cliches he chose not to part with. It would have been simply too unbearable.
“And so they insist they’ll mutiny if I try to lead them?” Maedhros kindly completed his uncle’s train of thought for him.
“Not in so many words,” he said. “But essentially, yes.”
In his place, he would have made much more of Fingon’s rescue. But his uncle’s sensibilities were delicate. Maedhros’ had been blunted after all. How many times a day could he say “torture has a habit of doing that to you” before it became tiresome? He filed this away as a question to consider later at length.
“My my,” said Maedhros. “What a difficult position to be in, uncle! Undoubtedly exacerbated, I’m sure, by my cousin’s turn at diplomacy.”
His uncle’s mouth thinned. “Insult me all you like, Maitimo. Manwë knows I’ve born worse from your father. But Findekáno’s act was all altruism and you might be more grateful.”
“Gratitude!” Maedhros laughed bitterly and moved away from the window at last. He examined his uncle’s various chairs. Their chairs. Carved by his father’s favourite carpenter. Maglor insisted they only left the spares behind, which was strange to imagine: while he was hanging on Thangorodrim, they were making themselves new chairs. They hadn’t even bothered with sanding down his father’s eight point stars. He settled on the tallest, which had once belonged to him. “Believe me, I’m very grateful uncle. But let’s not forget, if Findekáno had listened to me, neither of us would be in this damned uncomfortable position in the first place.”
“So you would make my son a Kinslayer again.”
“Once a Kinslayer, always a Kinslayer,” he said with bitter mirth. “You heard Námo the same as I did, uncle. Let’s not pretend. None of us are going back alive. It’s only a matter of when, not if.”
“Is that what the Moringotto poured into your mind?”
“No, uncle. I have two eyes, two ears and I can see the war laid out before us. My father did too, you know. None of my brothers want to admit it, but that was blackest despair in my father’s eyes before his spirit fled his body in flame.”
His uncle sighed. Thirty years of the Ice suddenly wore on him. He really was just an Elf, like the rest of them, fed to the same monster, like all of them. Guilt seized Maedhros. He closed his heart to it, but still it wormed through.
“You’re growing sentimental,” his uncle said, eventually. “Come. Show me how far you’ve progressed with your sword work.”
Maedhros followed docilely. They strolled at a leisurely pace through familiar and yet unfamiliar corridors to one of the inner courtyards. His uncle had been busy. A profusion of touch-me-nots, autumn lilies, bellflowers, larkspur and golden spindles lined the courtyard, tended to by a young woman wearing gloves and a muddied apron. The last time Maedhros saw this courtyard, there were saddles and hounds everywhere. The flowers, he admitted reluctantly, were an improvement. So was the stillness. Another thing to be grateful about: the willingness to shield Maedhros from prying eyes; treating him like a nephew and taking him into the family’s inner sanctum instead of turning him out into the yard for sword practice. Or at least sparing him the humiliation of confronting his own inadequacy. That awful outburst. Why in Manwë’s name had he told his uncle about his father’s dying look? Why did his uncle sigh and let him go, instead of pressing his advantage?
“Very pretty,” said Maedhros, recognising a cue when he was given one.
His uncle gave him a sidelong look, but he smiled. “I hear you’ve taken to it yourself.”
“Well I’d hardly —”
But his uncle had already filled in Maedhros’ lines for him. Maedhros watched with a sort of detached amusement, as his uncle summoned the girl. One of Aunt Anairë’s nieces; one of the endless string of eminently eligible girls who faded into a faceless, nameless mass. Girls to escape. Girls to delicately slip away from at parties, after finding them a young man who wanted to fetch them ices and lemonades and other frivolities. Maedhros’ mouth moved into a polite smile of his own volition. He had danced with her once at his grandfather’s midwinter ball. A year before his father’s exile. Yes, that was it. They talked politely about the musicians’ lacklustre playing, the weather and how she occupied her time in Tirion, where she was a stranger — and Maedhros could only wonder how long his family would persevere at this idiotic game, when he would always outwit them. Her name was —
“My dear,” said his uncle, “my nephew was just admiring your arrangement of the touch-me-nots. Maitimo, my niece —”
“Lady Arimeldë,” he said and bowed over her hand, the way his tutor taught him. “The years may have passed swiftly, but my lady remains as bright as she did when I first danced with her at grandfather’s annual midwinter ball.”
The girl flushed tiresomely, but Maedhros noted his uncle’s reluctant admiration with glee.
“Your Majesty is very kind,” she said.
“But always honest,” he replied. Then added, with a malicious glance in his uncle’s direction, “by some accounts, too honest.”
His uncle laughed and she laughed unevenly along with him. Their eyes betrayed them: his, furious and hers, disconcerted.
“As honest as a king’s work,” his uncle replied. “But come, nephew, indulge me, if you will. I hear you’ve now surpassed Makalaurë in the art of the sword. Arimelde, my dear, will you see to the others? I cannot trust Finno or Irissë to remember meals where horses are concerned and you know how Turno is these days.”
“Of course, uncle,” she said. She curtsied sweetly to Maedhros, though she still looked at him like a snake that might strike dangerously and without warning. “Your Majesty.”
Maedhros clicked his heels together and sharply inclined his head. “My lady.”
His brother had refused to let him wear his sword. His real sword. We’re brokering a peace. In Tirion they’d taken to wearing small swords by the very end. They were ridiculous, effete and useless things. No one ever drew them on each other. Such things never occurred in Valinor. If they did, they were a mistake; or the result of internal and incurable obduracy. So no one ever threatened anyone, no one’s hands ever leapt straight to their hilts and nobody had ever threatened anyone before his father did. Besides, you could adorn smallswords in ways that weapons of war couldn’t have been. The Noldor did love their gold, the endless reams of scrollwork and engraving and carving. Maedhros unsheathed his smallsword, a delicate and impractical and flimsy thing that felt useless and impotent in his hands. But they were here to make peace, not war. He saluted his uncle.
They crossed swords and began. His uncle fought with rigorous discipline and very little of Maglor’s artistic flair. Everything was beautiful with Maglor. The world lost its ugly sheen. Even on the slopes of the Ered Wethrin with their father dead in their arms, Maglor found the time to marvel at the beautiful curl of flames and ash rising from his body. Just because I’m not like you, Maglor shouted when Curufin accused him of heartlessness. Maedhros struggled to dispute Curufin’s accusation. There was something heartless about Maglor’s pursuit of beauty. Perhaps that was why Maglor had stayed behind. Angband was so very ugly, after all.
His uncle, however, believed in efficiency. He fenced with the same efficiency. Maedhros found himself hard-pressed to parry his uncle’s attacks. They were swift, unrelenting and unlike his brothers, Maedhros could rarely guess where his next blow would land. Once, his uncle’s smallsword came perilously close to catching Maedhros in his shoulder and only a dexterous flick of his wrist and a hasty dodge out of the way spared him the humiliating loss. Maedhros fell back, panting and a sharp pain shooting through his left wrist.
“There is another matter I meant to speak to you about,” his uncle said, while Maedhros shook his wrist loose.
He raised his sword. “More gossip?”
“Everyone talks.” His uncle shrugged and made a move. Maedhros parried him easily. “Would that we were our own masters, but kings and princes must serve their people. There are responsibilities we bear that take precedence over our desires. I speak of your position, Maitimo. Do you understand?”
Maedhros jerked his uncle’s sword upwards with his own and with a swift move brought his around. His uncle ducked, but not before Maedhros’ smallsword glanced off his shoulder.
“Only vaguely,” Maedhros replied, as his uncle fell back and they resumed their opening stances.
They clashed again.
“Your father’s sudden death worries people,” he said. “Those who trust you may not necessarily trust your brothers and now, more than ever, Maitimo, it becomes incumbent on you to continue your father’s line. You cannot lean only on poor Atarinkë.”
His uncle had the advantage in build and the cold, hard endurance born of years on the Ice. Maedhros had height and thirty odd years of torment. He bared his teeth and threw his uncle back.
“Poor Atarinkë, as you call him, enjoys being a father, as he so often reminds us.”
“Maitimo,” his uncle said reprovingly. He moved suddenly and his blade would have slid past Maedhros’ defences, if he hadn’t parried just in time. “You know as well as I do that what passed as mere whim in Aman is now different. People remember selectively and there are enough idle minds and tongues in this lull to remember the worst of what our fathers believed.”
Flame blazed through him at his uncle’s words. His uncle pressed his advantage but in his fury, Maedhros flicked his wrist and locked their blades together, bringing them face to face.
“What do they believe, Finwë-Ñolofinwë?”
“Maitimo, your love for men is hardly a secret,” said his uncle, baldly. “What passed as childish whim in Tirion is now ascribed to the Black Foe and his marring of all thralls —”
“Thralls —”
“Thralls,” his uncle repeated, firmly. “What else would you call thirty years of captivity, Maitimo?”
“Say torment.” He laughed, feeling wild as a thunderstorm on the verge of explosion. “Or torture, perhaps.”
“Marry swiftly and marry well and they will call it what you will.” His uncle pushed mercilessly. His weight bore down on Maedhros’ wrist. Sharp pain lanced through it. “People talk. First they call it abdication of duty. Then —”
“This is not war fighting,” Maedhros hissed. “Fight me as you would an Orc.”
“If you were an Orc, I would have slain you twice over. Your defenses are weak.” His uncle remained infuriatingly calm. “But let me finish —”
“I have heard enough.”
“Someone must say it to you directly,” his uncle said sharply, as though Maedhros was a child and not the man currently wearing the Crown. “If you will keep the Crown, then heed my advice. The Noldor will not be ridden as a stubborn mule, Maitimo. Their eyes are on you, watching for some sign, some taint of the Enemy. You are stainless, Maitimo. You must show this to them.”
This time his uncle was the one to step back. He looked calm, unruffled, unperturbed. All of this was a game; unfeeling pieces moved around on a chess board towards abstract and impersonal victory. None of this mattered. His uncle was married, with four children, three sons, and Fingon capable and ready to marry. His uncle had not spent thirty years in Morgoth’s captivity. His uncle was brave, persistent, martyred. And Maedhros — Maedhros —
“Why do you keep calling me Maitimo?”
The question took his uncle off guard. “Because it’s your name, child.”
And Maedhros was tormented, tainted by Morgoth’s wrath and his bloody lieutenant’s sick little mind games. Come now, Maitimo, just a cosy little chat you and I. Or, what a lovely name it is, Maitimo. Or, temper, temper, Maitimo, we must be as beautiful on the inside as the out. The last time he looked at himself closely in the mirror, there were scars on his chest that he remembered from a dream of a dream. So many battles, crooned in his ear. But he had only fought two, and one with his own kind. They were fine lines, healed, fine. None of them hurt, so, nothing to worry about. They don’t seem to have touched him: his healer to Maglor, and Maglor, bless him, tracing his chest, uncertain and yet with the conviction of knowledge, I don’t remember those. Poor little boy, that awful voice, crooning away, so beautiful and so ruined and all for someone else’s ambitions. On and on till Maedhros stared at them and touched them and thought maybe, just maybe he must have caught on some Orc’s sword and never noticed because he was young and strong and beautiful and his body could still heal itself.
“Maitimo.” His uncle’s voice drew him back to the present. “Come now, you know I only wish you well. There are many trials ahead of you and I would rather you not face them alone.”
Such kindness. It overwhelmed Maedhros. It held him down by the neck. Facedown, kindly, in a trough of water, until it filled his lungs, filled his veins, filled him all the way from head to toe. It held him down and laughed. Yes, behind all that martyred kindness was laughter and triumph. Finwë-Ñolofinwë, having the last laugh after all. Finwë-Ñolofinwë, full of pity for the dearly beloved and dearly detested nephew. Poor little Maitimo, left behind and fool, they’re feasting and rejoicing in your absence. Below him, his uncle’s banners and the long snaking line of Noldor, their helmets glinting in the sun and deaf to anything but the sound of their own triumphant entry. Look at them go, Maitimo, don’t you wish you were with them?
He charged at his uncle.
Everything happened in a swift blur. Steel, flashing bright everywhere. His uncle, shouting something, overpowered by the roaring of his own pulse in his ears and the sound of his sword, hitting his uncle’s over and over again until it was subsumed by a violent, loud hissing. His body moved of its own volition: muscles straining, arms and legs moving, propelled by a wild, mad desire to triumph, to destroy, to annihilate. Fuchsia, blues, green and gold blurred together as the garden spun around them. His uncle’s silver and blue tunic; his mouth moving soundlessly. A flash of pain in his wrist. The flash of sky, bright and blue. Then Maedhros found himself lying flat on his back and his sword lying a foot away from him. The pain in his left wrist continued to throb sharply. His uncle sheathed his smallsword, finally out of breath.
“Will you fight so on the battlefield?” he said sharply. “Will you lead us as king and let your tormentors provoke you into boyish foolishness? Make no mistake, Maitimo. The Moringotto will play his games and send your tormentors for you, again and again and again. You cannot afford to be led so easily astray.”
Paralyzing, blind red rage overtook him. His vision went white. Another man possessed him, this one wild, primitive and mad like the Morben, like the beasts of the field, like —
Who else knew him as well as Morgoth? Even Maglor looked at him sadly, like he was a stranger. Thirty years was all it took to take one man out and put another man in. Or to simply place him there, tucked away in the corners where he couldn’t be found, dragged out and exorcised. Uncontrollable fury raged through him like wildfire. Maedhros restrained himself. His hand, his shoulders shook with the effort, but he did it. It occurred to him this was why his uncle had sent the girl away, and why his uncle had chosen this courtyard. If the Noldor learned of this humiliating outburst it would be from his uncle. If they didn’t, it was one more debt added to Maedhros’ already insurmountable debt. He turned, fingers closing around dirt. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his uncle extend a hand towards him, as though he was a wild creature worth befriending. What was it his father said? The only valiant in this valiant people. His uncle would not outdo him. He pushed himself up and stumbled to his feet.
“My uncle is very wise,” he murmured as he picked up and sheathed his smallsword. “I am grateful. The wisdom of the wise must never be scorned.”
“Maitimo.” His uncle wore an inscrutable expression. Pity, perhaps. Or kindness. They were all the same thing weren't they? The largesse of the giver, the smallness of the one who receives. He was a king, his father's son and Finwë's heir. “Maitimo, let us help —”
“Uncle.”
The snap of his heels echoed sharply through his courtyard. The sharp nod sharper than it should have been. Maedhros felt his uncle’s scrutinising gaze prickling between his shoulders as he crossed the courtyard. His fingers curled at his side. He kept moving. Head up. Imagine an invisible string, his father said. Shoulders straight. He only needed to hear it once. Celegorm and Caranthir were the ones who needed constant drilling. Caranthir slouched, badly. Celegorm never stood still. But Maedhros was perfect, because Maedhros was vain. Never rush. Slowly. One foot in front of the other, in measured and even steps. He was strolling through his uncle’s halls to find his brother after a pleasant visit with his uncle and his cousins. They talked peace, they agreed on the most important details and any differences they had were trivial. Immaterial. All of it was immaterial. His uncle never humiliated him, never demonstrated how unsuited he was to being a king, all out of that same altruistic instinct that roused all their healers and brought them to Maedhros, half-dead in the middle of the night. Everything was just as it should be. The world will wait for you. His father had never accounted for the possibility that Maedhros might not want to wait for it; that he might, in fact, want to escape the world.
No, that wasn’t very honest of him and he was, at least, an honest man. Morgoth spoke to him a grand total of three times. Little fool. Your brothers will be far happier without you around to rule the roost. But since you Noldor love science, let’s test that hypothesis of yours, shall we, m’boy? Let’s see how quickly they come for you, hmmm? Maedhros could see their camp, glittering away in the distance. They had to know. There were scouts. Sometimes he thought they looked up at him, but that was long after he grew tired of calling for them. Did he beg? Perhaps he begged. He must have begged. Maybe they heard him begging and averted their eyes, embarrassed. A king shouldn’t have to beg. His father had never begged in his entire life; not even when he wanted to. So maybe they heard him and went back to Maglor and Maglor was embarrassed on his behalf. He must have said as much to Morgoth; he remembered Morgoth laughing. Your brother wears a crown now, boy. So much for fraternal love.
Was it before or after Maedhros stopped following the movement of the stars? He remembered so little. In fevered dreams, he saw Maglor harping away in his candlelit window, unable to look up, because if he did he would see Maedhros and how undignified, how mortifying it would be to see one’s brother reduced to such ignominy. Darkness stretched out on either side, above, below, until he was sure it all poured from a wellspring within. No, worse, it bubbled over and spilled into memory, sweeping away everything Maedhros liked most. But he remembered those joyful trumpets and bright helmets with vivid precision, followed by the deep plunge into despair when not one of them looked his way.
You’re a fly on the wall, said Morgoth. A stain on their conscience. Nobody liked stains. Everyone did their best to get rid of them. But maybe they’d let a fly live. Maglor was one of life’s pacifists; hated war; hated every minute of the Kinslaying and wept when it was over. Maglor had never hurt a fly in his entire life. Well, Maglor loved hunting as much as any red-blooded Noldor aristocrat did. So Maglor had killed deer and shot pheasants and speared wild boars, but Maglor would never hurt a fly. He would ignore it if it was inconvenient, or let it stay there on his wall if he thought it added something to his music. Maybe Maglor thought his begging added a certain je ne sais quoi to the lament he was already composing. There was nothing more fallen than being held captive by the Black Foe. You simply couldn’t get much worse than that. A better man would have let himself down from that cliffside and walked it off. Well, what do you make of our experiment, said Morgoth, then. An unqualified success. I think we can conclusively say my point was proven?
**
Maybe it was true. Maybe Morgoth’s lieutenant tormented him. Maybe Morgoth did. Maybe Maedhros imagined Morgoth did all of it, or some of it, or none of it. Maybe he conjured it out of nowhere like those stars. What was he thinking? There were no stars. Angband belched forth great poisonous, sooty clouds that blotted out everything but the darkness. It was all a little blurry. Maedhros thought it was only fair: no one could really be expected to remember thirty years of torment.
“Our uncle thinks I should abdicate,” he said jovially as Maglor and he rode back to their camp together. “He thinks I’m unfit for purpose. Perhaps some debts are unpayable, after all.”
His uncle’s camp had nearly twice as many banners as theirs did. Maedhros counted them. Fifty to their humble thirty. However, Maedhros’ crown was far lovelier. It clashed badly with his hair; but when he set it down in its velvet casing, it glimmered radiantly against the rich blue fabric. It netted the light in its delicate filigree and its fat jewels in ways that Finwë-Ñolofinwë’s sapphires would never do. Besides which, Maedhros had two crowns. It had to count for something.
There were simpler ways to resolve this equation.
First, the points in his favour:
- Two crowns
- One crown infinitely better than Finwë-Ñolofinwë’s — the value of nostalgia, Finwë’s death & rarity of rubies and diamonds in one
- Approx. 10x horses
- Approx. also 10x cattle
- Perhaps 10x sheep, for good measure
- Unmarried — all the better for diplomatic marriages, or the possibility thereof
- Better armoury
- Better war infrastructure
- Trained cavalry
- Army battle-hardened several times over
- Lineage & line of descent, directly from Tata
- Charm & relative good looks — including striking feature, copper hair
- Member of the Royal Academy of Philosophers
The points stacked against him, however, were weighty in the eyes of Elves who followed the ways of the Valar:
- Less than a season’s worth of experience in ruling
- Captive of Morgoth — general distrust of thralls, weakness in battle
- One hand
- Too much scarring, perhaps, if not immediately visible — Lauro insists it lends an air of distinction, but he has been known to be wrong on such matters before
- Ill-tempered
Possible hallucinations- Kinslayer
- Míriel’s curse
- Homosexual & evidently so
The points in his uncle’s favour were considerably more varied:
- Lineage of Ingwë & Tata, though of the cadet branches
- Married, four children, though one dead
- 1 crown
- 2x followers, therefore 2x army
- Best of OUR breeding stock
- Possibly more jewels — must compare Findaráto’s treasury against ours
- The moral high ground
- Not a Kinslayer
- 5+ years experience ruling
- Led ~20,000 Elves across the Ice
- Led them in the Lammoth
- 70% survival rate — not bad, considering the circs
- Founding member of the Royal Academy of Philosophers and member of the Lambengolmor
- Clearly favoured by Yavanna
There was very little that he could think of that was disqualifying. His uncle’s gift for sowing discord through his elevated martyrdom was clearly taking for the Noldor.
It rather did leave him out in the cold, crownless and dispossessed. Somewhere in Mandos, Námo was nodding sagely as his prophecy came to roost.
No, he had to try harder. This was insufficiently scientific. What did a king need after all? Power, wisdom, virtue, lineage. Maedhros had power, lineage and a not unreasonable amount of Vanyarin virtue. Wisdom could be gained with age, counsel, education, experience. Maedhros was gifted at the art of the kindly insult, the clever little social games of Tirion and to play them with innocent charm. He could make people forget he’d insulted them. Manwë knew he’d done it to his uncles and cousins plenty of times, though Aunt Findis was harder to charm and therefore, harder to trick. A blinding smile, the rueful expression, the self-deprecating laugh: all of it saying, forgive me, I can’t help myself. I just had to tell the truth. It’s not you, it’s me. He had never tried getting away with Kinslaying this way, but he was sure he could have if he tried. Maedhros was capable of all the virtues, all eight of them; though maybe he was best at valour. He could be harmonious, more harmonious than Finwë-Ñolofinwë, who didn’t even have the grace to wait for his father’s death before adding Finwë’s name to his own. Maedhros had the lineage. He held lands, cattle that his uncle wished he had. If he mapped it out in a graph, he would end up at the top: divinely ordained, appointed and decreed.
However, a king needs subjects — and Finwë-Ñolofinwë had twice as many. They even looked at him with adoration. The naive, innocent love of children waiting to be led by an omniscient, omnipotent father. Their upturned faces, glowing with adoration, as his uncle looked down on them with a benevolent, all-encompassing love. These days they looked at Maedhros like they wished he was anywhere but here: a sentiment he shared. But once upon a time — once upon a time that was how all of Tirion had looked upon Maitimo Nelyafinwë Fëanárion.
Maedhros poured himself a drink and downed it in one gulp. It stung, but he barely noticed it. He poured himself another.
Really, there was nothing more tiresome than perpetually living looking over one shoulder towards the more attractive past. Maedhros couldn’t stop himself. The past was beautiful, cast in a golden and silver light, unmatched by the pale imitations they had now. He used to be Tirion’s beloved prince. Crowds used to part like water before him. A benevolent hand here, a brush of someone’s shoulder, a smile bestowed, a bow or a hand, kissed: Maedhros had an eternity of life to give away carelessly, wave it away to every single Elf who demanded his attention. So he gave it away, carelessly, happily, and in turn he drank in their adoration and imagined this would last forever; he was omnipotent, he was unstoppable, he was invincible. Even when he was unhappy it was fleeting. He would dance with the girls, then slink out and spend the Mingling in the arms of beautiful men, pressed between their sweaty chests, at the homes of friends, at the Allmother temples, at farmhouses along the shores south of Eldamar. Time, he thought, would never stop.
Well, now he was hurtling towards the fullstop of his life. Námo said so himself. To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well. For blood ye shall render blood . It had already begun. Every smile wore on him. Every bow, every gesture, every carefully chosen word, every hand, kissed: it ground him slowly, a little closer to the earth. The eternal, endless horizon had disappeared. Maedhros was a dry well, being dug deeper. One day there would be no water left. If he was king, he would have to pour himself out the way his uncle poured himself out. Graciously, benevolently, illimitably. Morgoth had rather curtailed that ability of his. People wanted only one man and Maedhros was two: Nelyafinwë Maitimo Fëanárion and an unnamed shadow self. Not an heir to Finwë and certainly not well-made, though he did have red hair. Russandol belonged to his brothers. This strange man belonged to no one. Really, you wouldn't tell he was there, right till he emerged and Maedhros was either shouting at poor Maglor, or trying to beat his uncle to death with a flimsy, useless smallsword.
No, people didn't like that. People liked predictability. Even in war, they liked to know that their generals had mapped out the fight from start to finish. Nevermind that battles never went the way they were planned; nevermind that life itself had a way of deviating, meandering around, getting hooked on trivialities. A king was meant to be in charge. It meant having the power to regiment time and cause and consequence, or at least pretend one did. It meant endless benevolent kisses and bows, all delivered by the beautiful, charming boy and certainly never the thrall. It meant letting people drink of you, keep digging and digging. They would dig those empty wells till they hit stone. Maybe they'd keep digging. The Noldor were an ingenious people who could invent ways to dig through stone, right through the centre of the world, if they tried. So they would keep going, until one day, he was sure, there wouldn’t be anything left of him at all.
**
Worst of all, to be a king was to be a man and though Maedhros might lead the Noldor to triumph in war, the longer he remained unmarried, the longer he remained embalmed in a perpetual and charmless childhood.
**
“Is that it?” Celegorm demanded much later, entering the room in a whirlwind. “You’re just going to give up the Crown?”
Maedhros cheerfully lifted his glass in mock toast. “The Noldor are a virtuous people, Tyelkormo. My uncle is all virtue and I’m all vice. So it follows.”
Celegorm rolled his eyes.
“You’re drunk,” he said. “You’re letting him get to your head. You’re letting Lauro get to your head.”
“I am, am I?”
If Maedhros was younger and more foolish, he would have envied his younger brothers’ boundless self-assurance. There was something beautiful in Celegorm and Curufin’s deluded and arrogant belief in their own subtlety. They had all the subtlety of those great lumbering beasts of Avathar’s southern wilds, knocking down fat-trunked trees as they moved. Celegorm was better at this game than Curufin. It did not stop Maedhros from catching that calculating look before his brother smoothed it away.
“One understands Lauro’s desire for peace,” Celegorm said airily. “The enemy on our doorstep and all that. But don’t you believe, brother, there’s such a thing as going too far?”
“I’d have thought we were far past too far,” Maedhros remarked dryly.
Celegorm pretended not to hear him. “He loves to appease, our Lauro. Wonderful in a dinner party host, but not, I think, for war. Surely no one can be this naive.”
“You think he goes too far.”
“No,” Celegorm replied, swerving unexpectedly from the familiar trodden paths of this particular conversation. Caranthir had said something similar to him last week. He had a good laugh about it with Maglor, who seemed relieved. “I don’t think our Lauro’s that naive or stupid.”
Maedhros tensed. Words, fragments, shadows chased each other in his mind. He couldn’t look at them; that way lay endless purgatory of the mind. Silly boy, why else would your dear brother leave you here? Maglor looked so pale and thin, hovering at Maedhros’ side and wearing the silver circlet father had made for his fiftieth begetting day. Maglor hated being unhappy. Thirty years of being king is more than enough, his brother said, putting the locked box that held their grandfather’s crown in his arms. And yet, words, fragments, shadows chased each other. Maedhros pushed them all away, the cloud over his faculties beginning to dissipate. Celegorm didn’t notice it: or if he did, he’d grown better at hiding it. His eyes had landed on Maedhros’ scrawled list and chart. Celegorm pounced and removed it before Maedhros could even think of hiding it.
“You’re too harsh on yourself,” Celegorm told him, grey eyes scanning rapidly back and forth. “What good’s having four children? Besides, Arno’s dead anyway. That’s two sons and a daughter.”
“It’s respectable.”
“It’s a dead end.”
“The whole world knows —” Maedhros gestured expansively. “Here walks a man capable of fucking a woman, pleasing her and getting her pregnant. A real man. A virtuous man.”
“Well it’s all hypotheticals,” his brother replied. “Who would you even marry in this Eru-forsaken land anyway?”
“Uncle seems to believe Aunt Anairë’s niece a suitable match.”
“Bah,” said Celegorm. “Her family’s good enough — but not princely. Besides it’s too — them.”
Maedhros snorted. “There’s always Cousin Elenárë. She’s been dying to get her hands on me since I came of age.”
“Don’t take it personally. Tried it on me too when you were gone.” Celegorm said blithely. “What’s the use of marrying within the train? One marries out; one consolidates. As I said. A useless hypothetical —”
The idea occurred to them simultaneously. That scheming look was in Celegorm’s eyes again. This time he didn’t bother concealing it; it unnerved Maedhros far more than the smoothing away. There was a deliberateness to it that Maedhros distrusted.
“May I remind you,” he said, keeping his voice mild, “I’ve never liked women?”
Celegorm rolled his eyes. “You’re getting sentimental. Lauro’s been getting to you. You only need to say your vows and fuck her and you can think of — whoever it is you think of — while you do that.”
“How elegant and charming. I’m sure my future wife will be thrilled.”
“The elegance is immaterial.” Celegorm carelessly tossed Maedhros’ hours of careful, if drunken, work aside. “Marriage, diplomacy: it’s the same battlefield and you and I are generals, not sentimentalists and poets. That’s Lauro’s trouble, or so he claims.”
Maedhros laughed, evading the question of Maglor’s poetic disposition. “Why, Tyelko, at this rate you may as well go and persuade Thindicollo for his daughter’s hand yourself!”
“Be serious, Russandol.” All traces of levity had vanished and Celegorm was regarding him with an earnest expression. Maedhros distrusted it even more than the scheming one. “You can’t possibly let our uncle blackmail you into giving him the Crown. Or else we ought to blackmail him for causing all of this in the first place, by insisting on the superiority of his mother’s marriage over our grandmother’s. She died Russandol. The only Elf in Valinor to have died. If that doesn’t do it, then I don’t know what can. You can’t let him or Lauro guilt you.”
There it was again. Subtler than Celegorm’s old machinations, yet evident. No, there could be no move this way or that till Maedhros had resolved this.
“I’m always serious,” Maedhros replied, flippantly. “Guilt is so very tiresome. No, I shan’t be guilty. But you, my silvery brother, might write whatever flattery it takes for me to marry — that is, assuming you can do a better job of wooing than dear Lauro and his poetic soul.”
“Russandol.”
“Tyelkormo.” Maedhros leaned against the back of his chair and gave his brother a smile that was mad enough to be interpreted as drunk. “As you say, I must be king. Very well, if I must be king, I must have a wife, or at least a marriage. If I must marry, I must woo and wooing, be a king. So I come, full circle, to the start: I must be a king, or so you say. Therefore, woo! A fine job for a kingmaker, no? Would you promise lands? I have them. Wealth, jewels, swords, armies — promise anything you like, Tyelkormo, but don’t promise my heart. I have none.”
His brother regarded him, head tilted slightly. “You have become fey.”
“I have become what the Moringotto has whetted me into,” Maedhros replied lightly. “But you may dress that up as you please, or omit it in your case to Thindicollo. I leave it entirely to your discretion, Tyelkormo.”
He turned deliberately back to his desk, picked up his metal pen and began to write. Celegorm hovered behind him. Maedhros could sense the storm brewing, his purpose unfulfilled.
“Was there anything else?”
Hesitation, which sounded like the brief rustling of silk; Celegorm shifting his weight from one foot to another.
“No.”
“Then do send Maldanáro to me if you find him,” said Maedhros. “I need his good offices to tidy up this letter to my uncle. And by the by, Tyelkormo. A little matter concerning “Maglor the Meek” has come to my attention — you wouldn’t happen to know anything about it, would you?”
His brother stilled in the middle of turning the doorknob. “Only that the epithet exists.”
“How unfortunate!” Maedhros replied. “Sedition and defamation of the Crown is quite unforgivable. One might, of course, pardon such indiscipline in Tirion, but it is rather more inexcusable in times of war. Were I to discover the perpetrator, I would be forced to make an example of him.”
“An example?”
“For morale,” Maedhrose said, apologetically. “A public flogging should suffice along with a removal of all privileges and office. Enough to avenge the insult, don’t you think?”
“More than enough.”
“And Tyelkormo?” Maedhros said softly, as his brother opened the door. “If I was to learn some jealous prince or princess was responsible for this, I would deliver that flogging per-son-all-y. That’s all.”
“Marriage?” Maldanáro exclaimed.
Privately, Maedhros sympathised with his secretary’s doubtful expression. His own feelings were tangled, incomprehensible and difficult. All they knew about Thingol pointed to an overprotectiveness of his only daughter and hostile suspicion directed towards them. He mistrusts the North. It lies too close to the Black Foe: a local Sinda lord, provoked into unwisdom through the judicious application of heady, Valinor-brewed whiskey, and relayed back by Maglor. Maedhros wondered whether torture at the hands of Morgoth counted as lying too close. Lying too close implied a choice and Maedhros was rather lacking in choices then.
“Is that so extraordinary?”
Maedhros watched his secretary, who had accompanied him on plenty of his excursions in the gay demi-monde of Valinor, arrange his sentence as tactfully as he could.
“Not at all,” he said. “I merely thought you weren’t the marrying kind.”
“I’m not,” Maedhros replied dryly. “But needs must and I have had it made patently clear to me that a king belongs to his people — and the people, Maldanáro, the people require their kings to be wedded and wifed. A king and his queen, dear Maldanáro. Coupled, not singular and certainly not a king and his prince, duke, secretary, or knight. Not even a stable boy. I am no longer a boy; I must be a grown-up. You understand?”
“Very unfortunate.”
“You understand my mood.”
“Indeed.”
“I was introduced to a girl today morning, Maldanáro. One of those simpering fools. Do you know how long it took me to frighten her into disinterest?”
Arimeldë’s pinched, confused face lingered tiresomely with him. He told himself he didn’t care. And yet, a procession of delighted, blushing, flattered faces assaulted him at every turn of memory.
“Less than a minute,” he said, without waiting for his secretary’s response. “I did it deliberately and yet — once upon a time, Maldanáro, I used to fend them off and still have them adore me. I was forgivably rude, I was beloved, I was —”
Well, he still had some of his good looks. He used to be glossy, sleek; a beautiful predator like all his brothers, but buried beneath the layers of civilisation. Thangorodrim had sharpened, ground and whetted him into new and unexpected shapes. Civilisation was eroded; the dangerous and untameable predator more evident. Brightness instead of dullness, dullness instead of brightness, too many sharp angles, smiles that turned wolvish too quickly. He practiced for hours with that damnable bird whistling away at him, until he could smile charmingly, safely. It remained disconnected from his eyes. There was his arm. His fellow Elves tended to skitter away from it. Such encounters with his stump were only ever accidents: someone failed to avert their eyes quickly enough, or failed to look up at pretty Arien, or down at Yavanna’s handiwork. These misadventurers would always look up at him, frightened by their own transgression. No, he was giving them too much credit. Elves loved beautiful things and his stump of a hand was the furthest thing from beautiful.
“You might reassure me,” he told his secretary.
“I leave that to Laurefion. He’s much better at it than I am.” Maldanáro replied wryly.
“You think I’m wallowing.”
“I think there’s a letter to be finished and sent,” was the diplomatic reply.
Maedhros sighed and resumed his dictation and his pacing. When he was done, Maldanáro arranged his sheaf of papers until the edges matched perfectly. It was strange: Maldanáro the professional and Maldanáro his childhood friend and cousin were two very different people. One arranged papers till the edges were aligned. The other ran wild through the Allmother’s bath houses and temples, flirted indiscriminately with women then bedded their husbands, played the coquette in secret Mother houses, sucked cocks, fisted arses and fucked with wild abandon and who, if Maedhros knew anything at all, had already unearthed Beleriand’s illicit pleasure houses.
“I think,” Maldanáro said as he carefully screwed a bottle of ink closed, “you want to extend the glory days of your youth.”
“Perhaps.”
Neither of them could help looking around. No one was watching or listening, except for that stupid and wretched bird, slumbering in its cloth-covered cage. Maedhros had privileges now. Three months of staring at the ceiling in bed while the afternoon sun burned the tip of his right ear and Maglor was finally satisfied. Look at you , he said, beaming from ear to ear, you’re looking so much better . Everyone had their little fantasies. It was Maedhros’ turn now. It was only fair and reasonable: Maglor had three whole months and thirty years before to do as he pleased.
Maldanáro rose. Late afternoon light caught in his hair, turning the light brown nearly the gold flame suggested by his mother-name.
“If that was the case —” Maldanáro smiled. “Then I’ll see you at the stables when Tilion’s overhead. No gold. No silver. No diamonds. No pearls. Nothing you’d mind losing. And for Manwë’s sake cover your hair with a scarf.”
There was, unfortunately, a blot on the attractive past and the blot was his father. It wasn’t his fault; nothing ever was. Maedhros was the troublesome one, caught in a perpetual and unending boyhood. The right girl, his father used to say. One day you’ll find the right girl. Said with increasing desperation. Unsaid: you’ll grow out of this. His father might have said it to him in so many words, once. Maedhros couldn’t recall with precision. Between Morgoth and all the things he liked to ignore, so much had lifted the latch and slipped away into the Void.
But if one expunged this little blot from the record, Valinor truly was an idyllic land. There were pleasures at every turn. Secret, yes; but the licit was so unattractive. Far more exciting to imagine one was pulling the wool over Manwë’s eyes at every turn, riding out on high days for some new sport. There was always some new sport. Someone’s new beach house. A new lover. An old one, freshly penitent from Taniquetil and therefore, as good as new. Someone’s new yacht. Bath houses. Mother Houses. Manwë, but Maedhros had never been quite so alive as he had been then, wearing diaphanous gowns tucked in beneath breasts he didn’t have, and his hair up in loose curls like the priestesses of the Allmother: meat dressed on display for boys and men and all the land that lay inbetween to drink him in, to let their gaze range languorously over him, to ask with their eyes, do you , and to slink an arm around his waist and squeeze when he smiled. Of course, the most fun came after, when he was bent over and fucked till his vision went white. In that brief before, however, the magic took and Maitimo the well-made became very simply beautiful. Desirable, not because he was a prince, or his tiresome father’s even more tiresome son, but desirable because he was.
Was he? The question itched at him. The man in the mirror had a scar on the left side of his face. Blink and you might miss it. Perhaps if the lights were dim; the eyes undiscerning. Sooner or later the eyes would alight on it. It used to be so easy to laugh at old men, scarred from the Great Journey. Or else fall over them, drawn by the thrill of danger. Someone would look at him and chase that danger. He thought he might snap at them, wolf-like, if they did. Or perhaps turn to them, loosen his dagger in its sheath, and say you know what else I can do? There used to be a time when daggers, sheaths and deaths were only euphemisms to him and Nelyafinwë Maitimo Fëanárion used to be lethal at killing. How odd. He still was lethal. It was a new lethality. He had Morgoth to thank for it, and his father. Come one, come all. Nelyafinwë Maitimo Fëanárion, twice as deadly and twice as sharp. The show might end without warning though, boys. It could end in either direction. No — Manwë, no, it would not. He was a man, wasn’t he? He was a man and his father’s son. You’re a prince, aren’t you? Fëanor could do anything. Therefore, so could Maedhros.
The air was thick with smoke and the smell of spilled beer. The chimney was smoking. A few odd lamps cast a dull light that illuminated a few isolated patches. The tables were greasy, the plates chipped and the glasses mismatched. Maedhros noticed very little of this. He heard the drums and lyre. He saw the mass of bodies. Some still fully, respectably clothed. Some unravelling. Some in elegant dresses, with their hair piled on their heads and cheap fake jewels glittering wildly in the firelight that penetrated the room. Knights, traders, farmers, servants, all mixed together freely. Married men, single men, not so married and not so single men. Tall, short, Noldor, Sindar, Avari. Silver and black and brown in all their shades, bobbing and moving across the room. He smelled their perfume and sweat and horse. He smelled and heard, above all, the ecstasy of sex.
In that moment, they were one. A single great brotherhood of men who desired men: who wanted nothing more than to kiss or be kissed, to touch or be touched, to suck cock or have their cock sucked, to fuck or to be fucked, anything, everything, all directed in complete surrender to the only religion, the only deity that mattered: another man’s cock. Everywhere, from Valinor to Beleriand, they were united in the single most important pilgrimage any man could take. Damn Varda, damn Manwë and damn Taniquetil. All of it paled against the joys of salt-sailing, deep-sea diving, meadow-larking, cream-drinking, backdoor-stealing, tail-tweaking, pear-eating, spirit-spending from silvery twilight to golden dawn, bodies enmeshed in the singleminded pursuit of that ecstatic finish: spilling enthusiastically over the body of another man. Nothing else mattered; tonight less so than others. Maedhros was Doomed. There was no point, if one was Doomed, in pondering right or wrong, good or bad.
Maedhros stripped off his cloak and carelessly flung it over the nearby stand. He watched the crowd part and swallow Maldanáro and felt the satisfaction of homecoming. No few heads were already turning to look at him. Let them look. He was Fëanor’s son and the world belonged to him. Why do you do it , Celegorm demanded once. The same reason you go hunting , he said. Only it’s more fun at the end of the chase . Maedhros waited till enough eyes were on him. There was a trick to commanding a room. Enter, head held high and strike a pose without seeming to strike one. Demand their attention. Survey the crowd, pick out every face in the room worth looking at. Maybe that tall Sinda over there, who almost certainly had a cock to match his height. Or that farmboy, who would slam Maedhros up against a wall in exactly the way he liked. Or the blacksmith, who could hammer him to euphoric bliss with his cock. Remember, you’re a prince and all this belongs to you . Signal, above all, availability. Tonight he was not Maedhros, High King of the Noldor, and trapped in the loneliness of kings. He was a prince, which was considerably more jovial. Satisfied with the admiration, Maedhros smiled and descended.
Now the chase began in earnest. It was the oldest dance in the world. The story they told was full of romantic euphemism: Tata awoke, saw Tatië, woke her and then miraculously love blossomed, aided by the divine design of Eru Ilúvatar. Maedhros knew better. The tale as it was told was pure Vanyarin atrocity, elevated, spiritual and terrified of desire. Deep down he knew that Tata and Tatië awoke and saw each others’ naked bodies. Their eyes met and the charge that passed between them was the signal that passed between all animals. Birds shed or gained plumage, mammals scented their readiness, fish changed their colours. Well, Elves looked and they knew.
There was an art to it. The delicate lingering. The insouciant once over, up and down. Sometimes slow, sometimes quick depending on how much time was at hand. The fastest Maedhros ever managed it was in Valinor, with one of his grandfather’s footmen, right before court was about to enter session. So risky, so perfect. He went to court with the man’s spend drying between his thighs and his cock still half-hard at the thought. After the looking, the transaction. The tall and handsome Sinda was looking at him now. Maedhros returned the look with generosity. He held the man’s gaze and smiled. The crowd fell away. Maedhros saw desire catch and ignite in the man’s eyes, mirrored in his own. This truth passed back and forth between them like flame, firing their bodies for the inevitable. It ran through his arms, legs, his belly. Heat shot through his cock.
The man’s eyes slid towards an exit towards the rear and back to Maedhros. Another smile and the deal was sealed. Maedhros followed him, winding his way through the crowd, still fishing idly. He was only just beginning and there were at least three hours to go. For a brief moment before Maldanáro pushed the door open, the fear that he’d be a fish out of water seized him. So much for Morgoth. The rules were still the same. No one had changed the architecture of the game while he wasn’t looking. Some things not even Morgoth, time or Eru Ilúvatar in his high heavens could touch.
He followed the Sinda out into the night. Silvery moonlight spilled over his broad shoulders. That kind of broadening came with longbow use. The thought of all that muscle rippling beneath his tunic filled Maedhros with a sudden eagerness. As though sensing it, the man turned and grinned at him. Maedhros needed no further encouragement. He pulled at the fastenings and let his robes fall open. The Sinda’s eyes raked appreciatively over him, lingering on his cock. If he saw the scars, it didn’t matter to him. Maybe he had scars of his own. Maybe he was just too hard underneath those silks to care. Hesitation, brief. The clincher: silk falling off those shoulders. Fuck, but they were powerful. His cock was already hardening. Thick, even if it wasn’t as long as Maedhros had imagined it.
“Nice weather,” said the man in Sindarin.
“Very nice weather,” Maedhros replied, unable to stop himself from stroking his cock in what he hoped was inviting desperation.
The man slammed Maedhros against the inn’s stone wall with ease. His mouth was rough and demanding. Heat flooded Maedhros as his tongue plundered Maedhros’ mouth. A man who could fuck mouths that ruthlessly with his tongue could almost certainly plunder arses with verve. His fingers were rough and callused, probing, as they trailed his neck, his back, his hip. Maedhros made an incoherent noise at the tug on his cock. Three months of touching himself had begun to wear at him. It wasn’t the same as a stranger’s hand, warm and rough around it, working it in ways that were familiar to another body. Or the slide of the tender, hot skin of another cock against his. The man lined them together. Maedhros broke their kiss in a loud whine as he worked them together, despite the way their bodies were jammed together.
Past, present and future ceased to exist. They thrust together, against each other, small groans escaping them every time they struck just right, like lightning splitting trees in half. The Sinda’s back muscles rippled with every thrust and Maedhros dug his nails in in time. He smelled a clean and woody smell, but as sweat began to bead his forehead, the salty, musky scent of a man began to grow stronger. The pungent smell of hair underneath his arms. Touching himself alone in his bed just wasn’t the same and Maedhros was here to do more than just thrust against each other like raw youths. He caught the man’s hand.
“Fuck me,” he said.
The Sinda frowned and said something in an unfamiliar tongue. Not even the Sindarin Maedhros had started getting used to sounded like this. Panic seized him and he shook his head at the man’s withdrawal. Dimly he recalled Maglor lecturing away about thorns and theology —
“Come inside me,” he said, running off memories of Maglor’s edgy and heretical showboating.
His lover’s eyes went round for a moment, then dark. Come inside, he repeated. Maedhros found himself ruthlessly flipped over, his robes pushed off his shoulders. The man bit his shoulder, pressing kisses down the length of Maedhros’ back. His fingers dug into the flesh of Maedhros’ ass and squeezed. The man said something, unintelligible, parted him and spat. Maedhros hoped it was something flattering like, nice ass, or, Eru, I need you . Spit trickled between his cheeks. A single probing finger pushed at him and entered. Maedhros reached behind him and found his Sinda friend’s cock. He heard him say fuck yes or it might have been anything at all. Maedhros stroked experimentally, savouring its heat and the building throbbing, which all pointed towards fuck yes . A whimper escaped him as the probing finger found what it was looking for. It repeated the movement deliberately. Sweat was beginning to trickle down his spine. Maedhros pressed demandingly against his partner. The heat was unbearable, his whole body on fire and his cock desperate for relief.
The Sinda smacked him lightly and pushed him up against the wall again. His breath ghosted damp and warm against the shell of Maedhros’ ear. He whispered something, holding his hand up. Another of life’s universals. Maedhros spat. He was rewarded with a kiss, pressed to his shoulder and the sound of a cock being worked. Then Maedhros was parted roughly and its head was sliding between his cheeks. Blunt pressure yielded to that initial burn. A sigh escaped his friend as the tip of his cock tentatively breached Maedhros’ hole. His friend needed no more encouragement. He thrust sharply once, twice. A choked cry escaped Maedhros as his lover’s cock filled him all the way. Maedhros was stretched, full, reorienting himself around the cock inside him. His friend whispered something in his ear, kissed his ear softly and then twisted his hand sharply in Maedhros’ hair. Maedhros yelped, pleasure and pain and good sense about his scarf warring within. Pleasure won: his cock throbbed hard and then harder again as the man pounded into him. They blurred together until all Maedhros could hear was the snap of hips, the slap of the Sinda’s balls against his thighs, all he could feel was his cock slamming hard into Maedhros and his fingers tugging at his hair, pinching at his nipple and twisting. Maedhros cried out. The hand in his hair jerked back. The Sinda kissed him roughly, open mouthed, raking his nails down Maedhros’ chest and belly. At last his fist closed around Maedhros’ cock.
Maedhros’ breaths were coming in rough, uneven pants now. The whole world had narrowed to the cock thrusting deeply into him. It felt as though it sank deeper into him with every move. Far enough and it would be a child within him. Every slightest move like a baby, fighting its way out to be born. With every thrust, more disappeared, until at last, eventually, Maedhros would be no more than a hole, ready to be fucked by every cock in the world: fat and thin, large and small, individually, two together. He was an empty vessel, waiting to be refilled by their pleasure. They would pour and pour until it trickled out of him, down his legs and staining his ankles. See how the Noldor would like that then. Their prince, their king, with the spend of thousands of cocks slowly dribbling out of him.
But he was no prince. Here, in this Sinda’s arms, he was an Elf like every other Elf. He was a hole made for fucking, a mouth for kissing and a cock to jerk off. He worked the same as any man. Even those scars — his lover was scratching them now, deepening them. Yes, they could belong to Maedhros’ thousand imaginary lovers. Who was Morgoth? Morgoth was a single Vala. There were limits to what he could do. But all the men in the world: they were unlimited. Past, present, future; they’d outnumber him. Absent the linearity of time, those scars could have come from them, not Morgoth or his fucking lieutenant. An infinite number of lovers, marking themselves on him. Biting him, scratching him, their fingers digging deep into the flesh on his flank, of his ass, slapping him, bruising him. Yes, he could have it all. He belonged to them all and therefore, to no one. He was weightless, perfect, free.
He tensed, white fire pouring through him, his balls were tightening, speeding towards the end. He clenched around his Sinda partner, inviting a stream of curses or praise. The string snapped. His cock pulsed and began to empty itself in spurts. The Sinda kept stroking and thrusting, now uneven and shallow. Four, five, six. Maedhros felt his cock pulse several times. With each pulse, spend filled him, warm and wet.
The Sinda kissed the back of his neck with tenderness belied by the way he clamped his hand over Maedhros’ mouth and made him lick his own spend. Maedhros’ reward for a job well done was more sweet kisses, peppered on his throat and his ear. The thought of more, of the night to come was already making him hard.
His Sinda friend smiled at the sight. He said something that sounded like refill and then friend . Were they friends? In Valinor, where everyone knew everyone, this was natural. In Valinor, small talk was natural before cocks went in mouths or up asses, which was clearly not true in Beleriand. When in doubt, agree. Maedhros smiled and repeated the word. The man smiled. The night, Maedhros thought, could only go up from here.
**
The moon set. Wine flowed freely. The music played on into the long hours of the night and Maedhros, Maedhros discovered friend was friends as in: can my friends fuck you? Maglor probably could have explained the construction better. Maedhros was too busy getting fucked to care. Hands caressed him carelessly, affectionately, trailing his ribs and flank, sometimes tweaking his nipples. He was petted and cossetted, told he was good, beautiful, clever, hot, sexy. Yes, beautiful, desirable, even when Elves traced the scars, or kissed the stump of where his hand used to go and said poor thing . In their eyes, behind the sympathy was lust. When perfection was the ultimatum, imperfection was forbidden and therefore, thrilling. People tugged at his hair, gently, roughly. They fed him grapes and lembas, made him drink water, wine. The night began to blur together in a beautiful, magical whirl. He thought he saw gold hair, his cousin, but when he looked up again Finrod was gone. Someone offered him snow buckthorn and Maedhros knelt and smeared it on his cock and sucked it off like a boy demolishing candy. The man came too quickly. But Maedhros didn’t care. Time was racing. Cocks presented themselves, attached to bodies that were sleek and hard, or soft and yielding, and Maedhros sucked them or was fucked by them till he was a mess of spit and spend. Maedhros was bent over, slammed into, fucked while sucking on tables, walls, mattresses. It happened quickly and not quickly enough, all the while his body filled with the impulse to keep the momentum going for fear of the inevitable crash. For as long as he kept moving, he was free as the butterflies that flit from flower to flower in his brother’s gardens: beautiful, attractive, unstoppable, a man who could snap his fingers and have people jump, who could have the world fall over themselves to throw themselves at his feet, a man who could have it all and take what he pleased. In other words: he was a king in the truest sense, free of Morgoth, of his father, of time, history and a dozen other constraints. A man free to be exactly what he was: a man.
Notes:
In the words of the wisest philosopher of our time: Gay sex is natural, gay sex is good, not everybody does it but... HA HA!
Re. Royal Academy of Philosophers v. Lambengolmor - the way I see it, the "philosophy" of the royal academy has to do with science, while the Lambengolmor has to do with actual philosophy, history and languages. One of those baffling little naming choices.
The Allmother - a primordial mother goddess cult variant, from the group of Lindar found last at Cuivenen, who had already awaken before Imin et al found them, and consequently had a slightly different religious tradition than the rest of the Elves. By the time of the Great Journey, the Allmother had gained followers from across the three kindred & her worship/practice was carried to Valinor, though it went underground once it reached hither shores. The sexual practices of her temples are based on a mix of the priestesses of Cybele and various rituals of sacred sex in Roman religions.
The Mother House - based on the Molly houses of Georgian London.
Come inside - you will pry cum jokes about Thu/Su being about '''''''''''emissions''''''''' of '''''''''''''spirit'''''''''' from my cold, dead hands!!!
Chapter 3: Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Summary:
Maedhros plays a deep game in an attempt to hold on to power.
Warnings
Flashbacks to torture, mentions of substance abuse, rape & at least several different levels of ableism concerning both mental health & physical wellbeing.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Cousin,” said Maedhros, without looking up from his uncle’s letter. Once more, there were more debts to pay. This time of grain. Grain was affordable and Maedhros could afford to be generous. Generosity would reap dividends, or so the theory went. It had not borne out in practice so far. “Can I help you?”
Unusually, Finrod hesitated. Several weeks had passed since his little escapade and Maedhros had been several times since. Twice in the company of Maldanáro and three times on his own. Finrod never appeared again and so Maedhros concluded it must have been a trick of the light. Nothing more to look at. No worries. Take that, Lauro.
“Help, no help cousin.” Finrod crossed his leg at the knee. His mother would have rapped his leg with her fan for it. They were all rebellious these days, even sunny, innocent Finrod. “I came to see how you were faring. I was informed in order to do so, I had to make an appointment. Now here I am.”
“Now here I am, quite well as you can see,” Maedhros replied. “I trust you’re satisfied with my brother’s handiwork?”
“I never doubted dear Lauro for an instant.”
That makes one of us, Maedhros thought, sourly. But then Finrod could see the results. Maedhros saw the process. Maglor’s latest fad was taking the waters in the Mithrim caves. It’s so good for your poor shoulder . Said in the exact same voice as Curufin trying to persuade his son to eat his vegetables. Come to think of it, Tyelperinquar was also Maglor’s trump card every time Maedhros put his foot down. But Tyelperinquar wants to go there with his favourite uncle so badly! He could not simply say, look, the child’s favourite uncle is obviously the one with the big, friendly dog. Or, of course he’s my favourite nephew, he’s my only fucking nephew.
He didn’t think Tyelperinquar had much fun on those trips and neither, for that matter, did he. The waters had the sort of minerals that made the tips of his hair brittle and ugly and prone to breakage. Relief was incidental: he simply wasn’t in enough pain to require relieving. If he was, Celegorm’s lot were a great deal more useful with their poultices, compresses, harnesses and assorted remedies. But because this was all part of the longstanding standoff between Maglor and Celegorm, Maedhros had to sample all their helpful cures. The child, though, was unfair. The child was a third front; Curufin, of course, having his own convoluted little game to play. It was nearly like being trapped in Formenos.
Finrod, of course, had no idea about Formenos. In Finrod’s world, all conflict was incidental and interpersonal. Maedhros sighed and laid down his letter.
“You do look better,” Finrod insisted. “Look at you. Your hair’s growing out so beautifully.”
“All in the name, dear boy.”
“Your father did have an unusual way with words.”
Finrod smiled innocently in response to Maedhros’ scrutinising gaze. Celegorm, it seemed, wasn’t the only one who’d done some growing up. How tiresome. He’d forgotten about his cousins’ nasty habit of eavesdropping.
“You underestimate how much your dreadful glare gives away, dear cousin,” Finrod said apologetically. “None of you have ever been very discreet.”
“Ingoldo.”
Another smile, charming and so very sorry for the news it was about to deliver. “Lauro says the snapdragons are coming along nicely. It makes me quite envious, cousin. Be a darling and show them to me?”
“We can finish this later,” Maldanáro murmured in Maedhros’ ear.
Maedhros tried not to feel too betrayed about it. It was pleasantly cool outside. It was even pretty, though the trees clashed offensively with his hair. Or worse, he faded into them. Maedhros had never faded into anything in his life.
“You know, you’re quite frightening when you do that,” Finrod observed. “It’s making me nervous.”
“My apologies,” Maedhros replied with irony. “I’ll keep that in mind next time.”
Finrod tucked his arm confidingly into the crook of Maedhros’ elbow.
“I do so love autumn,” he said. “Something about the cycle of renewal. I thought it magnificent in Valinor, but in Valinor you know what comes next, don’t you? Spring follows winter, the land is touched by Yavanna and everything awakes on time. This land — there’s something about the fragility of this land that makes it even more stirringly beautiful. The thought that some of these trees might sleep and never wake again — how frightening — how miserable — and yet, if they did, they would have looked gloriously beautiful one last time.”
Maedhros looked up at the beeches Maglor and Amrod had had planted. Only Finrod could find philosophy in their slowly dying leaves. Someone had to sweep the leaves off the paths everyday, or they became slippery and dangerous in the rain. There was nothing very romantic about that. And there was a lot of rain, dismal, dreary and disappointing. At least Tirion’s thunderstorms had tyrannical glamour.
“You had something to discuss in private,” he said politely.
“A little triviality,” said Finrod. “In some ways, I suppose it is the precarity of life here that encourages this. We become preoccupied with survival and its means from one season to the next. And yet, there is some glimmering of hope! Your rescue; our uncle’s triumphal entry into this land. The sun rises, spring arrives and Manwë himself sends an eagle. Perhaps we are not wholly abandoned by the Valar! Or at least, not by Manwë and not by Yavanna. What a thought that is, but as with anything, it is possible to go to extremes in looking for enemies where there are none.”
Finrod’s allusory Vanyarin style was an acquired taste. Maedhros refused to accept it or grow used to it.
“Ingoldo,” he said. “We’ve discussed this before. Your sensibilities can’t come at the cost of sense.”
“Oh Russandol, will you make me say it?”
“Yes,” Maedhros replied, even though he knew exactly what Finrod meant. “Then we might have an honest discussion.”
The tip of his cousin’s ears went delicately pink. “I am not a gossip.”
“And not a busybody or a tattletale.” Maedhros flashed him a smile. The wolfish one, for good measure. “Shall we list all the things you’re not?”
They turned into the little walled off enclave where Maglor was trying his hand at gardening. Most of it was dead, but the snapdragons were lovely. Maedhros had the sense their grandfather’s second gardener was doing most of the work. The first was, unfortunately, rather dead.
“You can’t expect me to believe you haven’t heard the rumours,” said Finrod. “Or else your spies are failing you.”
“Suppose they’ve been failing me. Suppose all this is true — what precisely am I meant to be angry at, Ingoldo?”
“It’s no small thing to be accused of being an enemy of Yavanna.” Finrod paused. “The accusation is essentially unfair and I don’t believe it for a second. But I did see you at —” here he leaned in and lowered his voice, “The Cock and Stag.”
“You did, did you?” Maedhros was beginning to enjoy himself. “And what, pray, were you doing at The Cock and Stag, sweet cousin?”
“It was a cultural excursion. One must know the people —”
“Is that so, O friend of Ulmo?” Maedhros cut him off. “Tell me, does being a friend of Ulmo preclude being an enemy of Yavanna, or does one necessarily follow from the other? An interesting conundrum for the Faithful.”
“I have a fiancee,” Finrod replied flustered, and added, in case there was any doubt about it: “A girl. You really mustn’t talk like that about the Valar.”
“Really?” Maedhros looked around in an exaggerated fashion. “I don’t see her anywhere.”
“Maitimo, be serious, I beg you.”
“I’m perfectly serious. I find it a very troubling theological question! How can one be friends of one Valar and enemy of another?”
“People are talking!”
“As well they should,” Maedhros replied cordially. “We are the Speaking Peoples after all.”
They halted next to a rosebush stripped to its bare bark. Finrod turned to face him.
“About you .” Finrod searched his face. “Doesn’t it bother you to be thought of as infirm, unwell?”
“One gets used to it.”
“Perhaps.” His cousin hesitated. “Have you been since?”
“You’re awfully curious for a disinterested party.”
“I’m concerned for you,” Finrod replied soothingly. “It can’t all be good for you, Maitimo. Think of your health. It’s been barely five months since you were returned to us from Morgoth’s clutches —”
The rage, always lurking in corners and waiting for a moment of weakness, pounced.
“And falling back into them, I suppose?” Maedhros demanded, battling the sudden violent impulse to punch his cousin or hurl him to the ground. “You’re subtler than our uncle, at least! Dear Maitimo, why don’t you take some time off, go travel the wilds of Valariandë and heal. By the way, why don’t you leave the crown behind? And the kingship too while you’re at it. Don’t bother returning because we won’t need you anymore.”
“No — never, Russandol —”
But Maedhros had hit his stride and barrelled on. “Did our uncle send you, Ingoldo? Did you spend hours together shaking your heads over my wayward, profligate ways? Did you sigh self-righteously and think to yourself, thank Manwë I’ll never be like him? I’m a perfect, good little Noldo boy.”
“No,” cried Finrod. “Not at all. That isn’t what — of course he hasn’t sent me — I haven’t breathed a word of it to anyone.”
Later, he would dispassionately replay the memory again and see Finrod looking at him shaken and betrayed. In the moment, Maedhros felt nothing but the retreat of hot rage into cold contempt.
“You think you’ll escape it,” Maedhros told Finrod. “You think they’ll stop with me and having a girlfriend across the sea will save you. You think if you pretend enough, it’ll keep you safe. You’ll be miserable, but it’s worth it, because no one will ever guess what you are. Well you’re wrong. Get rid of me. Say your holy little prayers and look piously up at the sky while they strip me. But know this, Ingoldo. When they’re done with me, they’ll come for you too. They’ll call you a half-man, a salt-bitch, a child of Morgoth and having tasted blood once, they won’t stop until they’ve drunk you dry to slake their thirst. And you, you Ingoldo, would have wasted your life hidden in a tiny, lonely little hole of your own making, with nothing to keep you company except your hand, for no reason except your death.”
Finrod’s eyes were wet and shining with unshed tears when Maedhros finished.
“Sorry cousin,” he said in a voice that barely escaped him. “I have another appointment.”
“You could try harder.”
Maglor, exasperated, tired, working so hard to maintain their fragile peace. Finrod, indispensable; Maedhros, obstructive. Maedhros would have liked to contest the description — unpredictable, volatile, fey were far more accurate to the experience — but Maglor was in no mood to listen to reason. No, Maglor would listen and worst of all, Maglor would be sympathetic. Poor Russandol . No amount of I’m quite rich, thank you , would change this. Maglor had already added this to his ever-growing list of crimes and misdemeanours that proved Maedhros hadn’t recovered from Angband; that Maedhros was pushing himself too hard; that Maedhros just needed some more rest and relaxation.
So Maedhros continued to feed the awful little bird its weekly boiled egg in silence. The creature stared at him with beady, suspicious eyes in between nibbling at the proffered egg. It occurred to Maedhros this was probably how he looked to Maglor: beady-eyed, suspicious, fighting every good thing along the way. Maedhros resisted the urge to grab that handful of feathers and hurl it out the window right then and there. It didn’t know any better. There was a bit of Ingoldo in it too. Like looking in a mirror, slantways. Except Ingoldo was naive, sweet and essentially weak and Maedhros was not.
“Russandol.”
“Yes, Lauro.”
“You might say something.”
His brother was standing with one hand on his hip, just like their mother used to. Maedhros smiled, despite the brief pang of loss.
“But you say it so much more eloquently than I could, Lauro,” he replied. “It really was quite wretched of me. It seems we’re doomed not only to death, but the foibles of our fathers too.”
“I don’t think Father ever made Uncle Arvo cry,” Maglor replied, momentarily diverted. “Did he?”
“Not literally.” Maedhros conceded. “But spiritually —”
“Spiritually, Father's made everyone weep.”
“Well,” said Maedhros, “our father always was a perfectionist.”
Silence extended. Maedhros wondered whether Maglor had an invisible metronome keeping time to their conversation. Was it four measures or three? Perhaps it was slow, to account for all the scrutinising his brother was doing. Silence building ominously, slowly to its zenith. Maedhros ignored it while he carried the bird back to its cage. It went in unprotestingly. And yet, Maedhros couldn’t shake the sense that there was something baleful about its expression when he shut the door.
“Russandol.” Maglor’s voice was tentative. “Are you well?”
Maedhros glanced over at him, surprised. “You know better than anyone else the state I was in.”
“You know what I mean.” Maglor paused. “Are you well — are you happy? ”
He laughed. “Long and hard may be the road, Lauro. Have you forgotten? Through sorrow to joy.”
“I worry about you.”
Maedhros spread his hands out, gravely regarding the veins on his good hand and imagining them mirrored on his right. Perhaps an aviary would make the bird less murderous. Perhaps if his endless train of uncles and cousins could leave him; if his brothers could disentangle themselves, he would feel less murderous. Perhaps if Morgoth wasn’t a permanent blot on the periphery of his vision. Perhaps if he felt less like a house divided amongst itself: but how could he, when the divisions between his family ran so deep and ancient?
“I know,” he replied. “You take very good care of me, Lauro.”
“But not always.”
Maedhros skirted the conversation delicately. “If you’re asking if you could make me happier, I was thinking we could replace the vegetable garden with an aviary. None of us have the first idea about vegetables except for Carnistir, who’s purchasing them from the Grey Elves anyway.”
He turned in time to catch the tail end of Maglor’s wounded expression. Maedhros gave him his best friendly smile, as if he hadn’t seen his brother retreat with his tail between his legs.
“I knew you’d like her,” Maglor said lightly. “Isn't she marvellous? Nothing like yours, but I must say I don't miss being called a salt-bitch for merely breathing in the wretched creature's direction.”
“Like is a strong word.” Maedhros paused to cover the cage. “I just think the poor creature must miss the taste of the wild.”
A Crown was not a cage, but it might have been one. Maedhros spent hours trying and failing to put together a clever little riddle around the notion. And all the while, an endless stream of uncles, aunts, great-uncles, great-aunts, cousins and brothers came and went. Some solicitous, some avaricious, all of them concerned. So much concern. Nearly as much as the many letters flying back and forth. Will Doriath compromise? Will Doriath open its doors? The real question buried beneath: can Maedhros overcome Thingol’s notoriously infamous distrust of former thralls? Is Nelyafinwë Maitimo Fëanárion the right man for this complex, delicate job? Can he perform? Maedhros began to wish he’d joined the shipwrecked detritus and lobsters scuttling around at the bottom of the sea.
Maglor was the performer in the family. But Maedhros was a quick learner and thirty years was instructive. Angband, Thangorodrim was an ugly stage, but where else could one learn to perform with stakes that high? Can Nelyafinwë Maitimo Fëanárion perform? Indubitably so. Nelyafinwë Maitimo Fëanárion can perform as much as it takes to save his sorry skin. Apply to Morgoth or his lieutenant for more details, or perhaps Cousin Ruanel and Kemmótar, his dutiful healers. They would suggest better, effective questions to ask. Such as: is Maedhros flexible enough to perform all the roles he needs to? Or perhaps: are the stakes high enough yet for his instinct for self-preservation to kick in? Or, most importantly of all, can Maedhros perform without torment?
Autumn was beginning its indecisive turn to winter. There was a great flurry of activity. Endless streams of smoke and carts as Maglor and Caranthir oversaw the thankless task of victualling them for the winter along with their father’s steward. The last churn of washing. All the cupboards were turned out and in some pattern indiscernible to Maedhros, their contents rearranged to the pleasure of their old nanny, now housekeeper. New sheets, new curtains, new quilts replaced the old. The old lasted forever in Valinor. Meanwhile, a year in Beleriand was enough to wreak all kinds of new and fascinating damage. His great-aunt presided hawkishly over this in her new role as chatelaine. If she could turn that daunting, glittering look on some of the members of council, Maedhros thought, at least half their problems would be resolved.
In the midst of this, the endless exchange of letters with Doriath culminated in a letter of invitation. Hours of hard work between Maldanáro, Maglor, Celegorm and himself, poring over every possible word choice, writing and rewriting until the calligraphy was perfect, finally paid off with some help from Finrod. A charming pair of puppies from Amrod’s prize setter and a goldleaf icon of Námo painted carefully, if badly, by Maedhros did the trick. The locket and its icon charmed Finrod, who was even more sentimental than Maglor. Oh Russandol, he said, I understand . With those great big eyes turned sorrowfully on Maedhros, Maedhros wildly imagined he really did understand. Finrod barely understood Thingol’s laconic style, in which everything worth saying was unsaid. Like the invitation, which was not only a diplomatic invitation, but a reminder: I’m only extending an invitation to you Noldor because I liked your king once upon a time, a long time ago .
It was as much an insult as it was an invitation. Nevertheless, Maedhros cordially invited all his brothers, cousins, uncles and great-uncles to partake in the insult. It was only fair. Those who sought glory and its many spoils had to get their hands dirty every now and then. Besides which, Maedhros had only one hand now and needed all the help he could get.
The council stretched on across the morning. Unravelled. All motion was circular. Many creatures liked to travel circularly. Take pigeons for example. There used to be a handful that would turn futile circles on the ledges of Thangorodrim, trying to impress unimpressed females. She doesn’t want to fuck you , he shouted once. It only startled the creature briefly: he resumed his sisyphean seduction almost immediately. Or sheep. Even in Valinor, sheep were not immune to getting stuck in circles. Round and round, until some Vanya shepherd came along and patiently broke them out of it. Fish. Goldfish, catfish, swimming back and forth, circularly. What else could they do in Olwë’s gardens? Eat, fuck, swim round and round, mouths gulping witlessly. Were they frightened? Did it hurt? Maedhros’ head was starting to hurt. Dogs. Yes, dogs chasing their tails. Or cats. Take Caranthir’s mouser: unravelling a ball of gold thread down the length of the hall. Blissfully ignorant and uncaring, all while Caranthir shouted down every curse known to Elves and a few more besides. Yes, unravelling, as in: a cat wilfully sowing destruction in the pursuit of its own pleasure. Or perhaps one of Maglor’s opera choruses, quarrelling its way towards the unforeseen and yet inevitable climax.
Great-Uncle Silwë, who fully intended to replace Maglor as Maedhros’ regent: “time appears to have rendered Thindicollo acutely paranoid. Not without reason — any king worth his crown might be worried by the appearance of great princes under a great king. What he needs is proof of good will and reassurance that we remember and honour the great and longstanding friendship of our peoples.”
His uncle, ambitious: “My uncle speaks truly! What greater gesture of friendship than the union of our great lines; indeed, the union of all our peoples, blessed by Manwë himself. Thus we must act in celebration of an eternal and harmonious accord.”
Celegorm, rude but essentially selfish and determined to settle unfinished scores with Maglor: “And my uncle speaks like the blessed wind! Shall we concede before we have begun? Thindicollo lives because we hold the North. He must remember this.”
Finrod, mired in the role bequeathed to him by his father, but aware he had the largest following out of anyone present: “Perhaps the bonds of kinship and nostalgic affection in union will serve to strengthen our case and demonstrate the earnestness of our cause.”
Maglor, determined not to let Celegorm win at the little game they have going and annoyed by their uncle: “The bonds of kinship persuade insofar as kinship’s obligations and debts bring pleasure. The pleasures of memory, however, may soothe even the most irascible mind and render even the most unpalatable debt acceptable, though in my experience, the memory of debt makes even the sweetest mind ill-tempered and hardens the softest heart to unforgiveness.”
Amrod, perhaps too young for the proceedings: “will Thindicollo forgive the Kinslaying so easily?”
And so on and so forth. Every single one of them believed themselves subtle. The double meanings slithered around the room like coiling snakes. Yes, another circular animal, but dangerously so. The observations were not Maedhros’ own, but whispered to him by Maldanáro who could pass invisibly through their ranks, observing but never observed. And so Maedhros knew them intimately. Not only his brothers whom he had observed closely from their youth and then relearned at Formenos, but his uncles and great-uncles and distant cousins too. He knew the subtleties of meaning they hid in their little speeches, even his beloved Lauro.
He knew that when his grandfather's brother spoke of reassurance and friendship, what he meant was I’m the only man capable of playing envoy to Thingol, you complete children . When his uncle spoke of Finrod’s eminent suitability for the role, what he meant was, you children of Fëanáro will never best me at the art of diplomacy . When Celegorm spoke of concession he meant, unlike Lauro, some of us believe in Father’s vision for ruling. Finrod’s innocent why don’t we all get along concealed a viperous, some of us remember why we’re actually here . Maglor’s little speech insulted his uncle, but it was intended for Celegorm: I won’t fucking forget you little cunt, and I’ll make you pay . Only Amrod was the most direct of them all: are you all out of your minds?
Because beneath all those pretty words lay the ugly unspoken. It was evident in the sly and sidelong glances cast his way. Dear Maedhros, your bloodline is superb, but unfortunately the rest leaves much to be desired. Why in Manwë’s name have we put this madman on our throne? Look how far the line of Finwë has fallen. What a mess! In better, wiser, older hands, Thingol would be eating out of the palm of our hands. Well he can’t help it. It’s, you know — no, even before Morgoth got to him. Runs in the blood. So unfortunate. So very unfortunate. Can Nelyafinwë Maitimo Fëanárion perform without torment? Unfortunately, no, and I — and there were three or four contenders in the room for that I , some of them his own brothers — could do a much better job. Too bad about the primogeniture, but really at this point, it’s not fit for purpose. He doesn’t even look the part anymore, so what’s the use?
And all the while, Morgoth kept firing his furnaces. Dark clouds were billowing down from the North. The great Dark that Finwë had seen would keep encroaching. Finwë dreamed of war. Finwë dreamed of an army raised in Valinor: mighty Elves, armed with wisdom, with weapons, with Unsullied Light, sweeping back into Middle Earth and casting off Morgoth’s great enslaving iron shackles. Finwë saw the bigger picture. Finwë looked north and Finwë knew the darkness could never be defeated, like Fëanáro looked north and knew the darkness could never be defeated, like Maedhros knew, because Maedhros had lived inside it, and therefore had felt, like the personal, loving caress of a mother letting her child down, the despair of defeat. No, none of them could imagine this; could even look at the mighty Dark that confronted Finwë. All of them, incapable of looking north and seeing the encroaching darkness on the horizon. None of them capable of imagining torment. All of them pampered, yes even on the Ice, where the greatest enemy was the self. None of them capable of moving beyond the wounds of Tirion, all seeking selfishly to settle scores and play factions, to divide and rule little lands of their own and none of them capable of comprehending darkness so intense it choked the lungs, crawled beneath the skin and wormed its way through the heart. All of them reenacting, reinventing Tirion not out of any particular desire to do so, but because it was the safest thing they could think of doing; because in the face of such absolute terror, they could only retreat into comfort. All of them ignorant about captivity deep in the darkest bowels of the earth.
Without warning, the storm broke over Maedhros. He was at the table. He was alone in the dark. He was being held down in water. Water was flooding his lungs. Smoke was flooding his lungs. Darkness was flooding his lungs. Blood was filling his lungs. Copper in his mouth. Bitter water. Bitter pain. Fire flooding his limbs. Fire in his muscles. Fire in his lungs, his throat, shooting up the side of his face and through his head. What do you mean we have to hang him up? How the fuck are we meant to get him up there? Never think about that do they? Boss says we have to do it, so we do it. Ungoliant’s balls he weighs a ton. Let’s starve him a bit. No, genius, we can’t let him die on us. Boss’ orders. Boss can take his orders and shove it up — you be careful now . Awful, ugly voices, croaking. Beady eyes watching him. Cackling laughter, faraway, above water. Cackling laughter, the sound suddenly turned up like entering into a room. Hundreds, thousands of eyes piercing into him. Endless laughter at Maedhros’ final humiliation. Claws. Claws digging into him. Why do we get stuck with the dirty work, I want to know. Maedhros was everywhere, nowhere, Maedhros was still up on that damn cliff, watching his family play their little war games.
Louder and louder their voices rose in chorus until they were like the waves on the shore, the crackle of flame at Losgar, the hiss of swords and terrified cries puncturing the Alqualondë’s peaceful night and above all, worst of all, the moans and shrieks of thralls at work, of thralls being pulled apart on racks, of Elvish women being held down and their bodies torn apart, ploughed and reaped for new horrors because Morgoth, Morgoth was powerful but Morgoth was not Eru and Morgoth could not create, and thus Eru in his infinite wisdom looked the other way while Morgoth plundered the Elves for the spoils of life and twisted it this way and that to make what he would: and if they refused, if they resisted, he would delight in cracking them, pressing his finger down on the weakest seams of their minds until they began to shatter, to prove to them that he and only he could truly rule them and they were at best strangers, second class citizens in their own bodies. Yes, Morgoth showed him all of this and when he was done, said too bad your brothers don't think this is a Fate worth saving you from . Though maybe, just maybe, worst of all, it wasn't Morgoth who whispered it to him, but Maedhros whispering it to the night as he dangled from Thangorodrim, watching his brothers’ camp glimmering on the edge of the lake, and looking at Varda’s unseeing, unfeeling stars above, praying for someone to come and save him, while his brothers made themselves new chairs and patted themselves on their backs because they made one large enough for Maedhros.
Maedhros opened his eyes and took them in; all of them strangers to the last man.
“Fools,” he said in a low voice. “Damn fools. All of you, damn, bloody fools!”
They fell silent one by one, every head turning in his direction. Were they angry? Confused? Horrified? Maedhros couldn’t tell. Maedhros saw his hand distantly, through a thick glass pane ready to be painted. Red for the dawn, or else white flame for Eru Ilúvatar and his Unsullied Light.
“What do you know?” he continued, taking them in one by one. His uncle. His great-uncle. His cousin. His brothers. “You dream of lineage. You resent your brother’s long shadow. You hold yourself pious and untouchable. You wish you were Fëanáro’s oldest sons.” Celegorm, Curufin and Maglor began to protest, but Maedhros cut them off. “Your dreams are small. Sectarian. Valinorian. You want lands, kingdoms, crowns! You want subjects, jewels, herds beyond count. You want to be great princes, great kings. Look down and rule! And what will you rule? Ungoliant’s spawn? Ash? Nothing! Nothing at all!”
He lurched to his feet. “The Moringotto’s malice is sleepless and eternal. Do you think you understand it? Think again! His mind is devious, cunning. He sees all. He knows all. He knows our minds. How could he not? He walked amongst us and we poured out the secret terrors, the secret hatreds of our hearts to him. Will you impress Thindicollo? What then? What then! What do you know of malice, terror and darkness? What do you know of the evils of Angband’s pits? You see the smoke the earth belches forth and little else. But I tell you there is more, far more than you can conceive of in your nightmares. Beneath those pits are more pits and yet more pits, filled to brimming with the weakened spirits of his thralls. Will you win power? What power will you possess when the Moringotto fixes his evil eye on you?”
“You seem to place a great deal of importance on the Moringotto’s omnipotence,” Fingon observed in a mild voice.
Everything unravelled at once.
“What do any of you know of the Moringotto’s wiles?” Maedhros barked. “What do you know of terror or torment? What do you know of darkness? What do you know of the voice that promises you your heart’s innermost, secret desires, while its hand robs you of life itself? Nothing! Nothing at all! All of you, weak! Blind! You know nothing of the Moringotto’s devious tricks. Your dreams are small and your fears are smaller. But I know! I alone know! I know what he is! I know what he is, I know what you are and most of all, I know where your poisonous words come from, though you know it not yourselves!”
A gong went off somewhere. Maldanáro’s voice sounded right in Maedhros’ ear.
“Lunch is served, Your Grace.” Smooth, calm. Maldanáro was standing in the doorway.
Maedhros unclenched his fist. Nobody looked at him. They all stared at the table, or their hands. Like children, or guests at a party watching a couple fight. Nerdanel and Fëanáro, quarrelling. Or Father, drawing his sword on his uncle, while all the court tried to look somewhere else, somewhere where this excruciating social faux pas wasn’t happening. Except for his uncle. His uncle looked disappointed. How could he be disappointed? He wasn’t the one with electric pain crawling up the side of his head. Maitimo, what did I tell you? He wasn’t the one with electric pain crawling up the side of his head. As the fog lifted, Maedhros saw his reflection in the polished table and with horror, realised how much he looked and sounded like the mad old Elves who would come out to walk on fine evenings on Tirion’s parade road, accompanied by grandchildren, embarrassed by their frailty, their sickliness. Were his brothers embarrassed? None of them could look at him, not even his beloved Lauro, who had covered his face with both his hands. In their arrogant, omnipotent, cruel summer of their life, they had found those Elves mockworthy. So grotesque in their weakness, still lingering on from Middle Earth in fresh young Valinor, where nothing bad ever happened.
“Lunch,” he said, gritting his teeth against his own humiliation. “Yes. We’ll resume this later.”
“Thank you,” Maedhros told Maldanáro later, exhausted and wrung out.
Maldanáro gave him an inscrutable look. Once upon a time, Maedhros used to be as good as Nerdanel at interpreting everyone’s inscrutable little looks. He was tired, or the pain was suddenly unbearable, because Maedhros couldn’t understand what Maldanáro was trying to convey.
“Try not to bite off the Iathrim envoy’s head tonight,” Maldanáro said. “I’m sending Kemmótar.”
He was losing his touch. Was he losing his touch? He must have been losing his touch. Everything was strange. Faraway. Unreal. A dream, except if it was one, it was the most boring nightmare Maedhros had ever had.
Kemmótar’s hands were deft but firm. Slowly, Maedhros returned to himself between the kneading at his neck and shoulder, and the pungent smell of the poultice smeared on his shoulder and back. The frightening blurriness of the world faded back into its soothing banality. Maedhros could finally observe his new counterpane. A soothing grey damask. No flowers in winter, unfortunately. Someone had thoughtfully moved the tiger lilies inside for the coming winter.
“You clench your jaw too tightly,” his healer said presently. “Understandable, but —”
“I can’t help it.”
“You must.”
Maedhros fought to rein his temper in. “I can hardly help it if it’s —” Words deserted him. He stared hard at the patterned rug, as though its soothing triangular patterns could feed him the words.
“If it’s the shoulder, we can always adjust your working hours.”
“It’s not my shoulder. I barely notice it.” Maedhros paused. His hold over the throne was already delicate. “It’s everything else.”
“You were up within two weeks of your return,” Kemmótar replied. Maedhros could feel his body tensing, or trying to, but unable to under Kemmótar’s soothing ministrations. “You’ve been on the move since then. There’s no shame in —”
“I’m not ashamed,” Maedhros snapped. He inhaled and tried again. “I’m not ashamed. I’m not tired. Did my brother put you up to this?”
“I told you. I work independently.”
Maedhros scoffed. “None of us are independent, Kemmótar. That was my father’s greatest joke.”
“I trained under Estë.” Mild, but beneath that fury. “It is my duty to observe when a man is struggling with the business of living.”
“And no doubt all this will go in your report to my brother.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Isn’t that what you’ll do?”
“Only if that’s what you want.”
“None of us does what he pleases,” Maedhros snapped. “We’re all playing a game much greater than ourselves.”
Pain shot through his jaw. Perhaps Maedhros had miscalculated, or found fury where there was none. Kemmótar remained infuriatingly serene. He gently rubbed circles along Maedhros’ jaw. The soothing movement only enraged him further. He shot out of his chair and turned to face his healer.
“Answer my question,” he said imperiously. “None of this — I’m not one of your subjects.”
“You’re my patient,” Kemmótar replied. He turned deliberately away from Maedhros and began to wash his hands in the basin. “I’m here to serve you, not your brother or your uncles, or your cousins, or your aunts, or even your father’s staff. The terms of our service forbid it.”
He shook water off his hands, took one of the towels and began to dry his hands. The banal normalcy of the scene embarrassed Maedhros. There was nothing more ill-mannered than picking a fight with the help. The poor man had instructions. If he was to be believed, he didn’t have any. Did Maedhros believe him? Of course he was being spied on. Kemmótar had little notes. All healers had little notes, notes on how their patients were progressing. It was so easy, so simple to leave it lying around where Maglor, Celegorm, Caranthir — anyone at all, really — could find it. So easy to remain innocent. Maybe those were his instructions. Of course, it was equally possible he had no instructions at all and he was exactly as innocent as he seemed.
“That’s the list of people who approached me for information,” Kemmótar continued. “I’ve told them all it’s impossible under the terms of my service. The only person I report to is Lady Ruanel and there are limits to what I report to her. You can always ask her, if you’d like to check.”
Maedhros was struck with a vague sense of familiarity.
“We’ve had this conversation before,” he said.
“Several times.” Kemmótar smiled.
“Doesn't it bother you?”
“It's clearly important to you.”
Maedhros crossed his arms, suddenly self-conscious: both about his own relative state of undress, and Kemmótar’s youthful attractiveness. Or rather, Kemmótar’s light brown eyes, piercing him. Getting under his skin.
“My brothers don't like it.” Maedhros considered this. “I can't say I care for it much either.”
“You'll move on when the time is right.” Again, that unruffled serenity. “Until then I'll keep telling you, I’m all yours.”
Maedhros raised an eyebrow. The poor boy continued innocently packing away various ointments and unguents. He truly had no idea.
A perverse little idea took root in Maedhros’ mind.
“Are you?”
“Sorry?”
“You said you were all mine.” Maedhros uncrossed his arms and leaned back, giving him a look that couldn't be misinterpreted. “Are you?”
He could, couldn’t he? He’d always done it. It was easy, as a prince, to stretch out one’s hand and simply take. More often than not, it was freely given. Another one of those things, rarely noticed until it was gone. Or taken away. Or about to be taken away. That was what the look in his uncle’s eyes said, when Maedhros finally looked down at his council. Maitimo, my child, your time is up . So it wasn’t very wrong to want it, if it meant he could still rule himself.
“Yes.” Their eyes met. Light colour tinged Kemmótar’s cheeks. “That is to say, within the bounds of our professional relationship, naturally.”
“Naturally,” Maedhros gave the boy one of his most charming smiles. “But then it's not true, is it? You’re not all mine.”
Kemmótar laughed uncertainly. But the light in his eyes was charged. Not quite hungry, but getting there.
“I have a wife,” he said.
“You have a wife,” Maedhros repeated. “And is your wife here?”
The boy really did flush. “She remained in Valinor.”
“I see,” said Maedhros. “So you're not really hers either, are you?”
“No,” Kemmótar replied slowly. “I suppose not.”
Ordinarily, this was Maedhros’ cue. Hands on belt, kneel, pull the cock out of the breeches and suck. Even the reluctant soon forgot to object when he did that. Something held Maedhros back this time. A desire to win fairly, perhaps. Or to let Kemmótar stretch out his hand and pluck Maedhros like a desirably ripened peach in the summer.
“You report to my cousin,” Maedhros said. “You don’t have to tell her. If she finds out, I’ll handle it.”
Kemmótar stood there, his brown eyes wide and irresolute. Like a stag in the woods, startled by an Elf: caught between the terror of the arrow and the joy of unexpected friendship.
“I can also be discreet,” Maedhros added.
The late afternoon sunlight shifted. It caught magnificently in Kemmótar’s hair, turning the mousy brown a glossy, rich hazel. In that moment, the tension in his jaw went from uncertain to decided, he placed a hand on Maedhros’ bare chest and Maedhros knew he’d won.
Kemmótar made him sit on the bed and pushed him till he was back on his elbows. He nudged Maedhros’ knees apart and knelt. Slow, deliberate, not a trace of diffidence. Long, light eyelashes swept Kemmótar’s cheeks in a sultry come hither. Maedhros felt his heart beating in his cock at his triumph.
“Alright,” said his healer, and bent over him.
The sex was swift, sweet and over far too soon. Kemmótar held him down, pinning his wrists on either side of his head. Terror mingled with the exhilaration of another man’s body pressed against his: sweaty chest against sweaty chest, teeth puncturing throats and scraping jaws, or else burying deep into their armpits, hip bone grinding against hip bone and their fat, swollen cocks between them, slick with spit and pre-come. Maedhros was helpless, overpowered by his own desire. Maedhros was lying fully clothed and helpless, under Morgoth’s all-seeing eye, body tensed against his restraints, anticipating the next torment. But no, Morgoth understood only the brute force tools of pain and terror. He had no idea, couldn’t imagine how pain, terror and pleasure could ride thrillingly side by side. His imagination was small and self-absorbed and the greatest joy of sex was the infinitely vast horizon of possibility. Kemmótar’s fingernails dug into Maedhros’ wrists. The piercing pain, the heat and weight of his body, the smell of sweat, the pulsing of his cock against Maedhros’ sent him over the edge with a helpless cry. It swept over him with the totalising brutality of an autumn storm, Kemmótar’s come splattering like hot rain over his belly. And afterwards, Kemmótar helpfully changed the sheets and reapplied the poultice for him.
The crown haunted the periphery of Maedhros’ vision from its jewelled lockbox while he surveyed the meagre remains of their jewels. There was something tragic, reduced about the proceedings. But Curufin insisted. It was one of the few remaining pleasures of his rank now that their father was dead. While Curufin hovered, hawkishly picking out adornments, Maedhros tried not to look at that lockbox. It was one of the first things his father had seized from Tirion’s Palace. It’s ours by rights . Plenty of things were theirs by right, but it seemed rather relevant how irrelevant this was. Greater minds, greater powers had different ideas about their rights. But his father was stubborn if not anything. He also took the sceptre, the armills, the gold symbol of Laurelin’s fruit, their grandfather’s great seal and a great many other jewels and chains. Curufin followed him around busily with a lockbox and if anyone tried to stop them, he would have shown them the fragment of a personal letter in which Finwë confirmed Fëanor was his heir. No one bothered to ask. There were far more important things to worry about and Great-Uncle Silwë always had been one of father’s admirers, though not enough to surrender Tirion’s comforts for Formenos.
“If only your hair was a shade darker,” Curufin grumbled for the fifth time. “No scarlet, no purple, no crimson.”
“Take it up with Mama,” Maedhros replied.
“No silver, no blue,” Curufin continued. “No green.”
“And that one with Father.”
Curufin glared at him in the mirror. Maedhros smiled sweetly. They would undoubtedly repeat this conversation at least three times before Curufin finished.
His thoughts drifted back to the crown. It was more accurate to say it called to him. A dreamy little voice, locked away inside a golden box saying, wear me , which was funny all things considered. Maedhros had never really wanted to be king. Father was the one with ambitions. Maedhros was quite content, on the whole, with being a prince. Princes had all the fun, the privileges, the wealth and very little of the work.
But it was beautiful. It did call to him. Maedhros, High King of the Noldor. The very phrase suggested strength, nobility, the glory of his burnished youth, undiminished forever. There was nothing reduced or desperate about it. It left no room for a little brother lamenting colours, or how little they had left to choose from. It left no room for his maimed hand, or for his earlier outburst. Wouldn’t anyone want to pretend? Wouldn’t anyone, given the chance, want to slip into the invulnerable, glorious skin of a king? Maedhros was only an Elf. He would. He wanted it the same way his brothers wanted it: the way their eyes fell on that locked box first, before flitting to his face.
Or take his uncle. His uncle had no desires. His uncle was the perfect Elf, virtuous and saintly in every respect. Vanyarin, really, just like his mother. But Maedhros had seen that envious stare never once leave that great crown in Tirion’s square that terrible night.
Unfortunately, Maedhros’ hair clashed badly with the rubies.
“You ought to wear it.”
“Ought I? I thought this was a diplomatic dinner.”
“The jealousies of lesser men are not the king’s concern.”
“They rather are my concern when it makes things uncomfortable,” Maedhros replied. “I’m not overly fond of hanging my dirty laundry out to air in front of strangers.”
“A king without a crown? You’ll inspire far more gossip than some jealous, petty troublemakers.”
Maedhros studied his brother in the mirror. There was a restless discontentment to Curufin’s thin mouth, weaker than their father’s. All that thwarted ambition, stored up and with nowhere to go. In Tirion, at least, he could be a busybody to his heart’s content and be petted and cosetted for it.
“Our uncle is larger than he is petty.”
Curufin’s nostrils flared, but he said nothing. He handed a set of thin gold chains to Laurefion, who began weaving them into Maedhros’ hair.
“Who cares about the Moringotto?” Curufin said eventually. “If people prattle about his taint upon you, then our uncle should worry about himself first. His lies stained all of us equally — our uncle no less than anyone else. Did he resist it? No, I promise you, Russandol. He whispers in your ear because he fears you.”
And you don’t? thought Maedhros, but he said nothing as he traced the fine patterning on the gold belt Curufin laid out.
“Who can claim to have resisted the Mornigotto’s torments and wiles for thirty years?” Curufin continued. “Our uncle couldn’t resist the lure of mere ambition. But you, Russandol, walk in the footsteps of kings and kings of kings. Who turned the Moringotto from our gates? Who stood and faced him, alone in the great Unlight? —”
“Yes, yes, your craft is as sharp as ever, Atarinkë.” Maedhros cut him off. “What do you want?”
“Is it so impossible to believe I want my brother to hold his head high and join the ranks of his ancestors with pride?”
“I can believe the bit about joining the ranks of our ancestors,” Maedhros replied. “The last two, at least, are dead.”
“Here, jade should do the trick.” Curufin cleverly laid out a beautiful gold chain with ten white jade panels easing the sting of the insult. Each panel was stained with a deep russet and had gold patterning tracing the glories of Noldorin craft: smithying, philosophy, philology, masonry, the various arts. Maedhros had to reluctantly admit it would more than do the trick. “Very well. I want you to be king, Russandol, because you are king. You’re the eldest in a long and unbroken line of kings, going back to the dawn of Elvish time; a direct descendant of Tata, of pure Noldo descent. I wish it, because ours is a high and noble line and I don’t want history to remember us as the weak link who couldn’t hold our own against some scheming, half-caste Vanyarin by-blow.”
“That’s more like it,” Maedhros said approvingly, as Laurefion clasped the necklace around his throat.
“And furthermore —” Curufin ignored him, “I don’t want to see my brother humiliated by a couple of fools who think themselves elevated because of their sickly Valar worship. By Eru, we came to this land to escape their boot on our throats. Will we sigh and unmake ourselves over divine signs and portends? An eagle! The Moringotto take that eagle.” Curufin snapped his fingers. “I defy them. ‘Twas not an eagle that kept you alive, or indeed helped you resist the Moringotto’s evil. That was good, pure Noldo science and the fire of our blood burning in our veins. I will not be ashamed of it, neither will I cower and cringe and accept some strain of madness runs in our veins, waiting to take us unwary.”
Maedhros marvelled at the ease with which his brother could sweep aside the several disasters that had led them there.
“You’re a king of the Noldor,” said Curufin. “Power runs as strong in you as this alleged madness. Let them murmur the Moringotto’s lies. We will defy them as we have defied the Valar and their naysaying.”
Maedhros was moved despite himself. Not by blood or lineage but defiance. The thought of sweeping into that room with his head held high and the brief cessation of conversation that would follow. The single raised eyebrow, his uncle’s surprise: no more endless, bounteous pity. You’re dead , those eyes said. The price on your head is already too high. You’ll get us all killed. But then, Námo had promised them as much. His uncle ought to have been eager to fulfill it, faithful as he was.
“People think they know what they want,” Curufin continued. “They don’t know what they want. They’re waiting to be persuaded. What greater hope to offer than to have defied the Moringotto and lived?”
Lived, questionable. The thought of pulling the rug out from beneath their uncle’s feet, however, was irresistible. Curufin must have sensed this. He leaned over and unlocked the box.
In the mirror, very briefly, Maedhros saw the ghost of their father in the lines of Curufin’s face, blood dripping from his hands. Then Curufin placed the crown on his head. The illusion melted away, leaving only the striking afterimage. Someone would see it. They’d be fools not to see the bloodstains. Not only Finwë, or Fëanor, but what was and what would yet come, splattered across his white and cloth-of-gold embroidered tunic.
“There,” said Curufin, satisfied. “Loop the hair. And here, these cuffs, I think.”
“The Sindarin envoy is pressing for an answer,” Maldanáro murmured in his ear as they descended the stairs together. “He’s almost certainly also a spy, though I believe your brother has distracted him with their common love of linguistics.”
“Dear Lauro, always so resourceful. What does my uncle intend?”
“He prefers Prince Findaráto as envoy. I believe Prince Findaráto is not averse, but as Alamire tells me, would much rather not be involved.”
“How just like his father.”
“He and Prince Findekáno still aren’t on speaking terms outside of formal courtesies.” A pause. “Also I believe the icon of Námo went a long way to assuaging certain — qualms.”
“Our uncle would appear to have miscalculated, then. How fortunate we are surrounded by sentimentalists. And my great-uncle?”
“He prays to the Valar and sends what he believes are secret letters to your uncle.”
“Have I slipped so low in everyone’s esteem?”
“They all believe you’re very sick.”
“Well, it seems I must disabuse them of that notion,” Maedhros replied. “I think Prince Angaráto will make a very good envoy. You saw the little sketches he was making during our council?”
Ten years of total darkness had gifted Maedhros with both uncannily good hearing and eyesight. It helped to know, after all, when one of his tormentors were approaching. His cousin’s sketch was upside down and occupied only a corner of the paper he was ostensibly using for notes, but he still thought it was a very good likeness of Aredhel, bored out of her mind by the proceedings despite minuting them.
“Unfortunately, no.”
“I think he has real talent,” said Maedhros. “Besides which, it’ll please Ingoldo and infuriate both my uncles.”
“Your brothers won’t be happy either. Prince Tyelkormo fancies himself envoy.”
“Does he? And what does Prince Makalaurë fancy?”
Maldanáro’s look had real reproach. A sort of delightful Vanyarin primness. Maedhros would have laughed, but it would have offended his poor secretary.
“I couldn’t possibly say.”
Which almost certainly meant Maglor was either infatuated, ambitious, or wanted to spite Celegorm. The disunity troubled Maedhros.
“I think Angaráto will unite us all, though maybe not in joy.” Maedhros briefly touched his shoulder. “Maldanáro, has anyone ever told you you’re a prince amongst secretaries?”
Though these halls were no longer marble and their coloured tiles were only painted terracotta, Maedhros was transported back to Tirion as he walked down the grand hall at a stately pace. Few grand entrances in Tirion weren’t overshadowed by his father. Only Finwë could ever hope to overpower Fëanor in sheer charisma. It was one thing for the crowd to part before him like water or even gaze adoringly at him; it was another to have their full attention. At last, Maedhros understood why his grandfather not only chose to be king, but refused to surrender it.
Exhausted, but invincible and a font of endless charm, Maedhros reclined on his gilted one-armed couch. His great-aunt had outdone herself. Great chandeliers of glass and mirror hung from the grand hall, carelessly flinging candlelight around in radiant and dizzying arcs. Polished bronze sconces held torches to illuminate the far corners of the hall. Their light danced along bright spears, shields and swords, polished till they shone radiantly. Wine was flowing as freely as the conversation. Gold glimmered at ears and throats, peeped out of dark masses of hair and in a few rare places, on well-turned ankles. Yes, they were diminished, but they weren’t finished.
From up there on the dais, he surveyed his handiwork with pleasure. The Iathrim envoy had been safely encircled by Finrod and Celegorm, now too mindful of the foreigner in their midst to quarrel. His uncle and brother were cordially entertaining Great-Uncle Silwë and Great-Aunt Turavennë — and, undoubtedly, hating every moment of it. The rest of his cousins and brothers had been thrown together in various permutations. No one could ever accuse them of being disunited.
“Maldanáro,” he said, over his shoulder. “That’ll be all for the night, I think.”
“Are you sure?”
“Laurefion is watching me as hawkishly as his name would have it,” Maedhros replied. “I have no doubt he’ll ensure I go to bed exactly as the healer’s ordered. Go on, enjoy yourself.”
Lady Thoronië and his brother had organised various desultory entertainment for the evening. Lady Thúrenandë began with an elegant rendition of the water devotionals on the long zither. Her rendition was overly arithmetic, lacking the humane touch required to elevate the long zither from the realms of the merely intellectual. Yet the vision was affecting nevertheless. Maedhros appreciated the beauty of revelation, of the neat resolution of irresolution in each section. His nephew, also an enthusiast, sat beside him and scribbled numbers in a tiny notebook he’d carried with him, pausing only to explain how each note in a sequence added up to eight. It amused Maedhros as much as it certainly infuriated Curufin.
After her came a young man, capable of manipulating fire in the most interesting ways. He could make the flames take any shape imaginable. While the guests were taken by this, Maedhros was rather more taken by the sweat glistening at the opening of his leather jerkin, and their suggestive pathway down and out of sight. Or he would have been, if Great-Uncle Ravwë hadn’t chosen that precise moment to press him about plans to expand their frontier in the East. Something about how they were letting Morgoth grow his advantage. He was saved from answering this with any real seriousness by Tyelpë suggesting Morgoth would lose all his advantages if the Noldor simply subjected him to a little light aerial bombardment. Maedhros sagely agreed with this and refused to be moved from this position. Great-Uncle Ravwë took the hint.
Now his cousin Elenárë was leading several girls in a Vanyarin devotional dance. This one was meant to recreate the tale of the stars, culminating in their arithmetic, celestial dance around Varda. His cousin fancied herself a dancer. She also fancied herself a queen. Her grand and glittering diamond headdress was meant to crown her Varda to his Manwë, he supposed. Lady Turavennë certainly seemed to think so, by the many glances she cast his way. Maedhros smiled benevolently and gazed, instead, at one of the serving boys. He wondered where Kemmótar was, and if he was being kept awake by the festivities. Perhaps he was lying in bed, suspended between sleep and waking, their encounter still vivid in his mind. Vivid enough to send heat down to his cock and thicken it from a slender, soft creature to its fulsome, muscular zenith. The serving boy turned, caught his eye and flushed.
“Bedtime, Tyelpë,” Maglor said cheerfully. “You can’t hide from Aicanautiel forever.”
“I hate bed,” his nephew declared. “I’m not sleepy in the least and I want to see them make their eighths. Cousin Elenárë’s not very good at them. She doesn’t know the first thing about numbers.”
“Out of the mouths of babes,” Maedhros murmured.
“Of course you hate bed,” Maglor replied soothingly. “You’re a red-blooded Noldo lad, but boys who don’t sleep become stupid. You don’t want to become stupid do you?”
“Papa doesn’t sleep, so why should I?”
Maedhros snorted into his wine. “An excellent question, Tyelperinquar.”
“Don’t encourage him.” Good-natured, but taut. Ah, so Maglor was furious. Maedhros drained his glass and held it out for one of his footmen to fill. The night, so promising, looked considerably longer now. “Tyelpë, your father is a man of extraordinarily bad habits. The less you’re like him, the better you’ll do in life. If you go now, Cook can still spare you one of those little honey cakes you like, but only if you go now.”
“Bribery, Lauro?” Maedhros murmured as his brother took the couch his nephew had eagerly vacated. “My how low we’ve fallen.”
The serving boy was no longer in sight, but there were plenty of charming pages, awaiting their lords’ pleasure. Maedhros caught the eye of a golden-haired one and was awarded with a delightful fluttering coyness, like a doe inviting the hunter on the chase.
“The cost of doing business.” Maglor imperiously waved his glass at the footman. “You couldn’t possibly be more obvious, could you? Call him over. Make him kneel at your side and rest his head on your knee. Embarrass us all.”
“I don’t think poor Laurefindelë would like that.”
“I don’t think our great-aunt likes it either,” Maglor replied. “For that matter, I don’t think the Iathrim envoy cares much for it.”
Maedhros angled his head to look at his brother. Maglor, damnably, was resplendent and much more the king in rich purple and gold. “Would it be better if I ogled my cousin?”
“You could start by paying attention to her, or at least allaying the envoy’s suspicions. D’you know what I overheard our great-uncle and your secretary saying?”
“How you do lecture me, brother,” said Maedhros. “All this talk of business is quite unappetizing. It’s putting me off my dinner.”
“You spent a year without it in your telling, so you shouldn’t have a problem surviving the next three hours,” Maglor said ruthlessly.
Maedhros nearly sagged with relief. At last! Maedhros no longer had to pull his punches.
“You’re determined to torment me with truths.”
“If a warning is torment, so be it,” said Maglor. “Do you think your little escapades have gone unnoticed? Between them and your little display this afternoon, you’re making quite the name for yourself. I’ll tell you what Uncle Silwë said —”
“Yes do,” said Maedhros, “I’m all ears for the latest slanders they’ve been inventing about me.”
“Fëanáro the Fey, Makalaurë the Meek and now Maitimo the Mad — how much further must we fall?” Maglor paused for dramatic effect. “Now it’s not slander if it’s at least a little true, is it, brother?”
“And here I thought I was recovering beautifully under your capable care, brother.”
“Not even the most gifted healer can triumph against the truculent fool,” said Maglor. “And the fool might mar his own healing by pursuing his own, bounteous foolishness.”
“I can’t change who I am.”
“I’m not asking you to change,” said Maglor. “But you’ve never been careless like this, Russandol and it does make one wonder.”
“It does, does it?”
“Yes and everyone’s either frightened witless by you, or too interested in their little games to ask the question.”
“What question, Makalaurë?”
“Oh, Maitimo, do keep smiling. We must be a united front, mustn’t we? Or so, I believe, you told Maldanáro.”
His mouth moved automatically. It won him a smile from his cousin, still dancing and still botching her footwork. “What question?”
“You seem determined to force my hand,” Maglor observed. “Believe me when I say I’m asking this out of concern, and not whatever nonsense Tyelko and Curvo have been pouring into your ears: but are you truly well?”
Maedhros turned his head. Maglor’s eyes were bright and piercing, but not enough to pierce the steel of Maedhros’ mind. He had spent too many hours holding Morgoth at bay to allow his brother to find purchase and slip inside. Some would call this the sign of a paranoid, dangerous disposition. In Beleriand, Maedhros thought it was rather more like common sense.
“I’ve never been better in my life.”
Maglor laughed. “You’ve certainly spoken far better on the ills of the Moringotto than you did today.”
“I wasn’t aware worrying about the Black Foe was a sign of madness,” Maedhros murmured into his cup. “But maybe you’ve forgotten we’re here to wage a war.”
The music began to speed up. The traditional Vanyarin dances were all stately affairs, interesting only in the realm of the abstract and geometrical. Maedhros enjoyed the geometry. The femininity left much to be desired. His cousin clearly had other ideas. The moves grew sinuous and less geometrical. She was breaking with tradition. Maedhros glanced in his great-aunt’s direction, ignoring his brother. Had she put her daughter up to this? Did she know she was fighting a losing battle? Her smile was enigmatic and gave very little away. The very model of aristocratic discretion.
“Russandol,” Maglor was saying. “Russandol. Russandol. ”
“Do you think our great-aunt knows about my so-called indiscretions?”
“Who doesn’t know?” Maglor paused. “Russandol, are you well?”
“I’ve never been better in my life.” This time it lacked conviction.
His brother leaned closer, his curls nearly tickling Maedhros’. What a charming picture of brotherly unity they would present to the watching Noldor. Little did they know. Little did any of them know.
“Russandol,” said Maglor. “You need to stop.”
Maedhros reached for the plate of mussels and occupied himself with prising them apart to yield its steamed and spiced fruits.
“Russandol, are you listening?” Maedhros sucked on the meat, doing his best to ignore the whir of thoughts that threatened to possess him. “The more you push yourself, the more you flounder, the worse you get. Accusing us of being mouthpieces of Morgoth?”
“Have I gone mad?” Maedhros smiled. Across the floor, his cousin smiled back at him. “You heard those fools.”
“I heard you.” Sharp, through the knife of a smile. “You know what I think?”
“You seem determined to let me know whether I want to know or not.”
Maglor ignored him. “I think you want to give it up, but you can’t stand the humiliation. Ergo, let someone do the trick for you. That’s always been your style. The self-sabotager’s disposition —”
“Are you quite done?”
“No,” said Maglor. “Be honest with yourself and give up this farce. Go south, go east, go west, but spare yourself before it kills you.”
“Your concern is touching,” Maedhros replied, glancing at him. “Does it come from the terror of your own failure, or because you rather believe you’d be doing a better job in my place, Makalaurë?”
His brother’s eyes burned with anger. His mouth was a mirror of Maedhros’ own: a smile as false as his cousin’s false eyelashes. Then Maglor’s smile broadened viciously. Maedhros’ head swam with the thrill. His blood ran hot. At last, someone would give him the fight he’d been itching for since he returned.
“Well,” said Maglor, “ I kept everyone in line for thirty years, built fortifications, brokered a peace and doubled our wealth. Now my brothers scheme against each other, Great-Uncle Silwë runs to our uncle, Ingo retreats further into the arms of his Sindarin kin, only Carnistir’s ruthless fist keeps the costs of our building up north from emptying our coffers. A united front, Maitimo? How can we have a united front, when the king is disunited and listens to the whispers of every fool that kisses his feet and feeds his vanity: just like his dead, mad father?”
**
Losgar. Pungent and acrid smoke filling their noses, the air palpable with disgruntlement and Elves looking at the ground or the sky: everywhere but at them. Not quite enough for mutiny. Not enough to assuage it. Maglor turned to him, his face as blank as a theatre mask, and said, quite calmly: he’s mad, he’s completely mad .
**
Morgoth’s lieutenant, clear as the light of Laurelin: such a shame about your father’s death. I always did wonder why you hung back when you could have charged. What do I mean? Nothing. Nothing at all. Maybe you ought to ask your brother.
**
“I should be very careful of what I say next, Kanafinwë,” Maedhros replied silkily. “Indiscipline breeds disunity and thirty years of it has bred far too much for mere months to cure. Advice from the coward and naysayer can never help a king.”
**
No, he hadn’t said that. Had he? Maedhros spent most of his time in a lightless pit, then up on Thangorodrim, broken only by brief and unpredictable spells of torture at his captors’ pleasure.
**
Alqualondë, the stink of sweat and blood in the air. Maglor was standing on board the ship, supervising the offloading of dead bodies and the onboarding of horses, each of them skittish and distressed. He turned to Maedhros and said, impassive: “You know, I don’t think there’s any turning back now.”
**
“Better the clear-eyed naysayer than the madman’s hubris,” Maglor replied cheerfully. “Or should I say the ambitions of the salt-bitch who dreams of standing on his two legs instead of crawling at his father’s pleasure?”
**
Maglor, the last to raise his sword and swear their Oath; the first to find Maedhros afterwards and say: this will end in bitterness.
**
The crux of the matter: their final argument. Maglor was pale, doe-eyed and tragically handsome, doused in starlight. Their father’s sword lay between them, and the lockbox with the crown. No one could have staged the scene better.
“There has to be a better way of doing this,” he said. “You can’t hope —”
“Can’t?” Maedhros raised an eyebrow. “My dear Lauro, we’re here because we can and did.”
“Yes, and look where that’s got us.” A pause for effect. “Father dead, everyone demoralised and terrified and all of us — lost.”
“Which is exactly why we must do it. We came here for vengeance. Vengeance has presented itself to us — and you’d rather I sat by the shores of Mithrim and wept into its waters. In that case, brother, you’ll have to supply the mist.”
“No, I’d rather you be a king,” said Maglor, “not a general. Manwë knows our people have had enough of them for now.”
“We’ll never have a better chance.”
“I’d much rather set the terms of engagement.”
Circular. Elliptical. Evasive. Neither of them daring to approach the obvious —
**
The dark slopes of Ered Wethrin, the chaos of an undignified retreat all around and in the middle of that, Fëanor, dying. And as he breathed his last, Maedhros, Maglor and Celegorm all caught each other’s eyes and none of them said it, but they knew it instinctively. Fëanor despaired. Fëanor knew they would lose this war.
**
And so Maedhros broke omerta and said the unsayable: “You think I can’t outdo father.”
**
The music reached its zenith, his cousin spun in frenzied mimicry of the stars in orbit, her skirts lifting shockingly to unveil slender calves and ankles.
Maedhros took malicious aim. “Better an honourable salt-bitch than a dishonourable cuckoo —”
**
To which Maglor had given him an inscrutable sort of look and said: you needn’t repeat our father’s mistakes .
“If Eru set a fire in our father, he can damn well set such a fire within me,” said Maedhros.
“The fire consumed him,” said Maglor. “It will consume you and all of us. Or have you forgotten Námo’s parting shot?”
Maedhros snapped his fingers. “To Angband with Námo, I defy his Doom.”
“Our father failed —”
“Always the optimist, Lauro. Don’t let your failures in marriage colour our prospects.”
And Maglor had given him another look, also inscrutable, and said: “doing this won’t make you more of Fëanáro’s son and doubly so if you lose.”
**
“— who sings a sweet, treacherous song,” Maedhros continued. “And when it’s done, takes the Crown for its own. That’s why you left me in Angamando, wasn’t it?”
But Maglor had always been the more vicious of the two of them. Maedhros wielded his power like a prince, Maglor like a musician. Everything was a bloody symphony with his brother, waiting for the great, cliched, finale. Maglor smiled with gentle, feigned pity and then landed his blow with cool, unsentimental precision.
“I might be a coward,” he said, “but at least I’m no thrall of Morgoth.”
**
Maglor getting chairs made while Maedhros hung up on Thangorodrim. Maglor whispering we haven’t even covered our supply lines as Fëanor marched them on Angband. Whispering, we have to do something about it . Maglor, watching cousin Mirwë slip and hit his head on a winch, but too late to stop Mirwë’s brother from striking the first fatal blow in angry grief. Maglor, with a small superior smile, while the Valar’s final benediction was pronounced over them. Maglor, strumming his harp on the storming ship instead of being useful. Maglor, always appearing to him in dreams in Angband, telling him I told you so .
**
Betrayed! No reason at all to feel betrayed. Everyone said it. Everyone thought it. His cousin was thinking it right now, spinning around pretending to be one of Varda’s stars. And really, how else was he supposed to explain the inexplicable rages? How else could he explain how hard he had to close his good hand over his wineglass, so as to not hit Maglor instead? How else to explain the desire to revisit Lady Tintalpa of Atyamar , over and over, like a poorly scabbed over wound? He wasn’t a woman. He hated women. He hated the way they fluttered sly and long eyelashes at men and led them away from him. He hated how they were rewarded for this: good girls steering pious men through the deep waters of sex and away from the monstrous whores of the unmentionable powers, to chaste and perfect homes. But if he tried, he could imagine was one of those lost women, stolen away and buried deep in Angband, birthing Orc after Orc. Why else imagine an Orc buried deep in his guts, where a womb might have been? So, no reason to feel betrayed at all.
**
Maglor, sensing that perhaps he’d gone too far, leaned back and drank from his glass of wine. His eyes, however, were hard as flint. Both of them, still smiling at each other, for the sake of the Noldor. So much insincerity for the sake of the Noldor. He used to be so good at insincerity. Now it was like the drip-drip of Angband’s pits. A single drop, landing on his forehead, wearing him away cell by cell. He hated his cousin, looking at him with sultry eyes. Looking at the crown with sultry eyes. Nobody looked at Thangorodrim with sultry eyes now, did they? If they had, Maedhros would have been rescued in a trice. How much longer would this last? How much more would he have to smile and nod and feign some interest in her sensual devotion to Varda? She’d have more pleasure out of Varda than him. Everyone knew this. The rest was farce, because he wore a crown.
“And what did Maldanáro say?” Maedhros inquired, determined to salvage some of his pride from the wreckage.
“What?” said Maglor, thrown.
“Maldanáro,” Maedhros replied patiently. “My secretary, whom you overheard conspiring with our Great-Uncle.”
“I wouldn’t say conspiring, precisely —”
“But my dear Kanafinwë, how could I possibly let this slight against you go unavenged?”
“Russandol —”
“I would not,” said Maedhros, as pleasantly as he could manage, “be so free with that name if I were you.”
Maglor’s eyes went hard again. He shrugged and with careless languour, selected a slice of pear for himself.
“Why, maybe he said nothing,” Maglor replied. “Maybe he said much more. Maybe he said, better a noble madman than a flagrant coward . Why don’t you ask him yourself, if you’re so concerned?”
Maedhros could very nearly picture Maldanáro, unable to deny his insanity, yet loyal and worst of all, caught in the perfect trap. Everywhere, webs. Lies, as abundant as the mirrored chandeliers. Here was one, being spun to its finish. His cousin bowed low, finally done with her dance. Some other, lesser man would have been impressed by the swell of her breasts. Maedhros clapped politely, scanning the crowd for his secretary. There he was, lounging at their cousin’s table and in rapt conversation with his sister Aranyë. Aranyë and Elenárë, all part of the same set. Wheels within wheels.
Maglor rose as carelessly as he’d arrived.
“You are a king and a man divided against himself,” he whispered, bending over Maedhros. His hair tickled Maedhros’ ear. “Ours is a higher destiny than the Crown and I would not see you destroyed for its sake.”
Of course he hadn’t let the insult sit. Before he left, Maedhros finished off Maglor with a perfect knockout. He stared down his brother and said, imperiously, neither law, nor love, nor league of swords, dread nor danger, not Doom itself, shall defend him from Fëanor, and Fëanor's kin. Our father promised unceasing war on Morgoth. I will deliver it.
Alone again, insofar as a king could ever be truly alone, Maedhros lay in bed and watched the light flickering palely on his ceiling, waiting for the laudanum to take effect. Laurefion had left him with a single candle and one of his father’s lamps. It competed now with the little moonlight that escaped his curtains. New curtains. Thick and dark for winter, to keep the cold out. Not cold enough yet for fire, at least not for Maedhros. All his brothers except for Celegorm had fires in their room. Curufin had extra rugs. Maedhros had shoved most of his on the floor, too hot and too cold by turns, after years of exposure.
Thirty years outweighed the two hundred and fifty six of the before in warm, amniotic Valinor. It was strange, but substantially true: the Elvish body was frail. Only the absence of danger concealed this. Immortality felt tangible and inescapable in Valinor. His grandfather had seemed eternal. Invulnerable. Of course, lying there in front of Formenos he looked nearly doll-like. One in a string of dolls misguidedly given to Aredhel and Galadriel, who only liked to beat the stuffing out of them. Strong, but essentially frail.
More frailty: the row of bodies laid out on the beach, amongst jewels glittering in the firelight. As frail as cutting up midwinter’s night pork at the feast. Maedhros watched himself do it dispassionately, floating along over the battle. They were broken so easily, the poor Teleri. A sharp swipe. Blood. Down they went. Frail like his own companions. Great warriors, all of them. But Elves. Flimsy bodies that fell apart on harsh contact. Frailty all the way down: the ashen, darkened world strewn with hundreds of dolls with the stuffing beaten out of them.
Warmth spreading through his body, like the flames licking across his ceiling, twisting and dancing through blood-stained jewels on a white shore.
Maedhros floated dreamily through the Great Hall. The mirrored light was beautiful, starry and indistinct. The pillars were made of marble and set with topaz and amber and garnets and citrines. Nearly Tirion, nearly here, inbetween. Thousands of Elves milled around, in glittering pale silks: delicate cloud blues and cherry blossom and pearl and pale dove grey. Diamonds and opals glimmering, twinkling at throats and ears and tucked in hair. The light rendered their faces indistinct, white blurs. Hornpipes and flutes were playing softly and dolorously in the distance. They grew louder and louder as he wandered further in, until it nearly overpowered his senses. Dimly, he heard singing, cheerful and melancholy at the same time, as though from many rooms away. Their voices were all men — sailors, he thought, Teleri sailors on the prow of their great ships. The tune was familiar and yet the words were strange, as though someone had reached in and scrambled them all up:
O! Hoist up the rigging,
The foremast is failing.
The storm is a-raging,
The decks are a-burning!
O! tril-lil-lil-lolly
the galley is jolly!
As they sang, the light began to leech red and orange. Flames, perhaps. Flame, until it wasn’t flame. The music grew strange, discordant. Their voices grew louder, brighter. Their faces, their arms, their hands disappeared in blinding white light. Bright red stains burst out of their pale, bright clothes and jewels. It spread across the floors and doused the lights until the whole world was red.
Maedhros sat up sweating and scrubbed his face with his hand. No, no sleep for him tonight. He pushed his sheets down, pulled on a thick fur and sat down with a book of poetry.
It was the dead of night, when the sky was at its darkest and their fort was at its quietest, when Maedhros heard the voices again. They were even further away. So far away, he thought it was a trick of the night. Wind, howling through his windows. The glass fitted perfectly; the wood frames sealed shut against the night.
Maedhros took his candle and went downstairs, sword in hand. The stairs were cold beneath his bare feet. The place was sheathed in darkness. Maglor could have described the sound of sleep and its minute nuances. To Maedhros it was silence, or as good as, except for the singing. It grew louder by the minute, till he finally reached the tall dark doors to the Great Hall. Light streamed from beneath the door, at odds with the dark silence all around. Maedhros braced himself and pushed the door open with his elbow and shoulder.
Blazing light blinded him before resolving into shapes. He was in the Great Hall, but the Great Hall was changed from what it was earlier. Its walls were whitewashed; its pillars were golden marble and not stone. Long white muslin curtains fluttered delicately from somewhere up above, stirred by the steam of invisible baths. The floor was a great and obscene mosaic of stormy seas and great ribbons of fire wrapped around the writhing bodies of a voluptuous naked woman and a firebird. His throne looked suddenly insignificant against the great marble altar that now occupied two thirds of the dais. The priestesses were there, their arms outstretched, holding their great censers of incense and wine. But their song was drowned out by the abrupt cries of all hail the king and long live the king .
Dozens of men appeared, all naked except for the swords at their hips. They entered to the music, shouting their praise, while the priestesses sang at the altar. This wasn’t the hymn. The hymn was sonorous and sensual. The words of the priestesses tonight were the voices of Lady Tintalpa : tremulous and quiet. It clashed marvellously with the music which was wild and raucous as it should have been and the men, who continued to bless the king. When they turned, Maedhros realised they were dead. Slit throats, punctured chests and stomachs. Their eyes were full of light. Yes, they had been full of light, as his own eyes were still full of light. They surrounded him swiftly. Though they were dead, their eyes were full of adoration. Their hands tore at his robes. Maedhros found himself stripped naked, his sword taken from him, and then hoisted above their heads, their hands caressing him intimately as they bore him up towards the marble altar. As they took him they sang a sea song —
The rigging is drowning,
The crown is a burning,
The axes are dancing!
Now is the winnowing!
O! tra-la-la-lally
down here in the galley!
“O mighty king,” cried the priestess, as she mounted him atop the altar, “the Allmother has blessed you with realms of green earth and bright waters. Their fields are fertile and ripened by her bounteous love. Their people build great houses and fill them with many children. All the earth laughs with delight at the coming of the king.”
And Maedhros really did see it: great houses scattered across the wild lands of Beleriand, the north skies cleared and lush, green grass stretching up the lower heights of Thangorodrim. He took this all in, from north to south, to east to west, from a great height, as though at the top of a mountain, or else aloft in the air on the back of an eagle.
“O strong king,” cried the priestess, over the cheers of the men, and Maedhros found himself stiffening despite himself, “the Allmother herself has drawn you out of her flesh, to stand tall above all others, and mighty above the mightiest. Your sword is imperishable. It rises above the world and shatters your enemies. Your people weep in joy and follow their king to the ends of the earth.”
The cheers of the Teleri sailors briefly drowned the music. In that moment, Maedhros saw it: a column of glittering swords and golden banners flashing in the sun that stretched out across Beleriand and himself at its head, astride a great black stallion.
“O great king,” cried the priestess, casting aside her mask. Maedhros looked into the dead, bloodied face of one of Olwë’s grandsons, contorted by the fury of war. The thrill of terror only made him harder. “For what greater greatness and what greater pleasure can a man have than swift reunion with the Allmother’s divine bliss?”
The Teleri gave a great cry and drew their swords as one.
“You’ve come for revenge,” said Maedhros.
“I have come to deliver judgement,” said Olwë’s grandson, implacable. “Though you flee it, it will always find you.”
They fell on him with their swords. Relief washed over him as their swords plunged deep into his flesh. Relief, followed by the ecstasy of their unwashed bodies, sweaty with the steam pouring in from the baths. Over and over, their swords bit into his flesh, until he was torn into ribbons and at last, a great white light swept over the hall, obliterating everything in its path.
This time, he imagined the Great Hall with crystal clarity; Tirion and Mithrim, past and present entwined seamlessly. Maedhros was faced with a sea of the adoring, upturned faces of the Noldor, gaudy in gold and cheering with a great voice, may he reign forever . He was their king and he loved them and they loved him, for he was perfect. They danced in wild, whirling dervishes madly singing —
The time is approaching,
The bright swords are dancing,
The blood rivers flowing,
The ships are a-burning!
O! tra-la-la-lally
Out here in the galley!
And as they sang, Maedhros took in their waxy, dead faces. Every single last one of them were dead bodies on the beach, yet also, simultaneously his people. Yes, there was his uncle and his grandmother’s sister and his brothers and cousins and all his family. Would they die? Would they live? Would he outlive them all? His father saw the end and despaired and still committed them all to vengeance. Maedhros could do that. But Maedhros was a king. A house divided cannot stand. With the voice of the dead, Olwë’s grandson, said in his ear: what greater greatness and what greater pleasure can a man have than death? Another great cry and they fell on him, their beloved king, with their swords, each of them to the last man. No matter how Maedhros begged, wept, cried for help, they couldn’t hear him and their swords kept plunging into him. Celegorm and their great-aunt and his uncle, his cousins, the men who kept his stables, the men who kept his boudoir and at the very last, the very last sword to strike straight at his heart, Maglor, blind and unseeing.
“I’ve been thinking,” he told his brothers over breakfast. “While we sit here and debate Ñolofinwë, Ñolofinwë convinces his people that he alone seeks vengeance for Finwë’s death.”
His brothers were all nursing the aftereffects of too much wine to a man. Only his nephew was bright-eyed, his treelit eyes fixed piercingly on his face. It unnerved Maedhros.
“We came here to deliver war to Morgoth,” he continued. “As king, I mean to deliver it. In the spring, we’ll move our frontline up north and to the east. We’ll hem him in in his cold fortress and starve the bastard out.”
**
“That’s all very well,” said Caranthir, “but just think about the firewood — we have no idea about the fertility of the soil — ”
“Did we come to Beleriand to sleep in warm beds?” Maedhros inquired. “The harder the road, the greater the reward. That hill has the best damn view of the Enemy in this land.”
“Yes,” said Curufin, “but moving armies up there — and siege machinery —”
“Are we Noldor or are we fools?” he snapped. “Atarinkë, find a way.”
**
Another duel of both wit and body with his uncle. His uncle was still holding back, still pulling his blows. Pity? Kindness? Maedhros didn’t need kindness. Maedhros was leading a war.
“Fight me like an Orc,” he demanded.
“You’re my nephew,” said Fingolfin, unruffled. “And an Elf as well.”
This time, Maedhros was stronger. Celegorm had never quite learned to lose gracefully: too young for Maglor to treat him with anything but careless, indulgent tolerance, too old for Caranthir to teach him sportsmanship. It made him an unforgiving swordmaster. While Fingolfin refused to strike with his full strength, Maedhros pressed his advantage. Back and forth and back and forth they went, until eventually they had to stop and concede to a tie. War’s many duties beckoned Maedhros and lunch beckoned his uncle.
“I mean to take our war up north to the Moringotto,” said Maedhros, as Fingolfin’s people rubbed them down in the newly finished baths.
“Already? Surely we ought to wait and consider the logistics of spreading ourselves across such a broad front.”
“While we wait the Moringotto rebuilds.”
“I’d rather not fight on his terms.”
“Precisely,” said Maedhros. “Someone needs to remind him we mean business. Who better than the king he believes he has broken?”
“Our people are tired of war —”
“Our people want revenge,” said Maedhros. “Our people need the strong arm of a king; not a judge and not a father.”
His uncle sighed. “As you say, nephew, though my heart urges caution and the extension of friendship with our neighbours.”
**
“My father promised us great lands and mastery of the bliss and beauty of Arda,” Maedhros told the crowd of people assembled down below. “For as long as the Moringotto pollutes this world with his darkness, he poisons the beauty of this world, destroys its bliss and steals from our future. Shall we linger here by the shores of Mithrim, content to dream of castles without foundations?”
No. Obviously. Their faces blurred together in the snow. They could have been dead Teleri, for all Maedhros knew.
“Shall we sheathe our swords, content to fatten our purses, while our Enemy builds his armies in hiding?”
Also categorically, resoundingly no. His brothers stared straight ahead at nothing in particular. Only Celegorm smiled, wolfish, at their enthusiasm.
“Shall we mourn here for the lost, deedless forever?”
How could they say anything but no? They followed Fëanor. They loved him. They took him as their king. They came for war and by Eru, Maedhros would provide. Their love, such as it was, shook the walls of their keep and rattled its windows.
“There is none here amongst us who has not suffered loss at the Moringotto’s hands,” Maedhros continued. “Myself least of all. The loss is bitter; its pain a sting that cannot be soothed. Our anger is hot. Vengeance we promised, and war unending. It is time. Will you raise your swords and take the fight to the Moringotto’s doorstep?”
A resounding, absolute yes.
**
“While it warms my heart to see you taking an active interest in our war effort,” said Celegorm, “are you sure you're quite well, brother?”
Maedhros, perched precariously on a great pile of recently hewn stone, surveyed the column of Elves and broad-shouldered horses hauling rocks across the landscape to the outpost at Gwaeregond. Curufin’s engineers had begun blasting through the rock to build a great elevator that could carry these stones up the great hill up north. The winter was deepening, but the Noldor were undaunted by the cold or by Morgoth’s Orcs. Spirits were high and their hearts burned with a long-nursed desire for revenge.
“Well?” Maedhros laughed. It carried alarmingly across the snow. Several heads turned their way to see what amused their king. “I’ve never been better.”
**
“Fight me like an Orc,” Maedhros cried, wielding his sword with savage delight.
“You’re my nephew,” said Fingolfin. “And an Elf as well.”
Stern. Maedhros, an unruly, misbehaving child and he, the wise teacher, of course. Unquenchable rage threatened to master him. Maedhros, however, had been practicing. He steeled it, channelling the furious heat into precise, electric movements. Maedhros, pitiful, ignorant child fell away. He was flame, instead: fluid, swift and dangerous. Maedhros flowed around his uncle’s cautious probing, here, there, everywhere, until at last Fingolfin’s sword wavered, Maedhros found an opening and thrust.
“A point, I think,” he panted.
How far they had come from Tirion. In Mithrim, his sword at his uncle’s breast was merely child’s play. All the boys were doing it, and the adults too.
“You fight dangerously,” said his uncle, annoyingly less out of breath than he was. “Beautifully, but dangerously.”
“The Moringotto thinks he’s cursed me.” Maedhros bent over, resting his hand against his knee. A slight pain was beginning in his side. It might have been there before and he was only noticing it now. “Give him a taste of his medicine. See how he likes it.”
His uncle stretched out a hand, but then thought better of touching Maedhros’ shoulder.
“Come sit,” he said, instead.
Maedhros grit his teeth. He straightened up, breathing in as deeply as he could through his nose. His uncle was tired, but not tired enough.
“I have business with your people,” he said.
“Sit first.”
“They came for war,” said Maedhros. “Not to sit behind great walls and build lovely baths.”
“Russandol, sit.” The wise teacher, yet again. Like a petulant child, Maedhros straightened himself further and sheathed his sword. “This stubbornness serves you poorly.”
“This stubbornness kept me alive.”
The uncle disappeared and the usurper king appeared. Fingolfin gave Maedhros a long, measured look. “My people follow my command.”
“And you?” Maedhros smiled nastily. “Who do you follow, uncle?”
His uncle took his time answering. He looked up at the sky for several long moments, observing the grey clouds approaching from the north.
“I follow the One,” he said, at his most politic, “as my father, and his father, and all our fathers to the beginning of Elvish time and the divine appointment of the first kings by Cuiviénen’s waters.” He seemed to consider this, still gazing up at the sky, before abruptly looking back down at Maedhros and nodding sharply. “Yes, I serve the Allfather, and his appointed king.”
“Then you won’t go to war.”
“I’m willing to be persuaded,” his uncle corrected him gently, “but so far, my child, you haven’t made much of a case for it, besides a boy’s desire for — but I get ahead of myself. I can’t presume to know your mind.”
Maedhros’ hand twitched at his side. Revenge, so childish. Doing this won’t make you more of Fëanáro’s son. His father died conveniently and Maedhros lived rather more inconveniently. Maedhros had seen and lived through things Fëanáro had no idea about.
“I mean to make good on my father’s promise,” Maedhros said, as blandly as he could manage once he’d mastered his temper. “You speak grandly of divine appointment at Cuiviénen, uncle. But remember: there was a time when kings had to prove themselves as warriors against the Moringotto’s foul creatures. If we were to follow those ancient rules, then of the two of us, only one has suffered the Black Foe and lived to tell the tale. As Finwë and the forefathers of our people chose to leave Cuiviénen’s waters for a new world, I believe our people should have the right to choose how they wish to fight this war they have embarked on.”
**
With such an invocation, Fingolfin could hardly resist. Or rather, Fingolfin couldn’t resist Fingon, who was very persuasive when he wanted to be, but especially when he was spoiling for a fight.
**
“There have been many betrayals along the way,” said Maedhros, to the crowds of his uncle’s people. His people had been waiting to be seduced. These Elves watched him cool and impassive. There was a fine line between apology and closure. Maedhros hated apologising, especially for others’ foibles, but it was necessary. “Not least amongst them, my father’s betrayal at Losgar, despite our warning. Yet there has been great healing also. My cousin, wise beyond his years, saw the truth my grandfather perceived in Formenos, which many amongst us have struggled to comprehend: a people divided cannot withstand the onslaught of the Great Dark.”
Silence, not resounding, still unimpressed, but slightly mollified.
“Finwë’s death is a stain on our conscience,” he continued. “The king who led us from darkness to great light, felled at last by the great Dark he sought to dispel. Was it not to fight this Dark Enemy that Finwë brought us to Valinor? Did he not mean for us to learn the high arts of the Valar and one day return, that we might free our brethren?”
Still silence, but an interested one. A couple of Elves were beginning to nod in agreement. It was hard to dispute the righteousness of fighting darkness and liberating fellow Elves. Nevermind that they seemed to need very little liberating.
“Is it vengeance for Finwë alone that we chase?” Maedhros inquired. “No, Finwë’s death compels our consciences. His broken body demands we chase the higher calling. Are we not learned? Are we not skilled? Even reduced, Doomed, there is great strength and great fire in our spirits. Have we not looked into the darkness and instead of weeping or fleeing, marched straight through it? While others mourn, do we not act?”
A gradual and more concerted yes . Yes, they were brave. Yes, they were strong. Yes, they were great. Very hard to argue with such a flattering assessment, after all. Only someone like Maglor, who revelled in calling himself a coward, could quibble with the details.
“Doomed, we call ourselves,” said Maedhros. “I say Blessed instead: for why else should Manwë send an Eagle to rescue us, unless to recognise the divine rightness of our cause?”
A definitive, yes. Fingon believed it was because Manwë could never be touched by evil. Celegorm and Curufin believed it was because Maedhros was chosen. His uncle believed it was a sign of his own divine right. Maglor? Maglor believed very little. He said, it’s a lovely story, isn’t it?
“How then, o people of the Noldor, can we let this insult languish?” cried Maedhros at last. “How long before we avenge Finwë? How long before we free our brothers and liberate these sweet, pleasant lands? Shall we let the Moringotto and his foul servants laugh at us in their dark den?”
Resoundingly: no .
“You blessed people, on whom the sun shines, will you wait in patience for the darkness to breed and multiply?”
A thunderous, certain, no .
“The road is long and dangerous,” said Maedhros. “But richer and sweeter are the rewards. We take our war to the north, to the Black Foe’s very doorstep in the spring. Those who will not languish, but seek to strike the Moringotto where he hurts most may join us. I am a strict master, but a fair one. For great work, great reward. For every blow dealt, the sweet taste of freedom. For every scrap of darkness banished, a pleasant land liberated. The choice is yours!”
“Interesting speech,” Fingon said to him much later as they lounged over dinner. “How much of it did you really mean?”
Maedhros closed his eyes, listening to the ambient sound of people coming and going. Palace life, reduced and boxed up in this little keep.
“How much do you think I meant?”
“I’d like to believe it was none.”
“Poor Ingo won’t like it if you steal his title.”
“Poor Ingo insisted on bearing his entire bloody collection of icons across the Ice. Did he pull it himself? No. Alright fine, he did it a couple of times. That’s one good strong Elf wasted on useless jewellery. He’s not in any danger of being anything but Faithful anytime soon.”
Maedhros laughed. “But you’re nearly as pi, dear coz. Pragmatic, but pious. Rather like Tyelkormo, actually.”
“If you weren’t king,” Fingon said meditatively, “I’d pour my wine on your nice tunic for that.”
“It’s wonderful what a crown can do for you,” Maedhros agreed. “Protection against angry cousins. Magnet for torture and death.”
“You make it sound so appealing.”
“It has its benefits. The jewels are nice.”
“So you are better,” said Fingon, “if you’re playing the affected dandy again.”
“But they are nice. You’ve said so yourself.”
Fingon raised his glass in mock toast. “Here’s to grandfather’s exceptional eye and your father’s exceptional thievery.”
Maedhros drained his glass. “So we’re even now.”
“But truly Russandol,” said his cousin. “How much of that speech do you believe?”
“If you mean, ‘how much of it was written by Makalaurë’, he’s almost certainly fuming as much as you are.”
“Russandol.”
“I write my own speeches and everything.” Maedhros smiled at Fingon. “I thought you’d enjoy the bit about the Eagle.”
“Oh I like that bit well enough,” said Fingon. “Very nice touch. It’s the whole fighting the Dark, great war, soul of Middle-earth stuff I’m not convinced about.”
“Soul of Middle-earth! That’s very good. I’ll have to make note of it for later. Maldanáro!”
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
“Majesty! Maldanáro, remember ‘war for the soul of Middle Earth’. Do you have it?”
“War for the soul of Middle Earth.” Repeated dutifully.
“Russandol, be serious!”
“Excellent, thank you, Maldanáro. A prince amongst secretaries!”
Fingon gave him a dangerously bland look. The sort that had been mastered by all their nannies and on rare occasions, their parents. Maedhros vaguely remembered being moved by it. An old muscle, suddenly stretched out of nowhere. He had grown rather more used to Morgoth futilely trying his gimlet-eyed stare on him. He smiled at Fingon with winsome, infuriating charm. If only Maglor could see him now. He would have been so proud.
“Last I recall,” said Fingon, “you called it pure rhetoric and absolute guff. That was before Námo Doomed us and you slunk off in the night, but I remember it clear as day. You know how father is, he gets an idea in his head and that’s all anyone hears of for days . Familiar?”
Maedhros sighed, then said, somewhat acidly, “I wish Námo had seen fit to mention all the earnest speeches and conversations I’d be forced to endure in his Doom.”
“How sad for you,” said Fingon, not sorry in the least. “Freedom! The chance to rule ourselves as we please! Fresh air and the chance to breathe without someone breathing fire down our necks about the slightest transgression. You said so yourself. Now look at you.”
What Maedhros had said was, the difference between Endor and Valinor is that Endor is considerably bigger and Eru knows, we could all stand to put a lot more distance between us.
“What a delightfully romantic memory you have, dear coz,” Maedhros replied. “I recall a great deal more talk of kingdoms of our own.”
“Are they so different?”
“A man might be free and kingless,” said Maedhros. “But kingdoms rather do require kings. As I understand, we all wanted a turn at being petty tyrants.”
“Perhaps true of Angaráto, Aikanáro, myself, even,” said Fingon. “Our dear Nerwen, certainly. But is that what you really want?”
His eyes bore earnestly into Maedhros. He really did mean it. Or at least he believed he meant it. A sudden overwhelming urge to confess, to speak, to break that horrid self-imposed silence filled his lungs. For a moment, Maedhros struggled to breathe. All those healers and concerned uncles and brothers and not one of them had ever thought of asking Maedhros what he wanted.
Had Finwë felt this alone? But Finwë always got what he wanted. The whole world warped around him. It was the only time Maedhros had ever seen his father bend and warp. So Finwë couldn't have felt alone.
“Because if it is,” Fingon continued, still earnest, still probing at Maedhros' very soul, “I'll find a way to make it happen.”
**
Another life. The perfect, ideal life. A handsome young man, tall, handy and useful where Maedhros was half-handed and ornamental. A house, perhaps. Not small and cramped, but nice. Not as big as Maglor’s summer home, but large enough to give it a run for its money and with baths of its own. A country home with lovely rolling gardens, manicured into an organised wilderness. Sybaritic, but not crass. They’d fuck on every surface, morning and evening, everyday for the rest of their lives. Their friends could visit every weekend when they weren’t travelling. There would be plenty of travelling. Not for the sightseeing, which was boring. They would cut a wild swathe through Endor, finding and fucking every willing man from the west to the east. Maybe one day they’d even find those lost legends, first transgressors at the dawn of time, Dirwë and Nérwë. No Valar, no kings, no wars, no tiresome responsibilities, no crowns. No crowns at all. No. The ideal life: a nice boy, a nice home and endless hedonism stretching into blissful, idyllic eternity.
**
The ever widening gyre. Tirion, inescapable. Dead Míriel, her hand stretching out across time. Difference, insurmountable. A wall that could not be breached. They were in a new world, a new age and yet. Fingon carried all the arrogant, self-assuredness of a prince of Tirion. All of them did. They all truly believed a single, magical act could lift the weight of history leaning on them. None of them felt it crushing them, boots on their throats, forcing them to concede, submit to the inevitable. None of them except Maglor, the poet and tragedian.
**
That awful, pesky desire to weep, again.
**
There was, of course, every option of trusting Fingon.
Those eyes were so warm, so earnest. Maedhros wasn’t blind. Fingon’s long-nursed secret passion flattered him more than it irritated him. It was nice to know he could rely on someone to want him. But it was also indisputably true that every single one of them had inherited their grandfather’s gift for turning his magnetic attention on someone, making them feel like the center of the world, all while convincing them his desired course of action was their idea all along. Fëanor had it in spades. His uncle had it too. Even Manwë had believed his uncle when he said where you go I will follow . Only much later did anyone bother to observe nothing was said about crowns or kings.
Which was sort of the trouble. Fingon could mean it. Or he might not. They were their father’s sons. Nothing they could do would expunge this little fact. Not even Manwë’s act of divine intervention could wash that stain away. It only deepened it. One more unpayable debt, like Fingon’s act of un-divine intervention in Alqualondë. Keep the Crown and he remained indebted to Fingon, still his father’s son. Chase his heart and his uncle would be king. The humiliation of loss, of his own impotence, of his betrayal no matter which way he turned.
Did Fingon know? Morgoth was silent on the matter of Fingon. Morgoth didn’t have anything much to say, really. He had new depths to plumb, new rabbit holes to drill. Morgoth’s work had already been done there long before. Fingon could protest it all day long, till his face was blue. But Fingon would have known. Deep down, where he was his father’s son, he would have known how it would all unfold when he sought to reunite the Noldor by saving Maedhros’ life.
Maedhros rolled his eyes and smiled.
“The eternal do-gooder,” he murmured. “No, dear coz. Hard as it is to swallow, I really have always fancied those rubies and diamonds.”
Notes:
The songs of the dead Teleri are, of course, based on the tra-la-la-lally song in The Hobbit, here reimagined as an early sea shanty amongst Teleri soldiers (though not with the words here, lol)
Several of the lines in Maedhros' speech to the Noldor are remixed from Feanor's speech to the Noldor. Every reference to the "Great Dark" and Finwe fighting the darkness is based on the NoME entries about an Elvish heresy c. Cuivenen, where younger Elves believed they were divinely appointed to fight the "darkness" and "possess" Arda for themselves - which NoME references as the "source" of some of the later "Feanorian trouble" in canon.
Chapter 4: Uneasy lies the head that wears the Crown
Summary:
Thingol sends his reply. Maedhros abdicates, in response to the ensuing crisis of confidence.
Warnings
This chapter features a transphobic description of a character, transmisogyny, descriptions/meditations on torture, non-explicit medical procedures, a prolonged description of flogging as corporal punishment, body horror and (imagined) pregnancy & birth.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Spring. An ecstasy of sheet-changing, curtain-beating, room-airing and other desultory household activities. In Valinor, it was a season of fresh and tender beauty; a reminder of the beautiful fragility of life persisting. In Beleriand it mostly involved slush and mud. Slush on his boots, mud on his trousers and one season of misery giving way to misery of another kind. People went slipping and sliding through the gardens on rotten leaves. Not even riding horseback preserved him from the ubiquity of thawing mud, splattering on his finely polished boots.
His brothers revelled in it. Celegorm went stomping around, returning around as gleefully mud-covered as he used to as a child. Maglor and the twins embarked on some sort of elaborate landscaping project. Even Caranthir and Curufin, both notorious homebodies, went traipsing along through the slush and mud: Caranthir alone, to work off his pent-up temper; Curufin with his son because Curufin had odd ideas about character-building and exercise, even if he hated every minute of character-building exercise. Unfortunately for him, and to their collective amusement, Celebrimbor deliberately enjoyed every minute of it. He went splashing through every single puddle and collected desultory bits of wildlife to Curufin’s horror and Celegorm’s delight.
“He’s a natural scientist,” Celegorm said with conviction. “I know it.”
“No he’s not,” Curufin replied, rising to the provocation each and every time, while disposing of, variously: a grass snake, a pair of scorpions, unidentifiable jelly-like creatures from the lake, twelve eels and three jars of caterpillars and frogspawn. “Stop saying such horrid things and influencing him. He’s a perfectly respectable Noldo boy.”
Maedhros was fairly certain that this was all part of Elvish adolescence — a sort of refined, innocent passive-aggression the child could only have acquired from Maglor or the twins. Celegorm’s passions had been absent-minded, enthusiastic and indiscriminatory in the selection of its victims. All of them, even their father, had been surprised by bees in matchboxes, scorpions in pencil cases, caterpillars in their cupboards, snakes in their baths, any and every surface available boobytrapped beyond belief. Celebrimbor, on the other hand, was selective. His sudden, new passion for wildlife only ever afflicted Curufin. He was perfectly well-behaved on their newly resumed trips to the waters of the Ered Withrin; perfectly engaging on the subject of abstract algebra, if polite. It just went to show. All that character-building exercise, and Curufin still retained all his many character deficits.
Maedhros found himself wondering if he loomed as large in the boy’s imaginary as he did in Curufin’s, if it simply was the nature of a child humouring an adult, or if Maedhros really was that terrifying. It was one of those things that no one ever said, but he was left to surmise from the way people’s eyes skittered swiftly away from him, the way they had from his father. Which was all besides the point, which was that Celebrimbor was universally adored and treated as incapable of any wrongdoing. His nanny adored him. The cook doted on him. So really, Curufin was the problem and unfortunately, nobody had thought to lug any parenting books over the sea to remedy those essential deficiencies of character.
After the mud came the rain and once the rain was done, at last spring acquired a sort of wan rosiness. Maedhros’ budgerigar, which had shivered miserably in its cage all winter, despite the fire and despite Maedhros’ many indulgences, including letting her sleep in the crook of his neck while he slept, recovered its squawking spirit. Crocuses stuck their heads up through the slush. The sun grew warmer. Rivers swollen with ice melt disgorged their excesses and then sank back contentedly into their usual course. His tiger lilies unfurled themselves. Maedhros was mildly annoyed by his pleasure at their blooming. In the north, the first of Himring’s foundation stones were set to great cheers. And Angrod returned from Doriath, laden with silks and pearls and messages from Thingol.
“He wasn’t happy,” said Angrod, with characteristic understatement. “ I don’t think he liked that we waited this long before sending him a formal emissary.”
“Well,” drawled Maedhros, to general laughter, “we were all rather busy.”
Beneath the laughter, the smiles of wolves. This was another sort of circling; not of futility but of hunger. Sharks, vultures, buzzards, meat-eating leviathans, sea-serpents, monsters. Predatory creatures, scenting weakness and the imminent threat of death. Of course they were circling. Like Morgoth, circling him, or perhaps Orcs, or perhaps one of his lieutenants, or perhaps the figments of his imagination. They were waiting for that one crucial misstep, that one miscalculation so they could pounce. Maedhros could have spared them all that effort and told them the crown was bloody uncomfortable. It was heavy, unwieldy and set tiresome limits on one’s wardrobe. In the wrong light, the rubies glittered like bloodied diamonds in firelight. The filigree poked. Maedhros could have spared them, spared himself. But there was a certain thrill in knowing that if he ever failed — and he was failing, he could feel it with the certainty of the changing season — at least he would have the joy of seeing them squirm in misery in the hour of their so-called triumph.
Angrod delivered Thingol’s message while staring fixedly at the ceiling, as though inspecting cobwebs. For I am the Lord of Beleriand . Nearly all of their hands flew to the swords at their hips at those words. How provoking. Thingol’s pride must have been sorely provoked for him to go about provoking the pride of princes. Pride was a fickle beast. Sister to revenge, usually, in Maedhros’ experience. Revenge and rash acts like pointing one’s sword at one’s half-brother’s throat. This time, there weren’t even any Valar around to stop them from doing it.
And there, made evident at last: the contempt in his various uncles’ eyes, unveiled and unvarnished. He wouldn’t dare say this if we had a real king and not a boy. He would never have said this to Finwë. He would never have dared say this to Fëanor. None of them paused to consider that perhaps no one would provoke a madman who went around burning ships. Maedhros benevolently considered this point for them. Thingol might have sent them rude letters too, for their careless pride and neglect. You think you’re a king, but you’re only a boy. Even Finwë-Ñolofinwë in all his majestic wisdom, experience and lordliness was just a boy next to Thingol.
“Was that all?” said Maedhros, over the general outrage. Angrod was looking distinctly shifty. A child tempted to confess wrongdoing but afraid of punishment. Maedhros smiled as encouragingly as he could, given the insulting circumstances.
His cousin promptly stopped fidgeting. “There were a couple of private messages.” Said too airily. “For us — about family and such — and for you — family matters, again —”
“Family matters?” His uncle raised an eyebrow, attention immediately caught. “Surely we’re all family here, Angaráto?”
A brief exchange of glances on the Arafinwean side of the table. No amount of scolding could rid them of their childhood habit of conspiring even within a cousinly conspiracy. Even in their childhood, none of them could ever prove there was a third, secret conversation none of them were privy to. Now it would have been a grievous accusation. Finrod would have looked at him, martyred and wounded by the suggestion.
“He means private matters,” Finrod said smoothly, “which wouldn’t be very interesting to our council.”
Much later, Maedhros would remember to be grateful to Finrod for trying. He might even have won out, if Angrod had been a slightly better liar or gamester.
“Perhaps,” said Great-Uncle Silwë. “But I find it troubling to think one king might communicate privately with princes and thus bypass the king entirely. It was one thing in Valinor, but Manwë knows how much later strife might have been spared with judicious transparency and better attention to the hierarchy of authority.”
“No such thing, uncle,” said Fingolfin, “it’s only natural for Elwë to want to send messages in private to the descendants of his dear brother and his friend —”
“Any message concerning Finwë concerns us all,” said Cousin Alassion.
“Indeed,” said Great-Uncle Ravwë. “And I should wonder at this desire for secrecy.”
“Perhaps,” said Aegnor, “such accusations of sly secrecy and perfidy reflect the inner reflections of the heart —”
“Come now,” said Fingon, before feathers could get truly ruffled. “Such insinuations do none of us any favours. Angaráto undoubtedly has his reasons for his refusal. We must accept they are good ones. But as a matter of good faith, I’m sure he won’t object to giving us at least the summary of Sindicollo’s message.”
“I see no reason to entertain the idea,” Maglor remarked. “Angaráto must do as he was requested, which is the only honourable, decent course of action for a prince of his estate. If Thindicollo requested him to keep it private, who are we to interfere? Does a king's high estate forbid him the privileges of a private man? Shall we demand dishonour for the sake of curiosity?”
“A friendly king, perhaps,” Fingon replied, mildly. “It remains to be seen whether Sindicollo is a friend.”
“All united against the Black Foe must be considered friends,” said Finrod.
“And yet, some more friendly than others.”
“We can hardly make such claims, when our own friendship has been extended so cavalierly,” said Fingolfin. “But at the very least I agree that as a matter of policy, until we know Sindicollo better, it is best for there to be no private matters between kings.”
“Uncle,” said Finrod, clearly unhappy, “this distrust is no road to putting the past behind us —”
By now, Maedhros had guessed what Angrod was trying to conceal, and if he’d guessed, then so had his uncle. Celegorm, proud and arrogant in that spoiled child way of his, had dropped enough broad hints that their offer to Thingol was one more unspoken but well-known secret. His uncle had to know. If his uncle knew, then his uncle knew what he was doing. There it was in his eyes, opaque and hard as the cold stone they were using to build Himring. Something for dead Elenwë, or his uncle’s stung pride. Above all, the fucking Crown, slipping slowly and steadily out of Maedhros’ grasp.
“On the contrary,” said Fingolfin, “we have swallowed many hurts to put the past behind us. It’s hardly unreasonable to expect this to be reciprocated.”
“Enough,” said Maedhros, suddenly tired. “Angaráto, you might as well tell us and get it over with.”
In Angband, at least, Maedhros could grit his teeth and look into the ceiling, or wherever he imagined the ceiling was. He was meat being picked apart by greedy crows. Well he was still all that, but unfortunately a king had appearances to keep up. He plastered a patient smile on his face and waited while Angrod overcame whatever internal struggle he was fighting.
Angrod swallowed. “Concerning our proposed alliance, he says: as for a renewed and greater intimacy of our houses, I remain unenthralled by the unbeautiful, as the Noldor seem not to be. Let the unmastered master their own house, before they seek to master others.”
Angrod’s pronouncement echoed through the stunned silence. It rang through the room, the brief moment extending into what felt like eternity before everyone started talking at once. Heat crawled up the back of Maedhros’ neck. The room seemed small to him. Small and claustrophobic and awful, though not as awful as the tightness in his lungs and throat. Several of his brothers leapt to their feet, shouting. Maedhros raised a single hand and silenced them, despite the ringing in his ears.
“Unbeautiful,” he asked Angrod, knowing perfectly well what he would say, because they’d all thought it to a man, even Maglor, “or unmanned?”
His cousin’s shoulders sagged. “Unmanned.”
Unmanned (as Maglor might have defined it): origins unknown, with divergent testimonies putting its origin at the Great Journey, the first expulsion of the heretics, or Cuiviénen itself in derogatory reference to Lindar worshippers of the Allmother. Etymologically derived from √Ū, from which we derive ú , which is the ultimate negation, and √WEG, from which we derive vië , which relates to manhood and its vigour. In other words, no manhood and vigour, or, to put it simply: a spunk-loving, cocksucking, pearl-diving Enemy of Yavanna, a salt-bitch, a faggot.
Unspoken, unsaid, always haunting him at every corner: Maedhros Fëanorion, confirmed salt-bitch. Several of his cousins looked away. No one, really, met his eye. The uproar that followed was the uproar of self-soothing hypocrites. Someone might have unsheathed their sword. Grand demonstrations that meant nothing, because not one of them looked at him, not even Maldanáro, busily taking minutes. No, not true. His uncle was looking at him, no longer contemptuous or opaque but scrutinising and pitying. Can Maedhros Fëanorion perform. No, indubitably he cannot. He can’t even treat with neighbouring kings without inviting their invective and scorn. Maedhros Fëanorion is a liability.
Mostly, Maedhros heard Caranthir’s outburst, above the chorus of voices.
“You fucking tattletales,” he cried. “Repeating lies to that Moriquendi fool you call uncle — you insults to your Noldo father, you sons of beach—”
By Eru could he perform. He would lose the Crown: it was inevitable. Everything had been building to it. He would lose the Crown, humiliate his family, embarrass his dead father. But by Eru, he could perform if it killed him. He would not give Fingolfin the satisfaction of knowing his humiliation. None of them would, proud princes, grandchildren of Finwë and sons of the greatest Elda to ever live. He tipped his head back and laughed, drowning the rest of Caranthir’s foolish words, despite the raging fury and Námo’s words hammering at him: dispossessed, dispossessed, dispossessed.
“A king is he who can hold his own,” he drawled, with heavy irony, “or else his title is vain.”
**
All of that, only to lose. The magic of tragedy: every disastrous choice evident in retrospect, but only in retrospect.
**
“I think,” his uncle said softly, once the outrage had died down and both Angrod and Caranthir had departed from the council chamber in high dudgeon, “we might strike those remarks from the record.”
“You see Makalaurë,” he told his brother later, “cause and effect, after all. Unpayable debts have a rather nasty habit of returning to demand their payment. No, I do not think this will be the last debt we pay. Námo was very precise on this point.”
What did he hold? Not himself and not that Crown. But at least he still had his sword. He still had his sword. Not all of Morgoth’s schemes could take that sword away from him now.
At last, Maedhros was all grown up. His uncle had forgotten how to hold himself back, or else he really was that angry. He never showed it, his uncle. Still waters, strong winds: the province of pious Vanyar, who couldn’t bear the storm of real feeling. Like a long zither player, his uncle purified himself of ill thought, ill intent, ill will and filled himself with all those cherished virtues. Harmony, humility, beauty. The sort of thing that made a man bow his head and walk away from a sword, instead of drawing his own.
But beneath that lurked a real, red-blooded Noldo and he was here, at last, beating Maedhros at his own game.
“Recent events have proved quite illuminating, haven’t they?” his uncle inquired politely.
Maedhros bent and picked up his sword. Defeated, at last; not like an Orc, but a general and not a nephew. It would do. It would have to do.
“That would depend on what you mean by illuminating.”
“Let me put it this way, nephew.” His uncle paused. “A king has certain duties to his people. He must consider their future as much as he considers their glory. Having failed at one, one must ponder whether he might achieve the other.”
Beauty, yes, and humility too. Tempered with a fine sprinkling of pride and the ugliness of petty ambition. Maedhros’ fingers tightened abruptly around his sword.
“What need do we have for Thindicollo?” He sheathed it with savage anger. “Let him hide behind his wife’s skirts and issue threats if he likes.”
“Indeed.” His uncle smiled ironically. “As we all know, the house divided stands forever.”
“Say it, uncle,” said Maedhros. “Say you want the Crown, but let us have done with these lies and games.”
His uncle looked at him with gentle pity.
“He really has stolen something from you, hasn’t he?” His eyes scanned Maedhros’ face. “You were never so stiff-necked, child. Proud, yes. Aren’t we all? Is it not enough to have been humiliated once? But the path you’ve set yourself on Maitimo — I wonder if the only surrender you can imagine now requires your total destruction.”
The rumour spread swiftly through the various Noldor camps. Which rumour? Pick one. Thingol had insulted the Noldor and called them thieves. Thingol had called the king something unmentionable. Thingol had called the king a thrall. Thingol had called the king a madman. Thingol had rightly observed the king was just a boy. The king was sick, the king was mad, the king was a thrall, the king was abdicating, the king was not, the king was a power hungry maniac like his father, the king was being forced out, there was a coup in progress, no coup, the Valar had chosen him, the Valar had rejected him, Morgoth had chosen him, Morgoth had tainted him, Morgoth had plucked out every secret of the Noldor from his mind, Morgoth had found him unbreakable, Morgoth had destroyed him, Eru Ilúvatar had chosen him, Eru Ilúvatar had condemned him, the Noldor were doomed, the Noldor were triumphant, the Noldor needed a general, the Noldor needed a new king, a strong king, a wise king, a sane and ordinary king.
Maedhros stood at the window, watching the soft spring breeze ruffling through Maglor’s beeches. He wondered when he’d begun to think of them as Maglor’s. To the rest of the Noldor, they were his. The king’s trees, the king’s woods, the king’s lands, the king’s keep. His sheep, pasturing far below. In the end his uncle would be more than compensated for every Elf that died on the Ice, or the Battle of the Lammoth, or on the long march up north to Mithrim. None of it had ever truly belonged to him. Not the cattle, not the beautiful jewels and the gold, not the gauzy curtains gently brushing his face now.
“It’s just you and me,” he told his bird, hopping around on the sill.
She would not survive the cold up north, if not for the good offices of Curufin’s engineers, who were designing an aviary into his new fortress. There would be a greenhouse too, for his tiger lilies and any other exotic plants of interest. Leaving them all behind would streamline the building, but Maedhros cavilled. How much nicer to have a greenhouse with an aviary. He would find a parrot, a real one, and adopt her to keep this one company. He would teach her all the new and awful words he was learning. Unmanned. Maybe he’d teach her some of the dreaded speech of the foul Orc and use her to wage psychological warfare on his family.
If he was a kind man, an unselfish man, he would leave her behind here. The weather at Himring was dour and unkind; the country unforgiving, if beautiful in its starkness. She was a soft creature, meant for the warmth of Tirion, or else lands further south. He ought to leave her here, or let Amrod and Amras carry her south and release her into the wild where she had been stolen from. One little creature, taken from her home and carried away into captivity for the idle pleasure of a sickly prince. Yes, he ought to carry her there himself and let her fly away up into the trees where her sisters and brothers nested.
But now that she’d been tamed, she could hardly return to the wild. As she had softened him, he had softened her. She could not live and scavenge in the wild, when she had grown so dependent on the hand that fed her, watered her, tended to her every little need. She was used to the rarefied climate of her cage and his rooms, free of predators, free of storms, droughts, floods, pests and all the million things that brought death to the little creatures of the wild. Yes, if he released her, he would be releasing her not to some prelapsarian freedom, untainted by his selfishness, but to her death. She was warped, forever warped around him, as he was warped forever around Valinor, around Thangorodrim.
Maybe this was what Námo had meant when he delivered his Doom. Not the savage threat of punishment, but the dull statement of fact, the earnest warning of a loving but unheeded parent. Please don’t go wandering in the Pelóri, you’ll injure yourselves my darlings. Maedhros successfully broke his first bone in an unsuccessful scramble up a slippery, vertical cliffside at the nearby river, tumbling down from the foothills of the Pelóri. Forbidden, of course, to Maglor and himself by Nerdanel. So perhaps that was what Námo meant: you children of soft captivity are too gentle, too tame to survive the dark wildernesses of Middle Earth. But even children needed to run wild to grow stronger, to prove to themselves that they were capable, before they tumbled into adulthood.
“Russandol,” Maldanáro said quietly, beckoning him back to the present. He had not called Maedhros that name for a very long time.
“Have I failed, Maldanáro?” he said.
“I would say it’s too early to judge failure and success.”
“Spoken like a diplomat.” Maedhros sighed. “I meant the matter of the Crown, Maldanáro. It was my father’s only real desire, always tantalisingly out of reach. Now, here I am letting it go.”
“Are you?”
Maedhros smiled at the window. “There seems very little else to do now. Thindicollo’s insult merely illuminates. My hold over the Noldor is tenuous. Neither love nor war will truly reunite our people. If a king must rule by consensus, then, Maldanáro, I would lose anyway. I may wrestle with the dark, with the Moringotto's monsters and win. But how can an unbeautiful man win against a wise one? A people must judge their king's capacity for judgement suitable to the task at hand. I can hear you prepare to say this is a problem inherited from my father, but nevertheless, his stain will persist for as long as I am a Fëanárion — and I am unlikely to stop being his son anytime soon.”
The rustling of silks — a shrug perhaps? “It was always going to happen once the Valar blessed your uncle. I don’t think anyone’s cast off the hold the Valar have on their hearts and minds in quite the same way your father did.”
“The most extraordinary of the Eldar.”
“Quite.” The discreet shuffling of paper. “Your brother’s waiting to see you.”
“Send him in.”
The door opened and shut softly behind him. Maedhros did not turn around. He did not particularly feel like turning and seeing Curufin’s contempt, or soothing his temper once Maedhros told him what he proposed next.
“You sent for me,” said Curufin, eventually, when Maedhros said nothing.
“I did.” Maedhros held a finger out and waited for his bird to hop on to it before turning around. “The crown, Atarinkë. You will learn our uncle’s measurements and begin modifying it for his sizing.”
He briefly saw his brother’s eyes flash and his weak mouth begin to contort, before he continued on his way to his bird’s little golden cage.
“You!” Curufin spluttered ineffectually. “Surrender! That witless half-breed thief!”
“Careful,” Maedhros said dryly. “You’re insulting our future king.”
“Our father died for it and this is how you honour him?” Curufin hissed.
Maedhros locked the cage and faced Curufin at last, implacable as the sheer rock on which he was building his fortress.
“Honour? No,” he replied. “But I am realistic. I will not risk a civil war and another Kinslaying for the sake of a crown. Not, Atarinkë, when we have a higher calling to pursue.”
“And how, precisely, do you mean to assault the Moringotto and retrieve the Silmarils without an army?”
“I never said I was surrendering the army.”
Curufin made a sound of annoyance. “A prince with the power to wage war? Are you out of your mind? Impossible. Our uncle would never allow it.”
“Atarinkë, you’re forgetting your mathematics again,” said Maedhros. “Never confuse the improbable with the impossible. Besides which, you forget that our uncle likes to be thought of as an honourable man. Let him have the Crown. I will keep our border marches and therefore, our armies.”
His brother abandoned reason. “You can’t surrender our people to Vanyarin corruption.”
“I can’t stop people wanting to be corrupted.”
“People!” exclaimed Curufin. “People can be persuaded. They were ready to follow you up north. You will sell us out and destroy our father’s legacy for the sake of a Dark Elf.”
“One who will play an instrumental role in the fortunes of our war,” said Maedhros, “and, I will remind you, whose kind we slaughtered in Alqualondë.”
“Fishermen and fools!” said Curufin. “Will you go running with your tail between your legs because of the insults of some fool?”
Maedhros was beginning to lose his temper. “Atarinkë, this isn’t a request.”
“It’s that poisonous little bird of yours, isn’t it,” said Curufin, ignoring him completely. “You trust him too much. With one corner of his mouth he calls you a madman, with the other he offers you consolation. And yet with every consolation offered, he steers you as he pleases.”
Curufin had that same low and cunning expression he wore whenever he thought he was being clever and paying off some score — and all his scores were universally petty and trivial. Even snakes in grass and usurping uncles were more honourable, more honest about their ambitions. Maedhros’ lip curled in automatic disdain.
“Do tell, Atarinkë,” he said, “how is getting me to abdicate going to serve the ambitions of a man who might currently be said to be the third most powerful man amongst our people?”
“When he knows he can never advance to second or even first,” Curufin replied triumphantly. “As he never will, if he remains in your service.”
Maedhros studied Curufin’s sly and weak-mouthed expression. In many ways, Curufin had never quite recovered from the birth of Amrod and Amras and that disastrous demotion from baby to unextraordinary middle child. The entirety of his later adolescence and young adulthood had been warped around this little fact. Their parents had spoiled him too much; their father had indulged and doted on him beyond reason. All of it had just served to make him a subpar busybody and gossip. And when there was nothing he could sink his fangs into, he forged it.
“Papa knew a king must exert discipline, even when it becomes difficult,” Curufin continued. “Look at us now. Can you say Papa was wrong to burn those ships? Papa knew that an undisciplined people would grow wild and unruly. But you, Russandol, have always been too soft to understand this.”
There it was. Celegorm, nursing his injured pride with Curufin. Curufin storing away information for later. Curufin, demoted from favoured son to fifth-in-rank nobody. Curufin, a spoiled brat with a congenital need to be the epicentre of everyone’s attention and to have all the power with none of its responsibilities. Curufin, with a child's attempt at revenge.
Maedhros smiled broadly.
“It drives you mad doesn’t it, Atarinkë,” he said softly. “Look at you, lesser prince amongst lesser princes, lesser even than lesser lord of the least house. You genuinely believed our father would break with tradition and appoint you his heir.”
“Papa came to me, not you,” said Curufin. “He knew I would do what had to be done.”
“No, you little idiot,” said Maedhros. “He knew you couldn’t say no. If he wanted someone with the charisma and personality to match, he would have roused Tyelkormo, but Tyelkormo would have asked questions. You never argue, do you, Atarinkë? You’re a good little boy, daddy’s precious bootlicker and useful idiot and by Eru, Papa made use of it.”
“How dare you —”
“Poor Atarinkë, tolerated and indulged, but never quite respected,” Maedhros said maliciously. “Do you know why? Because Papa could smell it off you a mile away. Everyone could, because you, Atarinkë, married the only woman in Valinor who wasn’t a woman at all — and the only difference between me and you is that I had Father’s respect despite being a filthy homosexual, while you’re a weak-willed, cowardly faggot and Father knew it.”
Curufin trembled with rage. “You —”
“For the last time, Atarinkë,” said Maedhros. “Take that crown and refashion it, or I’ll horsewhip you for disobeying your king’s orders.”
His brother looked back with hatred in his eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
“No,” said Curufin, mean in his terrified fury, “or you would punish the seditionist first, then the insolent.”
Curufin’s eyes gleamed with the beginnings of triumph at Maedhros’ hesitation. Maedhros could already hear it, circulating through the fortress, through their towns and camps. Maedhros the Mad, forever tainted by Morgoth. Merely an echo of what was already circulating in their uncle’s camps.
“Ah Atarinkë, that was very foolish of you,” Maedhros replied very softly. “The kindness of kings is more forgiving than the soldier’s sword. He who demands the sword for another will one day face it himself. Go and finish this and it may spare you yet.”
“I don’t see that it follows at all,” Maglor said politely. They were still being extremely civil to each other, neither willing to swallow their pride and be the first to apologise. “But if you believe this failure in diplomacy reveals an essential weakness in your claim to the kingship, far be it from me to question the king's wisdom.”
Curufin had obviously run straight to Celegorm with his tail between his legs. If Maedhros knew anything about Maglor, Maglor would have had something sarcastic to say to Celegorm: younger of the older sons, now united in their disapproval of the eldest's mad course of action. Celegorm betrayed none of this when he planted himself in front of Maedhros and said is it true. Unembellished, straightforward, the general on the eve of his demotion, interested in knowing what job, what privileges he would have tomorrow.
“Is what true?”
Celegorm simply crossed his arms and waited, impassive.
“If you’re going to make trouble, say so now,” Maedhros snapped, irritated by his brother’s gesture.
“Trouble? No, not from me.” Celegorm smiled, unpleasantly. “But I do wonder about your choice to focus all your ire on your brothers. Threats, Russandol?” He tutted. “Kings don’t crack whips, they act. If you can't be king of the Noldor, you must expect people to ask the next, logical question.”
Maedhros matched his smile with one of his own. “And that is?”
Celegorm patted his shoulder patronisingly. “You’re clever enough to work that one out for yourself, Russandol. I won’t patronise you.”
What was Maldanáro’s crime? One ill-advised comment to a man who officially held a higher rank than he did. But Maedhros had made a promise and the word of a king was the foundation of his government; the word of a general, the strength of his sword.
“Hypothetically speaking,” Maedhros asked Caranthir, “in the eventuality it became necessary to do so, could one create a means of separating assets and gold that belongs to the Crown and our family in a way that eased the transfer of the treasury?”
His brother turned very red, his knuckles white where they gripped his pen.
“Ideally,” Maedhros added casually, ignoring the deepening of Caranthir’s colouring and the trembling of his hands, signs that always presaged one of his outbursts, “in a way that arranged things so as to be rather more satisfactory than not.”
With great effort, Caranthir mastered himself and hissed, “that’s corruption.”
“Beloved child, no,” Maedhros sighed. “Recall the substance of the Formenos arrangement in delineating what in Tirion's vaults was private and what fell under the treasury's purview, and therefore: what was for safekeeping, and what was for public spending. Do you follow?”
Maedhros watched his brother turn red enough to explode.
“And the arrangements prior,” he continued, “to separate Father’s estates from those of the Crown Prince’s. It’ll make it much simpler for everyone, really. Much less moving around. Much less vulnerable to thieves, spies and other lowlifes.”
He thought his brother really would get up and punch him in the face, or shout something about how they couldn’t surrender the Crown, couldn’t give up their father’s one dream. Curufin, naturally, had complained to him too. Caranthir, however, had a much healthier fear of Maedhros’ temper than either Celegorm or Curufin. He pursed his lips in distaste and visibly swallowed his many objections.
“How long do we have?”
“Months,” said Maedhros. “Maybe less. Perhaps weeks. The winds turn fast, Carnistir.”
A flurry of letters, uncles and cousins. Not Fingolfin, who’d had his say. Great-Uncle Ravwë, who said, stand firm boy. They’ll try to poison your mind, convince you you’re weak. You’re not weak, you’re tired. You’ll recover. He was desperate to believe this. Lady Arimeldë visited with Fingon, carrying over sweet jasmine to put him to sleep. Maedhros had it thrown away immediately, terrified that someone might try to slip something into his dreams. Finrod came and went and remained polite, kind but uncommitted. There were concerns. Everything was forgiven, of course. No, that Kinslaying? All in the past, dear cousin, all in the past. Still, there was a fine membrane between them. Us, them. My cousin might one day pick up a sword and kill me. Only natural for Finrod to be polite, but uncommitted. Solicitous, but distant. Great-Uncle Silwë asked, solicitously, if he was sleeping properly and offered him his own healer. His wife sent Maedhros various potions of her own concoction. For sweet dreams, she said, for deep sleep. Maedhros had his own tinctures and threw them all out. I thought I’d made three month’s worth, Kemmótar, surprised. How extraordinary, lied Maedhros. Anyone could have taken it. Anyone at all. There were always people coming and going, after all; maids coming to clean his rooms. How extraordinary, said Kemmótar, looking straight into his eyes. Cousin Elenárë played him the harp in the afternoons. The sound of the strings grew loud, metallic, morphing into ugly, harsh, individuated hammer-strikes until Maedhros felt he would burst out of his skin, or out of his head.
**
Everywhere, the eyes of his people, his brothers, his vassals, his servants, his healers following him around. The invisible eyes of Morgoth’s many spies: birds, spirits, creatures, his long hand stretching out across the dark. Above, the blinding, fiery eyes of Arien by day; the cool, silvery eyes of Tilion by night; and a million eyes of Varda watching, unrelenting, unstoppable. And everywhere, omnipresent, unbearably, unendurable: the eyes of Eru Ilúvatar bearing down on him.
**
Above all, the fucking crown glowering at him, casting him in blood from its velvet throne.
Maedhros was being operated on by a hundred different hands. Twenty. Fourteen. Ten. Their fingers poked and prodded at him. They loudly hemmed and hawed, their faces obscured by the blinding white light of the healer’s surgery room. Nurses, healers. The nurses wore the white gowns of Lórien's dead and dying. Their hands were soft and cold. He was flat on his back, splayed out on a table for the childish reenactment of birth. Yes, there beneath the loose robes was the unfamiliar bump. His whole body was swollen up and distended with the excessive life festering inside him. He could feel it squirming, pressing against his spine, against the membrane of his body by turns. No, it wasn’t meant to be alive. In all their reenactments, it was dead. A doll, some mockery of life. The whole thing a disgusting, absurd farce.
Maedhros detested it. The whole notion repulsed him. It was one thing to play at being a priestess of the Allmother, making an affectionate mockery of her fertility rites. There was something alluring about the act of pretense, of becoming the woman that society at large would much rather have and yet rejecting her spectral figure. Here were cocks and asses instead of cunts and wombs, refusing reformation, correction, natural orders and all that sort of dreary thing. With the act of birthing, the excess of pleasure morphed into abjection. Clever satire became farce. All that self-abnegation for something that couldn’t be, would never be. Maedhros found the whole thing absurd and humiliating, much more humiliating than the waiting room of Morgoth’s torture chambers.
There was a sort of dignity to torture. Something done: people probing, touching, shouting, everything imposed and therefore resistible. The whole point was the game of wills. On the one hand, the will of the torturer; on the other his victim. The body was a battlefield for this war of wills. He was a citadel, besieged and under attack. The invading army might have stripped him of his defenses, but still he had his mind and his will and as long as he could hold to it, Morgoth could do nothing but bang futilely on the walls of his body. Even the mind games and manipulations had more dignity to them. Morgoth was the one inflicting them on him. Maedhros never asked for it; even by the end when he might have begged or said something foolish, it was all Morgoth. It was all Morgoth. Always Morgoth. Only ever Morgoth.
The ritual reenactment of the Mother house was pure humiliation; a celebration of the abject, uncontrollable nature of the body. Men wanted it. Men dreamed of it. Men, on the outside looking in, wishing they could be like ordinary women. Once they stripped off their clothes and wore those birthing robes, they surrendered control of themselves. Will could take you only so far. The involuntary nature of birth rendered the actor helpless, pathetically vulnerable to the whims of his healers who might take perverse pleasure in making him stretch and strain like a woman until they finally tired of it. Morgoth’s torturers had no idea about sick pleasures. All that torture was just another job for them. Impose it, force it, until at last his body gave some involuntary shudder. No, there was Morgoth too, mocking him, relishing his terror, relishing the way his body shrank from his touch, but had no real escape, relishing the feeling of pressing against Maedhros’ mind, relishing saying things like, oh I don’t know if your brothers are that bothered about you. No, no, it was simpler than all that. It was games of watching and waiting. Poor boy, what will you give to escape the dark? Starving him out, till he begged. Waiting for him to break and beg for a drink of water. A stick and carrot: how high will you jump, little boy, to get this carrot? No, Morgoth and his people didn’t even need to do that. He did it all himself. Yes, that was the worst of it, the revelation of his own essential weakness and final desperation to please —
“All hands on deck, please,” said the Healer. “He’s nearly ready to launch. Any minute now and we’ll be sailing full speed ahead.”
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: Except the Allfather build the house : their labour is but lost that build it. Lo, children and the fruit of the womb: are an heritage and gift that cometh of the Allfather.
“I’m not giving birth,” said Maedhros. “Let me go at once.”
“Best get the rigging in,” said the Healer, “or it’ll be bellows to mend with.”
“That makes no sense,” said Maedhros. “You’re mixing your metaphors.”
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: Like as the arrows in the hand of the king: even so are the young children.
“Let me go," he cried. "I don’t want to play your fucking games.”
The healer poked his stomach. Pain shot through him.
“As I thought,” said the Healer. “Clear the deck, my dears. The storm’s on the horizon.”
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: O Eru Ilúvatar most holy, O Eru Ilúvatar most mighty, O holy and most merciful Allfather, deliver him not into the bitter pains of eternal death.
“You don’t even worship the Allfather,” he protested.
A terrible seizing pain gripped his stomach. Maedhros cried out. He tried to move his hands to touch the offending spot. Leather straps cut sharply into his arms at the movement. He was imprisoned, bound on every side.
“Stay calm, boy. Brace yourself,” said the Healer. “Heave-ho!”
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: Eru Ilúvatar have mercy on us.
“It's the wrong —” The rest of Maedhros’ sentence was swallowed by another sharp, convulsive pain in his abdomen.
“Heave, boy, heave,” cried the Healer. “Put your back in it!”
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: O great Manwë, from whose spirit nothing is hidden, save this woman thy servant; Who putteth her trust in thee.
“No I don’t,” cried Maedhros, through gritted teeth.
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: Be thou to her the wind beneath her wings; the strength of her spirit. Conceal her beneath thine pinions and hide her from the face of her enemy.
Maedhros screamed. His whole body tensed and pushed. Pain shot through his thighs, arms, shoulders. It pierced his head like a sharp steel rod. Leather cuffs bit into his arms, into his ankles, into his thighs, pulled wide and embarrassingly apart.
“Heave-ho,” cried the Healer. “Heave-ho, boy!”
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: O Eru the Father of all things: have mercy upon us Marred children.
“I won’t, I won’t,” shrieked Maedhros. “You can’t make me.”
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: From fornication, and all other deadly Marring; and from all the deceits of the Marred world, deliver us, Eru Ilúvatar.
“The storm’s upon us now, boys,” roared the Healer. “Man the rigging and mind the sails!”
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: Shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Allfather most holy, O Eru Ilúvatar most mighty.
Hands, hundreds of hands, touching him, stripping him, casting aside even the dignity of the birthing robes. No, no, don’t cry . Someone wiped his brow with a cool cloth. Maedhros spat and snapped and bit. But the hands he bit were dead, cold and ghostly and bloodless. They patted him, soothed him, smoothed his hair and firmly, coolly, lovingly, held him down until he was immobile. Ten years married and no child. Immobile and exposed. A marriage must have children — without children, what sort of a marriage is it? The nurses had no legs, only white frayed gowns that floated above the floor — silver hair — a flash of white —
— in Angband, the screams, the horrible screams, echoing off the dark — eternal, unending childbirth —
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: All-knowing Námo, with whom do live the spirits of the Children, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh: deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this Marred world.
— Orc after Orc, birthed into that horrifying abyss —
“Give her her head and let her fly,” roared the Healer. “Some grog for you boy —”
“No.” Maedhros shook his head. “No.”
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: From lightning and tempest; from battle and murder, and from sudden death
“It’s devil to pay out there,” said the Healer.
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: From all sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion; from all false doctrine, heresy, and schism; from hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word and Commandment
“And bellows to mend with —”
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: O Eru Ilúvatar, who alone hears our prayers, deliver him from these and all other evils!
He’s mad he's completely mad — here grab him — Manwë’s balls Russo — more hands holding him down, rough, callused Celegorm and strong, slender Maglor and practised, professional Maldanáro — give me my sword you fucking bastards — his voice unused, unpracticed — Ruanel chanting hypnotically promise us you won't use it and you can have your sword, Russandol.
No — not that at all — Maglor singing soothingly — just a little more for me, Russandol — just a spoon of medicine for me — a little poultice for my sake — kindness, so much kindness — an ocean of kind gentleness — a hand gently spooning the sedative into his mouth and stroking his hair — sleep sweetly, dear Russandol — a kiss on his forehead.
Fingon and Maglor, sweet and gentle — Russandol, do you want to talk about it — you can always talk about it — you know we’re always here for you — we love you, Russandol — we love you, but you frighten us when you talk like that — you don’t really mean that, do you — but you want to live — everyone wants to live — Russandol, don’t talk like that — Russandol talk to us, let us in, let us in — there, there little boy, it’s so lonely, isn’t it — you can always talk to me, yes me, I’m not the villain your father or your brother believes me to be — it’ll all be easier if you just let me in —
His body convulsed, involuntary, uncontrolled. Pain wound its way around him and gripped him like one of Ossë’s serpents, bracing to crack his ribs. The dead women wailed and with them the dead Teleri.
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: Eru Ilúvatar, have mercy on us!
“Straight downwind,” cried the Healer. “Steady!”
Maedhros’ vision whited from the pain. The squirming thing was wriggling inside him, like a thousand eels racing downstream to reach the sea. His skin was taut, tight, a waterskin filled to the bursting and now filled past it. Any minute now, any minute. The thing that was within him pressed against his ribcage, heaving, convulsing, contracting, expanding, reaching, reaching ever outwards.
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: Manwë Thúlimo, have mercy on us!
“Reef the mainsail!” shouted the Healer. “It’s now or never, boy. Heave! ”
“I’m not giving birth,” Maedhros shouted. “I’m not —” a terrible moan wrenched its way out of him as the thing forced itself between his ribcage, pushing bones and muscle and organs apart. His body groaned under the strain, bones popping from their sockets and muscles tearing themselves asunder, “I’m not playing your sick game.”
“That’s right, some grog will set you straight,” said the Healer, and attempted to pour horrible, burning homebrew down his throat.
“Let me go,” yelled Maedhros, half-spluttering and half-spilling the awful drink. “Let me —”
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: Námo, Lord of Dooms, have mercy upon us!
“Heave!”
His body heaved against his will and with a dreadful crack and the sound of deerskins falling away from sinews and muscle and bone, Maedhros’ flesh split open.
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: Earth to earth
Maedhros screamed. His ribcage parted. His flesh and skin were rent asunder.
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: Ashes to ashes
“There she blows!” cried the Healer, and a great, shadowy, bloodied hand extended into the air.
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: Dust to dust
Pain. Pain and darkness and a million stars. Then another shadowy hand and a head.
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: From the green sward to the third and final awakening, by the might of the Allmother —
The shade rose from its bloody grave. It rose and rose, darkness falling on either side, till it eclipsed the room with its bulk. Up and up, until it finally stood free of Maedhros’ body. All shadow, except for the flame of its mane of hair. And on that mane of flame, glimmered his grandfather’s crown, each jewel alight with its inner fire.
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: — whose song shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto her glorious body.
“No,” breathed Maedhros, staring at the shadowy giant, suddenly furious at the crown glittering on its brow. “No. NO!”
THE CHORUS OF NURSES: Praise be to the Allmother, world without end, So Be It!
With a great roar, Maedhros broke free of the leather ties that bound him. The ghostly dead fled as he threw himself at the terrible shade. They fell to the ground, grappling each other. The shade’s hands were cold, hard like diamond and steel. Its arms and thighs were sinewy and it had two hands where Maedhros had one. But Maedhros had righteous fury, the terror of death and the desperate man’s hunger for survival. Torture had stripped away the soft, fleshy parts of him. Torture had sharpened him, whetted him until he was steel and flame. Morgoth had broken him, but Morgoth had remade him. Deep down in Angband, Nelyafinwë Maitimo, spoiled prince of the Noldor had been melted down and in his place, Maedhros had been reforged: fierce, hungry warrior of a warlike, lawless land. The shade was strong, but the fire of Maedhros’ spirit was hot and ancient, stoked by thirty years of captivity and with nowhere to burn.
In that moment, Maedhros truly believed in his invincibility. With a war cry he dug his fingers into the shade’s face and with the weight of his body, flung it on to its back. Its head hit the stone floor with a sharp crack, baring the full length of its throat to him. And with another cry, Maedhros dug the stump of his hand into its throat and pushed, pushed, pushed against that unyielding fleshy surface. Flame blazed from his hand, filled his body like purifying light. His fingers curled around its neck and filled with that wild impulse for survival, empowered by that flame, he hit its head against the stone floor again and again and again, choking it all the while until its body jerked and seized like a strung-up marionette, jerked and jerked and jerked like a lizard’s tail, thrashed like a poisoned lizard, its body wracked by deathly paroxysm after paroxysm, until at last the shade fell still. Still, Maedhros dug his hands into its fleshly, shadowy body, deeper and deeper until at last, the white flame of his spirit covered it and devoured it and there was nothing left but ashes and gold.
Hand trembling, Maedhros reached for the crown. Its jewels glinted fantastically. Even in the silvery light of the moon and stars, its rubies pulsed with inner light. Living hearts, throbbing, bleeding.
Maedhros’ fingers closed around its gold filigree. Triumphant, he seized it for himself.
“Prostrate yourselves,” he told his ghosts, his shadow in the mirror.
OLWË’S GRANDSON, THE HEALER, AND THE TELERI DEAD: Eru Ilúvatar, have mercy on us.
“I am no king,” he said. “I am more than a king. I am indestructible.”
MÍRIEL, DEAD, ALONE: The greatness of the Noldor shall not be eclipsed!
**
**
In the morning, Maedhros awoke in his bed.
**
All evidence of his struggle was gone, if it had ever happened. Had he dreamed it? Imagined it? The world was porous and strange. Even the orange gold sunrise was unfamiliar. Maedhros stared at his stump, searching for the ghostliness that sometimes dogged it. He felt like someone had held his head in a bath till fire filled his lungs, then water. He felt like he’d drowned, burned and then risen from the dead again. Everything was foreign to him. Unreal, and yet real. Too real, too vivid, too glossy, like a beautiful painting rendered in loving brushstrokes, framed in gold, and cast beneath perfect lighting, to lift every detail out of the background. Daisies on his counterpane this time. A meadow in springtime. Gentle. Mild. Unreal, real, but not so real as Maglor, asleep and clinging to Maedhros’ good hand. His palm was cool and dry. In his sleep, Maedhros could nearly believe Maglor was as innocent, as loving as he liked to appear in his songs.
“Makalaurë,” he said.
Maglor stirred. Maedhros admired the way his brother stretched for an invisible audience, before deigning to look at him.
“Maitimo,” he said.
They studied each other, two proud princes, unwilling to bend in case the other gave way first. His brother looked wilted, wan like in those early days, when Maedhros could still do things like fling his bowl of soup away like a tantruming child, hurl cutlery at people’s heads and demand all kinds of exotic pleasures, just to see his brothers despair as much as he did. It only ever worked on Maglor. Celegorm was just unimpressed. Celegorm had spent too much time with his nephew.
Maglor yielded first. “You were thrashing in your sleep. We came to look in on you.”
“We?”
“Maldanáro, Laurefion.” A pause. “I was awake. I heard noises. I came to check.”
“You sent them away.”
“I thought it best.” At last Maglor looked away. “People talk, even if they don’t mean to.”
“Naturally, you’re the soul of discretion.”
His brother was silent for several moments while he mastered his temper.
“I know you resent me for leaving you up there,” Maglor said evenly. “I don’t suppose you’ll ever forgive me for it. I’m not brave like you or Tyelkormo, but I am loyal. Even when I disagree with you, Maitimo, I follow. It’s not nothing.”
Maedhros looked out of the window, suddenly tired.
“What would you rather have me do?” Poor Maglor. He believed so genuinely in the bitter end and still wanted to be good. “People are beginning to whisper about — your outbursts.”
So much of his return was an endless game of absolution. Maglor wanting absolution for abandoning him. Celegorm wanting absolution for having listened to Maglor. His string of brothers, guilty about breeding hounds and making themselves gold necklaces and cushioned chairs while Maedhros hung from the side of a mountain. His uncle, for having pushed Fëanor into the madness that led to this. Servants, staff, cousins. An endless parade of well-wishers. Dear Maedhros. Dear sweet Maedhros. We tried, we really did, but you know how it is. And everytime Maedhros smiled and said, don’t worry about it or I understand. Never, ever, the much longed for I forgive you. Even a king, a thrall had limits.
In Himring, in that cold and windswept land, Maedhros could be alone at last. Free, at least, of tiresome civilisation and people who looked at him like he was fragile porcelain, about to shatter at the slightest touch.
“Outbursts, or madness?” Maedhros inquired. He turned in time to catch the tail end of Maglor’s wince. “You know they’re all thinking of dead, stubborn Míriel. So sweet, yet ineffably, indisputably, Marred.”
“More like father.”
“Ah, but father got it from somewhere, didn’t he?” Maedhros smiled. “I’m quite aware of what’s being said. We’ve all done our fair share of it, haven’t we? Airetirmo got the worst of it, until father’s moods became too erratic to ignore. No, I suppose you meant well. Everyone always means well.”
“Míriel, then,” sighed Maglor. “Dead against all good sense and advice, yes. You were quite vocal about wanting your sword, wanting to die — wanting to fall on your sword — and Fingon, bless him —”
“Findekáno is his father’s son.”
“Fingon is his father’s son.” Maglor’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t think he ever learned how to keep secrets from his father.”
“At last, he comes to his senses,” Maedhros murmured. “Lauro, you understand —”
“I understand,” Maglor said angrily. “I understand that they look at you and see a madman, a man unmanned, so Marred by the Moringotto that he rejects Valinor’s pitiful ambitions: a beautiful wife and three sons of his own.”
“You know,” observed Maedhros, “I rather suspect you’re angrier that while they’ve given up on Valar worship, they haven’t turned to your precious Fairindë as yet.”
His brother gave him a mulish look, before suddenly melting into a boyish grin.
“Oh alright,” he laughed. “I can’t imagine why having thrown off one master, they’re so desperate for another.”
“Ah Lauro, very few people aspire to be rakish libertines,” said Maedhros. “They mostly want gold, comfortable lives and the soothing belief that they have some control or say over their future. Rules can be very comforting for that sort of person.”
“So, you’ll abdicate.”
“At the very least, the council will vote,” said Maedhros. “I have every reason to believe one of our many uncles will ask for a vote of confidence.”
“You’re very calm.”
“Why, I thought you’d be quite happy to hear it! As you say, we have more important callings to attend to.”
“Yes, but to have the chance to do it with dignity,” said Maglor. “You were — are — grandfather’s heir.”
Maedhros shrugged and held his tongue. Better let Maglor believe it, better let them all believe it. None of them needed to know, or believe, that one day the Doom would stretch its hand out and take Fingolfin, the oldest of their line, but not the only one.
“Dignity and rest.” Maglor sighed again. “You aren’t going to rest, are you?”
Maedhros smiled and patted Maglor’s hand. “No, my beloved brother. You, of all people, should know how tiresome I find sleep these days. There is a war to be fought and I suppose I have more reason than others to fight it. In the meantime, I intend to salvage some part of my reputation — for strength, if nothing else. One can't quite expect people to go to war under a weak general.”
“That all sounds very ominous.” Maglor hesitated. "You know —"
“Not at all, dear boy, not at all,” said Maedhros, ruthlessly heading him off before he could say something entirely truthful. “As you and Atarinkë and Tyelkormo have so forcefully put it to me, there is a distinct lack of discipline around. I merely mean to whip our people into shape. No, don't frown Lauro, I dislike it when you frown. Do send an invite to the family for lunch tomorrow. Yes, all of them, but we needn’t involve Ñolofinwë or Findaráto for now.”
Cause, consequence, conspiracy. There might have been a moment when Maedhros could have chosen differently. The competing ambitions, the webs, the ever-watching eyes — no he couldn’t. One treason birthed another and another, until the betrayals spread cancerously outwards.
“Congratulations, Uncle,” said Maedhros. “You have your wish. I only hope you enjoy it half as much as I have.”
“You know I set aside the hurts that lay between us,” said his uncle. “You know I follow the will of our people.”
His uncle was a good man. An excellent man, merely constrained by Fate. Pesky little thing, Fate, getting in the way, constraining people. If no one was responsible, no one could truly be bad, could they?
“I know many things, dear Uncle,” said Maedhros. “Some of them even thanks to the Crown. I hope you too might savour their joys.”
So easy to solve this little problem. Simply sit back, raise his shoulders half-heartedly. Sorry uncle, but you wanted this job. The perks are: a beautiful crown and all the power you could want. The downside: you try ruling my brother with an iron fist. Maedhros could see his uncle, smile in that sad, pitying way of his. He would say, of course, dear nephew — but he is your brother. As Fëanor tried to keep me, you too must try to keep him. Therefore, Celegorm would have to be reined in; therefore, Maedhros would make a point; therefore, an innocent man would suffer.
Too much loyalty, too little: it was all the same. In a flash, it could be rendered suspect. All it took was someone motivated, someone high-ranking enough, a wolf in prince’s clothing. Of course, the difference between a wolf and a prince was that a wolf could be killed. A prince could not, not unless Maedhros wanted a revolt on his hands.
What was it to be a king?
There was a lovely tapestry in the Palace at Tirion. Finwë, kneeling before Manwë and Ingwë, anointed with divine light drawn from Varda’s wells. On the right, Manwë extended a young fruit of Laurelin. On the left, Ingwë, bestowed the sceptre on Finwë. Very elegant, very lovely, essentially false. His grandfather — his other grandfather, rather — had made the sceptre in Atyamar. Crucially, Finwë was king long before that. So said the histories. Long before Valinor, in those murky, ancient days from before memory, where his grandfather had once rejected the Valar as tyrants.
In that murky time before time, his father said, Finwë proved himself a man, a hunter and therefore, a king. In that time before time, when kings could no longer decide whether to hand down power to their sons at the appointment of the Valar, or by the changing of the seasons, Finwë took matters into his own hands. Like the ancient kings at the dawn of Elvish time, he waited for an auspicious confluence of the stars and went down to the waters of Awakening. There he listened for the memory of Eru Ilúvatar’s words, held in its song. Once he had filled a cask with starlit water from the springs that woke Imin, Tata and Enel from their slumber, he went on a great hunt.
Primordial, unknown evils still wandered Arda in those days. It fell to kings and sons of kings to prove that not only could they be wise and just, but that they could be brave and mighty. In the days of Eru Ilúvatar’s long silence, kings and sons of kings turned to what they could to fumble their way in the dark. Only natural to believe that it fell to them, the Elves, to fight the great Dark that encroached on every side. There was no Ilúvatar, no Manwë to tell them otherwise. What other purpose could have brought them into a fair world, so hemmed in by evil? None, except to vanquish it and so vanquishing, prove themselves worthy masters of the bliss and beauty of Arda.
So Finwë wrestled with and slew one of those primordial evils, his father said. In doing so, he proved himself a king, for what was a king but his people’s first line of defense, the first bastion of light in the great encroaching Dark? In doing so he proved himself a man, a master of his own lesser, baser instincts.
**
Here he was, a boy who should have been a man; held perpetually at the doorstep of manhood because of his own essential weakness, the perpetual thorn in his flesh. But laws had been made and broken once and in this ancient, lawless land, they could be reforged again. A man in Valinor depended on the blessings of kings and fathers. In dark Endor, in lawless Beleriand, he could prove it the old way: one man, strong enough to vanquish a monster. One man, wrestling with the great Dark and triumphing.
**
Masters of the selves; lords of the Unsullied Light. His father proved himself king when he made the Silmarils. There were no monsters, no great darkness to vanquish in Valinor, unless it was the darkness in the heart of every man and woman. There was only unending light. Unending, that is, till it ended. Foresight? No, his father was as dull at matters spiritual as all of them. His father merely knew this: he could never beat Fingolfin at the art of government; therefore he would have to defeat him on the playing fields of the great game between Everlasting Darkness and Unsullied Light.
**
Well, he’d already suffered the Everlasting Darkness bit. Nothing could get much worse than Morgoth, really.
**
Untold by his father: the rest of that little tale, though his great-aunt, bitter over her sister’s death, was more than willing to supply it. After that great, forbidden triumph over primordial terror, Finwë came to her sister, one of the three great broideresses tasked with the weaving the Allmother's oracle. He wanted a blessing, she told Maedhros, sharp grey eyes unseeing, or else all-seeing. He wanted greatness. He was promised greatness, of course. Who could say no to Finwë? No one had ever said no to Finwë. Greatness, she said, great darkness and light . Her voice climbed higher. Fool that he was. Everyone knows darkness must precede the great awakening.
**
Who was the greatest monster of them all? Not Morgoth, in his miserable dungeon. No. The greatest enemy, the only enemy, was man himself.
**
Unsaid by his great-aunt: now look at us, sitting in the darkness again.
**
The Unsullied Light of Eru and the Everlasting Darkness of the Void, locked in eternal battle: the triumph of being versus the triumph of nothing. It was all very romantic and made for pretty speeches, but Maedhros had his own revenge to pursue — and by Eru, he would do what it took to turn their people’s heads and hearts towards it.
Maedhros waited till they were all well-feasted, mellowed by good food and better wine, to make his move. Not even the lingering spectre of Thingol’s insult could dampen the mood. Reconciled, satisfied and certain he’d won, Maglor was in fine fettle. He lounged negligently on one of the chairs, keeping Great-Uncle Ravwë and Great-Aunt Thoronië amused with his prattle. But Celegorm was certain of his victory too, flirting outrageously with both Cousin Elenárë and Lady Turavennë. Only Curufin watched him, wary. A wild deer who scents the hunter, but can’t see him through the dark woods.
And there was Maldanáro, of course. Great-great grand-nephew of Finwë through some ancient great-great-uncle, left behind at Cuiviénen. Too royal to be a commoner; too common to be a royal. Too wild. His mother’s public grief; Maedhros’ private joy. Too wild, therefore also, the talk of polite society. Oh, princes could be wild. Princes would be wild. But one day, they would settle down. Look at Maglor and his beautiful wife. Poor Maitimo simply had to find a wife of his own. In the meantime, how sweet, how kind of him to take that wild boy into his employ. Perhaps some of his influence would rub off on him. Contrary to Maedhros’ private fantasies, there was no rubbing off. Maldanáro had more self-control than he did.
No, no he was getting ahead of himself. He had:
- A duty to maintain discipline, whether as king or general
- A duty to the Noldor to cultivate respect for its princes
- A duty to his father, to demonstrate the house of Fëanor still had its pride and its incorruptibility
- A duty to himself, to demonstrate the strength and mastery he already possessed
He had to. He would.
“I have been thinking about riding,” he announced, during a lull in the music. “What makes the difference between a good rider and a bad one — and how one might distinguish between the failings of a rider — and his steed.”
His pronouncement was met with well-mannered confusion.
“Surely the rider makes the horse?” Celegorm called across the room, when no one answered except to murmur amongst themselves.
“Perhaps,” Maedhros replied. “Perhaps not.
“Why, the good rider makes the beast,” said Maglor, very comfortable from his repast. “He uses his whip sparingly. His diligence speaks for him. The bad rider only can resort to whip and rein. Thus, the mouth and hide are ruined, and so the beast.”
“Perhaps,” Maedhros repeated. “And yet, I find myself pondering the recalcitrant, ill-behaved steed.”
“Horses are wild creatures,” said Malicontar. “Only natural for them to kick against their traces.”
“Surely not,” said Uncle Almatar. “Why they’re as wild as our hounds! Which is to say, not wild at all; not when they come of good stock and good breed.”
“Indeed,” said Maedhros. “Good stock and good breed. Bad blood will show, as they say. How truly we see this.”
Several members of the family cast sidelong glances, hoping someone else would know and understand Maedhros’ meaning.
“Is this an allegory, Your Majesty?” said Aranyë.
Maedhros smiled. “Why, does the wild, unruly horse sound familiar, cousin?”
“Not at all,” she replied, cordially. “I was merely curious.”
“As am I, dear cousin, as am I,” he replied. “Blood will out! But how shall we distinguish between the ill-bred steed and the lame rider?”
“I suppose,” said Maglor slowly, “one would have to try the same horse out in different, skilled hands.”
“Clever Makalaurë,” Maedhros murmured. “And thus we come full circle. Which comes first, the bad horse or the bad rider?”
“Perhaps neither,” said Great-Uncle Silwë. “Perhaps all that matters is what is to be done with the bad horse, before it is completely spoiled for work.”
"Indeed — and what is to be done, dear uncle? What is to be done with the recalcitrant steed?"
"Your Majesty may differ," said Great-Uncle Silwë. "For my part, I believe the rider must prove himself master and a firm hand, first."
“Magnificent.” Maedhros clapped his hands. “Now we’re getting somewhere. A firm hand, yes. The bad horse requires both a sensitive mind, and a firm hand — and where needed, the whip. Used with discretion and great wisdom. Not in excess, but applied with the force of the master who will not brook disobedience. Laurefion, my hunting crop, if you please.”
His valet obediently placed his horsewhip in his hand. A fine, single braided shank and thin leather thong. He lightly flicked his wrist and felt it flex. Yes, it was still supple despite years of disuse.
“Thank you Laurefion,” said Maedhros. “You may leave, if you like.”
Maglor was the first to break the awkward silence.
“Somehow, I don’t think we’re talking about horses anymore,” he observed.
Could Nelyafinwë Maitimo perform? Within limits. But Maedhros, forged, reforged, broken, remade, could at least stand and say his lines with conviction and strength, if not low cunning.
He beamed at all of them. “Clever Lauro! No, indeed not. I leave my horses to my horse-master, as my horse-master leaves my people to me. I suspect you all must know what I refer to, but nevertheless let me be precise. It has been brought to my attention that there has been an air of indiscipline and unruliness amongst our people. Worryingly, it turns towards sedition, even defamation of the Crown.”
A stifling, dead silence descended over the room. Maedhros surveyed them all. His cousins, Great-Uncle Ravwë, Great-Aunt Thoronië, his younger brothers, his nephew, confused, intrigued, nervous. Curufin, torn between triumph and terror. Celegorm, still too self-satisfied. Maglor, looking at him with dawning horror. At his right hand, Great-Uncle Silwë, cool, collected. Inscrutable, except for the tapping finger, betraying his worry.
“And so I wonder, dear family, how such a matter should be resolved,” Maedhros continued. “As you rightly say, the firm hand, the whip. But how much, I wonder, and to what degree. How should the punishment fit the crime?”
“That would depend on the nature of the crime,” said Maglor, in a low voice. “And the degree of the injury.”
“But my dear Makalaurë, I have already made myself clear! Sedition and defamation of the Crown, a crime only lesser only than treason,” Maedhros replied. “Shall I be more explicit? Certain epithets — worrying in implication, and slanderously untrue.”
No one moved.
“What? Will you have it more direct?” Maedhros glanced around. “Are we so meek, so innocent now? As I heard it, such epithets were not unknown and unused amongst those present here.”
“Your Majesty grieves us,” said Great-Uncle Silwë. “But were we to know the substance of these accusations, then we might answer accordingly.”
“So we are all coyly innocent,” said Maedhros. “Very well, uncle. In my magnanimity, I shall make all things clear. I speak, naturally of Maglor the Meek, and its more recent companion, Maedhros the Mad.”
Another deadened silence, so rich Maedhros could hear their breathing.
“Dear aunt,” said Maedhros to Lady Thoronië, “I think we can dispense with the servants and the musicians, don’t you?”
How much they looked like bedraggled birds, huddled together in the rain or snow, as the footmen and musicians left. Only his nephew ventured to say something to Curufin, who immediately hushed him. Was he finally remembering Fëanor in Formenos? Tyrannical and implacable in his rage? Was he finally remembering how often he hid his precious son away, to preserve the innocent memory of an indulgent grandfather? Good, thought Maedhros viciously.
“Idle gossip,” said Maedhros, when the doors shut behind the last of the footmen. “The province of fisherwomen and stablehands. Yet rife amongst princes and the sons of princes. Shall I say now, blood will out?”
“What, will you still deny it?” demanded Maedhros, when no one spoke. “Then I will speak for you. Uncle Silwë, you are a fair man, a wise man. Then tell me, have you, as a little bird tells me, spoken of this little, er, problem with others present here today?”
His great-uncle met his gaze unwaveringly.
“I have always held my brother and his heirs in highest estimation,” he replied. “You and Makalaurë no less than others. Perhaps, Your Majesty, your little bird has secrets of its own.”
“Careful, uncle,” said Maedhros. “You tread a dangerous path. Your words suggest I am either a liar, or a fool.”
“Your Majesty is mistaken. I question the integrity of his advisors.”
“Of whom you are one.”
“And no more nor less than others,” said Great-Uncle Silwë. “I speak, at all times, as my heart compels me, and with the respect accorded to each according to his station. If such words have been spoken, they have, as you said, come from those of lesser wisdom and therefore, one must assume, of lower station.”
“Lower station, hmmm?” Maedhros turned, idly surveying his gathered family. “Lower station, perhaps, as a fourth or fifth cousin, uncle?”
His eyes locked with Maldanáro. A master of self-control, Maldanáro. His face was blank, as inscrutable as a sheer face of rock. Everything — all of it hinged on Silwë’s answer. Maedhros turned back to him and silently begged him to lie once more. One more lie, and all of this could be swept away. An idle warning, to be laughed at in relief, once the doors were opened.
But Great-Uncle Silwë was a man of great wisdom and greater self-interest. He knew, perhaps, that worse than the wrath of a king, was the wrath of a king usurped.
“Perhaps,” he said.
“How dare you,” cried Aranyë, leaping to her feet.
“My lady responds,” said Maedhros. “Miracle of miracles! I congratulate you, cousin, for some honesty at last.”
“It’s a conspiracy,” said Aranyë. “It’s a conspiracy — all of you power-hungry, jealous —”
“Aranyë,” said Maldanáro, cool and self-possessed. “Sit down.”
His sister trembled with rage, but she obeyed, which was more than Maedhros could say of his brothers.
“Maldanáro?” said Maedhros, hoping that he, at least, would lie and deny the accusation.
His secretary, cousin and childhood friend was too much the professional to betray any true feeling.
“I was asked, yes,” he answered, truthfully. “And I answered in your defense. Were you in the throes of what might otherwise have been called madness? Perhaps.” There was a general outcry at this. Maldanáro raised his voice, “but if it was madness, then it was nothing but the natural response of the body and spirit, to the Black Foe’s torment — and who amongst us can be said to have suffered his torment and lived?”
Maedhros raised his hand and silenced all the protests.
“An interlocutor, cousin?” he said.
Maldanáro smiled. “Your Majesty, I confess only to my misdoings. Let others answer as their conscience leads them.”
Maedhros turned back to his great-uncle. “Now, uncle, answer me. How would my grandfather have answered this?”
Silwë’s eyes darted to the whip in his hand. “I do not believe that my brother ever had any cause to answer any such insolence during his reign.”
“But how unfortunate, uncle, this is the second time you’ve disappointed me today. Let us hope there will not be a third time.” Maedhros casually flexed his whip and noted all those who flinched. Most of his brothers. Only his nephew watched, bright-eyed and curious. The eyes of the Allfather are all-seeing. Perhaps he saw through the eyes of young children. “How unfortunate that so few of you were there with us in Formenos. But my brothers should know: and I will tell you what they know. My grandfather ruled you with the might of his sceptre; my father, with the might of his sword. I save my sword for the Foe in the north and rule thee as the kings of old ruled their subjects.”
“For Eru’s sake, Russandol,” cried Maglor, finally rising from his seat in protest. “This farce has gone on for long enough. Be done with it and let us all depart from here and count ourselves chastised.”
“But my dear brother,” said Maedhros. “Who will defend your honour against these, er, accusations of cowardice, if not I, your humble liege lord and king?”
His brother was innocent, of course. A murderer, but essentially innocent. Innocent, martyred, selfless, loving brother dearest, the only man who could stand Maedhros’ irascible tempers. As Curufin was to Fëanor; so Maglor was to Maedhros. Most loyal, most loving brother. Maedhros was only returning the favour. A treat for the favoured. It was what Maglor wanted after all: to know that he and only he had the right to whisper truths and lies into Maedhros’ ear. Not so nice to get what one wanted, after all. The flash in Maglor’s eyes said so.
“For mere words, Russandol?” said Maglor. “Have we not had enough violence already?”
“Makalaurë, you begin to wear on me,” said Maedhros. “But to please you, I shall eschew the four and twenty strikes of our forefathers. For every accusation, a strike of the whip. Thus, my dear cousin is spared for her wholehearted defense of her beloved brother, and the rest of you shall wield the whip through my hand. Maldanáro, if you please.”
**
“Now, dear boy.” Morgoth, as in a bad dream. “It’s such a waste. My poor lieutenant! I do believe this hurts him far more than it hurts you.”
**
What right did Maglor, did any of them have to protest? They wanted this. There was no reason for his uncle to have spoken to Maldanáro, for Maglor to have overheard it. No reason at all.
But this was the way of all flesh. Longing for something, and when one finally got it, turning around and saying, no, this is not it. This is not what I wanted at all .
**
Maldanáro stood face to face with him, bare-chested. Straight out of one of Maedhros’ most private dreams and all wrong. His eyes were cold. Shuttered. Proud, so proud. A little give and take, Maitimo, that’s the trick. Maybe he looked at Morgoth that way too. Cold, proud, unyielding. A tree unbent by evil’s foul torments. Maldanáro’s eyes were never cold. Even at his most professional, there was always a residual warmth, amusement lurking in their depths.
“Are you certain you don’t remember who you were speaking with?” Maedhros asked him in a low voice.
“I remember,” Maldanáro replied coolly. “But as I said: I will not confess on another’s behalf.”
“Even now —”
“Even now?” said Maldanáro, quiet, but not so quiet that the walls and stone, damn them, couldn’t carry those words to all those present. “Be serious, Russandol. Art king, art not? Your word is law. None compel thee, but thou thyself.”
**
“Now, now, little prince.” Morgoth, hearty, booming, Finwë-like. “You can stop this right now, if you like. You have all the power.”
**
Fury, like Uinen’s tides, deep and unceasing.
**
“Bend,” he said angrily.
“No,” shouted Aranyë, leaping to her feet once more. “He is no — common — outlaw —”
Maedhros struck, swift and without warning. The sound rang vibrantly across the hall. Several stood or hid their faces at the sound. His cousin only flinched a little, despite the red welt now forming across his back.
“He is not an outlaw,” Aranyë cried again, struggling futilely in Maglor’s arms. “Let him go!”
“One,” said Maedhros.
**
What did Morgoth do? The Crown Jewel question. Surely Morgoth tortured him, like a lurid fantasy. Beat him till he was bloodied. Starvation. Maybe Morgoth threw him on a wheel until his bones began to crack and Maedhros screamed. Maybe Morgoth burned him. Maybe Morgoth dissected him and cut him open and pulled at his insides. Maybe Maedhros had died or nearly died and been revived several times over by Morgoth’s many dark arts. Maybe Morgoth tied his arms and legs to horses and made them pull in many directions. Maybe Morgoth practised hanging him and then stopping, just before his spirit fled. Maybe Morgoth forced him to bend and kneel for hours on end, because he wouldn’t of his own will. Maybe Morgoth held his head underwater, poured water over a rag over his face till he choked. Maybe he nailed him to a piece of wood and hung him up. Maybe he emptied ice on Maedhros, scraped iron over his skin, cut him, flogged him till his skin broke, tied him up, held him down, keelhauled him, invaded his mind, raped him: every horrible, torturous fantasy possible and known to the Noldor and lurking speculatively in their eyes every time they looked at him, every time they saw some tiny sliver of a cut peaking out through his clothing, every time they saw the stump of his hand, every time he said something unwise, every time he lost his temper, every time he stared out of a window too long, every time he drank too much, every time he drank too little, every time he raced his horse too hard, every time he said he was bored, every time he slept too much, too little, nothing ever, ever quite right again.
**
“Five,” counted Maedhros and struck again.
**
The sharp hiss, the sharp intake of breath. Morgoth, threatening now, listen, you little wretch, write this letter, or else.
**
Of course, he was worth more to Morgoth alive than dead and he knew it — and Morgoth knew he knew it.
**
“Seven.”
It took all of Maedhros’ will not to flinch at the crack of his own whip, at the wince of Maldanáro’s body. He watched Maldanáro’s chest rise and fall. Each breath, rough and uneven. Sweat had begun to darken his light hair. Eight. Maedhros’ knuckles tightened around the handle at the grunt of pain.
**
Yes, maybe Morgoth did all that. Maybe Morgoth put Maedhros through the fire, till Maedhros was melted down to the bone.
**
But no, that wasn't true. Morgoth lost interest in him within a week and let him rot in a dark hole. Occasionally they would bring him out and Morgoth would ask him the same questions over and over again. Will you go back. Will you leave. Will you let me be the winner. No, no and no. Morgoth let him rot in that dark hole until he decided hanging Maedhros up on the side of the mountain would kill two birds with one stone: torment him till he reached breaking point and demoralise all the Noldor, all in one go. Effective, questionable. But damnably efficient.
**
Ten.
**
An itemised list of torture inflicted on Maedhros, dredged up from memory:
- A little light flogging — twenty strokes, three different occasions
- Water torture — once
- Starvation — once, but Morgoth nipped it in the bud when he remembered about Elves fading
- Thangorodrim
- Nothing out of the realm of things he’d done for sport with lovers in the past
**
“Eleven.” At last, a cry, torn from Maldanáro like the ships from the dead Teleri.
**
Not entirely accurate. Angband was its own torture. A single drop of water, falling on his face for all of eternity, while he went mad, alone in the dark.
**
“Enough, Russandol.” His brother, a coward and a good man.
“Twelve.” A single fine line of red.
**
How to explain the crushing emptiness of the lonely dark? The slightest sound agitated. The slightest light hurt. Worst of all, the absence of time. In that lonely dark, the mind turned upon itself, like rats in a nest that was too small. Did Morgoth say any of that? Did Morgoth do any of it? Did it matter? Did it matter if he did it to himself?
**
Not much, really, to impress. Not enough, perhaps, to invite sympathy. Not enough to excuse his litany of mistakes and mishaps. Just enough to justify the obvious. Bad blood will out.
**
Maldanáro was panting through gritted teeth. This close, Maedhros could see his arms trembling, the tightness of his jaw, the vein leaping against his temple. Maedhros steeled himself and raised his arm again.
“Thirteen.” It fell deafeningly, shatteringly into the silence. Maldanáro shouted, strangled, abortive. Proud, so proud. Strong, to Maedhros’ essential weakness.
**
No, not silence, someone was weeping.
**
You could make it stop at any time. Always, Morgoth dangling the carrot over his head. He could always bite. Sometimes he thought, why not? Why not! Maybe he should. They’ve clearly forgotten you. There was no reason to be loyal. Nothing at all to cling to. No sweet and unpoisoned memory. He could be good, couldn’t he? He could be good. Yes, in this way he was unlike Morgoth. No, he was not like Morgoth. With each blow, Morgoth would hold the carrot over his head and leave the implicit if you obeyed, you could have it all hanging there. But Maedhros made no such promises. Maedhros was honest. In this regard, Maedhros was doing him a kindness, a favour, keeping them both honest —
**
Fifteen. One more than the ranks of the Valar. One blow for Morgoth, accusing them all at every turn.
**
In this regard, Maedhros was doing him a favour, because Maedhros didn’t expect Maldanáro to believe he could make this stop. Not really. Not in the way Morgoth drove Maedhros to the very edge, till dying felt like the only way out of the impossible choice —
**
Sixteen. One for the eyes of Eru Ilúvatar, watching through his nephew.
**
And truly, he’d given Maldanáro every chance to lie, to turn over Great-Uncle Silwë, a chance to walk it all back: be contrite, pretend none of it ever happened, walk away with your dignity intact and let Maedhros walk away with the last vestiges of his manhood untouched, without having to resort to such brutality.
**
Seventeen. You know, sometimes I think you’re this stubborn because you enjoy this secretly . Did Morgoth say this? Did he? Did it matter? It snaked its way through him, wrapped itself around his ribcage, grew tendrils into his heart, his mouth, his nose until he choked on the thought. Maybe he did enjoy it. Maybe he enjoyed it because he’d always enjoyed it. In innocent Valinor, Maedhros kneeling for a lover and letting him whip him and both of them, hard as a young Elf in the first throes of sexual ecstasy. So maybe he did enjoy it.
**
Eighteen. None compel thee but thou thyself. Maldanáro had to know how that would enrage him. Yes, there it was, in that look. Beneath that pride, pity. Could he see the way Maedhros’ heart beat against his ribcage? Could he smell Maedhros’ terror? Maldanáro was the only one who understood. If it was madness, then it was nothing but the natural response of the body and spirit, to the Black Foe’s torment. Maldanáro saw and if Maldanáro saw and did this, then Maldanáro knew, Maldanáro chose to do it, so Maedhros could find the courage or at least the rage he lacked, and if Maldanáro did it, then Maldanáro understood and Maldanáro was willing and if Maldanáro was willing —
**
Even in innocent Valinor, it took trust for one lover to know the other would never be unreasonable, would stop, would never cross the invisible faultlines that underpinned such dangerous games. When Maldanáro bent over that table, Maldanáro had to have trusted that Maedhros was unlike Morgoth; that Maedhros would stop; that Maedhros would never cross the invisible faultlines that protected body and mind from total annihilation.
**
Nineteen.
**
Perhaps Maldanáro wanted it. Perhaps Maldanáro wanted Maedhros and knew he could never have him for the asking. Perhaps this was the only way it could ever be the two of them. Perhaps all that sweat, all that heavy, erratic breathing was as it had always been in innocent Valinor. Perhaps if he looked, he would find Maldanáro, hard beneath his trousers, hungry for every strike that Maedhros delivered. And perhaps he would feel it too, that twinge of arousal, that feverish pleasure, pulsing through his cock, with every single strike. Perhaps Maldanáro wanted nothing more than for Maedhros to beat him, smith him like gold till every impurity was purged, till he was perfect, and once he was bloodied, show how much of a man he was by bending Maldanáro over and taking him right then and there. Perhaps Maldanáro wanted nothing more than the exclusive trust between a man and friend, a man and his secretary, a man and his right hand, laid bare with every single willingly taken strike of the whip.
**
Twenty. Another scream. They would hear it downstairs, in the kitchens and upstairs, in the bedrooms: cooks, footmen, cleaners, pausing in their work to wonder at the whims and fancies of their masters.
**
Yes, yes it had to be. It had to be. Maldanáro had to understand why he had to do this. He had to know how swiftly Maedhros’ power was slipping away, how hungry the wolves nipping at his heels were. He had to — he had to —
**
Twenty one.
**
No, no, no, no that was Morgoth — the voice of Morgoth — seeping into his bones — haunting him at night — Morgoth, bursting out of his flesh — worst of all — worst of all, maybe he was Morgoth, wielding the whip for some selfish purpose; worst of all, like Morgoth, inflicting pain on the innocent, in pursuit of his own power; not driven at all, not trapped at all, nothing of the sort —
**
“Twenty-two,” said Maedhros, and watched dispassionately as a final piece of skin tore itself away and a sliver of red joined the other three criss-crossing Maldanáro’s back.
He lowered his whip, his own chest heaving in time to his cousin's and with the brutal, crystal clarity that followed such violence, knew what a terrible thing he had done.
Aranyë gave a great cry and slipped free of Maglor. She flung herself across her brother, weeping.
Maedhros surveyed the collection of pale, stunned faces. Later, he would remember the spilled glasses of wine, the remains of their mostly-finished lunch. Curufin clutching his own, precious son to him, hiding the boy’s face in his robes and poorly trying to cover Celebrimbor’s ears with his robes. Celegorm and Caranthir, looking at him like he was one of Morgoth’s wolves. Maglor, horrified, paralysed, speechless for the only time in his life. At the time, Maedhros only really noticed Celebrimbor’s latest acquisition, a tortoise, crawling slow and unbothered across the floor. When had it gotten in there? The poor boy must have brought it, hoping to unleash it at some incorrect moment on unsuspecting Curufin. Hysterical laughter choked Maedhros’ throat.
Maldanáro straightened up. Tall, proud, clad loosely in his tunic, his sister clutching his arm. His eyes shining with involuntary and unshed tears. Cold. No, cool, but pitying.
If he was another man, a coward and a good man, he would swallow his pride and throw himself at Maldanáro’s feet and beg. I can’t think why I did that. No, he knew. He knew exactly why, had thought it all through long before he came down to lunch. He knew, clear as day, exactly why he’d reached for Maldanáro and shattered him, like one of his many soup bowls. Because out of all of them, Maldanáro was loyal. Maldanáro was a good man and a kind one. And so, unlike his brothers, unlike his uncles, unlike everyone else, Maldanáro would understand and therefore, Maldanáro would never hurt him in revenge.
If he was another man, he would cast all care to the wind and apologise. Maglor would apologise. Maglor was very good at apologising. But Maedhros, Maedhros was a man’s man, his father’s son through and through, from Valinor to Beleriand. Maedhros had never apologised in his life.
“I trust I’ve made my point?” he said, his voice steady and inexorable like the great marble pillars that raised Tirion up from the earth.
“Very clearly,” Maldanáro replied. He bowed stiffly. “Your Majesty.”
Later, much later, Maedhros tried, while they drafted the letter responding to Fingolfin’s letter of no confidence. Maldanáro smiled, kind and detached, and said, in the gentle chiding voice of a master to a student, Russandol, a prince must never doubt his actions, however unpopular and unpleasant.
In the words of Finwë, there was no going backwards: only relentlessly forwards.
“Cousin,” said Finrod, pi as his brothers and sister. “None will ever equal your magnificent courage and strength in the face of the Moringotto’s torments. Such bravery must be sung of in song and yet, deeds of song alone cannot be the basis of government. A king is a general, yes, and the arm of the law, yet that alone is not the substance of his rule. Yet what profit is there in the rule of law, if it rules through fear, strength and the power of the sword alone? No, you are wise cousin, but law untempered by mercy can only destroy.”
**
Those blessed, saintly children of Finarfin, always perfect and always failing to come through in the greatest hour of need. A failing that they came by honestly, from their Teleri side. Impossible to be angry with them.
**
“Whipping a prince of the line of Tata?” Fingon tutted, a discreet dimple forming despite the ostensible disapproval. “Really, what have the times come to, Russandol?”
**
The inciting event: a skirmish between soldiers on the borders of their respective camps. A fistfight, but swords were drawn. The spectre of Kinslaying loomed large again. The catalyst? An insult, of course, to His Majesty’s health and mental acuity. Maedhros the Mad, again. What could Maedhros do? He had the offending parties whipped. Both sides. This pleased no one.
**
“Six letters of no confidence,” said Maldanáro. “Your uncle, Findekáno, Turukáno —”
“No surprises.”
“—Itaramo, Lúlenaran, Lauretar.”
Maedhros watched Filitári worry the corner of one of the letters. Turukáno’s, judging by the length of the letters. Not even Fingon would break with his father. Good sons rarely did and Fingon was very good. Blessed, in fact, eagle and all, if the deluded followers of Fingolfin were to be believed. Really, who was to say it wasn’t all happenstance? That Thorondor had simply happened to look that way, had pity on the two of them and came swooping in to save them from their own terrible decisions? Filitári now, she was a loyal bird, but unfortunately there was little she could do to save Maedhros from his current predicament. She simply wasn’t grand enough to entice Fingon over to his side. Sweet, but not blessed and certainly not a messenger of the Valar. There were limits to the miracles she could work. She was a charming, intelligent creature made to be loved and indulged, no more and no less.
“So,” said Maedhros, “the first fractures begin.”
**
Dispossessed! Such an ugly word. So fraught, so laden with unpleasantness. It conjured images of destitution, misery, embarrassment, men puppeted along by hands stronger than their own. A cottage in the country with a tiny garden, instead of rolling lawns and a sprawling villa with fantastic marble pillars. His uncle, of course, continued to detest all unpleasantness. It said so in his letter. But with many regrets, etcetera. Well, at the very least, he was still his father’s son. Unpopular, feared, the manifestation of all the things the Noldor couldn’t bring themselves to want with all honesty.
“Hear this declaration of His Majesty, the King of the Noldor, O people of Fëanáro,” called the town crier. “On this tenth day of Lairë, in the seventh year of the sun —”
Their faces glittered prettily in the fresh morning sun. Merchants, farmers, here and there some of Maedhros’ newly minted knights, listening intently as the crier read Maedhros’ letter. There was Amras too, with the accompanying entourage. He was casually holding his grey in check with the reins looped loosely around one wrist. A beautiful, serene pastoral scene. A perfect study, like market day in Tirion, or a festival at Ezellohar. Beautiful, artfully arranged, false and cliched.
Someone would paint it in earnest one day, or insultingly turn it into a tapestry. Each stitch, each thread picked out by delicate, clever hands and keen eyes, to capture the way the sunlight caught and glittered in the steel of armour, the damp marble fountain, the rain-drenched leaves of trees. Or else the painter would see the eternity of mud, splattered across cobblestones and stretching out into fields beyond, at odds with the rich scarlets, ochres, violets, teals, peaches and cerise silks worn by the wealthier members of the audiences. Perhaps he would capture the sun, glittering in the Finwëan star picked out in fine gold thread on the town crier’s white tunic. Or perhaps, the precise moment when the white banners bearing his father’s star were replaced by his uncle’s blue and silver banners; the light twisting and shining in the silver and gold threads, like pale shadows of his father’s Silmarils. And there, in the corner, perhaps, the keep with its dark and oblong windows and on the second floor, a single pale face at the window. Maedhros, reduced to an insignificant blur in the backdrop of events much greater than one mere Elf. A wonderful entry in the facade of history and essentially false.
**
“Abdicate?” said Amras. “But —”
“Well, it was always going to happen, wasn’t it?” Amrod said wisely. “Uncle Nolvo —”
“That cunt —”
“If only,” said Maedhros. “They’re much more easily mastered.”
“I don’t think so,” Amras said thoughtfully. “I don’t think you’ve met enough —”
“So what now?” said Amrod, sensing that Amras was treading on forbidden ground. “The council might still vote in your favour.”
Maedhros half-smiled, amused by their naive hope in Great-Uncle Silwë. All wrong, of course. Maedhros had been so intent on Celegorm and Maglor, he’d made a beginner’s mistake. He had forgotten there were other means of betrayal; that a man might choose to change sides if only to spare his grandchildren the whipping he refused to deliver himself.
“There are beautiful lands to the east, I hear,” said Maedhros, skirting the question. “Lauro and I’ll be going up north. Keep the Moringotto on his toes. I think you’ll enjoy the eastern country. There’s good hunting there, according to Tyelkormo.”
The twins briefly exchanged glances.
“You’re demoting us, aren’t you?” said Amras. “There’s too many of us and you can’t employ all of us in your —”
“Diplomacy,” said Amrod, with a sidelong look. Maedhros wondered how that would have ended. Useless games. “As long as we get to keep the hounds.”
**
Did they hear the insult? Did they look to the great balcony and wonder why Maedhros refused to address them himself? Curufin, always concerned with keeping up appearances: you can’t not address our father’s closest supporters. You don’t get it do you, Celegorm, proud and irascible, that’s the point. Eldest of the line of Finwë, said Maglor, staring at the ceiling with a gaze approaching angelic, of a line doomed to die. Maedhros smiled elliptically, elusively. Say whatever you like, he told his brothers. As long as they bend the knee to the rightful king. Ah, said Maglor, soft and yet loud as the town crier, but what is rightful?
**
Summer. The glorious climax of spring. The fields were ablaze in a riot of colour, their roads with messengers and the Noldor, of unrest. They convened on the first day of the summer. All of them wore swords at their hips. Not playthings, but the real deal. Most unfortunate it should come to this, said his uncle, as the doors were locked behind them. Most unfortunate, echoed sagely. No one quite looked at him.
**
I, Nelyafinwë Maitimo Fëanárion, the first of his name, by the grace of Eru Ilúvatar, High King of the kingdoms of the Noldor in Valariandë, do hereby declare my irrevocable determination to renounce the Crown for myself.
**
“A ballot!” fumed Celegorm. “Of all the insults! Let them revolt like men, damn it all.”
**
“You will present your sealed written declaration,” said Lady Artamanyë, the only uneasy compromise between their competing factions, as one of Finwë’s distant and non-partisan cousins. “This will be countersealed by the forum, in the presence of all. You will then kneel and declare your decision. You must hold yourself accountable, not to the princes present, but to the all-knowing, almighty wisdom of Eru Ilúvatar and the grace of the Valar.”
**
“Let me be clear,” his uncle said blandly, at the foot of the dais, looking up at Maedhros. He was flanked by Fingon, Turgon and several of Aunt Anairë’s male relatives. None of them were bothering to conceal their swords. His uncle, of course, was charmingly unarmed and unarmoured, and thus, innocent. “We have tried the ways of the kings of old, Maitimo, and it has failed our people. But there is a way that is older than the old trials of body, mind and spirit, from the dawn of Elvish time itself and if mere trials alone will not save us, then the council of the wise must serve.”
**
Once upon a time in Elvish history, in the dawn before the dawn of Elvish time, one hundred and forty four Elves gathered by the waters of Cuiviénen and waited for Eru Ilúvatar to speak and mark the next successor to the Three Fathers with a crown of starlight.
**
His father must have known it too, when he encased the Unsullied Light forever in the Silmarils.
**
“At the end of the declarations,” said Lady Artamanyë, “the forum will declare the new king and you will swear your fealty to him, or else depart in exile.”
**
“By these words I fully and directly renounce my right to the rule and governance of the realm,” read the crier, “together with the name, honour, regality and majesty of the throne.”
“Come away,” said Maglor, as the inevitable whisper rippled through the crowd.
Maedhros followed docilely. Did they hear the exemptions? The great lords Lonatur, Lásatto and Veryohtaro would hear the absences: rule, but not the might of the sword; governance, but not power. Could he rely on them? Could he rely on anyone? His brothers were bound by an Oath, greater than the might of the sword or the bonds of blood between them. And yet, what was the power of Eru Ilúvatar against the Elvish heart and mind?
**
Great-Uncle Ravwë rose first and faced the forum: princesses and serious-faced lords, chosen from across their ranks to observe the proceedings. He ignored the row of icons and swore only on Eru Ilúvatar.
Maedhros Fëanárion, scratched their pens.
**
There were limits to his uncle’s persuasive powers. He would be a wise king, a great king, but his rule would always be marred by a single fact. Like a cracked bowl, mended again with gold, the weakness would remain. A single failure, one little fall and it would shatter beyond repair. He could see it already in Finrod’s eyes. Across the span of years, across the divide between life and death, dead Míriel stretched her hand out and still reached for them.
**
Finrod knelt before the icons. The late morning sun lit his face with an otherworldly, inner light. It caught in his hair, in a radiant circle of light. Blessed, Maedhros thought. Very blessed. Neither of his brothers were present.
“In the name of Eru Ilúvatar, who maketh all things; Manwë Súlimo, who seeth all; Námo Nurufantur, who judgeth all; and Ulmo, who blesseth all; I Findaráto Ingoldo Arafinwion, as prince and lord of my people, seek to abstain —” his voice rose over the raucous protests of both Fingon and Celegorm, “— Whom the One hath appointed, none may remove. Whom the Valar hath blessed, none may curse.”
**
“My dear boy,” said Great-Uncle Silwë. “I remember your grandmother like it was yesterday. Such skill! Such clarity of vision! No one could make silk like her — indeed, I don’t think we ever shall. Such generosity too. There are many, who having attained such level of skill, would seek to withdraw and deny their secrets to lesser craftsmen. But your grandmother was a generous woman who believed in the utility of her craft. What good is it if there’s no one to challenge me, she used to say. What good if no one learns and no one thinks to themselves, I could do it better than her. Now that’s a challenge. We all mourned when she died. I remember your father too — he used to be far more generous in his youth — but that is neither here nor there. And then there was you — yes, I held you too, mere days after you were born. You’re a fine man, Maitimo. A fine and generous young man. I should hate to see you go the way of your father — no I mean no insult — but you have so much of your grandmother in you, dear boy. Yes, I remain loyal to my brother’s memory and to hers.”
**
“In the name of Eru Ilúvatar, Manwë Súlimo and by the grace of the Valar,” said Great-Uncle Silwë, eyes cast heavenwards. Maedhros heard very little else. His brothers all leaped to their feet as their uncle spoke the cursed words.
Finwë-Ñolofinwë , scratched the pens.
**
Very little mattered after that.
**
“Seven abstensions.” Lady Artamanyë read from the piece of paper, signed and countersigned by herself, Aunt Lalwen, Galadriel and Aredhel; witnessed by Lásatto, Glorfindel and Turinando. “Eight declarations for the current king. Twelve for Ñolofinwë Arakáno Finwion.”
**
Dispossessed at last. Maedhros smiled and thanked them all for their honesty and rejoiced at the way they all flinched, to a man.
**
“What did you promise him?” Maedhros asked his uncle.
His uncle was standing straight-backed by the window in one of the little antechambers to the Council room. It overlooked one of Maglor’s landscaped gardens, this one of rocks and shrunken trees and hedges. The shrieking laughter of children floated up to them, dimmed only a little by the closed window. How lovely for them; how distant all of this was. They lived for today, still in the fresh spring of their lives, when all the world was new and so were they themselves. They were unburdened by what was and what would yet come. Such fears and griefs were the burden of age. Fears, horrors, griefs: yes, they all touched them, slowly sanding down the fresh hopefulness of youth into a refined unhappiness. After a time, all that remained was the unhappiness. For now, Celebrimbor would shrink slightly from him at one moment, and at the next, run out to play happily with Huan, fear forgotten and youth triumphant.
“Nothing,” his uncle said, after several moments of silence. “Nothing, except the fair and judicious application of the law as we knew it in Valinor.”
“You mean you won’t whip a prince.”
“There are better ways of handling sedition, even treason.”
The aftershadow of Fëanor, with his sword pointed at Fingolfin's throat, hovered over them both for a moment. Nothing more enraging, truly, than a man who kept his calm in the face of utmost provocation. It drove his father round the bend.
“Perhaps,” said Maedhros. “But I made a promise.”
“You are young,” his uncle replied. “You speak too rashly.”
“Would you have done any differently in my place?” Maedhros demanded. “On the one side, my brothers, ready to tear each other apart. On the other side, your people, scrutinising me for the slightest misstep.”
“It’s very kind of you to leave me out, Maitimo.” His uncle finally turned to him. “I truly was prepared to help. I promised your father, after all.”
His uncle was a patient man. A proper hunter, as Aredhel would say, and not only because he acquitted himself with distinction in the saddle. He was content to wait and wait until the moment was right. While Maedhros had been fighting on the familiar terrain of war and glory, his uncle had quietly opened a second front. Every speech, every declaration, every dramatic gesture was one more proof his uncle could hold up to all and sundry to demonstrate the essential streak of instability that ran through their family. You’re a fine man, Maitimo, I should hate to see you go the way of your father. You remind me of your grandmother. In the great standoff between their families, both Maedhros and his father had failed to understand just who was winning against whom.
“Kindness reaps kindness, uncle,” said Maedhros. “As we reap, so we sow.”
**
Forever, the spectre of the Doom, stalking them, more persistent than any Elvish hunter. Treason of kin unto kin. But only one of them had promised vengeance and bloodshed, to anyone who got in their way. Unlike his uncle, unlike his cousins, unlike the Noldor, Maedhros had a higher calling.
**
Whereas, we recognise the many grievances that have lain between the children of Míriel and the children of Indis, with such injuries having been inflicted not only on the persons of our families, but having spread amongst and fallen most grievously upon our people.
Whereas, in the name of unity, in furtherance of the cause of peace, and in gratitude for the valour of the house of Ñolofinwë in our hour of dire need, I waive such rights and entitlements to the kingship as hew to me according to my blood and my birth.
In token whereof I have hereunto set my hand, this ninth day of Lairë, in the seventh year of the reckoning of the sun, in the presence of the witnesses whose signatures are subscribed.
SIGNED AT
VANIMONDO
IN THE PRESENCE OF
His Grace, Prince Silwë, son of Túrwë
His Grace, Prince Ravwë, son of Túrwë
His Grace, Prince Makalaurë Kanafinwë, son of Curufinwë Fëanáro
His Grace, Prince Findaráto Ingoldo, son of Arafinwë Ingoldo
His Grace, Prince Findekáno Astaldo, son of Ñolofinwë Arakáno
Dispossessed, but not dead and not finished. Therefore, if he could not prove a king, then he would prove himself the bloodiest scourge Endor had ever seen.
Maedhros could be patient. He had very little choice, really, caught between the hammer of Morgoth on one side and the anvil of his family on the other. Fingolfin had won the battle, but Maedhros intended to win the war.
Down below, the children continued to play, heedless of all that was happening above, behind locked doors.
“I would not have had it happen this way,” said his uncle.
“Even if there were no grievances, the Crown would still come to thee, eldest here of the house of Finwë, and not the least wise,” said Maedhros. “Congratulations, uncle, you win.”
Notes:
Lines from the Chorus of Nurses are remixed from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer liturgy concerning i) women giving birth, ii) communion, iii) funerals, iv) the collect, v) the litany. The final bit from "prostrate yourself" to Miriel's declaration is a rough translation of the closing lines of Act II of Nabucco.
The birthing ritual that Maedhros' is repulsed by is a description of an actual simulated birthing ritual in the Molly houses of Georgian London, though the nature of testimony makes it difficult to tell how much is exaggerated prurience for court testimony, how much is hearsay and how much is legit.
Maedhros' final concession is quoted directly from canon.
Re. "unmanned" v. "unbeautiful" - both words can have similar connotations of "Marring" amongst the Elves, but "unmanned" specifically carries the connotation of emasculation and homosexuality, while unbeautiful is "uvana" and is a more direct gloss for "Marred" as a spiritual state. Unmanned also carries the connotation of someone who has not mastered his desires & is therefore driven by them, rather than purposefully choosing and directing his body and mind together.
There was a point while writing the whole abdication and council scene where I had a horrid realisation that this was really just Conclave fanfiction but from Tedesco's POV. Do with this knowledge as uh, you please.
Chapter 5: Till we have built Jerusalem
Summary:
The crowning of Fingolfin, the denouement, the end.
Notes:
This chapter deals very heavily with suicide: both suicidal thinking & social attitudes around suicide.
Chapter title taken from the Hubert Parry hymn Jerusalem, based on the William Blake poem "And did those feet in ancient time".
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Picture that last day of crisis. The sun is rising as it has for the past seven years, and will continue to do so for many thousands. Golden light bathes the outer walls of Barad Eithel. It rises, like the tide, till it reaches the newly-finished great tetradecagonic dome at the heart of the great complex of still skeletal buildings. Light pours through the great eastern rose window of the Great Hall and if we listen closely, we hear Elvish voices rising in great chorus, praying to unhearing, unheeding Lords of the West. In the rose window opposite, the Flame Imperishable looks down impassively on the assembly of Elves. Did he imagine this when he sang Elves into being? Could he have foreseen the circumstances that would lead the Noldor to flee Valinor? Did he see those lines of cloth-wrapped dead bodies along the beach? In his infinite wisdom, did he decide this was a price worth paying?
But none of the Elves below are thinking any of this while the sun rises. At best, they see the light pouring through the great eastern stained lancet window. The early morning light blazes through Finwë’s crown, through the flame descending on him as he leads our people out of the darkness of Cuiviénen. Do they wonder if all this might have been avoided if Finwë had, like his forefathers before him, stepped down from ruling and appointed an heir when the customary two hundred years had passed? Do they dare consider this? Perhaps, as history goes, the winners merely rejoice and the loser questions the nature of their loss: whether it might have been prevented, whether things might have turned out differently, whether they might have been spared the humiliation.
See now, the procession of princes. From the west, the sons and daughters of Fingolfin and Finarfin, Finwë’s turncoat brother and his family, Princess Lalwen, Fingolfin himself. All of them, barring Fingolfin, bear golden trumpets, except for Turgon who bears a sword and Fingon who bears a great golden eagle ampulla, raised on a golden staff. From the east, Prince Ravwë, bearing our grandfather's mantle followed by us. The princes Amrod and Amras, inseparable, grim, bearing the symbol of Laurelin’s fruit. Prince Curufin and his son, solemnly bearing the signet ring and the casked of Crown jewels. Prince Caranthir, a muscle leaping at his temple, bearing the great seal. Prince Celegorm has insisted on bringing Huan with him, a sign that the sons of Fëanor are not wholly abandoned by the Valar. He bears the Sword of State, newly forged by Prince Curufin, because while Prince Maedhros yields the crown, he still holds himself the only true heir to Finwë’s war on the Great Dark. Prince Maglor, bearing Finwë’s sceptre and admiring his handiwork as the chorus reaches its crescendo. At the very last, Prince Maedhros, bearing the crown and an enigmatic smile. His head is bare. But as the first of the bright white rays of the sun breaks through, it catches in his white tunic and for a moment he appears less Elf than white flame.
All these trappings of state are laid on the marble altar that lies directly below the tetradecagonic dome. Above, the Valar watch with blank eyes. Ahead, Eru Ilúvatar’s unseeing ones. Behind, Finwë’s stern and unyielding eye. This must be new to him. Who could have imagined, in the youth of the world, that death would come to a deathless land untouched by evil? There were no rules, no conventions for a coronation. Finwë, Ingwë and Elwë were kings long before they reached Valinor. They had no use for the theatre of state on the Great Journey. When death and danger hems people in on every side, the glorious theatre of state becomes immaterial, even insulting. Does Finwë watch from the Halls of Mandos? Does he wonder at the choreography? Does he see the hours that have been spent mapping who will carry what symbol of state and what secret insult or message it might deliver? Does he shake his head? Does he long to reach out from the realms of death and speak to the Noldor, remind them that a greater Enemy watches them from his fortress and laughs at their disunity? Does he cry in futile rage, before Míriel’s tapestry, a house divided can never stand? Does he wonder at the elaborate theatre unfolding and wonder how, having touched death, they can bear to playact these childish games?
But of course, Finwë had his own coronation, his own theatre of state. It says so in the writings of the great Rúmil. True, Manwë only confirmed the authority the Allfather had already conferred on him. Nevertheless, the great tapestry still hangs in the palace at Tirion: Finwë kneeling as Manwë blesses him with a young fruit from Laurelin and Ingwë holds out a sceptre. In Cuiviénen, the only power a king needed was his lineage and the word of the Allfather. In Tirion, the list of masters a king was beholden to expanded. It poses a difficult question for the Elves who compose the liturgy. If they fled Valinor, do they venerate the Valar or reject them as Fëanor did? If Fëanor lies buried, discredited, can his dream still be said to live? There has been a fierce debate, unbeknownst to the Elves waiting for their new king outside in the courtyards below. Within, the great and wise have arrived at an uncomfortable compromise. The king’s spiritual master is Manwë and the Allfather. Of Ingwë and matters unspiritual such as war, for example, the less said, the better. The king is ruler, general, father and priest in one. He alone hears divinity, even if divinity will not return the favour.
So the theatre begins.
What do each of these spectators and players see? Perhaps Finrod, with his gift of Sight, sees the bloody tragedy the Noldor are headed towards. Perhaps Angrod will wonder what he might have said to move Thingol differently, forever after. Or else he sees his dead cousin, the one he used to go sailing with in his youth. Fingon, with his eyes cast heavenwards, seems to see only the Valar. In his heart of hearts, he rejoices at his father’s triumph, the spectre of Fëanor finally laid to rest. But perhaps beneath that, he sees the white flame of his cousin and dear friend, perhaps he too sees the line of dead bodies, and wonders whether in this hour of triumph, they have made some grievous mistake.
Prince Curufin thinks no such thoughts. His smile is sly, but his knuckles are white around the prayer book he holds. Perhaps he already dreams of treason, humiliated by this insult to their father and their House. Prince Celegorm, on the other hand, draws the eye with his magnetic smile of disdain. What good is a king who hides behind princes? What good is a king who depends on his vassals to hold his own? Perhaps Celegorm dreams of war and its promise of revenge. Revenge against whom? Perhaps he dreams of something darker yet —
**
Behold the deposed king, still proud in this hour of his humiliation. Maedhros' head is lifted high. The light in his eyes burns fierce and brilliant, sharpened by the loud drumming. The light of torches catches in his hair, turning it to a crown of flame. A few in the crowd are reminded of Losgar. None mention this as Maedhros raises a hand to silence them, and then speaks in a low, terrible voice.
“From darkness Finwë brought us to light,” he says. His eyes sweep over the crowd, feeding hungrily on their silent veneration. “He knew there would be no defeating the darkness, unless we mastered the mystery of Unsullied Light. In Valinor we would learn the art and craft of true war. No longer the crude stone and wood of our forefathers for us, but the true mastery of the illuminated, enlightened mind, awoken from the darkness of its slumber. And so, we became the Noldor. The people of knowledge, who seek the truth of this great world, as dangerous as it might seem.”
Now, he is not Fëanor. Who can be Fëanor? Somewhere, his heart cavills at this talk of tyranny, mastery, domination. Though he tries to breach the wall, he flounders. Not all the darkness of Angband’s prisons can erase the sensation of a sword plunging into Elvish flesh. Elda, Maia, Aftercomer. But he would much rather slaughter Orcs. So, Maedhros hesitates. Maedhros ponders. Maedhros cannot turn back.
“My father perfected these arts,” he lies. “By his hand, new light was brought into this world. It was this light, our birthright, that the Moringotto stole from us.”
Can he say it? Can he bring himself to utter that particular heresy? Can he blame the Valar? Does he remember Manwë’s eagle, descending against all hope, from the sky above? Does he wonder at Manwë’s purpose? Does he look around corners, waiting for fell fate to find him?
“Not only the light was stolen from us on that day,” he says. Enigmatic, ambiguous, capacious enough to hold both the heretics and the faithful in thrall. “From great darkness, Fëanáro led us forth: not to find the light, but to liberate it and thus, save Endórë from the encroaching dark.”
The flames leap all of a sudden. An illusion. A trick of the eye. Maedhros appears to be the very light he seeks to liberate. The crowd below roars. What do they cheer? None of them appear to know. The image stirs them. This is enough. It’s only natural that Maedhros Fëanorion, who has been tormented by unimaginable darkness, would appear to them in the guise of a white flame. Why else would Manwë send an eagle to answer his cousin’s prayer? Maedhros Fëanorion is blessed. Maedhros Fëanorion has been divinely chosen and appointed, but not as king. His calling is higher and greater.
“We fight, not for vengeance, though we have much to avenge,” cries Maedhros, “nor even for dominion, though this land is ours by right. No, we fight this war for the soul of Endórë itself. While others hesitate, we stand vigilant against the encroaching dark. Though others sleep, our swords and spears will bleed the Moringotto’s armies until their blood waters these lands. Dispossessed though we may be, we will be the last bastion standing between all that is good and the Moringotto’s hordes at the gate.”
More cheering. A veritable hysteria of cheering.
“Unending war we promised,” he roars, and the crowd with him. “And I will deliver it, and thou with me, who love the light more than they love themselves and life itself!”
Amras raises a bow, wood that burns gold in the flickering torch light, and aims an arrow of fire into the air. It sails through the dark night, bright and terrible, before it falls to the earth in a blaze and ignites the great furnace that has been built in the centre of the square. The fire leaps to life with a roar. The crowd howls with delight at the sight. Spears, shields, swords: the firelight catches them all in its net, even as they thump in time to the rumbling drumming.
An orgy of war follows. The king’s treasury can pay for infinite war. A prince, on the other hand, must raise his own army. Let it never be said that the Sons of Fëanor are not resourceful. With that cry, the Noldor slip off their bangles and earrings and necklaces and rings and cast them into great buckets being passed around. Celegorm watches. In the firelight, he too is a ghost, but of a different kind. Is that despair on Caranthir’s face as he casts his own necklace into the collection? Does Amrod hesitate? Those are merely illusions. Amras is bearing one of those buckets after all from Elf to Elf, and the youngest prince of the house of Fëanor with him. Curufin supervises the collection as it is carried and thrown into a great furnace to be smelted down.
The flames rise high. The ground shakes, the drums roar. The gold will pay for the fortresses rapidly rising up north: for Himring, the ever-cold; for Himlad; for Thargelion; for a dozen keeps that will stretch across what will be known as the March of Maedhros. The Noldor are ready to pay with their finery for a chance at — what? Vengeance. Freedom. Birthright. A land of their own. More gold. A lordly title. Saving the soul of Endor. The higher calling. The chance to fight someone else’s war for them. Vast and intangible ideas that are prettier through flame and gold in the dark, than they are under Arien’s cold and impartial light. Maedhros holds all these ideas in his hand, a clenched fist around his sword hilt, a terrible and imposing silhouette that is either black or else white flame through the fiery furnace. Let it not be said that Maedhros Fëanorion is not his father’s son, though his higher calling is not quite his father’s calling — for now.
“Let the Valar-worshippers keep their crowns,” Maedhros calls into the night. “We will keep our swords.”
**
Time will reveal what Celegorm dreams of to the youthful and foolish.
As for Prince Maglor: perhaps he recalls an event from two weeks previously. It is the darkest hour of night and Tilion has disappeared from the sky. Only Varda’s stars keep watch, as he and his brother kneel in all-night vigil beneath the carved statue of Námo, taken from their mother. Námo, of course, does not hear. Does Varda? Both Maglor and his brother ponder this as they clasp hands and reswear their Oath. This does not deter Maedhros from saying till the bitter end or Maglor from repeating the words, though he does it slowly. He even kisses the hilt of the sword that Maedhros offers him. He is loyal; he has always been loyal. Is there an air of desperation in his eyes? Does he look as though he prays Maedhros will believe him? He has only ever committed one crime: despairing at bloodshed. Maedhros’ eyes are inscrutable. Even now, he wonders if Maglor nurses some secret doubt. If Maglor wishes he had remained or died in Thangorodrim, and Maglor had the Crown. If Maglor can foreswear that hidden snake. If Maglor is limitlessly loyal, loving. If Maglor would die for him, if he asked. Maglor swears, Maglor swears with an earnestness he has not even spent on his wedding vows. This too is a form of theatre. They both know Maedhros will continue to test Maglor’s loyalty to the very end.
And as for Prince Maedhros. What does he see? What lies behind that inscrutable smile? See how his eyes flit briefly to his cousin, while his uncle recites his Oath of Kingship. See the answering softness. Who marks it? The great and good of the Noldor are too busy watching Fingolfin recite his promises: to preserve the peace, to exercise the law and deliver mercy and equity. The great and good of the Noldor are content to accept the explanations given to them. Thus, they accept that Prince Maedhros abdicates because of his health and none question why, if he is unwell, he goes north, where Morgoth's evil is at its greatest; nor do they question why they should follow him in battle, or even up north, if he is unwell. Such questions are excessive and excess is dangerous in these frugal times. Thus, they accept that Prince Maedhros and his cousin enjoy riding together to take in the sunset over Lake Mithrim’s shores. The prince’s gratitude is well-earned; the renewed friendship a natural consequence.
Consequently, none know Prince Maedhros recalls an event from several months ago. Both Fingon and he have dismounted from their horses and are watching the mesmerising retreat-attack of waves on Lake Mithrim’s pebbled beach. Maedhros takes one of these pebbles, a flat one, and skims it across the lake. It leaps three times before it sinks beneath the surface. Fingon, on the other hand, is poking disinterestedly at empty mussel shells with his toe. The setting sun glimmers in their iridescent shells. Maedhros barely notices this. An idea has been growing in his mind. Of late, it has come to occupy the twilight and late, deep dark hours of his day. He is only a man and his uncle’s triumph has stung his ego. His brothers are kind, tolerant. Their kindness brings to mind old dogs, tolerated but not loved by their tired owners. Not true. Curufin and Celegorm are insulted by his weakness, though Celegorm hides it better. It is impossible not to feel that he has, in some way, proved to be the weak link. Eldest of the house of Finwë — Maedhros knows the Doom will come for them all. But when? He is only a man. It is impossible not to consider the question of revenge.
**
“Stop dwelling on it,” says Fingon.
He has the ruthless discipline of a man forged by ice. If he wanted to, Fingon could banish all his inconvenient thoughts with a sweep of his hand. The business of living came first. Everything came after.
“Seriously,” he says. The sun is dipping between the Ered Lomin in the west. “Terrible habit. That’s half the trouble in this family. We brood too much. Look where it gets us.”
Maedhros laughs. The idea has taken hold of him now and Maedhros has decided he will act. Every word and gesture is now calculated towards this end. “You make me sound like a broody hen.”
Fingon considers him with a piercing, hawkish eye. Lesser men have quailed beneath it. But Maedhros remembers Fingon as a young man, charging carelessly through the world but essentially naive. Maedhros has already fallen in and out of love, sucked several cocks and had one of their grandfather’s stableboys fuck him up the ass in the hayloft by the time Fingon even considers the sexual charm of the masculine form. Maedhros has led Fingon to various dens of vice in his time: gaming hells, prizefighting matches, the temple baths of the Allmother, the Mother house, the many farmhouse parties of southern Eldamar. Fingon has mastered that peculiar Vanyarin art of iron control and is no longer quite the impulsive man he used to be. But the aftershadow of the man Fingon used to be still remains. Maedhros, therefore, does not quail.
“Too thin,” says Fingon. “You’d be too stringy. Horrible, really.”
“You’d know all about that, of course,” says Maedhros.
Fingon tips his head back and laughs.
“I should run my sword through you for that one,” he says, when he’s done.
“You could.” Maedhros’ smile is deliberate as he turns to his cousin and friend. “You could fatten me up for the kill.”
As many times as Maedhros has run wild with Maldanáro, Fingon has run wild with him. Fingon has often looked at Maedhros in the same light that Maedhros has looked on Maldanáro. He knows Maedhros the professional, the prince who wields his status with a casual grace that Fëanáro never achieved. Maedhros the professional is friendly, but cold. He holds Fingon at arms length. He’s seen Maedhros, his friend and cousin, stripped naked and facefucking a man. Maedhros has kissed him, fucked men with him, held him through heartbreak, but Maedhros-his-cousin has always maintained a professional, emotional distance, aware of both rank and family and his own self-assured adulthood, against Fingon’s coltish manhood. Maedhros-his-cousin accepts Fingon’s desire as one more natural element of the world: everyone wants to fuck Maedhros and Fingon is just one of those everyones. Maedhros accepts everyone’s desire with the air of a king accepting natural tribute. Maedhros-his-cousin watches men with him and laughs with him with the merry bawdiness of a Teleri sailor. Maedhros-his-cousin even has orchestrated pleasing dalliances on his behalf. Maedhros-his-cousin smiles, but gently rebuffs his flirtations; never insulting, but always definite. Maedhros-his-cousin is cool and totally self-contained, is unpossessable, ungraspable. Maedhros-his-cousin is tantalisingly out of reach of Fingon, who has never been denied anything in his spoiled youth.
Is it any wonder Fingon turns to look at him, his handsome features, so like his grandfather’s, moulded in inquiry? Can it be happening? Is Maedhros-his-cousin finally breaking the unspoken rule that has governed their friendship for so many years? Is Maedhros signalling his willingness to be possessed at last?
“I know I’m awful company,” says Maedhros. This is another startling concession. None of them have been taught to apologise, really. “I suppose I still find the whole living thing strange.”
“If you’re going to be serious, I’m going home,” Fingon announces.
“Findekáno.”
“Russandol,” says Fingon. He aims for mocking, but Maedhros has turned the full force of his grey eyes, brimming with light and other murkier promises, on him. Fingon no longer knows what he meant to say. A long line of swallows are winging their way across the sky above. Perhaps they hear him and think, ah, young love.
Maedhros kisses his cousin with all the soft tenderness he can muster. Very little of him is soft these days. His fingers feel strange and skeletal as he touches Fingon’s full, warm throat and then his cheeks, filled out again in the few years since their return. Fingon sighs into the kiss and cleaves closer, his body melting into Maedhros’. Maedhros briefly opens his eyes and scans the horizon. No, no one watches. The Noldor like simple answers to difficult questions such as why did Fingon think rescuing his cousin could close the rift between our peoples? There were simpler ways to have done it. Maglor, in time, could have brought his people around. So too, their uncle and Finrod. Failing the three of them, Morgoth’s attacks would have united them in common cause. War is extraordinarily useful this way, especially for struggling kings and princes. But these are difficult questions, with unpleasant answers. The nature of Noldor society is to avoid the sort of unpleasantness that requires thinking twice or thrice; perhaps to even reconsider the nature of their world. Therefore, two princes ride alone and unescorted. Nobody looks. Maedhros kneels, fumbles at Fingon’s trousers and takes him in his mouth.
So Fingon, who, like the Noldor, prefers simple answers to difficult questions, allows himself to be plucked by Maedhros.
**
Does Fingolfin mark this exchange of glances? Not yet. He is too busy promising to be a fair and wise judge. His eyes are fixed on the Valar above, on the mosaic of wise Manwë who looks benevolently down on them all. Privately, perhaps he thanks Manwë for his continued favour. Some jealous Noldor might even go so far as to claim he thanks Manwë for preserving the Noldor from rule by a madman. Finwë-Ñolofinwë is a wise man after all. Not least wise amongst the princes of the line of Finwë, as Prince Maedhros has declared him. He is wise enough to hold his silence and go to his grave holding his most secret thoughts to himself. The gathered crowd can only fantasise about their new king, imagine him an extension of whatever it is their will requires.
Fingolfin is wise enough to play this part. His countenance is pious, impassive as Maedhros raises the ampulla and anoints him. No water of Awakening, this, but at least the waters of Mithrim's springs have medicinal properties, though none that can cure the many maladies of the Elvish heart. Some will claim they see a holy light descend on him. Others, an ugly smile. Who can say? Only Maedhros can. Maedhros has never mastered the art of piety. His smile is fixed, his eyes piercingly bright as he lifts the crown from its velvet cushioning and raises it for all to see.
All agree, later, that the morning light flickers and glints unusually in the crown’s great rubies. Alqualondë, Losgar, the Ice, the Battle Under the Stars are still too close to have been forgotten. The dead silence that sits over the crowd is its silent agreement. Námo’s Doom echoes. It is inescapable, suddenly everywhere, in everything. Look at the wild and unnatural glow in Maedhros’ eye. Look at that stump of his hand. Look at the way he smiles, his mouth moving in some secret message only to Fingolfin, about to be crowned king once and for all. He is about to achieve his life’s ambition, but look! Look how swiftly his eyes roll to the side and back. Who sees this? Who observes it? Certainly not Fingon, watching the proceedings with a bored expression. Who else might the new king look at? What else matters to him, except his beloved, cherished son; the one for whom he has forfeit any chance of return home; the one who has doomed him, along with so many? Not even a crown can outweigh a son, but the king cannot renounce the crown he has fought for all these years. Look how Maedhros smiles: ironic, vicious. Look, the Doom stretches its hand out over the Noldor and invisible to the great and good, claims another victim.
Who can tell what Prince Maedhros has just whispered to his uncle? Both are private men who suspect all, trust little and hold their counsel close. Both are discreet; Maedhros by necessity and Fingolfin because of responsibility. Both are consummate players of a game that is both enthralling and compulsive. Is that a touch of despair about Fingolfin’s eyes as he turns to face his sons and daughter? Do his eyes rest too long on his eldest’s face? Is Maedhros’ smile too great, too unnatural for his humiliation? Look away. It’s only a trick of the light. Don't worry about it. Listen, instead, to the great pipe organ and the orchestra as they announce Fingolfin’s triumph over the house of Fëanor.
Perhaps many years later, Maedhros will confess. Perhaps he will turn to a beloved brother, nearly at the end of the world, and repeat his benediction. I won, he says. You may have the Crown, the kingdom, our gold, the Valar’s blessing, Finwë-Ñolofinwë, but I have your son. Perhaps he then turns to his dear, beloved brother and says, calmly, by Eru, I destroyed us all, but I won in the end. At the time, we only have his smile, blinding, fiery, Fëanor at his worst. The great pipe organ soars. Our voices echo in thanks. He cries, behold your High King, Finwë-Ñolofinwë! Long live the king!
Everything that follows after is explained by this parting confession. Or rather, it has already been explained by Námo, long before: to evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass. Dispossessed, indeed, forever.
What happens next is inevitable. Fate, or perhaps a curse according to the Elves. Doom, according to the Valar. The skeptic who believes in neither calls it rational: cause and consequence. Cause: torment. Consequence: Nelyafinwë Maitimo Fëanárion is not the man he used to be. Cause: Maedhros is another man entirely. Consequence: he hurts those who love him most. Consequence: he is alone at the end of the world.
Maedhros learns, with time, that love expires. His uncle tells him, on your head be it, and they do not go to war. In time, this will take the lives of two of his cousins, thousands of good, noble Elves and destroy his uncle. He has won, he has triumphed, but at what cost? Fingon takes the Crown. He never says so in so many words, but his eyes say it all: I don’t know who you are anymore. Maedhros tries not to take it personally. Fingon is merely responding to the invisible man who drives Maedhros. Fingon in his naive goodness believes this is Morgoth, but Maedhros and his brothers know better. Kemmótar leaves, claiming he’s a healer and not a Kinslayer. Maedhros says: if you were, you would have gone home with the golden boys. Cause, consequence. Kemmótar will never open his heart to him again.
What to say about the rest? His brothers are collateral damage to the act of Kinslaying, not to be taken personally. Maglor is too kind to ever say it, but there is a light in the back of his eyes that says, Curufin wouldn’t have done it that way if you hadn’t been so harsh on him. Perhaps Maglor would say this concerning all of them, fell Celegorm included. Maybe Maglor would say: if you could be a little less like father. Counterfactuals are useless in war, but Maglor is a poet at heart, so Maedhros forgives him. Laurefion leaves. Again, those pesky little Kinslayings getting in the way. He says: Your Grace cannot compel me against my conscience. Maedhros says, bravely, ineffectually: I pay you to do as I please. How little it surprises him when Maldanáro leaves next. Maedhros confesses: there’s no more gold. In his heart, Maedhros hopes that Maldanáro will hear the unspoken plea. For once, Maldanáro leaves the professional behind and in the morning, Maedhros reads his note, in neat, professional calligraphy: Your Grace will understand that I must seek employment elsewhere; a man must earn his keep in order to live. Maedhros has gone unheard.
And so, here he is at the end of the world with Maglor, experiencing the long-delayed consequences of their many deeds. Is it any surprise when Maglor turns to him and says, I told you so? But at last, Maedhros is relieved. At last Maedhros has no more responsibilities; he is a free man. He has successfully severed the last rope binding him to Beleriand.
Pause and consider, if you will, the question of suicide.
It appears to us, here, as inevitable consequence. Despair occludes the senses and lights only the road to death. Morgoth’s torment is immense, inescapable. No thrall who escapes him ever escapes the memory of their torture. Who knows, after all, how many long hours of vigil they spend awake, alone in the darkness? We only know the end. We know the numbers, or guess: escaped and returned thralls who walk into the wintery night and are lost. Society overwhelms and bewilders them. Laughter and joy frightens them. They wonder how we choose to live in the middle of such horrors and how we might find some joy in it. Terror dogs their footsteps. Pain keeps them awake. As we confuse them, they confuse us. Sometimes they terrify us, with their mad bright eyes, their fits, their unnatural turns, their despicable weaknesses. We turn away, embarrassed. We are bewildered by their sudden unfamiliarity. Do I know who he is? Does he know who he is? We hide. They hide. They live lives of half-shadows and so it is only inevitable when such a dark half-life illuminates only the road to death.
But there is more to this darkness, in this particular case. There is the greater darkness of evil, which casts a pall over his life. Another inevitability. What can a man do when faced with the many horrors of the crimes he has committed? What can he do when he is forced to confront the ruins of the many lives he has swept through as an unrelenting autumnal scythe? What is the consequence of selfish war? Exile is too weak. Exile sends it to the fringes of society, but it returns again and again to haunt, steal and destroy. No, exile is not a punishment that fits the crime. For society to heal itself, war and its many selfishnesses must be purged once and for all.
This is the neat moral fable that will be imparted down the centuries. Maedhros Fëanorion kills himself in despair, rejected by his father’s heirloom, thus fulfilling the Doom that Námo has laid out from the start. Cause, consequence. For blood shall ye render blood. Historians agree that Maedhros Fëanorion’s hands are extraordinarily stained. It is natural that the weight of this knowledge drives him to his final, awful act. People will shake their heads afterwards and commiserate. Everyone says: we should have seen it coming. Poor boy, but what did you expect? The corollary to this is that perhaps it was deserved. The architect of Sirion’s destruction deserves no lesser Fate. Society cannot kill him, but if he removes himself from society, that is one last act of noble altruism.
Gossips will recall the first recorded suicide and shake their heads sorrowfully. It runs in the family. Or as might be said, though never in these exact words, so no sensibilities are offended by the crudeness of the construction: blood will out. Marred thou art and Marred wilt thou ever be.
Does that sound cruel? Perhaps society requires its sacrificial lambs, its devils and moral fables in order to turn its pages and begin again. Perhaps the First Age had to finish, punctuated with Maedhros Fëanorion’s death, so the Noldorin rebuilding of the Second Age could begin in a new, fresh land. When the Noldor look back at their history, they can shake their heads in sorrow at the tragedy. They can remember the lowest points of their history at a gentle remove. Remember Maedhros Fëanorion? He led the Third Kinslaying and participated in two more. He lost the Nírnaeth because he was too busy pursuing his father’s jewel. Yes, that one. It rejected him in the end. Will they remember Maedhros the great general? Will they remember the relentless war he waged against Morgoth? Who will remember him standing on Himring’s highest tower and staring to the North, hand outstretched in declaration: unending war we promised and I will deliver it ? Who will recount the Noldor, not just followers of Fëanor, but followers of Fingolfin and Finarfin too, removing their bracelets and earrings and casting them in the fire to fund the great war effort up North? Who will recount the First Kinslaying and the charge of Fingon Fingolfinion and his train turning the tide from battle into slaughter? Who will recount how we have always been fighting the great, encroaching darkness?
Perhaps we must ask a different question entirely. Perhaps we must ask: what society makes Maedhros Fëanorion possible? Then we might answer: this one. When darkness is eternal, recurrent, inescapable then so too is the war that must be waged against it. Have we imagined it any differently? Our long march to Valinor was driven by fear of destruction. Our march from it was driven by another kind of fear. Fear, that desire for land, for glory, for the memory of the father of our people, our great king, slain by the Darkness. It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s father. We were all obedient sons. Or perhaps, bloodthirsty ones. Eager to wield our swords, hasty to draw them and slow to sheathe them. When war is eternal and the enemy no longer exists, who remains? When the Enemy is banished, your father is dead, and the war is over but unwon what remains except the final war on the self?
What society makes Maedhros Fëanorion possible? A sick one. The same society that drove Míriel Therindë to her death, and scores of women with her. Consider Lady Tintalpa of Atyamar, the poor ghosts, Lady Tintalpa herself: precious jewels, locked away to be enjoyed only by their owners, growing the riches of their house. Society is wealthy. This wealth must grow, but for it to grow, it must be fed. Society hurtles towards a singular ideal. We must follow, or else be left behind. What is this ideal? Does it matter? Isn’t it enough to know it is a society which produces women who are beautiful jewels, children who are gold coins, and therefore, requires dross and waste in order to understand the value of diamonds and gold? When refusal is impossible and obedience is naturalised, death becomes the only escape. Is it too frightening to conceive? That even in Valinor, Maedhros Fëanorion might have been preternaturally marked for death because, in time, the contradictions of being a prince and being a homosexual would have destroyed him? Is it too frightening to imagine both Míriel Therindë and Maedhros Fëanorion’s deaths as final acts of stubborn refusal, pushed to its utmost limit?
This is too neat, too easy, too resolute. It cannot be the totality. The problem of war remains. Its violence is senseless. It is the horsewhip raised against Maldanáro. It is the senselessness of our attack on Sirion, of Elwing leaping to her death. It emerges violently. It strikes like lightning, burns and then disappears. Only the scorched earth remains. Perhaps suicide is the only final act of sense-making, of the fullstop at the end of an incoherent, ungrammatical, randomised string of words, conjuring up a sentence out of nothing. Perhaps it is just as senseless as the violence my brother wielded so skillfully.
Perhaps it is a child’s longing for home, when he knows he cannot go home, because he is forbidden from ever going home. Perhaps he knows only death is the way back, because to go back, he must go forward relentlessly. Perhaps he casts the Silmaril away, then terrified by the all-seeing eyes of Eru Ilúvatar, flings himself after it to escape Everlasting Darkness. Perhaps it is the longing of a lost child, lost to himself. Perhaps it is none of these things. Perhaps it is all of these things. Perhaps it is something else entirely: honour, spite, one last desire to thumb his nose in our father’s face, loneliness, fear of himself, sheer bloody exhaustion. What do I know? What can I know? How can I know? Am I my brother’s keeper?
There must have been a moment where things might have turned out differently. But where? But where?
Let us for the sake of argument imagine what passes through Maedhros’ mind, alone as he is at the end of the world:
So he composes as he walks. Maglor believes he’s looking for water, but Maglor is in too much pain to pay attention to the singular, obvious fact: Maedhros no longer has a working hand. This will return and haunt him later, but Maedhros is a free man and free men do not have to consider the ways in which other people will be haunted. And so, Maedhros can turn his attention elsewhere. He tries and fails and tries again, to express the idea that has been circling him for the past five hundred years or so. Dear Lauro, you see, there is another man inside me. No, I don’t know how he got there. I only meet him, every now and then, when I take a wrong turn on the stair; or if I look out the corner of my eyes quickly enough. He is a very troublesome fellow. It all sounds self-exculpatory. He can see Maglor, beloved Lauro, looking at him with disdain. But no, Lauro has never looked at him with disdain; Maedhros, once more, is imagining himself. Maedhros can afford to be clear-eyed now, at the very end. Lauro would look at him with love. Injured love, as Fingon, as Kemmótar, as Laurefion had. Perhaps compassion, exhausted, but still there against all reason: Maldanáro and his uncle, extending it over and over, despite Maedhros' ingratitude.
Cause. Consequence. Love expires, if one is unbearable enough. Or rather, sometimes love leaves, even when it still exists. One is still left with the wreckage, the empty bed, the hollow home. Or it remains, faithful to the very end. Lauro waiting, naive and trusting, loyal dog to the very end. It remains and it is unbearable. What can you do with love? Love will not resurrect Nelyafinwë Maitimo from the hollow of Maedhros Fëanorion. Manwë knows it has tried and failed and tried and failed. Manwë knows, Lauro has tried, against all the odds. Love cannot even triumph over the ghostly hand of Fëanor, stretching out over the long years. Love cannot carry him home, no matter how much the child in him cries for it. Love cannot dispel the weariness in his bones.
Love is a feeble thing. Maedhros has spent long years chasing the Unsullied Light, believing every violent act justified, as long as it meant the light would be liberated and brought to all the peoples of Middle Earth. Maedhros has spent long years convincing himself the Valar mean to hoard it. Maedhros has spent long years ignoring how much he figures in this fantasy as a saviour, a liberator, a king. Now Maedhros is faced with the incontrovertible evidence of his own essential darkness. The Valar have won the battle for Middle Earth, but they have lost the war. Maedhros has won his battle, but has lost the war for his soul. He is Dispossessed and Morgoth has dispossessed him, long before Ñolofinwë took the Crown. He is Beleriand, Arda Marred: a dying, pus-riddled land, belching out its internal, eternal curse. He is Thingol’s un-man. He is his father’s son. He is the third, last great suicide of his family: the man who fights the great god of Dark, the man who fights the world, the man who fights himself. He is a man, he is only a man.
Ergo, Maedhros is alone at the very end of the world, except for the little odd man put there by Morgoth, and the chorus of ghosts who beckon him lovingly. Ergo, the simple cause and consequence of the next act.
It all seems so awfully neat, doesn't it? Almost too dignified, too poetic an end for the man better known as the butcher of Beleriand. Nevertheless, we proceed.
He folds his cloak. He removes his vambrace. A convenience, so dear Lauro knows to stop searching. And then the end: darkness first, then light.
Notes:
Maedhros' not-a-suicide-note is inspired by the poem Antigonish by William Mearns which in turn was the inspo for Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World, which was the og working title for this fic.
Once again, thank you to Zee for being such an enthusiastic partner on this - this would not be what it is without yr enthusiasm & inputs!
I am as always very indebted to Caracalliope and deweydecibelsystem for their inputs, advice, rubber ducking and also general handholding while I was in the pits of writing this. I'm also very grateful to the various folks with whom I had really great convos / who reached out to check in while I was Posting through this. Esp s/o to littlewhitemouseagain for overthinking some of the word choices in this with me.
lonelyvisitor on Chapter 1 Sat 06 Sep 2025 09:35PM UTC
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lonelyvisitor on Chapter 2 Sun 07 Sep 2025 01:07AM UTC
Last Edited Sun 07 Sep 2025 10:27AM UTC
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lonelyvisitor on Chapter 3 Mon 08 Sep 2025 11:07AM UTC
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timelessutterances on Chapter 5 Sat 06 Sep 2025 09:23PM UTC
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clovis_unleashed on Chapter 5 Sun 07 Sep 2025 04:17AM UTC
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sallysavestheday on Chapter 5 Sun 07 Sep 2025 04:54PM UTC
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timelessutterances on Chapter 5 Sun 07 Sep 2025 04:57PM UTC
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EmberOfTheSea on Chapter 5 Mon 08 Sep 2025 11:18AM UTC
Last Edited Mon 08 Sep 2025 11:19AM UTC
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Thinwhitedutchess on Chapter 5 Mon 08 Sep 2025 11:02PM UTC
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guimenguan on Chapter 5 Tue 09 Sep 2025 05:47AM UTC
Last Edited Tue 09 Sep 2025 05:47AM UTC
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