The West Wind Quartet by Himring

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Chapter Five: Legacy

Fast-forwarding past Balar and Lindon at almost indecent speed, we arrive at Imladris, where Erestor and Emlinn fundamentally disagree about copy-right issues.

It all ends in tears, of course, but not entirely so.

I

If I had been in Doriath or at the Havens, when they came, my loyalties might have been tested beyond the point of breaking.  But I was not. Oderen had listened carefully, as I haltingly reported what I felt I could of my conversation with Maglor.

‘So Maglor Feanorion thinks that Doriath is not truly safe?’, he asked then. ‘Then maybe it is not’, he concluded.

Instead of making for Doriath, like many of our kin, Oderen took me straight across southern Beleriand back to our own Lord Cirdan. We went with him to Balar and stayed there, despite slim pickings.

‘For’, said Oderen, ‘if nowhere in Beleriand is safe, at least we can always escape by ship.’

And so I was on Balar, when the sons of Feanor attacked the Havens and committed the Third Kinslaying. I had feared that they would. There were those who believed they would desist because the Havens were inhabited by Noldor—in other words, not only by Sindar or Teleri.  But I had all along thought that in this they were mistaken.

Whatever they might have thought of Thingol and his descendants, those two sons of Feanor that I had encountered had given no sign that they held Sindarin lives cheap. Perhaps the others had done so, the three who had died in Doriath, of whom I knew little. But none of the four who survived, if pushed into killing at all, were likely to be fortuitously stopped by racial prejudice, not if what I had heard of Amrod and Amras was true.

When I had learned about the fall of Doriath, my first reaction had been an overwhelming desire to rush off into the wilderness of East Beleriand and search out Maglor. It was as if only by seeing his face with my own eyes could I confirm that it was indeed he who had done this. Then disbelief gradually evaporated and I envisioned myself actually meeting him and opening my mouth and... What could I possibly say? Any questions beginning  “Why did you...?” or “How could you...?” were clearly going to be so much waste of breath. In one sense, the answers were blindingly obvious. Dior had refused to hand over the Silmaril, and the terms of the Oath were by now known throughout Beleriand. And I could scarcely claim that I had thought Maglor incapable of kinslaying.

He would have followed Maedhros anywhere, I thought, a couple of steps behind and struggling to keep breathing evenly. As for Maedhros, despite my slightly different point of view, I had ended up hero-worshipping him much as everyone else in Himring had done at the time, but I would never have claimed really to understand him. Who was I that I thought the sons of Feanor would see a need to justify themselves to me, assuming I could so much as find them? In East Beleriand after the Nirnaeth, even fugitive princes with the tattered remains of an army would be almost impossible to locate and extremely dangerous to seek. I could not go alone, and I could not drag Oderen along with me on such a mad quest.

“My music is, after all, the best part of me”, Maglor had said. But my dream of music had cracked, and the north wind whistled through the cracks. I stayed on Balar and prayed to any and all Belain whose name I could think of: to protect the sons of Feanor from Morgoth, to protect them from themselves, and to protect others from them.

As soon as the first rumours about the attack on the Havens reached me, I ran out onto the eastern beach. Across the straits, I could see flames leap into the sky. I did not know I had sunk to my knees, until I felt the gravel bite into my shins. I tried to think which of the Belain to invoke for Maglor and Maedhros now they had done this thing and came up empty.

‘Nienna have pity on us all’, I whispered finally.

Oderen found me and stayed with me there on the beach, as all through the night we watched the Havens burn.

Finally, when dawn was about to break, I stirred.

‘Now are the Stars of the House of Feanor drowned in blood,’ I said. My voice sounded hoarse in my own ears, harsh like a crow’s. ‘Who will remember that they were a shining light in the North, while hope lasted? That they defended the weak, supported widows and orphans and tended the sick and wounded?’

‘You will’, said Oderen. ‘You do.’

‘What are you saying? Have you not been proved right? Why are you not reproving me for lamenting the killers rather than their victims?’

‘I don’t know’, Oderen said slowly, ‘at the time I thought nothing of it. I was the worst of soldiers, and in any case it would not have occurred to me that I owed true loyalty to any but Lord Cirdan. But I remember Maedhros as he was on the walls of Himring. His spirit burned like a white fire, and he was as one who returns from the dead. So many of us left afterwards, and he graciously gave us leave. I guess he might even have considered us in the light of fewer mouths to feed. But if we had not left...? Maybe it would have made no difference. Maybe there would just have been more of our kin who died in the Nirnaeth, and he would have attacked Doriath anyway...’

‘You are saying that we deserted them when they needed us?’

‘I am saying that maybe I deserted Maedhros, just a little. And it would not have occurred to me to think like that at all, if I had not seen you weeping for him. But you did not desert Maglor. You were sent by him. He entrusted his music to you. That task has just become more difficult. Are you giving up?’

‘No.’ I got up and looked him fully in the eye for the first time that night. ‘Thank you.’

I peered across the straits.

‘I think I see Cirdan’s ships returning’, I said. ‘The healers will be needing pails of water and rolls of cloth for bandages again. Let us go.’

 

II

I had to proceed carefully in Lindon. There were too many there who didn’t just believe, but knew that the sons of Feanor drank the blood of children. Their fingers ended in claws and, when they looked into your eyes, their gaze would incinerate you. It was no use arguing; the wounds in their souls were too fresh and the evidence of their pain silenced anything I could have said.

I worked hard. I sat up in the night, translating lyrics and ballad texts from Quenya into Sindarin. On my desk sat a well-thumbed two-volume dictionary, a fat grammar, and a small encyclopaedia.  I rearranged. Solo pieces became pieces for small orchestra. Choral pieces became instrumental. Parts of a larger whole became complete works.  I ruthlessly Daeronized the style of the accompaniment, when I thought it might be required. And of course I never, ever mentioned Maglor’s name.

I suspected my colleagues knew perfectly well what I was doing, but none of them ever admitted it. When the pieces that I produced fit the bill, they accepted the scores I handed them and did not question my evasions on their provenance as long as the music proved effective in performance. Perhaps Gil-Galad also guessed—I never quite worked out what his personal attitude to Maedhros and Maglor was, for he had to be so careful not to antagonize any of the factions at his court that he seemed unable to afford to have an opinion on the sons of Feanor at all. He preferred them to be buried in silence.

Erestor, of course, disapproves of what I did. He is a librarian and archivist, and he is shocked at my readiness to bow to political necessities and corrupt the pure wellspring of tradition, especially as I was uniquely privileged to have access to it. I disagree. In the case of some texts, it may be all very well for the original manuscript to sit untouched in the library in lonely splendour, but Maglor’s songs were meant to be performed. They need an audience.

Take the ballad of The Woodcutter’s Daughter—yes, of course it is originally by Maglor, what did you think? In whichever language that ballad is sung, no matter on which instruments it is played, it is still Maglor’s ballad, his plot, his tune. I have heard it played straight and deeply melancholy, I’ve heard it played as a parody, and I have even heard it played as a dance tune. I’m sure he would want it to be out there, being sung by people.

Some of my adaptations and rearrangements have proved quite effective. I think Maglor might be inclined to accept them as alternative ways of performing his work. Perhaps he has heard them, wherever he may be wandering, and perhaps he does approve. It is the only way I might be able to reach him now, let him know I’m still doing what he wanted me to do.

The Noldolante, of course, never needed my help. Nobody has ever wanted to leave the Noldolante to the Noldor, just as the Noldor have never wanted to leave it to the Dispossessed. Although it is such a complex work—I do not think it has been performed in its entirety more than five or six times—you encounter bits and pieces of it all over the place. You have heard them, haven’t you? Through sorrow to find joy, through sorrow to find joy!—sung by Avari who would be deeply shocked to learn they were singing the words of Feanor himself and wash out their mouths with soap if they knew—sung by Men who have no idea who Feanor was and who couldn’t care less—all the way across Middle-Earth, even in Harad and Rhun where the stars are strange...

But the West Wind Quartet, the score composed by Maglor with just the smallest bit of assistance from me during the siege of Himring, written by Maedhros’s own hand, my most precious possession by far...  I could never bear to use that as raw material for any of my rearrangements. Not until now, here in Imladris, have I seen a chance to perform it as exactly as it should be and as Maedhros expected me to. My lord Elrond, although he says little, remembers Maglor and Maedhros well–he will not object.

I removed the manuscript from the safe place where I keep it and took it to Erestor to get copies made. He looked positively greedy, when he first laid eyes on it. In my anxiety, I stood over him, literally breathing down his neck, as he took a closer look.

‘I know perfectly well how to take care of old manuscripts, Emlinn!’, he said with great irritation. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve encountered a document written by Maedhros himself.’

‘Just don’t forget that the original is mine and I want it back just as it is’, I said. ‘You can have a copy for the library if you like, of course.’

When I gave Lindir and the others their copies, he frowned. Lindir has known me since our time together at the court in Lindon; he had a very good idea what he was looking at right away.

‘Why do you want to play that?’, he asked, reluctantly.

I gave him my best Noldorin glare.

‘Because it is an excellent piece of work, that’s why!’

Lindir, although amazingly good with a knife in a fight, would run a mile to avoid a quarrel or an argument, so he gave in at once. And as soon as we had started practising, all four of them caught fire.  There were no more protests at all.

And so here we are, practising the West Wind Quartet. Listen to the voices of the tenor and the alto flute weaving in and out of each other like swallows at dusk. And now Lindir starts in on the fiddle, sweet and sorrowful...

Paradoxically, the siege of Himring kept them safe. Others would have succumbed to such a direct assault, but although the threat they faced was overwhelming, it was not in their nature to yield to it. That challenge they met magnificently, and so saved our lives as well as their own. But in surviving, they went on to succumb to a more insidious fate.

They must have been afraid all along what the Oath might yet do to them, if they managed to live through the siege. In the same room with them, I was aware of the love and the grief, but if I sensed the fear at all, I assumed naively that it was only the fear they shared with the rest with us, fear of the enemy beyond the gates. Now I hear it, in the melodious sigh of the flutes, in the anxious wail of the fiddle, and tears are running down my cheeks as I pluck the strings of my harp. The others pretend not to see.

When we perform the West Wind Quartet in the Hall of Fire at Tarnin Austa, I will not weep. I will walk out there with the others; I will sit down, take a deep breath and give it my all. For Maedhros who dwells in Mandos. For Maglor.

Chapter End Notes

Oderen's description of Maedhros defending Himring is quoted straight from the Silmarillion. The sentence about the stars over Rhun or Harad is probably quoted from LOTR, but I did that from memory, so I'm not sure.

Oh, and Feanor's words that Emlinn allegedly quotes from the text of the Noldolante are taken from the Silmarillion, too, of course. For Dawn's ficlet collection of the same name, see here.

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