The Sovereign and the Priest by Dawn Felagund

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Chapter 7: Finrod

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Chapter Seven 
Finrod

The most difficult part of getting away for the festival was Curufin. In the years since he and Celegorm arrived in the tumultuous first months after the Dagor Bragollach, Curufin had become almost a permanent fixture at my supper table, Celegorm having become such a favorite among my border guard, especially the Avarin guards, that he was barely returned for a day before he was accepting a new assignment and riding out again. I didn't even extend supper invitations to Curufin anymore; he simply showed up. If I was late, I sometimes entered the dining room to find him already seated and started on the soup course. Sometimes Celebrimbor came, but Celebrimbor seemed more consumed in his work these days than Curufin and often stayed late in the laboratory or forge. At first, Orodreth had stayed away, but slowly, the incidental encounters bound to occur between the two of them—my two most frequent visitors—had dulled the dread of the mere sight of each other, and then Orodreth, too, returned to my table. He remained cautionary, however: cordial, while gently deflecting any overtures of friendship Curufin made. Now it was Iwho counted Curufin a friend. Many a late evening we spent reviewing plans for expanding Nargothrond—this in the early days—and then more and more often discussing how best to rule such a realm, until Curufin was my best advisor, and Orodreth no longer.

But one point on which we differed irreparably concerned the festivals of the Avarin and Sindarin citizens. I attended these, and doing so had helped me to achieve legitimacy with peoples disinclined to trust a king from over the sea, especially one who would abandon a realm among trees and beneath an open sky in favor of ensconcing himself in stone. Curufin, though, had been raised with his father's beliefs—and these beliefs were, ironically, just as deviant from one-time status quo of Valinor as some of the lingering Avarin and Sindarin traditions—and was not inclined to accept anything else. Eru Ilúvatar was the supreme, the only god, and all others were akin to servants and, in Curufin's words, "My father was never inclined to beg something of a servant when he could ask it directly of the king."

Curufin was initially curious about the native beliefs, and he and I spent a long, enjoyable evening conversing about what I had learned in my years as king of Nargothrond. Once he discovered, however, that I actually did approach these beliefs with a willingness to grant legitimacy, rather than relegating them to something with which to be shocked or maybe amused before working insidiously to stamp them out, then he was appalled. It was the closest to a fight we'd had. "It is irresponsible of us, Finrod," he said in a voice edged simultaneously with anger and disbelief, "to withhold our superior knowledge of spiritual matters from those who never journeyed to Aman and have no way to know, just as it would be irresponsible to send them into war with wooden darts while we forge in steel."

"Their knowledge isn't necessarily inferior, though," I argued gently. "They simply use different evidence to answer the same questions. Lacking access to the Valar, they have observed the natural world and found their answers there."

"I can accept your continued faith in the whole hierarchical scheme involving the Valar and Maiar as intercessories for Eru Ilúvatar," he said, his voice maintaining its dangerous edge, "because that is how you were raised by your father. But I have trouble accepting someone of your intelligence and education accepting the primitive worship of mud and trees, when as certainly as I have, you have felt the supremacy of Eru in our banishment from Aman, if nothing else. Our utter dissociation from that land, as you surely realize, cannot be the work of the Valar alone."

"I tend to feel, Curufin," I replied, "that all spiritual paths that are couched in the desire to live right and do good lead to the same place."

"You walk a dangerous path, Finrod. You know these people are wrong. You should be guiding them—and that is your gift, is it not? to offer such guidance?—to the right knowledge, not withholding what you know from them so as not to hurt their feelings. And to live right? Do good? You see that among people who copulate freely, abandon marriage, and sometimes raise the children of two or three different mates? Finrod, I fear such immortality will prove Nargothrond's downfall. I understand your need to tread lightly, yet tread you must upon such wrongheaded and dangerous ideas."

Subsequently, I could not mention an Avarin or Sindarin festival without having the argument with him anew, so I simply stopped mentioning when I attended such festivals. This required some duplicity, however, as I needed to avoid having supper periodically with him without informing him of the reasons why. Appointments with my lords sometimes kept me from my own table, and I used these as excuses, although a certain narrowing of his eyes and hardening of his mouth—the scrutinizing look of a master artisan seeking the flaw he knew existed in an otherwise perfect piece—suggested that he knew the real reasons for my absences, which was not surprising, since these festivals fell at regular intervals upon the calendar. He, however, seemingly wanted another argument as little as I did, for even as he certainly suspected, he said nothing.

Today was the Festival of Oromë, the day when Oromë was supposed to have discovered the Elves at Cuiviénen. In Valinor, I remember it being a half-day of work and an afternoon and evening spent in the taverns. To the Avari, it was the most important festival day of the year, the day their young men and women come-of-age were initiated into certain religious mysteries and the day that the king renewed his sovereignty through symbolic union with the living earth. In the Avarin belief, the women at Cuiviénen preceded the men since their observations led to the not-illogical conclusion that naught could be born without woman; likewise, it was Arda herself who gave birth to Ilúvatar. This particular belief drove Curufin to distraction. I begged out of supper, telling him that one of my counselors had invited me to hear his daughter's musical composition over supper. "It is well," he said, "for I have much to do at the forge tonight." He had that scrutinizing look but bowed and left without further word. I told myself that an artisan of his caliber would likely wear that look as a matter of course, and I ordered my horse be readied and chose clothing appropriate for the occasion.

The Avarin festivals were always held well away from the city gates. I did not often pass outside of Nargothrond and was always startled by the air temperature—no longer held at a constant pleasant mildness by our depth underground but sometimes freezing, sometimes uncomfortably warm—and the force of the wind. Tonight, there was even rain, coming in short, cold bursts. If spring was upon us, then Manwë had thus rejected the gentle hand of Vána, preferring the clammy adornments of Ulmo upon his spring winds. The sun was beginning to set, although it was hidden utterly behind the clouds. In the wet grass, the silvered path of those who'd departed the city before me made the way easy to find.

I concentrated on all of these things to avoid thinking of the ceremony itself, which I told myself was a necessary exercise in order to maintain legitimacy among the Avari and even many of the Sindar who made their homes in my realm. I'd had some indiscretions in my youth, and then I'd been betrothed to Amarië and prepared myself for a settled sexuality primarily intended to beget children; when she'd not come with me to the Outer Lands and especially upon the assumption of my responsibilities as the head of my household, I'd abandoned any notion of marriage or sexual fulfillment and instead assumed a life of chastity. Given the heat of my passions at times in my youth—for I'd done things that would have ruined the reputation of my father's house, if discovered—I was surprised at how easy it was to simply shut down that part of myself that had once so utterly commanded me. I'd heard older Elves in Valinor speak of how, once their children were born, the constant intensity of physical affection proved more wearying than satisfying, and they simply made up their minds to indulge it no more, and I'd doubted that, as long as blood coursed in my veins, it wouldn't rouse me to passion. Yet I had tamed my baser nature so that it did just that.

Except for this night, once per year, for I was the king, and so I was the one ceremonially bonded to Arda according to the Avarin tradition. And I would lie if I did not admit that, in the embrace of the priestess that year selected to serve that role, with drums in my ears and the heat of the fire on my skin, with so many eyes watching me, my blood did not burn with the same ardor as it had in my youth, and in the week after, my gaze turned to beautiful youths in Nargothrond with more than a monarchial affection, and only with great effort did I prevent myself from taking the deep road to the place in Nargothrond where I knew my desires could be fully sated, as once they'd been in the Calarnómë, by those who didn't share the sexual compunctions of the Elves come from over the sea.

The wind was blowing such that I smelled the fires before even I heard the drums. Twilight had rendered the world around me a palette of black and varying hues of bluish-gray. I felt the drums as a tremor beneath my skin before I detected the sound of them, and then I saw the blush of the fires on the horizon. Then I was over the hill, and there they were, the fires leaping high amid the newly plowed fields. Elves swirled in a ceaseless dance around them, sometimes falling to the edge to couple in the furrows. It was considered good luck and a guarantee of a fruitful harvest; many children were born in the late spring to my Avarin citizens as a result.

At the top of the hill, a man took my horse, and the crowd parted as though by magic to make way for me. "The king," I heard them whisper. "The king, the king," but it was not in homage for they came not before me as my subjects; I came before them as a sovereign seeking another year of their loyalty and trust. This was a rite of passage enacted annually as surely as was the ceremony the young Avarin men and women would endure tonight. I made my way among the people. Some touched me; others simply fell aside. At the centermost fire, once I finished my procession, I knew that I would be met by one of the priests of Oromë, who would prepare me and guide me into the union with the priestess of Arda. I felt my body stirring already beneath the simple robes I wore.

I was almost to the centermost fire. The dancers made way, pulling back to leave a circle of bare earth around the fire. The priest of Oromë was waiting there, tall for an Avar and broad in the shoulders, masked as they always were in a rough leather mask and the antlers of a stag, wearing only a scrap of skin at the waist that left his leg bare to the hip. His hair was secured in a knot at his neck, but an escaped tendril revealed that he was pale-haired, as was rare among these people; that alone might have been the cause for reserving him to become a priest. Furthermore, he towered over me, which was not an accustomed—or entirely pleasant—feeling; his hands were strong as they led me forward. There was something unusual about the flash of his eyes that I saw beneath the mask, but I was so quickly propelled before him that I hadn't the chance to note precisely what.

And there she was: the priestess of Arda, upon her back on the bare earth and naked except for the same scrap of skin that the priests wore. She was different every year, and some lay passive while others clasped me with their legs and turned me over to press my back into the earth; there were prognosticators among the Avari who read the year's harvest in the coupling of the king with the priestess of Arda. This one was silver-haired, her small breasts pressed even flatter by the position in which she lay, and youthful of face. The priest was behind me, removing my robes; I watched the priestess, who had lifted her head slightly to look at me, who parted her legs just enough that I could see a shadowy place under the minute covering that she wore. When my robes dropped from my naked body, my desire was unmistakable.

One rough tug at the knot at her waist and even that meager covering dropped away. The drums were increasing in their intensity and even the fire seemed hotter and brighter. I slid my hands down her naked hips. She was small, slender, and silver-haired, like one expected the Avari to be—the priest who had led me to her notwithstanding—and she was grasping my buttocks to pull me into her. This one was eager. Sweat and desire were slick between us and made the coupling quick. I groaned, and she cried out in a high voice that might have been pain if not for the fact that she wrapped her legs around my waist to draw me in deeper. I tried to keep a slow and steady pace, but the drums were beating faster, and it was hard not to match them, especially with the intensity of the pleasure building in my loins. I was burning from within and without. I cared about neither. I heard my ragged breathing and moans of pleasure answered by her wordless cries, and then I felt her climax beneath me—something that only rarely happened during these couplings, the priestesses being heretofore untouched—and her nails bit into the flesh of my back and buttocks, and I could restrain myself no longer and heard myself shout with the intensity of it—it having been a year for me, since I'd resisted even touching myself in that time—and heard the people cry in answer: the legitimacy of the Noldorin king under the earth was again proved, the union between Nargothrond and the living earth again enacted.

I would have held her longer and spent myself further upon her, for I was hard again, but we were drawn apart by the priests of Oromë. Her fingers trailed my chest as I was lifted from her; she would have accepted. The priest who wrapped me in a cloak and led me away was different from the one who'd brought me down: as small as expected of the Avari, nimble-fingered, brown-eyed behind his mask. Around the fire, the revelry was intensifying, but I was not required and so did not partake in the excessively potent liquor that drove them into a riotous oblivion. The priest led me to one of the enclosures where they would initiate boys into Oromë's priesthood tonight. The usual brazier burned in the corner. Two other priests mulled in their scant dress and ragged masks, including—I saw—the tall, strong-built one from earlier. I was seated upon a log and my cloak gently lowered so that the scratches upon my back could be ministered to. My blood had been kindled by the ceremonial coupling but especially the girl's responsiveness and her roughness. My back stung as one of the priests dabbed salve onto the scratches, and my heart pounded harder with each touch. I was hard again, if in fact my erection had ever withered. The tall one was preparing the knives for initiations across the tent from where I sat, and the light from the brazier played on his well-muscled legs, his slender hips, his strong back and broad shoulders. I had the sudden thought that once, probably not long ago—for his strength belied almost certain youth—he had been held down in a tent much like this one and cut over his heart so that his blood could feed the earth. The force with which I wanted to be the one to have held him down was so violent and sudden that I felt as though the wind had been knocked from me.

I was doubled over and trembling, the priest who was caring for my back calling to the others in rough Avarin for a flagon of cold water, kept hidden beneath one of the tent flaps for those initiates who panicked and fainted when they were cut. I was on the verge of climax again, just from the thought of that powerful body reduced to helplessness and fucked and scarred, perhaps against his will, his purity having been preserved for more than fifty years in anticipation of enduring just such an assault. The cold water was brought by the other smaller priest. The tall one kept his back to me. The knife passed in and out of the fire. I spat out the water that they put in my mouth. The tall one turned.

The eyes behind the mask were strange, not what one expected of the Avari, because the eyes behind the mask were blue.

He said something roughly to the others in strangely accented Avarin. I was mistaken about his youth, I realized. The scar on his chest was faded almost to invisibility. His authority boomed in his voice. He was older than me. I felt the hands touching me recede. He came forward, beautiful as a god. He knelt before me. Golden hair fell over his shoulders as he lowered his head. He touched my feet. His blue eyes asked. "Gods, yes," I gasped, and with three quick strokes of his hand, I was done, shouting and clutching his bowed head to my chest over my thundering heart. And I realized that Celegorm son of Fëanor knew my secret as surely as I knew his.

~oOo~

I laughed at the sense of it. We were seated at the edge of Nargothrond's tallest waterfall, a place practically designed for sharing secrets. He looked every inch the Noldorin lord: the proud shoulders, the tidy and intricately embellished attire, the braids that would have kept his hair from spilling into the fire or compounds, had he any skill in the forge or the laboratory or any of the myriad other hazardous places where the Noldor became comfortable.

"I assumed you had Curufin's canniness," I said through my laughter, "to command such genuine affection from my Avarin and Sindarin guards. And all along you were one of them!"

"All along," he said. "Since we were still young in Valinor."

"What did your father say?"

"My father had no idea."

"You brother?"

"Has no idea."

"How did they not wonder at the scar?"

He shrugged. "I was always riding in the forest. I have a lot of scars. They wouldn't have known the significance of it anyway."

"But you were initiated in Valinor? How exactly?"

"There was quite a following of the cult of Oromë in the Calarnómë. I'm surprised you didn't know." His eyes darted to mine. "I know you went there too. Caranthir told me, and I followed you once. That's how I found the place myself. So you might say that I am here right now because of you, in some roundabout way." He was watching me closely to see what I'd say.

Caranthir. The long feud between my brothers and my dark cousin had begun there, in the Calarnómë, so long ago, my cousins and my brothers having allegedly coaxed wholly inappropriate love affair between Caranthir and a girl who granted favors of her body for books. I remembered the stone arch and the dark alley behind it. I remembered how my blood had leaped at the mere sight—the mere thought—of it. How it leaped now, to remember what I had done there, until the fateful afternoon that I'd gone home to find my father overjoyed that he'd made a possible match for me with Amarië of the Vanyar. And, with that clarion summons back to my duty, the one time that I'd lived outside of the confines of the triplicate expectations of the Eldarin people had come to an end.

"Whatever you thought you knew of me then is long ended," I told him.

He watched me for a long time before speaking. "I don't think that it is," he said at last, and his finger lightly brushed my throat where my pulse still pounded at the memory of the stone arch, the dark alley, the strong and beautiful priest kneeling at my feet and asking to touch me with his eyes. So easily, he replaced another who had knelt at my feet in much the same way: the pale-haired boy from the Calarnómë. He'd in fact been not much younger than me, yet I thought of him as a boy. No, I didn't think of him at all—not anymore. But once I'd thought of him as a boy for his plaintive pleases and my lords, for his dutiful obedience, for his malleability in the bedroom, as though he'd not yet developed desires of his own.

I'd loved him. I'd thought I had. It had been impossible to tell; impossible to winnow genuine love from the welter of passion and defiance, and yes, power that his presence in my life inspired. With him, I—circumscribed by so many expectations—felt a sense of not only autonomy but of command, as though I was truly a prince as I’d been told, with a freedom to wander beyond the boundaries of propriety without fear of reprisal. In a hierarchical society as ours was, where one answered always to those above him, I felt pressed as though by a weight of stones by those above me: my father, my uncles and aunts, my grandfathers the kings, the Valar, each crowding upon me so that it was harder and harder to stand on my own. I was less free, I realized, to have my way than a common-born child would have been. But with him, those expectations evaporated, and it was as those who look with envy upon princes and kings wish it to be, and the world confined within the four walls of his apartment in the Calarnómë was a world of my making. I told him to change the laces in my boots and he did. I told him to draw me a bath and he did. I told him to whisper to me of the greatness of my kingdom while I made love to him. He did. I tied him to the bed, I left him unfulfilled, I explored and experimented with his body—and he allowed me.

I went home and my father had added my name to the list of attendees of a new lecture series, my uncle made a passive-aggressive remark that amounted to the conclusion that my table manners were become slovenly, and I should work on that, my mother had scheduled me to be fitted for new dress robes, I was no longer allowed to have pastries in my bedroom because the chambermaid had discovered ants … and the expectations looped around me in ever tighter and tighter concentricities—and I allowed it, for I had no choice.

When word came that I would be courting and hopefully marrying Amarië of the Vanyar, I told him that I would not be returning. He accepted that with the same uncomplaining obedience as he'd allowed many indignities done to his body. I thought that my love for him would generate such turbid emotions that I'd be forced to lie sick abed as lovers did in insipid novels of romance, but instead, I felt cold as I walked back through the streets that had once engendered such heat in me. Just as lovers did in those novels, I'd wanted him this once to surmount his submissiveness and beg me—no, insist that I—stay. But he hadn't. It had been, "Yes, my lord. I understand, my lord," and the removal of my collar from around his neck while his hands lay still in his lap, then I was one final time down the avenue to the main city and gone from his life.

Celegorm's fingers were still at my throat. I snatched them away. "Don't you dare," I said to him. His head lowered, as it had the night of the festival, when he touched me. I knew the gesture well. The broad shoulders, the lord's raiment, the Fëanorian pendant at his throat: These were the trappings of authority and strength, of one who commanded. And yet beneath that well-made raiment, I knew that he bore the mark of a servant, of one committed not even to a person but to a mere belief not even belonging to his own culture or family. My heart thundered with the thought of possessing him as once I'd possessed the boy. That one such as he should consent to be restrained and cut and fucked and forced to kneel excited me. I remembered those quick, expert strokes bringing me again to climax. My erection strained against my breeches.

"When is your next patrol, Celegorm?" I asked him.

His eyes remained lowered. I had never noticed before how thick his eyelashes were: Eyes made for bowing low, I found myself thinking. "Tomorrow evening. My king."

"Do not go. Wait for a message from me. I will tell you where to meet me. Expect to stay for however long it takes."

"Yes, my king."