The Sovereign and the Priest by Dawn Felagund

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Chapter 9: Finrod

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Chapter Nine 
Finrod

Orodreth had come to me that night. Curufin and I were speaking idly while the servants cleared away the custard dishes, when Orodreth burst into the room, his clothing disheveled and hair coming loose from his braids. "Finrod, I must speak to you." He gripped the back of a chair, his knuckles squeezed white; his pupils were dilated to where his eyes seemed more black than gray. I felt a sickening lurch of fear. The madness was coming upon him. I hadn't seen it in a very long time. The peace of Nargothrond had kept it from him, or so I'd assumed. I could laugh at the pride underlying such a foolish assumption.

Curufin glanced at me and made a coughing sound that might have been the start of a laugh that died in his throat at the sight of the black pools of Orodreth's eyes. He was breathing hard, wheezing with every breath. "I—" said Curufin. When he looked at me next, his face was drawn with fear. "I should leave?"

It was not often that Curufin was so reduced. I felt all of the arts of discourse he had mastered crumble before the raw terror in my brother's eyes. "You should. My apologies, and I will send you a message in the morning. He is ill."

I took him to my bedroom, shouting to my servants to bring towels soaked in cool water and sleep-wine. Halfway down the hall, he began to fight me, but Orodreth was never physically powerful, and I wrapped my arms around him as I had been doing since we were children, when these attacks were upon him. In such a manner, I guided him backwards down the hall. He retched and vomited a clear stream of liquid onto the floor. "You don't understand—I must—you must—listen to—I know—I know—I see—"

The servant helped me lift him onto the bed. "No!" he shouted when I held his arms to the bed and he saw the servant advancing with the sleep-wine. "No!" And in a burst of lucidity, he completed a sentence: "Finrod, I dreamt of the ring with the twined serpents."

I lifted my hand to stall the servant from forcing the sleep-wine upon him. I had told no one that I had given the ring to Barahir, not even Orodreth. Although it had been my father's, I had worn it only rarely; my father had smaller hands than me, and it fit poorly and, besides, was not a design I preferred. Serpents—of all animals!—and a crown of gold for a house that had no ambition or even hope for sovereignty. I had often wondered at my father's choice in it. "Two minds upon one body," he'd said when he gave it to me at his departure, "yet one supports the crown of kingship while the other devours it. Mind the meaning of it, Finrod."

"Finrod, you must listen to me," Orodreth said, "and then I will lie still and sleep. The two oaths—they are moving. Like the gears in machines. They are moving and converging, and when they do, I fear so many lives will be crushed between them." He began to weep. "You will leave Nargothrond. Both oaths will push you hence. I cannot see the good in him that you can, Finrod. Forgive me, forgive me, for I will drive him from your doors. But it will be too late for you by then. I am in the dark with you, I am in the dark, and I cannot see you, but I know you are there. I am in the dark, and I have no idea what is going to happen next." As delirium seized him again, his words became nearly indecipherable, but I touched my mind to his and felt and saw what he saw. Stone walls rose about me, but I was not in Nargothrond. I felt them, icy and damp, as fear like none I'd ever known—even on the verge of death during the Dagor Bragollach—writhed inside my guts. Orodreth had stopped fighting me and silently wept. "Now let me sleep. Let me sleep! I would see no more."

~oOo~

When I was almost come of age, Grandfather Finwë invited me to stay overnight at the palace. Grandmother was visiting her relatives in Valmar, and he summoned me under a pretense of desiring my companionship to alleviate his loneliness at her absence. I remember that we rode together to some of the lower streets of the city and sat on the wall and ate ices. He told me stories late into the night, as he had done when I'd been a child, and in the familiar comfort of his presence, the confusion of adolescence had almost melted away. But when I sat opposite him at breakfast the next morning, he spoke to me as a child no longer but the man I would soon become. "Finrod, I have brought you here for a purpose beyond my own selfish wishes. There is something of great importance that I wish you to know."

I had by then begun to perceive the moods of others. I had assumed, as a boy, that all could do it, until I realized one day that my uncle had walked directly into an easily avoided—to my mind—argument with Aunt Anairë because he'd been ignorant of her black mood. Strong thoughts had begun to force their way into my mind of late as well. "Our family is blessed and cursed with it, the mindspeak," said my grandfather. "It comes through me. It skipped all of my sons save your father, but I see it even stronger in my grandchildren. Caranthir was the first, and I didn't know it when it manifested in him, and I am afraid that my ignorance has done him great harm. Your Uncle Fingolfin's children it has mostly skipped, save a slight susceptibility in Turgon. But you and your siblings all have it, through your father. Yours is not as strong as some of the others, but you must nonetheless learn how to control it, then use it responsibly."

I was still young enough to be competitive, and I asked immediately, "Who has it the strongest, if not me?"

Grandfather Finwë chuckled. "You cannot be the best at everything, Finrod. Caranthir has it the strongest, stronger even than me; it is something he often cannot control. Your brother Orodreth and your sister experience it strongly as well. Your sister has a masterful mind, and it will be truly a gift to her, and she will wield it with great skill. But Orodreth is not as strong and will not always be able to control it. Then you must protect and care for him, and most of all, listen to him."

For in those who had it the strongest, Grandfather explained, the emotions of others became so palpable that they felt those emotions as their own. They could perceive thoughts, although it took time and practice to discern accurately the person thinking those thoughts and avoid being deceived. And they could, at times, move in time as they moved in space.

That puzzled me. "You can go where you will in space, can you not, Finrod? You can sit here for an hour without moving, or you can spend that hour walking into the east, or you can spend that hour running hither and thither in all directions. But time marches forward at a steady pace and always in one direction, and you are swept along as though upon the current of a river. Those like your brother can sometimes move along time as you would move around in space. They can go back and perceive what happened in the past. They can go forward and see what is yet to come. This movement is not entirely free. But as far as I have been able to tell, something innocent in the environment will act as a trigger, and this trigger opens the mind to move out of the march of time."

"Are you sure I'll never be able to do this?" I'd asked, sorely jealous that I would not, for at the time it had seemed a great power to possess.

"I cannot guarantee that. Your powers are lesser than your cousin's and brother's but remain considerable. But it is not something to envy, Finrod. It thrusts the mind into an unnatural place and so provokes illness in the mind and, therefore—since one is linked to the other—in the body as well. You must be prepared to care for your brother when this comes upon him. I have told your father and mother as well, but they do not have the gift and so won't understand as you will."

I gave him my word, and I have kept it.

~oOo~

The two oaths—they are moving. Like the gears in machines. They are moving and converging, and when they do, I fear so many lives will be crushed between them.

Orodreth lay in sleep free from dreams. I lay beside him, holding him loosely.

The oaths are moving.

I had an awful vision of two enormous animals rising from the earth. For bones they were filled with the machinery of fate, grinding ever steadily onward; some slow gear had clicked into place after centuries, and now their legs straightened and pushed them toward the surface. Mountains crumpled and slid from their backs. They left wounds within the earth that the insatiable sea rushed to fill. When they bellowed, the stars shivered.

The two oaths.

I knew, of course, of what he spoke: my oath to Barahir, and the Fëanorions' long-ago oath in Valinor. But I lay with a Fëanorion in love. I shared one of the deepest bonds with him that two people could share. With Orodreth's prognostication, I too felt those oaths stirring—many lives will be crushed between them—and I wondered, would that bond be enough to lessen if not forestall the inevitable collision? What if the monstrous machinery of fate could move in unison rather than at variance with one another, synchronized by the love that the poets would have us believe was all-powerful? I did not know if such a thing was even possible, but I had to try.

~oOo~

I had brought many things out of Valinor that had, in hindsight upon the Helcaraxë, seemed frivolous: jewelry, old toys from my childhood, storybooks, elegant clothing. I could have left them, a monument upon the Ice to the last of the Noldorin innocence, in a place where it was likely to endure perhaps even longer than those who bore the forsaken burdens. Yet I did not, for in caring for these burdens, my mind was kept from recalling those now beyond my care. When I navigated a trunk of ceremonial clothing up a steep hill of ice, my mind could not dwell upon how easily Amarië had broken our engagement. I let the ache in my shoulders from carrying a cask of jewels fill my thoughts so that I would not think of my father's preference for his own safety over the right pursuit against Morgoth. I passed out toys for the children to clutch and perhaps forget, in some small measure, their terror and misery, and that barest kindling of joy in their eyes became as a polestar that I strayed ever toward, rather than remembering my grandfathers and my mother and wandering deeper into grief.

Upon establishing myself in Beleriand, some of the items I'd brought found use again and others I gave away, but a few receded deeper into my stores as the years passed for reasons not always easily articulated. Under my apartment in Nargothrond were a string of rough-hewn rooms too small to make much out of, and in one of those, I stowed the trunks—now moldering, the wood chipped in places, succumbing to inevitable decay—that I'd brought forth from Valinor. As Orodreth slept his dreamless sleep that night, I went down to this room. I was still dressed as though for court and supper with Curufin, in dark blue robes threaded with silver, a heavy necklace worrying at my neck, and braids dignified a few short hours ago and now achingly tight.

The trunk was not hard to find, for it was the shabbiest of them all, containing nothing that I wanted to work to preserve. There were old riding clothes in it that fell apart with the barest touch, rough books filled with notes and sketches that hadn't amounted to anything, shoes that were a gift from my grandmother but always pinched my feet and still smelled faintly of the lavender sachets she'd given me to keep in them. I tipped one, and shreds of cloth and flowers fell out of the toe, and I wanted to weep.

I had once made some ugly watercolors for Grandfather Olwë's begetting day but had never given them to him—realizing their ugliness, I suppose—and I moved them to the side. There was a box of glass beads that I used to use in playing jewelsmith with Galadriel before she very quickly grew out of that. I set it to the side. A box of comments from one of my later and less successful exhibitions. To the side. Disintegrated paper that had become a mouse's nest. I scrounged through it with my fingers and there found what I sought.

The leather was thin and supple. I'd burned the design on it myself, remembering the dual sensations of adoration and lust as I'd imagined fastening it at his throat. I smelled it, but it smelled only faintly of leather, not of the pale boy from the Calarnómë. The design gave the impression of two separate strands—I remember explaining this patiently to him while he listened with his hands pressed between his knees—but once one bothered to untangle them, there was only one. It was a symbol of unity, I'd added, in case he hadn't gotten that; he wasn't Noldorin, and I didn't trust that his mind found meaning in the same way that mine did.

It was a symbol of union too, not that we'd achieved anything like that. Once installed at Amarië's side, I'd forgotten him easily. And yet, when sweeping items seemingly at random from my shelves and drawers into these trunks upon my departure from Tirion, when I'd found this small strip of leather curled at the bottom of a drawer, I hadn't had to think twice before tossing it in with the rest.

I sat on the floor in that rough-hewn room and let my thumb trace the design upon the collar. I'd no doubt that Celegorm would accept. I understood less what I hoped to accomplish in the asking. The two oaths—the stern stone floor beneath my knees seemed to belie the motion of the two oaths that Orodreth had perceived as gargantuan machinery far beneath even the deepest halls of Nargothrond, yet I trusted him that the time would come where, even here, we would feel their laborious and hulking ascendance. Did I truly think that this would stop it? I spoke aloud to the empty room and said again, "I have to try."

But that wasn't all of it either. "Maybe this once I can choose love alongside duty." Maybe when I walked away this time—as Orodreth had foreseen that I would—as I too knew that I would—then I would not leave love forsaken behind me.

Nargothrond itself was sprung of a great unfailing hope. While my cousins and my brothers made war to the north, then I made a sanctuary. I carved a piece of paradise from the living rock and bent the will of the corrupted earth to my desires rather than Morgoth's. I was sick with my own unquenchable hope, a king who had united kindreds and willed peace in the midst of roaring discord, who curled around a strip of leather clutched to my chest, fighting not to weep.

~oOo~

I waited five agonizing days after making my proposal to Celegorm before returning to the apartment.

Orodreth was often ill with his visions in those days, and I let caring for him keep me from straying in the direction of the deep road. Curufin, happy to assist me in any capacity during my brother's convalescence—or so he assured me—brought me documents to sign and reports from my court, recalling entire speeches and conversations verbatim while I hastily spooned stew into my mouth, listening for my brother to cry in his distress from behind the closed bedroom door, already poised to rise when he did.

"I understand," Curufin had told me, nodding and saying simply, but in a voice laden with meaning, "Caranthir."

On the fifth day, Orodreth had no episodes and came to the table for both breakfast and luncheon. Our conversation meandered about the dull philosophical topics that we both enjoyed, though shying away from true argument. He had a half-glass of wine and drank prodigious amounts of water. "I think I will return to my rooms today," he said as the dishes were cleared from lunch.

Ordinarily, I would insist he stay for one day more at least. Instead, I asked merely, "Are you certain that is wise?" and he replied, "I will have my daughter stay the night with me."

That left me descending to the deep road earlier than usual, with the light still full and bright and the streets full of noise. Many called to me, and I forced myself to stop and hear their tales and share their laughter so as not to appear suspicious. I even stopped and watched the work of a young artist whose sketches I admired. My heart thundered, and I had to remind myself that others couldn't hear it. I had to remind myself that no one watched so closely as to see the extra haste in my step or the fast-beating pulse at my throat.

Just before the deep road was a waterfall that plunged into a stream that ran beneath the bridge at the top of the road. I ducked behind the waterfall and used a key to open one of the few locked doors within Nargothrond.

Fëanorian lamps bathed the passageway in a perpetual bluish glow. As once sight alone—thought alone—of the archway and the dark alley in the Calarnómë stirred my arousal, so this narrow stone tunnel did the same, and with the door locked behind me, I no longer had to exercise decorum. My footsteps slapped the ground at a trot, then a run. I stopped only to compose myself before the door to the apartment before entering.

Celegorm rarely noticed when I entered, for the hidden door was behind a promontory of stone that disguised my entrance. He was lying facedown on the bed, reading a book. He wore light trousers and went shirtless—a wooden practice sword rested against the wall and he'd kicked off his boots at the bottom of the bed, revealing how he'd been engaged only minutes earlier—and a thin sheen of sweat on his skin caught the lamplight and placed the contours of his body in a relief of cobalt and gold. His honey-golden hair gleamed and fell unfettered over his shoulders. He was beautiful. My breath caught.

I eased forward and still he did not see me. He cleared his throat into his hand and turned the page. His buttocks were very round beneath the thin material of his trousers. He swirled his foot in a figure-eight pattern upon the bedspread. His shoulders and arms were well-muscled and powerful, as his legs would be too, once I took the trousers from him, I knew. My admiration hardened into desire. I stepped forward fully into the light.

As many times as I'd come to him, he always looked surprised to see me and scrambled for a moment as though unsure how to best please me. He reached for his shirt even as he shoved the book away and then abandoned both to come forward. "My lord. You are early."

He knelt before me. I caught his face in my hands and made him look up at me. "I could wait no longer."

"The answer," he said, "is still yes."

I stood before him in my full splendor: the king of Nargothrond, richly clad and graced with jewels, presiding over the most remarkable realm in Beleriand. He crouched low, and I had to lift his chin again as I drew the collar from the deep pocket of my robes. His eyes flashed to mine, and I knew he recognized it. He drew back slightly. "I am not worthy of this …"

"Celegorm, son of Fëanor, you are."

I slipped it around his neck. He was still damp beneath his hair, and his skin was fairly glowing with warmth. As I tightened the buckle, I felt his pulse beating fast at his throat.

"Celegorm, son of Fëanor, this collar symbolizes our unity. Our lives and our fates are entwined as a single thread. I love you as I love myself, and no longer shall I think of us as two but as one, and all that I choose shall be with you at the forefront of my mind."

"I am one with you, Finrod Felagund, King of Nargothrond," he murmured in reply.

I hooked my finger into the collar and drew him to his feet. I had forgotten the pleasurable ease of such a gesture. "Undress and lie down," I commanded, and he did, and I undressed myself slowly before him, so that I could watch upon his naked body every response of his desire.

The curtains of the bed were tied back with braids of red silk rope. I undid one and watched the confusion and anticipation flit across his face. "As I have united with Arda as the year-king," I told him, "so I will unite with you. As has come to pass with Arda, our fates will be joined, and you will be mine to command, as long as you wear my collar at your throat."

I had dreamt many times of his initiation, of what it must have been like for the priest who held him down so that, delirious and frightened, he could be taken. I wondered if he fought as many did, or if he was resigned, as he usually was with me. I lay his arms above his head. I kissed the throbbing pulse at his wrist and the tender undersides of his arms, even as I looped the rope around his wrists. He gasped when I tightened it and swiftly lashed it to the bedpost. I felt at once his desire and unease as the full awareness of his helplessness descended upon him; as I had shaped the earth to my will, so I was trying to shape him. I watched the muscles in his arms flex and relax, flex and relax, as he tested his restraints. He pulled hard, and the bedpost creaked, but the tether did not give. His blue eyes were bright with fear at what I was attempting.

I straddled him and sat on his legs. "I could do anything to you now." To remind him of what that entailed, I traced the scar on his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut as though remembering and bit his lip. His memories came upon me. I felt his ecstasy and scribed upon it the pain of his marking and a quiver of shame that he was so easily subjected to both. "You are lucky that I love you."

I kissed his mouth and his throat. I took his nipple between my teeth, and his feet pedaled against the bedclothes and then lay still, as he realized that I was not going to hurt him. The bedpost creaked again. I moved my mouth down the taut, quavering muscles of his belly, stopping when I reached the golden hair at his groin. He groaned in frustration as I left his cock, slick at the tip already, untouched, but the bedpost didn't creak this time. "Good. You are learning," I said to him, but I didn't give him the reward he craved.

"Spread your legs," I said, and he did. "Lift your knees." He did. I poured oil upon my palm and prepared him. He was tense with anticipation, and one finger was uncomfortable; he made a sound in his throat when I added the second. "Relax," I told him. In this, he was not so easily commanded. I withdrew my fingers and knelt between his knees. "What is it that you want?" I asked.

"I want you to fuck me. I want you to love me."

I poured more oil into my palm and prepared myself hastily. I gripped his thighs, lifted his hips, and thrust into him. His back arched away from the bed. He bit his lip harder to keep from crying out. I moved steadily and hard inside him. His bound hands were clenched into fists, but he fought his restraints no longer. He is mine. The thought made my lust for him build to unbearable levels. Mine. Again and again I thrust into him until no amount of obedience could keep him from crying my name, and I climaxed at the sound of it.

He trembled in my arms as I held him—or was it I who trembled? He'd bitten his own lip to the point of blood. I kissed it clean. When I trusted my hands enough to fumble the knots undone, then I released him from the rope. His arms must have ached from it, but once freed, he didn't stretch or wring out his fingers, certainly numb by now. He held me in his arms and pressed his face to my chest.

Come what may, our lives—our fates—were entwined.

~oOo~

I had told him I would never stay the night, but this seemed the night to break that rule, if ever there was one. He was still sleeping when dawn's first light crept up the walls of Nargothrond, but I woke him to say goodbye. Half-asleep, he whispered, "You stayed," and rose to help me dress, but I pressed him back to the bed and kissed him and bade him sleep.

The streets were almost deserted except for a few farmers taking carts out of Nargothrond to bring back the harvest. The fullest time of the year was upon us, the time when we never had to worry about going in want. I certainly did not want for anything, I realized. I balled my fists inside my robes to keep my body from leaping and gnawed my lip to save my face from the ridiculous grin that sought to announce my happiness to the few passersby awake so early in the morning.

Whatever monsters of fate were yet far below Nargothrond, and whatever fears Orodreth had spun from out of the deeps of time hovered still well above the stone ceilings. I had made Nargothrond as a place for peace and free of fear. Perhaps for the first time since my lantern had revealed the unhewn stone and infinite potential of its walls, I knew those feelings for myself.

As I approached my apartment, a figure detached itself from pacing in front of my door: one of the border guards, his face worn with having waited for me all night and drawn with worry. I stopped where I stood and let him approach. Peace and happiness suffused every inch of my being. I willed time to slow. The oaths would awaken, and the visions would descend upon us. But not in this moment. I stood regally and let him approach, as befitted a king. Not in this moment! Make it last forever.