A Powerful Illusion by Himring

Chapter 1: The Boy

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The boy hovered in the corner of the room, trying not to fidget and draw attention to himself, trying to find some task that needed doing and would serve legitimately to keep him in the room. In a moment, he thought, his lord would notice that he was still there and dismiss him, telling him he did not require anything else just now. But Aphadon had sensed something was not right the moment Lord Maedhros had re-entered his chambers.
He was feeling on edge in any case, so excited to be travelling away from the Marches for the first time in his life that he felt a little sick inside. Lord Maedhros obviously knew, in the slightly alarming way in which he seemed to know or guess most things, and had begun making reassuring noises when Aphadon was around, casual remarks that required little or no answer. Aphadon had been quick to recognize the tactic this time; when he had first joined Lord Maedhros’s household, it had taken a while before those reassuring remarks penetrated the fog of bewilderment and awe that surrounded him and he realized that they were really and truly aimed at him, Aphadon.
Maedhros was not saying anything now and perhaps in itself that had alerted Aphadon to the fact that something was wrong. Maedhros sat, his chair turned half away from the dressing table, looking meditatively at his crossed ankles—or maybe he was listening for something? But if he was, what was he listening for?
Somewhere in the distance, at the end of an echoing corridor, a door banged, sharply. Maedhros raised his head.
‘Aphadon’, he spoke softly, in warning, ‘I believe we may be about to receive a visitor.’
Aphadon could hear heavy steps, as of someone storming down the passage towards their apartment, and hastily launched himself toward the anteroom. He made it to the door just as a fist crashed against its timbered panel. He took a deep breath and quickly and carefully opened the door. His gaze went up…
‘It is the High King, my lord’, he said, not even embarrassed by the way his voice rose into a squeak. Even those a great deal older and braver than he was would surely have blanched at the expression on King Fingolfin’s face.
‘Thank you, Aphadon’, said Maedhros behind him.
Aphadon jumped out of the way as Fingolfin strode across the threshold.
‘Uncle’, said Maedhros. ‘I was wondering whether you would wish to discuss things further with me.’
‘I trusted you,’ barked the High King. ‘I was so sure of you that I didn’t even ask you…’
He stopped, as if startled by his own words.
‘Aphadon’, said Maedhros, ‘go down to the kitchens. Fetch some red wine and white bread for the High King.’
Aphadon hesitated. The High King did not look to him as if he had the least intention of sitting down and sipping a glass of wine. In fact, a moment ago he had looked more as if he was about to go for his nephew’s throat.
The kitchens were a long way off. Clearly, Maedhros’s intent in sending him there was to get Aphadon safely out of the way. Aphadon’s loyalty to his lord would normally have exacted unstinting obedience to his requests but, much as the High King terrified him, he wondered whether his duty in this case might not be to disobey. Of course, there would not be all that much he could do if the High King really should go so far as to attack his lord, but…
‘Aphadon’, said Maedhros gently, ‘go’— and he felt Maedhros’s palm between his shoulder blades, giving him a little shove. Aphadon reluctantly went out and shut the door behind him, leaving uncle and nephew facing each other.

Chapter 2: A Powerful Illusion

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‘I was so sure of you!’, Fingolfin repeated, as soon as the door had closed. He had calmed down a little, but fury simmered on just below the surface. ‘Findarato—his reluctance I expected. It did not surprise me. But you! I would have sworn that not a day, not a night went by when you did not dream of attacking Morgoth!’

‘Maybe too much’, said Maedhros wryly.

‘What? How could you—how can anyone want to attack Morgoth too much?’, Fingolfin shouted, as rising anger drove out sincere puzzlement again. True, it was he who had argued against war on Morgoth, long ago in Tirion, he who had once held off before the Gates of Angband, but this was different. This was absurd.

‘I dream of it night and day, as you say,’ said Maedhros. ‘I dream and, in my dreams, I plant my banner in the earth of Ard-galen before the Gates of Angband and I raise my voice. And at once they come flocking at my call, from the west and the south and the east—all our people, of course, but the Sindar and the Edain, too, and Nandor and Dwarves—not only from Hithlum, from Dorthonion and the Marches do they come, but from the hidden cities Nargothrond and Gondolin, from the foam-lapped coast of Brithombar and Eglarest, from the engirdled woods of Doriath and from Brethil, from the lord- and leaderless in Ossiriand and Estolad, from the mountain caves of Nogrod and Belegost and from across the barrier of the Ered Luin…

‘All the free people of the free Earth heed my call, even the elusive Avari and the Petty Dwarves, for we are about to throw off the yoke off the Dark Foe! And at the sound of my voice, in the depths of Angband the thralls break their chains and even the orcs remember the stars! But I ride forward and, before the hooves of my steed, the Iron Gates of Angband shatter and crumble to dust because my courage is high and my heart is pure…

‘Only of course it is not’, he concluded, with a faint smile.

‘Is not what? What is?’, asked Fingolfin, confused.

For as Maedhros spoke, his voice had taken on a deeper resonance, both familiar and unfamiliar, and the haunting echoes of Feanor in his son’s voice had distracted Fingolfin so much that he had lost track of what Maedhros was saying.

‘My heart, Uncle’, explained Maedhros, ‘demonstrably not pure...  And moreover there is a problem with that theory, of course’, he added.

‘Theory?’, asked Fingolfin irritably. It was not the first time that he noticed Maedhros had a way of making him feel him out of his depth.

‘The theory that purity of heart and high courage alone should be enough to conquer our foe’, said Maedhros. ‘For if that were so, how did our ancestors at Cuivienen fall prey to him and his minions so easily? Do we fault their purity of heart or their courage?’

Fingolfin would much have preferred not to think about their ancestors at Cuivienen and what had happened to them. Besides, at some point in this conversation he clearly had let himself be side-tracked from its real subject!

‘Why’, he inquired doggedly, ‘did you advise against the proposed attack?’

‘Did you see my page?’, Maedhros asked.

Another non-sequitur!

‘Your page?’

Fingolfin had only just seen the boy, of course, but at the moment he would have been hard put to say what he looked like. He had seemed quite young, he vaguely recalled.

‘I have recently discovered’, said Maedhros, ‘that despite my best efforts even in Himring, in my own castle, there are people who believe that we are at peace. And if even in Himring there are people who are capable of believing that, how much more will people farther south, farther away from the border, be ready to believe that it is so! This very day there are those living in Beleriand who have never seen an orc.’

He made it sound as if that was a thing both very strange and wonderful, Fingolfin thought.

‘That notion of peace may be an illusion’, continued Maedhros. ‘Maybe peace is never anything but an illusion—looking back, even the fabled peace of Aman seems little more than a temporary, localized truce—but it is a powerful illusion. Law and order greatly depend on it. And we have seen—you and I—what consequences may ensue when that illusion is broken, to our great cost. Uncle, if we declare war now—although, in truth, neither you nor I have ever known peace along our borders all this while—we had better be sure that what we stand to gain is worth the breaking of that illusion.’

Fingolfin stared at him rather helplessly. Was Maedhros really suggesting that law and order among the Noldor would collapse if they attacked Morgoth?

‘If Feanaro had commanded you to attack, you would have obeyed him without question!’, he said at last and instantly regretted it, although that was precisely what he had been thinking all along—and it was perhaps that conviction which had caused most of his rage.

Maedhros’s face changed, indefinably.

‘Not necessarily’, he said. ‘But, Uncle, you did not command me to attack. You did not command me to do anything at all. You asked me for my counsel. I advised you as best I could—and perhaps not in my own best interest.’

He lowered his eyes thoughtfully and then looked back up at Fingolfin.

‘Maybe you should ignore my advice’, he said suddenly. ‘Command us to attack! Unlike me, you have never lost a battle.’

‘We have had our losses, too’, said Fingolfin stiffly and, once again, regretted it as soon as he had said it.

Maedhros’s face changed again. Suddenly, he looked very remote.

‘I was not attempting to belittle your losses’, he said calmly.

Maedhros had proved a staunch ally, Fingolfin thought, since Mithrim. He recalled how he had bent over him on his sick-bed, still concerned whether his nephew would survive, and how Maedhros had opened his eyes and had said, surprisingly clearly and coherently: We will have to start planning the abdication ceremony but at the moment I’m afraid I’m incapable of staying on my feet long enough.

They had worked well together in Beleriand. Maedhros had been polite and cooperative, occasionally even cordial, with a sudden fleeting warmth that always seemed to catch Fingolfin on the wrong foot: each of those moments passed before he could reciprocate. But Fingolfin had never understood Maedhros; he knew he had not. He should not have assumed that he could predict what Maedhros was going to say.

He should have talked to Maedhros in private before the council. Now it was too late. Angrod and Aegnor were furious, it was true, and were vociferous in their protests. But even they would think twice before launching a major attack against their cousin’s express advice, for now the gist of Maedhros’s counsel would inevitably leak out and become public knowledge.

And he should not have mentioned Feanor, thought Fingolfin. Mentioning Feanor was a mistake, always, even if he could not stop thinking about him—even if they both could not stop thinking of him. For whatever else might be unfathomable about his nephew to Fingolfin, this was not: he knew that, standing before him, Maedhros remembered Feanor—that he did so almost all the time.

Rather uncharacteristically, for him, Fingolfin noticed the evening sunlight slanting through the western window and dappling the floor—how it picked out glints of gold thread in the embroidery on his nephew’s shoulder, but did not touch his cheek. His eyes and mouth remained in shadow.

 

Chapter 3: Hazelnuts

An earlier version of this chapter was first written as birthday fic for Oshun.

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‘You’ve got a new page’, remarked Fingon casually.

They were sitting in a pavilion in the centre of the formal garden.  All around the airy wooden structure, rain was streaming down on knee-high hedges and white gravel. Fingon was cracking hazelnuts.

Only a quarter of an hour ago, they had been walking sedately together along a long corridor. Maedhros was already mentally bracing himself to meet the gathering of family and acquaintances that awaited them at the other end, when Fingon, without warning, thrust open a discreet side door and dashed off into the rain, calling over his shoulder: ‘Follow me!’

Maedhros had obeyed instantly, leaving the door to bang shut behind them.

It was, Maedhros considered, a tactical masterpiece, his latest rescue by Fingon, cleverly planned and expertly executed. Where they were sitting, they were highly visible from the large windows and galleries on all sides of the courtyard, so there was no way Maedhros could be said to be hiding from public view in shame and embarrassment. However, anyone who wished to express their strong disapproval and extreme dissatisfaction with Maedhros Feanorion’s latest decision would have to walk fifty yards through bucketing rain to do so. If that did not deter them completely, it might at least cool their tempers before they got here. So far nobody had ventured forth.

It was the more generous of Fingon to plot such a rescue, he felt, as his cousin himself clearly did not entirely understand why Maedhros had voted against his father’s proposed campaign against Morgoth in council. But apparently Fingon had decided Maedhros had suffered enough on that account. It was true, that besides his harrowing private conversation with Fingolfin, he had had to endure Aegnor’s flaming anger and Angrod’s iron contempt and a multitude of pinpricks by those who were not in a position to criticize him in quite such forthright terms but still did not hesitate to let him feel their disapprobation. Even many of those who had not been in favour of attacking seemed to be of the opinion that if Maedhros Feanorion, known as an inveterate warmonger, also opposed the attack, he must be doing so for the wrong reasons. 

More difficult to bear than any of these had been Maglor’s silence. Clearly, in the present surroundings, away from their home ground, his brother’s loyalty would not allow him to voice his disagreement even in private. But his silence was eloquent enough. Maedhros was not used to disagreeing with Maglor so comprehensively. And he was only too much aware of what the reaction of the rest of his brothers was likely to be when he returned to East Beleriand.

He owed Fingon a frank discussion of the matter, of course. But his painstaking attempt to speak honestly to Fingon’s father had merely entangled him further in unintended and unanticipated ambiguities. So for now he was very grateful for the chance simply to sit still, listening to the whoosh and drip of the rain, and watch Fingon crack the hazelnuts he had brought along for their entertainment with the hilt of his knife. He did so with great precision, applying just enough force to crack the shell without damaging the kernel. Each nut he cracked he offered to Maedhros, who only accepted every third or so, so that Fingon ended up eating most of them himself. The small pile of shells on the table before them was steadily growing.

‘You’ve got a new page’, Fingon had remarked, casually. He could have no idea that, for Maedhros, that subject was quite closely linked to the one Fingon was so carefully avoiding.

‘Yes,’ Maedhros answered. ‘I owed his parents a favour, and they seemed to think that this was it.’

‘Why shouldn’t it be a favour?,’ Fingon asked. ‘You haven’t suddenly begun mistreating your pages, have you?’ He stopped to consider. ‘I guess he is rather younger than the age you would take them on, usually.’

‘He is the same age you were when you were first sent to Father for schooling.’

‘Is he?’, asked Fingon surprised. ‘Yes, I suppose he is. There isn’t much resemblance otherwise, is there?’

‘More than you’d think’, murmured Maedhros vaguely, evasively.

‘Really?’, Fingon asked him curiously.

Maedhros encountered his cousin’s bright, unoffended, oblivious gaze and, once again, surrendered unconditionally.

‘No, none whatever’, he confessed, smiling. ‘None at all.’

***

‘He’s smiling’, thought Fingon, relieved. ‘So he did want to be rescued. I wasn’t quite sure… He can be so very stoical, sometimes.’

He looked down at his store of hazelnuts and did a quick estimate how many there were left. He had been going through them too fast, he discovered.  He had given in to the urge to reach out and offer, over and over again, craving that small but distinct feeling of achievement every time he dropped a kernel in Maedhros’s outstretched palm—he would see his cousin fed, if nothing else!

But now the rest of those nuts would have to be spaced out very carefully, for he suspected that all too soon after the last nut was cracked Maedhros would feel obliged to heed the call of duty and face the rest of the family—precisely because he did not want to.

‘That page of yours’, thought Fingon, ‘I hope he appreciates what he’s got. He may be too young to have left home so early—but at least he doesn’t have to measure out his time in your company in hazelnuts.’

Chapter 4: Endings

Warnings: for lost battles.

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Riding like the wind to Angband, Fingolfin slowed for a moment, remembering the words of his nephew Maedhros, who was now probably as dead as Angrod and Aegnor were. There was no way of knowing for certain.

‘We shall have to see what high courage can do, Russandol’, he muttered between his teeth and urged Rochallor on towards the Iron Gates.

***
During the battle of the Nirnaeth, as Glaurung swept those of Himring aside, Tercano, Maedhros’s standard bearer, was pierced in the eye by an orc arrow, staggered backwards and fell. Young Aphadon rushed to catch the flame-coloured banner as it threatened to sink to the ground. He barely survived half an hour to carry it. All in all, by the time Maedhros reached Mount Dolmed after his long retreat across Anfauglith, six members of Maedhros’s immediate household had died under the banner. The seventh had lost his left arm up to the elbow.

Briefly, Maedhros considered hacking the pole to pieces and burning it, ordering the banner torn to shreds. But after all, what was the standard but a stick of wood and a coloured rag? It was the commander of the army who was to blame for its defeat. And beside the immensity of loss that was the Nirnaeth, even the death of young Aphadon, consigned by his parents to Maedhros’s care because they fondly imagined that entering his service guaranteed a long and successful career, was little more than a drop in the sea.

Maedhros took a couple of steps in the dark, pressed his aching forehead against the sheer rock wall of Mount Dolmed and thought enviously, enviously of his uncle’s last ride. But such rides were not for the likes of Maedhros Feanorion. Nothing that Maedhros had done had ever caused Morgoth to stir a single step from his Iron Throne and now nothing he did ever would.

But neither could Maedhros even begin that long ride back across Anfauglith without turning back seven times—nay, seven times seven—for the sake of those who still relied on him.

***

‘Mellyrn?’, said Fingon to Haldir as he refilled the cup generously with sweet mead for him in lofty halls beyond the West. ‘Yes, they do grow over here. Or at least they did. I haven’t been that far south since…

‘You say you haven’t seen any since your arrival? But you haven’t been here very long yet, have you? Shall we go together and have a look—the day after tomorrow, perhaps?

‘But tell me, Haldir, do tell me: do hazelnuts yet grow east of the Sea?’

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Chapter End Notes

Last section contains verbal allusions to the Lorien chapters in FOTR (Lord of the Rings, vol. I).