A Powerful Illusion by Himring

Chapter 2: A Powerful Illusion

‘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.