The Maia and the Aulendili by Huinare

The Shovel

En route to Valinor, Mahtan meets one of the Maiar and learns about the mechanics of floating islands.

Read The Shovel

Mahtan had been digging for some time. The blade of his shovel was narrow, scarcely more than a broad stone spade hafted to a long handle, carried long with him from Cuiviénen. Its design was not his, but that of one of the elders, who had invented the tool in order to dig for deeper roots. Mahtan had liked that task since childhood, not for the roots but for the digging, the discovery of textures and shapes which lay unseen beneath the surface.

While the young man dug, a disturbance occurred in the ether some two hundred paces westward, at southwestern brink of the island. One of the Eldar may have been able to sense it; it would have been readily apparent to one of the Ainur; yet none were about to witness it. The air shifted as molecules rent and reconstituted themselves in new proportions and arrangements. In the muted starlight, a lanky figure emerged, straightened to consider the sky for a moment, ducked its head in a slow regard that swept from stars to earth, and proceeded measuredly toward a broad green swath south of the Eldarin encampment.

Mahtan, breathing heavily from exertion, did not hear anybody approaching until a polite cough clearly meant for his benefit came from off to his right. Stilling his work to lean on the handle of his shovel, he looked up from the shallow hole in which he stood. Like most of the elves traveling aboard this island, the person standing several paces away was dark of hair, but nobody he recognized. There was something distinctly different about the newcomer also, aside from a paradoxically awkward and graceful comportment which reminded Mahtan of a stork, an inexplicable sense of the uncanny which he was sure he’d only felt a few times before.

“I am sorry to disturb your–present occupation.” The stranger indicated the hole with his chin. His voice was rather pleasant, and somehow lent an aura of profundity to the mundane words.

Balanced between uneasiness and annoyance at being interrupted–for he’d been enjoying the quiet view of the stars upon the sea a stone’s throw away–, Mahtan swiped a loose strand of russet hair from his face. “What brings you h–” Understanding, delayed by the need to wrench his single-minded focus away from his labor, happened abruptly. “Excuse me. I get very involved in my work, and I did not realize… Are you not one of the Ainur?”

“Indeed.”

The visitor continued to peer down impassively as Mahtan, unsure what sort of formalities were appropriate to greet an Ainu of unknown rank and nature, grappled with his confusion. He dropped his shovel hastily, decided that must be unceremonious, picked it up again, drove its blade into the earth so that it stood with an air of respectful alertness, clambered out of the hole, and inclined his head briefly. “An honor. My name is Mahtan. Is there any way I can be of help, um…?” he prompted sheepishly, not knowing either any form of address.

The Ainu seemed to consider that, then said with a small shrug, “Curumo, I suppose, in your tongue.”

As did Oromë and his Maiar, Curumo spoke the tongue of the Quendi with a slight accent. The word he gave sounded like a proper name rather than a title, but Mahtan wasn’t keen on embarrassing himself further by seeking clarification. “May I be of any assistance, Curumo?”

“Only this, Mahtan: I’ve been sent to request that you desist from–” The Ainu was cloaked in some dark hue, but the white of his sleeve flickered out from the shadows as he gestured with one hand at the hole.

Now Mahtan was filled with mortification. Of course! He justified himself hurriedly, “I was not digging for roots, I assure you. Your–your people have been very generous in provisioning us.”

Curumo blinked at him. “I fear I do not understand.”

They regarded each other in mutual confusion. “Well,” Mahtan elaborated, “we were told before we all embarked that we were not to dig in the earth while on this island, and that if we were running short on food, we should instead ask Ossë and then the Valar would provide. Which they have, most kindly.” Once, a whale–or rather, one of these Ainur in the form of a whale–had been sent with imposing parcels of food in water-tight skin wrappings harnessed to its back. “I thought maybe digging for roots here would be taken as ungrateful, so I wished to explain that’s not what I was doing.”

Curumo smiled a little wryly. “Ah. Not at all. Your folk were asked not to dig because this island is somewhat fragile underneath the soil layer, and we would not want to risk damaging it with all of you upon it in the middle of the ocean.”

“Oh!” The elf started to chuckle, then stopped himself uncertainly. “It’s funny, then; I was digging because I wanted to know what lay under the soil. It did not seem to me that an island ought to be able to float, especially assuming there’s rock under there. In any case, I apologize. I certainly didn’t want to cause any damage, and had I known–”

“No harm done.” The Ainu was now regarding Mahtan with more open interest. Curumo’s eyes seemed the color of pitch, at least in the starlight, but a curious flicker or spark like the flashing of light on dark water had awoken in them. “Directions given without explanations are likely to be misinterpreted.”

A new concern struck Mahtan, and he looked around reflexively. “But how did you know I was digging? Who asked you to come here? I mean, I don’t want to sound rude, but we do not understand much about your people, and…”

“And you rightly do not wish to be spied upon.” Curumo nodded, unruffled. “It wasn’t that. Some of Lord Ulmo’s Maiar are accompanying this island underwater at all times, to ensure its safety. One of their number who is also acquainted with the materials of the earth could perceive that somebody was digging; as one of Aulë’s household, I was asked to address the situation.”

“Aulë’s–!” Hardly able to restrain his delight, Mahtan eyed the Maia with a new respect. “I have heard of Lord Aulë.”

“Given your apparent predilections, that you should take an interest in Lord Aulë is unsurprising. He invented a process you would probably like, by which to make a material more durable than stone and lighter.” Both of them glanced at the shovel still standing in the hole. Curumo continued, his voice and features much more expressive now, “You can’t dig for it here just now, but I can tell you what this island is made of. I could give you a sample of the material once you have reached Valinor.”

“Yes and yes,” Mahtan nodded eagerly, his recent unease quite forgotten.

Curumo began pacing round the hole as he spoke, gesturing to illustrate his points. “Pumice. It is indeed stone, but stone which can float because it is mostly air and therefore lighter than water. It’s to do with conditions attending a volcanic eruption underwater, during which the lava solidifies into stone so quickly that it entraps many pockets of air in itself. Sometimes large chunks of pumice float to the surface, but they usually disintegrate quickly. This island was created deliberately, and conditions were carefully controlled to produce the desired outcome. A girdle of sea plants and corals was placed just below the surface to hold the thing together, but still, it is a highly unnatural structure and we don’t wish to place any undue stress on it.”

Mahtan followed this speech attentively, contributing monosyllabic interjections of surprise and interest. The Ainu then suggested that he could sketch a diagram of the island, if Mahtan had any parchment on him. “Not on me, but I’ve some at the camp,” the elf proffered. “We could go back there, if you’d like; the fire would provide better light.”

Curumo seemed loath to enter the encampment, whence singing and piping had recently arisen. “I was sent upon a task, and that I’ve done. It were best if I returned to my business in Valinor. However, you should reach land before you’ve slept many more times, and I hope we shall continue this conversation soon.”

“I see. Thank you then,” said Mahtan.

“Likewise.” The Maia nodded and turned away rather abruptly, pacing off into the west. It was unclear to Mahtan whether he eventually blended into the shadows, was lost to view behind a small hillock, or simply vanished into thin air. How had he arrived on the island, anyway?

“‘Likewise’?” Mahtan grumbled to himself, thought not displeased, as he retrieved his shovel. “Thank me? What on earth for?”

---

Chapter End Notes

This chapter fulfills my one of my three prompts for the SWG’s 2015 Fanworks Day participation, “First Meetings”  [“How might a character originating from and living in Valinor react to his or her first meeting with a character just arriving from Middle-earth?”]. It was also the only chapter actually completed on time for Fanworks Day.  

The Marble

Young Nerdanel shows her early work to her father's friend.

Read The Marble

Nerdanel put the glazed decorative marble on the floor. It was not to be rolled carelessly as one might a ball made of hide, so she finished setting it down lightly before giving it a deliberate one-handed push.

The large marble, four of Nerdanel’s finger-widths, rolled toward the grownups who hunkered fixedly, on spindly metal-framed chairs which her father had made, over an unfurled diagram on the table. It rolled past Mahtan’s chair–he heard it, glanced down in time to see it amble past, and said absently “oops!”–and toward the feet of the visitor, who eyed it with a look of mixed surprise and annoyance and just managed to stick a foot out in time to gently arrest its progress.

Nerdanel hesitated. The visitor, someone whom her father had identified to her privately as an important Maia associated with Aulë, struck her as quite serious. When he occasionally came to call, Curumo always sat with Mahtan over diagrams, and later the two would walk somewhere outside. The Maia never paid Nerdanel any mind; perhaps it was his air of somber focus that interested her, ironically prompting her to roll the marble at him with an infrequently-exercised playfulness. Now he reached down to take up the object in one hand and bring it closer to the level of his eyes.

“Nerdanel made it herself,” volunteered Mahtan.

Curumo suddenly seemed to take more of an interest in the marble, using both hands to turn it around as he studied it. “The entire process?”

“Her mother helped apply the glaze and put it in the kiln for her, but she shaped it entirely on her own.”

“This is a remarkably uniform ellipsoid,” decided Curumo, still turning and eyeing the thing, “nearly spherical in fact.” For the first time, his dark eyes came to rest on Nerdanel in a way that seemed to register her existence. The Noldorin girl stood as straight and tall as her toddler legs would allow, both warmed and worried by the remark; it seemed like praise, but she was not quite sure. Curumo glanced sidelong at her father before addressing her directly, “How did you shape this?”

Nerdanel stood silent. Her parents had asked her the same, and it had seemed a silly question, or maybe just an invasive one.

“She wouldn’t tell us,” Mahtan interjected after the Maia and the child had stared each other down for some moments.

Curumo raised an eyebrow, but almost as quickly the corner of his mouth twitched upward just slightly. “I see.” He paused judiciously and set the marble back on the floor, addressing Nerdanel in a tone that was most convincing, “Your work is commendable.”

Nerdanel stood grinning a bit ridiculously, not sure what “commendable” was but reckoning from the context that it was good. She nearly forgot the shiny marble before noticing that its trajectory was angling gradually away from her as it trundled in the direction of the fireplace. For a very important Maia who was good at studying diagrams, Curumo had a poor aim. Nerdanel scrambled to retrieve her work, just in case it should chip itself connecting with the raised hearthstones. When she looked back to the table, her father and the Maia were again engaged in their discussion.

Her inquisitive nature prodded by the visitor’s evidently positive reaction, Nerdanel proceeded resolutely toward the grownups. She clambered up onto the bench which paralleled long side of the table farthest from the fireplace, across from her father and to Curumo’s right, met only with mildly curious glances. Nerdanel stood on the bench and watched for a short while as they talked and gestured over the large unrolled page. Slowly, she reached out and put the fingertips of her left hand against the pale cloth of the Maia’s sleeve.

Now Curumo turned his head to stare imperiously down at her, looking annoyed. “I beg your pardon?”

Nerdanel quailed and almost backed off, but she thought better of it. This Maia seemed to like her work and therefore he must like her. He was just very serious, that was all. She stood straight again on the bench, nearly at eye level with him, and said with the appropriate severity, “What are you made of?”

Curumo hesitated eloquently.

Mahtan again explained, maybe a bit sheepish, “I told her that Ainur aren’t made of flesh and blood.”

“Ah.” The Maia met Nerdanel’s gaze with a seriousness that was suddenly not at all severe. “I do not know, precisely.”

“You don’t?” blurted Nerdanel, made slightly uncomfortable by this almost painful candor in a way that caused her to unleash a burst of laughter.

Curumo appeared to wince just a bit. “Do you know what you are made of, beyond flesh and bone and blood? What makes those things? As I said,” he resumed when Nerdanel could provide no answer, “my knowledge is imperfect. However, I think, it would be the same things you are made of–the same small things, smaller things than you can see–but in different ways.”

“So you’re not clay?”

Mahtan, to Nerdanel’s annoyance, stifled a laugh; but Curumo responded with dignity, “Well, no, clay is…” and rattled off a list of very technical terms which Nerdanel did not know.

“Oh.” The girl nodded vigorously. “All right. I just thought, clay can take any shape and also I heard Ainur can take any shape, so maybe you’re the same.”

The Maia appeared to stare very fixedly at nothing in particular. “Only superficially.”

“That means two things only seem similar, but really they aren’t,” said Mahtan.

“So, you are not similar to clay,” Nerdanel tried again.

“No and yes,” Curumo responded softly and a little unhelpfully. It would be quite some years before Nerdanel could begin to comprehend and appreciate the broad applicability of such an answer.

---

Chapter End Notes

This chapter does not incorporate any of the Fanworks Day prompts which gave rise to this story, however, it was necessary to what the story was trying to accomplish. Plus, this scene had been lurking in my head for about five years, and it seemed an ideal time to get it out.

The Palantír

Curumo and Maitimo have an awkward talk precipitated by Fëanáro's latest invention.

With thanks to Himring for allowing me to write one of her scenes from my own protagonist's POV (please see chapter endnotes). Most of the dialogue herein is hers, from "Maedhros and the Palantír."

Read The Palantír

Curumo exhaled in relief as he found the hallway empty. Behind the door he’d just closed in his wake, the incessant chatter arising from the occasion–small talk, speculation and debate, covert political maneuvering–became muffled. He considered trying to incorporealize and make a rapid escape through the hairline crack between the finely-crafted main door and its frame, but discerned that he was too unhinged to easily shed his present physical guise.

The intensity of light and sound spiked as the door he’d just passed through reopened. He hastened to turn away, but too late; “Lord Curumo,” someone began.

The Maia wearily angled his gaze back round to note Maitimo standing just paces behind him. A fine thing, such courtesy, he reflected to himself, coming from somebody whose mother, as a young child, had managed to upend a bucket of plaster all over Curumo. He found that this tangible reminder of his failure to sustain his connection to the house of Mahtan, following Nerdanel’s marriage to a character whose very presence Curumo found obnoxious, only disconcerted him further.

Maitimo was diligently emitting some other courtesy which Curumo did not quite hear properly, and so he responded, “Ah, yes.” Well, that was awkward. He could at least attempt to seem engaged, though he was resisting the urge to turn and all but barge out of the home of Fëanáro. “I hear you are to be congratulated, Nelyafinwë Maitimo,” he tried again, with formality.

“Thank you–But for what?”

“You collaborated with your father on the palantíri, did you not?”

“No, not really, Lord Curumo,” Maitimo replied, evincing little more relish for the conversation than Curumo felt. “As you know, Father had already discovered the salient principle.”

The Maia subdued his impatience with effort. He disliked any intimation of humility, nearly as much as he disliked the open and casual self-assurance with which people like Fëanáro–and Mairon, of old–went about their existences. In fact, when it came down to it, Curumo disliked a great many things. However, the eldest son of Nerdanel seemed an intelligent and charismatic individual, though perhaps not quite so aware of these qualities in himself as would behoove him, and so Curumo suggested, “Are you sure you are not being modest?”

“Indeed, no!” demurred Maitimo, who went on to briefly recapitulate the palantír’s development, to which he alleged to have contributed no substantive research, as a device for instantaneous long-distance communication upon the commission of Olwë. It was unfortunate, the Maia thought, that the progeny of his friends should have become so unfamiliar to him. The only familiar thing about this one, really, was the superficial trait of his unusual hair color. Of course it was only Curumo’s own fault that he’d landed up in this awkward interaction. He probably couldn’t have declined the invitation to the reception, as a ranking Maia in Aulë’s household, without appearing rude; but, he could have kept his head down and lurked in some corner, instead of taking the first opportunity, when all eyes turned briefly in the direction of a florid and rather inebriated toaster, to reach a hand out to hover inches away from the palantír. Indeed he wasn’t entirely sure what had compelled him to engage with the dark, spherical object. Supposedly it would not work until its counterpart was activated. Perhaps it was no more than a desire to appear indifferent to Fëanáro’s intellectual and creative output when others were observing, combined with Curumo’s damnable curiosity.

But, the palantír had worked, or at any rate it had distinctly done something, whether its creator had intended that as one of its functions or not.

“–and so instant communication with Avallonë is only going to be a matter of weeks!” Maitimo ended up.

Curumo, reflecting upon what he’d seen in the palantír, had again nearly ceased to hear him. The Noldo was giving him a peculiar look now, so he attempted to pull himself together. Something needed to be said, and most of the things running through his mind were nothing he cared to air aloud, so he grasped at one of the more neutral sentence fragments that surfaced in the jumble of his thought–”The hands and mind of Fëanáro.”

He wanted to hide his face in his hands. That wasn’t even grammatical, and he’d been fluent in Quenya long enough to have lost his accent, so there was really no excuse. At least he managed to sound profound. He was adept at that, if nothing else, after millennia spent subtly honing the weird distracting or lulling effect his voice seemed to have on others.

“Yes,” Maitimo attempted gamely, visibly quashing a brief look of bewilderment. To Curumo’s relief, he followed this up presently with, “I will bid you farewell then, Lord Curumo, at this time, but hope you will honor us with your presence again soon.”

Curumo managed to refrain from saying that somehow he rather doubted that, and mumbled instead, “Good evening,” although both parties were already turning away to depart in their separate directions, and made for the door. The painful awkwardness of such an interaction with one of Mahtan’s and Nerdandel’s own line left a bad taste in his mouth. However, Nelyafinwë Maitimo soon left his thought entirely as he made his way down quiet streets and examined in his memory the image which the palantír had so forcefully and randomly conveyed to him.

There was a rocky shoreline somewhere, and a horseshoe crab which had been laid out on its back by a wave. Its ten legs flailed as its long spike of a tail sought for purchase on the rock, that it might lever itself onto its front. A much larger creature with one fewer pairs of legs stood over it, rendering the somewhat ghastly-looking horseshoe crab pitiful. The spider prodded the smaller animal with the bristly end of one leg, tearing the rapidly fanning gill tissue, then fell to ripping its prey casually apart with its jaws. Curumo yanked his hand back from the palantír, his sharp inhalation thankfully drowned in a peal of laughter provoked by something the swaying toaster had said or done. He’d then glanced round for any signs that he had been observed, perceived none, and left promptly.

He walked briskly, though with no immediate purpose, northward with the faint silver glow of Telperion from upon his left throwing his shadow at the stars upon his right. Had the palantír malfunctioned? Was the image some lingering impression from the mind of another who had touched the stone, or something pulled from his own mind and reflected back to him distorted? Was Fëanáro aware of this feature, and, if not, ought he to be made aware?

Curumo frowned and pulled his cloak more tightly around himself. The night seemed uncommonly chilly. He didn’t relish the thought of speaking to Fëanáro about this. For one, it would entail the admission that he’d been curious enough about the invention to try and touch it without permission when everyone’s back was turned. Moreover, if Fëanáro would in fact know why and how that image had shown up in the palantír, Curumo couldn’t abide the thought of a person he disliked knowing more about what had just happened in his own mind than he himself did. But! perhaps, being an Ainu, he could interact with the palantír in ways which an Elf could not, in which case talking to its inventor would be pointless anyway.

He had run upon Ungoliant ages ago, and her terrible form and equally terrible insanity had quite tried what little courage he had. Once in a while, the spider still appeared in his dreams. Given his present concern about Melkor’s recent release from Mandos, and the knowledge that a powerful being who could not and would not have truly repented was abroad in Valinor, it wouldn’t be surprising that his dread might manifest itself in the image of one of Melkor’s more archetypally terrible associates. He didn’t think about Ungoliant too often, and never about Ungoliant eating a horseshoe crab, but possibly it was some sort of waking equivalent of the bizarre metaphors the brain liked to concoct in sleep–simply himself showing himself to himself, with the palantír mediating. That was the most likely explanation, Curumo decided, possibly to deflect any sense of obligation to act on the unsettling incident.

It was only after the lights had been extinguished and he would never glimpse again his shadow cast by Telperion or Laurelin that Curumo realized he ought to have told somebody–not Fëanáro, but Nerdanel or Mahtan. He should have used the incident to repair the distance he’d let fall between them, and if he had explained it to them instead of staying silent, he may have gained enough perspective to be able to suspect that the stone had shown him Ungoliant as she actually was, not an obscure symbolism-laden image of her generated in the shadows of his mind, but simply Ungoliant living undetected upon the shores of Avathar.

---

Chapter End Notes

This chapter fulfills my one of my three prompts for the SWG’s 2015 Fanworks Day participation, “Differing Perspectives” [“Choose a drabble or another work by an author that illustrates a single character's perspective. After seeking the original author's permission, write the same event--using all of the author's original conventions--from a different character's perspective.”].

I owe a debt of gratitude to Himring for graciously allowing me to use the first scene of her excellent story “Maedhros and the Palantír” for this prompt. I am not sure what constitutes Using All The Conventions, but I tried to keep the tone and structure similar inasmuch as I could from Curumo’s POV. Moreover, Himring’s story proved very influential to my writing of the first two chapters of my own story here, because prior to this I had not considered Ainur from an Elven POV (my cozy niche being Ainur from their own POV).

PS - horseshoe crabs are not actually crabs, but they are cool and somewhat scary-looking.

The Spike

Saruman sees Celebrimbor, and possibly wishes he hadn't.

Darker than the preceeding chapters, but I tried to stay in keeping with the earlier tone and not get very graphic.

Read The Spike

Mairon readjusted his literal and figurative grips on the palantír and went on, «I hate to lose my temper with you, but you’ve allowed a valuable captive to escape.»

The person on the other end of his communication gathered himself painfully and rejoined with a weary pedantry, «That platform was one hundred and fifty meters above the ground, and I was unaware of the continuing meddling of the Eagles in–»

«Perhaps you thought that placing him on the roof might result in his falling while trying to climb down, that he might conveniently die thus and spare your tidy hands his blood?»

The old man, as it were, raised his eyes to glare directly into the palantír, which currently held no image for him other than a void darkness. Curumo had ever been more vexing than Mairon would care to admit, a paradox of cowardice and pride, attempts to intimidate him analogous to breaking a glass window and sifting through its shards. «You know little of the state of my hands.»

«Doubtless whatever bloody acts you implicate yourself in would seem mild to me,» Mairon said lightly, a new idea visiting him. «Let me show you something.»

The wizard drew back from the palantír as far as he was able. «I’m sure that telling me would suffice.»

Mairon called up still more of his will, envisioning both palantíri as mere extensions of it. Curumo put up a few moments’ physical and mental resistance before his hand fell onto the stone as though magnetized. Taking his memory of his last visit to the House of the Mírdain–the sensory components of it, nothing of his own thoughts or feelings at the time–, Mairon passed it along the channel of his will to be transcribed in the mind of the other.

In one of the workshops, the smiths had wrought a stockpile of simple iron weapons. It appeared these had been made with hasty innovation as their foe crossed Eregion; having already used all wood available to them, they had fashioned long skewers of iron to serve as pikes. These heavy weapons lay on the floor alongside the wall like menacing man-height toothpicks. Only one had seen any use, and that was currently impaling a wild-eyed Noldo who was prevented from collapsing only by the circumstance of his wrists being bound firmly to an anvil behind him.

Curumo blanched, trying fruitlessly not to see, at which Mairon’s impression of the old man in the palantír was curiously transposed with one of the dark-haired, beardless Maia who had been by turns colleague and adversary. «I don’t know whether you’d have met Tyelperinquar,» resumed the lord of Mordor. «He told me he barely remembers aught of Aman. Before, I passed pleasant time in work or conversation with him. But you see that did not change anything, when he placed himself in the way of my goals.»

In Mairon’s carefully tended and transmitted memory, his own past voice addressed Celebrimbor, “This could end quickly and with little pain. Indeed, it need not end at all; I made sure that quaint weapon of yours didn’t hit anything vital, and I can see to it that it is removed and that you recover completely. But, you must disclose to me the location of those crafts which you have fashioned only by my counsel and my favor.”

Celebrimbor’s breath came loudly and excruciatingly. “Now that I’ve seen your mind–? You may as well kill me.”

“That may be, but not soon nor easily if you stay this course. I have half a mind,” reflected Mairon, circling the anvil contemplatively, “to hand you off to a troll, affixed to this spike as you are, and haul you around raised on high like a banner. Do you think it would inspire more dread if you were dead, or still able to look your folk in the eye with such a visage of anguish as you bear now?”

Through the palantír, Curumo’s countenance was a silent snarl and he fought to break away. Mairon abandoned his memory in order to secure his grip on the wizard. «You always did have a weak stomach. I hope for your sake that you understand why I showed you this, Curumo, so that I need not show you any more.»

The other made no answer and sat like a sapling gripping the earth in the face of a flash flood, trying staunchly to conceal his horror–but no, more than that, to conceal something different which surpassed a mere aversion to violence. The palantír betrayed him here. His unhappiness went forth, diluted yet magnified, as though carried on a ripple left by a plunge into frigid water. Mairon, who had been utilizing the palantír longer and could more readily manipulate it, caught a fleeting impression from the old man’s still older mind, a large common room in someone’s home where chairs had been situated to place an Elf woman and her infant child at front and center. The distance and angle at which they were seen suggested that Curumo had been lurking in some corner when he observed the event. The woman was standing and holding the child whilst the people in the room recited some blessing or welcome, and the father and grandparents stood fanned out behind the mother. One of the grandmothers had reddish-brown hair, striking amidst the crowd of largely dark-haired individuals of which the child itself was one.

Mairon seized upon this brief glimpse, deducing readily enough what it meant. «So you did meet Tyelperinquar, after a fashion. I suppose that stands to reason. His great-grandfather, by all accounts, was dear to Aulë.» He was gratified when the other Maia winced faintly. «You knew Mahtan, at the least. And Nerdanel? Either Curufinwë?–not so much. It must trouble you to see this branch of Mahtan’s lineage come to so painful and ignoble an end. Why do you think I showed you that?»

Curumo’s presence, like a guttering torch, flickered in fear and contempt. «Because you are deranged?»

Few would dare say any such thing. Mairon’s hand twitched over the palantír as he oscillated between amusement and vexation, before he decided that the best reaction was none at all. «Whatever else I may be, I am practical; what reason would I have to show you that?»

A long pause ensued. Evidently reasoning that obduracy would only result in the prolonging of this unpleasant interaction, Curumo eventually ceded, «That was an apt demonstration of what occurs when your allies provide more offense than usefulness.»

«I couldn’t have said it better myself. I’d also urge you to reflect upon the fact that Celebrimbor had done, well, nothing at all to vex me, before he concealed the lesser Rings. Whereas you have intermittently caused me significant annoyance since before the world was formed. What pity do you think I’d have for you, if you were to renege upon our arrangement?»

«As much as I deserve. In this you have grown wise.»

The old man’s dark eyes looked directly into the palantír again at that, and Mairon examined them with interest. Curumo was eloquent, almost bizarrely convincing, but incapable–at least to one who understood him in some ways, if not in others–of flattery that did not hold some grain of truth.

«And what of those who are important to you?» Mairon resumed. «Of what consequence are they to me?»

The wizard again winced and looked away, in spite of himself. «I have long since betrayed or discarded anyone who may have met that criterion.»

Mairon wondered at this. «I’d have been tempted to assume so much, given what I know of your history. Yet every so often you manifest these seemingly random altruistic streaks. It’s apparent you cared for Mahtan’s family. If there is anyone else whose destruction might still move you, I assure you, I will find them, and I will stake them upon your loyalty.»

Curumo nodded once, subdued, desirous of ending the conversation. The lord of Mordor released him and he receded back from the palantír.

But Mairon remained by his own stone, refocusing it more broadly upon the tower of Orthanc, which had benefited but little from the wizard’s attempts to shield it from spying palantíri. The afternoon was drizzly, mostly overcast, and a mist was accumulating in the valley around the tower’s dark flanks. After some time, the old man appeared on the roof and stood in the wan light that still flooded over the mountains, watching westward, a solitary figure on a cold island in a sea of fog.

 

---

Chapter End Notes

This chapter fulfills my one of my three prompts for the SWG’s 2015 Fanworks Day participation, “The Nature of Fear” [“…write a story that explores fear in some way. Whether you try to scare your readers with a horror story or show how a character perceives and reacts to fear, your goal is to gain a greater understanding of this powerful emotion through your writing.”].