Speak No Evil by grey_gazania

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Speak No Evil

It was a cold night at Amon Ereb. The window panes were traced with ferns of frost, snow blanketed the ground, and all around the keep my people had retreated to the warmth of their beds. Even Galwen had crept from the stables and into the kitchen, though she had no love for stone walls. Apart from the men and women on watch, who I would join at two hours past midnight, only my brother and I remained awake.

We were together in my study, both seated by the fire. Maglor was clad in his warmest clothes with his back to the flames, poring over the essays he had set for Elrond and Elros the previous week. The twins were tucked safely in bed under as many blankets as we could find for them. Being mortal, they chilled easily, and Maglor spent each winter fretting that they would fall ill. He had reason; as much as we tried to avoid the Men who dwelt in the area around our fortress, there were times when we needed to trade with them, and they sometimes carried sickness -- coughs and fevers, sore throats and congested sinuses. We Eldar were unaffected, but the boys were not.

 

I was at my desk, further from the fire and not so heavily garbed. After the bone-gnawing cold on high Thangorodrim and several yenil9; of Himring’s long, icy winters, I found the weather in the south to be relatively mild, even on nights like this.

 

The only sounds in the room were the crackling of the fire and the occasional rustle of paper, until Maglor set his essays down on the small table before him. He sat back, beaming, and there was no small amount of pride in his expression.

“Ah, Nelyo,” he said, “my sons are remarkable boys.”

“Indeed,” I said. I had long ago stopped pointing out to him that Elrond and Elros were our hostages, not his children; he loved them as a father should, and the reminders only seemed to cause him pain. “I take it their composition lessons are going well?”

“Elrond is still struggling with the vocative case,” he admitted, “and Elros needs to take more care with his punctuation. But their ideas, Nelyo! Even Atto would not be able to find a flaw in Elrond’s reasoning, and Elros’ arguments are persuasive enough to coax blood from a stone. Such intelligent boys!”

 

I nodded, for he was right. The twins were blessed with keen minds. “They’re making great gains in botany and swordsmanship,” I said. While Maglor had taken responsibility for the bulk of their education, those two subjects were my domain, and I could not deny that Elrond and Elros were performing splendidly.

 

There was a third subject I wished to teach them, though I had been holding off on approaching my brother with the idea. I knew that he would think the boys were too young to be burdened with it. But my own opinion was that the earlier these lessons started, the better, and now that the boys were learning to defend themselves, we had no excuse not to give them every advantage we could.

 

I set down my pen and spoke my thoughts plainly. “I think it’s high time they learned to understand Orkish,” I said.

 

Maglor blanched, much as I’d expected. “You can’t be serious,” he snapped. “That’s an absurd idea. They’re much too young.”

 

“I’m deathly serious,” I said, looking him in the eye. “They’re not so young as that, Makalaurë -- not anymore. And you can’t keep them sheltered from Moringotto’s evil forever. That’s the entire reason I began teaching them swordsmanship, is it not? Sooner or later, they’re going to encounter orcs, and understanding Orkish will be an advantage. You can’t deny that it’s been of good use for us.”

 

Maglor’s lips grew thin, and he didn’t answer. He was stubborn, my brother, just like all of our family, and while he knew I was right, he clearly didn’t want to admit it. My fluency in the orcs’ harsh tongue had saved us and our people from peril on more than one occasion. But Maglor could never forget from whence that fluency came. I’d made no academic study of that ugly language. All my knowledge came from my time in Angband, where learning the speech of my captors had been vital to my survival.

 

Maglor had chosen to leave me there rather than give in to Morgoth’s demands or make what would certainly have been a fruitless attempt at a rescue. Abandoning me had been the wisest course of action, and I had forgiven him and my five dead brothers for it long ago. But no matter how many times I told him so, Maglor insisted on holding himself responsible for what I had suffered.

 

And make no mistake: I had suffered. I still suffered, though at least I was no longer bound in that iron hell. But Morgoth haunted my dreams, and I knew that I would never truly be free of his shadow.

“You know I’m right,” I insisted, resting my elbows on my desk and leaning forward. “It will serve the boys well, and I may be the only man in all of Beleriand who can teach them this.”

“Hearing those vile sounds come from your lips makes my skin crawl,” Maglor said, his voice flat. “I hate it.”

“They can’t learn the language if they never hear it spoken.”

 

“It’s not a language,” he spat. “It’s an abomination, a mockery, just like the orcs themselves!”

“It is a language, whether you wish to admit it or not. And the orcs may be an abomination, but they are still real. They will kill your sons if given the chance,” I argued. “Teaching the boys Orkish will give them another tool that they can use to defend themselves. Do we not owe them that?”

 

“It will frighten them,” he said. “It frightens me! I hear you use those words, and all I can think of is what could have happened if Findekáno had not saved you. Moringotto could have destroyed you, and I could have found myself facing whatever he left behind on the battlefield one day -- an orc with my brother’s face! All because I was too much of a coward to rescue you myself.”

 

His face had gone white and pinched, and he was shaking in his seat, his chest heaving. I climbed to my feet and crossed the room to kneel beside his chair. “Little brother,” I said softly, taking his trembling hand in mine, “how many times must I tell you that you made the right decision? How many times must I tell you to forgive yourself?”

 

“I will never forgive myself,” Maglor said, his voice choked. “Never, Nelyo.”

Reaching up, I pulled him into an embrace, holding him until his breathing had steadied and his body had ceased its shaking. “I am no orc,” I said firmly. “Moringotto did not destroy me. And you had a responsibility to our brothers, and our nephew, and all the rest of our people. You needed to do what was best for them.”

 

“I know,” he admitted after a moment, his voice muffled against my shoulder. “But I hate what happened to you. I hate that I did nothing to stop it.”

 

Maglor did not know even half of what Morgoth and his servants had done to me. I had told the full truth, or near to it, only to my brother Caranthir, whom we had lost in Doriath decades ago, and to valiant Fingon, my beloved. But Maglor knew enough. I would not burden him with more.

 

“I will tell the boys no tales of horror,” I said. “You know that I would not. But I will teach them the language, for the sake of their safety.”

 

“All right,” he murmured, giving in, as I had known he would. Stubborn he may have been, but of the two of us, I had the stronger will. When we truly disagreed, I nearly always prevailed. “But do it where I cannot hear,” he said. “And I will tell my sons that they should seek to understand the words, but not to speak them unless at the utmost need.”

 

I nodded. “Agreed,” I said, letting him go and pushing myself to my feet. I returned to my desk, but I could feel my brother’s sad eyes on me until I left to take my place with the night watch.

We did not announce our decision to the boys immediately, but waited until I had gathered my thoughts, collected what I needed, and drawn up a lesson plan. A week passed before I finally joined Maglor in the schoolroom one chill morning. Seated at the table they used as a shared desk, Elrond and Elros looked up at me in surprise. They had not expected to see me. I was fond of them -- as Maglor had said, they were remarkable boys -- but outside of lessons and meals we rarely crossed paths, at least here at Amon Ereb. After all, I had many matters to attend to besides their schooling.

 

I took a seat near their desk, but Maglor stood stiff-shouldered at the front of the room, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Maedhros will be teaching you a new subject today,” he said. He paused and swallowed convulsively before adding, “It will not be pleasant. I am sorry for that. But it is something that you need to know. My brother has convinced me of that.”

 

Elrond and Elros exchanged a nervous look, and I decided that Maglor had given enough of an introduction. Hemming and hawing would only put the boys even more on edge. It was time to be straightforward.

 

“I am going to teach you Orkish,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “Knowing the speech of the orcs may well save your lives one day, as it has at times saved ours.”

Wide-eyed, the boys stared at me in silence, until Elros finally found his voice.

“Orkish?” he said, sounding apprehensive. “But how did you learn--” Then he cut himself off, comprehension dawning on his face. “Oh,” he said quietly. “When you were-- When Morgoth--”

“Yes,” I said. “I learned it to survive in Angband.” They knew the outline of that story -- that I had been captured by Morgoth and held prisoner until Fingon had come to rescue me, and that my hand had been the price of our escape. But this was the first detail they had ever heard.

 

If I had my way, it would be the only detail they ever heard.

 

Maglor took a deep breath. “Remember, your goal is to understand Orkish words, not to use them,” he said. “Please, do not speak them outside of these lessons, and do not ask me for help with any work Maedhros assigns you. He shall teach you alone, for I cannot bear to hear that vile tongue on the lips of my kin. But Maedhros is correct in his judgement. Given the state of Beleriand, it is certain that you will encounter orcs, and likely sooner rather than later. The ability to understand them will serve you well.”

With that, he nodded to the boys, squeezed my shoulder, and then left us. I waited until the echoes of his footsteps had faded, and then leaned towards my students.

“Maglor worries about you,” I said. The statement provoked an amused snort from Elros and a small smile from Elrond, for I wasn’t telling the boys anything they didn’t already know. “He’s afraid that you’ll find what I have to teach you upsetting. But I think you’re made of sterner stuff than that.”

At my words, Elros squared his shoulders, and Elrond sat up a little straighter. I had found early on in their swordsmanship lessons that they strove harder when they felt they had something to prove, and I wasn’t hesitant to make use of that trait.

“It’s not a particularly sophisticated language,” I continued. “The grammar is much less complex than that of Quenya or Sindarin, and the lexicon is small. You’re intelligent children. I don’t expect that it will take you very long to master it.”

How long it had taken me to master it was something I did not know for certain; time had had no meaning in the pits of Angband. But as best as I could remember, it had not been long.

“What alphabet do they use?” Elros asked, shaking me from my thoughts. “The cirth or the tengwar?”

“Neither. They have one of their own, though I was never in a position where I could learn it. I can only teach you the spoken language.”

“Oh.” Elros bit his lower lip, as he often did when pondering something, and then said, “That makes sense, I suppose. It’s not as though you had lessons.”

 

“Precisely,” I said, though that was not entirely true. I hadn’t had lessons of the kind Elros was envisioning, but I still had had lessons -- painful ones. But that was not anything the boys needed to hear, so I kept the thought to myself.

Elrond tipped his head and asked, “Who else understands it? Besides the orcs, I mean.”

 

“Maglor and Doronel understand enough to be getting on with,” I said, though I knew that both of them wished they didn’t. “My brothers Celegorm and Curufin also learned it, and made good use of it. But unless there are some among the Sindar or the Houses of Men who know it, I believe I may be the only living man who is fully fluent.”

 

I shifted in my seat, leaning forward to rest my elbows on the table. “Understanding the speech of your enemies will always be an advantage,” I told them. “The orcs, like all of Morgoth’s servants, are the enemies of every free man and woman in Beleriand. Their language is an ugly thing, but you need to learn it.”

 

The boys both nodded solemnly.

“I’m glad you understand my reasoning,” I said. “Now put those books away, and we’ll begin.”

The boys learned quickly, as they did in all of their lessons. Within a few weeks, they were able to understand short sentences, and as time went on their fluency grew in leaps and bounds. And if I sometimes overheard them practicing with one another when they thought they were alone, I kept it to myself. Elrond and Elros were doing no harm, and Maglor couldn’t be upset by what he didn’t know.

 

“Orkish seems to be related to our languages,” Elrond observed one morning. “Maglor was doing Quenya and Sindarin etymological comparisons with us yesterday, and it looked to me like a lot of Orkish words come from the same roots. Is that right, Maedhros?”

 

I nodded. “They were elves once,” I said. “The very first orcs were Avari who were captured and tortured by Morgoth. Orkish comes from the language spoken at Cuiviénen, just like Quenya and Sindarin and all the Avarin tongues. But where the languages of the Quendi grew more complex over time, changing to express a greater variety of concepts and ideas, Orkish became debased, just like the orcs themselves.”

 

As I spoke, Elrond began to take notes in the neat penmanship that he had labored so long to achieve. Elros, however, was looking at me with a troubled expression, and I raised my eyebrows, silently inviting him to speak.

 

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Wouldn’t it have been easier for Morgoth to-- to make his armies out of mud or something?”

 

I thought I knew what he was really asking. Why destroy something unless you had to? It was a question that, unfortunately, I could answer, though I would perhaps be coming uncomfortably near to the tales of horror that I had promised Maglor I would not tell. Still, I owed the boys the truth -- and many other things besides.

 

The truth, at least, was something I could give.

 

“I don’t know what would have been easier,” I said. “I do know that Morgoth takes more pleasure in destruction than he does in creation.”

 

Elves, the Two Trees, the peace of Valinor, my father’s mind, my family, my own body… A list of all that Morgoth had endeavored to corrupt and destroy would take several yení to recite, and I would surely be sick long before I was through.

 

Some trace of my thoughts must have shown on my face, for Elrond’s eyebrows had drawn together in the way they did when he was worried or displeased, and Elros, his voice tentative, said, “Maedhros? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”

 

“It’s fine,” I said, waving his apology aside. “This is a schoolroom. You’re meant to ask questions here.”

 

Elros nodded, but both boys remained subdued for the rest of the lesson, and I caught Maglor eyeing them at dinner in a way that suggested that they had not been their usual selves during their afternoon lessons, either. Our meal was a quiet one, and we all retreated to our rooms earlier than usual.

 

That night I dreamed of Angband, dreamed that Morgoth had taken Elrond and Elros into the pits of hell and broken them as he had not managed to break me. I dreamed that the twins led an army of orcs, all bearing the faces of those I loved, living and dead -- my father and my brothers, Fingon and Fingolfin, Finrod, Celebrimbor, and even my mother, who had never set foot in Beleriand. They fell upon Amon Ereb like a wave as I stood alone and unarmed before our fortress, and their faces were full of hatred as they advanced upon me..

 

I woke to Maglor’s hands on my shoulders and his voice calling my name.

 

“Nelyo,” he said. “Nelyo.”

 

I came to full awareness just in time to stop myself from shoving him to the floor as I sat up. The blankets fell away, and I shivered as the cold air touched my sweat-soaked skin.

“You were shouting,” Maglor said.

 

I shook my head. “Just a dream.”

 

Silently, he pulled the woolen blankets up around my shoulders, sat down beside me on the bed, and took my hand in his. For a long time we stayed like that, unspeaking, listening to each other breathe as I let the soft candlelight and my brother’s familiar presence push the nightmare to the edges of my mind.

 

Morgoth would not take the boys, I told myself. Maglor and I would fight to the death if he tried, and in truth, he didn’t seem particularly inclined to try. Morgoth was plainly ignoring us. As much as it pained me to admit it, we weren’t a threat to him any longer. The disaster of the Nírnaeth Arnoediad had left our strength of arms too small and our resources too few for a second assault, and now, after our losses in Doriath and at the Havens of Sirion, we numbered less than seventy.

No, Morgoth had nothing to fear from us.

 

“I’m all right,” I finally said, squeezing Maglor’s fingers before letting go of his hand. “Thank you for waking me.”

 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

For a brief, aching moment I was reminded of Caranthir, who had refused to leave my side as I recovered from Morgoth’s torments, who had asked that same question after every nightmare, and who had born the terrors I shared with him without complaint. But Maglor was not Caranthir, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell my only remaining brother what I had dreamed, not when the horror of it centered on the children he loved as his own. There were some evils that shouldn’t be spoken.

 

I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I repeated. “You should go back to sleep.” When he didn’t move, I swatted him lightly on the shoulder. “Sleep, Makalaurë,” I said. “Don’t be a nanny goat.”

 

He didn’t laugh, but he did smile. “Good night, Nelyo,” he said, embracing me and then climbing to his feet and heading for the hall. In the doorway, though, he hesitated and added, “If you need me--”

 

“If I need you, I know where to find you,” I reassured him.

 

He nodded and took his leave, closing the door quietly behind him. Once he had gone, I snuffed out the candle and burrowed back beneath my blankets. It was still several hours until dawn. Perhaps I could succeed in getting a little more sleep.

 

Hopefully it would be dreamless.

 

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