Lies and Music by Elisif

The Nightingale

Read The Nightingale

““In this treacherous world,
There are neither truths nor lies.
All is merely dependent upon the colour
Of the crystal through which one sees.”

Pedro Calderon de la Barca

 

Prologue  

 

Findekáno is waiting for Russandol.

The words have echoed without mercy in Maglor’s ears for twelve days, five words briskly spoken to him by his young squire and dismissed every bit as quickly; the boy’s last, spoken mere moments before, with the raising of a thousand glittering swords and the triumphant cries of the soon to be unnumbered dead, the world had ended.

Findekáno is waiting for Russandol.

So far as Maglor is concerned, it has yet to stop ending.

Findekáno is waiting for Russandol.

Nor is it likely to do so today, as he is riding out with a small party of loyal accomplices to the other camp established for the – precious few- additional survivors, some ten miles to the north of their own encampment, where they will doubtless be informed of further losses they have all, as yet, been mercifully denied knowledge of.

The forest is damp with early spring rot; their horses’ hooves sink into the mire of thick mud and rotting leaves with every weighted step or else shift unsteadily on the slippery moss that coats occasional firmer ground. For Maglor, every misplaced step is agony; the jolts shove his as-yet barely healed thigh hard against the coppered trim of the borrowed saddle and serve to bring the pain of his three broken ribs to a nigh on unbearable level. He really isn’t in a state to be riding yet, but as he’s the only one of his brothers recovered past a stage of feverish writhing, he has taken it upon himself as his duty to act as ambassador for the survivors waiting at the other camp.

Russandol is among them.

The hawk came yesterday, the crumpled scrap of parchment bringing him his first smile in twelve days and yet more tears. He had not thought either still possible.

Once more, the palfrey slips; he bites down on his tongue to the point of drawing blood to stop himself from crying out, rummages and scrabbles through the fraying corners of his belt pouch for any remaining poppy seeds. He salvages a couple; they are stale and dry, taste of the old linen that lines the pouch, but they are salvation all the same. He gulps them back, prays vainly for further distraction from the pain in his ribs and leg.

Findekáno is waiting for Russandol.

If the world has indeed ended, the forest does not know it; the larks and nightingales in the birches above carry on singing melodically, their joyous song oblivious to all but the unending blue sky at which their melodies appear directed.

Come comfort of the night, sweet nightingale

Let all you love to shadows pale

Amid the echoes of your song...

Though his broken ribs have forced him unwillingly into silence, the voice in Maglor’s head echoes the birds in instinct born of lifelong habit, carries blindly onwards.

Your praise unto the heavens bring,

While other birds no longer sing

In shadows, stilled lie sleeping...

Being unable to sing is a special kind of torture for him, but he supposes- knows all too well- that things could be far worse. His hands, at least, are uninjured. Damaged hands have always been a certain nightmare at the back of his mind, one injury he very much doubts he could ever endure.  

The riding party pushes onwards, uphill now, the damp and mossy forest mud now turned to loosely broken and crumpled rock. The jolts are harder to take now, leave him gasping for breath and clutching at his side with every step. His- new- squire shoots a worried glance at him, opens his mouth to call out and suggest stopping for rest, but Maglor dismisses the boy through sharply gritted teeth, tells him he is fine. Lies.

Another rider draws up alongside him; he recognises him as Mormirë, one of Celegorm’s servants, who lost three brothers in the battle which can hardly be termed as such. He jerks back hard on the reigns, turns to Maglor and in a tired voice, brushing his braids from his face says:

“I was told my last brother was taken to this camp, injured but alive. If I may hope...”

Maglor turns to face him.

“I’ll hope with you,” he says. “No one deserves losses such as yours.”

He nods, forces a weak smile; as Maglor bites down and urges the palfrey forward, Mormirë continues:

 “I only wished to ask you...”

He tugs the reigns back, draws the palfrey to a brief halt.

“Go on.”

“It was you who slew Uldor, was it not?”

He swallows hard.

“Yes,” he says, through gritted teeth.

Mormirë draws a deep breath, looks deep into his eyes.

“Did the traitor die the death he deserved?” he asks.

Maglor tightens his grip on the pommel of his sword, digs his nails into the engraved ridges of the hilt, avoiding Mormirë’s eyes. Uldor, an unworthy recipient of Ilúvatar’s gift, was brought down from behind with a single blow, blood and brains splattering as he fell dead into the mud ere he had a chance to utter a final scream.

“Yes,” he lies. “I made sure of it.”

“I will tell that to my brother,” says Mormirë. “He will be glad to hear it.”

They are silent as they ride onwards, the spring sun beating down hard upon their unprotected necks as midday approaches. The trail widens; the ground underhoof turns to ever-deepening mud and the sunlit chinks between the shadowed trunks grow ever wider as the welcome scents of birch, elderflower and bluebell are replaced by the acrid and familiar stinks of shit and blood. 

The encampment is now visible through the trees, specks of white from the long lines of tents peering between the sharp greens and blues of the forest; Maglor straightens his back, forces himself to sit rigidly upward through a blurring haze of pain, urges the palfrey to the front of the party, pushing his way between the other riders, nails dug hard into the ridges of the sword pommel.

He rides on ahead of the rest of the party, canters painfully to the forest’s edge and halts. A banner of silk has been tied between the drooping birches that edge the clearing, a line of brightest white cutting neatly across the trampled earth brown of the camp ahead. He pushes the palfrey forward, gasps and draws his hand from his sword to his aching ribs as he reaches out to loosen the banner when an unknown voice from below startles him.

 “My Lord-“

He canters the horse round in a tight circle, once more jolting his injured leg against the saddle; a handful of guardsmen stand below his steed, the adorned silver and gold trimmings of their variant livery speckled white in the glare of the unguarded sun. As he turns, they fall to their knees; one’s black hair is thickly caked with congealing blood, a jagged and barely-healed gash running the length of his clotted scalp; another has an arm tied up in a bloodied sling and a patch damply yellowed with pus over his left eye.

These are the ones well enough to guard the camp, he reminds himself bitterly.

“Arise,” he tells them, jerking back on the reigns. They cautiously oblige; as he shifts to ease his leg in the saddle, another stab of pain jolts through his ribs and the guardsmen blur to a mottled white amid the glaring blues and greens; he gasps and continues onwards, in no mood for courtly formalities. “My brother was brought to this camp?”

The guardsman nods; Maglor regains composure, begins fumbling stiff-fingered with the ties of his gauntlets, looks down at the guardsmen for a response. The black-haired guard of the party speaks up.

“Yes, my Lord. But-“

The stubborn knot of the gauntlet tie yields; he lays the heavy and drooping gauntlet across the seat of the saddle in front of him, flicks a braid free of his face and looks back at the stammering guardsman with the lost eye.

“And the High King too?” he asks.

The black-haired guard shoots a brief glance back at his companions, then trembling sinks to his knees, palms laid enraptured in front of him on the muddied earth.

 “My Lord... we had hoped that you had heard. The- the High King did not survive the battle. He was slain as he fought, valiantly to the end.”

Maglor very nearly falls backwards off of the palfrey in blind shock. No. No.

Slain. Slain.

Findekáno.

Findekáno is slain.

It is all he can do to stay upright as the words join all the others echoing mercilessly in his head and time slows to a tortured crawl. The world is spinning, light, laughter and colour crushed helplessly under the unbearable weight of those words; time slows to a tortured crawl around him and he feels as though he is looking upon the face of a stranger from afar, Hröa severed from Fëa as though it is he who as died and not... Findekáno.

Findekáno...

A realisation yanks him back to reality, draws him upright, sends all remnants of his own grief fleeing to the clear, blue sky as the blurred world in his eyes reforms itself to clarity just as he knows the real world never will. He gasps, reaches blindly for the reigns, pulls himself painfully upright.

“Where is my brother?”

The guardsman inches his face upwards of the earth; with a pained expression, he turns to his companions, then once more bows his head and not meeting Maglor’s eyes, he stammers:

“My Lord- the grief is a double-edged. We fear the Lord Maedhros is like to die with him-“

Again, Maglor very nearly falls from his horse.

“NO!”

“He has refused all offers of help, gravely threatened those who tried to assist him-“

 “Where is he?”

 “The great tent with the red banners- my Lord, you are gravely injured-“

Maglor grapples for the strap around his injured leg and frantically attempts to loosen it, smearing his hands with his own blood as he draws the twisted silver free of the improvised buckle, flings the strap bloodied leather hard into the mud.

A hand reaches out to halt him; he pushes it and all the others aside, leaps from the saddle, staggers, very nearly collapses as he lands hard on his maimed and injured leg, his arm flung against his throbbing side. Cold, sharp wind pours into his lungs and tortures his broken ribs, but he ignores that too as he pushes past the guardsmen and under the white banner between the birches, stumbles into the campsite, limps through the ever-deepening mud, sprints blindly in the only direction he knows, that of his older brother.

Fortunately the great tent lies at the very front of the camp; Maglor yanks aside the silken doors, fears the worst as he finds his brother lying limp across the floor of the tent, empty and shattered wine flagons strewn in all directions, broken shards even clinging to his bedraggled and matted hair, the thick carpet underfoot sticky with the dredges of sour wine and the tent foul-smelling with odours of sour wine, infection and blood. Screaming, he runs forward, falls to his knees, attempts to seize and lift his brother’s unconscious body into his arms, but Maedhros is heavy and his hands, still damp and sticky with his own warm blood slip on the cleanly polished bronze of his breastplate. He seizes his brother by the ridged bottom edge of his Plackart, yanks him upwards, gasps in agony as the solid bronze edging of the gilded breastplate digs hard into his ribs.

“Don’t you dare die, do you understand? Don’t you dare!”

Struggling under his weight, he turns his brother over in his arms. Maedhros’ cracked and bloodied armour is only half-removed, lacking only the few pieces easily untied with one hand; under it he is wearing the same blood-soaked tunic and braies he wore into battle nearly two weeks ago; an untended gash bruised crimson and purple runs the length of his good arm from shoulder to elbow. Maglor lifts him upwards, frantically brushes the matted tangle of copper tresses from his face, flinches at the foul smell of his breath as his head falls back. Inebriated, but not dead. Not yet.

Another sharp stab of red-tinged pain in his side as the breast-plate jams into his ribs; his hold loosens and he very nearly drops his brother. He catches him, but not before Maedhros’ good arm falls loosely free of his grip, drops limply to the floor; as he reaches down to draw it back into his desperate embrace, he sees that his brother’s white-knuckled fist is still tightly, agonisingly clenched around something, even in this state not daring to relinquish whatever treasure is contained within.

Stifling sobs, Maglor clutches his unresponsive and once-more-broken brother against his chest and drawing a deep breath, takes the clenched fist into his own and pries apart Maedhros’ stiff and bloodied fingers.

A tiny scrap of silk lies cradled in his palm.

Blue and silver silk.

Findekáno is waiting for Russandol.

Somewhere in the distance, a nightingale is singing. 

---

Chapter End Notes

The squire’s use of Quenya names here is a liberty taken purely for purposes of literary and narrative effect.

The Nightingale Song is my own loose translation of the seventeenth century German poem "Komm Trost der Nacht, O Nachtigall" by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen