and one man, in his time, plays many parts by Duilwen

---

iv.

---

The light came back.

Despite themselves his people cheered it. There was another dance, this one impromptu and occurring without Maglor’s approval or participation, because he was busy with Curufin and Caranthir planning a year-long series of agricultural experiments that could determine what could grow under the new light, what could grow in well-designed greenhouses if mirrors were used. They had a plan sketched out by the third time the light rose in the sky.

Then they built focusing lenses several meters across and set them carefully atop buildings with improvised retractable roofs and began work on creating the glowing Ñoldorin lampstones that his father had developed so many centuries ago. They were ornamental pieces in every home and office and workshop in Aman, but their original creator and his family had none; Morgoth had taken them. 

The city was singing. Its songs were shaped nothing like Tirion; the roads were uneven and imperfectly planned, the walls were not ceremonial and were densely guarded, and nothing glittered. To realize that it was a Ñoldorin city, Maglor thought, you had to listen carefully, you had to look close enough to see how defiantly inventive the crumbling, incompetent buildings were, and how they improved with each year’s new understanding. The city was poorly-planned and clumsily-built and falling apart, but there was more to sing of it, in a way, than of Tirion.

When the light rose in the sky for the seventh time a woman approached Maglor in the newly-laid cobblestone street. He didn’t go about accompanied – no people to spare – but by convention everyone usually stood respectfully out of the way. She, though, cheerily crossed the street to end up in his face. “Your Grace!” she said, “It needs a name, and we have seven for your consideration.”

“We?” he said, amused. “And I suppose it does. Are those your proposals?”

She instinctively pulled the scroll back from his hand, and then, realizing what she’d done, awkwardly held it out again. “Well, yes, but I was hoping to explain the context and considerations. And ‘we’ being the Lambengolmor for Endorë, or that’s what we’ve been styling ourselves, though if you think it’s too impudent we could probably –”

“I think,” said Maglor, “styling yourself a new Lambengolmor is not inexcusably impudent but interrupting me in the street rather is. You may bring your proposal to me tonight, when the light rises.”

“Of course,” she said, not at all abashed. 

 “Who should I tell my seneschal to expect?” He didn’t have one. Perhaps the appointment was overdue, really, but he couldn’t think who would suit. Everyone his father had trusted had died with his father, everyone Maitimo had trusted had died with Maitimo-

“Celirhíl,” she said.

“That’s Sindarin.”

 “A translation!” she explained with a  bright smile. “They appreciated it tremendously. They’ve already learned some and been rounding the names off to the nearest appropriate phonemes – you’re Maglor – but everyone a little less important has a little time to choose how we want to be known.” She faltered at the expression on his face. “It’s the ultimate triumph, really, of your and the Lord Curufinwë’s efforts to encourage rapid adoption of the language.”

“My father’s,” Maglor said. “That was a priority of my father’s. Celerhíl. I will see you after the light rises.” He arrived at the workshops quite thoroughly distracted and having forgotten the questions he’d intended to ask when he got there. Luckily everyone was eager to regale him with information and left him no brief silence in which to ask questions anyway.

“Everything is in place,” Caranthir said, “we can start making lampstones this evening. I’ve told Curufin his time is probably more highly valued somewhere else – this procedure is trivial. Well. Not trivial. But there are ten or fifteen people who can do it, and in comparison to some of the skills and arts that are all but lost here –”

“We have an observation deck there, if you want to watch,” he said. “The idea is that we can train some more people, have six lenses in each of four buildings of this type, each of which can produce one lampstone a week –”

“Do we need that many?”

“To trade with the Moriquendi,” Caranthir said. “From what the peoples around Mistaringë have said, it’s possible that even if we bring Elwë all the riches of Valinorë he’ll refuse to let us in to talk. But, from some other things they have said – it would much improve our odds.” 

“Bribery.” 

“Diplomacy.” 

“As you like it. Moryo, do you have complete personal records for everyone in the settlement?

“Not all of the new arrivals from the lakeshore tribes.” There were several thousand of those. They’d settled within the Fëanorian perimeter for protection and kept their distance, at first. Now they came to the dances, sometimes, and traded Maglor’s people dangerously intoxicating wine in exchange for the last of the lembas out of Valinor. Maglor had half-heartedly tried to forbid this, but when Caranthir had instead suggested taxing it he’d been happy enough to foist the whole mess off onto his shoulders. 

“But all of our people?”

“Yes, of course. Gray book, my rooms. Or rather – I should probably go with you, you’re not going to be able to decipher it. There’s not much to do here until the light rises…”

“I have a meeting then,” said Maglor, “so this won’t take that long.” 

Caranthir’s rooms were the largest. Maglor had never noticed that and wasn’t sure how to challenge him on it. He’d in any event made good use of the space. The gray book was actually eight separate volumes, designed so pages could be detached and reordered, covered on both sides with dense, tiny writing. “Pityo’s been helping me,” said Caranthir, at Maglor’s raised eyebrows.

 “He has? That – raises more questions than it answers.”

“I promised him that if people decided, of sound mind and in their own right, to leave, then you wouldn’t stop them from going by force.”

“Of course not.” He was thinking more about the impracticalities of stopping them than any grand principle of just leadership, but Caranthir looked oddly pleased. 

 “He promised to help me collect information.” 

“What sort?”

“You’ll see. Who did you want to know about?”

“She gave her name as Celirhíl. Which isn’t just a Sindarin pronunciation, it’s a proper translation, if I’m to understand it-” 

“Yes, lots of people are doing that,” Caranthir said absently. “It’s a fad. Here. Ah. She’s Túretulco’s younger sister.” One of their father’s apprentices of forty years. Maglor didn’t know him except vaguely, but Caranthir was smiling fondly. “Their mother was in the workshop this afternoon,” he said, “she’s one of the people who can do lampstones. Their father is dead, as is Túretulco’s wife. Alqualondë.”

“Add to the book,” Maglor said, “that she’s styled herself a representative of the Lambengolmor for Endorë and wants to meet with me to name the light.” 

“Oh,” said Caranthir, “that’s a good idea. She has a lot of ties in the local tribes – the ones living within our protection and without it – so we could ensure that it has a consistent name in Quenya and Þindarin, even. And naming things improves everyone’s spirits. It feels like a properly Ñoldorin thing to concern ourselves with.” There was sarcasm there but Maglor was not sure who it was aimed at.

“We named ourselves the Quendi,” Maglor said. “By Cuivienen, I mean. Those who speak. It was the Valar who decided to name us children of their Light. It is not merely a properly Ñoldorin thing to concern ourselves with; it is a properly Quendi thing to concern ourselves with. Strange, maybe, to celebrate our small rebellions, even after the great and terrible ones – but necessary, perhaps, if we are to define ourselves by anything other than what they took from us.”

“Rehearsing your speech already?”

“Always,” Maglor said absently. Caranthir had finished adding his notes to the book. “Túretulco has children, right?”

“Three.”

“And her? Is she married?”

“She has a girlfriend in the Þinda settlements,” Caranthir said. “Why?” 

“No – no reason – how do you know things like that?” 

“People like talking about things like that,” Caranthir muttered. “Finding out whether they’re actually fluent? That takes effort. Finding out who they’re sleeping with-”

“Moryo-”

“Oh, are you going to enforce the laws of the Valar here?” 

“Of course not. I am just realizing that I’m obviously not keeping you or Pityo busy enough.”

Caranthir smiled bitterly. “This was from before the light. There was time to burn, then.”

“Well.” Maglor said. “Now there isn’t, so I order you both to stop tracking our subjects’ sexual indiscretions with the locals. And if I’m not mistaken, the light’s rising, so –” 

“I’ll go make you a lamp,” he said agreeably. 

Maglor had still neglected to appoint a seneschal, so he met the woman herself at the door to the conference room. “The main considerations,” she said without preamble, “were memorability, aesthetic appeal, and maintaining the possibility of using the same word in Þindarin and Quenya by obeying the phonemic principles of both languages. That last one proved to be the greatest constraint.”

“If you give me the list,” Maglor said, “I’ll look it over and make an announcement  later.” 

Her face fell. “But I wanted to explain all of the relevant considerations –”

“I think I have a good grasp of them,” he said gently.

“The Þindar are already using Ithil. Another relevant question is how easily the word modifies –”

“Celirhíl,” Maglor said, “I learned Telerin for the sake of making poetry with puns that only half my audience would understand. I tried learning Valarin for music, and gave up only when I realized nothing would ever rhyme. I’m currently managing the vast expansion of our capabilities made possible by the new light source, and I do not have time to have the new Lambengolmor teach me about language. You are dismissed. Go tell your Þinda friends that we’ll host a naming ceremony for the light, tonight, when it is at its height.”

She at last looked a little disconcerted. “It’s all in the notes,” she said, and left. 

It occurred to Maglor, as he drew the paper closer to read it, that perhaps in the shock of Maitimo’s death he had drawn his inner circle too small, and it was worth finding some quiet, responsible, discrete people to add to it.

He spoke the seven possible names of the Moon aloud, and knew at once which one was right. He gave the speech at the Moon’s peak in the sky, and sang, afterwards, a silly children’s ballad in which Ungoliant was explained to have inadvertently vomited the light back into the sky, where it circled now to mock her. The lyrics worked in Sindarin and Quenya and most of his people obediently alternated, at least until they got too drunk.

Ithil. The Moon.

“Maglor,” he said, testing it out, the name the Sindar called the Noldo king. Curufin raised an eyebrow.

The next day a different light rose in the sky. Laurelin, people said at once, though it wasn’t, just as Ithil was not Telperion; but it had in common with Laurelin her color and her scorching heat, and within an hour of its first surfacing on the horizon everything in Middle-earth was dying.

“Damn,” Curufin said. “The experiments are all a little useless. The plants that were asleep are awakening, they’ll do fine; the plants from Valinor need a lot of water, but if we irrigate the fields they should also do fine. The native flora are all going to die.”

 “Something of a crisis for the people accustomed to living off them,” said Maglor, scowling at the orb in the sky. Just like the Valar, to try to surpass something they’d done perfectly well and end up completely misunderstanding the people they intended to benefit. Assuming the Elves even were the people they intended to benefit.

“As long as it hurts Moringotto more than us, it’s worth it,” Celegorm said fervently. “And by this light, if I climb the mountains, I could see all the way back to Aman, probably.” 

“Go for it,” Maglor said, “but the other mountain range. Try to catch a glimpse of Angamando. Tyelco-” because he had already starting running off – “no matter what you see, come straight back. Swear.”

 “I swear,” he said solemnly, and then wheeled gracefully around and raced away. 

“He’s right,” Curufin said, “that it hurts the orcs more than us – and, more importantly, that there’s a general principle at work here that advantages us. We’re adaptive. We were taking advantage of Ithil within an hour of its appearance. If you give the order to start irrigating an experimental field off the lake –”

 “Yes, of course.” 

“- then we’ll be exploiting this advantage within an hour too. Moringotto is slow to react to surprises. He’s stronger than us, but he’s clumsy and we’re inventive. Speaking of which, if you liked the idea of poisoned exploding seed pods, I need to go collect samples now before they all bake to death in the light of this hairbrained –” he waved at the sky.

“I’ll track down our arrogant pack of young linguists and ask them for a list of recommended names for it,” Maglor said. 

It was hardly the first priority, though. Concentrated by the lenses in the workshops, the golden light reached a dangerous, searing intensity; it was, Maglor thought as he squinted at it, brighter than Laurelin, and looking directly at Laurelin could fry your eyes. He aided them in pulling the retractible roofs over the lenses, listened to an excitable young engineer with plans to turn the concentrated light into a water heater and possibly a generator, approved efforts to irrigate the western section of the lake, and, as the golden light rose higher in the sky, returned to his room to put on clothes he had not worn since he’d left Tirion. 

I should have known, he thought, when he heard the unmistakable sound of Celegorm on horseback racing toward the camp at top speed, that the good things don’t last even long enough for the beginning of healing. 

Celegorm was dusty and sweaty, his robes sewn for Formenos and for Araman and lately used for lightless Endorë. The horse was overheating, and he waved Maglor toward him as he walked with it toward the lake. “They’re here,” he panted when Maglor reached him.

“Moringotto’s – what are the numbers –”

“Not Moringotto,” he said. “Irissë’s here. They’re all here. Nolofinwë’s people – thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands of them. All of them, possibly. I didn’t stay to count. They’re marching toward Angamando.”

“No,” Maglor whispered.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve seen them. We need to –”

 “I’ll call a meeting,” Maglor said, and closed his eyes for a second. It didn’t shut out the light. Instead it pulsated, reddish, within his eyelids, until he felt sick and had to bury his face in his hands.

Amrod had taken to sitting on Maglor’s left and leaning in to read whatever he was looking at. He did it today even though there was nothing to look at.

Celegorm and Huan took up the entire right side of the table between them. They both, Maglor thought dimly, looked profoundly unhappy.

“They hiked across the Helcaraxë.”

“Yeah.” 

Celegorm shifted restlessly. “We don’t know that.” 

“It’s a fairly reasonable inference,” Caranthir spat. “I don’t think the Teleri built them boats.”

“Could have built their own-”

Curufin shook his head. “If there were ways of getting here from Aman other than the Helcaraxë, Father would have thought of them. It’s utterly implausible that Nolofinwë found something he didn’t-”

“He wasn’t exactly in his right mind.”

“Our people weren’t disciplined enough to get the ships out of Alqualondë and Olwë’s were willing to kill over mere property,” Curufin snapped. “Anyone who claims we could reasonably have anticipated that is a liar, because you didn’t.” He looked around the table. “None of you did.”

“I rather doubt Olwë did,” Celegorm offered. “And in fairness, they mightn’t have been trying to kill us, at first, throwing people into the water. They weren’t familiar with armor, they might not have known that an armored man can’t swim –” 

“That debacle,” said Maglor flatly, “is not worth rehashing at any length. It’s done, and we did it, and we carry it with us –”

“How courageous of you,” murmured Amrod.

“Ah, but Cáno,” Curufin said, “you’ve missed the essential trait distinguishing this argument from our previous ones. In this case we are using our differing assessments of Father’s capabilities and sanity to arrive at different conclusions. I contend that Nolofinwë and his host must have crossed the Helcaraxë. Because I am confident in our father’s judgment that there was no conceivable way to leave Aman save by the theft of the boats or by the Helcaraxë. Anyone who does not share my confidence in him can predict, instead, that they found another means of passage, and we’ll see the issue settled shortly. I will grant you that every previous discussion on this topic has been an abhorrent waste of time and energy. But this one is not.”

“If they did,” Caranthir said, “they will have suffered staggering losses. It’s not a safe – hell, I’m stunned it’s even possible – they must be starving.”

“It’s not any more feasible to eat off the land here,” Curufin said. “Or, rather, it wasn’t until recently. He gestured outside, even though the room was windowless. “They can’t be any hungrier than we are.”

Caranthir shook his head. “They’ve been walking the whole time. That’s double the food needed.”

“They can’t have been walking the whole time,” Curufin said. “It’s less than half the distance from Tirion to Formenos, and we travelled that, in the dark, in less than half a Year’s time. It has been four Years.” 

“And yet,” said Maglor, “we can anticipate that they’re hungry, low on or out of supplies of food and in poor physical condition. And that they’ve suffered substantial losses, probably of children in particular. We can verify all that with some scouts – yes,” he added to Celegorm, who was standing to leave, “but not right now – and that will settle the question far more effectively than speculating.”

Celegorm sat back down, heavily. “They’re going to hate us.” 

“Going to?” Amrod said. “Already do, presumably. We killed them –” 

“No, we didn’t.” Curufin said impatiently.

“Yes,” Amrod retorted, “we did, and you are the one who persuaded me of it, so for a few minutes, god damn you, you will listen. You explained to me, a while ago – on a boat, and I was seasick, so it’s possible a few details have escaped me, but –”

 “Pityo, you can make your point without the hostility,” Maglor said.

 “Curufinwë Atarinke presented me with the following dilemma. I live alone; a person comes to my house, injured and in need of aid. I refuse it, and they die. Am I accountable?”

“Yes,” Caranthir said impatiently.

 “The person comes to my house, injured but not fatally. But they intend to go straight back out, and if they don’t rest they assuredly will die. They intend to do this because a child of theirs is alone outside, half a day’s walk away. They are determined to return to the child, and cannot be dissuaded, nor can you stop them from leaving. You could however offer to go yourself, or offer to lend them a horse, or tell them of a shorter path to the valley where the child is. If you make either offer, they live. Instead you don’t, and they die. Are you accountable?”

“Yes.”   

“General principle. A person in desperate need is set upon their course. They cannot be dissuaded from it, and indeed turning from it would impose a terrible cost on them. You have the means to help them – by taking the trip with them, or by lending something you hold dear, or by teaching them how to make the journey more safely. You withhold such aid. They die, are you guilty?”

“We thought Nolofinwë’s people would return to Aman,” said Curufin. 

“Then we obviously did not think very hard.”

“We thought that,” said Curufin, “because our own people contained many among them scared and whining they wished to return to Aman – and if there were such cowards even among our own family, then how on earth could we expect steadfast hearts among Indis’ kin?” 

Celegorm had stirred at that, but Amrod waved him down. “Oh,” he said, “now you’re just being lazy with the insults. I knew him better than you did, and he was not a coward. Shortsighted? Yes. Reckless? Yes. I suppose he got both traits from our father. Principled to a fault? Time, I suppose, will answer that, but I’ll grant you it in the meantime. But he knew. Telufinwe knew that he had sworn the Oath, and that he was damned forever unless he fulfilled it. He knew he faced the wrath of the Valar, and of Eru, if he returned and he knew the fate he had bound himself to after that. And still. He thought it was the right thing to do, and so he did it. You don’t have that courage. You cannot imagine it. You never will. Give me an army of ten such cowards, and I’ll burn Moringotto on his throne.”

“They’d decide they were so impure as to be undeserving of the plaudits for destroying him,” Curufin said, “and so let him live.”

“Both of you,” said Maglor coldly, “are being vicious, cruel, unfair and unkind. Every person in this room has chosen to bear terrible risk to see terrible evils brought to heel. Every person has made the compromises and sacrifices necessary to place us in the best position for that war, or best uphold their duty to their people, or best uphold their conscience, when those differed. And we’ve all got it wrong a couple times. We are doomed, even, to get it wrong. To be presented with those choices again and again and have the world twist itself into knots to make our choices wrong, no matter how good our intentions.” He turned to Curufin. “Your extended meditation on the duties of aid owed a desperate, injured friend would have been useful to present to Olwë, back when that mattered. After that you should have dropped it. No one cares if he was in the wrong to refuse to teach us to build boats. Though it’s not a fraction as fucking useless as relentlessly derailing conversations to insinuate that the dead deserved it, so if you’re determined to devote your energy to one of the two –”

“You’re not well-suited to the role of mediator, Cáno,” Curufin said. “It’s too obvious you just want everyone to shut up and leave you alone.”

“Tyelcormo,” Maglor said, “if he speaks again without permission throw him out of this room.”

“No,” Celegorm said. “He’s being cruel but you’re pretending to be wise and neutral and that’s even worse, I think.” He stood. “I’m leaving.”

“I have work to do,” said Curufin, standing as well. “If they come here, and they’re angry, we’re going to need to defend ourselves.” 

“I’m not killing anybody who marched across the Helcaraxë to come give Moringotto a fight,” said Celegorm. “And why would they come here? There’s a whole continent out here. They can go somewhere else.”

“Mountains,” said Caranthir carelessly. “Strong defensive strategic position, water for agriculture, good line of retreat to the sea – we wouldn’t think of it like that, but they would.”

“Father,” Curufin said. “They’ll come for Father. They think he’s here, so they’ll come. By your leave–” 

“Go,” Maglor said, and shuddered at the screech of chairs being pushed back from the table, and blinked at the sudden, harsh bright golden light that spilled into the conference room, and marvelled, in the sudden silence, at how quickly optimism could turn into despair.

To evil ends shall turn all things that begin well, he thought, and even though the room was superheated by the strange new lights, he shivered.