The Brightest of Us All by Ilye

Chapter 1

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There were three of them, all raven-haired, standing shoulder-to-shoulder inside the gates. Ñolofinwë had never seen them in such bright light before. It made them look grim and fey, skin paler against the black of their hair than he was used to seeing, and their eyes pale and shifting in the broadness of the sunlight.

Fëanáro looked restless, in that tense, coiled way of his that seemed like it took a monumental effort of his iron will to keep from dashing off to do, solve, fix, create. At his right shoulder, Makalaurë stood peaceful – almost resigned – whilst at his left Carnistir glowered.

“He looks pleased to see us,” remarked Lalwendë brightly. Behind them, Findekáno snorted.

“He looks like a king being more royal than thou.” There was a pause. “I am not kneeling to him, Father.”

Ñolofinwë narrowed his eyes against the glare from the lake at their left. “I think, under the circumstances, that sentiment can be forgiven.”

“But not the action?”

Ñolofinwë glanced over his shoulder to meet his son’s challenging glare. “You are an adult, Findekáno. You can make your own decisions in awareness of the consequences.” His eyes slipped away, past the guards who tailed them, and back to where the beginnings of a camp could be seen on the far rim of the lake.  “I would, however, recommend diplomacy. Please, let me handle him. We have enough hatred amongst our own and I don’t want another battle. We’ve lost enough already – remember: there are bigger things to forgive than a refusal to kneel to the king.”

They were almost within earshot now, and fell silent for the final approach. Ñolofinwë took in the encampment. The gates were made of broad wooden beams, as thick as his forearm and braced and bracketed with industrial strength iron. The walls into which they were set had been built at an angle to form a rampart. Ñolofinwë was not surprised to notice their immaculate construction; neither was he surprised to realise that Fëanáro's camp was geared for war.

The guards flanking the gate wore armour from throat to thigh and carried long, sharp swords. Ñolofinwë halted Roccor at the gate's threshold before them and dismounted. Behind him, he was glad to hear Findekáno and Lalwendë do the same. The guards did not move, save for a darted glance shot at their leader who finally stepped forwards outside the gates.

In the morning sun, Fëanáro was as resplendent as he had ever been. The crown on his head was functionally small, but no less beautiful for it and set with tiny white gemstones that glittered like the light on the lake as he tilted his chin pridefully up. He wore gleaming armour formed of delicate leaf-shaped plates that were certainly tougher than anything Ñolofinwë could imagine. The sword on his hip was familiar – Ñolofinwë remembered all too well staring down its sharpened edge in a hall to the west of the sea. Over it all, he wore a cloak dyed a deep, venous red with stitching in gold and a jewelled clasp at his throat. He was, without doubt, King in Middle-earth.

Ñolofinwë dropped to one knee. Over his shoulders loomed the shadows of his sister and his son, defiant in the morning sunlight. He shot a glare backwards at Lalwendë, silhouetted against the lake. She braced her hands on her hips and cocked her head at him.

“He’s my brother too, Ñolvo. I have as much right to hate his guts as you do.”

Ñolofinwë rolled his eyes at her. So much for diplomacy. But Fëanáro ignored her, as he usually did. Instead he approached Ñolofinwë until he was but a pace away and stood, arms folded across his chest, looming. His own pride simmering beneath his forced outward calm, Ñolofinwë averted his gaze and stared determinedly at his brother's heavy, hobnailed boots, doing his best to imagine legions of Morgoth's minions crushed beneath them instead of the sand bloodied by innocents. It didn't help.

“You…” said Fëanáro at length, and Ñolofinwë looked up into his face then. Fëanáro shook his head, which would have looked like an arrogant toss of his hair to anyone who knew him less well than Ñolofinwë. “You are an arsehole.”

Ñolofinwë blinked at him. Then, he began to laugh.

Fëanáro bristled. “That was not intended as a joke.” It simply made Ñolofinwë laugh harder. He laughed despite all the death behind and around them, despite the trouble in Aman and the years of misery on the Ice, he began to laugh. Or perhaps he was laughing because of it.

"Ñolvo!" his brother thundered, "I am absolutely deadly serious – what? Have you become utterly demented? Get up off the floor, for pity's sake!"

Straightening and standing, Ñolofinwë caught his breath and ran his hand down his face. "It is just --" he began, then paused to swallow another hiccough of hysterical laughter. "It is just that really, Fëanáro, I think it is I who should be calling you the arsehole."

Fëanáro huffed a chuckle that was more exasperation than humour. "You persistent, insufferable pest," he sneered in that affectionate way of his, and then he sighed. "You weren't meant to follow me."

Ñolofinwë quirked an eyebrow at him. "I don't think we should start listing all the things either of us wasn't meant to do," he said, at the same time laying his hand on Findekáno's shoulder. Beneath his palm muscles bulged, filled with the stresses and griefs of recent history. But Findekáno kept his peace, and the uneasy silence, and bore Fëanáro’s scrutiny.

"Leave your weapons at the gate," Fëanáro said eventually, and turned on his heel. "And come inside."

~~~

Inside the encampment walls was a bright, bustling industry. Predictably, a number of the small huts appeared to be smithies, with benches and cooling troughs outside and smoke billowing from the meagre chimneys. A number of unhitched wagons stacked with crates and barrels stood in a line, with no clear indication of whether they were being received or removed. In places a few tents were still erected, but they were ragged and unoccupied for it appeared as though the Fëanárians had moved beyond canvas some time ago.

Fëanáro led them through the camp to a long, single-storey hall. A pair of guards stood on either side of the arching doorway at the hall’s southern end. Like those on the front gate, they wore elegant armour and carried blades. Beneath their cloaks Carnistir and Makalaurë too were armed and armoured, in the same  interlocking leaf-like plates as their father. The entire place felt as though it were on its guard. If his brain were less frost-addled, Ñolofinwë suspected he would be intimidated by the weaponry surrounding him, especially given the owners’ track record. But he felt strangely at his ease, and likewise neither Lalwendë nor Findekáno – whom Ñolofinwë suspected of having a dirk still secreted about his person – seemed fazed by the situation.

"This is quite an establishment you're setting up," he remarked as he stepped through the doorway, observing that the half-carved wooden doors were pocked with divots as though they were to be reinforced with the wrought metal stacked to one side.

Fëanáro dismissed the comment with a wave of his hand, like a fly were buzzing around his face.

"We first started building in the dark. It's not the most attractive." He braced his hands on his hips and looked up through the scissor beams to the hall’s ceiling. Ñolofinwë’s attention alighted on a patch of earthen tiles amidst the thatch.

"No,” Fëanáro went on, “it’s certainly not attractive – but it's functional for the time being.” He jerked his chin at the area of the roof Ñolofinwë had noticed, then swept his eyes around the room. “It took us a while to find the ores and stones we needed, so to start with we had to settle with what the lakeside can offer. But Curufinwë is applying himself to architectural improvements, now we’ve got the resources sorted out."

"And weapons too, it seems.” It was said gently enough, but it was the spark to Fëanáro’s tinder. His whole demeanour changed in an instant, as his expression shut down and his eyes darkened, and he spun away to stalk a few crackling paces across the straw-covered floor.

“We need weapons!” he snarled, turning back to glower at Ñolofinwë. “How are we to fight a war without them?”

“That I understand.” Ñolofinwë gestured to Fëanáro’s armour. “But all I see speaks of defence, rather than attack.”

"Morgoth is belligerent – he has stolen my greatest treasures, and still he is not content...” Fëanáro narrowed his eyes and half-turned towards the nearest window. There was nothing happening outside it, but he seemed fixated nonetheless. Ñolofinwë presumed that he had lost his attention to a private vision. The moment stretched taut. Ñolofinwë glanced at his nephews, hovering to one side of their father. An uneasy glance passed between them and then, for the first time since Ñolofinwë’s arrival, Makalaurë spoke.

“We fought a battle shortly after we reached the Eastern shore,” he began, but broke off as Fëanáro reanimated and spat soundly upon the floor.

“Ambushed in this very encampment, we were,” he growled, “hence the fortifications."

"You too?" Ñolofinwë dipped his head; that explained much of what he had seen since arriving on Mistaringë’s northern shore. “Then Morgoth is indeed belligerent; we were attacked almost as soon as we set foot in Valariandë.” He swallowed hard against the grief that closed his throat and felt Findekáno step closer in solidarity. “We lost Arakáno."

From the corner of his eye, he saw Makalaurë’s lips tighten as he lowered his head. Carnistir averted his gaze, but Fëanáro looked up with his eyes bright and sharp again.

“It pains me to hear that,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically – dangerously – quiet. “We too suffered great losses.”

“Not your sons?” Ñolofinwë realised with a twist of his innards that he had heard no mention of several of his nephews.

Fëanáro gave a jerk of his head that was neither confirmation nor denial. “Tyelkormo has gone scouting with Ambarussa and Tyelperinquar is assisting Curufinwë. But Maitimo – Maitimo is dead.”

Ñolofinwë’s stomach plummeted. At his shoulder, Findekáno took a choked intake of breath and Ñolofinwë felt his son’s fëa turn cold and grim. He reached for Findekáno’s elbow, but before he could say anything Makalaurë looked up from the floor and crossed his arms across his chest.

"I keep telling you, Father, that he is not dead," he muttered peevishly.

Fëanáro looked as though he were barely refraining from curling his lip into a sneer. "And I keep telling you that it would be better if he were."

Ñolofinwë shook his head to clear it. “Hold, brother – so when you said that Morgoth has stolen your greatest treasures –”

Fëanáro smirked without humour. “I was not just speaking of the Silmarilli.”

Hot on the heels of his renewed grief for Arakáno, Ñolofinwë found this too much to process. The sudden withdrawal of Findekáno’s warm support as his son's fëa closed in on itself was cause enough for concern, without the icy dread that trickled down Ñolofinwë's spine as it became clearer what peril they were all wound into. He gasped a breath; then, before Findekáno could find his voice and temper and widen the fracture between their houses beyond repair, he stepped away from his son and touched Fëanáro’s elbow instead.

“Can we speak outside?” he asked, softly but with an undertone that brooked no refusal. Fëanáro’s eyebrows rose in surprise and he immediately drew himself up straight enough to place a space between them, but to Ñolofinwë’s relief he did simply nodded and marched away towards the door. Leaving Findekáno in Lalwendë’s capable hands, Ñolofinwë followed.  

He found Fëanáro around the side of the hall, leaning against a tree and staring north-east towards the inky clouds that billowed in the distance.

“I take it you have tried to rescue him?” he said quietly. Fëanáro snorted and eyed him obliquely.

“You heard me the first time when I told you he is dead,” he said after a moment. Ñolofinwë looked pointedly around him at the fortified buildings and shook his head.

"And yet you remain within spitting distance of the enemy."

A slow, sharp smile sliced its way across Fëanáro’s features. ‘Oh, how well you know me, little brother,” he returned scathingly. He tossed his hair back, took a deep breath with closed eyes, and then looked squarely at Ñolofinwë. “Would you like to see my plans, then?”

Relief loosened the anxious knot in Ñolofinwë’s stomach even as he felt a bloom of adrenaline. He stepped alongside Fëanáro, close enough that their shoulders almost touched.

“I would. We could be on the same side, you know.”

The flames of Fëanáro's eyes flickered over him without disturbing the prideful uptilt of his chin. They were silent in the wind for a moment. Then, Fëanáro’s lips tightened and he looked back towards Angamando.

"Since we arrived here, Morgoth's true form and will has become all the more clear," he said, then paused, pursing his lips. "Maitimo’s capture has put things into perspective."

He was standing perfectly still, but Ñolofinwë could feel the heat of his fëa roiling and churning. There was rage there, and impotence, both ventilated by sobbing breaths of grief. You really haven't given him up for dead, have you? And you are not sure whether you wish that he were.

"I meant it when I said you were not supposed to follow me."

Ñolofinwë blinked in surprise. That could have been an accusation, but in fact it almost sounded like an apology, or as good as he would get from the proudest of the Ñoldor.

"Perhaps your injustices are greater in number than mine, now,” he replied. “But brother, please never forget that my father was killed too."

"I know it, I know it." Fëanáro gave an agitated swipe of his hand, then turned so they were facing. "That surely means we have a common enemy." It was said with his customary certainty -- and yet, Ñolofinwë felt again his brother's spirit waver in question.

"We have done all along," he said quietly. They stared at each other for a heartbeat, before Fëanáro frowned and turned his shoulder towards Ñolofinwë again.

"You are quite right that it is you who should be calling me the arsehole," he said to the sky.

Ñolofinwë just had a view of his profile, stern and stony against the bright morning. He could tell it galled Fëanáro, this was definitely as close as he would ever get to an apology and a truce. Progress! For I cannot win my own people’s support if you will not accept my aid.

He had just opened his mouth to respond when his sister’s voice interrupted him.

"Ñolvo! There you are! I've been searching for you."

Ñolofinwë bit back his frustration as the moment's delicacy fractured and turned to her with all the patience he could muster.

“What is it, Lalwendë?”

“It’s Findo,” she replied, clutching at her elbows. For the first time since they had set foot on the Helcaraxë, she looked young and scared, her joy and cheer extinguished. “He’s gone.”

 

Chapter 2

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As soon as it became evident where Findekáno had gone, Ñolofinwë had ridden out with Carnistir, who knew the land well, to track him down. But they found no sign and, puzzled and unhappy, Ñolofinwë had been forced to return to the camp once a day had fruitlessly passed.

 

After that he remained in the Fëanárian camp. The moon chased the sun many times. He sent an urgent message back to Turukáno and Irissë – in his own hand and sealed with his ring to alleviate worry that Fëanáro had slaughtered him after all – and locked himself away with his brother to pore over the plans of attack. They were abnormally civil to each other for the duration, although the unspoken tension frothed between them like a pot at the boil. It was as though Fëanáro had accepted his own son’s fate and did not expect Findekáno to return either; more than once, it occurred to Ñolofinwë that the best they could hope to recover was the Silmarilli. The idea filled him with such an icy dread that he could not stomach it. So instead, to occupy his thoughts and hands and imagination, he set himself to learning all of Angamando that he could thanks to the work of Fëanáro's scouts.

 

It was slow work, worthy of despair. Many of the sketched maps and reports contradicted each other. In some cases it was clear where entrances had fallen into disuse over time and others opened in the rock to take their place. Mostly, though, it felt like hopeless guesswork, linking hypothetical tunnels and mapping supposed terrain in a bleak, dreadful, unknown fortress. Ñolofinwë considered asking Fëanáro how many scouts had failed to return, but the very thought sent him into a wretched downward spiral of comparisons and so he shoved it to the back of his mind and continued joining imaginary doorways through solid rock.

 

The only people they saw were Curufinwë and Lalwendë. Curufinwë would silently present himself each morning with two reports, one written in his own staccato print and the other in Makalaurë’s flowing cursive. He laid each on the top of a neat pile that consisted of the previous days’ reports, untouched from where he had set them at the time. Ñolofinwë assumed that this was a regularity, from the way that Fëanáro’s eyes would skim the page as if doing nothing more than ensuring it was marked with ink before setting himself back to his plans, and Curufinwë left again without a word.

 

Lalwendë was more disruptive, but only because she brought them tea and food and insisted that they consumed it. Every time Fëanáro would snap at her for disturbing him, but it was in a mild and harmless sort of way and he always did as she bade.

 

The two seemed to have settled into an uneasy truce after Fëanáro had unleashed the full force of his temper upon her for letting Findekáno slip through his fingers and ruining his plans. But this time Lalwendë failed to let their brother's temper slide over her. Instead she had stood up to him, blazing that his last twelve years' planning had clearly been unproductive so far if Maitimo remained alive in the enemy's hands. She reminded Ñolofinwë so much of their father in that moment, all righteous glory and silver-sharp tongue. He reckoned that was the reason that, for the first time, Fëanáro backed down from an accusation and stalked away with her barbed retorts still embedded deeply in him. Ñolofinwë had forced a smile at her and conceded that she made a fair point, but nonetheless he was uncertain how he felt knowing that she had deliberately let Findekáno hare off to Angamando.

 

Time felt paper-thin as it passed, as though it were just one moment that might be snatched away on the wind, or shredded into scraps, or set alight like so much kindling. Ñolofinwë wondered if this was how his brother had felt for the entirety of the twelve-year since Maitimo's capture. But in fact, the moment changed not in the wind, or in fire, but as simply as if somebody had turned a page.

 

It was nearing dawn when the guard's shout went up. Ñolofinwë had barely slept – again – and was pondering one of Fëanáro’s essays on the merits and drawbacks of certain alloys for armour. He stepped out into the heavy white mist, opaque enough that the gathering crowd looked like shadow-walkers in the rising twilight, armed and whispering at the great bird they could see approaching from the north-east. And at the crowd’s head, hand on his sword and no knowledge of whether Manwë’s raptor brought redemption or retribution, was their King.

 

Ñolofinwë had once stood with Fëanáro's blade at his throat. He had seen the flame of fury light his brother's eyes when their father had died, and the blind, fanatical devotion of a man dispossessed after the massacre at Alqualondë. But after Ñolofinwë's cold terror for his own Findekáno was blunted, when he recognised that glinting hair in the morning’s red light, an entirely new fear surged forth. He found he had never been so afraid of Fëanáro as when Findekáno slipped gracelessly off Sorontar's back with the maimed and bloodied skeleton that they had used to call Maitimo.

 

Wordlessly, Fëanáro stepped up to Findekáno with arms outstretched to receive his son. Ñolofinwë had never seen his brother’s hands tremble before, nor the way his jaw was set so hard that it was a wonder his teeth did not shatter. But to Ñolofinwë’s horror, Findekáno’s blood-streaked chin took that upward tilt that signalled bald defiance. In the bare seconds that yawned through the mist, neither said a word and Ñolofinwë feared once again for his son’s safety. This silent, shaking Fëanáro was magnitudes more dangerous than the blazing, snarling version with which he was familiar, and he did not know how to handle him.

 

It was Curufinwë who eventually took charge in the silence.

 

“Well, bring him this way!” he barked from behind his father, then marched into the camp. Findekáno, clutching relentlessly to Maitimo’s motionless, cloak-wrapped form, grunted approval and stumbled after him. It fractured the stalemate. Around them the crowd broke into horrified whispers, muffled by the mist into the sound of dead leaves scraping in the wind. Ñolofinwë turned to Fëanáro, just as Lalwendë sprinted past them to catch up with Curufinwë and Findekáno and began asking urgent questions of them pertaining to medicine. Fëanáro made no move to follow.

 

“Fëanáro.” Ñolofinwë spoke quietly and calmly. He and shock were intimate friends.

 

Fëanáro made no response except for a sharp intake of breath through flared nostrils, and so Ñolofinwë tried again.

 

“Fëanáro, your son is home.” His fingers twitched at his side, longing to catch his brother’s shoulder and shake him to his senses but aware that it might lose him his hand. But his voice was enough. Fëanáro’s head snapped around and his eyes lit upon Ñolofinwë like glowing coals before he strode silently after the others.

 

Ñolofinwë tailed them to a thatched building a short distance away that he thought were Tyelperinquar’s sleeping quarters. Lalwendë’s voice could be heard from outside, demanding bandages and hot water and scissors and other things. Inside was chaos.

 

Hanging back in the doorway, Ñolofinwë assessed the scene. They had laid Maitimo on the bed and peeled away Findekáno’s cloak. He was still not moving and now that the full, wretched state of him was revealed, Ñolofinwë could see why. He was emaciated and shrivelled, bruised yellow and blue, sun- and wind-burned, scarred and twisted; more than half-dead. With impressive impassivity Lalwendë was examining him whilst obedient assistants fetched and cleaned and staunched at her bidding. She was doing a fine job and everyone seemed happy to let her take charge. Ñolofinwë had learned that certain of Fëanáro’s people had become healers by necessity, but the same was true for Lalwendë and the single battle and a few skirmishes suffered by Fëanáro’s people paled in comparison to her years on the Helcaraxë.

 

Curufinwë hovered like a hawk in the far corner, surveying but keeping well out of the way. Next to him stood Tyelperinquar, with Makalaurë and Carnistir close by. None of them seemed inclined to approach Fëanáro, who stood a few paces beyond them with the world whirling around him. He had fallen back into the trembling paralysis that had governed him upon Findekáno’s arrival, consumed by the flare of a white-hot fury as he took in the horror of what had become of his eldest son. His eyes would flash occasionally to Findekáno, who was at the foot of the bed, agitated by a completely different kind of temper that Ñolofinwë knew was directed at Fëanáro.

 

There were too many people and too many tempers in the small room. It was only a matter of time before the pressure head burst. Lalwendë must have also sensed it, for as one healer crashed into another and spilled a bowl of water, she paused in her examination of Maitimo’s severed wrist and caught Ñolofinwë’s eye.

 

“I have a lot of work to do and I need space and quiet to do it,” she announced with a deliberate sweep of her eyes around the room. Her voice was calm, but firm enough that everyone paused to listen. “I want everybody who is not holding something medical to leave this room. Now.” She cast her eyes around the room again and, as most began to follow her instructions, chucked her chin at Findekáno.

 

“You too, lad. You’ve done well. Go and clean yourself up so that you’re presentable when he wakes up. Ñolvo, see to him before he collapses, won’t you?”

 

Ñolofinwë nodded to her and caught Findekáno’s shoulders. Just as he was guiding his son out of the room, he saw Lalwendë look up at Fëanáro, still helpless and terrifying. Her eyes melted and Ñolofinwë noticed that Fëanáro did not follow them out of the hut.

 

~~~

 

They had barely set foot outside when Findekáno exploded out of Ñolofinwë’s grasp and began pacing around in front of the doorway. His hands were a frenzy, in his hair and at his sleeves and slicing through the air before him.

 

“How could he?” he growled, his voice gritty and harsh from Vairë-knew-what he had breathed and cried and choked on during his ordeal. The sun was fingering the misty horizon now and casting him into a hazy red light that made his anger seem all the more sanctioned. “He should have got him sooner! How could he leave him so long? How could he – how could he?” He skidded to a stop, inches away from Ñolofinwë, and narrowed his eyes back through the doorway.

 

“He deserves to burn for this.”

 

With a low sound of disapproval, Ñolofinwë caught him by the arm and steered him into a cluster of trees beyond the hut, out of earshot.

 

“Keep your voice down!” he hissed, his fear mutating into an anger of his own. “What you say is treason, and in the High King’s own camp no less!”

 

Findekáno jerked his arm free again and rounded on him. “You cannot tell me you disagree, Father!”

 

Ñolofinwë gave his elbow a rough shake. “At some point, Fathers have to accept that their children have grown up enough to make their own terrible mistakes! Like you, skipping off to the enemy’s doorstep after he’s slain your own brother! What in Manwë’s name were you thinking?”

 

Findekáno snorted. “Manwë’s name came in very useful, as it happens. He sent us Sorontar, after all.”

 

“And that was your entire strategy, was it? Invoke the name of those who abandoned us to our plight in Valariandë and hope that they’d send you a miracle? Unlike you, Findekáno, I have studied Angamando. I spent the entire period that you were gone looking at Fëanáro’s research and helping him find a way to get you both out of there, assuming you were even still alive!” He scowled at his son and took a step backwards. “Fëanáro has been trying to rescue Maitimo for twelve years. He is not a stupid man! Do you not think that if there had been a straightforward solution, he would have seized it long ago?”

 

Findekáno shrugged. “Seems to me that the straightforward solution was to walk in there and get Maitimo out.”

 

There was less aggression beneath that bluster now. The adrenaline glow was starting to settled, and Ñolofinwë knew that the aftermath would not be slow in taking its place. He sighed, biting back the temper born from his worry.

 

“Blessed you may be by the Valar, Findekáno, but that would not have gone well if Fëanáro had tried it, don’t you think?”

 

Findekáno shrugged again, but this time he had no retort. The tension had left his shoulders and he was starting to look despondent instead of irate. Ñolofinwë chanced a few steps closer to him and, when he felt that generous spirit reach out for reassurance, slid his arm around his son’s shoulders.

 

“How long do you think Maitimo had been there?” he tried gently.

 

“On Thangorodrim?” Findekáno leaned into him, grimacing as a shudder rattled through him. “Hard to say. But his other injuries speak of a long time in the Pit.”

 

He looked very pale all of a sudden. Ñolofinwë was unsure if it was that the angry flush had faded from his cheeks or if shock was working its ugly charm. He reached to unfasten his cloak clasp with his free hand.

 

“You know you’d never have been able to get to him inside the Pit, don’t you?” he murmured as he wrapped the cloak around Findekáno’s shoulders. Findekáno looked up at him in confusion and at last Ñolofinwë gave in to the urge to crush his son to him. “I’ve spent the last days examining those tunnels, Astaldo. You’d never have done it.”

 

There was a hint of a tremor now in Findekáno’s frame. His arms came up to clutch at Ñolofinwë’s back, and Ñolofinwë pressed his lips against his temple.

 

“My dear, stupid, valiant boy,” he sighed, then started at the voice that ricocheted between the trees behind them.

 

“Findo!”

 

They looked up to see Tyelkormo hurtling towards them, trailed by Ambarussa. Both Fëanárians were plastered in mud and windswept beneath their grey-green cloak hoods. The colour was high in their cheeks and their breathing still fast, intimating a hard ride out of the wilds.

 

“We saw the eagle!” Tyelkormo went on as he loped up to them and took hold of Findekáno’s nape in one gloved hand. A broad, lupine grin split his face and he shook a clump of damp blonde hair out of his eyes. “An eagle, of all things! We followed him back here as soon as we saw – you did it, you brought him back!”

 

It startled a laugh out of Findekáno, though he did not seem surprised by Tyelkormo’s statement. Ñolofinwë eyed them both as certain aspects of Findekáno’s disappearance started slotting into place.

 

“He’s in a bad way,” Findekáno said with a lightness that sounded as false as his smile looked. “Aunt Lalwendë is taking care of him, but I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”

 

Tyelkormo’s eyes followed Findekáno’s to the hut from which they had been banished. “He's in there? Ah, looks like poor Tyelpe is going to be sharing a room with Curvo.” He clapped Findekáno heavily between the shoulderblades. "Good job, cousin," he said cheerfully, then took off towards the forbidden hut with Ambarussa silently beside him.

 

Ñolofinwë waited until he was nearly at the door before he turned back to Findekáno.

 

“No wonder I couldn’t track you if you had Tyelkormo on your side,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “So he too defied his father?”

 

To his surprise, Findekáno paled even further and caught hold of his wrist. “You cannot tell Fëanáro!” he breathed, darting a wide-eyed glance at the doorway through which his cousins had vanished. “He will be livid! Tyelko made me swear –”

 

Ñolofinwë cut him off with a bark of disbelieving laughter. “And haven’t you yet learned the danger of oaths?” Findekáno’s lips tightened, but instead of the mulish expression that Ñolofinwë was expecting, his face twisted in a way that suddenly made him look tired, anxious, and very young. As quickly as it had flared, Ñolofinwë’s anger died again.

 

“Well I expect Tyelko’s father has enough to worry about for now.” He captured Findekáno’s fingers in his own – cold, he noticed with a shiver of concern – and replaced his arm around his son’s shoulders. “As does yours. Come, look: you are cold and exhausted. Let Lalwendë and the healers do their job looking after Maitimo, and let me do my job and look after you.”

Chapter 3

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Maitimo woke up screaming.

Lalwendë was already there with the healers when Ñolofinwë arrived hot on Fëanáro's heels. She looked up at them both, teeth gritted, as she bent over the bed close to the mattress. She was clasping Maitimo's head to her breast with one hand and had the other pressed across his chest to hold him still. One of the healers had his legs and was struggling to pin them down as he writhed and arched with a strength that defied his frailty.

"What is going on here?" Fëanáro thundered, his expression black. His hand was on his sword-hilt and the air fairly crackled around him. "What are you doing to him? Let go!"

"I am trying to keep him still!" Lalwendë flung back at him. "He is having a nightmare, or a vision, or – ah!” She grunted as Maitimo twisted, snarling, and clawed at her with his left hand. “And with the greatest respect, this shouting isn't helping either."

She turned her attention back to her nephew, whose screams had petered out into a whining against her shoulder, even though he still tried to fight her. "Maitimo, Maitimo, shhhh, come on. You'll hurt yourself like this – come on, you're with family. You’re safe."

A vice-like hand landed on Ñolofinwë's shoulder. He glanced backwards to see Findekáno, face pinched and eyes wide.

"What's happening?" he breathed, peering over Ñolofinwë's shoulder and into the room. "I heard him across the camp, I – let me through, Father, I need to get to him–”

Another scream rose from deep inside Maitimo's chest, wild and strangled and not quite Elven. Everyone winced. Ñolofinwë turned to catch Findekáno, but his son was too quick and ducked under his outstretched hands to slip inside the room. Ñolofinwë cursed and called his name, but Findekáno paid him no mind and darted for the bed.

"Thank you, Findo." Lalwendë’s voice was breathy with relief. "Help me hold him – he will open his wounds if he–”

Findekáno grabbed hold of Maitimo’s groping hand before Lalwendë could take another set of fingernails to the face. It made Maitimo contort and he strangled out another scream. The sound made Fëanáro flinch so violently that he nearly elbowed Ñolofinwë standing behind him.

"For pity’s sake! Can't somebody gag him?"

The activity in the room shuddered to a horrified halt as everybody stared aghast at him. He looked as though he was burning white-hot. Maitimo’s sobbing cries swelled to fill the void, his eyes fixed blindly on a point between the ceiling and Angamando.

Ñolofinwë’s throat clenched in anger that his brother could even think such a thing. But before he could issue reprimand that it was almost certainly restraint and pain that had caused Maitimo’s distress in the first place, Fëanáro took an ominous stride towards the bed and locked eyes with Findekáno. Each looked as murderous as the other, but Findekáno wasn't armed and Fëanáro’s palm was still on his sword. Ñolofinwë suddenly found himself fearing for his son's safety. But instead of drawing blade, Fëanáro just stared at Findekáno as though he were barely refraining from spitting on the floor, then spun on his heel and stormed out of the room.

Findekáno glowered at Fëanáro's retreating back for the barest of moments before Maitimo cried out again and snatched his attention away. Ñolofinwë waited just long enough to see him take orders from Lalwendë before he went in pursuit of Fëanáro.

It was morning, and the camp was just springing into life. Fëanáro was moving fast through the camp, but his streaming red cloak and the disturbance he left in his path made him easy to follow. Ñolofinwë’s fury rang in his ears with his pulse as he marched in his brother’s blazing wake. It felt like wading through the shimmering heat of a mirage, with the confused faces of the disturbed citizens he passed hazing at the edge of his vision.

Fëanáro weaved between – and sometimes through – his subjects’ daily morning activities until he reached the encampment gates. He ignored the guards who saluted his approach and, without warning, broke into a run. Ñolofinwë kept following. They ran down the approach from the lake to the gates, where Fëanáro took a hard right and disappeared into the trees. He was quick, but Ñolofinwë was taller and not wearing armour, and easily kept pace. More than once he saw Fëanáro glance behind just before accelerating, but still Ñolofinwë kept him in sight until finally they approached the far edge of the woods.

Here it seemed that Fëanáro had reached his destination, for although he was still aware of Ñolofinwë’s presence he slowed and then stopped. Ñolofinwë shifted to a walk for the final approach, keeping one eye on Fëanáro whilst he tried to gauge their surroundings.

They had run three-quarters of a circle around the camp so that they now faced North-east. A vast green plain stretched before them, leading to a stretch of low mountains that ran the width of the horizon. Beyond them the sky was dark and bruised, pierced by the jagged peaks hemming Morgoth into his filthy fortress. It was the ideal scenery for one to brood and plot revenge.

Ñolofinwë stopped level with Fëanáro and faced him, arms folded across his chest. Fëanáro had settled his shoulder against a tree-trunk in such a way that it was hard to tell which was propping the other up. He was staring towards Angamando, as still as the moment two days before when Findekáno had dropped out of the sky on Sorontar’s back and scattered his careful plans into the wind. Now, though, his anger’s edge was gone. It was as though the mad dash from the camp had rasped the sharpness away, until all that was left was a blunted, hollow sorrow.

“Once again, Ñolvo,” he said quietly into the distance, “you shouldn’t have followed me.”

“Well, I did.” Ñolofinwë shook his head. “I’m going to say it, Fëanáro: you are an arsehole. That was a vile thing to say.”

Fëanáro pressed his lips together so tightly that they formed a thin, bloodless line. His pose was soft, but his entire body was rigid and for a moment it seemed that the world held its breath.

"I just can't bear to hear him screaming like that," he said eventually. His voice was like the puff of smoke as a candle goes out. "His fëa is in so much torment – I can hear it screaming too and I can’t do a Valar-damned thing!”

Ñolofinwë took a half-step backwards as Fëanáro’s hand shot up, then flinched as it crashed into the tree trunk. The second time he stepped forward and caught his brother’s bloodied fist before it could collide with the bark again. Fëanáro’s head snapped around and he gawped at Ñolofinwë, as though astonished that anyone would touch him. And perhaps, Ñolofinwë realised, there was good reason for that.

“Of course you can do something,” he said firmly. “You can do far more for him now than you ever could.”

It earned him a look of narrow-eyed scepticism. Ñolofinwë offered him a sad half-smile and dared to reach with his other hand for Fëanáro’s shoulder. There was a shifting of Fëanáro’s weight; a squaring of his shoulders under Ñolofinwë’s hand in a way that was bracing rather than aggressive. Ñolofinwë braced himself too. The next breath he inhaled was thick with smoke and the stench of the battlefield.

“Arakáno died in my arms, you know.”

He closed his eyes. The enemy had retreated as quickly as they’d attacked – an ambush; there was no other word for it. But to slim satisfaction, they’d also left a slough of corpses behind them.

Ñolofinwë had noticed Arakáno’s plumed helmet amongst an array of those stinking corpses. He’d slipped on bloodied mud in his rush to get to him. At first it looked as though his son was simply pinned to the ground by the hulking body of the Orc captain, but after Ñolofinwë heaved it off him he realised that it was much worse than that.

“The Orc captain’s scimitar had nearly eviscerated him. There must have been three arrows in his chest and belly too – great black barbed things, all dipped in some dreadful poison. My poor Arko, he was terrified, and in so much pain. And he was ashamed because he thought he'd failed me.”

Of all things, the taste of that battlefield was the strongest in Ñolofinwë’s memory. Ash was thick on the tongue, and up close the Orcish stench was strong enough to clog at the back of the throat. Arakáno’s face was covered in filthy mud and his lips smeared with his own blood that frothed and bubbled as he tried to stutter out his final words. Ñolofinwë tasted both mud and blood, as he gathered his son close and kissed his face and felt his last breaths shudder across his own skin.

A touch to his elbow brought him back to the present. He looked down to see Fëanáro’s hand cup around his upper forearm, then up again into quicksilver eyes now soft with sympathy. Ñolofinwë blinked rapidly to clear the sudden brightness that had sprung into his vision at his brother’s show of solidarity, and went on,

“Ashamed, Fëanáro! Imagine it. Everything he did for my – our – cause. It wasn't his cause. How could I possibly refute his efforts? So I held him and I told him how proud I was of him. I told him the truth. I told him I loved him. There was no leader and warrior there, no ruler and subject. In his last moments I was nothing but the best father I could be to him. And when we said goodbye, I think he was more at peace.”

Fëanáro said nothing, but it was obvious from the way his brows were drawn together that he’d seen the entire scene Ñolofinwë had just replayed in his mind. Then he nodded, slowly as though deep in thought, before he reanimated and turned back the way he'd come. Ñolofinwë did not miss the briefest touch to his shoulder as his brother swept past him, and allowed himself a relieved sigh as he followed.

When he reached Maitimo's sick room, the screaming had stopped. He met an efflux of healers and servants at the door, wearing the disgruntled expression of the curtly dismissed. Ñolofinwë elbowed his way past them and stopped dead inside the doorway.

Fëanáro's boots were discarded on the floor and he was loading the one remaining servant with his armour. It was the first time Ñolofinwë had seen him without it this side of the Sea. In the far corner of the room stood Makalaurë, his eyes shifting restlessly between his father as he removed his armour and Lalwendë, who was perched on the edge of the bed and soothing the occasional whimper that still issued from Maitimo's throat. Findekáno crouched by the bed beside her, his expression frustrated and helpless.

Maitimo was quieter, but he did not seem any more peaceful. He had curled into a tight ball on his left side with his eyes screwed shut and it wasn't clear whether he was awake, asleep or still in the throes of waking nightmares. He was shivering under the blankets heaped upon him. Even breathing looked painful. Ñolofinwë doubted that he'd stopped screaming because he was more at ease, and figured it more likely because he was simply too exhausted to battle whatever terrors he still saw.

Lalwendë looked up as Fëanáro removed the last of his armour and approached the bed. Her hand tightened where it lay on Maitimo's shoulder, her expression and Findekáno's both suggesting an impending protest.

Fëanáro made an agitated swipe of his hand through the air.

"Move," he instructed abruptly before she could open her mouth. "I appreciate what you have done for him, but don't think I won't have my guards remove you if you resist me on this."

Findekáno tensed. Ñolofinwë took a step further inside the room; he recognised this single-minded direction of Fëanáro’s and knew now from bitter experience not to stand in the way.

"Findo," he said in a low warning tone, "come."

Findekáno and Lalwendë exchanged a glance. She reached for his shoulder, then turned back to Fëanáro. But this time, something in her brother's face must have made her back down, though she did not look pleased. She gently disentangled herself from Maitimo, whispering to him when he shifted and moaned, then ushered Findekáno away from the bed. Fëanáro nodded his approval. Then, he climbed onto the bed at its head.

Findekáno and Lalwendë both voiced a protest and, though he was unsure why, Ñolofinwë also found himself frowning. Fëanáro ignored them all and began to make himself comfortable.

It was Maitimo’s shifting by barest inches towards his father that quieted Findekáno and Lalwendë again. Fëanáro, to Ñolofinwë’s surprise, crooked a half-smile at Maitimo, then murmured something to him and settled cross-legged with his back to the wall. He padded the hollow between his thighs with the folded cape and then, with aching gentleness, he lifted his son's shorn head into his lap.

Maitimo shifted again into a position that looked more comfortable. Fëanáro's head dipped so that his hair slid forwards to cover his face as he murmured something private to him, and then a sudden warmth seeped into the room. It felt to Ñolofinwë like a cape, warm and comforting and safe against the elements. Maitimo sighed, a long release of a hastily-gasped breath, and stopped shivering. He buried his face into the blood-red wool of Fëanáro's cloak and his whimpers ceased.

Fëanáro sighed too, and it was as though a peace chased the tension from the room. It was the first time since Findekáno's return that Ñolofinwë had seen Fëanáro truly calm. Perhaps it was the way that Maitimo seemed to be seeking his father's touch, rather than passive to his medical care or fearfully resistant as he had been when he first awoke. Perhaps it was because Fëanáro felt that he was not so helpless after all, if he could bring his tortured son even the barest measure of relief.

It suddenly felt too intimate; Ñolofinwë knew that if it had been him and his son in their place, he would have wanted privacy. Makalaurë must have felt so too, for he took a step out of the corner with his head cocked in wordless question and stole Fëanáro's attention. Fëanáro's hand settled on Maitimo's head and he looked down deliberately at his eldest's pale face.

"You are dismissed. I will wait with him until he awakes without screaming."

Makalaurë's eyebrow lifted. "That could be some time," he said drily.

Fëanáro's head snapped up again, his eyes now smouldering like coals, and jerked his chin at the door. "Go and be Regent for a while, Káno," he hissed. "In fact: go away, all of you. Especially you, Ñolvo."

Their eyes met across the room and Ñolofinwë knew why he was being so particularly dismissed. Fëanáro's vulnerability was evident; he'd let Ñolofinwë see too much – know too much. Ñolofinwë nodded – more of a shallow bow, really – and hesitated so that he was the last to leave.

"I am only on the other side of the lake," he said, just loudly enough for Fëanáro to hear him. But it apparently went ignored, and so Ñolofinwë took his leave.

 

Chapter 4

Read Chapter 4

Ñolofinwë’s rousing speech to his own people was met with the grim cynicism he expected. Findekáno, who was already short-tempered and agitated at being wrenched away from Maitimo, stood smiling through gritted jaw at his side throughout, but when Ñolofinwë finished to a smattering of half-hearted applause amongst sceptical whispers, the facade clattered to the floor.

 

“I should have kept the hand as proof,” Findekáno muttered under his breath, then twisted on his heel and stalked away. Ñolofinwë let him go with a swallowed retort about long memories versus forgiveness. There were some, he knew, who would have taken joy in removing a Fëanárian hand, and here he was asking them to instead join hands with their aggressors. It was no wonder that Findekáno had failed to receive the hero's welcome he otherwise deserved.

 

By the time the assembly had dispersed and Ñolofinwë reached Findekáno’s tent, his son was already packed and ready to leave. By his side was Irissë, also with a pack at her feet, sword at her hip and bow over her back.

 

Ñolofinwë sighed. "Now where are you going, Findekáno?"

 

"Away," came the short reply, accompanied by an aggressive sheathing of his own blade.

 

"Are you, now?"

 

"We shan’t go far, Daddy," Irissë supplied. Ñolofinwë canted an eyebrow at her; Fëanáro’s camp was not far.

 

"We're going to explore the area and hunt some," she added. She, at least, sounded enthused by the prospect. Ñolofinwë bit the inside of his lip: it had been too long since she’d had something to enjoy. Besides, she might temper Findekáno’s–

 

"I know I'm not welcome here."

 

That from Findekáno again. Ñolofinwë heard the unspoken addendum: So I am going somewhere that I am welcome.

 

On impulse he stepped forward and caught both of his children against him with an arm about each of their shoulders. Irissë fitted immediately against him and laid her head on his shoulder with a soft chuckle of surprise. Findekáno allowed the embrace with more reluctance, his shoulders stiff and his jaw set.

 

"Just be careful, both of you," Ñolofinwë murmured, indulging in his protective instincts for once. "Come back safely, do you hear me?"

 

Irissë's arm came up around his middle and squeezed acknowledgement, and even Findekáno huffed a nod. Resisting the urge to ruffle their hair as he had done when they were children, Ñolofinwë released them.

 

“And if you bring back a beast we can make a feast of then so much the better, hmm?”

 

Findekáno, to Ñolofinwë’s utter surprise, flinched and closed his eyes. In a flash Ñolofinwë recalled the last time that Findekáno had brought home a carcass, painstakingly tracked through the wilds and bleeding out through a careful wound made with his hunting knife. He groped for words that might soothe that memory, but Irisse had already looked to her brother and taken him consolingly by the elbow.

 

“We’ll see you in a few days, Daddy,” she said stiffly, her face now nearly as dark as Findekáno’s, and off they went. Reluctantly, Ñolofinwë watched them go.

 

No, they are not going hunting at all.

 

~~~

 

The letter came two days later. It was addressed from Fëanáro, son of Finwë and Miriel Therindë, to to Ñolofinwë, son of Finwë and Indis of the Vanyar; may Ilúvatar keep him and may no shadow fall upon him. Yet within the pomposity and assurances that Maitimo was conscious and asking for Findekáno, and that Fëanáro therefore demanded his presence, there was a veiled request to Ñolofinwë.

 

Russandol wishes for Findekáno’s company.

 

You may accompany him when he visits, if it pleases you.

 

Findekáno reappeared half a day after Fëanáro's messenger and did not appear in the least surprised when Ñolofinwë relayed the summons -- which in turn did not surprise Ñolofinwë and only confirmed his suspicions that Findekáno and Irissë had met with Tyelkormo whilst exploring the area.

 

This time he urged Lalwendë to stay behind. She resisted, even when Ñolofinwë insisted that she had not been explicitly invited.

 

"None of us were invited the last time, and still he let us in when we appeared on his doorstep."

 

Ñolofinwë cringed inwardly; she was on the mark, as always. "That is true enough. Even so--"

 

"Besides, you never know," Lalwendë continued blithely, "he may even wish to thank me."

 

Ñolofinwë stared at her for a moment, and then they both cracked into cynical laughter. He curled his arm around her shoulder and made a point of ignoring Findekáno's impatient sigh.

 

"You are eminently sensible as always, Ñolvo," she sighed, and kissed his cheek. "I shall wait here and ensure there is no mutiny in your absence. But if that dear boy looks anything other than in the rudest of health then you are to send for me at once, do you understand?"

 

"We will, we will," Findekáno said hurriedly and shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet. He crouched as though to shoulder his pack, which he had not even emptied yet from his previous excursion. "Father? Shall we?"

 

Ñolofinwë finally succumbed to his son's impatience and set off around the lake once more. Fëanáro met them outside the gates as before, although this time he was alone except for the guards stationed at the entrance.

 

Ñolofinwë dismounted with a squelch into the mud left by last night's drizzle. This time, though, Fëanáro gave him no chance to kneel.

 

"About time," he said with a rough jerk of his chin at them both, and turned back into the camp. "Findekáno, I want to speak to you. Alone."

 

Findekáno appeared unfazed as he also dismounted, but Ñolofinwë felt the hairs on his nape prickle in alarm. He opened his mouth to protest, but Fëanáro looked back over his shoulder with a toss of his hair and huffed.

 

"We shan't harm each other – will we, boy?" he said with an arch look at Findekáno. Findekáno returned the look with uptilted chin and received a grin from Fëanáro, bright and sharp.

 

"I'll make you a deal," Fëanáro offered, his hand going to his sword belt. "I shall leave my sword at the gate just as you have yours, if you also leave that dagger you have hidden in your boot."

 

For this first time in many days, Ñolofinwë saw a smile crack across Findekáno's face. "The dagger I have hidden in my boot has proven extremely useful in recent days," he said, now biting the inside of his cheek to curb his smirk.

 

"Yes, well, if we need to remove any more body parts during our conversation then I have an axe in the forge and stocks behind it," Fëanáro answered shortly. He pivoted in the mud. "Now come with me, before you find yourself locked inside them."

 

It was all bluster, Ñolofinwë could see now. Despite his ever-whetted wit and brusque manner, Fëanáro looked tired. His impatience to speak to Findekáno and the fact that he'd met his nephew's cheek with jibes – however forced – intimated his need for efficient, temper-free conversation. His black humour and sharp remarks were simply a diplomatic foray to smooth Findekáno's feathers and get what he wanted from the situation.

 

Ñolofinwë appreciated the effort. He nudged Findekáno with his elbow and nodded in the direction of Fëanáro's retreating back.

 

"Go on," he muttered in response to his son's scowl, "off you go. And keep your temper, please."

 

Findekáno rolled his eyes, but jogged the few steps to catch up with his uncle. As both stopped by the guards to leave their weapons as agreed, Ñolofinwë cleared his throat and called out,

 

"Fëanáro – may I look in on Maitimo in the meantime?"

 

Fëanáro glanced back over his shoulder. He waved a hand as though it were of the least concern to him, but the tight lines around his eyes belied it all.

 

"Suit yourself," he said, "though he is most likely asleep. You remember the way, I presume?"

 

Ñolofinwë did, and soon found himself alone at Maitimo's bedside. The single healer who had been appointed to keep vigil excused herself and left, and so Ñolofinwë set her vacated stool next to the bed and occupied it himself.

 

His nephew was sleeping as Fëanáro had predicted, but peacefully now and he looked better than expected. His cropped hair did his poor gaunt face no favours, for it honed the bony angles already sharpened by starvation. But his features were relaxed and that softened the hollows of his cheeks, his arêted cheekbones and the caverns around his eyes.

 

Ñolofinwë took in the scars radiating from Maitimo’s lips; his broken nose no longer quite straight; the wide interruption across the hairs of one eyebrow; the purple-circled eyes. It was his nephew’s face still, but after it had been taken from him and abused by somebody else. He wondered how he would feel if it were one of his children in Maitimo's place and tasted bile.

 

Maitimo must have sensed his agitation, for he stirred, groaned, and squinted up at Ñolofinwë in confusion for a moment.

 

"Father?"

 

Ñolofinwë offered him a gentle smile and a softness of voice. "No, lad, it's your Uncle Ñolvo. What do you need? Shall I fetch him?"

 

Maitimo's head twitched on the pillow in what Ñolofinwë presumed to be a headshake. "No, no," he mumbled, already dropping back into slumber. "I just... You looked at me... It explains why the Silmarilli didn't burn."

 

Ñolofinwë frowned, but Maitimo was already asleep again. He was still trying to puzzle the meaning – if there were any and it was not simply a pain-addled dream – when Fëanáro and Findekáno emerged from their discussion.

 

Their attention immediately went as one to Maitimo. Ñolofinwë took the moment of distraction to survey them. Both looked harried and tired, but resigned, as though they had given each other what-for and come to a grudging agreement at the end of it. As though feeling the weight of their attention, Maitimo stirred a second time.

 

"Fin–" He gasped and his eyes shot open. "Findo?"

 

"I'm here." And he was, in an instant, gently taking Maitimo's groping hand in his own as he knelt by the bed. "I'm here, and so is your father, and mine."

 

Awareness seeped back into Maitimo's eyes. “I dreamed...” he began, then broke off into a series of stuttering breaths.

 

Ñolofinwë felt that strange, penetrating warmth again. He looked over to the door and saw that Fëanáro had his eyes closed and his head bowed, much like before when he had settled Maitimo from his nightmare after he first awoke. And, as before, Maitimo then let out a long, slow breath and went still beneath the blankets.

 

As Findekáno dipped his head and began murmuring to his cousin, Ñolofinwë sidled towards the door. Fëanáro’s face had turned dull and grey, like the ash on the outside of burnt-out charcoal. He caught Ñolofinwë’s eye and jerked his chin at the door. Together, they stepped outside and left their sons in privacy.

 

“You should leave the healing to the healers,” Ñolofinwë admonished. Fëanáro scowled and sliced a hand through the air.

 

“They were doing a poor job. He looks much improved.”

 

Ñolofinwë bit his lip. “This is true. But – oh, Fëanáro! –"

 

He darted forwards as his brother suddenly staggered sideways against the wall of the hut. But before he reached him, Fëanáro straightened again and glanced backwards with an irritated jerk of his head.

 

"It’s nothing,” he muttered, his hand going to his side and pressing hard. “My wound pains me, that is all."

 

"I didn't know you were injured."

 

Fëanáro shrugged. “Yes, gravely, in the first battle. Osombauko nearly had the better of me.” He turned side-on so that Ñolofinwë could see him in profile and they could avoid looking directly at each other. “It didn't seem important – I survived, after all, and the bastards had my son. It is no issue, except that it pains me a little from time to time, particularly when near fire.”

 

Ñolofinwë wondered how that fared for him working in the forge, but guessed instead, “And it pains you when your fëa burns to heal him, no?”

 

Fëanáro lifted his head, eyes glinting, and said sharply, “Would you let that stop you if it were one of your children?”

 

“Of course not, if I had your ability.” Ñolofinwë said it evenly enough, but he knew the look on his face implied a far stronger sentiment. Fëanáro uptilted his chin in his manner of aggressive acknowledgement, and Ñolofinwë nodded.

 

“And he does look better for it. But, Fëanáro, I have to ask: when I was sitting with him, he half awoke and mistook me for you. He said that I looked at him, but the Silmarilli didn’t burn.”

 

Fëanáro’s lip curled up in a sneer and a renewed heat flushed his cheeks. "Yes. He tells me that Morgoth has set them into his crown. They burned his eyes in the darkness, he says, like –”

 

He faltered, and with it Ñolofinwë’s heart did the same, such a rare occurrence as it was. Fëanáro sucked a deep breath across his teeth and spoke again with his voice like the low, dangerous crackle of a far-off fire.

 

“He says it was like I was watching him, whenever Morgoth looked down on him and tormented him, and he could do nothing."

 

Ñolofinwë swallowed at the thought, both heartened and alarmed. “So Maitimo has spoken of his torment?” he ventured.

 

"Don't call him Maitimo."

 

This time, Ñolofinwë's self-control got away from him. He gawped at his brother. Did you just...? But Fëanáro simply waved a dismissive hand at him and turned his shoulder towards Ñolofinwë.

 

"Don't look at me like that. I couldn't care less what he looks like. He asked me not to."

 

Cheeks warm from embarrassment and his chastening, Ñolofinwë dipped his head. “And so what may I call him instead?”

 

Fëanáro’s eyes scraped across him. “Russandol,” he said, in a tone that clearly closed that line of conversation. Ñolofinwë blinked, but accepted the statement and nodded.

 

“Very well. Poor lad, he must be in a state. It is a shame.”

 

Fëanáro’s eyes flashed, though whether from pride or anger or simply the shying of a cloud from the sun, Ñolofinwë could not tell.

 

“It is nothing of the sort,” Fëanáro declared. “He is not a shame. He is strong and he will heal, and we will manage his limitations. He will be like a gemstone, crystallised from the filth, the heat and the pressure, in the depths of the earth. He will be the brightest of us all.”

 

A replacement for the Silmarilli, forged with the flame of your own fëa? Ñolofinwë wondered, but held his tongue and instead acknowledged his brother’s words with a graceful dip of his head.

 

Their conversation was interrupted by Tyelperinquar, who emerged quietly from between the buildings and halted a few paces away

 

“They said I might find you here, Grandfather,” he said, dropping into a shallow bow. “Father asked me to inform you that the reports are on your desk.”

 

Fëanáro glanced up at the sky to gauge the sun’s position. “Late today,” he said, frowning. “Is everything well?”

 

“Nothing has come to my attention,” Tyelperinquar replied. “I believe Father was simply delayed in a meeting.”

 

“Ah,” Fëanáro replied, as though he could well believe that. “And are the smithies in good order?”

 

“Yes Grandfather. The sword-count is on track and the arrowheads are above predictions.”

 

“Excellent!” Fëanáro clapped him on the shoulder. “I am pleased to hear it. I shall drop by later and inspect the quality.”

 

“I have done so myself,” Tyelperinquar replied, “and I can assure you that the quality is exceedingly high.” There was a touch of insulted pride to his features that reminded Ñolofinwë of both Curufinwe and Fëanáro himself, but then he swallowed and his mask slid back into place. “However, I should be glad to have your approval also.”

 

Fëanáro nodded and did not acknowledge the challenge. “I am glad to hear it,” he said. “Thank you, Tyelpë; you are dismissed.”

 

As Tyelperinquar disappeared again, Ñolofinwë turned to Fëanáro with a raised eyebrow. The entire exchange, coupled with Curufinwë’s conspicuous absence, implied a subtle disobedience from Fëanáro’s closest son.

 

Fëanáro rolled his eyes. “Curvo is simply put out because he thinks he is no longer my favourite.”

 

Ñolofinwë’s other eyebrow lifted. Fëanáro smirked.

 

“Ridiculous, no? That implies that I have favourites.”

 

“Well, I was rather under the impression that you did.”

 

Fëanáro tossed his hair. “Presumptuous.” He looked away. “Even if I were to have a favourite, it is assumed that because Curufinwë is most like me – even in name – that he would be said favourite. Why? It assumes that I am overly fond of myself. And, whilst I know that I am great at many things, that does not mean that I am likeable, even to myself.”

 

Ñolofinwë filed that latter comment away for later discussion. “And yet Curufinwë resents your attention being spent elsewhere,” he suggested. Or perhaps he recognises that you identify with Maitimo – no, Russandol – after his torment more than you might realise yourself.

 

“I am certain we could all find something to resent about each other,” Fëanáro said, shrugging in that way of his that intimated a barb had struck deeply. “Not everyone chooses to act upon it, though.”

 

Indeed, thought Ñolofinwë, and said,

 

“Findekáno tells me Russandol defied you at Losgar.”

 

"Findekáno always was an insufferable brat," Fëanáro replied with a glint in his eye, "just like his father." He eyed Ñolofinwë pensively. "Russandol tells me Findekáno refused to kill him on the cliff."

 

Ñolofinwë felt his pride swell. "Well how about that?" he said with half a smirk. "Insufferable and disobedient – just like his father."

 

Fëanáro's shoulders lifted in a silent laugh. “Oh, go back to your followers,” he said with no real heat. “You have a diplomatic incident on your hands, I presume?”

 

"Something along those lines, yes. No thanks to you."

 

Fëanáro gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “In that, at least, I am merely the scapegoat, Ñolvo, and you know it very well indeed.”

 

Ñolofinwë offered him a serene smile, worthy of Lalwendë. “I do – and I have every intention of keeping it thus. They did follow me here, after all, and they will continue to do so provided their offence lies with you alone.”

 

It was said lightly enough, but beneath it he was deadly serious. Fëanáro regarded him a moment with his most calculating expression, then shifted to face North-east again as though drawn by what lay beyond the mountains. And perhaps he was.

 

“None of Morgoth’s slights will go unavenged, Ñolvo,” he said. His voice had drifted into that faraway place between ambition and foresight. “Not a single one: not my Russandol, or your Arakáno, or the Silmarilli, or the Trees. Or,” and his lips tightened before he finished, “our father.”

 

There it was: veiled, but the peace offering Ñolofinwë awaited. Everything slotted into place. Much water had flowed under many bridges between them, but now what his brother needed most was a chance to prove himself; an ally whom people would follow, and Ñolofinwë was it. Ñolofinwë’s blood swooped at the same time as his heart leapt in his chest: grief, mingled with new, united purpose.

 

“I would be honoured to take revenge at your side, Sire,” he said, stepping alongside Fëanáro. “Brother.”

 

They looked at each other and grinned, bright and sharp: a careful balance of deference and cameraderie.

 

“That is well, then,” Fëanáro said and turned, an indication for Ñolofinwë to follow him. “What say you we revisit our plans?

 

Chapter 5

The battle that might have been. I am no expert in battle strategy, but any parallels to the Nirnaeth Arnoediad are entirely deliberate.

Additional dramatis personae:
Angaráto: Angrod
Aikanáro: Aegnor
Findaráto: Finrod
Artanis: Galadriel

Additional dramatis locae:
Haloronti: Ered Wethrin (lit. “Shadowed Mountains”)
Ard-galen: Laiquarda (lit. “Green Region”)
Thánendor: Dorthonion

Read Chapter 5

They would be too far away to hear when the armies engaged. Ñolofinwë had fancied that he might have been able to pick out the clash of swords and the battle cries on the plain to the east, but all he could hear were the muted sounds of his own army poised for attack.

He would just have to await his signal.

Ñolofinwë surveyed his men. All were well armoured and each kitted with a Fëanárian sword. His cavalry had fine, sturdy horses, many sired by Ñolofinwë's own Rochallor in the decades since they had become domiciled East of the sea. They were as well armed, as well fed, as well trained and as ready for this war as the Fëanárian cohort on the far side of Angamando’s gates. They were almost – almost – the same army. Yet this moment had been a long time coming.

The Union of Russandol had been a ruse at first: named after word of his abstention at Losgar had been carefully propagated and the hearts of Ñolofinwë’s followers had softened enough to offer him their allegiance, if not Fëanáro. Yet it soon turned out that the excessive diplomat Fëanáro thought he had raised was gone, interred in the Pit and replaced by something harder, tougher, and brighter than ever before. Ñolofinwë had been there the first time that Russandol had lost his temper – a thing previously unheard of – and exploded at Fëanáro for undertaking too much organisation on his behalf.

Fëanáro, to Ñolofinwë’s amazement, had simply laughed. "That's my boy," he said, clapped Russandol on his good shoulder, and then stood aside. And that was how, with Russandol’s own thirst for revenge and his unfortunately intimate knowledge of Angamando’s deepest workings, they had begun to devise their assault on Morgoth.

Fëanáro had the basis of an army already, having rallied pledges of support from Men and Dwarves. Yet there was no battle strategy, they all concluded, for it was all too plain that without Ñolofinwë’s alliance the Fëanárian muster lacked the strength to challenge Morgoth’s forces alone. And so, in the early days when Russandol was still bandaged and limping, he had ventured across to the lake’s far shore and plied Ñolofinwë’s people with the remains of his silvered tongue.

After that, it had become a running joke that their plans were safe, as Morgoth would never believe that Finwë’s two eldest sons and youngest daughter had formed an alliance. Over time, the battle strategy came together smoothly enough. Russandol had insisted on leading the assault. It was his union, he said, and his vengeance as much as any other’s. His eyes would blaze whenever he spoke the enemy’s name, or made reference to a particular intricacy of Angamando that Ñolofinwë could tell sparked from a memory of pain and humiliation. There was a fire inside him that stoked his bloody-minded intent, but quicker and hotter and whiter than Fëanáro’s, like a secondary flare lit from a long-burning bonfire.

Russandol’s entire host was to follow him out of the east, across the Laiquarda: the Elves of the Eastern Marches, together with his father and brothers’ following of Dwarves and Men. They would engage Morgoth’s army and draw them onto the plain – and then the signal would go up for Ñolofinwë to fall upon them from behind.

Ñolofinwë’s army was the smaller of the two, even bolstered with Angaráto and Aikanáro’s Thánendorian troops and the Sindar from Doriath who had rallied to the invitations of Findaráto and Artanis. It would wait in the West, being quicker and quieter than Russandol’s heavy infantry and so better-suited for dismantling Morgoth’s rear-guard. With Ñolofinwë waited Lalwendë and Findekáno, who had at their backs the Falathrim and the Haladin of Brethil: an even smaller, more agile company whose task was to round the head of the fighting after Morgoth’s forces were engaged, closing off the gates to prevent their retreat and a possible siege.

Ñolofinwë, however, had instantly seen a gaping flaw in Russandol’s plan and taken Fëanáro aside.

"There is every chance you will not regain the Silmarilli this way," he pointed out, certain that Russandol was aware of it and astonished that Fëanáro was allowing it.

"I know how probability works," Fëanáro had sniped back. "There is an equal chance that we will draw Morgoth out of his Pit, and we shall be ready for him then."

Ñolofinwë had looked at him long and hard, and eventually Fëanáro had deigned to answer the unasked question.

"And if not, and Findekáno and Lalwendë simply close the gates; well, we shall at least have the gem of a land free of the Valar in which to live, shan't we?" He sounded convincing enough, but Ñolofinwë remained agnostic.

There had been endless debate over the wisdom of first scouring Valariandë and Thánendor for Morgoth’s minions. Fëanáro and Lalwendë had thundered at each other for days, he arguing that such a scourge would alert Morgoth to their activities, and she countering that enemy spies would know as much regardless and it would assist both Union armies if the Orcs had been routed first. In the end, Russandol had broken their impasse by declaring that there should be a vote, from which Fëanáro walked away smug and victorious.

That was how, hidden in the wooded foothills of the Haloronti, Ñolofinwë now awaited his signal. They had sent scouts up the trees to keep watch for the flares – but in fact there was no need, for he felt the moment deep in his bones when the Eastern beacon, miles on the far side of the plain, burst into flame.

The gasp that went up amongst his troops was accompanied by the hiss of sheathed swords, fresh from the whetstones, and the heartbeat-thump of shields hefted against gauntlets.

"Hold," Ñolofinwë called out, low and muffled by the trees. "Not until the second beacon lights."

"In case of spies or traitors?" Irissë whispered beside him. Despite the nervous clench of his innards, Ñolofinwë breathed a silent laugh.

"Indeed."

Two of the three beacons must be lit before Ñolofinwë bore his troops down onto the rear of Morgoth's forces. Fëanáro had been adamant and impressed the point upon Ñolofinwë so many times – "in case of spies or traitors" – that it was a wonder Ñolofinwë hadn't given him a black eye. Yet now Ñolofinwë had to admit the sense of that plan, for he could see nothing of the battle and had no clue whether the fire had been lit by a Fëanárian outrider or by the enemy, trying to draw them out. The first beacon was obvious, but only a few knew where the second and third were located and that meant they could only be lit if the battle was going in the Union’s favour.

Ñolofinwë watched.

When the second flare went up, the Union would strike.

And, for the victory orchestrated by the Noldor’s brightest, he waited.

---

Chapter End Notes

Notes on terminology: whilst I have mostly kept with Quenya names to fit with the Noldor point of view, I have in places used the Sindarin, particularly in areas occupied by those people. In other instances, I have taken liberties with translation for places that only have a Sindarin name in canon. These may be inaccurate and corrections are appreciated.

On Anfauglith versus Ard-galen – I work on the basis that the Ard-galen had not been scorched into the Anfauglith during the Dagor Bragollach, because if it had then Ñolofinwë would not still be alive. Whether those events happen later, of course, I leave up to your imagination.