The Brightest of Us All by Ilye

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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.”