Of the Coming of Fingolfin to Mandos and his meeting with Fëanor by bunn

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"Then Melkor set new lies abroad in Eldamar, and whispers came to Fëanor that Fingolfin and his sons were plotting to usurp the leadership of Finwë and of the elder line of Fëanor and supplant them"

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In one of the many long dim halls, hung with tapestries and crowded with quiet figures of the dead, Fingolfin looked at his brother, standing bound between the Maiar, his face quite without expression, and his heart twisted within him with grief and anger.

It was like going back again to the Ring of Doom at the Gates of Valmar, and seeing Fëanor constrained to answer Mandos over his threat to Fingolfin, and be exiled. It was like seeing him stand before Manwë’s throne, required to attend the festival and apologise.

Now, here they were again, and Fingolfin knew already that no matter what words Fëanor said, the fact he was being forced to say them would mean that the bitterness would be only greater, never less.

“I had no intention of betraying you.” he said, anyway, because he had wanted to say it for so long. “You could have relied on me. I swore to follow you!”

Fëanor looked at him blankly. “I apologise for my offences towards you,” he said. “I accept that Maedhros has waived the claim of our family to the kingship of the Noldor and it has passed to Fingon. I understand you have injured our Enemy. I commend your courage.” There was a sharpness in his voice that set the last words into an insult.

Fingolfin could feel his temper rising, predictable, and yet he could not stop it. His years of kingship vanished in the mist. He was the younger, less talented, less cherished brother again, but one with a list of grievances that had grown very long.

“What more did you want of me?” he said. “I gave my word. He is my father too, and he was king of all of us! How dared you take revenge for him to yourself alone? We lost so many in the ice... Elenwë died, you know, an awful death. ”

Let Fëanor guide them away from an argument, since he had such fabled skill with words. Let him apologise!

“If you had sent the ships back for us, we would have been so much stronger. And stronger yet, if you had stayed your hand at Alqualondë, and we had all arrived in Middle-earth together. Why did you not wait? Do you hate me so much?”

He had expected his brother to become angry in his turn. Perhaps he had even hoped that Fëanor might shout at him that no, of course he did not hate his brothers.

Instead, Fëanor said stiffly, “I apologise for my offenses, and I beg your forgiveness.” Mandos, standing next to their father, a little distance away, nodded approvingly, but Fingolfin would greatly have preferred anger. This calmness made him uneasy, though he could not pin down exactly why.

Fëanor was speaking now of Elenwë ’s death and of provoking battle at Alqualondë, but somehow he seemed very far away, further even than the distance across the Grinding Ice.

His words did nothing to bridge the gap. Every word he spoke was false, an insult in itself. An apology should have helped. But perhaps nothing could, any more.

“How could you abandon us?” he asked, bitterly. “You were supposed to be our king!”

“Is that how you speak to your king?” Fëanor asked, defiance sparking from his bright spirit at last.

Mandos looked at him, and there was an almost visible feeling of strain in the air, for a moment, before Fëanor looked down.

“I beg your forgiveness,” he said, quietly, and nothing could have been more awful.

Fingolfin wondered if there was anything at all he could say that would not make things worse. He could think of nothing.

Eventually, he said “Of course I forgive you. ”

Fëanor said only ‘Thank you’. There was a long pause, and Fingolfin realised that his brother could not leave until Fingolfin did. Defeated and lost for words, he turned and went away.

 

. . . . .

The scent of doom on the wind

It was oddly difficult, without a body, to think new thoughts, unless that was something to do with the Halls of Mandos. But the quiet and peace was welcome, after so many years when there had always been far too much to do. Now there was nothing that must be done, save for rest and healing. Fingolfin’s spirit still felt at times a harsh cold ache from the chill of Angband that had struck into it as he died, but it was fading.

Here in the halls, there were those he loved, too. It was good to see his father, and to speak with his daughter Aredhel again, and talk of happier times, although the manner of her death troubled him greatly.

Eöl, her husband and her murderer had not come to the Halls of Mandos. He must have refused the call and stayed, unbodied, in Middle-earth. This was just as well. Fingolfin, it seemed had been granted some degree of forgiveness for his rebellion and perhaps even the slaying at Alqualondë, but he felt that neither Aredhel nor he could reasonably be asked to promise to remain calm, faced with Eöl.

Sometimes they watched the tale of the world unfold in the workshop where the tapestries of Vairë and her helpers were made, he and Aredhel. Often Aegnor and Angrod joined them, and sometimes Fingolfin’s father, too. There they could see how Fingon his heir was faring as High King. It seemed to make the cold ache worse to watch for too long as the long bright threads wove into place, but he could hardly forget his sons, his kingdom and the surviving remainder of his people.

But most of the tapestries that decked the Halls of Mandos told tales of days long past, and events that, presumably, were meaningful to the Valar, but meant very little to Fingolfin. They were comfortable enough to look through, or to ignore. Mostly he ignored them. He had memories of his own that he preferred to visit, both from Valinor and from Middle-earth. He walked in memory with his wife Anairë, and hoped that she would welcome him home, one day, and he laughed in memory with old friends in Hithlum, looking back, rather than forward for a change.

Still, it was good to know that Círdan had come to Fingon’s aid, and that Fingon and Maedhros were working together to reclaim the lands that had been overrun. There was a joyful time when Aegnor came to him to tell the news that Dorthonion had been retaken, even though both of them knew that it could be nothing but a temporary respite. But still, every few months, every year of the Sun counted, in the way that years had never counted in Valinor when there had been no Enemy to strike against them.

Then came the news that Finrod had gone out with little help against Morgoth, had fallen into the power of one of Morgoth’s greatest Necromancers, and had been slain. His brothers Angrod and Aegnor were white with fear for him, and Fingolfin and Aredhel were hardly less distressed. It was hard enough to fall in battle, but entrapped by a Necromancer, there seemed no hope at all that Finrod’s spirit would escape and come to the Halls of Mandos. The spirits of Morgoth’s victims usually fled to safety, but Finrod was a prince of the House of Finarfin. Sauron knew he was a spirit of unusual power, and he had died deep in Sauron’s dungeons.

The thought of what Sauron had done, and would do to Finrod, what one of Finrod’s power might be twisted into, was terrifying. Finrod had been loved by all. All the dead of Mandos wept for him.

And then the great news came. The news that Lúthien had come, with Huan of Valinor, had brought Sauron’s tower low, and let Finrod’s spirit escape.

Finrod, exhausted and torn by teeth and suffering, with his valiant ten followers behind him, came back from Middle-earth to the Halls of Mandos, and for a while there was singing and rejoicing in all the many rooms and ways of that huge strange place.

The news that Lúthien had gone on to Angband with her mortal lover Beren, and had seized a Silmaril made more uncomfortable hearing, though many of the dead were jubilant at that too. But those who had served the House of Fëanor exchanged uncomfortable looks with Fingolfin when they met.

It was a victory, a great victory, the claiming of the Silmaril and yet, Fingolfin, looking ahead, feared what it might bring. The Oath of Fëanor was the chink in the armour, the fault in the music, the breach in the dam that would let the darkness in.

It was not the only one, of course. There were many weaknesses in the league that protected Beleriand from Morgoth. Fingolfin knew them all intimately, but the Oath was the one that troubled him most.

His wounds ached, and he felt that he could smell doom approaching as you used to be able to smell the first snows were on their way, in Hithlum.

Fingon would have to fight again, soon. And this time, or the next, or the one after that, would be the last, and perhaps the last for Turgon too.

It was the next time, in the end, for Fingon, though not yet for his brother. Fingon marched out against Morgoth, fell in battle against the Balrogs and came to Mandos as a hero.

“Should I have waited?” he asked his father, some time later, and rather to Fingolfin’s surprise. Fingon was rarely unsure about anything, and he had thrown all he had into his great alliance with Maedhros.

“I don’t know. Should I have done?” he asked Fingon in return.

“I wish you had!” Fingon said. “If you had led the union of our forces against Angband, Maedhros’s eastern Men might not have turned against us.”

Fingolfin considered. He owed his son an honest answer. “If they chose Morgoth over Fingon the Valiant and Maedhros, I doubt they would have fought for me,” he said, eventually, and knew it for the truth. “I thought single combat worth the attempt. But I went to it in despair, and despair is where Morgoth’s great strength lies. Still. We both tried, at least.”

“We did,” Fingon said, and shivered. You could still see the whipmarks lying fresh and dark across his spirit. “Perhaps there never was any way out.”

“I don’t think there was,” Fingolfin said. “We were always doomed. At least we fell swiftly, facing our enemy. ”

“Yes,” Fingon said, and his scarred spirit roiled with trouble as he considered Middle-earth as he had left it, falling into darkness. “It was swift and easy for us. I fear it won’t be for the others.”