Quenta Narquelion by bunn

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Postscript: Lindon

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They were beginning to call it Lindon; the land west of the mountains, the land that had once been Thargelion and Ossiriand. It was not a wide land, compared with Beleriand of old, but then most of the inhabitants were not going to stay there long. There was a great deal of ship-building going on, when Fëanor came south again.

Ships to take thousands of Elves home to Valinor — or home as far as it could be called a home, when many of them had never seen it.

Ships to take the Men of the Three Houses of the Edain to the new island that was called the Land of Gift, that the Valar had made for them.

Elros had been successful in his discussions with Eönwë about the need to reward Men for their aid in battle. He had, Fëanor heard, for it was much talked about, been offered the choice: to be counted among either Elves or Men.  

Elros had chosen Men, which was hardly unexpected.  The Valar had promised long ago that Elves would become weary, would fade before the younger race to come.  The Elves had been summoned to Valinor, to live under the hand of the Valar, while Men inherited the wide lands of Middle-earth and would be free to go out beyond Arda too.  

Elros had chosen the wider future and the brighter promise, for all that he would not live in Arda for long.  He would have time enough to heal the wounds of war and set his people on their path. In the new Land of Gift, the Elves of Aman would at least be permitted to aid him in that task.  

Fëanor kept clear of the camps along the coast. Although he had unmade the Oath, he was not eager to discuss it with the Herald of the Valar.

He drifted east instead, along the wide waters of the great rift that had been carved through the mountains of the Ered Luin, to the new capital that Gil-galad was building there. Mithlond they called it, where the tall blue mountains reflected in the waters of the new River Lune. There was not much of it there yet, but it was interesting work to observe: both the planning and the building: better than nothing at all.

Elrond, rather to Fëanor’s surprise, had chosen the Elves, as his father and mother had.  But he seemed in no hurry to rejoin them in Aman. Elrond and Gil-galad were staying in Middle-earth.  The Valar had not quite forbidden that, or at least they had put no urgency upon their counsel to the Elves to sail into the West, though Fëanor wondered if the Valar knew that Gil-galad had begun the building of a city here upon the Hither Shore.  It seemed that he had in mind something more than only lingering for a while.

Celebrimbor had joined them in the new city of Mithlond, with the last remnants of Curufin and Celegorm’s folk who had followed him from Nargothrond, those who were left of the followers of Maglor and Maedhros, and even a few of the Released.  The name had spread about, and many of Morgoth’s freed thralls from all the Houses of the Eldar had taken it to themselves now.

Celebrimbor seemed to have resolved to prevent his people from causing trouble with the other residents by working them and himself to exhaustion. They were far from the only workers building in Mithlond, but they were the fastest and, Fëanor thought, the most skilled.

Warehouses, workshops and houses rose, and then the first of the towers, tall and white with gates of curling iron, wrought like trees, like flowers, birds or even dragons. Elaborate stone quays were planned and built for Círdan’s ships, and then re-planned when tides proved more unpredictable than had been expected.

Fëanor observed the work, but found he had little taste for intervening in it. His Enemy was gone across the Sea to judgement, and his greatest works were gone too. It was hard to bring himself to care for building towers for a High King who was known to dislike the very name of Fëanor.  

In Mithlond, Celebrimbor alone still wore the star of Fëanor, but he did not use it to sign his work. Nobody did. Celebrimbor’s people wore the winged sun of the House of Finwë, with no lord’s badge to mark them out.

Nobody spoke of Fëanor’s sons, save as a past evil, now vanished like Morgoth himself.

Only, once, some years before the Edain set sail for their new island kingdom of Númenor, Fëanor was there when Celebrimbor came to Elrond about some business of the city. He found Elrond hurrying away, dressed for riding, with a pack slung across on one shoulder.

The look he gave Celebrimbor, and the glance to the badge he wore, was so guilty that even Celebrimbor, caught up in plans and drawings, and like his grandfather, no great observer of people, noticed it, and came to a conclusion.

“You’re going to look for them, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I might be,” Elrond said, guardedly. “I have to go up to Forlond, anyway. Some quarrel that has flared up between the Sindar and the Gondolodrim ... Gil-galad asked me to look into it. I thought I might ride a little up the coast from there, perhaps. Just for a day or so.”

“It’s not that... There’s been no word of them?”

“Not that I’ve heard,” Elrond said.

“What will you do, if you find them?” Celebrimbor asked.

“I don’t know. I won’t know, unless I do find them.”

“I’m sorry, Elrond,” Celebrimbor said, earnestly. “If I’d thought they would... I’d have stopped them, if I’d only understood in time. I thought it was over.”

Elrond looked at him, began to smile, and then thought better of it. Fëanor could see that he was thinking of Celebrimbor trying to stop his two eldest and most deadly uncles from doing exactly as they wished.

Fëanor could have stopped them. Fëanor had not tried.

“We all thought it was over,” Elrond said. He looked curiously at Celebrimbor. “Do you always apologise to everyone when they are mentioned?”

“Of course. It helps some people feel better. And it seems that someone should.”

“But none of it was your fault.”

“Wasn’t it?” Celebrimbor looked miserable, but he went on speaking with determination, as if carrying out a penance, one that he of all people had not earned. “It is my House. I was at Alqualondë. And the guards watching the Silmarils. I should have known.”

“So should I,” Elrond said, looking grim. Then he shrugged. “Perhaps if I had spoken to Eönwë before, and made him understand how the thing tormented them... Eönwë understood the horror of it, when he saw them; that’s why he let them go. Although I’m not sure that was kind, either. Maedhros would not have let someone go off in pain like that, he would have ended it, one way or the other. I thought that they would see there was no choice but to surrender to the mercy of the Valar, and that the Valar would help them. Then they could go home and find better healing in Aman than they could hope to find in Middle-earth. I didn’t think they would lie to us like that. I thought I knew them. I thought the Valar all-knowing and all-wise, too. Stupid of me on all counts.” He sighed. “Too late now. Anyway you don’t need to apologise to me.”

“Do you think.” Celebrimbor stopped. “Do you think it’s safe for you to go after them on your own? Maedhros all but told me he wouldn’t kill for the Silmarils again. And then he did it anyway.”

“It’s a risk I’ll take,” Elrond said, eyes bright and face determined. It was clear he’d thought about it. “They already have the other two. I hope and pray that is enough. But if it comes to it, and I find they are still tormented by the Oath, enough to turn on me, then I will offer to go to Aman on their behalf, to the Valar and my father, and beg them for pity and for mercy and the return of the third Silmaril. ”

“You’d do that?” Celebrimbor said, amazed.

“It’s why I need to find them. One of the reasons, anyway. That and asking why. Although I suppose I know the answer to that one, really. And then shouting at them for a while, perhaps. ”

Celebrimbor gave a frustrated nod and sigh. “I am with you on that last point.  I too have a considerable number of things I would like to shout at them.”

“I imagine you must,” Elrond said. He looked at Celebrimbor’s star again, and and gave him a long thoughtful look. “You haven’t thought of making yourself another badge?  It can’t be easy wearing that one still.”

“It has never been easy,” Celebrimbor said. “It was not easy in Nargothrond, or in the Havens, or on Balar. But the tale of the House of Fëanor was more than only doom and death and I believe that I can make it be more than that again.”

Elrond gave him warm smile, which faded into a speculative look. “You’d better hope their Oath has been satisfied with two. If the third is needed then I’m making you come too, to show me who to talk to. I doubt it would be a decision for my parents alone.”

“No,” Celebrimbor said firmly, as Fëanor had expected. “Not even for you, Elrond, and certainly not for them. If the last of the House of Fëanor sailed into Alqualondë, demanding the Silmaril, they’d think I’d gone mad and taken you prisoner myself. It would probably start another war.”  He thought about it for a moment. “I could write you an introduction to Finrod. He has returned from death, his father told me. Finrod knows everyone and even after everything, I think he’d probably help them if he could. And I wish you good luck searching. Though — I don’t think they will want you to find them.”

“I’m not inclined to worry about what they want,” Elrond said, bleakly. “If they wanted consideration, they should not have lied to us. You haven’t heard anything? Perhaps from their supporters among your people?”

“No. If I had heard anything at all from them, I would have told you, and the High King.” Celebrimbor assured him “Having me and my people here is awkward enough for Gil-galad anyway. And you, of course. I know it makes the Doriathrim uneasy.”

“It does. But so many things make them uneasy,” Elrond said wryly.

Celebrimbor said, “Those who were with them to the end are watched. I don’t believe my uncles would run mad and attack Mithlond for no reason, or that Carnil or Telutan or Angruin would be foolish enough to aid them if they did — but I can see why people who saw them at the Havens worry about it. I’ve been wrong about them before; guessing what they would do and wouldn’t. I can’t risk that again.”

“I suppose not. Sorry, Celebrimbor, I must go. I am expected in the Forlond before nightfall... Can you leave the plans here? I’ll look at them when I get back.”

Fëanor thought for a moment of going with Elrond, then dismissed the idea. He had promised Maedhros that he would not speak with Maglor, and that promise he would keep.  

The living must not speak with the dead: he had known that truth since his mother had died, first of all the Elves in Aman.  Maglor was free of his oath, it would be best if he were free of his father too.

* * * * *

 

Probably it would be best for him to leave Celebrimbor to his own devices too. But first he had a task to complete that he had set himself, prompted by a scurrilous rumour overheard in passing.  He had decided to write down a few of his observations, from the time of his death to the recapture of the Silmarils.

The rumour was that he had burned one of his own sons to death at Losgar. How anyone could believe such a thing was a mystery: many of the people of Lindon must have seen Amras lying dead beside Amrod, on the shore of the Sirion, even though none of the people of East Beleriand had survived the war to tell of their twin lords and their long battle against the shadows. There was nobody alive to speak of them, save those who would not speak their names.

It was not surprising that the people who had lived at the Havens of Sirion had forgotten the defenders they would not acknowledge, even to remembering that there had been two of them, given what had happened afterwards. And yet, they had tried so hard. Nobody adds ‘ yet without them we would have died much sooner ’ to songs of fallen monsters.

Few had lived to tell of Maedhros, Maglor and the defenders of Ossiriand and Thargelion. Even Elrond rarely mentioned their names. There were few tales of the war in the East, unless it was talked of among the Dwarves. Nobody in Lindon talked much with them, either.

Fëanor wrote the story in his own Quenya first, writing fast, with a passion to it. But when he read it back, it seemed to lack something.

He decided to write it again, as an exercise, in the Sindarin dialect once spoken in Hithlum. It was fascinating to see how the change of language changed the meanings of things and formed the shape of events in the memory.

Once that was done, he considered it for a few years. Then he wrote it out again, this time much more slowly, painfully, in the Sindarin that people spoke now in Lindon, a mingling of all the dialects of Beleriand, coloured a little in places by Quenya, and more obviously, by the speech of Men. It was a rather different story, the third time.

He left it in the library that Elrond had built, tucked behind a shelf that held a stack of a thousand songs of the stars that had shone above the woods of Doriath.  Then he left Mithlond, and went away.