Quenta Narquelion by bunn

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The Havens and the Woods

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The Havens was more than just a camp by now. The mingled escapees of Doriath, Gondolin, Brethil and Nargothrond, and not a few from East Beleriand, had brought with them many skills and enormous ingenuity, if very little else.

On the shores of the great river Sirion, on the small islands and low wooded hills dotted between the many shining mouths of the river, joined together by a haphazard network of boats, small light bridges and causeways, they had woven a town from the branches of the willows and the great tall concealing banks of reeds that stretched for miles upstream: a busy, muddy town that might not be neatly planned, and certainly was not rich, but was not without grace, beauty and joy.

But it was built as a hiding-place and a harbour, not as a fortress. The small groups of houses, the many causeways and bridges that strung the Havens together into a whole would have made the place hard to defend, even if it had been walled and held by a force armed and armoured that was ready for attack. But it was not.

The sons of Fëanor had been living every day at war for many long years. They had lost almost everything, except what was needed to keep them fighting: weapons, armour, food and water. They were still well-armed, and after all those years of war, those who remained and still stood with Fëanor’s sons were those who were so used to battle that it was hard to remember that once they had had another kind of life.

They came upon the Havens in light boats across the water out of the south, one quiet golden morning late in the year when the Sirion lay calm and glimmering at the turn of the tide under the rising sun.

And they ran through the small water-side buildings like a flame through dry straw, burning and destroying as they had been commanded to do.

Fëanor stood upon the quayside and watched. He knew he should be searching for the Silmaril, should be hunting through the reed houses like a dog after rats. The Oath called him on, but he could not make himself want to follow it.

This was not the battle that he had come to Middle-earth to fight. The sight of battle-hardened warriors hunting fishermen and weavers through the burning ruins of reed-woven cots and flets woven into willow-branches sickened him. It was not like Alqualondë, not at all, for all that this was also a battle fought beside the sea.

In Alqualondë, sharp words had turned to blows almost instantly on both sides, and both sides had striven with pride, with fury, had been fierce and furious, new to battle and full of passion. He saw it clear in the mind’s eye, although the memory gave him no joy. But there was no fury left in these people, and seeing them run, and plead and die beneath the swords of his own people, Fëanor’s flame too was quenched.

Even before he came to the the muddy island where Celebrimbor held a slender bridge of creaking willow against the invading Noldor, Fëanor had had enough. He looked at his grandson, sword in hand, fighting his own people to defend a handful of terrified Green-Elves and Aftercomers with children at their skirts. The tears were running down Celebrimbor’s face as he fought.

And Fëanor thought; if Celebrimbor had the Silmaril, so be it. He is of my line. Let him keep it. The Oath pulled at him. It hurt.

Fëanor reached out and pushed the Noldor on, calling them after Maedhros, who had pressed on into the centre of the settlement, searching for Eärendil, Lord of the Havens, for Elwing his wife, and most of all, for the Silmaril. They did not need much encouragement to leave Celebrimbor standing there, on the far side of the water looking at the ruins of the fallen bridge, his light and delicately crafted sword and shield smeared with mud from the riverbank. He was not what they were looking for.

Celebrimbor was not the only one who turned his sword on his own House that day. Fëanor saw others who, overcome with horror at the sights around them, and given a fatal moment to think, chose to throw in their lot with the Havens. Maglor slew two of his own that turned on him as they ran through the narrow paths, swiftly, efficiently, killing with a remote expression on his face, as if he were thinking about something else. Among the defenders of the Havens were those who wore the star of Fëanor: Celebrimbor’s people, who had been Celegorm and Curufin’s and had followed Celebrimbor in Nargothrond.

While Fëanor stood staring in shock at his grandson with his sword raised again his own, Amrod, running swiftly through the burning wooden buildings as the fires started as a diversion grew and spread, was shot from on high. Egalmoth the archer had been leader of the the House of the Heavenly Arch of Gondolin before its fall. His aim was true and his bow mighty. Amrod fell with an arrow in his eye, and he did not rise again.

It was only much later, when they had learned that Eärendil of the Havens was far away, exploring the coast in his ship, after they had seen the High King’s sails racing out of the West from Balar Isle, bringing help too late, and retreated swiftly across the river, darting from isle to isle in the red sunset light into the dim shadows of the of the great forest Taur-im-Duinath, that Fëanor heard that Amras, too, was dead.

Survivors of Gondolin had come to Egalmoth’s aid. Their swords were deadly. Amras had the greater skill, but he was surrounded by a ring of steel, and at last the Gondolodrim had the victory. Maglor came up to their aid too late to do anything but take revenge.

So Amras too died by the shores of the Sea, and with him, here and there along the foreshore, slain by Noldor out of Gondolin who they had once called friends, slain by Men out of Brethil, and most savagely of all, by those who had escaped the Thousand Caves, there died many of the last remaining supporters of the House of Fëanor, and their bodies fell into the Sea or were taken by the growing flames and were lost.

And after it all, when the time for the grim accounting came, when Fëanor’s last two sons met again, bloodstained and smoke-blackened under the dark branches, the Silmaril and its bearer were both gone.

Elwing had flung herself into the Sea at last, rather than surrender. All that she left behind in the ruined ashes of the Havens were her twin half-elven children, Elrond and Elros.

Maedhros had found them first, playing unafraid beside one of the many shallow streams that flowed into the great river, not far from the quays. Elwing and her people had rushed to face Maglor, coming up from the South, and then found flames breaking through a line of thatched barns had cut them off. Maedhros had found a way through the maze of store-rooms to come up behind her.

Maedhros had offered Elwing her children in exchange for the Silmaril.

She did not believe his shouted offer to let them go.

As Fëanor raced unseen towards her and the Silmaril, Elwing looked towards her distant children one last time, despairing, as one who looks on the faces of those already dead. She dropped her sword, and then, before anyone could intervene, she leaped, out from the low black spur of rock past which the river and the tide whirled out with lethal muddy speed, the Silmaril still around her neck.

The force of the river and the tidal current took her, and before Maedhros could do more than step forward and shout helplessly, her pale figure was turned by the speeding water and hurled with terrible swiftness out to sea.

They had taken the last chance, and it had slipped through their hands like all the rest.

 

* * * * * *

The last remnants of the House of Fëanor did not return to Amon Ereb. There were not enough of them now to hold even that small stronghold. No more supplies would come there from those who had moved from Fëanorian lands to the Havens, to aid the last defenders of the Andram wall. The grasslands and the heather hills were not an easy place for the survivors, no more than a couple of hundred people, to live off the land, not when they must be constantly alert for attack.

Instead they wandered the Forest Between Rivers, hiding in the woods, far from the Isle of Balar where the High King still lived, with what was left of elvendom in Beleriand.

And on a day of grey skies when the trunks of the trees shone dark with rain, Maedhros said to his brother, flinching as if from a blow; “In Amon Ereb, the Oath knows where to find me. It hunted me, until I ran from it and did its bidding in the Havens. I do not wish to return. I will hide here among the trees. Perhaps it will forget me, if I cannot forget it.”

Fëanor had not revealed his spirit to the wandering Noldor, even now, but sometimes, now, in the shadow of the great forest, he thought that he had caught Maedhros looking at him, in furtive, unhappy glances.

Fëanor had spent a long time unseen among the Eldar. He knew how they behaved, how they looked when there was nothing to see. Maedhros did not look like that, not any more. He was Fëanor’s eldest son. There was still a living connection between them, even as there was between Fëanor and the Silmarils. If anyone should have been able to see Fëanor’s unbodied spirit without his making a conscious effort to reveal himself, then it should have been Maedhros.

And yet, he did not speak to his father or make any clear sign, only glanced and looked away, wincing. After a while, Fëanor decided that Maedhros, beset by the shadow of Morgoth which lay all around them now, and sinking into despair, had become unable to tell his father from the Oath that he saw following him. It was a thought that tore at his heart.

 

* * * * * *

 

The half-Elven children had been carried off in the confusion of the retreat. Everyone there had fought at Menegroth. Everyone there remembered Dior’s children, abandoned in the darkening woods at midwinter. There was no safety for them in the burning maze of the Havens, or in the land to which they had fled, east across the river from the quays of Sirion, which now had no protection at all from the orcs and wargs coming from the North. By necessity, Elros and Elrond were bundled along unwilling with the swiftly retreating Noldor.

Now, in the woods, nobody knew what to do with them. But everyone remembered what Maedhros had said about Dior’s children, lost to die in frozen ruined Doriath. Orc-work, their lord had called it. For all that almost every one of them was an Elf-killer many times over, there was not one who wished to think of himself as deliberately cruel.

And so all of them tried, as best they could, to be very kind to the small, terrified boys, in the manner of people who have had little contact with children for a very long time, and could not quite remember how they used to speak to them, so very long ago, when they had lived in peace with children of their own.

It seemed a time that was very far away to Fëanor, too, as he watched Maglor, tall and harsh in battle-scarred leather over mail, try to coax Eärendil’s stolen children to eat a little food and drink some water.

He had to think hard to walk back in memory and see once again Maedhros and Maglor at that age: small princes, clad in silks and gold, provided with everything they could possibly want or need, with nothing but the small fears and woes of family life to dread.

He wondered what Nerdanel his wife would have done, if she had stood where Elwing had stood, and known her children in the hands of her enemy. Nerdanel, he thought proudly, would not have leaped to her death. Nerdanel would have fought.

But a small uncomfortable voice from the back of his mind, said to him that Nerdanel would have fought as Elwing’s mother Nimloth had fought, and that she would have died as Nimloth had died; not so much because anyone wanted her dead, as because in war, even a queen can die.

Elwing might have been a child herself in years, but she had lived her life at war. Nerdanel had never known war. He found himself very glad of that. He remembered that he had been so angry, when she had told him that she would not come with him, and begged him to leave Amrod and Amras behind. But now he was only thankful that Nerdanel at least was safe. Surely she was safe. He could not know, but surely Tirion still stood, and she dwelt there still in peace.

If his own twin boys had stayed with her, they would not have died at the Havens. They would not have been driven there to kill and to die. If Curufin had stayed with them, then he too would be safe: would never have had to learn fear so terrible that he could set it into others minds and leave them enfeebled, unable to fight.

If Curufin had stayed, then Celebrimbor would not have stood there weeping with his sword raised against his grandfather’s people...

Of course, it had been impossible for any of his sons to stay in Tirion. They had sworn the Oath by then. They had sworn it in anger, in grief and desire for revenge for Fëanor’s murdered father. Never, as he exchanged angry words with Nerdanel, had it occurred to Fëanor that in his grief for his father’s death, he had sold his own life, and the lives of every one of his sons. But now, thinking of Amrod and Amras, of Elwing’s despairing face, and looking at Earendil’s tearstained children, he could see things with a terrible clarity.

It was hard to imagine how it might have been for Fëanor’s seven sons, if they had been forced to live in a rough shelter in the woods, without books or tools or tutors, eating only what could be found in the forest, learning only what could be taught there, while all around them, the darkness grew.

Morgoth’s creatures were moving into Taur-im-Duinath from the North: crows and wolves at first, and soon orcs followed them. Darker things, too: evil shadows of the dead had been seen even in the southern woods soon after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad and now they had moved far south. Such things were hard to hold to any frontier, although they fled when they felt the strength of Fëanor’s spirit, or heard the words of Maedhros or the harp of Maglor.

They were brave, Earendil’s children, but not as foolish as their age might suggest. Even the Havens had not been safe, even when the Sons of Fëanor had held the northern border and the power in the river Sirion held against the dark. They had been taught wariness all their lives.

Elros and Elrond gave up trying to run away, and no longer had to be watched constantly, which was a relief to everyone. But still they were wary. A month is a long time for a child of six, whether Elf or Man — and yet it was months before they would speak freely or could sleep easily in their bed of deerskin over pine needles.

 

* * * * * *

 

"I want to go home," Elros said, indistinctly, for at least the tenth time that evening. Elrond was crying silently to himself, pale and exhausted, arms wrapped around his knees.

"Sorry, Elros. No," Maglor told them yet again, glancing back at them briefly. There was no way back to the Havens far away. They were blackened and deserted now, and the survivors all gone to the distant Isle of Balar.

Maglor had his sword in his hand, and was looking around cautiously at the trees. Two of their people were making a fire. Most of the rest had formed a loose ring around them and the children, looking outwards. The dim daylight of the woods was fading into a night without stars.

Suddenly a flurry of movement in the darkened trees, something hideous and black rushing at the Noldor from a treetop. A giant spider, another. Maedhros stepped forward and despatched it swiftly, almost with one movement. The fire was flaming up, bright against the darkness. Elrond shuffled a little closer to the light. Elros’s wide grey eyes were fixed on the dark mass of the fallen spider.

“I thought we’d cleared them all out of this section,” Maedhros said in disgust. “We’d best set a double guard again tonight. Varyar, Roquenon, Panonis, more fires, please. Four in a square, so we have room to move the horses between them as well.

Maglor glanced back at Elrond and Elros, and waved two of his people to his side, to watch the trees while he pushed the ugly bulk of the dead spider back into cover, away from the firelight.

He came back to the children and squatted to be nearer their level. “You will have to wait a little till the venison is cooked,” he told them in Sindarin. “But Panonis has found some cobnuts for you. Do you know how to crack them?”

They did not speak, but Elrond nodded warily. “All right. Here’s the bag. And here’s a water-bottle. We’ll go to the stream tomorrow, so we can wash, but I think we’ll have to skip that tonight.” Maglor put the bag of nuts on the ground next to the water bottle where they could reach it without coming too close. Elros put out a dirty hand and picked it up.

“Do you want to help build a shelter, for tonight? I don’t think it will rain, but it might be warmer.”

“I want to go home,” Elros said, again, but he was pulling out a nut from the bag. Elrond took one too, and cracked it with his back teeth, then peeled the green shell away from the soft white core.

Maglor gave them a slight rueful smile. “We’d all like to go home,” he said. “But we can’t. Will you help me build a shelter? Or would you rather sleep next to the fire tonight and have an extra blanket?”

Elros looked over to the shadows that the spider had come from. Elrond looked up at Maglor with a wariness in his eyes that was hard to see in one so young. “By the fire,” he decided.

“All right then. Eärrindë will make up a bed for you shortly, you can help her if you like. I’m going out with Maedhros to check there are no other dangers around the camp now. Then when we’re quite sure it’s safe, we’ll have some venison. Will you promise not to go away from the fire until we get back? It is safe by the fire.” Elrond did not look at him, but Elros nodded.

Maglor played the harp for a while, later, though neither Elros nor Elrond would choose a song that night, when he asked them. That trust took a while longer to win, but it came in time.

After a while, they found it easier to speak to the others too, whose eyes and swords shone bright and warded off the darkness. For all that they were killers, they were better than the alternative.

 

* * * * * *

 

When Elrond and Elros were ten years old, a new star rose out of the West. It was clearly, unmistakably a Silmaril.

“Let us be glad; for its glory is now seen by many and is yet secure from all evil,” Maglor said, as they stood on a nameless hill deep in the woods, whose grassy crest rose above the trees giving a view west into a clear sky of velvet blue. They came up here sometimes, when the endless trees of the Forest Between Rivers became too much to bear, to feel the wind and look at the stars. Even now, the vapours from Thangorodrim rarely hid the sky here in the South for long.

“Is that a new song?” Maedhros asked. “Secure from evil like us, you mean. At least this means the Silmarils in Angband are now the easy ones.”

Maglor said, “It cannot be one of the two in Angband. It must be the jewel that...”

“The one that our mother took with her when she leapt into the sea,” Elros said quietly. Maedhros ignored him, staring out at the Silmaril that hung so far out of reach across the huge reaches of the forest, fading far away into the silver distant line of the Sea. But Maglor turned and looked Elros in the eye.

“We can only hope,” he said. “I thought... from what I could see, your mother was lost in the waves. But now, I am not so sure. I can see no way that the Silmaril could shine there save through the art of the Valar. If it has come into their hands, then someone has taken it to them. And it is said that your father’s house has the favour of Ulmo, Lord of Waters.”

When the world was as it should be, there would be, of course, a connection between father, mother and their children that would tell the boys if their parents lived. Elwing and Eärendil surely were not both dead. And yet the children could feel nothing of them. Fëanor hoped this was some aspect of their heritage that stemmed from Men: the idea that elf-children could lose that link with their living parents through mere separation in early youth cut him to the core. He could see it troubled his sons too, though they did not speak of it.

“There is no word from our father?” Elrond asked, cautiously, his eyes flickering to Maedhros’ thin tired face. All of them were a little cautious around Maedhros now, and the boys had picked it up from the rest.

“Our watchers on the coast have not seen his ship,” Maglor told him. “If they do, if we hear that he has come back to harbour at Balar, then we will tell you, I promise, and somehow find a way to send a message. I had hoped we would hear something of him before now.”

He gave them a helpless, guilty look. “You are both old enough now that he should have had the chance to hold the name-making for you. In fact, you are old enough now, and skilled enough in language that you should be holding your name-choosing! But you can’t choose names without being given a father-name. It’s all wrong.” He shook his head frowning.

“Hardly the only thing that is all wrong,” Maedhros said bleakly.

“I like my name,” Elros said firmly. “My mother gave it to me. I shall keep it.”

“Me too,” Elrond agreed loyally.

“Many people choose their mother-name. I did.” Maglor said. “Maedhros, too, when he was young. There’s nothing wrong about that. But still, you should have had the choice, and your father to give it to you. And the celebration, and the gifts.”

“We were given a star,” Elrond said, looking up at it. “We’ll have to make do with that. Make us a song for the new star, Maglor. That can be your gift.”

Fëanor looked up at his work, shining high above the Sea, and his heart called out to it, in greeting, and in longing. There had been a time when it would have made him angry to see it hanging there, out of reach, and still in the back of his mind the Oath curled and hissed. But he refused to listen. It was his Oath, and would serve him only as he chose.

Maglor was right. The Silmaril was safe far beyond the reach of his Enemy and that was enough.