God, I Pity the Violins by StarSpray

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Chapter 12

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Maglor did not have a plan, but Dennis Newman, it turned out, did. He slid down a steep bit of slope and rounded a large tree trunk and found several guns pointed directly at him; his shout was enough to stop Andromache and Quynh in their tracks, but two of the four bullets fired in quick succession struck him, and he lost his footing and fell down another even steeper portion of the mountain, smacking into sharp rocks and finally landing in a tangle of brambles at the bottom.

Everything went black for a moment, and when Maglor forced his eyes open again everything hurt. It was worse than falling into the English Channel. He cursed, and somehow managed to wrench himself out of the brambles, tearing his clothes and his skin in the process. One branch raked across his face. When he was able to look back up, hearing more gunshots and someone shouting, he found Newman standing over him. This time the gun was pointed at his head. "It didn't have to end like this," Newman said, though he did not sound as grieved as he looked. Blood trickled down from a cut on his temple, sliding darkly over the pale stubble on his cheeks. "We asked nicely and we could have worked together, could have bridged the gap between the Undying Lands and the earth, you all could have given us back our birthright, but you refused—"

"What you want of us," Maglor rasped, "we cannot give you."

The gun pressed against his forehead, the barrel still warm from previous shots. "We nearly had it once," he said, and Maglor was almost certain he spoke of Ar-Pharazôn and his fleet that sailed against Valinor—as though there had ever been any hope for its success. "As descendants of Elros Tar—"

Maglor's body moved before his mind caught up with it. The gun went off but not quickly enough; he felt the wind from the bullet passing by his head. He hit Newman in the stomach with his shoulder, putting all of his weight into it. The gun went flying and they went down, a tangle of flailing limbs and fists, both of them smeared with Maglor's blood. Everything hurt but fury drowned it. His fist connected solidly with Newman's jaw, which stunned him long enough for Maglor to roll them so that he was on top of him, a hand around his throat, blood dripping out of Maglor's hair onto his face. "You dare," he snarled, choking the words out of lungs that struggled to hold air, "you dare speak his name? You dare claim him for your own? There is not a drop of Númenor in your miserable veins, you—" Newman heaved Maglor off of him and slammed a fist into one of Maglor's bullet wounds. Maglor screamed as his vision went white and then black.

When he came back to himself Nile was kneeling over him, pressing a hand over one of the bullet wounds. There was blood on her temples, as though her ears had bled. "I don't know what note you hit there," she said, "but damn."

"Where's—" Maglor tried to say, but his throat was raw, as though he'd been screaming for hours instead of for only a second. He sat up instead, and nearly fainted again.

"Hey!" Nile yelped as he swayed. "Will you just let me—you were shot—"

"Where is he?" Maglor managed to scrape out. A shout from some nearby bushes answered before Nile could, and he somehow heaved himself to his feet to follow the sound.
Nile scrambled after him. "Max! Maglor! Hey! God, you're worse than Andy. You're still bleeding!"

Once upon a time such wounds would not have stopped him. Maglor had been sorely wounded—by a poisoned blade no less—at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, and his fury had drowned the pain so that he hadn't even realized he'd been hurt until Amrod and Amras tried to haul him off of the field once Uldor was dead. Now he could barely get to his feet. Perhaps he just wasn't angry enough.

Maglor stumbled and caught himself on a tree. Just ahead he spotted Newman at the moment Joe and Quynh caught up with him. But before their fight could begin in earnest, and before Maglor could do more than take a breath, a voice rang through the trees: "Stop!" Everyone and everything froze; a sudden and heavy silence fell over the forest. Maglor's knees gave way, and he slid to the ground as Daeron emerged from the trees. Unlike the rest of them he was not spattered with blood or dirt. His hair was dark around his face and his eyes shimmered with ancient starlight. The bright sun seemed to dim, as though Daeron carried around him an echo of the ancient days when the world had lain in perpetual twilight. He stopped where they could all see him. "Enough," he said. "I will see no more blood shed this day. Let him go." Quynh, who had Newman by the collar, released him, looking surprised at herself as she did so. Daeron's voice thrummed with power; Maglor felt it deep in his bones, the way he felt the Music pound through the waves on the shore when he lay in the surf on a starry, moonless night.

Now that power was focused upon Dennis Newman, whose face was ashen grey now. He seemed only then to realize just what sort of powers with which he had tried to meddle. Daeron said, "You will leave this mountain alive and unhindered, but hear me: you caught us off our guard and unaware, and it shall never happen again. You will never find what you seek, and what you run from shall catch you sooner than you think."

"What—what does that mean?" Newman demanded, voice weak now and wavering, high-pitched.

Daeron did not answer. "Go. Now." Newman fled.

After a moment the shadows retreated, and Daeron was his usual self again, a slender elf in borrowed jeans and a slightly tattered t-shirt. His dark hair fell across his eyes as he turned to Maglor. "Sweet Elbereth, Maglor, what did you do?"

"He got himself shot," Nile said.

"I fail to see how that's my fault," said Maglor wearily as he leaned against the tree. The bark was rough against his cheeks. Nile ripped his shirt off and pressed something against one of the bullet wounds.

"It's slightly less your fault than falling into the Channel," Joe said as he joined Nile.

"You fell into the English Channel?" Daeron said in disbelief. "Whatever for?" Maglor opened his mouth to reply but Joe pressed down particularly hard, and for the third time that morning, Maglor fainted.

.

He woke up in bed, swathed in bandages. The sun coming through the slits in the window blinds was the heavy golden color of late afternoon, and elsewhere in the house he heard someone singing. Everything still hurt, but less so than before. Maglor closed his eyes again and let himself drift. He was only vaguely aware of the door opening and someone coming in to check the bandages and press a hand to his forehead before departing.

When he fell into a proper sleep he dreamed. It was the Nirnaeth and he was hunting for Uldor, but when he found him he did not look like himself but like Dennis Newman—but he fought as fiercely as Maglor recalled, as the battle raged about them. In the distance the flaming roar of balrogs rolled like thunder across the plains. Overhead the skies roiled with dark clouds spewed forth from the crevices and crags of Angband. The air was heavy with the smell of sulfur and of blood; Maglor's sword grew heavier in his hands with each passing second.

Someone called his name, and Maglor woke just moments before he finally killed Uldor. Or Newman. Whichever. He started awake, finding that it was now evening. Hathellas switched on the lamp beside his bed. "Do you think you can sit up a bit?" she asked. "I have some broth for you, and then I'll sing over your wounds. You really do need to stop getting shot so often."

"Countless years I have wandered this Middle-earth," Maglor said, casting his eyes plaintively toward the ceiling, "and sustained not a single wound, from gun nor arrow nor sword. And now in less than a week I've been shot thrice and thrown off of a ship into the sea, and my reputation is in tatters." Hathellas laughed. "And I couldn't even kill the fool responsible."

"You did serious damage to his eardrums, at least," Hathellas said, patting his knee as he adjusted himself on the pillows. She handed him a mug of pungent smelling tea. He inhaled the steam and felt something inside him ease. There was athelas in it. "I'm sorry to say, though, that we can't stay here until you recover. We must leave in the morning. By some miracle all of the cabins on this bit of the mountain are empty vacation homes, but someone elsewhere may have heard all of the gunfire, and someone will certainly notice the abandoned SUV at some point. You'll have to suffer further humiliation in allowing us to carry you to and from the car."

"My only worry about being carried," Maglor said, "is that someone will drop me."

"Oh, I'm sure we'll manage," said Hathellas breezily.

She sang over his wounds and departed, leaving Maglor feeling sleepy but unwilling to return to sleep. Nile poked her head in after a little while to, as she said, make sure he wasn't trying to get out of bed and rip out his stitches. "If I promise not to move, will you fetch me the palantír?" he asked her.

"That thing is a menace," Nile said, and disappeared. She did not return with the palantír. Maglor sighed and eyed the window blinds, which were just out of his reach without getting up—and whatever Nile thought of him, he had no desire to tear any stitches or reopen wounds. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

Then the door opened again, and Quynh came in with the bag that held the palantír. "Nile said you were asking for this," she said, holding it up.

"I was."

"Are you going to look for Newman again?" Quynh set the bag down beside Maglor and sat down on the edge of the bed. Maglor carefully lifted the palantír, wincing as his wounds pulled, and set it on his lap.

"Yes," he said. "Daeron sent him away with his tail between his legs, but I do not trust him not to have something nasty waiting for us when we try to leave tomorrow."

"Yusuf and Nicolò have already gone out with the other elves to make sure he doesn't," said Quynh. "Andromache is grumbling because she sprained her ankle and Hathellas won't let her stand on it, so she couldn't go with them."

"Poor Andromache," Maglor murmured as he took a breath and began to focus his mind and his gaze upon the palantír. He heard Quynh laugh, but as though at a great distance, as he fell into the dark depths of the stone. It recalled him and bent more easily to his will this time—he barely glimpsed the fires and the pale hands of Denethor of Minas Tirith before the images turn to whirling stars and then, after just a few seconds, to Dennis Newman. He sat in the back of another large car; whether the men around him were the same that had been on the mountain, Maglor could not tell. But they were not speaking and the car, when the image drew back to show it on the road, was speeding down an Interstate, the mountains already shrinking into the distance behind it.

He looked up and grinned at Quynh. "He's far away now," he said. "I don't think we need to worry."

"He could have left something or someone behind," Quynh said.

"I don't think he did. What resources he has are no longer in these mountains." Maglor set the stone aside.

"So what happens now?" Quynh asked.

"We return Thranduil's children to him," said Maglor. And he was meant to seek out Tatië, a prospect which both thrilled him and made him nervous. He could not imagine what she wished to say to him.

"After that," said Quynh, "I want to go to Paris."

"Of course."

"Once you're recovered," Quynh added, clearly an afterthought. "And if you aren't injured again."

"Every single one of my injuries this past week," Maglor protested, "has not been my fault!"

"Falling into the sea was definitely your fault," said Quynh.

"That is debatable." Quynh reached over and picked up the palantír to return it to the bag. "You should rest. No more spying on your enemies for tonight."

"I had not planned on it." But he did not try to stop her taking the palantír away. It was tempting still to try to look into the past, into his own youth, or into the Valinor of the present to see what his father and mother and brothers were doing. A pointless temptation, he knew, since he would see them soon enough, but…

"What made you so angry out on the mountain?" Quynh asked suddenly.

"Hm?"

"I saw you, when Newman had his gun pointed at your head. He said something and you—it was almost frightening how angry you got."

"Oh." Maglor looked away. With the distance of a few hours it seemed almost ridiculous. "He tried to claim descent from Elros, and use it as justification for everything he had done."

"…Who is Elros?"

"Elros Tar-Minyatar was the first King of Númenor, of Westernesse," Maglor said. "He was the son of Eärendil, who carries the Evening Star through the skies, and of Elwing, Princess of Doriath."

"Very impressive," said Quynh. "But that does not explain why you were so angry."

"I knew Elros," said Maglor. "I—fostered him, for a while, he and his brother Elrond. His great-grandfather was my cousin."

"I see. I suppose Elros would not have approved of Newman's actions or intentions."

"Of course not!" Maglor had heard the lightness in her tone but turned to frown at her anyway. "He was—he was Half-elven, and given a choice of which kindred he would be counted among. He chose mortal Men. His later descendants had different ideas, but Elros went to his death with grace and at peace."

Quynh patted his hand. "I'm sorry," she said. For the loss of his erstwhile foster-son or for making light of it, Maglor couldn't tell.

"He is long gone beyond the Circles of the World," said Maglor.

"So are all of my family," said Quynh. "My mother and father and my brothers, and all of their children. But I remember them still, and I miss them." She patted Maglor's hand again and stood. "You're about to fall asleep. Better stop fighting it. We have a very long journey back to France."