God, I Pity the Violins by StarSpray

---

Chapter 8

---

Their leave-taking was not exactly merry, but there were many smiles and wishes for good fortune on their quest. Thranduil was grave as he bid Maglor to try to stay alive. Aeramath was more cheerful as she performed the customary gift-giving. Maglor did not see what she gave each of the others; for himself she pressed a small wooden flute into his hands, carved with delicate, swirling runes that very nearly looked like vines and flowers, unless you knew what to look for.

Linnoriel handed him two knives, leaf-shaped and deadly sharp. "One is for Daeron," she said. "Do make sure he doesn't cut his own fingers off if he tries to use it."

"If all goes well, there won't be anyone for him to use it on by the time we're making our way out," Maglor said, as he dropped both the knives into his rucksack, alongside the flute.

As he turned toward the cars, Maglor paused. The gates at the far end of the drive were swinging open on silent hinges, but they should not have been—not yet. "What in the world…?" Thranduil stepped forward. "Galion!" As he spoke, Galion and the other gate keepers knelt on either side of the open gates, and a group of almost two dozen elves strode in. They were clad in hunting gear, except it was not truly for hunting, since the leathers and furs glittered with gems and clicked with beads and was adorned with intricate lacing and embroidery. They all carried spears with elaborately carved shafts. Nearly all were dark-haired and grey-eyed, but for the one at their head whose hair gleamed like burnished copper in the sun, with emeralds woven into the elaborate braids. A hush fell over the courtyard; even the birds seemed to cease their singing, and the breeze stopped rustling the leaves.

They approached the party by the chateau doors, and parted to reveal a pair of elves in the center. The escort formed two lines and thumped the butts of their spear shafts on the gravel, and as one Thranduil and his queen and their court knelt. Maglor dropped to his knee with them.

The pair of Elves in the center were clad similarly to their guards. The man was tall and scarred, with missing fingers on his left hand, and a patch over where his right eye had once been. A livid scar ran down from his scalp to his chin, passing beneath the patch. His remaining eye was dark as deep water, and in it was reflected the light of ancient stars. So too were the eyes of his companion, a woman who was not tall at all, but whose presence made her seem to have a much greater stature. Her hair was silver, and flowed loosely down her back and was held out of her face with a copper circlet set with garnets and sapphires.

Maglor had never before met one of the Unbegotten. He had known many, his own grandfather among them, who had been born at Cuiviénen, but even they were not so old as these two, with the weight of countless years behind their eyes, the first to open of all the Children of Ilúvatar on the earth; the first ears to hear the sound of flowing water and the wind in the grass; the first tongues to speak with words; the first hands to make things; the first hearts to love and yearn and dream.

"We have heard that Canafinwë Macalaurë is leading a party to rescue Daeron of Doriath from a group of Men who have taken him captive," said the woman. "Is this true?"
Maglor raised his head. "It is, Lady," he said. Behind him he thought he heard Andromache make a quiet, indignant noise, but this was not the time to argue details—which Andromache seemed to understand, since she subsided and did not say anything.

The lady gestured to him to rise and approach her, and so he did. He stood almost as tall as her companion, which meant he towered over her. Meeting her gaze was like having his mind cut into with the sharp precision of a scalpel. Even Galadriel could have taken lessons from this lady. She seemed to be searching for something in him, though whether she found it or not was impossible to say, and he dared not ask. She said, "Daeron is not alone in his captivity. One of our own was taken in Calais not two days ago. Eldur tried to stop it, but was unsuccessful, and returned to us only with this." She held out her hand, and on her palm was a patch from a jacket, with a stylized tower in white thread, that looked almost more like a rocket (or a missile) than a tower, with a T worked into the negative space near its base. The logo of Turralba. "Her name is Calwë. Bring her back, if you can."

Maglor nodded. "I will," he said.

Unexpectedly, she smiled. "I expect nothing less, Macalaurë of the Tatyar. And when you return, we will speak more. I have long wished for this meeting, but it was not in the stars." She gripped his shoulder so he leaned forward, and she pressed a kiss to his forehead. "May the stars light your path, my child. Destroy this Turralba that seeks to ruin our peace."

And with that she stepped back, looked past him as though taking the measure of those who were to accompany him, and then as one the Avari turned and departed, leaving the courtyard silent with surprise and awe. Into the silence Nile's voice, though she spoke half in a whisper, seemed loud and jarring when she asked, "Who was that?"

"Tatië, and Tata," said Thranduil after a moment, as everyone who was still kneeling got to their feet. "A great lord and lady of the Avari, and of the Unbegotten."

Maglor turned back to Thranduil. "Did you know that they were in France?"

"No. They keep to the mountains farther east, usually—but though they have settled realms of their own, many of the Avari wander far and wide and often. They have come to visit us before, usually at high summer for the feasting, but it has been many lives of Men since we last saw them." Thranduil's face was troubled. "What did Tatië say to you?"

"That one of their own was taken at Calais," said Maglor.

"By Turralba?" Joe asked. Maglor nodded.

"Then we need to get going," said Hathellas. She stepped forward and embraced her father, then her mother, and then Linnoriel. Radoriel was a step behind her. "Farewell! We will return soon and there will be much feasting and celebration, and perhaps even Tata and Tatië will dance with us!"

Norindo scurried over to Maglor as the party went to the cars. He scooped up the little dog and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "Not this time, my friend," he said. "You must stay here and chase all the rabbits you wish." Norindo whined and licked his face. "Stay with Lady Linnoriel."

Linnoriel accepted Norindo into her arms. "Do try not to get yourself killed, Fëanorion," she said.

"I'll do my best."

He climbed into the minivan, this time sitting in the middle beside Nile, while Quynh took the front seat with Andromache. Radoriel and Hathellas had their own car, and were to lead the way to the airport outside of Paris where their private jet awaited them. Maglor leaned back in his seat and sighed, watching the trees pass by as they made their way down the forest road toward the outside world. Once he thought he saw at least one of the Avarin hunters, but when he looked back there was nothing.

"So what's Unbegotten mean?" Nile asked after a while.

"You know what beget means, right?" Joe asked.

"Uh—"

"When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much—"

"Oh. Okay." There were snickers, and then a pause. Then Nile asked, "So how the hell can someone be Unbegotten?"

"Maybe that's just how Elves are," said Joe. "They pop up out of flowers or whatever."

"That is not where Elven babies come from," Maglor said.

"Have a bunch of Elven babies of your own, do you?"

"I have five younger brothers. I think my mother would have much preferred finding them beneath her topiaries."

Andromache glanced at them all in the mirror. "If no Elvish babies were actually begotten, that wouldn't make the unbegotten ones special."

"They were the first," Maglor said, turning his gaze back to the window.

"The first what?"

"The first Elves."

There was more talk after that, debate and speculation and banter, but Maglor stared out of the window and ignored most of it. His thoughts turned away from the woods and toward their destination.

It took a couple of hours to reach the airport. As they began to see signs for Paris appearing by the roadside, Quynh asked abruptly, "What about Booker?"

The silence that fell over the car was sudden and deafening. Maglor glanced at Nile, who had her lips pressed tightly together, and at Joe and Nicky, who were looking at one another in silent conversation. Andromache's grip on the steering wheel tightened just slightly. "What about him?" she asked finally.

"Why is he not here with us?" Quynh asked. "I have been dreaming of him almost nightly, and all he's doing in Paris is getting miserably drunk every night." Nile winced. "Did he leave you?"

"No," Andromache said shortly.

This was not a conversation Maglor should have been present for, and he wished that Quynh had waited—or had asked earlier, when he wasn't around. As it was he turned his gaze resolutely out the window and pretended to be entirely absorbed in the French countryside. But no one offered a detailed explanation of Booker's transgressions, only that he had betrayed them and been exiled for it. Quynh was not satisfied with this, but no one would speak more on it. Nile did not speak at all.

They arrived at the small, private airport at last, and Maglor was very happy to leave the minivan and stretch his legs, and to escape the tension that had lingered even after Joe had forcefully changed the subject from Booker, whose absence seemed to suddenly yawn like a chasm between them all. Quynh followed Maglor as he strode away from the van, while the others went around gathering their things, while Radoriel and Hathellas disappeared into the relatively small building to do whatever it was they needed to do before they took flight.

"I don't understand," Quynh said as she and Maglor stood at the edge of the parking lot in the sunshine. On the verge at their feet grew more dandelions than grass, and bees were busy among them. "Why would he do it? Give them over to someone such as Merrick was? Why would he give himself over?" She wrapped her arms around herself, and scowled into the distance at the hazy outline of Paris.

"Only he can answer those questions," said Maglor.

"I'm growing sick of the dreams," she said. "He is miserable, and lonely. A hundred years by himself at the bottom of a whiskey bottle will drive him as mad as I ever was at the bottom of the sea."

"Remember, he has also been dreaming of you," Maglor said quietly. Quynh shuddered. "Do you dream of one another every night?"

"No. But often enough." Quynh rubbed her arms as though she were cold, though the sun was warm. Someone had fixed the clumsy haircut that Maglor had given her, and now it was very short, and she kept running her fingers through it. "There is no time now, but when we return, will you—will you go with me to find him?"

"Of course." Maglor grinned at her. "You are going with me on a far more dangerous errand."

"It is more dangerous for you than for me," she pointed out.

"More dangerous for both of us than going to find one drunk man in Paris," Maglor replied. "There is Radoriel. It seems we are ready to take off."

Thranduil's private jet was luxurious, in an understated fashion. Maglor settled himself into one of the very comfortable seats beside a window, and by the time they began to taxi down the runway the party had split into three. He was by himself, the immortal mortals were clustered together, and Radoriel and Hathellas were seated near the front by the open door to the cockpit, where they could speak with the pilot and crew. As they sped up he saw Quynh grip Andromache's hand with white knuckles even as she leaned against the window, watching with wide eyes as they left the ground and the airport, and Paris, and all of France shrank beneath them.

Maglor turned back to his own window, and sighed, leaning back in his seat. "Maglor." He looked up to find Radoriel holding out a tablet and a set of ear buds. "In case you wanted to watch something, or listen to music," she said.

"Oh. Thank you."

"That's a lovely stone," she added, as he reached out to take the tablet. Maglor's hand went immediately to his father's gem. "I've never seen you wear it before."

"It was a recent gift."

He settled back and turned on the tablet as Radoriel returned to her sister. A peal of laughter could be heard from the cockpit. Outside they were passing through clouds and blue skies, and across the plane Nile had separated herself from the rest of the group and was reading something intently, while her older companions conversed in an old dialect in a tone that suggested they were reminiscing about something. Maglor put in the ear buds.

After some thought, he searched for Dennis Newman, and found a few talks he'd given at conferences of some description. The talks themselves were full of cliches and jargon, saying nothing through a great deal of words. Maglor muted the videos and focused on the man. He did not look particularly extraordinary. He was of average height, Maglor guessed, with sandy hair just starting to go grey. His eyes were brown, his skin slightly pockmarked, his face beginning to sag—although when he switched to another video that had gone away, and also his nose had changed slightly. Dennis Newman, as far as Maglor could tell just from looking at him, was a healthy, rich white American businessman who did not want to admit that he was no longer in the first bloom of youth. Though of course it went farther than that. If he was kidnapping elves on whom to experiment, Maglor was willing to wager that Newman not only did not want to admit that he was aging, he wanted to stop it.

"Like Númenor all over again," Maglor muttered. Newman also kept wearing t-shirts with a red and white and blue logo that looked familiar, but which Maglor couldn't place. It wasn't an official United States symbol—but upon searching the Internet he realized it was supposed to be the shield of Captain America—a comic book super soldier, for whom Dennis Newman seemed to have a fondness. Maybe there was more to his plans than mere immortality. Maglor shook his head and abandoned the videos in favor of putting the whole music app on shuffle and closing his eyes.

The flight was a long one. Maglor spent much of it dozing or staring out of the window at the ocean far below, with music in his ears and his thoughts far away from Europe or America or the task soon to be at hand. He was considering whether to make his own ship or just buy one when Nile came to sit in the seat just across from him, her expression pensive. He took his ear buds out. "So," she said after a moment, "back when I first met everyone," she gestured back toward the other immortal mortals, as Joe threw back his head with laughter at something Nicky had said, and Quynh and Andromache leaned into one another, both giggling and looking surprisingly young. "Back when I first met them," Nile went on, "I asked whether they were the good guys or the bad guys."

"And what did they say?"

"Booker said it depended on the century. Nicky said they've always tried to do what they thought was right. But what would you say if I asked you that question?"

Sweet Elbereth, but she was young. It was almost easy to forget, because she was as unkillable as the others, but she had acquired that particular power only recently. Maglor sighed. "I would say that your friend Booker has the right idea, and that very few of us, of any race, purposely set out to be the—as you say—bad guys."

"So you'd say that you always tried to do what you thought was right?" Nile asked, her dark eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

"We did in the beginning. By the end—well, you read what I said to Maedhros. Less evil would we have done in the breaking of our Oath, though we be doomed to darkness everlasting."

"But you didn't."

"We tried. After Doriath, Maedhros forswore it, and we stayed away from Sirion. But our father did not make things that were easy to break. The Oath was…it was more than a mere promise. More than mere words. It would not be forgotten and it would not be tossed aside, and in the end Maedhros was not strong enough to withstand it, and I was not strong enough to gainsay him." His gaze had strayed to the window, to the clouds passing grey and white beneath them, and he rubbed at the gem around his neck. It was warm beneath his fingers—but a comforting warmth, rather than the searing pain of the Silmaril when he'd at last grasped it. He looked back at Nile. "I am not making excuses. By the end my brothers and I were not what you would call good guys." He gave her a crooked smile. "But if it makes you feel better, I have slain no kin since the end of the First Age, and I have largely done nothing either particularly good or particularly bad since."

"I don't know if it does," Nile said. "What about your oath? I mean, does it still…bother you?"

"No. We fulfilled it as far as it could be fulfilled, Maedhros and I. I threw mine into the Sea, and there it has stayed. Even if the Oath were still active, it would still be moot since no one here has a Silmaril."

Nile pursed her lips. She didn't seem satisfied with his answers. "Do you regret it, though?" she asked. "I mean, you're talking about—about attacking a refugee camp, like it's nothing."

Maglor leaned forward. "Of course it wasn't nothing, and of course I regret it. I am rather famous for my pain and regret, in fact. But if even now, after countless centuries, I continued to wallow in it, I would go mad. Ask your friend Booker."

"How do you know what Booker's problem is?"

"Am I wrong?"

Her lips pursed again. "I don't know. He misses his family. But we're not talking about Booker, we're talking about you."

"I am not a villain, Nile. Perhaps you don't like to take the word of a kinslayer, but I give it to you anyway. I have no plans to betray anyone. Only to rescue Daeron, and Calwë, and perhaps to find out how and why this Dennis Newman and his private army have decided to begin hunting down Elves."

Nile snorted. "If your story proves anything it's that you can keep a promise." She got up and returned to the others. Maglor put his ear buds back in as they all leaned in for a conference, doubtless about him. He hoped they would not back out once they landed, but if they did…well, he would think of something. He was still sorely out of practice, but if it came down to it he thought he could sing Turralba's headquarters into submission. It would put him in bed for at least a week afterward and Daeron would not let him hear the end of it, but he could do it…

At long last, they began to circle the airport. They were not flying into New York, but into Boston, and they would drive the rest of the way. Yet another chunk of time sitting in a vehicle. Maglor's legs felt cramped at the very thought. As they all piled into a large van, with Hathellas and Radoriel in the front, Andromache pulled out the tablet with the satellite images of the Turralba headquarters to consider further how they were going to infiltrate it. There were going to be perimeter guards, and a high fence that might or might not be electric.

"Can you magic the fence or something?" Nile asked Maglor, poking him in the shoulder from behind. "You can magic people."

"I could probably come up with a song to plunge the whole place into darkness," said Maglor. "If I could find the right turn of phrase—what's a good rhyme for wire?"

"That would be as good as calling ahead to tell them we're coming," Joe protested.

"Not necessarily," said Andromache. "What's the weather going to be like?"

"Thunderstorms are forecast tomorrow evening and the day after," Hathellas said from the front.

"Okay, so a power outage would work," said Andromache.

"I can more easily wrap us all in shadow as we enter the grounds," said Maglor. "No one will see us coming until we are on top of them—and perhaps not even then."

"Does that work on cameras?" Nicky asked.

"It should."

In total, they traveled for a full day before reaching the cabin that Lumorn had rented in the Catskills. The cabin was still an hour away from the Turralba headquarters, a comfortable enough distance since they were fairly sure that no one else knew they were there. Lumorn looked as tired as Maglor felt when he opened the door for them. Radoriel immediately enveloped him in an embrace. "Thank all of the Powers, you've arrived," Lumorn said. "I don't think I've slept in a week."

"Well, we aren't here to simply whisk you away, you know," Hathellas said.

"Yes, you're here to rescue Daeron." Lumorn reached around his sisters to grasp Maglor's hand in greeting. "Hullo, Maglor. And hullo, everyone. Please come in. I've set up beds and sofas, and I've stocked the fridge if you're hungry."

There was the usual shuffle and confusion of activity that accompanied arrival in a new place, this one complicated by several large weapons and a surprising amount of plastic explosives that Nicky had packed without remembering to tell anyone. By the time Maglor slumped onto the couch that was to be his bed, he was weary enough that he fell asleep almost immediately. He dreamed of walking down a long stretch of lonely beach beneath a storm-dark sky, as the waves crashed against the stones in a steady and familiar rhythm.