God, I Pity the Violins by StarSpray

---

Chapter 10

---

As they left the room of artifacts, Maglor handed Daeron the flute that Aeramath had given to him. Daeron blew a few experimental notes, and then grinned. "I shall need your help when we bring this place down," Maglor said, as they moved to the stairs. As he stepped over a body the lights came on. Someone had found another power source.

"Elevators are working again," Joe remarked. "We still taking the stairs?" As he spoke they passed an elevator and its doors dinged open. Everyone with a gun raised it, but no one was inside. Quynh backed up several steps anyway, jaw going tight. Maglor caught her arm and squeezed it briefly.

"We take the stairs," Andromache said firmly.

"We could be trapped in them," Calwë protested.

"We could be trapped in an elevator, too," Andromache replied. "Follow me."

When they came to the door leading to the stairway, Maglor caught Andromache's arm. "Wait," he said. "Let me go in first."

"So you can get shot?" Quynh demanded.

"So I can clear the way. Stay out here, unless you fancy a nap." Maglor opened the door carefully. He could hear voices above and below, echoing through the strange acoustics of such passages. He turned and found Daeron with him, flute in hand. He lifted it to his lips and began to play. It was an ancient, lilting tune that had once flowed through the nightingale-haunted glades of Neldoreth. Maglor waited a few bars and then began to sing, his voice joining the power of the waves on ancient shores to the nightingale-sweetness of the flute, as he sang of deep darkness and stillness. His voice echoed off of the walls and through the stairs, and the flute's notes wound around the words like a dancer. Shouts rang up from below them, but by the time Maglor had sung two verses of the lullaby, there was no other sound. He fell silent, and Daeron lowered his flute.

When the last echoes of their song died away, Maglor opened the door. "Hurry," he said.

Calwë peered down over the railing, and nodded, looking satisfied. The others immediately started down the stairs, jumping the last few to the landings. Maglor followed last, glancing up often. Anyone in the stairwell would be asleep, but it would take more time than they had to lock all of the doors. No one followed them until they passed the second floor; just as Maglor turned to go down the final set of stairs the door burst open and half a dozen men piled through. One saw Maglor and immediately fired his gun. Maglor ducked and almost thought he could feel the bullet pass by his hair. "Go, go!" he said, when Joe paused to look back. Joe did not go, but waited until Maglor passed him so that he was the last one. He fired several rounds into the knot of pursuers before turning to catch up again.

They took the emergency exit at the bottom of the stairs and found themselves in a side parking lot. It was still raining hard, and the wind drove it towards the building, splashing into Maglor's eyes. As the door shut behind Joe Maglor turned to it and spoke three words. They dropped from his lips like heavy stones, and a moment later the soldiers crashed into the door from the other side. It did not budge. "Nice," Joe said.

"Don't ask me to do it again," Maglor said, staggering a little as he turned away.

"This way!" Nile had taken the lead, racing around the corner of the building towards the generators. Joe grabbed Maglor's arm to help him along when he staggered.

"Can you still sing the place down?" Joe asked as they ran.

"Yes." But after that he would be spent, and he did not like to think of how he'd get back to the car afterward.

They reached the place in the fence that had been cut earlier, and slipped through, one by one. When they reached the safety of the trees Maglor stopped and turned, stepping back out into the open. He closed his eyes and let the rain wash over him for a moment as he caught his breath. At his side he felt Daeron. "Ready?" Daeron asked.

"When you are."

"What is your purpose?"

"To destroy the entire thing, from roof to foundation." Maglor opened his eyes and saw Daeron's eyes glittering in the dark and rain. Lightning flashed and lit his face, white beneath dark hair. Maglor grinned back and then turned all of his thought and attention to the building before them, with its labs and its weapons and the thieves and kidnappers and killers that had made it. He began to sing. After the first few words Daeron joined him, and together they wove their songs together, of breaking glass and cracking stone, of crumbling walls and foundations turned to sand.

This was not like the lullaby they had used to clear the stairs of enemies. Maglor had not heard Daeron pour such power into his song for many centuries; the air crackled with it. Lightning flashed and once it even struck the building as they began to hear, even over the rain, the scream of over-burdened steal as it twisted and failed, and the ground beneath their feet shook not only with the boom of thunder. As their song swelled, Maglor heard someone cry out behind them, as the building crumpled, like a soda can crushed in a fist, before it fell, collapsing in on itself.

When the song was over, Maglor stumbled. Quynh caught him, and he had to lean heavily on her as they made their way back to the trees. Daeron was in only slightly better shape—he had been weaker to start with, but had not expended so much of his strength before that song. Hathellas was waiting in the tree-shadows with a flask in her hand. "Drink," she ordered, handing it first to Maglor, and then to Daeron. The drink was sweet and light as the finest elven wine, and clear and fresh as spring water. Not miruvor, but something very like it. Maglor felt immediately refreshed. "Everyone, take a sip," Hathellas said once Daeron had had his share. "Is anyone hurt?"

"No," said Calwë. "Where do we go from here?"

"Back to my sister at the van," said Hathellas. "This way. Follow me!"

"But it's pitch dark," Nile protested as Hathellas began to go deeper into the woods.

"Here." Maglor pulled one of the crystal lamps from his pocket. It was the cracked one, and so not as bright as the rest, but this close to the compound that seemed the wiser choice. He held it out, and Nile took it, her eyes going wide, shining in its clear and bright light.

"Hurry!" Hathellas said. "There may still be soldiers who escaped the collapse!"

Quynh kept a hold of Maglor's arm as they plunged back into the wood, and after a few minutes she wrestled his bag away from him; he had not even noticed how heavy the palantír was until its weight was gone. "Hathellas, do you remember the way back?" he asked.

"Of course I do!" she said over her shoulder. "Hurry up! Watch out for bears!"

The rain continued to fall heavily as they scrambled up muddy slopes and stumbled over stones and roots, though after a while the lightning and thunder passed on, and the wind lessened. They met no bears, because no self-respecting animal would have been out in that weather if they could be holed up in a warm and dry den instead. It seemed to Maglor that the hike back to Radoriel took far longer than the hike from her to the compound, but perhaps that was only weariness and discomfort, and not Hathellas losing her way. A Woodelf in the wood did not get lost, even on the darkest of stormy nights.

At last they came to the gravel road and the clearing where the van sat, its lights on and the engine running. Radoriel dropped out of a tree as Hathellas emerged from behind it. "You made it!" The sisters embraced. "Is everyone here?" Radoriel scanned their faces, and her smile was bright and wide. "And what's this?" she exclaimed, reaching for the shining gem in Nile's hand.

"They were stealing treasures as well as people, it seems," said Hathellas. "But we can speak more later."

"Yes, of course. Everyone in!"

They piled into the van. There were fewer seats than people, so Maglor ended up on the floor bracing himself against a seat and the wall as Radoriel drove rather more recklessly than he would have liked. "It's raining and we are on a mountain!" he protested as she took a sharp turn so quickly that he almost thought the van lifted onto two wheels for a moment.

"I know!" Radoriel replied. "Isn't it delightful?"

"I hope you didn't rescue me only to kill me when this thing goes over a cliff," Daeron said sourly. Radoriel laughed. It was not reassuring.

But at last they made it down the mountainside and she slowed to a more reasonable pace. The rain began to let up as well, so that it was only a light shower when they pulled up in front of the cabin where Lumorn waited. He had towels and fresh clothes laid out, and both coffee and tea in the kitchen. Both Radoriel and Hathellas did not wait to change from their dripping clothes to embrace him, in spite of his protests. Before long they were all only slightly damp rather than soaking wet, and gathered around the dining room table with mugs in hand, and the things they had rescued from Turralba spread out before them. The Fëanorian lamps shimmered in a small pile at one end of the table, beside the rings and bits of gem or gold. Maglor reached out and picked up a brooch of silver, in the shape of an eagle and set with a gemstone green as spring grass. He could feel the power within it. "Elessar," he said, marveling at it. "Where did they find this, I wonder?"

"Perhaps the same place they found the palantír," said Radoriel.

"What is it?" Nile asked, reaching out for the orb. She had it in her hands and was peering into its depths before Maglor could say a word of warning. Everyone watched as her gaze was drawn deeper and deeper. Then she gasped and dropped it. It hit the floor with a heavy thud before rolling away. Nile's face had gone grey.

"What did you see?" Calwë asked as Hathellas picked up Nile's mug to press it into her hands.

"Fire. And—and hands? Like someone else was holding it? But they were burning too."

Maglor sighed. Daeron said, "It is the Anor-stone, then. Not the Orthanc-stone, or Elostirion."

"The Elostirion-stone was taken west by the Ringbearers," said Maglor.

"Was it? I did not know that."

"Can someone please explain what any of that means?" Andromache asked.

Maglor left it to the others to explain the Seeing Stones, as he picked up the bits of jewelry and gemstones to examine. They were merely gold and stone, as far as he could tell, though a few of the rings had strange markings. Someone had been trying to create things of power, but they had not been successful. As he turned one of the rings over in his fingers Lumorn asked him, "It was said that Fëanor made the Seeing Stones. Is it true, Maglor?"

"Hm? Oh, yes." Maglor looked up. The palantír was back on the table, Nile eying it warily, and Andromache looking like she wanted to try her hand at it. If anyone could wrench the palantír to her will, Maglor suspected it would be Andromache. Though even she would have a fight, he thought. "He made dozens of them, trying to get them to a convenient size—we traveled all about Aman, when we were young, and he and our mother wanted to be able to speak with us at need."

"So how did this one end up here?" Nicky asked, pointing at the palantír almost accusingly.

"Tall ships and tall kings," said Radoriel.

Three times three,
What brought they from the foundered land
Over the flowing sea?
Seven stars and seven stones,
And one White Tree.

"That is the least helpful answer you could have given," said Joe, his tone bone-dry.

"The answers are all in The Lord of the Rings, which is available to you at any bookstore," Radoriel retorted. "Do none of you read?"

"Nile's read it."

"I skimmed parts of it," said Nile. "I did see the movies, but there was only one of these palantír things."

"They came to Middle-earth by way of Númenor," said Lumorn. "Seven of them, anyway. I never heard how many were given to Númenor, or who on Eressëa did the giving."

"Well, it must have been my mother Nerdanel," said Maglor. "They would have been in her possession, then. How the Anor-stone came to be here, though, who can say? It was thought to be lost long ago, with all the others. And with this." He held up the Elessar. "Of all of this I am most glad that we recovered the Elessar."

"Why?" Quynh asked.

Maglor did not answer. He tossed the ring to the table and turned the Elessar over in his hands. There on the back, still clear even after so many long, long years, was a C glyph. He rubbed his finger over it. The raw edges of his grief over Celebrimbor and Eregion had long ago been worn to smooth melancholy, but he felt a pang of it again, standing there in the light of lamps that may also have been made by Celebrimbor himself, holding one of his nephew's greatest works. Not as great, perhaps, as the Three, but in the end a better idea and use of his skills. He sighed and lowered the brooch to the table. "It's very late," he said. "I am going to bed."

"Someone should go back in the morning to make sure it's really all rubble," Andromache said.

"But not at dawn, surely," said Hathellas. "Maglor is right—it is very late and we all should rest."

"Someone put that thing away," Nile said, pointing at the palantír. Maglor scooped it back into his bag. "Thank you. Feels like it's watching us."

It wasn't worth explaining that that was not exactly how the palantíri worked. Maglor left the bag beneath the table and retreated to the room he was to share with Joe and Nicky. There were only two beds, but it was clear from how they fell onto the first one already tangled up together that Joe and Nicky did not mind sharing, and that they had also shared far more cramped spaces together. Maglor lay back and closed his eyes, breathing out a long sigh as muscles he hadn't even realized were tensed finally began to relax. But not wholly. It felt as though there was something they had forgotten, though as he lay and thought through everything, he could not think of what it was. They had destroyed the building and hopefully most of the worst parts of Turralba with it. They had rescued Daeron and Calwë, and more things they had not even thought to look for. Yet it felt unfinished.

Maglor rolled over and pressed his face into the pillow. The rain drummed steadily on the windowpane. He turned his attention to the sound, and was, slowly, lulled into an uneasy rest.