Wall the Heart by heget

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Chapter 1

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It is the scream that draws Elu’s attention, a scream that sounds like it should come from the throat of an injured animal rather than that of an elf. The sound has echoed down from the serpentine corridors of the subterranean palace system, warped and uncanny. Elu Thingol grabs the heaviest of the rolled map scrolls from the desk in front of him, lamenting that he left his sword and armor back in his private chambers. The scroll will make a poor weapon, but the uncanny scream triggers a fear and a reflexive impulsive to defend his home.

After months of wearing the heavy steel of sword and armor, Thingol had relished the absence of the weight, the respite from the fighting. Only a week and a half after returning to Menegroth from the killing fields in the East, Elu is tired of war and death. His muscles are exhausted from the strain of desperate marches across the rough terrain of his realm, back and forth from the stronghold, of heaping the corpses of orcs in stinking hills trying to expend the rage of helplessness from Amon Ereb. The guilt of coming too late save his friend and fellow king Denethor, of being unable to save any of the Laegrim, has destroyed his sleep, and at first Thingol thinks the scream is just a walking dream, another hallucination. Images paint across the back of his eyelids. Finding the cooling bodies of Denethor and his two sons that played with Lúthien as children, bright and dear lads who Thingol had taught to use a sword, nephews in all but direct blood, their bronze swords bent and broken by Angband’s steel. Denethor’s wife, as dead as he, found on the hill, who constantly teased Thingol for being too tall and ugly, and who he had retaliated by insulting her cooking. Elu thirsts for at least one sip of her awful bitter beet stew, an irrational craving ever since he returned from the battlefield, and knows the only reason he feels nostalgic for that nasty stew is that he will never have it again. Galathon, last child of his brother Elmo, the only one of Thingol’s nephews and nieces left to him on these shores, remains no more. Thingol hates how he found the dead body, a grisly wound on Galadhon’s head that made all features of that smiling face unrecognizable, only knowing it was his nephew by the dark silver of the hair and the familiar leaf embroidery on the padded silk jerkin. Denethor’s kinswoman and Galathon’s wife, Danaril, stretched out at his side almost as if she was sleeping peacefully, the illusion broke at the ragged bite marks on her arms and the gaping wound that nearly severed her torso in two.

Elu’s first task upon returning the Menegroth and reassuring his wife and daughter of his personal safety had been to approach Galadhon’s two young sons. They had been under the care of their grandmother, Elmo’s wife Linkwînen. That painful walk to their wing of the palace made Elu feel like he was wearing a pair of those ridiculously ugly Naugrim boots, steps weighed down by heavy cast iron. A long walk, in the end unavoidable, for Linkwînen knew. His sister-in-law grew up on the shores of Cuiviénen and had lost friends and relatives to the dark riders. She has comforted Elmo when he and Elu’s parents had been taken by the hunters, stood strong during the long years Elu had been missing, separated from her oldest child by choice when the tribe was split, and lost her second child to the evil spirits during that long and dangerous period when the Eglath wandered the wild of Beleriand. Strong unbroken Linkwînen. Then came the year Thingol had to approach her when the fell false wolves hunted and tell her that Elmo, her beloved husband and Thingol’s precious brother, was among the missing and presumed dead. He had to tell that the reed girl who grew up with the youngest of the silver-haired boys that she would no longer have her companion, no longer tease a man curious as a squirrel and have his voice answer back, that her walks through forest and wading in the shallows of the rivers and lakes would be lonesome where it once was always with treasured company. That grief had bent Linkwînen harder than the day the Lindar tribe split, or the day young Eöl unexpectedly returned to them with dark eyes haunted by unspeakable events and told a sinister tale to sicken their joy of reunion with the knowledge this came only with her grandson, that her daughter and son-in-law would never return as well. Thingol had feared the grief would break his sister that day only her grandson returned, but she was well-named, for like a reed bowed by the wind Linkwînen had rebounded. She had poured her energy into helping her people, into building friendship and knowledge with the dwarves that had returned her only grandchild, and then when the Laegrim came to befriend and assist Deenthor's people. She had encouraged her last child, Galadhon, to find happiness with Denethor’s kinswoman, to start a family.

And once more, because of Elu’s failings to protect his friends and kin, he had to approach Linkwînen in the aftermath of Amon Ereb. He had to inform her of more family that would no longer walk at her side.  

She had known, for news of the grievous price victory had cost them flew ahead of Thingol’s returning army like bands of crows, and the tales of the Laegrim refugees deciding to shelter in the many halls of Menegroth instead of retreating home spoke loudly. The young boys, Galadhon’s two sons, were old enough to understand what had happened, though the elder, Galathil, had put on a brave face and did not cry, nor did he say that he wished he had been allowed to fight at his parents’ sides, and die with them. Not that he needed to; Thingol read it in the grief and guilt across his face. The younger, Celeborn, had been the one to place his hands around his grandmother’s shoulders. Taller than his bare fifty years would seem, the youngest scion of Elu’s kin had only asked if his parents had been in much pain before they died. Celeborn was wise; he knew his great-uncle had lied when Thingol answered it had been swift.

In the echoes of the unnatural scream, as Thingol kicks the maps outlining the armies of orcs that have overrun his kingdom, the lists of refugees that have poured in from all over Beleriand to crowd the halls of Menegroth, Elu connects the straying thoughts. The scream is coming from Linkwînen’s chambers, deep in the heart of palace. And it is not a wail of heartbreak.

 

Mablung is outside the door, his dwarven-made great-ax in one hand and dagger drawn from his belt in the other. He hands the dagger to Thingol in place of the impromptu weapon and slides into position at his king’s side. Together they race up the gradual incline of the twisting hallway from the map room to the private chambers of the senior princess of the Eglath. Mentally Elu tallies the last known positions of his family. Lúthien is helping her mother use healing herbs and magic skill to save injured soldiers in the improvised hospital they’ve converted from the great throne room. The two dearest stars in the king’s sky are far away from the source of the screams, and Thingol prays they will remain safe. His sister-in-law, however, is not, and the more he thinks the more he feels certain that the inhuman scream was her voice. He does not know what has forced her to make such a dreadful sound. There should be no danger in Menegroth. The cave system was built to be as secure as Melian and all of the master architects of Belegost could devise. Nothing could have breached it. “What of my nephews?” Elu pants between breaths, slamming doors in his haste.

"With the Great Lady, last I knew," Mablung answers. They have neared her chambers and there is an unsettling silence. "Let me enter first, Your Majesty. We know not what we face."

 

Entering the room, Thingol sees but does not understand what he faces.

Linkwînen’s chambers look almost - but not - as he remembers, pine chairs with thick cushions, tapestries of marsh and lake scenes on the walls, the scattered pieces of a board game on the table. Half of the pieces have been knocked to the floor, and there are long gashes in the wall hangings and furniture. It smells of blood. All of Menegroth reeks of blood with the aftermath of the war, but this scent is fresh.

Mablung is first to notice the body.

Linkwînen stares at the ceiling sightlessly. Blood puddles around her body, and Elu knows she is beyond even Melian’s skill to save. There is nothing there to call back. From the horror of her expression, the death was terrible, and there are deep bruises around her neck that match the bodice of her dress. Not that the colors matter, for there is a haze of red seeping into Thingol’s eyes. The attacker is on the other side of the room, pulling in frustration at the locked door that leads to Galathil and Celeborn’s room. The man is not who Thingol expects it to be, but then nothing about this is something he has expected.

It is Eredhon, Linkwînen’s brother, the lord of Thingol’s people who chose to make the northernmost plains their home and who had but recently arrived safely to Menegroth with the last stragglers from Mithrim’s overrun plains fleeing the Dark One’s armies.

At first Thingol thinks there must be a third assailant in the room, something or someone that attacked both Linkwînen and Eredhon, something threatening Elu’s kin who has successfully slain one but not the other. Eredhon holds a sword in one hand coated with red blood, and the blood is splattered over his face and clothes. Elu remembers giving Eredhon that sword. A gift to the Lord of Mithrim to help him protect his people from the wandering beasts like wolves, bears, and the fouler things that stalked their herds. Elu remembers commissioning every detail of that blade from the master craftsman of Belegost, of the pride and honor he wanted to bestow on Eredhon for such long and faithful service.

That sword turns towards Thingol.

The king hears Mablung shouting, watches in disbelief as he realizes there is no other person in the room. That the terrible scream had come from Linkwînen because she had just been attacked by her own flesh and blood.

Eredhon lunges for Thingol, face contorted like a wild beast.

The act of plunging the long dagger into the other elf’s chest, of smoothly avoiding the swinging sword and using his longer reach, comes unthinkingly to Elu. His reflexes are back on the battlefield, and in this moment Eredhon no longer looks like a friend from childhood, a man Elu has known longer than his own wife, a friend older than even Finu and Ing. He looks like an orc.

Eredhen crumples, dies silently, and all that Elu can feel is an overwhelming rage. Linkwînen is dead, killed by her own brother. A brother that had turned around and tried to kill him. A king attacked in his own fortress.

"What happened?" he addresses to the room, tasting the rage in his mouth like an overripe fruit.

Mablung stammers but has no answer.

 

Melian finds him, and commands the bodies be removed and treated for burial, pulls the bloody dagger from Thingol’s hand and cups the side of his face. She reads his shock and anger. “It was Bauglir, my beloved. It was his hand in this, I feel it. I do not know how or why, but I can feel the discordant violent song of the Mighty One. I did not feel his touch in Eredhon before, but I can now. I’m am so sorry.” Tears drip from her bright eyes, and Thingol remembers a distant glade in the early days of their marriage when Melian vowed to protect all of his elves from any danger. That her duty was to stop all his people’s suffering in repentance for inadvertently denying them their leader in those long years when both elf and Maia were enthralled by the spell of each other’s gaze deep in Nan Elmoth. This war, with its heavy losses, have drained her. “I failed,” Melain cries softly. “He twisted or convinced the Lord of Mithrim into one of his agents, and I did not see the signs in his mind. I did not think, too concerned with the outer wounds and stains of evil that hurt his people, to check for inner. I sent him to Linkwînen unthinking that he would do aught but give her comfort as a family member returned safe who we thought lost to the darkness engulfing us.”

"We all thought it was safe," Thingol bites, and he knows this stings his wife, that his voice is harsh, but he cannot shed the anger and shock. He is glad to have called in all his councilors and remaining family, except for Lúthien and the young Celeborn and Galathil. He had asked his daughter to take the boys to another part of the palace. They needed no more death, no more guilt.

"Why did he do it?" Thingol asks, uncertain if the him refers to Eredhon or the great foe. Or that he must treat the motives as the same.

"To kill you," Mablung replies bluntly, "and as many of the royal family as possible."

The idea of the Lord of Mithrim, one of Thingol’s most loyal lords and kinsman by marriage, trying to murder him and members of his own blood, should have been unthinkable. But the evidence is here.

"I told you about this," Elu’s nephew says in a sour voice. Eöl has claimed the darkest corner of the room. Thingol wonders why that particular nephew has joined this meeting. Eöl is aloof, tone biting with the few words he does speak to others, and deeply mistrustful of his fellow elves. Thingol has rarely interacted with the young man outside of projects involving cooperation with the dwarves and never knows what to say to him. Eöl never seems happy in Menegroth, and there is only so much of another person’s sour mood and discontent one can withstand. Except, Thingol pauses, there was the manner of Eöl’s parents, of why this nephew had been found a few years after Thingol himself. A boy in the company of the newly introduced Naugrim, telling a story of parents gone mad, of evil plots from the master of the dark hunters. Still, Eöl has always been surly, and to his shame Thingol admits privately that he does not like his niece Égnith’s only child. The boy was born during the time Thingol had been caught in the web of Nan Elmoth, and Elu has no memories of how this dark-eyed nephew of his had behaved before his parents’ death. Perhaps the boy had been likable then. Elmo had thought well of him. Well, no, Elmo had called him a little shit, but then Thingol’s youngest brother thought that of many elves.

Melian preached that it was not Eöl’s fault the manner in his parents’ death or his own personal misery. The loss of Linkwînen feels keener, for she was one of the few to coax pleasanter expressions from her grandson, or get him to open up about what had happened.

That something far too similar has caused her death, Bauglir indeed is the Balar of cruelty.

"You didn’t believe me, though. You thought I was lying."

No, Thingol says to his private thoughts, we didn’t want to believe such horror. That elves would do the work of the Dark One and not just be taken away by him. Thingol thinks of the orcs, their bodies like twisted parodies of elves.

"I told you what had happened to my parents," Eöl continues in that voice that sounds like the deep echo of rocks thudding into mud from the back of a cave. Because the young man hunches over constantly and lurks in shadows, and with the thinness of his face and quiet movements, Thingol is always surprised at the deep evenness of his great-nephew’s voice, that it does not crack like a crow or rotted wood. "That the evil things had twisted them, turned them to be like them." Eöl is snarling, and Elu does not know where the majority of the anger is directed, at them for not truly believing until now, or at the memories of what happened. Then again there is something indiscriminant in his dark nephew’s anger, a hatred for everything like an animal that had be caught too long in a hunter’s trap. Melian counseled gentleness when dealing with Égnith’s son, but the time for gentleness disappeared with the first horn blasts issuing from the black peaks of the north.

"Yes, Eöl, you were right," Thingol says testily. "It seems this too has become part of the enemy’s strategy, one that was nearly successful today." A petty piece of the king's mind takes great amusement from the shock on his nephew's face. 

Grief, Thingol reminds himself, grief has removed our armor, will make us feel and think things we shall regret.

One of Thingol’s councilors enters, Daeron at his heels. Both have grave faces. “There was another attack, in the corridors of the palace set aside for the various refugees. One of the elves from Mithrim turned and started killing the injured Laegrim that were sleeping there. Luckily one of the healers heard the noise and was able to stop the man. He won’t explain why he did it before he died, only whispered the name of the Belegruth before he died. The people are badly frightened.” Long pause. “Among the dead were injured children, and some of their surviving lords.” A longer pause. “I have spoken to some of the Laegrim; they no longer trust the safety of Menegroth. Many are planning to return to Ossiriand.”

"How many died?" the king asks and wonders why he thought his weariness would subside when he reach the walls of his home. His people no longer trust him to provide safety. As Daeron reads out the list of the dead, Thingol doesn’t hear the names. Ithilbor is the only one that stick in his mind, one of the Wise among the Laegrim, whose loss will be keenly felt. All Elu hears is his own thoughts. My people  chose me as their king, even after I had been lost to them, left them alone to face dangers without the guidance I promised them, who still chose me when I returned, and I have failed them. I have failed. I could not save Denethor. I could not save his family. I cannot even save his people. I have failed as king. I owe their trust in me to never fail again.

"What of this man - did he come with the last group of refugees under Eredhon? Was there a connection, could he have been working under his lord’s orders?" Is there any answer to this more concrete than just a shadow of the Dark One’s malice that Melian sees hanging over the world? Elu cannot swing a sword at the impressions of shadows.

"No," Daeron says, his tablet of reports in front of him like a shield. "The man was from a different group of Northern refugees, from the group fleeing from the plains north of Dorthonion. They never spoke to each other during their time here."

The news brings the opposite of comfort.

"Can we tell friend from foe?" Thingol demands, "know for sure who has gone over to the side of the enemy?" He stares directly at Melian, looks into the light of her eyes that usually burn as bright as the memory of the Two Trees.

"I thought I could," the Maia answers in a soft voice, looking at her fingers that twist among themselves like so many serpents each trying to escape one another. "I thought Eredhon was truthful in that he had managed to evade Bauglir’s hand, that he would bring no harm to anyone."

"And Linkwînen and others paid for our mistake."

"You are too harsh, my husband," Melain says, but he brushes it off.

"No. I was not harsh enough. I was naive, and thought no enemies could come to us in our home. That rats could not sneak behind our doors. I have been too trusting; I ignored the warning of my own kin," and here he nods towards Eöl, who looks up startled from his own dark corner, private personal nightmares gnawing at the young sword-smith’s mind. "I thought all our enemies would come in foul shapes, would look like wolves and orcs. I thought that an elf could not hurt another elf. And now my kin and my people have died for that folly.”

Elu remembers Cuiviénen and how his first home had not been safe from Bauglir’s attacks until the Belain had come and set guards and wards to stop the hunters. Power was needed to chase away the hidden agents of Bauglir, power that he did not have.

Eredhon had been family, had been a dear friend. The elves of Mithrim had been his, had taken Thingol as their king, but now they had turned against him, turned against his people. Who else had fallen over the spells of the Black Foe? Could he trust that all of the planned treachery had been played out, all the agents killed? Were there still more, hiding among the scared and injured? Eöl had spoken of how his own parents had tried to murder him, to drag him to Angband and pledge allegiance to its terrible lord. Thingol and Melian had spoken in confidence to the old Naugrim that had found and rescued Eöl, and the stunted bearded man had collaborated the tale, recounted how the dwarves had found the boy with broken arm and gibbering fear, that his parents with eyes like dead fish had done this to the boy.

Eredhon’s eyes had looked normal, until the moment Thingol had run the blade through. Then the eyes had changed. Dead fish. Soulless. But until then, he could not have seen any change. When Elu greeted Eredhon at the bridge over the Esgalduin, the lord of Mithrim had clasped Thingol’s arm in friendship and fealty, had looked Thingol square in the face and whispered his relief of freedom from fear, spoke of the long and dangerous journey hiding behind bands of marching glamhoth, always running from the forces of the Great Death. Had even then Eredhon been plotting murder?

The uneasiness and fear churns in Elu’s gut. He knows he must make a decision, that the safety of all his people rests on him. He must inform Eredhon’s son that came to the safety of Menegroth when the first orcs appeared and explain why his father is dead, and his aunt, to look at that face and not wonder if he should fear his own subjects.

To bear the burden of grief and the dead, and yet let none of the responsibility to the living fall from his shoulders.

Thingol runs the coarse fabric of a funeral shroud through his fingers. It had been brought out for the dead, stitched like most things by Melain’s perfect hands. The grey cloth is almost the same shade as the northern cloaks, but the texture is the difference between a pearl and a piece of limestone. Eredhon had been a weaver, one of the most skilled at interlacing the reeds in those first days of Cuiviénen, had taught the skill to the Tatyar friends of Elu. Had things been simpler back then, or only the memories seem so? He closes his eyes and sees Linkwînen and his baby brother Elmo walking along the shoreline of the great lake, draped in thick cloaks of rushes, laughing and swinging their hands, happy and freshly wed. The memory of his little brother and his perky wife is no longer a wellspring of happiness. Declaring that Linkwînen has reunited with her husband in the Halls of the Judge after a long and cruel separation is not comforting, though Thingol feels it should be. Linkwînen is dead, killed where she should have been safe by the hand of someone she trusted and loved.

"No," Elu says, his voice sounding as cold as the winds of northernmost Mithrim even to his own ears. "We cannot chance it. The lives and safety of all our people are most important; we cannot put them at risk. We allowed the refugees from areas controlled by Bauglir in, and the malice of the enemy followed. We trusted them, and our sister paid for our folly." One day, Elu thinks, in the endless stretch of time, he will face his brother who had never lost faith in him, repaid all of Elu’s mistakes and disappointments with unwavering loyalty and love, face Linkwînen who Elu had promised to keep safe, and had lost her all her children, allowed her to die in terror in his own halls. He must be strong. He must do the necessary cruelty. Or else he can never look his ghosts in the eyes.

Melian gently pulls the funerary cloth out of his hands. In a soft voice, her eyes shining brightly divine, she says she has an idea. She speaks of a Girdle.

 

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Chapter End Notes

Notes on Terms:

• Laegrim is Sindarin for the Nandor or Green Elves.
• Bauglir "the Constrainer" and Belegruth "Great Death" are alternate Sindarin terms for the Dark One or Great Enemy, as Morgoth was the name first bestowed on Melkor by Fëanor and thus would be impossible in Beleriand at this time.
• Belain is the Valar.
• The glamhoth is the "din-horde" - the armies of orcs and other dark forces.
• Though it is unclear what the original Sindar inhabitants called their land before the Noldor arrived, I've used Mithrim to avoid confusion, and at least it is a Sindarin term and not adapted from an original Quenya name like Hithlum - Hísilómë.
• The names of OCs:  Danaril is a feminine form of Dan, Eredhon - "Seed-Brother", Égnith - "Thorn-sister". Linkwînen is primitive elvish/proto-quenya for reed/hyacinth + wet/water (thanks, Elleth!) As she started off in my various Cuiviénen stories, I never got around to modifying her name.

Plot Notes:

aka The Manchurian Agent of Menegroth

Chapter 10 of The Silmarillion, “Of the Sindar”, makes me teary-eyed for the words 'Amon Ereb' in a way 'Nirnaeth Arnoediad' never will. Of the final stand of Denethor and all his kin, of Thingol’s desperate ride to aid his fellow king only to arrive too late, and that in bitter vengeance he slew the orcs ‘in heaps’ but couldn’t return the Green-elves their king. That afterwards the Green-elves split, some retreating into secrecy deep in Ossiriand, but that many others go to Doriath and Thingol for safety. Ithilbor is a canon character, the father of Saeros, therefore I had an opening to use a canon character to identify one of these refugees. 

That when Thingol returns it is to learn how badly the war has gone for the rest of his people, Morgoth’s forces have overrun all of the north and west from the Ard-Galen and Hithlum and Dorthonion all the way down to the Falas, and only an enclave of Círdan’s people are still standing. So this image speaks to me, of the king of all the elves of Beleriand gathering as many survivors as he can into the safety of Doriath, and Melian setting a protective Girdle, this enchantment that somehow holds out where the even Valar couldn’t, and that this land stays safe and is never overcome by Morgoth, that the refugees inside its borders have peace.

I craved stories about the formation of the Girdle and the decision to go with that plan. Eventual wrote it myself.

 

As for the “Manchurian Agent in Menegroth” aspect, a quote from The Silmarillion that I thought always had untapped plot potential was this:

“But ever the Noldor feared most the treachery of those of their own kin, who had been thralls in Angband; for Morgoth used some of these for his evil purposes, and feigning to give them liberty sent them abroad, but their wills were chained to his, and they strayed only to come back to him again. Therefore if any of his captives escaped in truth, and returned to their own people, they had little welcome, and wandered alone outlawed and desperate.”

Mind-controlled agents replanted back into the population to cause mayhem and assassinations is a common trope in SF and fantasies series, one that can have a lot of variations and explanations for both the mechanics behind it and how other characters react and try to deal with or defend against. Plus a good failed assassination attempt makes good drama.

Also this ties into my ideas for part of Eöl’s backstory, why he would shun the crowded confines of Menegroth and prefer the company of dwarves to other elves, his pathological need to know where those he loves are and controlling nature.

On those various Sindar family ties left vague by Tolkien, I have a family tree I use in all my fics. Elmo, the mysterious third brother of Elwë and Olwë, is for a few reasons my favorite footnote character in Tolkien. Linkwînen is what I've christened his unnamed wife, Eredhon her brother (the OC is name-dropped in The Smell of Raindrops and Lightning as well), and Galadhon is Elmo’s son and - according to all but the last version of history of Celeborn - the father of both Galathil and Celeborn, grandfather to Nimloth and Celebrían. Copying a trend that shows up in Tolkien’s family trees where an onscreen male character has in the family trees mention of two older sisters (Denethor II and Imrahil, Tar-Menedur and Tar-Súrion), I gave Galadhon two older sisters: Ilsë who goes with Olwë to Valinor and Égnith who stays to search for Elwë. As for Galadhon’s unnamed wife, I adopted the idea from Marne’s fics that she was a kinswoman of Denethor. Thus, while not considered a prince and leader of the Green-elves, Galathil unlike his younger brother would go live in Ossiriand with his mother’s people instead of Menegroth. Thus Nimloth would grow up in Ossiriand and meet and fall in love with Dior Eluchil.

Also, when it says that all of Denethor's kin died with him at Amon Ereb - and yet Dan/Lenwë did not accompany his son across the Blue Mountains, leads me to believe Denethor had a wife, children, and siblings at least. This also made me wonder if Lúthien grew up with any of her fellow princes and princesses - and if there might not have been tentative ideas of marriage and alliance cut short by the war...

(And once I have this extended Sindar family, the question becomes when and where I kill them off.)

 

Now in History of Middle-earth 12 The Peoples of Middle-earth, the essay “The Problem of Ros”, which much of the content was rejected or revised, does have a footnote explaining how one of the numerous reasons Thingol disproved of Lúthien's surprise secret boyfriend has to do with Beren’s accent:

This was of course the native tongue of Beren, lineal descendant of Beor the Old. He spoke Sindarin after a fashion (probably derived from North Sindarin); but his halting and dialectal use of it offended the ears of King Thingol … He [Thingol] had small love for the Northern Sindar who had in regions near to Angband come under the dominion of Morgoth, and were accused of sometimes entering his service and providing him with spies. The Sindarin used by the Sons of Feanor also was of the Northern dialect; and they were hated in Doriath.

However the published Silmarillion states clearly that after the Dagor Bragollach:

“The most part of the Grey-elves fled south and forsook the northern war; many were received into Doriath, and the kingdom and strength of Thingol grew greater in that time, for the power of Melian the queen was woven about his borders and evil could not yet enter that hidden realm.”

How mistrusted can it be if a few hundred years later the Northern Sindar are pouring into Doriath? Especially when Thingol's Ban is motivated by protecting the Sindar and their culture, especially those living in the north, and he is obeyed even when no longer their direct overlord. The idea of a great divide and lasting mistrust between Thingol and the elves of Doriath toward the Sindar of Northern Beleriand just doesn’t hold water. Thingol as king of the Sindar, with a vested and almost paternal interest in protecting them and their rights, even when he knows he doesn't have the strength and reach to safeguard every one, fits what is presented in canon more than a distant king that hates and rejects a portion of his people.

Still, the idea of there being a germ of distrust or dislike beyond that of a great cosmopolitan cultural center for the provincial backwoods country, especially coupled with the idea of these secret unwilling agents released by Morgoth, does present a story opportunity. There is no direct statement how long the period was between the first unnamed Battle of Beleriand and the Second Battle Dagor-nuin-Giliath, though it’s in the same Valarin year. Many Sindar could have been captured by Morgoth in that year, and all it would take is one infiltrating the safety of Menegroth for the naturally suspicious and over-protective mind of its king to decide prudence trumps hope and leniency. Thingol’s great fear, when Beren appears inside the borders of Doriath having inexplicably bypassed the Girdle, is that the mortal is in-league or under the spell of Morgoth. So, what happened to cause this fear?