Release from Bondage by heget

"Half my life I have waited to come home, and for what? Mockery and disregard."

The chance to travel home and see a father, mother, sister, and uncles he had not in three and a half centuries had blinded Faron. His hopes had been so strong and foolish, but the reunion disheartening, blood-kin dismissive and angry, and the cost higher than Faron could have ever imagined.

The trip to Brithombar was the last time Faron felt something that approximated freedom. The wooded highlands of High Faroth had made for pleasant travel. Faron remembered that as they travelled he sang a song by Loremaster Daeron that described that region in summer with such beauty as to gild the leaves. In Angband, he no longer knew the words of the song or could recall why the highlands inspired beauty. Nor could he remember most of his companions on that journey. Little Ereinion had been younger than Faron had been when separated from his own father. A dark-haired princeling bundled in furs, jewels, and fine silk clinging to his aunt, the boy spent the journey leaning over his saddle to ask Faron in an excited voice if he had been nervous when he left home and would he enjoy living by sea. Faron could not answer from both bitterness and ignorance.

Never in the right place, Faron knew, surrounded by the wrong companions, by the wrong wolves.

Like a snake biting its tail Faron returned home in this strange echo of why he had left. The young Noldor prince sent away from the frontlines of the war depended on the alliances which King Finrod had helped to brace, which Faron had been made into one of its bricks. Círdan had sent the last son of his most powerful vassal inland to the new Noldor allies to offset the growing dissention that came with wild rumors of Kin-slayings and dark exile, crafting a boy somewhere between symbol and hostage and ward. Faron’s father had been the most vocally opposed, most unwilling to work with Noldor and allow King Thingol’s ruling that for the Kinslaying most Noldor had bitterly atoned. Thus Faron was sent to the most acceptable of the newcomers, Prince Olwë’s grandson, to the new city that had their king’s blessing. In hindsight Faron wondered if his return-welcome would have fared better had he be sent to Menegroth, for even then he would have been just as much an outsider, divided from the sea, his words grown strange and footsteps balanced for stone and branches. Ten years after the Dagor Bragollach, Faron finally returned to the walled seaside city of his birth and found himself adrift on unknown currents. Longing did not stop Faron’s mother from being a face that did not match the one he remembered, or make his sister’s laugh less familiar than Lady Finduilas’s smiles. His uncles grim and joyless were not the men that played and sang in his memories. Everyone smelled too strongly of salt and fish. They grimaced at the cut of his clothes and the weapons he bore and doubted aloud if he knew what it was to hear the music of running water under the stars. Infrequent letters and name-day gifts had not undone centuries of separation. When Faron and Iessel stood before one another once more, they found it hard to embrace as kin. At that uneasiness Faron knew his father was right, that his long years in the Hidden City had turned into one of the Noldor, who distanced from any former ties of family instead of following the example of the Edhil.

And then the messenger had come from Nargothrond with a tale of the coup by Lords Celegorm and Curufin, of King Finrod’s abdication over the outlaw Beren, choosing to aid the last Lord of Ladros, son of the man who had saved the king and Aglar and himself in the Fens of Serech.  His king had joined the mortal Beren on a dangerous quest with only a few companions who the messenger could not name. Faron knew who they were, knew long before he rode back through the hidden door on the west bank of the Narog River in a furious panic. If King Finrod had appointed Lord Orodreth as steward -and yet it was not his men from Minas Tirith that greeted Faron at the gate, but men who with scornful glares and unsheathed Tirion-forged steel wishing to turn Faron away if not for Lord Gwindor’s timely intervention- then Edrahil had gone, and Captain Heledir with him. Ten men had gone with King Finrod and the mortal Beren, ten out of the thousands of the Hidden City, and Faron had not been present to be one. Loyal guardsmen and rangers with whom Faron slept beside in the barracks wing and patrolled with for years had gone: young Ethir from the willow region of the south, Tacholdir who taught him to read tengwar, Bân and Fân with their oversized swords and incomprehensible inside jokes, pig-headed young Gadwar who secretly pined after Gwindor’s niece, old Arodreth who knew the tasks of turning men into rangers, newcomer Consael whose gentle sister had the skilled hands of a healer, and of course Aglar. Faron’s companions had gone, his fellow rangers, his direct superiors, his friends, his king. Faron had abandoned them, or they him. His mind could not decide, but his body knew he needed action. High summer was now the turned leaves of autumn, and no word had yet come of their fates. Nor was anyone, it seemed, willing to investigate. Gadwar’s brother, handsome white-clad Galuven, stopped Faron before the armory, dragged him back to Lord Gwindor’s chambers while lecturing the entire time about duty, foolishness, hopeless causes, and civil responsibilities, and Faron had called them both cowards. He almost called them traitors, especially Galuven who had been with his brother Gadwar in the Fens of Serech and owed the Lord of Ladros his life as well. In Angband, cringing fearfully before the orcs, afraid of defiance’s repercussions, Faron forgave Galuven for staying, rescinded too late his taunts of coward and traitor.

Gwindor bolted the door, glancing down the tunnels to see if anyone had followed, before nodding to Galuven to release him. “Prince Orodreth needs us,” said Lord Gwindor, and Galuven in his pompous voice echoed him with more words on the needs of the city, of the lawful charge set by the King to protect his city and rally behind Prince Orodreth as steward, to win back control of Nargothrond from the former lords of Himlad.

Faron cared not.

He should have gone with the king, and died with Aglar in the dungeons.

Gwindor understood, had seen Faron’s self-loathing for what it was long before he did, and knew Faron’s ties to Nargothrond were bound through a singular friendship. Galuven believed in institutions of rule and the protection of the majority. Gwindor’s personal loyalties were still in the Hidden City. Faron’s were languishing in the dungeon that Sauron had made of Tol Sirion, though no confirmation had yet come of King Finrod’s capture. Only Celegorm and Curufin with those personally loyal to them were permitted to scout the plains outside Nargothrond. “We are watched,” hissed Gwindor. “And any actions we might take would be stopped and labelled treason by the ones that think themselves rulers now. The former lords of Himlad are looking for an excuse to imprison us, or strip the few of us loyal to Prince Orodreth from all positions of authority and replace with their own lackeys. We two are the senior-most officers of the rangers left, and you, now that Captain Heledir and Arodreth have left. Faicandil is their man, and the new stable-master. You are watched, Faron, and will be stopped. They know who you are, who your closest companion was, who your father is. The people have grown heartsick of loss thanks to the Bragollach, and that fear was played upon. Now they are mistrustful of the strength of our secrecy and our arms, our courage and our cause. No one wants the soldiers away from the city where their swords are not visibly between them and the threat of orcs, the rangers away from our borders where they might draw the attention of Angband, and the former lords of Himlad do not trust those swords or rangers out of their sight, fearing some counter-treason. They are suspicious, as ever they were before, and will tear Nargothrond apart in civil war between those with any loyalty to the House of Finarfin and themselves, and use this fear of violence against us.” Gwindor spoke with the voice of an older man, as Captain Heledir or Steward Edrahil might have. The fear he spoke of that paralyzed the people of Nargothrond infected him as well, though it burrowed into the heart with a different guise, and settled into Faron as well. It tasted of well-meaning caution, the unsteadiness of green troops, of petrifying guilt that lashed outward so the thorns did not dig so deeply into host flesh, and under all the lingering echoes of Thu’s fear-inducing cloud on the survivors from Tol Sirion, tendrils of what would be perfected as the Black Breath.

The acceptance of Gwindor’s words dropped cold and heavy in Faron’s soul. He could not leave the city to go after King Finrod, could mount no rescue. He was no High King to ride out alone in courageous fruitless challenge. He had no desire to waste his life, to die unmourned in a hopeless war, and Faron was enough his father’s son to scoff at any value placed on a Noldor jewel.

Arodreth died, and Captain Heledir of the kingfisher-quick smiles. Werewolves fed on the bones of Ethir and Tacholdir. Loyal Edrahil, steward of Nargothrond, would never see the Hidden City again, nor his nephew. No more letters came to Bân’s sweetheart in Doriath or ever would. Only three knew when Fân died, watching helplessly as Draugluin’s spawn did what a fever could not. Sweet Faelineth in the healers’ wing of Nargothrond whispered futile prayers to the Valar for her brother and her newly-wed husband, and Faron avoided the caverns that led to the healers or their storerooms. He could not face her questions about Aglar. His stalling tactics were no more sustainable than the teetering tensions that truly ruled Nargothrond, but the outside break came the day that Galuven dumped all his jewelry into the underground pool beneath the kitchens. Faron watched the older man pull rings from his fingers and chunk his arm bands and bracelets into the pool, his handsome face bloodlessly pale, whispering of nightmares and his brother’s name. Even once his wrists were bare of metal, Galuven rubbed at the flesh as if expecting blood. Spooked, Faron fled to the upper levels in time to hear that the lords Curufin and Celegorm had found Princess Lúthien, captured her, and brought her to the city. The former lords of Himlad and rulers of Nargothrond in all but name kept anyone from helping the princess. Faron never spoke to her or heard her pleas to rescue Beren, Finrod, and their companions, though he questioned Gwindor and even had the courage once to speak to Finduilas to learn if the lady was allowed to visit her cousin in confinement. A sad shake of blonde curls and a stony glare across the vaulted hall to where Celegorm nursed a bruised jaw and complained of his besotted dog answered that. Then came the morning when it was discovered that Princess Lúthien had escaped Nargothrond, slipping pass any pursuit with the assistance of the very hound they had used to guard her. Galuven had laughed, the first time Faron heard Gadwar’s pompous and serious brother laugh, the sound bordering on the hysterical as he rubbed his wrists in his strange new tic. Such mockery was kept away from the knowledge of Lords Curufin and Celegorm, but the simmering resentment and mistrust that Prince Orodreth and those loyal to his house cultivated from the seeds that Luthien's unexpected arrival, unjust treatment, and unconventional departure had planted were starting to root. It was the careful campaign of Faron's obnoxious smirks, whispers from Lady Finduilas's solar, the pointed way in which Prince Orodreth dictated romantic letters to his wife still in Brithombar, and Gwindor's airy compliments to the empty-handed patrols that returned soon after they would set out.

Silence of a sort ruled Nargothrond until the freed prisoners from Tol-in-Gaurhoth hobbled back to the Hidden City with their reverent tale of how Princess Lúthien and the hound Huan defeated Sauron and pulled down his tower. Less palpable was the history of endured horrors written across their bodies and every flinch and dead-eyed stare, the former prisoners telling of what had happened to the twelve taken alive by Sauron and how only one living body was pulled from the pit, of the tall cairn they helped to build for Finrod’s body, placing the bones that could be found of his ten companions around him. The former prisoners were sequestered quickly when they reached Nargothrond’s borders, and only their desperately desired and despaired of stories rebuffed the standing policy to refuse contact or reentry for any ex-slave of Morgoth. But Gwindor and Prince Orodreth saw the opportunity of their arrival and all the tales they carried, and ordered the rumors spread immediately against the wishes of Celegorm and Curufin. Like the muddy runoff mounting behind the dam, the anger was dark, opaque, and red. “Gather everyone in the city and bring them to the throne room. There are proclamations I must make,” Prince Orodreth ordered. Lord Gwindor, dressed in full armor whose floral engraving could not hide the steel, politely suggested all troops whose loyalty was trusted to do the same - and rouse the former lords of Himlad to attend this meeting without allowing them the opportunity to arrive equally so garbed if possible. Discretely, though, as to not unduly alarm, and Faron hooked his bowstring and tucked two arrows into his finest belt. Finally Galuven’s hands went perfectly, horribly still.

When everyone in Nargothrond was in the throne room, and the former lords of Himlad questioned the purpose, did Prince Orodreth speak.

When Prince Orodreth’s speech was over, he was King and not merely lord or acting steward, and the former lords of Himlad had no guest-right or power in Nargothrond.

Faron volunteered as one of the rangers watching the pair ride away humiliated and furious, fingers on the arrows at his belt, half-hoping the day of mercy would end before the riders escaped the borders of the Hidden City. He could call it vengeance and maybe find a modicum of satisfaction. It would not unmake Faelineth a widow or bring back Galuven his brother. Faron wondered if it would even please his father and the shade of Uncle Tolon long dead on a distant shore. But King Orodreth demanded honor and clemency, to act in a manner that would not shame King Finrod’s memory or curse his people further. Faron’s guilt over Aglar and his former king could not overwhelm his loyalty to that honor. But his fingers brushed against fletching.

Commands forbade any ranger of Nargothrond as aggressor in open conflict. No one warned Faron of watchers and treason, and yet he was once more forbidden to leave, once more the hostage never named such. Now he no longer had even the sole comfort of a dear friend to chase the darkness from the caves or the hope of a warm reception at the sea. An arrogant boy desperate for glory and vengeance and escape, he latched onto the news of the Union of Maedhros.

King Orodreth, after much bargaining, allowed Gwindor to lead a company to join the alliance in what would be the fifth great battle of Beleriand, though only under the banner of High King Fingon. Not that it mattered to Gwindor or Faron among his men. The banner they brought in their hearts to the thirsty plain outside Angband’s black gates was green with a silver harp and a burning torch. The king they pledged to fight for had a name given in honor by the dwarves, a king they had abandoned, a king they had loved. The knights of Nargothrond wanted vengeance for their dead and enough orcish blood to rinse away the shame of standing back.

He should have died in Tol-in-Gaurhoth, with Aglar and his king. He was in the wrong dungeons, surrounded by the wrong wolves.

Faron knew it would be best not to think of the start of the battle, of the moment Gelmir was led from the gates, of the taunting lies shouted before commencing that display of torture and execution. In many ways the words haunted Faron most, the false hope they had given him. Gelmir who everyone thought lost in the Bragollach had survived long enough to be captured, and if Angband had many more prisoners whom everyone thought dead, then Gwindor and Faron and the soldiers of Nargothrond had to rescue them. It would have been their redemption for failing to save their king and friends. Faron remembered the wild, ridiculous hope for other survivors, that maybe someone else had not burned in the fires of the Bragollach, that while it was undeniable that Aglar was dead perhaps his brother, Craban, was not. Maybe even one of Faron’s brothers, all these long years mourned by his mother, needed not. Such a terrible fool’s hope was the spur that dug into his war-horse’s flanks as Faron charged the iron gates of Angband.

Faron remembered Gwindor screaming his brother’s name, and the name of Galuven’s brother, and their dead. Faron was also screaming that morning. He screamed until the blow came that should have killed him.

One of the wargs kicked in its sleep, jarring Faron from his memories. He woke, no names upon his lips, no chains around his wrists. The memories of home were fading away, the faces gone.

Still the thought that he should not be here, that if his curse was to face torment then this was not the right one, followed him whether he slept or was awake. Wargs were not Sauron’s wolves, and no stone of Angband had ever been part of an elven fortress. He should have died beside Aglar and his king in the dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth under the teeth of its werewolves, not in Angband surrounded by the wargs and eaten by fear without death.

Chapter End Notes

This two-part section was heavily inspired by The Leithian Script, especially the idea of Edrahil as a relative of Nerdanel. Again, most OCs mentioned are expies from ASoIaF or other series, Aglar the most obvious. Arodreth should also be familiar.

Edhil = Sindarin term for 'Elves'. HoMe XI clears up that while there was ill-feeling enhanced by arrogance and resentment between the Noldor and Tatyar Avari, the Sindar had strong kinship feelings with the Lindar Avari and Nandor as one people.