Release from Bondage by heget

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"We flew."

Faron found Faelindis at the mouth of the leftmost tunnel that entered the lower gallery. She was burdened by a load of thin gorgets, half of which she had looped around her arms so the frail maiden could carry all the pieces of armor. For the last few work shifts her task had been to bring finished armor pieces from the forges to the stockpiles. Sometimes Faelindis would hide next to the stack of metal curiasses and wait for Faron so they could share a meal of the white cave root, comparing what they knew of the advancing army. That pile had been the first place Faron had checked. Back in the gallery, one of the overseers was barking to the orcs milling around to start suiting up for battle, and Faron knew the last place Faelindis needed to be was surrounded by orcs keying themselves up for a desperate fight. “Leave those,” he hissed. He tugged at her arm, spilling the metal gorgets to the ground, and pulled her back into the tunnel. The ricochet of metal on stone was lost in the high din of orcs demanding orders and the locations of their troops.

“Faron, what are you doing?” Faelindis asked, her steps unsteady as she twisted back to stare at the discarded pile of metal rings. “Please, let go. We’ll be in trouble. The overseer will hurt us. I have to return those to their rightful spot or the overseer will whip me. He promised to. And you will get in trouble for talking to me. Faron, don’t. Stop, please, before they hurt you.” Her second hand drifted over to the hand that was tugging at her wrist, gently feeling the empty spaces where the flaying knives had removed his fingers.

 

“Quiet before they notice us,” Faron said, and Faelindis started to cry. Her sobs were not loud; the howling wargs and shouting orcs masked the sound, but Faron wanted to scream in frustration. “No longer safe back there,” he hissed. He had already dragged her halfway up the tunnel to the higher gallery, and the echoes of marshalling orcs dogged behind their feet. The hammers of Angband’s forges were beginning to peter out, and the new hammerfall sounds of orcs bellowing the start of their fighting chants replaced it. The drumbeats of Doom, Faron thought, and noticed how rapid was his heartbeat in comparison. Faelindis wept, but her hands griped his tight, and she followed him through the tunnel without further compliant.

Their passage through the tunnels was not completely unnoticed by other slaves and orcs, though the orcs were mostly preoccupied by disjointed summons and the screeching call. None made moves to halt or question Faron or found Faelindis’s tears remarkable enough to warrant notice. Yet. “Taking the princess back to her cell,” Faron shouted. He hoped no one heard the panic in his voice and realized this was a buff to ward off questions or intervention.

The upper gallery teemed over with confused bodies, aimless orcs entering and exiting the wide cavern searching for their cohorts and leaders, needing that reassurance of comrades-in-arms and instructions to follow. They were not the only ones who would have appreciated such comfort.

For a second Faron considered the coffin-like cells for valuable prisoners, how seamlessly they blended into the wall of the gallery. After the battle, when the orcs rushed around to murder the last prisoners of Angband, would those cells be overlooked? Two bodies could not fit inside such small cells, and the prospect of separation from Faelindis now that he had found her was unthinkable.

He looked elsewhere.

“Where does that side-exit lead? Has it been blocked off?”

Faron’s pull was rougher than it should have been, and the ghost of guilt heightened the awareness of her skin, how he could feel its blood vessels and tendons and bird-brittle bones. A maiden pulled up from river mud, made of skin soft so that every touch imprinted bruises dark, and Faron, afraid she would wash away, had found her to be the dirt beneath his fingernails. He did not apologize for the force of his grip. Under his remaining fingers he could feel her fast-racing pulse.

Faelindis stuttered and hummed. “The Kinslayer. Maedhros One-handed, that’s the route that led to where he was displayed, hung up high on the side of the mountain.” Focusing on explaining what she remembered of overheard gossip helped Faelindis settle her nerves. Her voice steadied. “The orcs complained about that, how hard it was to carry food and check to see he was still there. There is a network of tunnels that led up to the spot, then some span of a narrow ledge. But it’s no good, the tunnels go through one of the orcs’ main halls first. The guards said so, that some of the time they were sent to check on the prisoner they would only go halfway and visit their companions or bed. Later they would lie to the overseers that they went outside. I think that’s why Prince Fingon was able to save him, because the orcs were lazy.”

Euphoric hope cooled. Faron mentally plotted the course lain by Faelindis’s explanation. If they used that route as an escape, and successfully sneaked past the living quarters of the orcs, there was no space at the final destination, only a ledge with some rusted chain and maybe a severed hand, like all they found of Gwindor when he escaped. Faron knew that path would not work. But the darkness of the small doorway beckoned. The small side tunnels of Angband, the ones that were not dressed stone widened and polished for the Balrogs and dragons to parade through, branched and twined like tree roots. And the side passage was no longer in use, not for centuries. Perhaps there was a fork in the tunnels before it looped over to where the orcs were kept.

“There,” Faron said, and was surprised at the surety of his voice.

On the far side of the large cavern with inward sloping walls, an elderly orc, perhaps not an orc at all but one of Morgoth’s captains, a lesser Maia, was shouting for the orcs to line up. He was attempting to inject some order into the milling crowd, snarling for them to forget their usual companies as the various divisions of the horde were scattered due to the panic and disorder flooding Angband. Fierce rivalries between the orc divisions had fueled many of the brawls, and to share a work crew or fighting company was more important that what passed for blood ties among the creatures. To create an ad hoc troop from random bystanders invalidated the only important ties among the orcs that was not fear of their masters or enemies. As the gathered orcs strenuously quarreled with the captain, affronted that someone not their leader was trying to force them to follow orders -and that the captain was no towering Balrog with fiery whip so no fear overpowered this orcish inclination for insubordination- Faron nearly laughed. The hateful nature that Morgoth had imbued in all his creations was aid instead of hindrance. No orc noticed Faron or Faelindis on this side of gallery. Slowly Faron tugged her over to the partially-blocked entrance to the unused access tunnel, staring at her darker eyes until a silent understanding filled them, and as the orcs shouted such charming retorts as “Who are you to order me around?” and “The White Elves take you if you try to force me to work with those shits from Cavern Thirteen!” and “I’ll gut you if you dare look at me again!” Faron climbed into the tunnel with Faelindis quick behind.

Ducking behind the pile of refuse that half-blocked the entrance, hands cupped over Faelindis’s mouth, though the gesture was pointless for the maid was as silent as him and understood the need why, Faron listened. With no change in the squabble outside, he assumed their actions continued to be unnoticed, and rising from his crouch he pulled them both deeper into the forgotten passageway.

All they needed was for this narrow side-tunnel to branch off before reaching that cavern for the orcish living quarters, and Angband was riddled with cracks in its walls, as hollow as bone or igneous stone. Fool hope or true hope, the elven thrall could not say. There were no torches or light in the tunnel once they had walked beyond the first two turns, and Faron knew Faelindis followed him only by the sound of her bare feet scuffing against the stone louder than his unbalanced steps and by the faint pressure and heat of her hands hooked around his wrist. The tunnel began to slope up, so Faelindis shifted her grip from his wrist to the frayed cord Faron used as a belt so his hands were free to brace against the walls and to pull his body up and over the rock shelf. Then he used his hand to help pull her up. The shelf wobbled under their weight, and Faron wondered if it was not some unintentional obstruction caused by the tremors and small quakes that shook Angband. Then again the orcs had a greater aptitude for navigating the dark tunnels, so perhaps such a steep step would have not hindered their tasks. The tunnel quickly narrowed after this point. There was a fine layer of dust, and coupled with the silence and darkness, it promised that this side passage had been abandoned and forgotten.

The longer the two elves climbed the fainter grew Faron’s hope that an exit before the rumor-promised hall of orc living quarters would appear, and he almost halted their climb, willing to chance hiding in the tunnel until the tremors of Angband ceased to signal its final fall. But that which was longed for did appear.

Faron could feel where the narrow tunnel branched off, a gap in the wall. No air moved through, but when he stretched out his arm he felt no resistance. “Here,” he whispered, breathing through a smile no one could see. There was no illumination in the tunnel, nor would he have chanced it, but he pulled Faelindis after him. “We’ll find our way out but yet,” he promised.

Faron would not fault Faelindis’s unspoken skepticism of that optimistic assertion, not that she voiced any doubts, for his true feelings would concur. But she patted his shoulder and did not turn back. Together they squeezed through ever narrowing passages, lost in the cracks behind Angband’s walls. Never had Faron felt more rat-like.

Sound was muffled in the dark creavses, without even the echo of the Valar’s horns, that divine sound that discarded the boundaries of the natural world to pierce through layers of corrupted stone. The rocks were oily to the touch, the floors and ceilings as uneven as the walls. On some unknown instinct Faron crawled through these fissures, hands groping to find openings to new passageways halfway up the walls or on odd corners. Some sections of the tunnel narrowed so that even as skeletal thin as they were to proceed involved a tight squeeze. Only the drive to continue climbing and the omnipresent quiet propelled him forward, even when he was positive they were circling back around. Faron was unsure if they were descending or ascending, or how long they had travelled. Often the necessity of their malnourished bodies and the long journey through uneven passages imposed a period of resting. How long these rests were until fearful urgency bade them crawl onward was as impossible to determine as the distance or spatial orientation.

A few hours or a few days, Faron could not say, yet their spelunking was nearly at an end.

For a while now Faron had felt the pull of gravity that suggested upward movement, and the rocks felt slightly chill, as if they were moving away from the great furnaces that built Thangorodrim. He had erred each time the tunnels had branched to choose the colder air. Now Faron knew on the part of faith he remembered the king labeling estel instead of amdir that they were almost free of Angband. Maybe it was the lessening pressure of Morgoth’s presence in the deep recesses of his mind, as if pond scum was being scooped out of a spring by small hands.

Behind him Faron heard Faelindis take a deep inhale of air, and when he copied her the taste of fresher air, sharp with the cold but lighter of coal dust, filled his lungs.

The tunnel opened up in a narrow crevice in the earth. Faron and Faelindis had to shuffle sidewise, scraping chests and backs against the uneven rock face, worried they might become stuck if the gully squeezed any tighter. Weak sunlight stroked the tops of their heads for the first time in decades, and they could see the sides of the crevice and how their shadows inched across the stone. Hot tears poured from the corners of Faron’s eyes, and he knew not if they were a product of stress from their escape or just relief due to daylight.

Eventually the canyon splayed out into a small mouth, hidden by the jagged stones around it. Faron wished for the freedom to scream in relief, yet knowing a battle was around him and that, while judging from the quick glance up and around them that the pair of escaped elves had emerged outside Angband in the rocky foothills to the north, they were still in Morgoth’s territory. Most siege lines were to the south, and as the rock face around them seemed deserted, nor could they see any causeways and deep craters from Fingolfin’s duel, north and its foothills was Faron’s best estimate of where they were. Awkwardly hoisting his body onto one of the taller rock spires and turning around, he saw the triple prong of Thangorodrim looming behind him, close enough that he could not see the tops of the peaks. But they were not on the slopes of the smoking mountain itself, having found by chance the underground path that led away from the fortress. Not far enough, but they had not emerged in the middle of some orc battalion. Faron and Faelindis had reached the surface after all, a feat he had privately despaired of. All they needed now was to continue walking and crawling away from Angband, and praying that their luck continued to hold and they that avoid any patrols of orcs, werewolves, or flying spies. Faron looked down at his mangled feet, at the gaps where the torturers had taken his toes. Faelindis obstructed his view by placing her hands on either side of his head and lifting it up to meet her eyes. There were fresh tears in those dark brown eyes, but for once they came from relief. The tips of her white teeth covered her cracked bottom lip, restraining a tremble. “Almost free,” Faron whispered. “Let us continue on, before any foul thing finds us. The Army of the Valar has come. Soon the Iron Crown shall fall. We need but survive ‘til then.”

The soft hands that cupped his head trembled, but the lips around those white teeth were curving into a smile.

 

 

Any steps carved into the path had the appearance of natural rock fissures, their scaling proportions irregular and oddly spaced. In all likelihood the path itself was more the intention of an escape route than a premade feature. Faron wished an escape trail, so his eyes were painting one for them. It was but another folly in a long chain of them, but the elf accepted it. His decisions had always been delusions and folly, and this last gasp to save the maid and himself from death was no different. Perhaps this was a path, and freedom at the end. Faelindis followed behind him, scrambling up and over the uneven steps. She trusted him. For that trust Faron climbed.

The air held no water and was cold enough that had it moisture a rind of ice would have settled like a thick shellac over their lips, crystalline and mummified. The wind blew against their backs, sooty with black dust off the bulk of Thangorodrim, oddly warm like cinders off a dying furnace. Faron did not turn back to look at the peaks. They were still trembling, sending the mountains around them to shake. For fifty years the peaks above Angband had smoked and belched ash and fire, but there were no eruptions at the moment, only the tremors, and any lava Thangorodrim might spew would be directed south towards the armies. So did Faron hope. The landscape north of the Iron Prison was mountainous without signs of growing things, no dead trees or animal tracks, only a fine layer of ash that covered their feet as they climbed. The only landmarks to gauge the path were near-indistinguishable stone outcroppings. Some were light gray, but most of the stone was iron-black and glossy as polished glass.

Faron could still hear the battle waged on the other side of Angband. As long as the path was taking them further from those sounds, they had hope.

The shaking of the earth was growing stronger. Faron wondered how fierce the tremors were inside Angband now, to be this violent so far away.

The foothills around Angband through which they fled were not towering high but felt greater thanks to the half-finished feeling of the cracked stones. Without a topsoil or growing plants to soften the stone, the hills looked nothing like those around Nargothrond. Objectively the hills were closer in height and shape to those around Nargothrond than what ringed Dor-lómin or would have been found amongst the tarns of highland Dorthonion. As a ranger Faron had transversed the hills of the Andram and High Faroth south of the Guarded Plain with comfort and skill. Back then he still had all his toes and boots to shelter them. He could had patrolled through those hills as any ranger of Nargothrond did, swift and surefooted and invisible. In this terrain, bleak as it was, he could still hide Faelindis and himself, and all that mattered was that they travelled in a direction away from Thangorodim. Their slow speed still worried him. Uphill, malnourished, injured, and in unfamiliar terrain, slow was the only speed Faron and Faelindis possessed.

Slow transformed into a sudden halt.

The prayed-into-being path violently dropped off at a wide chasm, the edges raw from the recent upheavals, the black stone flaking off the cliff with each seismic tremor. Clattering stone clips bounced down the steps and then fell silent as they careened down the abyss. Faron lurched back, Faelindis colliding against him. The unsteady earth beneath their feet tried to slide them towards the gaping fall. The far slide of the chasm was several feet lower, but the ravine itself was too wide to safely jump.

They needed wings to cross it.

Faron laughed, and was surprised that he could still laugh. If only one of the Great Eagles would come; an Eagle could have plucked Faron and Faelindis up in its talons and carried them away to safety. But Faron was no prince with golden harp or braided hair, and his fingers could not strum a sweet melody even if he wished. The girl in his arms was no princess either, so he knew better than to ask for Eagles to come rescue them.

Faelindis glanced behind them, her skittish eyes darting from rock to rock, waiting for the iron helms of pursuing orcs to arrive. She moaned, alternating between low groans and shrill whistles, her nails digging red rivulets into his arms. Faron looked across the chasm. Either they would stand at the edge of the ravine, waiting for the orcs to find them or the stones of Angband to crush them, or they could attempt to jump it. Faron pulled one arm away, peered down the ravine, then chose.

Objectively Faron knew he looked like a skeleton covered in skin, so thin he had become and his muscles wasted, but Faelindis was barely heavier or wider than him. He hoisted her in his arms against her last groan of startled protest. On reflex her arms tightened around his neck. Warmed by the self-satisfaction that his strength was enough to lift her body, he carried her the few steps in a blind rush towards the ledge, constricted the hold of his arms in desperate need, continued his run, and leapt.

A gust of wind flew under them as they jumped, like a giant hand holding them aloft, and their fall was almost slow and soft, almost like flying, and then they hit the black stones on the other side of the wide crevasse with a crunch. Smears of bright blood shone red against the rocks. Though he had tried to twist in the air, Faron landed with Faelindis underneath him, and he heard the snap of what was probably at least one of her ribs against him. If there had been a chance of any air in his lungs, he would have whispered apologies to her. He had not meant to land on top of her. Slowly Faron tried to turn around, to roll off the maid. His arm around her torso might have snapped as well, for it ached as if it was broken, the sharp pain instead of the fire of his other arm and legs. Faelindis had screamed twice, once as he leapt, again when they hit the far side. She was whimpering now, soft keening noises, and her fingernails were digging into his neck and back. She smelled of sweat and coal dust and blood.

"Safe," Faron finally choked out, and before he fainted away from pain he heard the first discernable words from Faelindis since he had pulled her through the access tunnel.

Her voice was soft, gentle. “Why don’t you ev-” He could not hear the rest of her question. Another apology he owed her, and though the unconscious void was for once empty of all worry or pain, he awoke to the need to learn what her question had been. He opened his eyes to find his face level with the ground, watching tiny chips of black stone dance up and down to the tremors. His body still hurt. His back was warm, though, from another body lying tight against it, and he could hear the soft exhales of lungs and feel the moth-like lightness against his ear.

“Faelindis?” he asked. “Are you awake?”

The breathing hitched. “Yes,” the maid whispered. “Yes, my name,” she cried, a wrenching sob of happiness. “Yes. Yes, I am awake.”

“What was it you were trying to say?” Faron asked. Neither of their voices rose above a whisper.

“Oh.” Faelindis giggled.

Under the Thangorodrim’s three-pronged shadow lay in exhaustion these two starved and bleeding elves, two pale streaks against the darkness of the broken wasteland, and with a giggle Faelindis brought a small piece of joy back into a place that had been bereft of such loveliness for time long beyond counting.

“You never give me a warning of what you are going to do when you try to save me. Why you named me the princess and why I needed pretend to be her. Or just now with the ledge. I am thankful. I am, Faron. But warn me. Explain.”

“Oh.”

Now Faron laughed, brief and weak and defiant towards the soul-crush of Angband. "I shall attempt to resolve that flaw of mine, and tell you all my plans," he said. His teasing made Faelindis laugh again, and Faron resolved that such a light and sweet sound should replace all her weeping. "My next plan is that we rest here for a little while. I have no strength or energy to move, I must admit." Faelindis's arms moved to embrace him from behind, her body pressing against his back. Face pressed tightly to his body for warmth, she muttered that this was a fine plan to which she had no objection.

In the gray and black bleakness of the land north of Angband, the passage of time was hard to judge, with the whistling of wind and the sounds of the battle on the other side of Thangorodim the only noise. Faron and Faelindis lay where they had landed, exhausted and dozing.

A new coldness came upon the two suddenly. The echoes of battle that were not yet distant and muffled enough to assure Faron of safety now changed in pitch and clarity. Discordant screams and clanging metal had crescendoed into a single sharp note, the portend of some dire event. Yet nothing came to disturb the two, aside from how suddenly vanished the dim sunlight. As dark as night come again was the world once more, and Faron wondered how many hours he had lain with Faelindis on the ledge unable to move to make this day so fleeting. There was a great and terrible sound, then a long period of silence in which he could hear nothing, be it his breath or hers as Faelindis pressed against his back, one leg draped over his hip and her arms encircling his shoulders.

 

Only later would Faron learn that darkness had been Ancalagon the Black arising from Angband in his awesome bulk, dark and monstrous with wings so wide as to block the horizon’s light. That the monster led the great unforeseen host of winged dragons, and the armies of the Valar had quaked in shock until Eärendil cast down the greatest of dragons, that Ancalagon the Black was vanquished as sunrise repels the night. That the tumult and destruction, the explosions and avalanches, had been Ancalagon’s impact across the three peaks of Thangorodrim. When the dragon fell, its body brought down all of Angband’s smoking crown.

By some mercy, none of the descending stone fell towards the two escaped elven prisoners.

Faron and Faelindis had been sheltered, as if by a giant and yet gentle hand of air.

Chapter End Notes

Nuance between the two terms for hope, amdir and estel, is explained in the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, but can be summed as logic-based hope versus faith.

 

Invisible Manwë cameo.

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