The Forsaken by Artaxastra

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The ForsakenV

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In the year 2174 of the Third Age

                An early spring night, and the Anduin is swollen with rain.  Snow melt from the Misty Mountains and from the Grey Mountains to the north is on its way to the distant Sea, filling the great river’s banks and sending it tumbling over them into the flood plain, drenching fields that have just begun to green.  The dwellings of Men, such as they are, are closed up against the rain.

                He had intended to follow the water downstream, hearing already the distant song of the sea in its eddies and splashes.  He always hears the Sea, everywhere he goes, anywhere there is the sound of moving water.  It runs through his dreams.

                Unfortunately tonight it is also running through his boat.  Between the torrents of rain and the high water, his boat is seriously in danger of sinking.  Maglor feels no fear.  A cold dunk in the Anduin would be unpleasant, but probably not lethal.  If he feared for his life, which he does not.  But it would ruin his harp, and he is fond of it.  It took him years to make and he has carried it three centuries.  He would miss it if it were lost.

                He dips the paddle swiftly, trying to get to the eastern bank, but the current is strong.  The rain drives down, wind blowing out of the east, the rain stinging even through his cloak.  The boat will not turn.  The wind is hard against it, and so choppy that it is splashing over the sides.  If he is driven broadside to the current it will swamp him.

                Maglor digs with all his strength, which is quite considerable, as he is a Noldo born in Valinor, but to no avail.  The Anduin is stronger yet. 

                Something dark looms as he paddles furiously – a great tree ripped from its roots by the flood, carried down the river on its merciless breast.  It’s three times the length of his boat and ten times as heavy.  The power of the current is pushing it straight toward him.  It will smash his boat, drag him under if it does not injure him fatally with its sharp, torn branches or crush him with the impact. 

                Maglor feels a rush of fear.  He is living, and while he has said often enough that he does not care if he dies, when faced with it he does.  He cares very much.  He pulls on the paddle with all his strength, turning away from the bank, toward the center of the river.  Hard over, the boat leaps forward.  Perhaps the tree will miss it.  Perhaps….

                No.  The highest branches graze it, a slap that nearly capsizes it, the downstream side dipping into icy water.  Water pours over his feet, and it is only the fastest shift of weight that prevents flipping over altogether. 

                And then the tree is past and he is struggling in the dark, the boat barely buoyant, his baggage sloshing, his ankles underwater.  He can’t fight the river like this.  In minutes this boat will sink.

                There is an island in the middle of the stream, a small one less rocky than the Carrock downstream, a low tangle of trees that dip their roots in the flood.  He can reach it – maybe.  Marshy and uninviting, but there must be some higher ground toward the middle at least.  It’s got to be better than the river.  He bends to the paddle, all his strength against the flood. 

                He’s almost swept past, but at the last moment he comes in the shelter of the low hanging branches and is out of the wind, fetching up on roots of great trees now submerged.  They catch at his boat and he can scramble out, sloshing through water that splashes to his hips as he drags the boat up among the tangles.  His breath is loud and harsh in his ears.  He drags his pack out of the boat and more importantly his harp case.  Perhaps the wood won’t warp if he can get it dry soon.  But where he’s going to get it dry on this forsaken island….

                The great trees rustle, whispering just below the level of his hearing.  They are not friendly.  They do not like creatures like him.  They do not like elves.  Some offshoot of Mirkwood, perhaps, whose borders are not but ten leagues distant on the eastern bank.  They do not act, but they whisper.  The rain drives down, nearly freezing.  The temperature is still dropping.  Soon it will be sleet.

                “I am no enemy of yours!” he says to the trees.  Their branches are swaying in the wind above, reaching out for him like grasping hands.  “I have never been.”

                She is coming, they whisper.  She comes.

                Maglor turns about.

                There is a woman standing beneath the trees, cloaked and booted against the rain.  It’s too dark to make out her features, but her voice is clear as she speaks to the trees.  “Do not harm him.”  One hand, where it rests on the bole of an enormous tree, is pale as starlight.  Elven, he thinks, not mortal Man.  A wood elf, like as not.

                “Lady,” he says, as politely as one may while having just waded out of a torrent.  “I am cast on this island by the river.  I do not mean to trespass in your lands.”

                She stands still for a moment, then turns.  “Come,” she says.  She does not wait to see if he follows.

                He does.  Whatever shelter she may offer is better than this, and better for his poor harp too.

                It’s not far.  The island isn’t large.  Once, perhaps, it was a watchtower to guard the river traffic.  Now it is a ruin that does not reach higher than the treetops, sunk so far among them that he must stoop to descend into what must once have been the tower’s cellar.  There is a strong door that she bars behind them, a hanging curtain to keep the warmth in or perhaps to keep the light from being seen.  She brushes through and Maglor follows her.

                It’s one large room below, a fireplace with bright flames, a pot of something above it that makes his mouth water.  It’s not tidy or particularly clean, with roots twining about the ceiling and a tangle of furs and blankets and quilted silks for a sumptuous bed, long ropes of onions hanging nearby, their tops braided into chains.

                “You may warm yourself by the hearth,” she says.  She lights no other lamps.

                Gratefully, he sinks down onto a stool, shedding his soaked cloak.  He has no clothes other than the ones on his back and in his pack, and all are wet through, but at least he can be rid of boots and cloak. 

                She watches as he unslings quiver and harp case, tending to the latter most urgently.  “You have no sword,” she says.

                “I do not use a sword.”  His voice is terse even to his own ears.

                “A bow.”

                “I hunt for my dinner.”

                “Ah.”  She takes a step closer, cloak swaying over the damp hem beneath it.  “A harper.”

                “I am called Durlinn,” he says.  He looks up at her, wondering why she does not take off the cloak now.

                At that she lifts the hood and lays it back.  Her hair is silver-gilt, fair as any Sinda lord, and her eyes are the same gray blue as the children of Earendil.  Her face is fine boned, her jaw a little square, more like Oropher and Celeborn of Doriath as he remembers them from long ago than like any of their later kin.  There is power about her.  It all but crackles in the air.  She is as old as they, and no less strong in ways that have never been Noldor.

                “Lady,” he says, and inclines his head at the same time he discreetly reaches for his knife with his left hand.

                “You seek refuge in the storm.”

                “Yes,” Maglor says.  “And that is all.  I shall be on my way in the morning.”

                “And how shall you pay for your supper, harper?” she asks.

                “Alas, my harp is wet,” he says.  “I cannot play tonight.”

                “Then will you sing?”

                Traditional payment for hospitality.  “If it is your wish.”  He looks up.  She is beautiful, and yet there is something strange about her, something not entirely real.  “What would you hear?”

                “The Noldolante.”

                He goes cold.  Slowly, he gets to his feet.

                “I know who you are, Son of Feanor.  I have heard of the Dark Singer who wanders sometimes in the vales of the Anduin.  Do you deny it?”

                “No,” he says, and stretches out his marred hand.  “And who are you?  Do you pursue blood-feud with me?  If so, I would have your name.”  There are Sindar enough who promised to follow him to the ends of the earth with their vengeance, others beside Oropher who is dead.

                She takes her cloak off, a gown of dark green beneath it, white hair falling to her waist starred with water droplets in the front where the rain blew in her hood.  Her eyes do not leave his.  “I have no feud with you.  And I am called the Grandmother. “

                That is no Elven name, but a nightmare instead, a dream of dark places and whispered stories that no one dares speak by daylight.  Some fugitives spoke it long ago, tormented souls who claimed to have escaped the dungeons of Thangorodrim, making their way to Himring only to be driven out again.  After Maeglin’s treachery, none of the Returned could be trusted.  The Shadow lay upon them, and upon all who encountered them, whether they succored them or drove them forth.

                She is watching him, and her chin rises.  “I see you have heard of me as well.”

                “Yes,” he says.  He will not name her.  He will not name what she must be, but this he knows: all he sees is illusion.  The Sindar are skilled with such; Luthien was the greatest but not the only of her kin to master that craft.  She seems beautiful, high and fair.  What is beneath must be terrible indeed.  Grandmother they called her, and Mother of a Hundred, when fugitives or spies came to Himring long ago.

                She spreads her hands.  “And what will you do with that knowledge?  Run straight to the Master in Dol Guldur?”

                “Much ill has been said of me and of my kin,” Maglor says, “And much of it is true.  But no one has ever said that we served the Enemy.” 

                “That is so,” she says thoughtfully.  “Always you fought him.  I do not know what this world would have been if the Noldor had not come.”

                And that surprises him out of care.  The Sindar have said again and again that it would have been better if the Noldor had remained in the West.  But then she is no Sinda.  “You say that?”

                She turns away, deliberately giving him her shoulder if not her back, taking off the cloak to hang it by the door.  He cannot see her face, not even its illusion.  “I heard him singing.  Your brother.”

                Maglor flinches.  He does not need to ask which brother she means. 

                “It is one of the first things I remember, after.  It penetrated the haze of despair, I suppose, that in that place there was one singing.”  She hangs the cloak, her voice weaving the picture surely as any Sinda.  “In the depths of Thangorodrim we heard him while he hung upon the wall.  We heard him singing.  We wondered if he would break and come to us, or if he would die first.  I had not heard song in so long.  I remembered what it was.”

                Maglor swallows.  Horror and shame war within him, but curiosity wins.  “What did you do?”

                “I taught my children to sing.”  A shiver runs through him as she turns, though she seems as lovely as ever.  “Do you not know that my people sing?  We have many songs.  We have hunting songs and war songs and drinking songs and comic songs.  Some of the latter have rather too many teeth in them for your taste, I expect, but we have songs.  We even have lullabies.”

                And that slides too close to the ultimate horror, the thing that no one will ever name, the fate that Elves fear most, twisted creatures born to darkness, deformed beyond all hope, and yet the children of Elves.  She is the mother of such, mother a hundred times over though the title may be exaggeration.  He should not even look at her, but slay her and set her free.

                She comes and faces him across the hearth, a little smile on her lips.  “You should learn our songs, harper.  Add them to your repertory.”

                And the idea has appeal for all its wrongness.  Songs that no other elf has ever heard.  Songs that no Man knows.

                Now she smiles indeed, something not quite elven in the way her upper lip draws back.  “Perhaps you should play the court of Gundabad.  I promise you would stay for the feast, not be the feast.”

                “Alas, Lady, I shall decline that honor,” Maglor says dryly.

                She laughs, a clarion peal bright as a young girl’s.  “I hear you have also refused the court of the Woodland Realm.”
                “Prudence,” he says, “to refuse the court of Oropher’s son.  I hear his dungeons are deep.”

                “It is a crime to imprison a bard.”
                “And what is that crime against so many?”

                Her face stills.  “True,” she says.  “And you have killed many more elves than I have.  And for worse reasons.  At least I only killed those who were trying to kill me, not the innocent of Doriath or the Havens.”

                He flinches, and there lies the deep pool of blood, the long pit of madness that leads to forgetting, to forgetting even himself and wandering witless until he finds himself somewhere shivering in winter with no cloak and no harp, wondering where he has gone this time.  If he closes his eyes he will fall.  For a moment the world blurs.

                “There.”

                He is sitting on the stool by the hearth and she is sitting opposite him, stirring the blaze to life so that the shadows dance and little waves of warm air lap at him.  Sparks fly in the stone chimney.  She puts more wood on the blaze while he breathes deep.  Fire.  Sparks.

                “I will heat some wine,” she says.  “It will do you good, soaked through as you are.”

                “Madness,” he says.  “It takes me sometimes.  Since….”  He opens his marred hand in explanation, a burn deep as dragonfire, a scar as horrible as any orc’s.  This his father’s jewel did to him when he was unworthy.  And yet.  “I suppose if I had thought I still had any just claim on it I would have taken it in my left,” he says quietly.

                She smiles, and this time there are no edges to it.  “I am glad you did not.  I would like to hear you play.”

                “Is that all?”

                “Yes, harper.  Your lodging and dinner for a song.”  She gestures around the room in its splendor and clutter and ruined darkness.  “You have played finer halls I am sure, but I hear from the Men of the Anduin that the Dark Singer plays in farmstead and inn as readily for bags of peas or sausages.”

                “Then I will play for you tomorrow when my harp has dried.”  There’s an urgency he was forgetting.  He must check his harp.  He reaches for the case.  Perhaps if he lets it dry far enough from the fire….

                “And you may share my peas and sausages.” 

                “I am not sure I trust your sausages.”
                “Pig,” she says, and this time her smile is all teeth.  “Elves taste strange.  But I will understand if you decline and stick to the peas.”

                The wine is warm in no time, rich red and spiced, and Maglor drinks deep.  His harp is arranged, and his clothes are drying on his body, at least on the front that faces the fire.  He turns a little on the stool to warm his back.  He watches her cooking the sausages in an iron pan, stirring the potage on the fire.  Silver white hair glimmers.  That, he thinks, is no illusion.  That is real, a riddle for a bard to untangle.

                “Are you of Doriath then?”  That Sindar kingdom was hit hardest by the Enemy in the Elder Days, many of its people slain or worse before the Noldor even returned to the shores of Middle Earth.

                “I never came to Doriath.”  Her back is to him, stirring the pot, her dark green skirts swaying.  “I was taken in the passes of the Misty Mountains before we ever crossed over into the west.”

                “On the Journey.”

                “Yes.”

                She is old then, oldest of the old, one of those born in starlight when evil things lurked outside the circles of firelight and dark things moved under the trees.  She was taken in Morgoth’s initial malice, when he sought to make his own creatures by breeding and twisting.  And she, an elven woman who was lost, was his breeding stock. 

                “My husband was killed defending me, but our daughter survived.”  Her voice is even.  “So I am Grandmother of two races.”  She does not look at him.  “I spent many an age in Thangorodrim before the Noldor came, and if they had not I should have died there eventually.  The Valar did not care.  They did not care at all for the suffering of those of us who lived in starlight as long as they had their toys in the Blessed Realm!  They would never have assailed Morgoth if not for love of your folk.  If not for Earendil.”  She looks up.  “They forsook us, not we them.”

                He cannot argue with that.  “You will get no defense of the Valar from me, Lady,” Maglor says.

                “Except for the Lady of Sorrows.  The Dark Mother is the only one who cares for us.”

                “Nienna, who has mercy even for Morgoth.”

                “Just so.”  She bends her head, scooping potage into two bowls.  “But know this.  We did not choose our fate.  I did not, and even less so my children, born to ruin.”

                “I understand.”

                “Do you, Son of Feanor?” she challenges.  And then her eyes rove over his face, seeing something.  “Perhaps you do.  You understand suffering and madness, and yet you live.”

                “I seem to.”  He takes another drink of the wine.  “When it comes to it, I cannot end.”

                “Even when it might seem kinder to find a swift death.”  She puts one bowl before him and sits down with the other, the sausages still cooking over the fire.  “Yes.  Most die.  Most died.  I did not because….”  She stops.  “I don’t know.  It was not in me.”

                “Nor in me.”

                “Your brother sang.”

                “That is a frail hope,” he says.

                “And yet.”

                The potage is good, and it is warm and nourishing.  He has a body yet, and while he lives he cannot forget the taste of food any more than he can ignore the lure of a song.  Or the pull of curiosity.  “You should be a queen.”

                “I have been.”  She looks up from the bowl, that same smile again.  “I have ruled kingdoms and armies.”

                “You do not seem to be one now,” Maglor observes.

                “Setbacks,” she says.  “Difficulties.”

                “Ah.”  He chooses his words carefully.  “Do you serve the master of Dol Guldur?”

                “Never again,” she says, and there is venom in her voice.  “Never again.  He came among us with promises and treasures, and he used my kin like brute creatures.  He drove them onto the spears of the Numenoreans or Elves and led them to the slaughter.  Lord of Gifts indeed!  The gift he gave us was death.”  Her eyes are bright.  “Take Ost-in-Edhil, he said, and you will have the kingdom.  You will have lands and food and fields and treasures and revenge for the Ruin of Doriath!  You will avenge yourselves on the Feanorians when you have slain Celebrimbor.  And I will give you treasures beyond price.”

                Maglor sucks in a breath. 

                “I am the one who loves you, he said.  I am the one who cares about the Forsaken.  I am the one who returns for you to draw you from the mountains and from hovels to give you good things.  I am the Lord of Gifts, and when the Noldor have been driven back over the sea where they belong, all this land will belong to your folk.  Your age will dawn.  All these things I will give you, because I am the only one who has ever loved you.”  She closes her eyes.  “And it was a lie, of course.  He used us.  He used everyone.  He set us against Celebrimbor and used us to destroy him, and then let the Numenoreans destroy us.  Our bodies were so many at Sarn Ford that the river ran blood, did you know?  We died by the thousands, even our great lords.”  Her voice breaks, and a thought strikes him.

                “You lost someone.”

                Her eyes are still closed, her face drawn.  “Not all my children were born in hate.”

                Her words fall like stones, and yet the truth of them is unmistakable.

                “The Lord of Gifts promised revenge and the riches of Ost-in-Edhil.  Instead he brought ruin.  I will never believe him again.  I will never serve him again.  Not if he laid the treasures of Celebrimbor in my lap as weregeld!”

                “He promised you an Elven ring.”  Riddles upon riddles, but that is one he can solve.

                “He promised me the Ring of Adamant.”  Her eyes open.  “And the Ring of Water for my Lord Helgburn.  You see how we were served and what his promises are worth!”

                “He would never have given them to you, even if he had found them,” Maglor says.  Even if his nephew had not preferred death by torture rather than betray their whereabouts.  But then his nephew had believed Annatar too.

                “I know.”  Her voice is even and she meets his eyes across the potage.  “We would have been too strong.”

                And there is some riddle there, some story he does not know yet, though he does not doubt for a moment that she could wield the ring meant for a lady of the Noldor.  “Yes,” he says.

                She takes a breath.  “Whenever one of our kind grows too great, he leads him into danger.  He leads him into battle with false promises because he fears what we become without him.  He fears our great kingdoms of the North because they are not under his hand, like Mordor, or like the poor forest goblins who have nothing but their spears and the skins on their backs.  He comes with lies and promises, and there are always those who are foolish enough to listen.”

                “And that’s why you’re here.”

                “Yes.”  She glances around the room.  “Because that gullible boy Azog has once again listened to his false words.  He might be a great king if he would think!  He has the mind and he has the skill.  If he would leave off his obsession with the Line of Durin and think of his people instead, he might rule long and well.  But no.  He listens to messengers who promise glory and revenge instead of listening to the old Grandmother, and I have washed my hands of it.  There are others who might be brought up to be better kings.”

                “Khazad-Dum has fallen.”

                “So it has, and is that not enough?  What do we care what the dwarves do in the Grey Mountains or the Iron Hills?  Leave them be and tend to our own.  Make safe our own hidden realms and do not trust in those outside.”

                Maglor cannot help but laugh, inappropriate as it is.  “Now you sound like Doriath indeed!  Such were the words of Elu Thingol!”

                “My brother did have some sense,” she says tartly.

                It falls into place like some vast block falling soundlessly and afar.  Rhymes of lore half-forgotten give him her name, and he speaks it quietly.  “You are Elleth,” he says.  “And your daughter Oriel, who was raised with Celewen and Luthien, who gave birth to Oropher of Doriath.”

                She lifts her head, one silver white lock of hair falling over her shoulder.  “I am not Elleth.  And I am not an elf.  I am the Grandmother.”

                “But you were Elleth once.”

                “Once.”

                “Then you are the highest lady of the Sindar still on these shores.”

                “I am not an elf.”  Her voice is firm.  “Know that.  Do not mistake me.”

                He could ask her to show him, but he will not.  If there were not some part of her that was still Elleth, she would not wear this guise.  And that is too deep for tears, and too worthy of respect to pity.  Instead he opens his marred hand, holding it out before him.  How much does it take to make an orc?  How many scars?  How many deaths and how much blood?  How much taint and ruin?  Maeglin looked fair, but he had given in to the Enemy as Elleth never has for all her suffering, for all the ugliness that must rest beneath that flawless illusion.

                She looks at it, and reaches out, carefully closing his fingers.  Her hand is white and beautiful to look upon, but what he feels is different indeed, rough skin, nails made claws.  Involuntarily, he shivers.

                Her face stills.

                He does not pull his hand away, only turns it in hers to rest palm to palm.  “Tomorrow I will play for you, Lady,” Maglor says.  “And repay your hospitality.”

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Chapter End Notes

 

 

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