Deadly Doctor by hennethgalad

Chapter 1

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Deadly Doctor

   Maeglin, firm of purpose but cold with fear, looked over the edge of the sheer cliff. There was no trace of his father's body, swallowed by the thin green veil that was all that could be seen of the forest from on high. He stepped back, the fear adding to the bitter taste in his mouth.

   Poison; he himself had aided his father in the preparation of that very poison, for use on orcs. But his father had followed him across the leagues from Nan Elmoth, carrying this poison, hunting him as an enemy, stalking him, intending to murder his own son. Maeglin's fists clenched, he ground his teeth, hatred rose in him like a black tide of sickness. He would have killed his father himself if it had not been so ordered by Turgon. He frowned, writhing inside, his own father, it was intolerable.

  His mother's agonized whimpering had penetrated the door they had made him wait behind, it had taken hours for her to die, and this was the death his father had wished for him. He tasted the bile in his throat as he held back the nausea, and mechanically remember his father's deep voice instructing him in the gathering of herbs and their preparation for the blending of a cure for nausea. Tears burned his eyes. This elf, this great healer who had cured many dwarves of many ailments and thereby won their trust, this doctor... this doctor was in his blood, was part of who he was; because of the isolation of their life, this doctor had had an overwhelming influence upon Maeglin's thoughts, and they were darkened.

   He remembered the tall figure striding up and down in the vast laboratory, fascinating to the earnest youth, emphasising a point with a sparing gesture, a slight movement of his pale hand conjuring images in Maeglin's mind that the curt sentences barely sketched. He remembered the face, only the colouring resembled his own. He did not know, never having seen him, that Eöl resembled Thingol, his handsome kinsman who had won the heart of one of the Maia. The same symmetry of feature that had fascinated his mother. His poor, dead mother.

  He choked back a cry of anguish and compared his father unfavourably with her. His father had coldly plotted and actually attempted to murder him, but his mother had given her own life to protect him.

  He resolved to purge himself of all that was in him of Eöl's influence, to never think or speak of him again, and in all things to emulate Turgon, wise and farsighted, the brother of his noble mother.

  Naturally he would remember the teachings of his father, in the finding and shaping of metal and the distilling of potions, for truly his learning had been diverse and profound. Maeglin coldly observed the paradox, the healer wielding poison with deadly intent. He himself would not be such a doctor as his father. He would be deadly only in battle.

 

 

 

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Chapter End Notes

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