A Candle for the Hollow City by Lordnelson100

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Chapter 4 The Makers

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The drums flourished and were still.  The dwarven helpers refilled dark ale into everyone’s cups. The Speaker took up the story once more.

Once upon a time, it was the Ancient Days of the World. In the Days of the Stars, the Fathers of the Dwarves awoke. Under the sky of starry night, we spoke to each other for the first time in the words Mahal gave us, and discovered with wonder the strength of our bodies, the invention of our minds, and the use of our hands. Strong and unyielding we were made, stone-hard, stubborn, fast in friendship and in enmity: fit to live and endure both joy and peril in this Middle-Earth.

With the teachings of Mahal, we became the Masters of Stone, of crafts and delving, and even before the rising of the Sun and Moon, we knew how to devise arts of great beauty and cunning, and we wrought from rock our wonderful fortresses and hidden homes, high in the mountains and in the deep places of the world.

But that was not all we learned to make.

For in the First Age, we became the original and greatest artists of sword and axe, armor and helm. Our armor was strongest, against blade and fire; our weapons cut keenest, biting flesh and spilling blood. Our mail and blades did not rust or blunt, but stayed bright: they could be ever renewed and repaired across long centuries of war.

We had need of them.

The musicians gave a low, deep shout, and made a long trailing sound of rattles, like a warning of serpents.

For it was also the Age of the Old Enemy: Morgoth. He was Askad Aznân , the Shadow in the Darkness, the Flame of Despair.

He hated all peoples that walked free on the Earth or delved within it, and He hated the Powers that protected them. But we remember that He hated most of all Mahal, Aulë in Elf-speak, the great Maker and Smith, for Morgoth himself could make nothing beautiful or new, but only steal and corrupt that which others made first.

And He loathed and envied that the Khazâd had the gift from the Maker himself to invent and forge new things. And the Dwarves used their talents to fell purpose against Him, destroying the Enemy’s Orcs wherever they found them, hewing His Wargs and Werewolves and Trolls. And our Fathers were the first who learned how to stand against the great Dragons.

But  spies were everywhere, and many creatures He turned to His own purpose. The Elves also called Him Bauglir, the Imprisoner, the Lord of Fetters. Well-named. For He came in the dark and stole, taking away Dwarves from their stone halls and Elves from the green woods and Men from their fields, into deep and terrible prisons.

The Chorus cried aloud, as if in a memory of many voices lifted in sorrow and fear. One made a long keening note with her bow, atonal and eerie.

It was known that in his pits, He and His servants tore apart the bodies of many Dwarrow, hoping to uncover the secret of their making, or how He could steal their free wills and enslave them. But Mahal had hidden our hearts from the Enemy; He never found what He sought.

And so from those early days, the Dwarves learned to be secret. We did not teach our tongue to strangers; we kept hidden our ways; few guests were had into our halls, and those saw only that which we chose to show.

When you see the she-fox on the mountain side, and she sees you , she speeds away by clever paths, and ever she feints and dodges, and leads you farther and farther away from her den. The wise do not show to strangers the secret place where their hearts’ dearest lies.

The Chorus made their agreement known, with call and answer of warning and reply. A lone flute sang, a note brave and sad, as if to represent the heart of the mother, treasuring her secrets in the snow.

Now you must learn,  there was still at that time a mighty and beautiful land west of the Blue Mountains, Beleriand of the Elder Days. And in that Age, our people made the first ancient and wonderful cities of the Khazâd, both in the East and in the West.  Our story concerns two that lay in Beleriand, lost home in the West. These was Tumunzahar, the Hollowbold, which the Elves called Nogrod. And there was her sister city, Gabilgathol, the Mickleburg, which they remember as Belegost.

In this land lived also two Elven kings of fame:  one golden, and one grey.

The Grey Elf King of this story lived deep in the woods called Doriath, and he had always lived there, since the beginning of days: Thinkol, the Grey-Cloak. The Golden King of Elves was Felakgundu, the Maker of Caves, that the Elves also called Finrod. He was one of the Exiles that came over the Sea.

The ways of the Golden King and the Grey in dealing with our people were very different.

Now Grey-Cloak was wary of the Enemy’s snares, and he came to the Dwarves for help in creating a great keep under the earth, where his people could sit safely. The Dwarves of Tumunzahar and Gabilgathol created for him great gates and a mighty bridge, and halls so vast they were named Menegroth of the Thousand Caves, deep in the forest of Doriath.

And likewise, the King of Wood Elves sought to buy great store of wondrous Khuzdul weapons and matchless mail: they made for him long coats of steel rings and high helms, axes and swords, so excellently forged that they were never equalled, even by the greatest smiths of the Elves. And through such craft and trade with the Khazâd, his kingdom became well-protected.

But to Grey-Cloak, the Dwarves remained mere hirelings, to be paid and dismissed. And Thinkol and his court scorned the Dwarves as to their bodies and faces, calling them unlovely and stunted, and misused or forgot their names and ways, which his people could not be bothered to learn properly. Even more offensive, these Elves in their haughtiness told each other that Dwarves had no souls, and turned to stone when they died, as if they had not the protection of the Maker who gathers their spirits to the Halls beyond the grave.

Ever Thinkol and his folk ever spoke their words of dishonor and insult,  even within the hearing of the Dwarves, as if they were people of stone indeed, and had not ears. But the Dwarves had learned the language of the Elves, even as the Elves had not theirs, and they heard and remembered.

Still, Elves and Dwarves were alike the enemies of Morgoth. And Thinkol had as his wife a great sorceress and wise-woman, Melian. She made around their kingdom of Doriath great protections of mysterious magic, woven with wisdom, and she was willing to trade with the Dwarves some of her learning and art. Some say it was from she and her bards that we learned letters in those ancient days, in which to capture the wisdom of our fathers.

And so the Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost held themselves paid, and continued to trade with Thinkol. But they did not count him a friend.

It was elsewise with King Felakgundu. It is remembered by our sages that he was loved even by all the troublesome tribes of Elves, who spoke a confusion of different tongues and were in strife with each other. He likewise befriended the Houses of Men and taught them his speech, and learned theirs.

Certain it is that he made bonds of friendship with the Dwarves. He, too, made contract with them to build a great mansion beneath the earth. But Finrod delighted to learn about the skills of Mahal’s folk, and even what they would tell him of their language and lore.

Together, they explored a set of marvelous ancient caves that had formed beneath a river, and they shaped them, making stone flow as it had been gold made molten, forming it at will into delicate column and arch, carven pattern and spiralling stair. Together, the artisans of Nogrod and Belegost joined with the Elves, and achieved the splendid palace of Nargothrond, the Nulukkizdîn of many wonders.

In this place, the two peoples, Elves and Dwarves, wrought together in joy and friendship, learning much from each other, and creating that which was greater than either could have made alone. The Dwarves gave to Finrod the name of Felakgundu, Shaper of Caves, and even his own people often called him by it.

With the tapping of wood on wood, thump of drum, and rapid shaking of rattle, and a quick, shrill piping on the flute, the Chorus called up the idea of many hammers and tools at work, amid eager voices singing at their work.

Now Nargothrond was not only beautiful,  but well-hidden. And the Dwarves that helped him build it never told the secret of that guarded place. Even those that fell into the hands of the Enemy in later dark days, and were tormented: they held silent about Felakgundu’s secrets, as they did their own. No vow or magic bound them to silence: only that they counted this Elf King as their friend.

It came to pass at the height of this friendship, that Finrod asked the Dwarves to create for him a great work of art. He had brought with him splendid gems out of the Elves’ fabled Land Across the Sea, such as did not exist in Middle-earth, and he wished to have them set in a work that would help him remember the wonders of that legendary place.

The Dwarves of the West were unwearied in those days, eager for new works, still warmed by the Fire of their own awakening. Taking on the task,  the Dwarves made for him a work of craft beyond any they had created before, pouring into it the joy of making and inventing and learning which was then poignant in their hearts.

It was the Great Necklace,  woven of gold, set with the gems of the Undying Lands, but imbued with a gentle power so that it rested lightly on its wearer as spider’s silk; and whoever wore it, if they had grace and loveliness within them, the light of their spirit shone clearly forth.

Though this work was made in contract for Felakgundu, and he made rich payment for it, yet did the Dwarves give him back a creation much greater than the price. For they surpassed themselves, out of love and out of their fierce longing to excel, and made such a work as they never had before, nor since. It was the most renowned of their works in the Elder Days.

For us, it is remembered as the Khajmel , the Gift of Gifts.

But the Elves of latter days have ever called this work Nauglamír,   the Mîr na Nauglin , in their older words: the Necklace of the Stunted Ones.  Fah! For this is true of the Elves and the Dwarves: even when they look upon our greatest works with awe, there is spit from their mouths upon the name of our people. And so they join ugliness to beauty, even in the naming of the world.

The Chorus made a low growl, rebellious, resentful. The string-player came in with a passage of anguish, regret; yet ending with a sweet theme, as if recalling happiness long lost.

There is now one more piece of this tale you must hear to understand this history.

In those days, the crown of the Dark Enemy held three Great Jewels, beautiful beyond mortal ken, but corrupt with destructive power. All that our people knew of them came second-hand, for no Dwarf made them, or had ever held or looked upon them. Except, perhaps those poor victims who had seen His face when He tormented them. But the Enemy’s victims never came back to us.

The Elves told how they had originally created these Jewels, and that Morgoth had stolen them long ago, in their legendary Undying Land across the ocean, and so the Exiles had come to Middle-earth in pursuit and vengeance. They said, too, that the Great Jewels, or Silmarils as they named them, were holy, and contained the light of the Powers who made the World, just the same light that kindled the stars.

If it be so, it seems the Enemy had the power to poison even so sacred a thing.  For by the days we speak of, these Silmarils, sitting long on the head of cruel Morgoth, had on them a most terrible curse.  

Morgoth got the Jewels by theft and murder, as he got all things, and those Elves from which they had been originally stolen never forgot; the lust to regain them burned in their hearts. And so the Great Jewels had a power that grew from hate: they caused any who sought them or kept them to go gradually mad with desire, and to turn on one another with violence, forgetting honor, forgetting even the truest love of their own hearts.  

Woe came to us through these Great Jewels, though we never wrought them.