Last Days in the Magic Kingdom by Lordnelson100

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

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One of the first big leaks happened in the Hall of Ages, once used for the spectacular Autumn Moon dances. Formerly a favorite room of the Queen. A section of gilded woodwork, encrusted with carven grapes and flowers, gave way and fell to the floor. Water streamed in, ruining a delicate mural of the Great Journey. The polished parquet floor swelled and warped beyond repair.

No one was thinking about dancing, so soon after the King’s death and the Sack. They shut up the room and left it be.

 

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“We could go south to Ossiriand, and live among the Green Elves as Luthien did!” said Lhinnion, stirring the fallen leaves with the butt of his spear.

The older soldier blew out a skeptical sound: “Pheh!” This young thing had never spent more than a week away from the soft beds and bright tapestries and warm enchanted lights of Menegroth. She tried to picture him living on raw fish, fresh off the spear tip, and climbing a tree to make a flet of fresh cut branches. It didn’t sound likely.

For that matter, it had been a very long time since she herself had done those things. Once, she’d been a rough-cloak, a wanderer: born among Círdan’s people near the sea. she’d taken it into her head to visit the other Sindar peoples in their wide-sundered homes, and off she went with a bow and a bedroll and little more.

Along the way she met peace-loving Laiquendi with their tree-houses, savage Avari with secretive eyes and necklaces of Orc teeth, the distant Nandor who lived in far away river vales over the Blue Mountains and knew of the ocean only in tales.

Deep in the forests, she’d even met one of Yavannah’s uncanny folk: a Shepherd of the Trees, tall as an oak and rather like one. It let her touch its skin: rough and layered like bark, but warm and animal-alive.

She flexed her fingers, recalling the curious sensation. Hadn’t thought of that in years.

Good days, the wandering years: dangerous, but free. But that was long ago. Things had gotten bad, since. Centuries ago, now, she decided to bow her head and become one of Thingol’s protected flock— or rather, Melian’s.

But Lhinnion had never lived anywhere else but behind Melian’s spell-wall, the poor farmyard goose, and his naivete touched and annoyed her in alternating rhythm. He wasn’t even especially handsome: exaggeratedly large eyes, a small mouth like a doll, and rather lank hair. He was centuries younger than herself, as well. Sometime she wondered if her feelings for him were a sort of misplaced, belated maternal tenderness.

Though in that case, she shouldn’t be fucking him.

But, well — Orchalnith was broad-shouldered and hard from years of marchwarden duty, and the finer people turned up their noses at her blunt-chopped hair and big hands. The attentions and eagerness of a slender youth were flattering. He kept the bed warm, too.

 

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She missed Beleg and Mablung. Their ageless confidence gave them a daring that was fey and half-mad, but had seen them through millennia of disaster. When they were around, it felt like survival was always a possibility, not matter the odds. Now, with them gone—

She was shocked to find she didn’t miss Thingol. Or at least, she was still so furious with him that it blotted out the affection and reverence and gratitude that she must have felt for him once.

So many Elves were dead— so many of their friends and family — that the disaster of the King’s death and Melian’s abandonment were — not exactly softened, but confused with all the other losses.

Once everyone would have been appalled at the idea of Doriath without Thingol: their King since before the rising of the Sun!  Doriath without Melian — who was not dead, but had left them anyway — unthinkable!

But now it was strange how people danced around their names. No one wants to say angry things about them, the soldier thought. No one wants to hate them, and they’re afraid that they might get there.

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They sealed up the Hall of Stone-wrights where the Nogrod folk had lived; where they used to stay for years at a time, working out long contracts to build and forge and craft for Doriath.

People pretended like the Naugrim had never been there, never worked with them, never been a familiar presence in the halls. Like they hadn’t been shocked to see the faces of Khazâd they had known their whole lives, coming at them with weapons raised. Like the elves hadn’t struck them down without quarter, in their turn.

No one admitted out loud to ever having had friends among the Dwarves.

No one talked about their spoiled bodies, and the cloud of crows and buzzards that hung over the ford of the river for weeks.

 

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She thought about making a run for it East, over the Blue Mountains. Celeborn was wise and trustworthy. But more than that, where Celeborn was, there was Galadriel. That one she’s pit against the Dark Lord himself. Not that she could beat Him. It looked like no one could. But Galadriel would give him one in the eye before she went down, and it was a good bet she’d protect the people around her as long as — well, as long as it were possible.

But she’d balked. At the time the Lady of the Exiles and Celeborn left, Orchalnith was still hoping that Thingol would snap out of it. She’s been unwilling to leave her friends and her ancient mother and the other kin who come and settled with her for safety when the years grew dark.

Now look. Half of them were dead fighting the Naugrim during the Sack.

After the King died, her poor mam had been one of many in Doriath who suddenly had accidents befall them. One day Selebil went to gather herbs in the forest and didn’t return. They found her with a broken neck under a huge fallen tree.

 “Is it that such bad luck just didn’t happen when Melian was here? Or did Mam will the damn tree down on her head?” She asked her brother.

“Both, I’d wager,” he replied.

By now the journey east would be absurdly dangerous, especially if it were just her and the boy, the cobweb headed fool. Assuming they could even find true news about where Galadriel had got to, they would find little refuge between here and Eradior.

She thought about trying to take Lhinnion over the Ered Luin. That journey took weeks of rising before dawn and eighteen hour days of climbing, with gains of four thousand feet even to reach the passes, and sudden snowstorms waiting to drop even in late spring—-not to mention other enemies, the kind that’d make bitter frost-pain pleasurable by comparison.

She thought about leaving him in Doriath, where he’s be safe— for as long as anyone was.

She spent the nights rehearsing every curse word she had ever learned.

 

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In the last year of Thingol’s reign, she nearly away went with Oropher and young Thranduil— though not out of fondness on Orchalnith’s part.

Oropher was no wise and courteous Celeborn, certainly. A haughty, sharp-tongued lord, he was; a tangled mix of Nandorin and Sindar blood, related somehow to ill-fated Denethor. He was brave in battle, a weapon always in his hand, but utterly without the gift of giving or taking counsel, as far as she could see.

In an era when doubts were running everywhere like cracks in spring ice, he’d crowned himself the leader of a faction of action-minded lords and warriors who dared raise questions about where things were headed in Doriath.

Oh, his row with the King about the Silmaril had been spectacular. On guard that day, she’d had a first-hand view of it.

“To keep this cursed jewel is madness, Elwë,” Oropher said. “What is this Noldor thing to us? In what possible way can it add to the greatness of the King of the Sindar? Are not our enemies numerous enough, that you must add the furious swords of the Fëanorians to the list?”

At Oropher’s elbow, the eyes of his stripling son were wide; he even cringed a little at his father’s haranguing. Mayhap he’d grow up with some measure of the courtesy his father utterly lacked.

Melian was absent from the audience, as she often was since her daughter left and the shadows mounted around the realm. She drifted silently through empty glades or her own chambers, alone with her thoughts, as her courtiers trailed uncertainly after her.

Thingol lounged on his high carven chair, his eyes distant. “Anguish,” he said, after some time. “Anguish, and blood. Through their suffering was this won. They went against the Great Enemy himself, and through woe unmeasured won this prize. It shall be sung of to the end of the world, the quest of my Luthien!”

“The last I heard, he got up again, Morgoth Bauglamir, and sat back on his throne!” said Oropher, exasperated. “It is swords and alliances and our safety, my lord, that we were talking of, not lays!”

Thingol went on speaking in a monotonous drone, as if his listeners were not there: of the Silmaril and its light, and the unworthiness and crimes of the Sons of Fëanor, and other such matters.

“I never intended he should actually go!” he said, aloud, to no one.

The father and son went out. “They say Luthien when she came again healed the winter on Thingol’s body. I think she missed his brain!” said the elder.

The bizarre acquisition of the Nauglamir from an escaped thrall of Morgoth was the last straw.

“Now we’re holding rapine from the stronghold of dead Finrod, warm from the dragon’s belly? And he’s asked the Dwarves to what, now? No— “ He held up his hand to his son. “On second thought, do not bother. Pack your gear.”

Oropher and Thranduil gathered their like-minded followers and so off they went— in a different direction than Galadriel, Orchalnith guessed, knowing their dislike of anything that tasted of the Noldor.

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Young Dior and Nimloth looked like children playing King and Queen, to her eye.

Dior was a lovely lad, to be sure, and Nimloth a good sort; the three pretty children were sweet. The people were all still bewildered from the Sack when the King’s grandson and his family arrived. The young King had bustled in with his retainers soon after their battle at the Stony Ford.

“Well, Grandfather’s avenged, so that’s done! And the Silmaril’s back where it belongs with my parents. We must begin to put things right in Doriath now! What a state it’s in! Where shall we begin?”

“Your Majesty,” said one of the chief Iathrim, tentatively. “The Girdle of Melian— the great enchantment — it’s entirely gone, you see. Perhaps it has not been explained — “

“Very unfortunate, indeed!” said Dior cheerfully. “But the rest of the Eldar get on without such a thing. Why my friends the Green Elves have been outwitting their enemies for a thousand years with no enchanted protections. And has not Doriath still the greatest riches and the finest soldiers in Beleriand, the fruit of Grandfather’s long reign!  We must start organizing.”

And Orchalnith realized that after the tree villages of the Laiquendi, the halls of Menegroth still looked splendid and bright and mighty to Dior.

 

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More leaks were springing up throughout the thousand halls.

At first, the people of Doriath were slow to heed them, for such things had never happened in Melian’s time. Soon they learned that such things, if left, did not stop—-they go on spreading, spreading, spreading their ruin. But the realization was late in coming, and the work to stop the damage: well, sometimes did not come at all.

Black mildew bloomed on spectacular tapestries,  and none of the weavers’ remedies seemed to work anymore.

Beautiful hand-painted tiles popped from their place on walls, revealing hidden blotches of damp.

The halls grew chiller and chiller, for in addition to the leaks, the weather in the world above was ever worse; but when they went to light the cunning hearths and stoves that were meant to warm the palace, many of them smoked or remained stubbornly dead.

The thousand glittering lamps that lit the underground realm began, one by one, to go out;  the spell-magic that had served them seemed to gradually leak away. As the months passed, Menegroth grew dimmer. In some places, torches and oil lanterns replaced the enchanted lamps; many halls and corners remained dark.

The news above ground was no better.

Crops took on strange blights, and yields grew thinner and thinner. The cows and hens and sheep came down with every disease under the sun, and some new ones. They seemed stubbornly determined to blunder into every danger or accident, no matter how unlikely.  

One day Orchalnith helped the head shepherd search for a flock that had got out when a pen inexplicably gave way. They found them drowned in a pond: they seemed to have all walked straight off a small but very obvious cliff.

“I suppose that’s one way out,” said the shepherd, sourly.

Game seemed to grow more and more rare: hunters who had once returned laden with fat bucks and geese came home with a few hares, or empty bags.

When Dior, exasperated, sought for answers, they were always depressingly familiar.

“Melian always managed the weavers — in her days the cloth we spun did not rot or wear or stain —” said one. “And the workshop mistress, who knew all the dye formulas, left with Galadriel!” Another added.

“The master tile-maker died in the Sack, and so did the chief builder. “

“Only the Naugrim knew how to make and repair those hearths: we cannot seem to make them work again.”

“We went to Melian when the crops were in trouble, it was she who fixed the weather or the pests.  And: “Twas Beleg who know how to tease game from the woods in even the worst season.”

“Sire, to my grief, we have not the means to make the proper tools again: we used to trade to Belegost or Nogrod for the steel.”

“Enough!”

At last the young King shouted in frustration. “Can’t we invent anything anymore? Can’t we discover answers for ourselves? Why can’t we do anything new!? How has it come about that we think and talk and sing only about the past?”

 

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Dior held many councils: he was fond of them, convinced he could re-awaken the sparks that once roused the flame of Sindar greatness (or something of the sort, Orchalnith could only half remember, imitating him for Lhinnion’s benefit).

One of the more pompous of his counselors was delivering a long speech about how they should divest themselves of Dwarf-made mail and weapons from Nogrod—-long, polished phrases about the wickedness and ingratitude of the Naugrim.

Finally Harphen, Mablung’s replacement as the head of the forest-watch, lost his temper and stood up, hands planted on the table.

“Are you mad, Lhosdir? Or just unbelievably dim? Do you realize these armaments are irreplaceable? We’ll never get any more, now. The Khazâd won’t trade with us or work with us anymore.”

Another lord objected: “But Belegost stayed neutral—-”

“They stayed neutral,” snapped Harphen, “Until Beren’s people killed every single Naugrim they encountered at Sarn Athrad. Took no prisoners at all, never stopping to ask who did what, though the Nogrodim worked with us for the last seven centuries before this disaster. I don’t suppose we’ll ever find out now which killed Thingol—-that might have been nice to know.  And our people left their bodies to rot, to boot, which is unforgivable sacrilege in their eyes!”

Dior looked deflated. Of course, he had been there at that Sarn Arthrad— and Orchalnith  guessed from his expression that no one had given the least thought to such matters. Truly the heir of Thingol, she thought, meanly.

Lhosdir, the elder councilor, sniffed, “Well, we couldn’t have trusted them now, anyway. The Belegost folk are still Naugs, and they’re allies of Maedhros Fëanorian.”

The chorus of voices grew confused.

“Yes, and even before the Sack, Azaghâl’s people said we’re cowards who refused to fight Morgoth and left their Kings to sacrifice themselves without us —- ”

“Everyone says that, not just the Dwarves.”

“It’s all been going wrong since Luthien —-”

“Stop!”  Dior waved his delicate hands and tried to put the council back on a useful track. “What is done is done. Surely Belegost isn’t the only potential trade partner or source of arms! What of the mission to the East?”

Harphen said grimly, “The envoys we sent over the mountains have reported in, Sire, those who still live after a journey of many perils. As we had heard, there’s a huge Dwarven city in the Misty Mountains—-bigger and finer than any here, founded by their oldest house, so it’s said.”

“With what result?”

Harphen gestured to one of the returned envoys to speak.

“My lord, they took us before their King, who’s called Durin. He had our letter in his hand when we were brought in. He said,  ‘Surely this message requesting trade rights for Doriath must have been misdirected. Otherwise, it would seem you think me so greedy and honorless that I would trade with the murderers of my kind. And that would in itself be a blood insult.

So I will assume instead that you are merely stupid, and ignorant of the Khazâd, like all your kind.’ Then his soldiers escorted us to the border of the kingdom and pointed to the road.”

There was a silence in the council room.

“So! We’ll be keeping the arms and armor we have, thank you very much, since we won’t be getting any more from either Dwarven or Noldorin makers. And some of you should begin teaching yourselves to smithy again.” Grimly, Harphen rose and left the meeting.

 

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Her hopeful young fellow looked at her in bed one day, when the soldier lay weary and restless from patrol. He said, “Maybe we should make a child. Look to the future, as it were! You would make a good mother!”

“Fists of Tulkas, what an idea! What makes you think I would be a good mother, out of curiosity?”

“You’re a good wife. We do well together,” he said confidently.

“You are a child yourself, Lhinnion. And I am not your wife.”

He cried. She patted his shoulder, awkwardly.

She found, after a while, that she scarcely felt desire for him any more. The scanty food supplies, the terrible weather, and the general air of decay in the kingdom did not help. She almost hoped he would find other company.

But he clung to her cloak like a burr.

 

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Messengers came at last from Ossiriand to bring word that Dior’s parents had died; to bring him as well the Silmaril, fixed in the Necklace of the Dwarves.

Letters came also from the Sons of Fëanor. Some people acted shocked, the damn fools.

Dior took to wearing the jewel defiantly at all times. The never-paid work of the Khazâd craftspeople had been exquisite: the magic gem sat gracefully in its pirated home. The Dwarves had said there was a spell on their great necklace, so that it showed to all the inner qualities of the wearer. If that were true, then pretty Dior had a soul that wasn’t quite big enough for his boots.

She realized that he and Queen Nimloth, who had been long among the Green Elves, scarcely had any true sense of the Sons of Fëanor. To them, the Oath-takers were just monsters out of folktales: evil wights to be outwitted. Had not Luthien and Beren foiled them and made fools of the two worst brothers, had not Nargothrond cast them out? (Luthien and Beren who were dead, now, and fair Nargothrond was no more).

It was one of Thingol’s haughty pretences that none of his people were supposed to come or go from Doriath. But it was not the whole truth. Before the ruin of the Noldor realms, there had been news passed among the Elven peoples. In reports to Thingol, it was always put down that “Beleg and Mablung went,”  when someone had to travel to Fingolfin or his son. If the wardens took some trusty folk with them — well, it was not necessary for the King to think on. Or Galadriel had her errands to Finrod, and that didn’t count, somehow, as breaking the ban. And Doriath needed things from Belegost and Nogrod; the Dwarves did not always come to them; sometimes they went to their cities. And once there, it was just a jump to Dol Caranthir—-so it went.  

As a result of this not-so-secret secret, Orchalnith had actually seen Maedhros Fëanorian with her own eyes, and some of his brothers, too. The old Kinslayers, who arrived in Beleriand before the sun and the moon; the swords of the North, sitting on their tall horses in the keep at Thargelion, an unearthly grim air about them from centuries of endless battle against Morgoth and his creatures.

She looked at pretty Dior now, whose hand kept straying to his neck. There sat a power which had fired the Oath of Fëanor and sat in the crown of Morgoth. The young Queen walked in the garden, with a sword at her waist, holding their daughter’s hand. The twin sons ran in circles, thwacking each other with branches and shouting defiance to villainy.  “We shan’t give in to evil, shall we, darlings?” said Dior, drawing himself up tall. “No, papa, no!” they cried.

The soldier made up her mind at last.

“Tell you what, nutshell, we’re leaving,” she said that day.

“Really?” Lhinnion said, practically wagging his tail.”I thought you said it was too dangerous!”

“As soon as it's spring, and the snow in the mountain passes lessens, we’ll go look for Celeborn and Galadriel. Ah, don’t look so eager. You won’t be, after a month on the road East.”

 

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Spring was still two months off, and she passed the time taking her turn on watch near the forest’s edge. Lhinnion came out some days and brought her food, and made a nuisance of himself.

On this particular day, cloud and fog and snow blended so that only the very nearest trees had form. There were no shadows. Orchalnith watched the breath puff from Lhinnion’s mouth and turn to mist. She was half lost in journey-planning: thought-lists of packs and food and maps.

Suddenly, a burst of sparrows took wing in the snow-silenced forest.

Soundlessly, the figures on horseback emerged from the snow, seven-pointed stars on their cloaks.

She had time to tell him, “Run!”

But not time to find out if he did.

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Chapter End Notes

I get saddest thinking about all the people in the background when all the kingdoms of Beleriand fall one by one.