The Art of Speech Through Smithcraft by Idrils Scribe

Of my father, Curufinwë Fëanorion, I try not to speak at all these days. Greatly maligned he has become, by Noldor and Sindar alike, and most of that infamy is entirely deserved.

Without descending into self-pity, I do believe I can justly name my mother and myself the very first victims of the fall of the house of Fëanor.
But I make false promises. I will not describe to you my garbled recollection of the dispassionate violence with which my father ripped the child I was then from my mother’s arms in darkened Tirion. She fought him like a lioness for her cub, and even unto the Halls of Waiting has her valiant and ultimately futile stand been sung. May it never be forgotten.
Against the fire of Fëanor’s most ardent son bent upon doing his will, even she could not stand. As she lay before the doors of our house, broken in body and spirit, I was carried to the blood-soaked quays of Alqualondë by the knights of his household to be embarked, a part of his baggage train as much as his smithing tools or the boxed-up contents of his personal library.

You need to know these things to understand what I am about to tell you, but I shall begin my tale proper somewhere else entirely. My father may have settled first in Mithrim, and roamed the width of Beleriand in the later days of what we now call the War of the Jewels, but in my mind Curufinwë’s proper place shall always be Aglon.
Upon that narrow pass between the empty sea of waving grasses that was Lothlann in those days before Morgoth’s marring of it, and the hill-country sloping down to the river Aros and Doriath beyond, my father and his brother Tyelkormo were bidden to build a great fortification and a keep. Thus they were to be part of an unbroken chain of defenses barring the Enemy’s creatures from entering Beleriand proper. In those days they still bowed to the authority of their eldest brother Maitimo, and they hearkened to his counsel. A mighty fortress they raised with their cunning stone-crafts, and held it against Morgoth Bauglir for many years.
It was there that I came of age and grew, if not to respect my father, then at least to a manner of understanding him. You may flinch at hearing me say it. Others have pointed out to me that to understand all, is to forgive all. Rest assured that forgiveness is not so freely given.

When I was eighty years old, and had been in Ennor for little more than sixty, Morgoth decided to test the defences of the Eldar.
I remember well how we were summoned, for I was with my father in the tiltyard. It pleased him to spar with me there at times, to oversee the progress of my training with the swordmasters. He possessed near endless stamina, and had been toying with me with dulled blades for most of the day. I was swaying on my feet, and still he came at me time and time again, inflicting quick, smarting bruises for my trouble whenever he found an opportunity.

“Step lively, Telpë! Were I an orc, this would be a rip the size of my hand!”

I felt humiliated, and wroth with him at the time, but the reality of battle would soon make me grateful for his teaching.

When the messenger entered the yard in great haste all I could feel was gratitude for the unhoped-for respite, for these ordeals tended to last well into the night if my skills were deemed lacking.
The woman wore the black livery and eight-pointed star of our house, and the richness of the silver embroidery marked her as one of Maitimo’s inner circle of knights. She went to one knee before my father, for in those days we still cleaved to the elaborate formality of the one-time court of a Tirion that no longer was.

“My Prince, I bring summons from High Prince Maitimo. Moringotto is executing a surprise attack on all fronts. A large contingent of Orcs is moving south into Lothlann at speed. Your brother’s need is great, and he bids you to his side with every Elf-warrior you can spare from the defense of the pass.”

My father gave a nod, for she, too, was a noble, be it of a lesser house than ours. His tone was one of complacency.

“Rise, Canissë. Long have Prince Tyelkormo and I foreseen this day. Aglon shall muster all who can bear arms to the High Prince’s side.”

He turned to both our esquires, who stood aside, unsure whether the sparring session was officially ended and they were allowed to step onto the field to attend us. At his nod, ice water and linen towels instantly appeared. I caught Cendaro, my own body servant, staring regretfully at the mud-spattered ruin of my simple linen tunic. To my delight, my father’s clothes bore at least a few stains and slashes of their own. I was not entirely without merit as a swordsman, it seemed.
Canissë turned towards me, eying my sword with unconcealed admiration. Even having owned it for most of my life, I was still conscious of how marvelous a blade it was. Perfectly balanced, and as deadly as it was beautiful. Of course it was my father’s work. There had been one finer swordsmith once, but Fëanáro was no more.

Her voice became honey-toned as she complimented my father. “Telpë is a credit to your teaching. Both his weapon and his skill at arms do honour to your House. Many will rejoice at seeing our lord Fëanáro’s grandson test his mettle against our foes!”

For a moment Curufinwë Fëanorion, Lord and Master of Aglon, was struck dumb. I instantly knew he had intended to leave me at home, his regent in name only, to pretend I was in charge of defending a keep that could not conceivably come under attack, not with every Orc in Ennor well engaged many leagues to the north.

“All who can bear arms”, my father had only just promised with such casual generosity, and from what this canny pawn of his brother’s had just witnessed I was most certainly among those.
A feeling of delirious jubilance came over me, as can only be experienced once in a lifetime, by those blissfully innocent of the realities of war. I was to go into battle.

---

Lothlann was an ocean of grass, yellowing green speckled with wildflowers stretching from one horizon to the other. At the height of the Northern summer its blades grew to a man’s hip, and they reflected the sunlight like golden straw when waved by the ceaseless western winds off the Blue Mountains. Never since its destruction have I seen beauty quite like it.
The rich crimson tents of my uncle’s household looked like gaping wounds in the bucolic landscape.

My illustrious uncle Maitimo was very pleased to see us indeed. Even with the small skill at reading others that came with my tender age, I could tell that the dominant emotion on his face when my father and uncle Tyelkormo bowed before him, offering seven thousand cavalerists and the same number of spearmen and archers, was deep relief.
Maitimo’s decision to abdicate High Kingship of the exiled Noldor in favour of his half-uncle Nolofinwë, who called himself Fingolfin these days after the Sindarin fashion, had driven a deep rift between the sons of Fëanáro. Sharp words had been spoken upon their last parting at Lake Mithrim, and the drawing of even sharper steel only narrowly avoided. There had been talk, with my father as its chief instigator, that Maitimo’s claim to the leadership of our House was forfeit by his actions. It had come to naught in the end, but only because Makalaurë, who could then have usurped his older brother, would not hear of it. The sight of Maitimo’s rebellious brothers flocking to him like loyal vassals to their liege-lord had to be a sweet one indeed.

Eager to consolidate this new spirit of fraternal harmony, Maitimo went out of his way to be kind to me, his young nephew getting his first taste of war. Even so he made an imposing figure. Maedhros the Tall, the Sindar called him, and that was a name justly bestowed. The scars crossing his fair face seemed only to underline the pale perfection of it, crowned with a wealth of fox-auburn hair threaded with gold. At my age I had been taught better than to look down, to the strange blind end on the right sleeve of his tunic. Even here, in a war camp on the eve of battle, it was cloth-of-gold stitched with sea-pearls.

“My dear Telperinquar, all grown into a warrior. It seems only yesterday that we flew kites together.”

I knew not what to answer him, for those kites had been improvised from scraps of sailcloth, flown from the deck of a swan-ship to coax a forlorn elfling into ending the hunger strike that threatened his life.
Maitimo continued, oblivious to the slap of remembered misery he had just dealt me.

“I have heard most favourable word of your swordsmanship, Nephew.”

From the line of knights behind the camp chair from which he conducted the reception, Canissë flashed me a smile. Warmth flooded my chest. Compliments were a rare occurrence in Aglon, and I savoured them wherever they might be found.
Before I could do more than nod and smile, my father answered in my stead.

“Someone is kind. We have endeavoured to train him to the best of our abilities.”

Maitimo was undeterred. “Tell me, young kinsman, what weapons do you wield from horseback?”

“The spear, javelin and bow, Uncle.”

Maitimo shot my father a probing glance, an unspoken challenge.

“A true Elf-knight indeed. What think you, Curufinwë, is he prepared well enough to go forth among my retinue?”

And now my father was pressed between belittling my skills, and thereby his own tutoring, or relinquishing me to ride among the High Prince’s knights in the coming battle. The very thought of being counted with that fierce and noble company set my blood aflame.
For a moment I feared Maitimo had overplayed his hand, that my father would rise in anger at being manipulated over me twice.
But time and Aglon’s isolation had taught Curufinwë to value peace with his brothers, and since Mithrim he knew for a fact he lacked the leverage to unseat Maitimo.

His words dropped like stones in a still pond. “Telperinquar has been taught all my household has to offer. Only war itself can teach him more.”

A sly smile played across Maitimo’s impossibly beautiful face, but he knew better than to gloat outright.

“That is well. Tomorrow at dawn, we drive Moringotto’s spawn back to the black pits from whence they came. You will hold the line beside me, Telpë. Have no fear for your son, Brother. My personal guard will protect him as they do for me.”

He turned to his hovering esquire. “Bring the maps, and watered wine for the lords, that we may take our counsel.”

His eyes gained an uncharacteristic softness. “Come here, Nephew, sit with me.”

Have no doubt that my father did, in fact, love me. If The Valar should ever call me to Máhanaxar to testify on his account, that certainty is all I can think of to bring forward in his favour.

Curufinwë’s actions in Beleriand centered on two driving forces. Naturally, nothing in Ëa could take precedence over his all-consuming Oath. Yet whenever it briefly loosened its black and bloody stranglehold on his mind, he would turn towards me like a disturbed compass needle righting itself.

The eve of battle of Lothlann was one such rare moment, though I did not know it then. With the clarity granted by time and distance, it stands out starkly.
My suit of armour was worthy of a Prince of the House of Fëanáro, and not once during the entire painstaking process of its making had it been touched by any hand but my father’s. I had of course attended him in the forge, a requisite part of my education in smithcraft, but I was made to stand aside, alternately being measured and watching in silence for entire days and nights as he moulded, tempered, engraved and refined.

The fruit of these labors was as molten silver given shape, fluid, light as a feather, its beauty sharp enough to cut to the quick. Even Tyelkormo, reared from birth in opulence so lavish it became a by-word even in Tirion, with sapphires common as pebbles in Fëanaro’s house, gasped when he finally held up the chest plate, blue steel tough as adamant with the eight-pointed star of Fëanáro overlaid in mithril.

Cendaro had unpacked it from its wrappings and hung it from a wooden stand in my tent. He stood at the ready to dress me by the light of a single blue lamp in the early hours before dawn, while I broke my fast with white bread and watered wine. Suddenly the tent-flap was pulled back to admit my father and uncle Tyelkormo, both fully geared for war.

“Leave us” my father brusquely ordered Cendaro, who bowed and disappeared.

His tone with me was equally curt. “Stand over here, Telpë.”

Only then did it dawn on me that he intended to dress me himself. I was immeasurably glad Cendaro had already braided my hair. Given Curufinwë’s melancholic mood, he doubtlessly would have insisted on doing that, too, an intimacy I would have found hard to bear from him.

As it was, I shuddered as he began his work, helping me into my padded red gambeson. He looked at me, searching for what ailed me as if he were determining the composition of some troublesome alloy in his crucible. As ever, he read me correctly.
To this day I wonder if it was the fey mood before battle, or a touch of foresight that made him speak aloud what had remained unsaid for all our time in Ennor.

“Sixty years has it been since I took you with me from Tirion, and still you cannot suffer me to touch you.”
The realisation did not keep him from deftly tying the shoulder straps of my breastplate.

“Necessity only was what drove me that day. Can you not understand, at least, so we might ride to war without a quarrel to divide us unto death?

My mood was as fierce as his, and the knowledge that he could not possibly go back on yesterday’s agreement with Maitimo emboldened me like never before.

“You could have left me with her.”

Tyelkormo had sat down on my camp-bed, idly drawing a whetstone across the already dangerously sharp edges of his spear.

“Left you caged, Telpë, to sit at the feet of the Valar? Are you so eager to be their serving-boy, while the murderer of two High Kings wears the heirlooms of your house unchallenged?”

My father remained silent, letting Tyelkormo’s words hang in the air like a whiff of toxic fume.
There it was, staring me in the face. That black rend Fëanáro tore into the fabric of all our lives, inescapable as a run extending ever further through our warp and weft.
It was not the Oath that barred my father and uncles from regret or atonement for their deeds, but the Fëanorian pride, a complete and utter inability to even consider the possibility they had been wrong.
No matter what fate he and I would meet that day, whether glory or doom, death or a taste of Maitimo’s long torture, my father would not, could not regret bringing me into it. All the ages of the world and the vilest of horrors unleashed upon his own son would not suffice for him to repent. The realisation struck like a blade to the gut: a lingering agony I have carried to this day.

My father’s hands danced over my shoulders and sides, tying and buckling, his eyes fixed on his work.

“I have only, ever, wished for you to grow up with dignity, and a sense of your own worth. How could you have that, coddled into weakness under Varda’s skirts? Your mother and I… please believe that I tried every possible alternative, Telpë. Every other way. She would not listen, could not see reason, so thickly had the Valar poured their poisonous meekness into her ears. I do not blame her, but I had to keep you safe.”

Suddenly I noticed the wet sheen to his eyes, the minute sluggishness of his darting hands. The sight of my father’s sorrow shook me more than any amount of spurting blood could have done.
Children are the most loyal creatures in Arda. Whatever atrocity their parents subject them to, a young child will cling like a dog to its master, ever in slavish pursuit of love and appreciation.
I was young enough then to still be subject to this inherent fallacy of youth.

“Atarinyë…” My voice cracked.

He had come to the very last act of the coördinated dance for two that is the donning of armour. Girding my sword-belt required him to put his arms around my waist. The strange mockery of an embrace took place wordlessly. Only when it was in place did he right himself to look me in the eye.
And I, young fool that I was in those days, I embraced him.
The resounding clang of both our suits of armour and the strange stiffness and distance they kept between us were entirely apt.

When he stepped back, his eyes were dry once more. “You will do us proud, today.”

It was all he said before pressing the red-plumed helmet into my hands and turning to leave. Tyelkormo rose to follow him.
I stood, staring transfixed at the tent flaps fluttering in the wake of their passage.
Outside the camp drew itself awake, the sound of entire companies of booted feet and hooves was swelling. Cendaro stuck his head through the flaps, wearing a mail hauberk of his own.

“My lord, your horse is ready.”

Having already suffered the first defeat of the day, I stepped forth into the darkness before dawn, praying the fortunes of war would bring me better luck.

In the aftermath we took to calling that battle the Glorious Battle, a moniker even the Sindar approved of. The name was entirely apt. 
Even to me, reared from birth in a state befitting a Prince of the House of Fëanáro, the sight of Maitimo surrounded by his household knights was awe-inspiring. His company oversaw the muster from a small hillock amidst the trampled grasses. My uncle stood out among his attendants, tall as an oak tree. His high helmet of mithril-overlayed steel bore the distinctive crimson plumes of Fëanáro’s own devising. His breastplate was inlaid with rubies and garnets, and it caught the first rays of Anar’s rising over Lothlann like a leaping flame. Even from the hilt of his sword sparkled a wealth of red gems. His personal guard was arrayed no less richly under their banners bearing the eight-pointed star picked out in mithril and diamonds on blackest sable. A glittering memory of the splendour of Tirion before the Darkening had taken shape once more on the grey shores of Ennorë.

Then Maitimo’s eyes, their deep Tree-light sharpened and refined by his torture, came to rest on mine, and the lingering wisps of that morning’s despair, coiling about my mind like bitter, ash-grey smoke from Thangorodrim, were blown away by the sheer ardour radiating from him. Fëanáro’s firstborn son was a creature of fire, a blazing, consuming flame made flesh, and the sight of him sparked a fierce blood-lust in my chest.
He appeared to have the same inspiring effect on his troops. Suddenly a roaring cry went up from every voice. The elegant, lethal phalanxes of his Noldorin cavalry, twelve-thousand strong and mounted on the spirited descendants of Oromë’s own blood-horses. His spearmen, their eyes and the keen points of their helmets and lances reflecting Anar’s rays like an army of stars fallen to earth. Even the few Sindar that could be persuaded to take service with the sons of Fëanáro, some small companies of archers looking frail and drab as wood-pigeons among the richness of the Noldor, lent their voices to the great battle-cry.

“For the Silmarils! For Finwë! For Fëanáro!”

Maitimo was the only one not overwhelmed with blood-lust. He was well aware of how he looked, and of the effect he was having.
He sat on his great destrier observing, gauging the battle-fury like a smith calculating the heat of his forge-fire by the colour of its flames. 
When he saw me approaching he brought his stallion beside mine, turning us until we stood side by side before his troops. They made a roaring, intimidating sea of blue-grey steel and white gems, twenty-thousand upturned faces drinking us in. Maitimo took my right hand in his left, a gesture that might have been tender had we not both been wearing metal gauntlets, and raised them high above our heads.

“Behold, the grandson of Fëanáro come to draw swords with you! Our House shall thrive eternally to spite the Moringotto! Today we drive that knowledge home to him like never before. For the Silmarils!”

I think it very well possible the resulting clamour was indeed heard all the way to Thangorodrim.

Remember that Maitimo was once, in the days before the Fall, a politician of unrivalled skill and cleverness. Through me, he promised the Noldor everlasting vengeance and victory where before they saw only defeat after defeat. The idea that a leader might have genuine need of heirs was a new one, born of the harsh necessities of war. Maitimo made my very existence the symbol of the endurance of the House of Fëanáro, and his warriors lapped it up.
Doubtless this had been a move long calculated, and knowing Curufinwë would refuse Maitimo the use of me for his scheme, my recalcitrant father had been made to acquiesce by clever manipulation. Canissë’s praiseful attention for me took on a new and disturbing dimension. It would seem Maitimo sent her to Aglon on more than one errand. With a stab of hot shame I recalled how unquestioningly I had basked in her regard for me. Then and there began my long education in the intimate and personal art that is diplomacy.

Maitimo must have known my thoughts in that moment, because he was genuinely kind. Taking some time to put me at ease, he placed me beside Canissë in the line of Elf-warriors that was to move northwest across the rippling ocean of golden grass, driving Orcs and Wargs before it. The thought he sent his people was readable even to me: their duty was to die for me if need be. He would see every single one of them trampled to a pulp in the bloody mire before I, the hope of his House, might come to harm. 
Before taking his leave to assume command once more, he turned to Canissë and me, whispering for our ears only.

“Telpë, my dear nephew. Canissë will remain by your side, and she will demonstrate both skill and valour for you to emulate. If all should be lost turn to her. She will spare you from the worst fate of all.”

Canissë sent me an unreadable look.
For the first uneventful hour of the ride I honestly believed that Canissë was meant to somehow keep me from being slain. Only when the sun had fully risen above the Ered Luin in a great glory of gold and madder did the realisation hit me like an avalanche. To Maitimo, the worst possible fate was not death but capture, and I was to receive the tender mercy of Canissë’s blade instead.

If Lothlann was an ocean of waving grass, the marching companies of the sons of Fëanáro were the rising of its silver tides as we swept the plains in a mighty arc moving west towards Ard-galen.
At first we drove out naught but small bands of Orcs and Wargs, stragglers and scouts easily destroyed by our vanguard. I recall my childish eagerness, and being disappointed at the lack of opportunity to prove myself. True to his word, Maitimo remained close beside me. My chance arrived when we came upon the siege of Ladros.
A great multitude of Orcs and other foul creatures were encamped in the foothills rising towards the dark pine-covered heights of Dorthonion, pillaging and defiling the green lands. The brothers Angaráto and Aikanáro, their names by then unceremoniously Sindarinized to Angrod and Aegnor, valiantly defended their fief, but lacked the numbers to break the noose of Moringotto’s servants that was pulled ever tighter around their necks.
Maitimo proved himself an able strategist, drawing the Orcs out to meet us on the plain instead of giving them the advantage of higher ground in the hill-country.

Show me a warrior who claims they were anything but mindless with terror at the sight of their first Orcs, and I will show you a liar. Seen from a distance it was as if the highlands of Dorthonion released rivers of viscous, slow-running pitch upon us. When they approached the streams separated into individual shapes running jerkily, hunched over, many knuckling along to the ugly beat of their war-drums. At first my heart was almost moved to pity at the sight of living creatures so hamstrung and mutilated. The feeling abruptly turned to terror at the sight of the bloodlust in their sickly yellow eyes and their vile weapons: crudely made polearms eight feet long, topped with cruel blades and hooks for pulling down riders.
The fate of what Elves they succeeded in unhorsing grew clear soon enough, when the hapless fellow in front of me was pulled to the ground and torn to pieces by a mad frenzy of claws and fangs. His howls of agony would resound through my nightmares for years to come, and they continued until Canissë, with a steady hand and terrifying hate in her eyes, drove a white-fletched arrow through his eye.

Perhaps I should boast of my valour that day, of how I “slew the foe in droves” as my politically astute uncle Makalaurë would sing to great acclaim not a sennight later. I would prefer not to make a fool of myself. This was my first battle, and the tally of my contributions to the day’s glory amounted to remaining alive and keeping my morning meal where it belonged.

There on the battlefield, surrounded by screams and the stench of entrails, threatened from every direction, I could not spare a moment to think of it, but these were the first Orcs Maitimo had encountered since his torment in Angband.
His vengeance was terrible to behold. If my uncle had been as flame that morning, in the heat of battle he blazed like a living inferno. Never before had I witnessed such lethal skill at arms. The red gems on his sword-hilt caught the light as he thrust and hacked, sending flecks of red light across the surrounding knights of his household guard like dancing splatters of blood.

Maitimo hewed through the churning black hordes like a harvester scything ripe wheat, unstoppably clearing a path to their captain under his banner of sable unblazoned. To lead his first attack on the Noldor Moringotto had sent forth no mere Orc. This was a Boldog, a fallen Maïa clad in orc-flesh. The accursed beast was even taller than Maitimo himself, armoured in black iron and brandishing a cruelly spiked club nearly its own size. In its beady eyes shone a twisted cleverness far beyond the blind obedience and terror of regular Orc-slaves, whose masters use whips to drive them onto the battlefield. Here was an opponent against whom Maitimo’s hot rage would only serve to endanger him.
The Boldog knew this, and it taunted him mercilessly as they circled, weapons held aloft, appraising each other. Its coarse, hateful voice recounted the foulest details of torture and humiliation before all his household. Only then did I realise this very creature must have been among his tormentors in Angband. Even under the torrent of the monster’s scorn, Maitimo’s face was unreadable, his eyes blank.
He remained calm and impassive, methodically testing the Boldog’s defenses as it ramped up its provocations. From Maitimo himself it moved on to his brothers. Makalaurë captured, Tyelkormo dragged to Angband in chains, brutalizing the entire House of Fëanáro until he reached Pityafinwë dismembered under the vilest of tortures. Maitimo slashed, and ducked the swinging club, and parried in a silence heavy as stone.

What measure of Sight remains to Maiar who have abased themselves so deeply I cannot say. Did the Boldog perceive me among the wide sweep of Elf-warriors keeping the throng of common Orcs from stabbing our prince in the back as he fought? Or had it heard mention of my presence in Beleriand wrung from Maitimo’s lips by some foul torture? We will never know, but in the end it was my name that decided their duel.

“Fear not, my Elf-thrall. I swear no Orc will ever lay a finger on your nephew. We hear that of all your bellicose House, Telpë has the sweetest disposition. My Master is of a mind to break him personally. We will carry him to Angband unbruised as a ripe peach.”

The Boldog, its slavering mouth seemingly too small for the multitude of yellow fangs it was meant to contain, looked directly at me across the field, and laughed.

After working up to it for so long, the swift and simple reality of Maitimo whirling underneath the swinging club to decapitate the monster with a single stroke was almost disappointing.
Blood-spattered and wild-eyed, Maitimo took the Boldog’s head and impaled it on its own standard, tearing off the black banner to tread it into the creature’s blood. When he raised his grisly trophy high for us all to see, a red fever of blood-lust and vengeance descended on the House of Fëanáro. We fell upon the dismayed Orcs with enough bitter hatred to purge ourselves of the dreadful images the Boldog had conjured, washing our minds clean in black blood. Looking back I can barely remember how many I killed or how I achieved it, so frenzied was the deluge of violence Maitimo had unleashed on his enemies. Later I found gore clinging to me in the strangest of places, bone-fragments working their way under my gambeson and more than blood alone matting my braids.

At their captain’s fall, the Orcs were utterly routed and fled north in disorder. Even as the cavalry and knights pursued them, drunk on victory and the clear wind in our faces, the call of many horns was heard from the West, and Maitimo’s face alighted like sunlight through dark clouds breaking. Many fair voices took up the call.

“Nolofinwë! Nolofinwë has come, and with him rides valiant Findekáno!”

Like two cupped hands, the eastern and western phalanxes of Elvish riders met to encircle the fleeing Orcs.
Fëanáro and Nolofinwë, the kinslayers and the clean-handed, the Dispossessed and the High King, naught did it matter as we fell upon the Orcs’ disarrayed rearguard in a storm of blue Elvish steel. Makalaurë later sang that not a single Orc escaped us to return to Angband, possibly the only line of his whole splendid lay that is not poetic exaggeration. We still had long hours of hard fighting to do as the sun settled in the west, colouring the clouds of toxic fume spilling forth from Moringotto’s fortress as deep a crimson as the very earth beneath our feet.

We were close to the Thangorodrim itself then, and I knew the very sight of the piled, groaning agony of its ashen peaks was torment renewed for Maitimo. By then I had returned to my senses enough for understanding to click into place at the look of deep relief in my uncle’s eyes as they rested on the imposing figure with gold-wound braids that was Findekáno.
Every one of the furtive whispers I managed to overhear as they did the rounds of Aglon’s barracks was true. To my uncle, Findekáno was his saviour in more ways than one.

When I woke from my exhausted stupor at midday the roof of one of Maitimo’s tents billowed above my head as the westerly winds of Ard-galen caught the heavy crimson canvas. The light filtering inside was the vivid poppy-red of blood, or a smith-fire.

There was no trace of my uncle or his retainers. It was Cendaro who had woken me and now hastily dressed me in my next-to-best finery, for I had been invited to the share the midday meal with none other than Crown Prince Findekáno. 
I had expected this invitation to be a rote politeness, little more than permission to join a company of lords and their attendants at some large gathering. I could not have been more mistaken. As I know now, long tables and grand but empty words are reserved for stately dinners. The truly important machinations of statecraft are engineered in small, intimate companies over simple daytime bread and wine.

As I approached the tents housing Prince Findekáno and his retinue I remember feeling exceedingly smug. Where our Fëanorian encampment was all brightness, colour and gem-studded splendour, the Nolofinwëan tents, though large, were decidedly understated in plain indigo and pearl-grey, as if the High King of the Noldor had on a whim chosen to emulate the Grey-elven drabness surrounding him in Mithrim. Even after witnessing Nolofinwë’s questionable taste in décor, I was genuinely surprised at finding myself hailed in Sindarin and led into the Crown Prince’s presence by a Sindarin servant in the Nolofinwëan livery. The Elf was whisper-quiet and slender, his alien eyes strangely devoid of Light.

Findekáno himself cut a figure nearly as imposing as Maitimo. They were matched for height, and everything about him, from the luxuriously gold-wound dark braids to his broad shoulders and the martial fire in his eyes, seemed the personification of what it meant to be a Noldo. 
It was all I could do not to startle when he rose from his camp-chair to greet me in Sindarin, the Moriquendian language flowing from his lips smooth as syrup. I had been taught the tongue’s essentials, if only to communicate with our stable-hands and huntsmen in Aglon after Thingol forbade them the use of Quenya. I had not nearly enough of it to carry on a civilized conversation or address the Crown Prince with the respect that was his due.
Even as I fumbled through my greeting I struggled to remember the correct conjugation rules for the reverent form of verbs, one I admit to having used very rarely at that point. The Sindarin servant remained present, pouring and watering wine while observing me with dispassionate curiosity.

My rescue came from an entirely unexpected source. From a side entrance Maitimo stepped into the tent, seemingly unescorted.

He gave the Grey-elf an easy smile. “That will be all, thank you, Manion.” His Sindarin was far better than I expected.

Instead of objecting to being dismissed by anyone but his lord, Findekáno’s manservant bowed and left. Maitimo clearly made himself at home wherever Findekáno was, and saw no need to pretend otherwise on my account. He sent me a look that was both searching, and a challenge of sorts. Either he was so sure of his position he no longer feared scandal, or he believed me incapable of unleashing one. 
The instant the tent-flaps fell closed behind Manion both lords gladly reverted to Quenya.

Findekáno pointed us towards a table set for three with bread and wine. His smile was warm and slightly feline.

“Welcome, Celebrimbor, if I may call you that? I have heard so much about you, it seems as if I know you already.”

I was struck with awe of this lordly figure, and so immensely relieved at being allowed to speak Quenya that I would have agreed to any name of his choosing. “Aye, my Prince.”

“There is no call for such formality, cousin. We are among family. I apologise for receiving you in Sindarin. I merely wanted to gauge your proficiency. Much of our official business is conducted in Grey-elvish these days. It is but a small deference to Elu Thingol in exchange for his continued goodwill.”

I attempted to hide my shocked indignation. Surely he did not willingly bow to the haughty decrees of this Moriquendian pretender to kingship of the Teleri even in his own household?

Maitimo and Findekáno exchanged glances, and there was a strange undercurrent, some tacit understanding between the both of them that wholly eluded me.

“There is no shame in a good compromise, Telpë, regardless of what your father would have you believe.” After the sight of him on the battlefield the day before, Maitimo’s voice was shockingly gentle even in this unveiled attack on Curufinwë.

“Which brings me to the purpose of our meeting here. I wish to discuss your prospects.”

My eyes shot to Findekáno, wondering why this conversation was taking place in his presence.

“Findekáno advises me in many things, as I do for him. It is my wish that the two of you might become friends as well.”

I acutely perceived that this was a test of some kind, and much depended on whether I would prove myself accepting of whatever Findekáno’s entanglement in Maitimo’s life entailed.

“The friendship of Prince Findekáno is an honour indeed. I will aspire to prove myself worthy.”

At the time I could have said little else, but in later years I grew to fully appreciate the value of the alliance with the future high king I gained that day. Findekáno once more smiled his cat-like smile and raised his wineglass in an almost conspiratorial salute before taking a sip. I responded in kind.

Maitimo continued. “Naturally all peoples tend to view events in the wider world from their own halls first. In Aglon, you have been raised exclusively within our sphere of influence. However much we might wish differently, the balance of power in Beleriand has shifted away from the Fëanorim of late, and we have neither the strength nor the numbers the fulfillment of our Oath requires. If we wish to recover the Silmarilli, we shall sorely need our allies. Yesterday’s shared battle has proven this is very much possible despite our differences.”

I nodded, still unable to fathom the purpose of this meeting.

“The short of our current predicament is that we need every Elf in Beleriand to take up arms against the Enemy if we want any hope of defeating him. The vast majority of those Elves are Sindar, Elu Thingol’s loyal subjects. The Fëanorim are anathema to the very people we need to accomplish our purpose here in Ennor.”

Maitimo’s eyes, blue as lapis, came to rest on mine.

“Only one among the House of Fëanáro might redeem himself sufficiently to be accepted even by our Arafinwëan cousins and the Sindar, in time. One who has sworn no Oath, and taken no part in the slaying of Elves, and therefore stands a chance of securing their swords for our cause.”

Ah. Once gained, an insight changes one’s perception of everything that went before. Maitimo had wanted me for more than simply egging on his troops.

“I am no diplomat, Uncle.”

Findekáno chuckled, but there was nothing mean-spirited about the sound. “Indeed. We would have been astonished if you were, raised in a military outpost by a hunter and a smith. It is high time your uncle took charge of your education.”

A sense of dread descended on me. “What is your intention?”

Neylafinwë leant forward. “I mean to bring you to Himring with me. There are many things I can teach you, Sindarin not the least among them. When you have learned to my satisfaction, I will send you to those places your uncles and I cannot ever hope to go, as the emissary of our House.”

Himring. The name itself sounded like a promise.

I thought of the empty, echoing hallways of Aglon, the long silences in the forge, my father’s hard-handed fencing lessons, and marvelled at the sudden possibility, never conceived of before, of not returning to them. 
This was one of Maitimo’s political masterstrokes. Stealing me away from Curufinwë was a plan as multifaceted as one of his many well-cut rubies. He would gain a useful ambassador, with the added sweetness of a sharp retaliation for Curufinwë’s attempted betrayal after Maitimo’s abdication. It was exquisitely cruel without being obvious, and for a moment I hesitated, unsure whether I wanted any part in this. 
My father loved me deeply, even if he was incapable of showing it any other way than through harsh teaching and the fruits of his labours at the forge. For a moment a vivid image of him standing alone and forlorn in the great hall of Aglon beside my empty chair at the high table made my chest contract with pain. In the next instant I remembered the last sight of my mother, the sensation of being lifted from her arms and the sound of my own incessant howling. Curufinwë seemed to forget that others had suffered, beside Finwë and Fëanaro, and to me the shadows she cast were as long as theirs.

Maitimo sent me a look of deep regret and longing, a look that turned my heart around. Things might have been so different, it said. In another world, one without Silmarils or doomed Oaths, Nelyo and Káno could have been a pair of friendly uncles who would never have sons of their own, taking a shy but beloved nephew under their sleek wings. There would be no need to steal me from my father, because Curufinwë would have approved instead of clinging to me like an oyster to its shell out of barely disguised guilt over his unspeakable deeds. 
That world existed once, and their own swords had hacked it to pieces.

“You have not forgiven him yet, and I doubt you ever will. Is that not reason enough?” Even off the battlefield Maitimo’s aim was true.

“I will not forsake my father. It would break him” Even a less skilled observer would have noticed the waver in my voice. I wholly meant it, at the time.

“I do not ask you to. To forsake your father would be to forsake our House. Consider it a period of extended tutoring, if you will. We all had those at your age. He cannot begrudge you one of your own. Yours will be the most productive of all, if you succeed.”

Suddenly a cold hand seemed to close around my heart.

“‘To evil end shall all things turn that you begin well’. Why would you attempt this at all, knowing it is a doomed undertaking?” I did not dare say: how can any endeavour succeed if it is begun by kin tormenting one another so?

A sad smile played across Maitimo’s scarred face, granting its marred beauty an almost ethereal glow. The look in Findekáno’s eyes as he watched him was unfathomable.

“Your innocence might protect us all. You never chose any of this, and neither did you share in our deeds. if the Valar presume to call themselves just, how could they possibly include you in their Doom? I know it will come to pass, Telpë. One day I will unite all Elves of Ennorë to overthrow Thangorodrim and take back our birthright, and you will help me do it. Believe me nephew. Day will come again.”