Dry lightning by Idrils Scribe

Chapter 1

This chapter contains a graphic description of dead bodies.

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Lalwen had studied enough Ennorëan meteorology to know that the towering cloud-castles building on the horizon and that strange pale yellow tint to the light would bring their company nothing good. The hot wind of high summer was bone-dry, howling down the plains from the blighted north to bend the brittle stems of Ard-Galen’s grasses like an army of thralls might bow before the Morgoth.

An ill choice of day to venture out onto the plain, but her nephew was the one in charge of this investigation, and whatever else he might be called -- The Valiant, The Commander -- The Cautious was not an epithet any Elf in their right mind ever applied to Fingon son of Fingolfin. It explained her brother’s insistence that Lalwen join this expedition of his.

With another stab of concern Lalwen inhaled the metallic scent of ozone. The building storm would bring not a drop of rain, but soon great forks of lightning could set the tinder-dry plains themselves ablaze and burn horse and rider alive. They needed to get out of the long, yellowed grass -- and fast.

Lalwen eyed the reason for their ill-advised expedition. The strange furrow before her was a drab brown of decaying vegetation plastered to the ground by some foul-smelling, slimy substance she prayed would prove non-flammable. The stench was eye-watering, strangely reminiscent of rotting fish. The very idea of touching the foul ooze was repulsive, but soon these mysterious tracks where horses refused to tread might be their only refuge from roaring lines of flame, wind-whipped across the steppes faster than Elvish cavalry could ride.

She raised her hand to Nandaro, the chief of Fingon’s household knights, and brought her pale stallion to a halt to swing down from the saddle. Sírdal snorted nervously, loath to set foot upon the rotting soil, but Lalwen knelt down at the very edge of the eerie band of decay plowed through the vastness of Ard-Galen unto the horizon, and tentatively reached out her gloved hand to touch.

She could feel the keen eyes of Fingon’s cavalry upon her back. Unsurprisingly, Fingon himself soon knelt beside her, the fire of curiosity alight in his steel-grey eyes. Never did he shirk from any danger he would command others to dare, and the principle extended to his elders.

“Has Yavanna ever told you of aught such as this, Aunt? Or perhaps it was recorded in the library of Tirion? It might be a salamander of some kind -- unless the Sindar failed to inform us that Ennor harbours giant snails.”

When she was still Fingon’s tutor, in simpler days in Tirion, Lalwen had always been patient with her nephew’s exasperating flights of fancy, his lack of scientific rigour. Even at this deluge of nonsense spoken before his warriors she did not rebuke him.

“The largest snails in Yavanna’s gardens are the size of a dog. Any larger and their flesh would no longer withstand gravity. If it cannot be achieved in Valinor it should not be possible here in Ennor either. The same goes for giant amphibians, by and large. I fear this is something else entirely, and doubtlessly the Morgoth’s work.”  

She stood to follow the alien track with her eyes. At the point where it disappeared into the northern horizon her eyes could just discern the miniature, blue-tinged reflection upon the atmosphere itself of what lay beyond: the three peaks of Thangorodrim in all their ugly, piled horror. Fingon followed her eyes and his jaw clenched in determination.

“Whatever abomination he bred in those foul pits, I will have it on my spear before this summer is through.”

Lalwen shrugged. “At present the matter calls for the scientific method rather than spears, Nephew.”

She crouched once more and lifted a pair of tweezers from the pouch at her belt to pick up a flat, grey thing the size of her palm. Her other hand swiftly produced a small, exquisitely wrought magnifying glass -- the late Fëanáro’s work -- a perfectly ground lens caught in a setting of engraved mithril. What she saw made her wish she could swallow her condescending remark.

“On second thought, do not put down your weapons just yet. This is an osteoderm.”

All she received was a highly disappointing blank stare. Her remark would have sufficed to strike terror in the heart of any of Fëanor’s clever sons. It galled her to no small degree that Fingon, her own student, needed to have such things explained to him.     

“The bony skin plates on certain creatures’ scales. They make up the beasts’ natural armour. Whatever made these tracks may shed a mucous poison, but it is most likely reptilian in nature. By the shape, this particular scale has come off the side of the jaw. I estimate the creature itself about the size of a horse, possibly larger.”

Fingon eyed the broad swathe of festering grass before them. “I could have told you that, Aunt.”

Lalwen silently dropped the sample into an airtight silver container for future testing, and scooped a glass vial’s worth of slime. Her field laboratory was a far cry from what she had in Barad Eithel, and an even further one from Tirion, where Yavanna’s Maiar once worked alongside the finest minds of the Noldor to explore the mysteries at the very core of life itself. Still, she had a decent enough microscope at her disposal. She would wring every last piece of intelligence from this piece of bone to better arm their warriors against this new, mysterious abomination Morgoth unleashed upon Beleriand.

---

The greener grasses announcing the safety of the wetlands around the Fen of Serech were tantalizingly close when a fast-moving dot on the northern horizon resolved into one of Fingon’s warriors, her wild-eyed horse in a lather.

“My Prince! Princess Lalwen! The scouts found yet more dead, fresh from last night by the look of things! Will you not come?”

To his credit Fingon did cast a look at the menacing cauldron of roiling cloud that was the northern horizon, already shot through with lightning, and at Lalwen’s concerned face.

“I will go, with my personal guard. Pass me some of your vials, Aunt, that I may bring samples of whatever I find back to you.”

Lalwen shook her head. Knowing her nephew there was precious little point in arguing about mitigating risks. In Fingon’s eyes, the very concept applied exclusively to other people.

“I do not fancy riding through the gates of Barad Eithel bearing your charred remains in a litter and explaining to your father how I was twenty miles into safe territory when lightning struck. I promised him that I would remain by your side. My guard and I will burn beside you, if necessary.”

----

The storm was nearly upon them when they reached the corpses. The sallow half-light filtering through the roiling thunderclouds seemed to slide off the remains of Fingolfin’s messengers with revulsion.

Mere days ago Lalwen would have known the dead men’s faces well enough. They were in and out of her brother’s council chambers bearing messages at all hours. Today she could not have put their names to them if her life had depended upon it. Whatever black sorcery or unknown weapon this was had burned hot enough to blister faces to featureless charcoal and heat muscles to the point of twisting the bodies of Elf and horse into a strange, eldritch mockery of dancing poses.

Nothing remained of the couriers’ livery and the royal banners they had flown so proudly. Only the engravings on their weapons, found by the glimmer of metal through sheaths turned to soot, marked them as the swift riders Fingolfin had dispatched from Barad Eithel to bear word of this new threat to Maedhros in Himring.  

Fingon stepped back from the smouldering mound of horseflesh that once was a fine Valinórean thoroughbred. He was wiping flakes of carbonized leather from a dagger engraved with the star of his House wrung into a strange, waving shape by the heat. His voice was carefully neutral.

“This was sheathed when it burned. They never drew blade.”

The dry, hot wind howling across the plains did not prevent the miasma of smoke, charred flesh and the acrid fish-stench of the strange slime from scorching Lalwen’s throat raw. She knew she must not flinch, that she could afford no outward show of her shock and horror. She was the oldest of the House of Finwë present here, the greatest Noldorin loremistress East of the Sea, and these warriors needed her to tell them what to make of this.

“This was no Balrog. Whatever did this wielded stealth as much it did fire.” Fingon sank to a crouch to touch the black, beslimed earth.

Lalwen turned her face toward Angband. “Slime, stealth and fire. And it moves only at night.”

Thangorodrim had been swallowed by menacing towers of cloud, but the sleepless gaze of the Dark Vala emanating from it weighed no less heavily upon the land.  

“It has fled the daylight into Angband. We will learn nothing more today. I see only one way forward, Nephew, but it is an utterly perilous one.” Lalwen paused for a moment, gathering her strength to speak the dreaded words.

Fingon stood straight, and the calm determination in his steel-grey eyes granted Lalwen another measure of courage. His mind was cool and gentle against hers as he deftly plucked the plan from her thoughts and voiced it for her.

“We will set our ambush here, on the plain. I will be your defender, and you my father’s eyes and ears.”

---

Chapter End Notes

Thank you for reading, a review would be wonderful!

What prey are Lalwen and Fingon hunting? And where is Maedhros?

Chapter 2 is coming soon!

Chapter 2

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Upon his return from Angband Fingon had been ‘gifted’ with a personal honor guard, hand-picked by his father. Fingolfin had selected his son’s guardians from the oldest and most loyal supporters of their House, all hardened survivors of the Grinding Ice. Their task was not overly complicated, but difficult nonetheless: keep the daring Crown Prince of the Noldor alive and in one piece until he might be needed as his father’s successor.

Fingon now offered all of them the choice to retreat, wishing only volunteers for this perilous ambush. Rather predictably, not a single one took him up on it.

After nearly two yéni in Ennor, Lalwen still found it disconcerting to watch Elves her own age, people she once knew as musicians, gardeners and smiths in Tirion, become wholly absorbed in the ceaseless demands of an entirely new craft unknown to peaceful Valinor. Quenya did have a word for ‘warrior’, but to see it deftly lifted from the Lambengolmor’s Primitive Elvish lexicons and pressed back into daily use was a linguistic shift she regretted having to witness.

Finally, after tedious hours crept by with only increasingly horrific speculations on the nature of their quarry for diversion, the last of the day’s dying light was absorbed by a low roof of heavy cloud. To the north the starless sky was lit from below by a pulsing crimson glow that marked Angband’s hellish furnaces vomiting their poisonous fumes.

Gibbous Tillion rode high among the chasing storm clouds, and Lalwen wondered how much of what befell the rebellious Noldor would find its way back to Manwë’s halls upon Taniquetil by word of Oromë’s former hunter. Mayhap he was jealous: none of Yavanna’s beasts on the plain of Valinor had ever provided such a quarry as the House of Finwë now pursued.

Lalwen’s horse Sírdal flattened his ears against his head and took a great snort of air, as if tasting it. Upon her next breath the smell of rot assaulted her senses. Fingon’s warriors pressed in around their prince and princess with lowered spears in a vain attempt to protect them from whatever invisible threat crept near, but their horses panicked from the sheer power of that vile stench and the formation fell into disarray.

Lalwen strained her eyes and spied movement on the plain, a ripple along one of the long, waving hillcrests left by the vanished glaciers of ages past. It defied the eye, now seeming wholly present, then shimmering out of existence. Even as Lalwen attempted to focus her gaze, Sírdal screeched and reared, mindless with terror. She had no choice to be equally ungentle when her mind took hold of Sírdal’s.

“Stay!”

All of Lalwen’s power thrummed behind the words. The stallion was shaking like an aspen leaf, but he stood.

Lightning struck down, too bright even for Elvish eyes, leaving tracks of dark, branching lines floating wherever she looked as if all the world was now dirtied with soot. It did finally light their attacker. Lalwen could not suppress a gasp.

A great lizard, its scaly hide a drab, unassuming grey. Four laughably small, almost vestigial legs failed to keep its snakelike body off the ground. The mysterious slime was explained well enough: this bloated mockery of Yavanna’s darting, jewel-coloured monitors would be incapable of movement without a lubricant beneath its pale belly. The beast’s own droppings clung to it in a thick, wet crust. The stench was indescribable.

Fingon swiftly nocked an arrow, but Lalwen reached out to stay his hand. All she could muster was a horrified compassion. A pitiable thing it seemed, dug up from beneath a rock or found writhing in a deep cave-pool, better left alone to live out its mutilated life veiled in darkness.

Abruptly, the massive head swerved and the body followed, snakelike and frighteningly nimble. Lalwen gasped once more. Those eyes! They were beyond sentient. No beast or even one of the Children of Iluvatar could ever have such intelligence, such depth and raw Power burning behind their gaze.

This was one of the Ainur, but not clad in a fana of its own making. Morgoth had used some brutal, unknowable coercion to accomplish this, or mayhap found among the perverted spirits swirling about him one twisted enough to let itself be willingly entombed in this horrid cage of flesh and filth. However the Enemy had achieved it, the result was a horror entirely unknown, an unspeakable abomination against the very laws of Eru Iluvatar set loose upon the Elves.

Then the being spoke in Quenya, and with horror Lalwen realised that Morgoth had been cruel enough to let his victim keep their wits.

“Hail Irimë, Finwë’s daughter, wisest among the Noldor!”

That voice! Even here in Ennor’s darkness, distorted by the reptilian beak and wheezing through an irregular jumble of needle-shaped teeth, Lalwen knew that voice.

Laureo -- the Golden -- this Maia had been called in the lofty halls of Ilmarin on Taniquetil. Lalwen had hung on Laureo’s every word, when he still delighted in teaching the Noldor the secrets of the alien fires that raged at the heart of Varda’s stars, where matter itself was torn asunder to violently birth Light. In those years he had worn a fana of pure radiance. And yet, when the Darkness descended upon Valinor Laureo had chosen to serve it. Lalwen had to breathe through tears of shock at the sight of one who once stood beside the Elder Queen, twining his voice with Hers as She sang the very stars into existence, now reduced to crawling in his own excrement.

White-hot anger towards Melkor and all his followers had propelled Lalwen when she crossed the Ice in pursuit of vengeance for Finwë’s murder. That fire remained hot within her, but seeing what abject humiliation had befallen Laureo at the hands of his new lord she could not think of anything worse to inflict on him.

“Oh, vassal of Varda, how you have fallen!”

Lalwen was proud of her calm, even voice. Beside her Fingon’s eyes burned with frightening anger. His great bow sat steady in his hands, a white-fletched arrow nocked.

“It is you who have fallen, Princess. Your faithless masters have hoarded what little Light remains in their fenced land, and locked it against you. You are left outside to hunger while we in Angband feast!”

Fingon laughed a bitter laugh. “Laureo, you poor deceived fool! The Morgoth does not share. He has taken your Light as he did ours, and locked you in this prison of flesh and slime. Even your name he stole from you. You are grey now, no longer golden.”

Laureo’s voice hissed, distorted with fury, and Lalwen had to strain her ears to understand him.

“You cannot begin to fathom the generosity of the true King of Arda! I have my own Light now, and my name is a new and better one. I am Glaurung! Behold!”

Venomous hate flared in plate-sized eyes that somehow retained a hint of gold. Their gaze burned, and with a shock Lalwen realized Laureo was no less powerful than before. A fell, hungry spirit peered out at her, and it took her a few endless moments of holding that unbearable gaze before the insight struck her like a mace: Morgoth. For a moment Lalwen despaired. She had been prepared to bring all her art of Song to bear against a dumb beast of some kind, but how could a mere Elf Sing against an Ainu?

She never got a chance to attempt it, because in the next heartbeat day returned to Ard-Galen. A coruscating light was kindled, fierce and fell and golden, rendering the whole of Laureo’s body radiant like Vása herself, the last fruit of Laurelin suddenly set down upon drab, marred Ennor. He was instantly transformed from grey to marvellous, the long lines of his new form redrawn and limned in light.

One could not look upon such splendour and not feel exhilarated, delighted, enthralled. Even Sírdal stood stock-still underneath her, mesmerized by the pulsating golden light. For a brief instant Lalwen was astonished -- surely the Enemy was incapable of creating such striking beauty?

Some foul deceit was at work, and like a horse beset by flies she shook her head to clear it. The next instant realization struck. That absorbing, spellbinding light had been the last thing Fingolfin’s hapless couriers saw before their very eyes were boiled away.

“Fingon!”

There was no time to scream anything but his name. Fingon swerved his great stallion so abruptly that horse and rider went down into the slimy grass. With a sickening crack Fingon’s great bow broke beneath the horse’s weight.

In the next instant pain and heat were all the world. Even as Sírdal bolted in terror Lalwen could feel her eyebrows shrivel, and the penetrant stench of burning hair filled her nose. She only lived because the absurdly bright jet of blue flame roaring from Laureo’s gaping mouth had been aimed at Fingon.

It passed over him as he lay entangled with his fallen horse. Fingon’s stallion screeched in terror, his long legs flailing iron-shod hooves inches from Fingon’s head. It seemed that even a fallen Maia’s endurance had its limits.The river of flame waned to a trickle, then stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Lalwen ungently mastered her terrified horse and drove it back to where her nephew was about to recklessly enter single combat against a nightmare.

With an elegant roll Fingon regained his feet beside his foe, sword in hand, and hewed into Glaurung’s scaly neck. The force of his strike glancing off the bony scales threw the weapon from his hands. Every other Elf in the company remained spellbound, and Lalwen could do nothing but look on in horror as Fingon stood alone and unarmed before this thing that once was Laureo.

“You were always a fool, half-wit son of a usurper, but here in Ennor you have become a thief. You absconded with my master’s rightful hostage, but this night I shall deliver his justice!”

Glaurung rose, lifting his pale, slimed belly like a snake towering over its prey. His absurdly tiny forelegs wriggled with mad joy, and from the monstrous beak emerged Laureo’s well-known golden laugh, marred only by the slightest trace of madness - and all the more horrific for it. Earlier the beauty of Glaurung’s light had captivated Lalwen like a fly trapped in honey, but as she looked once more into the eerie red glow deep inside the gaping maw she found no trace of fairness. The Lord of Abomination could create nothing else. Her bravest kinsman, Fingon the Valiant, was going to die in agony, surrounded by horror.

Time itself slowed, and the universe twisted and slid sideways until it seemed Lalwen was the axis upon which spun all the world. Either she would act, or Fingon was lost.

Lalwen was no warrior. She bore no weapons, but she was Finwë’s daughter, grown to womanhood in the Light of the Trees and taught by the Star-Kindler herself. Her bite lay elsewhere. Valarin was a strange and terrible language, sharp as the glitter of swords made into sound, a pain to learn and never designed to be pronounced by Elvish mouths. When uttered well it could unmake the very fabric of Ëa and reweave its threads to the speaker’s desire. Lalwen had always been proud of her mastery, second only to Fëanor’s.

The words she called out were those of unmaking, of the spirit flying free of its housing, the breaking of chains. A mere Elf had no hope of unseating Laureo from Morgoth’s cage of twisted flesh, but the foul threads binding him to it did loosen, and for an instant his spell of confusion wavered.

Fingon’s bow lay broken and his sword was lost, but he had pocketed the heat-twisted dirk that belonged to one of the charred corpses. Fingolfin’s bladesmiths were fine craftsmen - the damaged weapon retained enough of an edge to sink in deep when Fingon’s strong arm drove it into Glaurung’s soft, slimy underbelly.

The monster roared in furious shock and pain. Black blood spurted to soak Fingon’s gloves and armguards. Nandaro, the captain of Fingon’s archers, instantly regained his faculties at the sight.

“Shoot the beast! Save the Prince! Shoot!!”

Yéni of training kicked in the instant the warriors woke from their daze to Nandaro’s voice. At once Glaurung became the center of a moving cloud of white-fletched Elvish arrows, every warrior determined to sink the killing shot. Most harmlessly plinked off his hide, scattering like raindrops falling upon stone, but not all. Soon enough it became obvious that Glaurung’s dung-caked belly was his weakest point, and Fingon’s archers took advantage to sink several flights into the gaps between his scales. The beast quickly fell back down into his low crouch but already the grass was stained black with blood from many wounds.

Physical pain was a sensation unknown to Laureo, who had been a spirit of pure Light, and his new shape -- Glaurung -- had never before taken damage on this scale. The great worm bellowed in terror. Fingon took advantage of the beast’s confusion to retreat. His own destrier had fled in panic, but he lightly swung himself onto Sírdal, landing behind Lalwen’s saddle.

“Beware, Aunt! Now he is truly dangerous!”

Glaurung’s mouth gaped open once more. Blood-red light pulsed within, and Lalwen could hear the great rush of air sucked into his lungs before he would breathe fire. Within his throat the very air trembled with heat. Nandaro aimed an arrow that would have skewered Glaurung’s brainstem through the roof of his mouth had the wooden shaft not flamed into ashes mid-flight.

Fingon’s voice rang bright and clear as a great silver bell.

“Fall back! Fall back and encircle! Ride fast!”

A ring of galloping archers now circled the dragon. Their own speed protected the warriors, for Glaurung was tired and weakened, his flanks heaving and the great beak panting open. Now the Elves were the nimbler ones, aiming and loosing from horseback with the same unerring precision as if they were standing on the solid ground of the archery range in Barad Eithel. At the sight, Lalwen felt immensely grateful for Fingolfin’s insistence on rigorous training, his ever-demanding perfectionism.

When yet another one of Nandaro’s broadheads found the thread-thin gap between two scales to deeply sink into soft flesh, Glaurung’s light extinguished. Instantly the dark of night covered the plain once more.

At first Lalwen naïvely believed they had killed Laureo’s monstrous body and set his spirit free to choose once more between Angband and the West. When her eyes had adjusted to the acrid smoke and sudden dark, a stab of sorrow made her sag against Fingon in the saddle and bury her raw face in her equally blistered hands. In his mad flight Glaurung had mauled the hapless horse and its rider that stood between him and the way to Angband into a shapeless mound of torn flesh. Another track of poisonous ooze now led due north. Within their circle nothing remained but scorch marks and a bloodied patch of slime .

---

Chapter End Notes

"The glance of his fell eyes was keener than that of eagles, and outreached the far sight of the Elves." From his epithet "The Golden" we can infer that Glaurung shone with a golden-red light when his fires burned high; when they burned low he looked "like a huge snake, ashen-grey, sliming the ground with his belly". On his underside he was "pale and winkeld, and all dank with a grey slime, to which clung all manner of dropping filth." His blood was black. His eyes were terrible, "being filled with the fell spirit of Morgoth, his master", and he used them to bring others under his spell. None could withstand their look, except Túrin when he wore his Dragon-helm. Glaurung had an "armor of horn, harder than iron, but below he had the belly of a snake", and this was his vulnerable spot.

(Unfinished Tales, Part One: The First Age, Narn i Hîn Húrin.)

Chapter 3

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Dawn broke over Ard-galen with the merry tweeting of a flock of lapwings and a clear sky blue as periwinkle. The sunlight brought little relief from the night’s horrors.

Lalwen had insisted on making a final sweep of the area in the light of day, but what she found gave little cause for cheer. Glaurung’s needle-sharp teeth had torn horse and rider to barely recognizable pieces, the latest Elf to be murdered without resistance of any kind. Lalwen turned away from the corpse with a wave of nausea, and motioned for Nandaro and his people to begin raising a mound of earth over it.

Whatever foul sorcery of the mind Morgoth had bestowed on Glaurung was strong enough to wholly overpower even the Calaquendi. In Tirion, Lalwen had perfected her skill at connecting her mind to others for a wordless exchange of images and ideas. She had not realized that all those who engaged in it with her were either Elves like herself or meant her well. This first hostile encounter of its kind highlighted the need to adapt yet another peaceful art for wartime use. She would have to speak with Fingolfin.

Her first notice of their visitors’ arrival was the look of absolute joy that washed over Fingon’s face at the sight of something behind Lalwen’s left shoulder. She spun herself around, terrified that he might be under another spell, and she would find herself face to face with Glaurung once more.

The eight-pointed star gleaming on the banners of the approaching company of warriors was only marginally more welcome.

Lalwen had last seen Maedhros on the day he rode from Fingolfin’s encampment at Lake Mithrim a scarred and wasted shadow of his former self, newly unkinged after passing Fingolfin the crown. His years in Himring had been kind to her eldest nephew: Maedhros had regained his former splendour.

‘The well-formed one’ a breathless Nerdanel had named her firstborn, and even after all that had come to pass Lalwen had to admit her ecstatic sister-in-law had been right. Despite his scars, her nephew looked sleek and elegant as a well-tempered blade. He was garbed as one might expect from a son of Fëanor, all gold-inlaid plate and sparkling red gems, though he did have the decency to swiftly remove his red-plumed helmet and have an attendant pack it away when he caught sight of Lalwen’s banner snapping in the brisk north wind beside Fingon’s.

Maedhros knew that Lalwen had not forgotten the sight of Fëanor wearing that pompous thing within their father’s halls. She could not look at it without hearing the sound -- as of tearing cloth -- of Fëanor’s sword sliding out of its scabbard to come to rest in the hollow of Fingolfin’s throat. A bitter anger flared to life once more in Lalwen’s chest.

In the encampment at Lake Mithrim Lalwen had considered it beneath her to extract vengeance from an invalid. Every one of Fëanor’s sons had felt her white-hot, righteous fury -- for Finwë, Elenwë, all those nameless faces starved into skeletal masks and frozen to stillness upon the Ice -- except Maedhros. From him she received the bitter atonement of seeing him brought so low he could sink no deeper: stripped of his health, his dignity, his kingship. Towards Maedhros alone she had been polite, kind even -- because she was satisfied.

She could not tell whether her contentment had survived the sight of him restored to a measure of happiness. It did not take a loremistress’ subtlety to comprehend the wild joy and anticipation she read in Fingon’s eyes as he watched Maedhros’ approach.

Fingon’s daring rescue had gained his father the crown, and mended the rift that threatened to divide the Noldor against their common enemy. Even so, High King Fingolfin did not care for the motive behind his son’s heroics, and neither did Lalwen.

It was not that she disapproved of love between those of like kind. Her own son had never looked twice at any maid and was no less beloved for it, but Glorfindel had the decency to choose a lover whose hands were not stained with Elvish blood. Nor did he bear the responsibility of providing his House with the heir they needed so desperately to spare the Noldor another potential succession crisis. Maedhros was doubtlessly a man of many talents, but childbearing was not among them.

Lalwen managed to keep her voice down. It would not do for the household guard to hear the House of Finwë squabble amongst themselves like Telerin fishmongers.

“Do not insult me with the pretense that this meeting is mere coincidence. When did you manage to send for him behind my back? Or did you plan this...this assignation from Barad Eithel?”

“Please, Aunt, be civil.” Fingon’s voice was less than a whisper.

She turned to skewer him with the sharpest look she could produce. “I will, if you do the same: nothing beyond what would be considered civil within your father’s halls.”

Anger alighted in Fingon’s face, and for a moment Lalwen saw his mother Anaïre there as she had stood firm before a departing Fingolfin -- tall, pale and immovable as Taniquetìl itself. Grief clenched her throat.

“In matters of lore I will gladly be led by your wisdom, Aunt, but in this I will do as my heart tells me. You may repeat those words to my father. He will not find them anything he has not heard before.”

There was little she could do but look ahead with a straight, detached face as Maedhros approached across the wind-swept plain, surrounded by the knights of his household. Even now it pained Lalwen to look upon them. Beside Maedhros rode Canissë upon a black destrier, mailed and helmed with a broadsword at her side. She was once among the best and brightest of Finwë’s civil servants.

What unspeakable acts did she commit in Alqualondë? Fingon, at least, had leapt into the fray in ignorance, with no other intention than to protect Maedhros. Canissë had known well enough who were the true aggressors and who merely defended what was theirs. What other atrocities would she perform without question or protest, simply because her lord commanded them? Lalwen suppressed a shudder as she watched Maedhros dismount with all his fluid grace of old.

“Hail, High Princess Lalwen, daughter of Finwë, Lady of Hithlum!”

For a moment Lalwen was struck silent, unsure whether she felt relieved or galled that Maedros had regained his courtly airs. Her nephew gave an elegant bow, exactly deep enough to be respectful without fawning, as if a thin veneer of politeness might hide the Oath-driven ruthlessness underneath. Lalwen was unimpressed.

“Maedhros, son of Fëanor. You look far better than the last time we met.”

“Thank you, Aunt. I wish I could say the same, but you appear to have won a most perilous battle.”

Only then did Lalwen stop to wonder how badly burned the sore skin of her face and hands must look, how singed her surcoat.

Maedhros bowed once more, slightly less deep. Pleasantries concluded, he turned towards the true purpose of his unexpected journey into Ard-galen. Both he and Fingon knew better than to stir up a public scandal in full sight of their troops. They did nothing but clasp each other’s forearms in a perfectly honourable warrior’s salute. The look that passed between them nonetheless thrummed with a sensuous energy that made Lalwen want to avert her eyes in embarrassment.

“Cousin.” Layers of meaning hidden in a single word.

She had intended to step closer, force them to break up this hand-clasp going on slightly too long for comfort, but all of a sudden a great wave of bone-deep cold washed over her. Her ears were filled with a thrumming as of the pulse of a heart the size of a mountain. All her mind froze and turned toward the touch of a Vala. The hand of Irmo Lórien, master of Visions, was not gentle when it descended upon a mere Elf.

The place where Lalwen stood seemed unchanged. The low, sloping hills surrounding her had not moved, but they were suddenly frighteningly bare of their lush grasses. Choking, whirling dust black as Thangorodrim covered all as a battle raged around her. Banners bearing the Winged Sun of Fingolfin’s House flew high. Bizarrely, the High King of the Noldor commanding his troops beneath was not Fingolfin, but Fingon. A stab of grief at her beloved brother’s loss nearly choked Lalwen, but the vision swept her onwards, unstoppable as a river raging downhill. Fingon raised his helmed head to give her that same hopeful, ecstatic look, and once more she spun around to see Maedhros approach under the banner of the Eight-pointed Star. But this time Glaurung was also present, despite the broad daylight, placing himself between them. He, too was changed. No watcher would now think to compare him to a horse. Glaurung had grown to an absurd, unimaginable size, like the very hills sprung to life, breathing fire, and behind him sounded the whips of Balrogs.

 

Lalwen returned to the present cradled in Maedhros’ mangled right arm while his left hand bathed her face with a wet cloth. With astonishment she looked up at a tent-roof billowing where she had expected the sky. By the sting of salt in the burns on her cheeks she had lain crying in the kinslayer’s arms for some time.

“Where is Fingon?”

Maedhros gaze was harsh.

“I made him leave.”

Lalwen shuddered. A whole battle-tale lay within those four words.

“Princess, what did you see?”

His question came too late. Lalwen was once more in control of her faculties, and she would not give intelligence to any son of Fëanor for either kindness or threats.

“Nothing.”

Maedhros grew frantic.

“My Lady, I am no fool. I know what I just witnessed. You were touched by Irmo himself. You have spent the past hour insensate, sobbing in my arms while calling out your nephew’s name. I beg you, speak. Fingon need not be burdened by this, but in the name of what mercy is left in you, warn me of whatever danger is coming for him, that I may avert it.”

Lalwen raised herself to sitting upon the camp-bed beneath them, then stood, shaking on her feet.

“I must speak with Fingolfin before any other.”

Maedhros sagged as if she had slapped him, and the look in his eyes was more sorrow than she could bear to witness. She broke at the sudden realization that, unlike in Aman, time was a finite resource for her nephews.

“Some visions will not come to pass if we divert from our path to avoid them. Others cannot be averted without altering the very weave of the world.” She breathed deeply. “Fingon must be crazed with worry for both of us. Go and comfort him.”

Maedhros rose obediently, then cast her a questioning look.

“I will not stand in your way, son of Fëanor. Go. Make him happy.”

Lalwen found no peace that night. A lone wolf’s forlorn howling rose to the sky as she wandered the hillcrest overlooking their encampment on one side, empty plains under a sky of stars marred by Angband’s blood-red glow on the other.

She could not decide what to tell Fingolfin. It was one thing to suspect what went on between Fingon and Maedhros when they rode out on the plains maintaining the Siege of Angband, but quite another to know beyond any possible deniability, to be rendered complicit by her silence. But how could she deny Fingon what short happiness his ill-starred affair might grant him? The memory of her horrific vision throbbed within her mind like a fresh wound.

Later, she dreamt of a memory - a pair of gangly boys she had once caught deep in Finwë’s hunting domain. Both of them had been asleep in Telperion’s silver light, long-limbed bodies entwined beneath their cloaks. She recalled the sight of their hair on the folded saddle blanket serving for pillow, mingled streaks of dark and red.

She almost managed to remember the image without seeing a field of blood-streaked mud.

---

Chapter End Notes

"But even as the vanguard of Maedhros came upon the Orcs, Morgoth loosed his last strength, and Angband was emptied. There came wolves, and wolfriders, and there came Balrogs, and dragons, and Glaurung father of dragons. The strength and terror of the Great Worm were now great indeed, and Elves and Men withered before him; and he came between the hosts of Maedhros and Fingon and swept them apart."

(The Silmarillion, Quenta Silmarillion, Ch 20, Of The Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad)