Dry lightning by Idrils Scribe

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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 .

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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.)