The Scrape of the Knife Against the Vellum by heget

The Tenth

Read The Tenth

Edrahil needed to forget their stories. He needed to forget their names.

 

Yellow eyes stalked his dreams, stained his memories, shimmered in the side corners of his sight, streaked a line of color in the fleeting reflections of every ephemeral surface of the illusions that he conjured to hide his mind from Sauron.

A trick, learned long ago, to bury his mind in memories so nothing outside his head could touch him, no voice reach him. Maiwë had hated it. For months that trick had worked to keep Sauron's interrogations at bay.

He was steward of Nargothrond, servant and master to its halls. Other men had designed its beauty and form, planned the trajectory of its corridors, carved away the natural caves and shaped stone and wood to create its rooms and passageways. But Edrahil had lived within its shapes and commanded the minutiae of its life. From king to lowest of menials had he interacted, and thus no man could claim a greater intimacy of both Nargothrond and all its people. For one to know the anthill, one needed to know both its tunnels and all the crawling insects. What Edrahil created was grander than any anthill. Within the guarded confines of his mind, Edrahil recreated the hidden city, drowning out the darkness of the dungeon with Nargothrond. He rebuilt the tactile details of the balustrade outside his office, the creak of the door, the squeak of his chair and the notch in the right armrest, the strong smell of linseed oil in the black ink. Small, powerful memories.

Little details worked best. Scent and taste was strongest but hardest to hold. This truth Edrahil established while crafting his illusion to keep his sanity when crossing the impossible cold of the Helecaraxë. Maiwë’s house near the docks, the licorice root in her small, rough hands, how the sweetness lingered long after they shared a piece.

Edrahil could not use her garden anymore. When she turned to look at him, her eyes were cruel and yellow and her laughter was cold. Her white walls were red with blood. Like her ship, dripping red off its deck, painting the ice in the harbor. Not those memories.

Nargothrond, then. No dungeon, no dead. He was the steward of Nargothrond. His office, writing in one of his many books. Linseed oil, black ink. That chair that creaked whenever he shifted his weight but was too comfortable to replace.

Within this city Edrahil weaved illusions of his companions. Tacholdir at his ledgers, teaching a mortal girl how to read and count, patient and kind, the scratch of quill against parchment like a slow and sweet duet. Arodreth damp from the laundries, the steam still beading across his tan skin and the faint beard beginning to emerge across his chin, no longer smelling of rose perfume. Beren smelled of flowers, strangely, even after he was cleaned from his journey and pressed awkwardly into borrowed clothes, desperate to find the quietest corner of Nargothrond to escape the crowd. Edrahil would guess that the scent was nipherdil, if he needed to name the flower. Bân with serving ladle upraised as he doled out the daily soup ration to rangers, his voice loud as he called for them to eat, a new letter tucked into his belt. A reflection of yellow eyes across the curved surface of the metal ladle, only a second of color. Aglar with ankle wrapped, his injury forcing him to remain in the city until it healed, sweat sticking his auburn hair to his brow, requesting to work a few shifts in the smithy, finally able to reclaim the skill and talent that a harsh uncle’s demanding tutelage had smothered. Yellow sparks from the forge. The memory of fear-sick in his gut. Heledir’s laughter, inescapable in every corner of Edrahil’s city, echoing even when it should not, a bird trill down the corridors and a soft chuckle from the doorway of his office. Owl-call. Gadwar resplendent in green silk, carrying a lantern high so that his twin sister could examine the mechanics of the unused fountain. The sister turned, wore a face that was not hers, was too cruel to ever be hers. Pale-haired Fân sketching flowers, a small dog stealing a paintbrush from the satchel of supplies at the man’s feet and galloping off unnoticed. For a second the dog’s eyes were bright, toxic yellow, and Edrahil shuddered. In the illusion he did not warn Fân of the thief, tried to pretend that he had not seen it. To the stables, where Consael leaned against a stall partition to rest fingers gently against the nose of a small roan mare, salt grains clinging to those fingers, murmuring to the horse with a voice as smooth and low as the underground river. Soothing sounds. Ethir at that river, deep in the bowels of the hidden city, leaning over the final railing to reach his fingers to the waters, smiling in the blue lamplight to feel the wet caress. Edrahil watched the constructed memory, watched Ethir’s brown hair in its tightly braided plait hang down towards the Narog and swing as the young man reached for the river until he dipped low enough for the end of that braid to touch the water. When Ethir lifted his head, droplets fell from the braid-tip like the wet ink of Tacholdir’s quill. Light hit the river, reflecting back as shards of yellow. Yellow, not blue or white. 

“It is a dreadful death if you do not answer me,” Ethir said, allowing his voice to echo in this deepest chamber of Nargothrond. “A dreadful death. Your name, your purpose.”

Edrahil was back in his office, a quill between the fingers of his left hand, vellum beneath the splayed fingers of his right. The steward smelled linseed from the ink, but he tasted anise. He hoarded candies, and the sweet licorice taste was always on his tongue. Heledir teased him about the candies, about his desperation the first years in Beleriand until he found a plant that could recreate that taste of licorice. It had a strong taste, licorice or anise, but not as strong as to overwhelm that of stomach bile or blood. Still Edrahil clung to his candies, and the memory of those candies, and he made the illusion of anise strong enough to wash away the taste of blood.

The sound of a quill tapping against the side of an inkwell to shake loose superfluous ink, the feel of writing against the surface of the parchment, that slightest of resistance, that action more ingrained in him than breathing. Calming, that memory. Focus on that. Tacholdir was also in those memories, was a memory of standing across from him in his steward’s office. Edrahil could not run his city without his best scribe, his best quartermaster. Tacholdir with his hands of calluses, calluses that matched the ones on Edrahil’s hands but fingertips scarred from thousands of tiny pinpricks that Edrahil never had. Tacholdir with ledgers full of tallies, bringing those numbers for Edrahil to inspect. Who would run the inventories of the city when Tacholdir was not there? What hands would find the numbers within those pages and unlock their secrets to share with others, share knowledge, share, share, share. “Share with me what you are writing,” Tacholdir asked, his hands reaching for Edrahil’s on that desk, and Edrahil looked up at the other man and saw that his eyes were yellow. Tacholdir smiled, and his mouth was bleeding from pins, a hundred tiny holes in his lips and gums and blood was running bright red across his teeth and dribbling down his chin. “What are you writing?” Tacholdir questioned; the question changed. “Who are you? Where did you come from? Who is your lord? What purpose do you share?”

“No,” Edrahil whispered. As he spoke Tacholdir’s eyes were no longer cat-yellow but the pale blue that they should have been, soft and sad and kind.

“What is my name?” Tacholdir asked. He held a tiny pin in his hand, delicately between his first finger and thumb, up for Edrahil to see. One of those small things used to hold the creases of fine linen collars and the seams of beautiful court gowns. Thousands were used in the garments of princes and princesses. A wasteful indulgence of fashion when in Beleriand, prompting the smarter Noldor princes like Finrod and Orodreth to quickly adapt to Sindar fashion. “Which prince?” Tacholdir asked, scraping the pin across the parchment, scouring the page, ruining the tehta inscribed. “What is my name?” Tacholdir’s voice whispered, dragging the pin back through the words, the still-wet ink folding back on itself and marring the words. “You know who I am, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” Edrahil whispered back. Tacholdir’s eyes were yellow again. 

The memory smeared, overlapped like words written on a page and not allowed to dry, imprinting onto the previous page of text. Tacholdir had the crossed scars on his jaw that belonged to Bân, they stood in Edrahil’s office but Edrahil was sitting in the chair that he sat in when in King Finrod’s personal quarters, the door was open to hallway corridors that were those of the seventh gallery but also the fifth, the tenth, the ones that led down to the stables. Architectural mirages. The air was damp with water- laundries, river, both. Old Arodreth and young Ethirdor, together saying, “I am not afraid of death.” Edrahil was in the stables, the pillars of the stalls were those that graced the throne room, and the horse that Consael was petting turned its head to stare with yellow eyes. Aglar raised a hammer in the smithy and lowered it onto the chandeliers of the wide gallery. Crowds wandered through the barrack sleeping quarters. All the scenes of Nargothrond were bleeding together like multiple manuscript illustrations held up to a light source. Fân tuned up from his page of drawings, the metal of his silver earring and silver ring reflecting a bright sickly yellow.

 “I forgot who I am,” Fân whispered, coughed, pleaded. “Tell me. You remember who I am.”

“No,” Edahril said, fighting that desperation.

He was leaning over the silent fountain, the one Gadwar was showing to his twin sister so that she could learn the mechanics of its plumbing. Edrahil’s reflection stared back at him, and over his shoulder leaned Gadwar. Green eyes, not yellow. No. Yellow. “What is my name?” the reflection asked of his, the water dead and still.

“No.”

Heledir laughing down the corridors, only the tunnels were all wrong, all twisted up like an anthill, and the echoes were rushing in on each other and becoming the cacophony of a flock of birds scattered into flight. “You are panicking, old friend,” Heledir said, “and you cannot keep the illusion steady if you are panicking.”

“You didn’t want my illusions,” Edrahil whispered. “I couldn’t make them strong enough to hold you from the dungeon.”

“What dungeon?” Finrod Felagund asked, sitting in the parlor of his private quarters, hands stilled above the strings of his harp. The Nauglimir glittered at his throat. All the gems were bright yellow. “You are in no dungeon. Where are we?”

“No,” Edrahil whispered. Hidden city, guarded. Finrod in the darkness of the dungeon, commanding them to never reveal their names, keep silent their purpose.

“But you know my name,” Arodreth said, standing across from Edrahil’s desk. Edrahil sat in his office, in the memory of that office. A piece of licorice-flavored candy in his mouth. Focus on that taste. His nose was filled with the scent of linseed and rose. A cat sat on the stack of books piled across from the desk, a pile of everything that Edrahil had meant to shelve on his bookcases but never had the free time for. Just a cat, cleaning its paws, waiting for Edrahil to do his job. The steward of Nargothrond, had to know all the details of running a city, that patrols were kept and servants given tasks, that the lamps were lit and rooms cleaned, that everyone was fed and the broken parts fixed, that the king’s orders were heard and obeyed, and the king was informed of the needs of his kingdom. Had to know the horses, the soldiers, the courtiers, the scribes. People, its people. Edrahil looked down at the parchment page, at a piece of vellum so thin that the text was bleeding through to make the words hard to read. But the words were still there. Cross them out with ink, make a correction above the line, would not change that the words were written on the page. Only way to remove words written on a page was to take a knife and scrape away the layer of parchment. Edrahil’s father taught him how. A careful task, delicate work to not destroy the vellum. Better to learn not to make mistakes, not to waste hours of work. Wax tablets were better if it was calligraphy to remove. Easier to wipe clean. Tacholdir should have taught the Edain how to write using wax covered tablets and stylus reed pens, as Edrahil had been taught. Too late now. Too late. Arodreth’s name was on the page, there for the cat to read with its yellow eyes.

Knife. Scratch out the name. Remove it completely before he succumbed to the temptation to answer. No different than cutting out gangrenous flesh.

“Don’t,” Arodreth whispered with yellow eyes, pleading for his name. For Edrahil’s memories of him, all the tiny details. The sound of his laughter as the wolf came for him, rueful and accepting. 

“No,” Edrahil said to the dream, to the memory. “I can’t hold onto you. If I do, I doom us.” The feel of the knife in the fingers of his left hand, the faint resistance of the parchment as he scraped it against the vellum, shaving away ink. It should not have sounded like teeth crunching bones. 

That voice, that one that never stopped asking for his name, for their names, even when he tried to hide in his mind and make a maze of memory to still his tongue from answering, no longer pleading. Loud again, reverberating through the corridors of Nargothrond.

The next name. Ethirdor. Gone the sound of the River Narog with it, gone Heledir’s laughter at the pun of his name, gone the willow flute. Disappeared along with the smell of roses and the chatelaine grumbling as she rattled her keys, complaining about stubbornness. Gone next his cousin, Aglar, this time cutting too deep, taking too many of Edrahil’s memories of Valinor, of his life before Beleriand, before the war. The cat rotated its ears, pulling them flat back against its skull. It did not like that scraping sound. Consael, gone. The cat hissed, lifted its lips to bar its sharp small fangs, pink tongue curled up in its open mouth.

Forget Heledir. No laughter in Nargothrond’s hallways, no imitations of others’ voices. Edrahil could only recreate voices inside of illusions. Used to envy Heledir for that talent, for mimicry without illusion. Cat was still hissing, spiteful and loud.

“No,” Edrahil said, ignoring that the cat was no longer a cat but a wolf. Bigger fangs, same yellow eyes.

Scrape away the next name written, Bân. Gouge deeper than the pin’s mark to erase all trace of Tacholdir. Gadwar. Fân. Empty the imaginary Nargothrond of them. They no longer existed in the real city either. Only fitting. There would still be people in that city, just not these. No record of their names. No empty anthill. Maybe they had already forgotten, the real city, too. Edrahil needed to do his name next. Then the king’s and Beren. Else it would become empty, that anthill.

But the wolf was here. The wolf with bright yellow eyes, glowing in the darkness of the dungeon.

Oh, not illusion. “No,” Edrahil whispered. His mouth was dry, his tongue swollen from dehydration. Once it had known the taste of anise and licorice before it.

“Who were they, your companions? Tell me their names, their purpose, and I shall spare you the dreadful death that I gave them,” the cruel voice whispered one last time.

“No,” Edrahil whispered.

 

“I do not know their names.”

---

Chapter End Notes

Edrahil's name was recorded in canon, but the other nine were not (even when all of Barahir's companions were named). So I built around that.

Yes, Sauron finally appeared- but only as the all-seeing eye and Tevildo.