By Stars' Light by Erfan Starled

*** 469 Years of the Sun ~ Tol-in-Gaurhoth ***

There were only three of them left now. Finrod jerked his head up for a moment, listening. Was it returning? His heart pounded, but only an irregular drip of water in a stony puddle had disturbed their rest. The tiny sound in the dead darkness surrounding them had startled him unduly.  In inflicting blindness, these light-starved deeps refined hearing already painfully acute in the face of danger.

Edrahil moaned as he shifted his head heavily against Finrod’s stomach. He must be awake. Finrod bent over him and whispered, “Is it well with you?”

“Nothing I can’t live with.” A dry laugh accompanied the reply. The adventures of recent days had left them both the worse for wear. Finrod easily caught the suppressed hitch of pain.

“You cried out,” Finrod said. “You must have been dreaming. Go back to sleep if you can. You need the rest.” He felt the bony body lying supported by his own subside but not in sleep. A hand moved along Finrod’s arm where it rested over the other’s chest. Long fingers closed in firm pressure around his wrist and held on. Finrod heard an almost silent sigh. He kissed Edrahil’s untidy hair and pressed arm and hand closer, suddenly fiercely glad of a moment to savour simple touch.

All things must come to an end. He smiled grimly. He knew himself ready for what was coming, and the heat of Edrahil’s body, familiar and very dear, reminded him of all that had happened, of so much that they had shared. He had a little time yet to sit and remember…

***

*** Years of the Trees 1500 ~ The Calacirya ***

“At least the arguing is over…”

Finrod said nothing. Close though they were, his hawkish sister did not share his desire for the peace and order of Tirion. She did, however, know he would be glad the confrontations were over. He wondered for how long. He had watched with cold dismay as people were beguiled into pursuit. Revenge, justice, subjugating a great enemy, freedom, new lands… Fëanor had certainly found something for everyone. His uncle was always a good orator. Meanwhile, both their course and their leadership bitterly divided the princes.

He followed their people through the murk. The tree-bereaved land was all the darker for the fogs that crawled over the ground but still, sure-footed, they navigated the litter of rocks in the pass. His regrets merged into a common sense of loss. The dearth of light, silver and gold, whose common twilight had been as beautiful as their separate fullness, parting from Amarië, leaving Tirion… He turned often to look back through the unnatural murk.

Mindon’s beacon gleamed fainter now. Half-falling backwards over a grass-covered stone, Finrod straightened up with a word of thanks for his neighbour’s steadying hand and faced onwards, east between ramparts of rock, where white ships sprang tall masts that would carry them west.

He doubted this haste would serve them usefully. For hunting Morgoth many of those up ahead were ill-equipped. Finrod had seen Fëanor leave, travelling light. This driven quest of Fëanor might have good reason behind it but to see their hunt led by obsession that would listen to no counsel was worrying. To see even composed Calyaro fall into place on Fëanor’s left so far outside his usual setting had jarred.

With so many agreeing that they wanted to settle in Endor, families were going, even children. Finrod was glad Amarië would remain in safety and await his return. The crowd trailing Fëanor carried no more than cloak and sword, and a few bundles that might be food. Though in Calyaro’s case, he was apparently taking at least one of his instruments with him. Finrod had time to wonder where the road would lead them all before he moved away on his own more measured preparations.

He was glad that he had dug in his toes when Fingon on one side and Galadriel on the other had urged him to hurry. Like hounds pointed on the scent, they were eager to be off. Fëanor had urged immediate departure once the decision had finally fallen his way. He wanted no-one changing their minds. Finrod had ignored his importunate cousins to take stock of what they might need that might feasibly be carried. There was no guarantee that Morgoth would quickly be hunted to earth, and no knowing where – this might take some time, and they still had to live.

With Finarfin’s approval, he had swiftly mustered messengers to bid those associated with their house to make careful selection. They must carry at least some of the means to maintain themselves, but the list of what they could bring was small. Ropes. Ropes were always useful when hunting, to carry the kill, to fashion shelter if it stormed. Basic hand tools – usefulness for weight, he had emphasised, bearing in mind an indeterminate journey. And food, he urged. Food that will keep on what might be a long hunt. And they might find portable valuables of use, in barter among themselves. Or as gifts to smooth over differences, perhaps. He made sure to pack what he could.

Galadriel grew more thoughtful and went away to oversee these orders carried out. He saw her questioning those who gathered for departure bearing nothing but a hastily caught up cloak, not wanting to be left behind. She sent them back to think again.

He also took the time to walk through the city to the quiet Vanyarin quarter. Amarië was waiting for him where Galathilion wilted in the poisoned gloom. This was good-bye, for a time. He touched her hair, her cheek and gently drew her close. They parted almost wordlessly on an aching kiss that lingered ghost-like on his skin as he strode through the Calacirya.

The cliffs turned north, and the coastal bluffs retreated from the shore to open into wide salty flatlands spreading north to the city of ships. There were so many of them on the move it was hard to be sure when the angry cries of elves seemed to carry on the wind above the constant shrieking of the gulls. Finrod stiffened, desperately hoping it was a trick of the wind, but his hearing had always been better than most. Gulls did not scream defiance.

Appalled, he looked around and spied Galadriel. Eel-like he wove a path at his fastest run and overtook her. He shouted without slowing, “Tell father to come as quickly as he can!”

He did not linger to explain, but raced on, only watched over his shoulder long enough to see her stare and then kilt her skirts at her thighs. She put her head down and ran, infected by his urgency, letting her pack jounce unheeded at her back.

Others were looking at each other now. Those he knew for steadiest he shouted one word to, ‘Come!’ as he passed, desperate to get to the source of the outcry.

His concern proved inadequate. He slowed in shock as he burst through the city gates to find people running, crying and shouting. Noldor, swords in hand, closed on Teleri, who were the ones screaming defiance. An arrow hissed past, narrowly missing Finrod, but he hardly noticed.

He ran for the docks where the noise sounded loudest and found what at first he took to be Morgoth’s work. Fire flared in the darkness where lanterns had been overturned, gleaming and glinting on drawn metal. Dark patches shone on clothing, on bodies, in the gutters… Blood.

He looked around. Teleri were taking cold aim from windows and housetops at Noldor fighting with cold steel those they had cornered on the ground. The decks of the graceful ships themselves were the heart of this battle-ground and even now, one of them shed ghastly light on the whole scene as her sails went up in a gout of flame.

Galvanised, Finrod started giving out savage orders to those he had brought with him. Some he sent to bar further entry into the city, some to help the injured, and others to investigate further streets for trouble. The burning ship had to be next or flames would take all… He made to cast her off, regardless of the battle being waged for her decks.  Some of the Teleri drew on him, seeing what he did, but he shouted his name and faced them – seeing their King’s grandson and his gesture at the danger above, they helped him loose the heavy loops from the bollards and let the current carry away the danger of wholesale fire. Her struggling compliment of Noldor and Teleri would have to jump for it and get to shore however they might.

Panting with exertion, he took stock. The Noldor were winning, the Teleri not giving in, and he did not know how to put a stop to it. Everywhere he looked there was fighting, a blood-spattered Noldo not five hundred paces away had closed on a Telerin boy with a bow. His blood ran cold as he recognized the half-turned profile.

He moved faster than he knew he could and leapt to put a hand so hard about Fingon’s wrist that his cousin shouted out in pain and shock. He made to swipe at Finrod’s head with his left hand, a hard blow, but Finrod ducked back and shook the right hand bearing the sword, and then brought up his left to grip his cousin’s throat, pushing him back, ignoring more flailing blows. Mad with horror, he held him pinned to the rough harbour wall, bashing his sword-hand repeatedly against the stones. The Telerin boy slid away over the gutters and ran off in a spillage of arrows, abandoning his bow.

“What do you think you are doing?” Finrod shouted. “What have you done?”

Fingon cried out in pain as his hand broke under the attack. He dropped the sword on top of the small hunting bow, and stared in shock as Finrod shoved him one last time into the wall.

Fingon started to shake his head, saying over and over, “They attacked. They had attacked…”

Savagely, Finrod swung him forward. “Look, you fool. Look what you joined!” He thrust him toward the docks and let him go in disgust.

Shuddering, he stepped away, to survey the ships. Bodies and hunting bows lay scattered among the wounded, along with fallen Noldor, their swords loosed by dead hands no longer doing harm. The fighting was over.

He turned to those who had followed him into the city and said harshly, “Separate the survivors, and gather up all the weapons on the docks and in the streets.” By force of hand despite the danger, they wedged a space between the ships and the town, undeterred by the press of grief and rage.

He could not bear to stay more than a moment at the dock-side where Fëanor was determinedly, if shakily, ordering the securing of the ships by his sons. He had laid aside his sword, but appointed an armed watch at the ship-sides and those competent with bows had taken them up and were even now gathering arrows before the injured were tended.

Everyone was shocked. An eerie, incomplete quiet settled down, even while distant voices could be heard keeping more of the travellers out of the city. With jerky actions, Noldor on the decks cleaned swords and sheathed them and began scouring the harbour for those who had survived the sea. Finrod’s late-come faction bent to check bodies that might be alive in the streets. The weeping of surviving inhabitants carried on the clear sea air. The moans of injured elves, the creak of ships and the rush and slap of water in the bay were muted in his ears after the din of fighting.

When Noldor tried to stop Teleri who were come to claim the ship-board bodies, Finrod put his hand to his own sword-hilt to face them down alone. He had no idea what was on his face but Fëanor gave a sharp order, and the Noldor on the deck cleared a space for the elf who advanced among them to gather the broken body of a sailor. Silently, she smoothed his hair away from his face, before another joined her in loading the body onto some wood to carry him away.

There was an unreality to this aftermath of wounding and killing, the like of which he had never imagined, that made it impossible to feel or even think. Finrod kept staring at the body of a youth lying nearby on the stone flags, blood not yet dry pooled in the cracks between. He jerked his gaze away around the harbour, and then found himself once more drawn to the brown-eyed, spilled body, whose face looked at the sky as if counting stars worlds apart from the twisted limbs and gaping wound. The face was untouched and beautiful.

Finrod stirred. He tore his eyes from the sight, and stiffly stalked back to the gates, where Galadriel, for once quiet and white-faced, awaited him with messages. It was an ill-fated day.

Teleri cursed them in their bewildered, angry grief as they passed. The fighters had fled north, by ship and by land. King Olwë wanted none of the Noldor to linger, but the bonds of family made for grievous partings which he did not quite forbid.

Finrod’s aunt was weeping when they found her with Hlápo in her arms. Her son had been too young for work but spell-bound by ocean and ships alike, he could never be detained long on shore. Finrod collapsed to his knees at Hlápo’s trailing feet, devastated, while Finarfin knelt beside his wife’s sister. In greater sorrow than any they could have imagined, they remained still for a time unmeasured until Galadriel sighed and stirred from the door to fetch water and cloth.

When she started to wash the blood away, Finrod took the cloth from her. Tears as well as water fell on the body, until the sword cut in Hlápo’s ribs were all that remained to mar him.

The silence as they left was as barren as the harbour. The grimy black residue of oil fires looked no different than dried blood on the flagstones as they passed. Nothing else remained of the fight, except for the dim out-line of a fire-damaged hulk, hung canted on an outcrop of reef. Soon the rising tide would claim her for her last voyage and the last of the great Swans would be gone.

It was a grim knot of Noldor who departed the city, leaving their Telerin kin to live with devastation. Melkor, Manwë, Fëanor – there were more than enough at whom to rage. Instead, Finrod felt numb.

The gates rose before them. They went through with Finrod bringing up the rear, in no hurry to see the rest of the family. He had lost track of Fingon on the docks and was glad of it. Nothing was going to be the same again.

The gates, ornate and tall, curved up in wings of stone and wood over the arch. Inattentive in the mist-ridden dark, his foot caught on a metallic rasp and he tripped. Finrod picked himself up. He kicked aside the sword underfoot. Nearby crouched an elf, squatting against the wall with his hands hanging from his knees. One of the fighters? Or had he tried to stop them and been injured? In any case, the sword made him Noldo.

“You can’t stay here.” There came no answer. Impatiently, Finrod said, “Up with you. We are forbidden the city.” A buckle scraped against stone, and with his attention now drawn to the shadows, he could see an odd-shaped pack at the other’s back, but the elf did not move.

“Finrod?” Orodreth was come after him. “Father sent me back to see what delays you.” He glanced between the two of them. “Are you alright?”

“I’m coming. Here, help me with him.” Between them they dragged the elf out into the lighter gloom of the fog-shrouded starlight.

Orodreth asked, “Who is it?”

Finrod answered, “I fell over him in the dark. He had a sword. Let’s have a look at him…” A pair of grey eyes that looked like wells of black horror stared at him out of a familiar face. Finrod let out a sigh, a faint sound of dismay, as Calyaro looked at the two who had gathered him up.

“Finrod, that’s Calyaro, and he’s covered with blood…” Orodreth stared, sickly fascinated.

Finrod pressed his mouth flat. “I recognize him.” A quick inspection found no injuries despite the shock the other was displaying. Calyaro said nothing as he was handled, and Finrod’s frown set deep. “Let’s go.” Grimly, he pushed his reluctant acquisition onto the coastal flats north.

Chapter End Notes

Names

Tol-en-Gaurhoth – Isle of Werewolves, once Tol Sirion

Calyaro – One who illuminates

Hlápo – Flies, blows, streams in the wind

*** Border of Valinor ***

“I am going with them, father.” He spoke the words steadily, as if he were no more than going on one of Oromë’s hunts with Turgon, Galadriel and Aredhel.

“Finrod, Aman will be closed to you! You heard Him. No pity even in death, if you follow them now. Galadriel’s heart calls her hence, but yours – yours speaks of Tirion. And of those left behind, as does mine. We were always going to return, and if you leave now you will be forever barred!” Finarfin’s eyes bored into his son’s, desperate to persuade him. “Do not number yourself among the dispossessed… Listen to your heart. Return with me to Amarië. Don’t follow the oathsworn into this curse.”

His eyes hardened as Finrod shook his head slowly. He would go with Turgon, with Galadriel, and with his brothers. To leave them, to let them seek Morgoth without him, never to know their fate – he could not do it.

“This parting cannot be undone. Be very sure…”

“Give me your blessing?” He bent his knee and waited.

His father’s hands touched his head. Warm lips kissed his brow. Finarfin drew him to his feet for one last, long look.

“Then do justly. Tend your honour well. You will need it. Keep true to what you believe and take my blessing with you, for all your endeavours if not this choice, for I do greatly fear for you.”

Finrod kissed him, lips on tear-damp cheeks. “Tell Amarië I loved her well but could not stay. Help her understand?”

Finarfin gave no answer and Finrod nodded in abrupt resignation. His father would not promise what he could not do and his father did not understand this wilful severance from grace.

While the others said their goodbyes, Finrod let the chill breath of the fugitive north wind dry his tears.

***

*** Araman ***

The ships hove to clumsily. Fëanor welcomed his sons ashore but nothing was resolved about loading the ships for a first crossing. Fingolfin said they were all exhausted and should take counsel again after they had slept. Uneasily, much needed rest settled across the company. Calyaro watched as the boats came ashore and though his eyes followed Fëanor’s every step with equal parts hunger and dismay, he showed no sign of moving to greet his lord and Fëanor, after one cold glance in his direction, ignored him completely.

Finrod saw the little byplay and saw Maglor move toward the minstrel and his father say a sharp word to him. Maglor’s hand lifted in protest but he gave in and with one last look over his shoulder he went with his father. Calyaro blinked slowly and then he gracelessly retreated past Finrod to a less populated stretch of rock where Finrod lost sight of him.

After everything that had happened, the shambling, beaten-looking figure should not have been important, no matter how cultured he once was. It meant nothing that Calyaro had once entertained kings – but his reduction to this state seemed in a small way to match the obscenities of the Haven. Finrod, feeling disgusted with them all and with better things to do, still found himself disturbed by the emptiness in Calyaro’s eyes.

They woke to a north-west wind and an empty sea. Talk turned grim but they settled down to share out some food and wait for the fleet’s return.

When red light broke and flickered upon the horizon, reaching high and higher still, a laugh escaped Finrod before he bit it off. “A new custom for new times, my lords. They burn a pyre for the dead of Alqualondë…”

They all stared, silent. Only when the flames burned low and sank into the sea, did anyone move.

Fingon said, white-faced, “They would not do that! Maedhros would not leave us! Not after…”

Finrod looked at him. Did he think he deserved better? The impulse to call him to account moved in him, but there was nothing to say and nothing to be done. Those who had fought Teleri could still fight Morgoth. They must face Mandos’ doom and their own conscience. Finarfin would hardly let him do more. His feelings subsided into inner shadows, coiled quiescent, not resigned.

What to do? Some talked, others listened. Fingolfin considered their next course, while Fingon urged him to take the one route left to them, the northern passage. All the while, Galadriel, close by Fingon’s side, nodded emphatic approval of this most dangerous choice.

Finrod had no taste for debates with Fingon and murmured a word in excuse to his uncle. He started moving among the crowd, the needs of such a journey on his mind. Exiled, cursed and shipless – how had life changed so much in such a short time? And now the mountains ahead of them… To navigate even the rocky steeps of the coastline, they must reapportion the baggage, sparing people to aid the children, and they must take fresh stock of what food they had.

He was wondering what size groups they should divide into, each group to keep tally of their own number, when he came upon Fëanor’s rejected follower crouching mournfully among the rocks. Refined Calyaro was not his idea of a killer but then none of them had imagined killing of any kind before the unholy death of Finwë. He was fumbling with his pack, blind fingers undoing buckles and strap as if his eyes were blurred. 

He finally managed to get the wrapping open and bowed over what appeared to be a mandolin, fingers gently mapping the cracked neck and the gaping hole where pegs should have been. Half of them dangled still attached to their strings and the others forlornly adorned the once-proud neck above which curved a lovingly carved head and beak. Bleak irony that this broken instrument, clutched as if for comfort, must once have mirrored the swan-ships’ beauty.

Finrod moved on, but later saw him staring out to sea as if searching the dark horizon for ships that would never come. He sat on, oblivious or uncaring of the rising tide. Finrod’s feet started to take him down to the beach toward him, moved by the sight of such desolation, when his sword knocked against his shin. He stopped, his cold heart hardening, reminded of Calyaro’s own sword wielded at the Haven along with the rest.

Instead, another figure down on the shore-line crossed to Calyaro’s side with ease, despite the wet, sandy rocks, slippery with weed. Glorfindel. He spoke a few words in Calyaro’s ear and then drew him away from the salt damp of his disconsolate vigil.

“Did he come with us, Aro? He seems more than a little upset.” Glorfindel came to talk to him, musician in tow, as calmly as if all in the world was well, apart from this one sorry creature and the sea-wrack that he was trying to shake from his boots.

“I picked him up at Alqualondë.” Their eyes met.

“He was there?” Glorfindel frowned.

“With a sword and travelling at Fëanor’s side when I saw him ride out.” Dispassionately, Finrod inspected the state of him. Damp, haggard and still blood-stained, Calyaro barely heeded either of them. Occasionally he shivered. He was wet to the knees.

“Well?” he said more coldly, “Has your lord betrayed you, as well as us? Is that what troubles you? Or is it your conscience?”

Slowly, Calyaro looked at him. Finrod had never seen such lifeless eyes and he almost shivered himself. For a moment they stared at each other, one with animosity, the other with hopeless shame, then Glorfindel shook Calyaro by the shoulder in friendlier fashion than Finrod’s address, more to rouse him from his stupor than to rebuke him when there was no sign of an answer.

Finrod’s spurt of savage anger faded back to easier numbness. There was going to be no remedy for what had happened. Fingon was no less guilty than this underling and he could not in justice single out the one and spare the other. He had other concerns, more pressing.

“Let him go. He’s of no account.” Glorfindel looked a little surprised, but released his catch.

Freed, Calyaro slowly wiped the mandolin as dry as he could and rebundled it closely in its tattered wrapping.

“Does he not talk at all?”

Finrod shrugged. “Not so far. Not to me. Let him do as he pleases. Let him drown on the rocks, if he doesn’t want to cast himself on Manwë’s mercy, or he can come with us and face that.” He pointed. Glorfindel’s lips twisted down, whether in disapproval of the callousness, or at the mountainous prospect that was their gateway to a precarious bridge of ice, he neither knew nor cared.

Finrod’s bitterness faded. Like his anger earlier, it was not gone but settling deep within. There would be much to do and that was what mattered. Unprepared, they faced a journey far harder than they had imagined. Fables told of what lay ahead. They were about to find out for themselves. 

*** The Mountains of northern Aman ~ The Grinding Ice ***

Glorfindel apparently still had the energy to be curious despite the unrelenting cold. “Does he say anything yet?”

“Not a word.” Glorfindel, Indis’ nephew on her sister’s side, had shown endless patience with all of them, apparently liking the company of his younger cousins. He treated all Finwë’s grandchildren with impartial kindness, related or not. Finrod had never seen him take sides in his uncles’ quarrel. When Glorfindel spoke his mind, he did so discreetly where it might do most good and least harm. His unhasty deliberations had always reminded Finrod a little of his father. Childhood was long past, yet Finrod felt obscurely comforted that he was here. Even if it was taking kindness too far to be solicitous of one guilty of bloodshed.

In a lull in the wind, Glorfindel cast his next question against the monotony of walking. “Why do you think he got left behind?”

“No idea. It wasn’t accidental, though. Fëanor was furious with him over something and wouldn’t let Maglor talk to him.”

“Doesn’t that make you think twice about what went on?”

“He’s got guilt written all over him. You can see it yourself.”

“He is not doing well, Finrod.”

Were any of them? Finrod grunted. “Even if I wanted to, there is nothing I can do. He can go back to his own soon enough, once we get there. If they will take him.” If they got there. He bit his tongue and kept his fears to himself, as did they all.

Despite his words, he took to wondering why Fëanor had cut his follower off so callously. It was something to take his mind off the cold. Glorfindel was right. Calyaro was not doing well. Physically, he managed better than some, but his spirit seemed broken. ‘Slain by grief…’ Mandos’ words echoed in his mind as he walked, until that took all his effort and thinking faded into a blur of white ice.

Talking hurt. Breathing hurt. Theirs was proving a wretched northward march, with food rationed and breath that froze in the air. They were all wondering just how long their bodies could function in the intense cold.

Fingolfin led the way with Turgon or Fingon. Galadriel, too, was eager to be at the fore. She and Finrod argued with their uncle as to how far north they must go before they could risk the ice. Argument availed little against ignorance and they spent more and more time in care of those who weakened in strength if not resolve. The steep escarpments meant the company must help each other along and keep careful watch on the slowest and the youngest that travelled in their midst.

As time passed, hardship distilled the cousins’ determination, as they weighed the dangers of cold and hunger and struggling through the mountain fringes against the need for the sea to be frozen all the way across once they ventured the strait itself.

The familiar tapestries of stars overhead altered subtly with the leagues. Some of the southern constellations had dropped below the horizon altogether and the northern constellations that remained held truer to their ever-circling course. Ango’s entire body was almost always visible now, curled around Hen Anguo, the only unmoving star in the sky. Galadriel puzzled over this change  but found no explanation. She and Glorfindel had less energy for debate, with talk so difficult, but Finrod was certain they would thrash out the mystery endlessly, once returned to warmth and safety.

In fear of perishing of short commons and prolonged cold, they at last turned east. A sound like nothing they had ever heard rumbled ominously ahead of them, as much felt as heard, transmitted through the icy snow they crossed. At first only faint, it grew insistently with every step they took, until the edge of Aman brought them to ramparts of ice forced high under relentless pressure.

Even with its surface waters frozen by Morgoth’s ancient blight, the Sea far below still moved and the Ice with it, grinding in constant torture. Fantastic shapes rose in ridge after ridge, carved by the wind and alternately smoothed and gouged by flying ice. In the troughs between these, frozen waters stretched from fissure to fissure, with fragments small and large all moving one against another. The air was filled with unearthly groaning that sapped the ability to hear even their own minds’ thoughts above its noise.

Soon, they bunched together for warmth, but the ice rapidly grew more treacherous than the wind and the cold. The first time a crevasse betrayed someone’s footing, hidden by layers of snow, it provoked screams and horrified lunges to help. Then the ice taught its second harsh lesson, as would-be rescuers slid into the void themselves to be lost in turn.

By the tenth fall, the shouts for help invoked their risky, new routines. Carrying ropes to hand, they probed for the last safe edge, stamping down hard before crawling spread-eagled onto the surface near the edge.

By the hundredth such disaster, they had found ways to walk – and climb – east with an exhausted, despairing caution, trying to cover the distance in hopes of not perishing of cold and starvation from their very slowness. Some ideas had worked. Others failed.

They roped groups together in the ill-founded hope that one person could be saved by the rest. Without purchase for their feet on the ice, it only meant multiple disaster as one person’s fall pulled others over with them. Grimly they uncoupled the ropes from those at the front.

They learned to proceed in strict lines and rotate the leaders of each file when they tired. Whatever lengths of wood or metal they had brought, be it sword, spear, javelin or mere fishing rods, they used to check for solid ground ahead. Prod, test, step. Prod, test, step. In this way they managed for a time. Until the ice moved and a bank gave way where they stood.

The cold and eerie wastes, the constant grinding and creaking that vibrated through them, the treacherously flowing Ice that preyed on them without respite, opening channels before them no matter how careful they were, the wind that howled for leagues on end carrying sharp ice that cut exposed flesh – any one of these would have eroded the alertness they could not afford to lose and could not maintain.

So many were lost that the Helcaraxë felt like a live creature beneath their feet, taking them treacherously by ones and twos. Determination became their mainstay, hope a casualty left in their wake with the rest. They had thought to cross successfully by sheer perseverance, but sapped by cold, doubt set in and later thought itself froze, numbing hope and doubt alike.

They lost count of Ango’s revolutions, by which they measured time.

Oddly, Calyaro woke from his stupor in the midst of this misery when he tripped over an exhausted mother and her child, fallen before him in the line of march. Finrod saw him stumble and land on the hard surface. For a moment he seemed dazed, before he looked around and stood up with the crying child, thumb in mouth, lifted to one hip. With his other hand he bent to pull the mother up. Finrod reached him and together they hauled her clumsily to her feet.

Calyaro nodded his thanks. Finrod, due to relieve Orodreth, let go. Calyaro gripped the mother’s arm more firmly in his frozen hand.

When Finrod trudged up the line again later, the three of them were still together. Calyaro had apparently kept them going until the mother could clutch the toddler to her chest once more, wrapped about by a shared cloak for what warmth she might retain about them. Finrod saw him lay a hand on the child’s back in parting, and touch the elf’s shoulder, before moving away.

Finrod grew used to seeing him join the rescuers when someone fell, or lead a file, or walk the lines with other stalwarts to shove falterers up and on. He had not imagined he could feel gratitude toward one of Fëanor’s number at the Haven, but he came to rely on him in the same way as he did Orodreth, Aegnor and Angrod as they tended those who faltered.

It was far too cold to stop to rest. Hands could not undo packs or hold food. They froze and walked and pushed each other along. The only passage of time was another freezing breath and the next forced step of a cold-stiff foot, punctuated by another wail of terror that would galvanise the nearest into painful action. Hands chapped by cold barely healed, reopening at the slightest exposure or strain, the deepening wounds slowly turning black as healing failed them. Finrod fell into line more and more often to rest and blindly keep step without having to think. More than once while on duty he walked mindlessly in the wrong direction, waking disoriented and off course.

Once, he had strayed and only knew his error when hands laid on him roughly halted him, jolting him to consciousness.

“Calyaro?” Dazed, he looked about him. Only the two of them stood in a hollow between ridges. Had Calyaro not seen him and woken him he might never have woken at all, or he might have wandered until he dropped without ever finding the others if once the wind rose. Calyaro started trudging in the right direction, dragging Finrod with him by a hand threaded through the rope coiled at Finrod’s waist.

The Ice stretched before them, never ceasing its noise.

When bitter tragedy hit Turgon, Galadriel and Glorfindel kept Turgon, Idril and Aredhel firmly between them near Fingolfin. Turgon seemed lost in nightmare, barely acknowledging them after Elenwë’s loss.

Coming painfully up to the front, Finrod asked, “How is he?”

Galadriel was measuring the skies, probably checking their direction by the Snake’s Eye while the driving, blinding winds were in abeyance. She did not answer, but Glorfindel shrugged.

“He’ll survive. But you?”

Finrod felt more dead than alive, with legs made of lead and lungs cut by knives with every breath. “I’m fine. I’d better get back.”

Glorfindel eyed him critically. “Stay here. I’ll go.”

With relief he gave up his watch while Glorfindel went to the rear in his stead.

When the hateful creaking of the ice first diminished, Finrod hardly noticed it. When nothing gave way under them, when they no longer had to divert their progress to shouted warnings, the impossible realization stole over them that the Helcaraxë was behind them.

Even as this hope took root and their steps grew confident once more, a shine of silver appeared about them, ever brighter, and long shadows sprouted from their feet to claim the land ahead. Behind them where the Pelori must be, the sky was paling, and then a circle of unknown light mounted the heavens. Calyaro was not the only one to stop and raise his face to stare in bewildered wonder until Fingolfin ordered horns brought out, and chill hands and blue lips tried valiantly to play as they marched into their own shadows under a silver sky.

“Ghost of Telperion,” the whisper ran. It sounded like a phrase from song. Finrod looked around and found Calyaro but he was only smiling faintly. With blissful silence underfoot, they walked on snow converted by the unearthly light into crystalline sparkles of extraordinary beauty. At last Fingolfin steered his survivors south, deeming they had gone far enough east into the foothills to find land not water if they turned for warmer climes.

When they first saw bare rock, they collapsed wordless, apart from a few enquiries about injuries, or persuading the dangerously weak to eat. They stared at each other in an unhappy mix of grateful disbelief and worn grief.

Calyaro sat blankly staring at his hands’ blackened skin where cracks had deepened as he persisted in working the ropes. Whether healing was prevented by the cold or forestalled by fresh damage, none was sure. Finrod looked away from their ruin to where Turgon sat, staring into nothing, and wondered when any of this nightmare would seem real.

Fingolfin started scratching a map with his dagger on the rocky substrate, cast into strange relief by the inexplicable orb now rebounding from the eastern horizon. They all kept staring skywards, but it did not feel an ominous thing. It had come from the west and thither it returned with no immediate disaster in its wake. They dared a diffident trust of this Light so reminiscent of the Elder Tree, and a goodly feel gradually replaced their first surprise.

“Here.” Fingolfin stabbed the ground. “This is known from before the crossing. We go south to the firth that breaks the coast. There is a vale that will see us through the mountains. After that, we will see. The old tales place Angband in the north, here somewhere.” He swept a curving line above his other marks with the tip of his dagger. “But exactly where he has fled, we won’t know until we get there.”

The company formed up. South they went, their thirst at last liberally quenched with fresh, running water, and then east through the mountains, following the path of the sky’s voyager as it sank to the horizon. But as they emerged from the vale, a red-gold fire lit the western sky. Colour blazed all around them as this late-born twin to the silver elder climbed high. In burgeoning hopes that the Valar had not wholly forgotten them, Fingolfin summoned banner bearers forward and ordered his horns to signal their coming into a day most joyous, in spite of all that had gone before.

Their hearts lighter despite danger ahead, they covered the leagues to Morgoth’s doorstep. Rough prints of creatures unknown were all they saw of enemies, fled away from them and from the sky’s fierce new beacon.

No herald emerged nor any enemy, though they waited and Fingolfin had spears batter the doors in notice and challenge. But no answer came and he would not wait for some trap to form about them, vulnerable as they were down on the plain between the arms of grim mountains to north and west and east. Out of prudence he turned south intending to search out a place of safety with clean water and plentiful food where they could all rest.

And so they travelled south and east, back through the high pass to put the wall of mountains between them and the enemy’s gate. Here on the western plains they would succour the weary and renew their strength.

Scouts reported a Noldorin encampment about a great lake, set in the wing of a spur of hills. There Fingolfin led them, for he was angry and his company many in number, in no mind to avoid or delay this encounter. On Mithrim’s shores they came to rest, anxious to confront their betrayers. 

Chapter End Notes

Names

Ango – The Snake (Draco)

Hen Anguo – The Eye of the Snake (Polaris, the North Star)

*** Lake Mithrim ***

With a place to rest at last, themselves on the north bank and their predecessors fled to the south bank, Finrod found himself dourly indifferent to his task, to mount a watch against trouble-seekers out for revenge while Fingolfin and Fingon approached Fëanor’s new camp with demands, reproaches and enquiries. So long as no weapons came into play, Finrod found it hard to care, until Glorfindel, by a look, reminded him of his duty.

The news of Fëanor’s death followed by Fingon’s venture into Dor Daedoloth in search of his cousin changed a stalemate of antipathy into one of appalled suspense. The upheavals of his reappearance brought all other concerns to a stand-still. The tale of Maedhros’ ordeal, Fingon’s quest and the glory of the great eagle’s coming bridged an impossible gulf. The crown’s bequeathment as Maedhros’ amends changed everything.

The latter had occasioned much palaver and ceremony, after which the capture by a troupe of guards of a bedraggled curiosity went unmarked by few save Finrod. The guards were spruce in fresh-washed garments in honour of the new King. Finrod, finally at leisure after a long stint of duty, was about to see to his own appearance, when they came bearing Calyaro in their midst. He looked ragged and shadows in his eyes matched his tired air.

“What has happened? And why do you bring him to me when it is not my watch?” Irritated, wanting only some peace in which to wash, eat and rest, Finrod had thought him long since back where he belonged. “Calyaro?”

It was, of course, one of the guards who answered. “We spied him to the north, camped – if you could call it that – by one of the willow creeks nearby, and brought him in. Glorfindel said you picked him up at Alqualondë and suggested we speak to you.”

Calyaro’s sojourn in the wild alone had clearly not suited him. As thin as he had been at the end of the crossing, time on Mithrim’s gentler shores should have begun to put that right, yet he looked no better fed. Mud-smeared from his creek-bed – perhaps trying to fish – he also looked wet, as well as dirty. His brown hair had not been immune, scraggled back into a bunched tail that did nothing to tidy it or protect it from knots.

Finrod sighed and gave up immediate ideas of grateful solitude. “What does he say for himself?”

One of the guard cuffed the detainee’s shoulder, not excessively, but insistently. “Well? Speak up for the Prince, you!” The guard’s irritated frustration suggested this was not his first attempt to encourage an explanation. Calyaro moved away but an outflung arm stopped him.

The guard shrugged. “He says nothing, as you see.”

“Just for a change,” Finrod said drily. He could order him bundled back south by the guards, but that would not tell them what he had been doing north of the lake. He remembered Fëanor’s look of utter disdain, and Maglor’s attempt to speak to him. Maglor would not have turned him away…

He could order them to question him at length. But as he looked him over he saw that the hands resting at Calyaro’s side were still discoloured. He had not stopped helping, back on the Ice, no matter how badly his hands deteriorated.

Obscurely, Finrod felt he owed him something after what they had gone through. Calyaro’s faint air of embarrassment, devoid of fear or guilt, decided Finrod. He had nothing to beware. He could at least question him personally. And he was sick of guards and pomp and the trappings of royal duty.

Abruptly he said, “Leave him with me. If there’s any problem, I’ll let you know.” The escort were dubious about leaving their find alone with the prince, but departed in obedience with only a few backward glances.

Finrod rummaged in his own supplies and fetched out the rarity of a spare shirt and tunic, old and worn, but decent. And a comb. These he handed over saying levelly, “You’ll have to tidy up. The King’s camp is not for vagrants.”

A nod suggested gratitude and Calyaro stood uncertainly before beginning a half-heartedly clumsy attempt with the comb. Finrod did not think he had seen him with a single possession save only the mandolin and the clothes on his back. It seemed a long way back to Tirion and Fëanor’s hall where he had visited his cousins and seen Calyaro, quietly elegant, stand in front of them all and play. He looked for that person now and could not find him. A moment of fierce regret for what had come upon them all swept over him. It was gone as quickly.

Finrod felt as weary as the other looked. With Fingon’s absence, and Turgon grieving, standing in for his father at his uncle’s side had meant more than formalities. Finrod soon learned to delegate in turn to his brothers and sister, parcelling out duties to oversee the layout of the camp, create shelter against storm, co-ordinate hunting, scout for suitable sites for settlements, and set a guard against the Enemy.

He was only glad that there were others who, like Glorfindel, served Fingolfin in the higher capacities of decision-making. Supervising routine grunt-work, he could cope with, no matter how tired he was.

He was under no illusions. Even their triumphant arrival at Thangorodrim had been daunting. Nothing in his life had remotely prepared him for seeking battle in cold blood. What were they to do against an enemy hidden away in such a fortress? Wait and watch, said his uncle. Naïvely, he had imagined the Vala, one against so many, might be quickly brought to a fight, even if it cost them dearly. The anticlimax had been appalling.

Calyaro had given up the pretence of unknotting his hair. He sat composedly, though eyeing him with some surprise, presumably over the wit-wandering stare. Finrod grimaced and decided he wanted a swim anyway, and he might just as well see his unwelcome flotsam cleaned up and fed before he questioned him. He needed to eat himself before he could dredge up any intelligence.

He got to his feet. “Come on.” Half a mile around the shore brought them to clear shallows where rock-pools held water warmed by the sun.

Calyaro seemed more than glad to scrub himself clean. The recent rains had rendered them all a little muddy. In Calyaro’s case, camping alone with no equipment had worsened the effect greatly. He repeatedly dipped under the ripples and kept attacking his hair with the comb, apparently determined to get out all the bits and shift the dirt. He emerged in a cascade of water, brown hair lankly forming its own waterfall and skin shining under the deluge. His grey eyes were lighter under the blue sky than Finrod had noticed before, and he was certainly in need of food, no surprise if he had been bow-less in his cold camp these last days on top of hard journeying. What had he been doing since their return to Mithrim?

While Calyaro sat in a warm pool to work at his hair, Finrod swam, cleaving the water with arms glad to stretch, body delighted to float among sun-sparked waves. When he was done, the luxurious novelty of sunning himself on the bank seduced him.

Idly lazing, clean and sun-drenched, he fell asleep. 

*** Lake Mithrim ***

He woke to a chill in the air. The sun was not yet set over the Mithrim range, but it would not be long before it disappeared and fog set in.

The sun’s reversal to an eastern rising had generated great puzzlement and not a little alarm, in turn allayed by the regularity of its new path. No-one had tired of seeing dawn transform ugly fog into a golden landscape. The children delighted in running at the few squirming patches that briefly survived, dispersing them with flailing arms. Meanwhile, it was the western horizon that turned orange as the sun’s low-slanting rays found their way through the mountain passes.

He looked around. Calyaro was sitting a way off, in easy line of sight, but not near enough to disturb. A hint of amusement on his face faded quickly but it had changed his appearance to something more familiar. He had been older than Finrod and all his immediate cousins, but not by much. Enough to be an adult while they were yet children, much younger than Glorfindel.

Seen from the eyes of childhood, he had always appeared assured and a little reserved. Calyaro had long been part of Fëanor’s household, employed to teach the children, especially Maglor. Later, he had stayed on, still playing for the household and their guests. Finrod, loving the music, had seen him as a quizzical presence to be respected – part of the background of life in Tirion, somewhat remote from his own orbit, but someone who might indulge a child’s request for favourite songs when he had the time and inclination. In hindsight, that reserve was probably only the measure of distance any tutor would need to adopt with seven strong-willed, intelligent and not always well-disposed pupils. At the time, his musical skill made him an object of considerable awe and his personal presence had added to that.

Finrod quirked his brows, annoyed to be the cause of amusement. He led the way to the royal enclave, more than ready to get to the bottom of his reappearance.

Once arrived he purloined a fowl from one of the cooking pits of the King’s guards. Fowl and fish seemed to be their interminable diet at the moment. No-one else was around, though he could hear Aredhel singing to Idril in their makeshift tent-cabin – a matter of branches interwoven, laid stones and a lining of blankets. The King had been furnished with a similar, if larger, arrangement and improvements to both happened all the time, as willow and hazel wands were cut and woven for matting or walls, and straight lengths of branch supplied to enlarge the structures.

Their most precious possessions now were not jewels but axe and saw, chisel, hammer, and spade – the means to find ore, smelt metal, and work wood. Already he had seen searches commence for flax and reeds and woodland vines with the provision of fibre in mind for rope, cloth and cord. If he hadn’t insisted on bringing along tools as well as swords…

He cut a drumstick from the charred, goose-type bird, sat on a split log and gestured to Calyaro to help himself. Hungry, Finrod ate, skin and all, uncaring that hot grease slipped over his hands and dripped onto the grass.

Where had Calyaro been? Why had he been lingering on the north shore? Methodically, Finrod scoured the bone clean, glad to eat before the night’s fogs thickened about the lake. The bitter miasmas irritated the lungs and spoiled taste, though moonrise would thin them down.

He had finished and Calyaro’s time had run out.

“This,” he said, conversationally, stretching out his legs, “is a fighting base. Not that Valar-forsaken hell-march which brought us here. So you can now account for yourself. Why were you skulking near our camp? Did you not return to your lords as I thought? I did think Maglor would have taken you in.”

Calyaro wiped his hands clean, though he looked as if he could have done with finishing his meal and eating three more like it. The brown hair, still damp, was bound back in better order, giving him an oddly unfamiliar appearance, neither member of court nor apparition of the wild. He looked younger and vulnerable in the thick linen shirt and the wool breeches that hung loose on him. The red hues showed up the pallor of his thin face. Had he spoken even one word since Alqualondé?

Sometimes, after the Ice swallowed someone and they could not thread rope down the contorted channels, they could still hear the lost one’s weakening cries. Finrod heard them still in nightmare. In the killing cold it had been gross foolishness, but two or three always stood vigil, offering words that carried uselessly away on the wind, while the rest went slowly on.

At times, it had been Calyaro who waited with him while Finrod called hoarsely down. When there was no longer a reply, Finrod would feel a hand on his shoulder to bring him away, the living touch augmenting Calyaro’s silent presence. They would walk away after the others into the white wilderness with only numbness for comfort.

He felt angry at the memory, as if he betrayed all the Telerin dead by his impulse to gentleness.

“Enough. I can hand you back south of the lake with a request royally endorsed that they keep you there. And before that, I’ll see to it that you give up this silence or answer to my guards’ persuasion.” The threat was ugly, and disturbed even himself considerably hearing it out loud. He not only meant it but could do it without compunction. He wondered just how much Alqualondë had changed him.

Calyaro moved one hand in negation. “I will not put your guards to that trouble.” The voice was not the hoarse mumble Finrod expected after his long withdrawal. The words were offered at the same pleasant pitch he remembered, though they emerged slowly. He met Finrod’s inspection steady-eyed.

“Where did I go? To see Maglor. Prince Maglor,” he amended. “Why did I return? I suppose I could have gone anywhere, but I am not one for travelling alone in the wilds.” A slight gesture might have been rueful deprecation of his earlier state. “Where I go does not matter, save only that I will no longer follow the oathsworn.” The amused, assured elder who watched him wake by the lake had vanished, leaving his expression blank and uninformative. That was all he said, delivered as if it were entirely sufficient.

Again, the impulse to anger rode Finrod. He was painfully reminded of Fingon. Both he presumed guilty at Alqualondë. Both had been silent on the matter thereafter, both performing later heroics without counting the cost to themselves.

The Haven’s slayings were not to be written off by such means. He ached for the chance to sit once more on the harbour wall and watch Hlápo fly past in his dory. He had not imagined such a physical feeling of hurt to be possible where there was no injury. It tore at his guts and left a gaping hole where his insides should be.

Calyaro made that subtle forestalling gesture again, palm up-turned, and with more difficulty added, “I went to ask Maglor – Prince Maglor – for his account of my lord Fëanor’s death.” He looked pensively at the twilit lake where thick, black tendrils of mist were settling, writhing like things alive. He shrugged. “He gave me a change of clothes, but as you saw they got rather mired in the rain. I can see why your guards were suspicious. I suppose I should have spoken to them.” The after-thought might have been intended as an apology.

“And this long silence?”

Calyaro went very still. “What we did – was not a thing we should have done.” He looked at Finrod with strained eyes. “Words did not seem sufficient for such a tale, for its grief and its guilt, and nothing else seemed worth saying. I will tell you how it was, if you want, though it can only cause you pain.”

Finrod gave him the slightest of nods.

Calyaro took on a distant look, as though he were seeing beyond the dim, tree-fringed waters stretching away in front of them. “Fëanor resolved on taking the ships ourselves. He was sure King Olwë could not stop so many of us. He said the Teleri could do little to prevent us, if we were determined. He denounced them for denying us passage in such a cause, and said they could build others to replace those we took…

“We made it to the ships easily, since we had been withdrawn out of their sight for a time. They did not know our intent, and thought we were only come to argue. We pushed aboard past the sailors, and set about making sail, shoving them away when they would have stopped us. Some of us fell when they pushed back. Then, seeing us fall, they deliberately cast us down. Those in the water could not swim, but still the Teleri threw us off.”

Calyaro stopped and touched his tongue to dry lips. “That was when Fëanor ordered us to use our swords to prevent their attempt to stop us.”

Finrod, revulsed yet nonetheless riveted, held out a water-skin. A swallow, and Calyaro took up the tale again.

“We obeyed. But the rigging was unfamiliar to us and they found it easy to cast us down once they fetched bows and axes. They cut loose the ropes we stood on and the ropes we clung to, and tilted the spars to hang straight down. Those that did not fall, they picked off with arrows. Over the cries of the wounded, Fëanor ordered us to cut the archers down to protect those they threatened next – but he would not break off or surrender our claim so that we could help those who were drowning, or to tend the injured on deck.” Grey eyes, staring at Finrod, did not see him.

Finrod, horrified anew by the recital, believed the pain that cracked his voice.

“He ordered us – he ordered us to continue the fight when we stopped to help those who cried out, drowning or injured or about to fall.” He touched his tongue again to dry lips. “Then he cursed us for faint-hearted cowards and traitors. It was madness to persist after the first resistance but he would not listen. I argued with him, but in the end none of us refused him.” He touched the back of his hand to his cheek, as if in memory of a blow.

The spate of words had run dry on that last bald confession, swallowed by a silence filled with images neither cared to dwell on, of bodies strewn in angular heaps across railings and decks, and hanging dead in the rigging like obscene, tangled flags.

“It would have been the greater part of valour to defy him,” Finrod said. His dispassion belied his feelings. He longed to blame only Morgoth’s intrigues for that push and shove struggle that escalated into killings, but he could not. He held them all responsible. Fëanor, Calyaro, Fingon, and the rest.

Calyaro was looking at him with raw guilt and loss alike on his face, stripped by this telling of all semblance of his more usual calm. Perhaps, thought Finrod, the dead and the bereaved were not the only casualties of that fight.

Fëanor had burned too brightly, had gathered all manner of souls to his orbit and kept them revolving about him in his brilliance and his verve for life, though not always wisely or kindly. Passionate, energetic, inventive, consumed with curiosity and love for his family, Fëanor had been white fire that drew moths to their death even while the blaze consumed itself – leaving ashes and destruction in its wake.

“You know he was fond of that charge of cowardice. He used it as an accusation in every speech he made, before and after that particular piece of madness, against anyone who disagreed with him.” He took a deep breath, as if he had been shouting, though he only spoke quietly. “And I tell you this, when he called my father a coward, he lied.”

Words and raw feeling alike rang in the intense silence.

“I never said I followed him out of wisdom. He was not difficult to love.” For the first time, Calyaro avoided looking at him.

“And this makes you less responsible?” Finrod spoke with justice and princely authority. It was the weight of his anger that invested the reversal of their roles with harshness. Years of full adulthood in Tirion had not moved him out of a comfortable respect for Calyaro but Alqualondë and Finrod’s responsibilities erased all trace of it.

Calyaro made no answer to that but he winced.

“You went to see Maglor? Have you proof of it?”

“Only this.” He unwrapped the swathe of thick, oiled wool. The wrapping was new. From it, he drew forth the same instrument as before, as if it were a precious child. This time it emerged entire, the long swan-neck gracefully intact, the pegs in place, the body restored with paler patches. It gleamed with repeated polishing.

“He bade his craftsman mend it in token of thanks for my service to his father.”

He gave it up most reluctantly to the outstretched hand but did not for even a moment gainsay the demand.

Finrod turned the mandolin over in his hands. Only a musician, obsessively equipped, could have provided the seasoned wood for patches, carefully weathered and thinly honed, the matched pegs that held the strings fast, the glue that would bind and not fail under stress, and most extraordinary, the new strings. Rare and precious commodities indeed.

To give Calyaro camp-space would cost little, except that this singer threatened his calm. Finrod was not ready to come alive again, not yet ready for grief. Calyaro reminded him of Fingon’s guilt, of rage and of dead boys. Yet he would not force even one such as this back to those who were bound by that oath, not against his will.

Something went out of him then, some ugly tension though his anger remained. “Take it.” He held out the mandolin. “Make yourself useful and you can stay.”

Calyaro, too, relaxed slightly. What had he feared? Living alone? Being bound to the oathsworn sons of his deceased lord? He looked as if was choosing words carefully, but in the end said simply, “Thank you, my lord.” He moved a hand, tilted his head, in the merest suggestion of a courtly bow.

Finrod made a weary gesture. “I do not want your thanks.” Or your court manners, he thought. “Just – earn your keep like the rest of us.” Preferably somewhere out of the way. “You can go – and take that bird with you. It needs eating. And tell the guards to see you furnished with somewhere to sleep.”

Finrod stared after the retreating figure and hoped the moon would rise soon. Silver-bathed, his dreams would be less vivid. He did not want to dream of Hlápo staring at him over Fingon’s shoulder, or watch a nightmare sword pulled free, leaving a boy dead who should have been flying on the wings of the wind. 

Finrod lay next to Galadriel, listening to his sibs and cousins talk in an unheard of evening of idleness. They were all settling in to some serious drinking, having planned this gathering with the King’s dispensation before their imminent dispersal.

“Even so, surely the heavens should not move one way and then back again, as if they were uncertain.”

“No such thing. We moved, not the heavens,” Glorfindel said kindly, as if that explained it.

Finrod could always tell when Glorfindel was drunk. He would genially spout the most utter rubbish. His cousin chose that moment to look at him and he blushed, and then Glorfindel winked at him. Teasing Galadriel had long been a past-time he particularly enjoyed. So, not very drunk. And reading his mind to boot. That was nothing new. Finrod went back to perusing the sky, prepared to take bets on where – and when – the moon would rise tonight.

“No, the stars were moving… They always do, but they moved differently. You saw it yourself.” She tried to mimic with her hands the way the stars circled above them, dipping below the horizon. “The most southerly stopped appearing above the horizon. In the north, their paths straightened.” She made a circular motion with her finger in the air.

They all laughed at the impossible mimicry. With good-natured dignity, Glorfindel conceded, “I am not denying it. I was just agreeing with you that the heavens shouldn’t be so untidy as to wobble.”

Laughter met this but they all looked at the sky. Certainly, the moon seemed erratic and changeable. They had fast learned it did not mark the night’s beginning and end. Some thought this chaotic oddity meant it was of evil origin, leaving the world darkened, and others argued that this was ungrateful. Its light was fair and of great worth, and maybe it was only right that the stars still had the sky to themselves at times.

Rather than revisit another celestial debate, they touched for a while on military matters, arguing about Eithel Sirion as the site of a fortress, such as Fingolfin ordained, and where else to settle their strategic forces.

Tol Sirion, Dorthonion’s massive peaks and the length of the unexplored eastern slopes of the Ered Wethrin were all candidates. Turgon had another agenda, suggesting the mountains to the west of Mithrim – even the caves of Androth – as a stronghold. He wanted horses to explore Nevrast and started wheedling Fingon for the loan of one or two of the precious stallions Maedhros had given them.

Lazy jibes accompanied this from the others, knowing his preference for riding, attributing the idea to a mere excuse for a holiday. They all humoured Turgon’s whims, encouraging him to emerge from his paralysed shock, knowing that he sought a way of living with Elenwë’s loss for Idril’s sake. Turgon spoke of maintaining himself nearer the coast, where the sea’s writ ran strong and warmed the southern and western winds. He held that they must maintain a watch to seaward, their otherwise undefended back-gate, against a coastal sortie from the north.

“All those tracks we saw. We have no idea how many of his spawn Morgoth is harbouring but if they break north, as we did, and go round, there is no reason they could not come down the coast…”

Fingon grandly granted the boon of the horses with a royal wave of his hand, and Turgon took the teasing in good part, knowing that when it came to approaching his father about the project, he had an ally in Glorfindel, who would not want to be tied to a building site if they could be riding the western plains.

In forming these idealized plans they knew well how their energy and time was in fact going to be spent in the foreseeable future. They would be fully taken up with the demands of building, strategic exploration, guard duty and patrolling, as well as all the minutiae demanded by the successful settlement of a host of people in a new land.

Huge groans went up when someone mentioned the word ‘drainage.’ Apparently even Fingon was not exempt. Fingolfin had strictly ordered their facilities carefully managed and tomorrow it was his elder son’s turn for the inspection in the woods.

“No problem. I shall delegate,” he said. “In fact, I already have. I came upon Finrod’s stray looking for a job and put him on to it.”

Only Finrod made no answer to that, the others reproaching Finrod in fun or sympathising with the absent Calyaro. The laughter was not unkind: everyone took turns at the digging save those of highest degree. They were all slightly curious about the addition to their camp. Fëanor’s musician spoke but little and did not touch his craft so far as any of them knew. They had learned that Finrod would not talk about him but it did not stop them wondering.

Fingon was looking at him in faint question. Finrod returned his regard levelly, in an exchange that needed no words. ‘Should we talk? Will you ever forgive me?’ ‘What would be the point of talking?’ And, far more painfully, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how…’

Finrod let more raucous laughter ebb and flow around him, knowing it for a release of tension much needed, content to sit out the conversation. He had checked that Calyaro was provided for and occupied, and that he had found somewhere to sleep. It had seemed to be enough. Now, thinking of those hands, he felt uneasy. He took another drink, aware of Glorfindel’s eyes on him.

“Stop sitting on that bottle,” complained Fingon.

Finrod made sure to grin. “What, this one?” He drained it without bothering with his cup to general boos and hisses while Fingon threw his boot at him. Finrod caught the footwear and pretended to throw it into the stream running nearby. Meanwhile Glorfindel produced as if by grand conjury another bottle of precious liquor. He opened it, first offering it as if ceremonially to Galadriel, who promptly sat up straight against her bole and gave him a queen’s acknowledgement before filling her drinking horn to the brim and passing the bottle on.

 In the end the party broke up when Aredhel and Galadriel went to find their tents, and Fingon sought his bedroll, saying he needed to attend his father at first light. Turgon left, ostensibly to look at maps, more probably to find another bottle in Fingolfin’s store that the King would not miss. Fëanor, or more likely one of his people, had had enough wit to offload the ships before they burned them, and Maedhros had been lavishing Fingon with such honorary gifts as crates of wine; Fingon had not refused them.

Glorfindel hooked his head at Orodreth and the two owlish youngest. They took the hint and mumbled good-night.

Glorfindel waited. Finrod stirred and sat up. “What?”

“I never said a word.”

“You don’t need to. I can feel it rolling off you. My head hurts.”

“Drink some water.”

Finrod held out his hand and Glorfindel put a water-skin into it. The silence stretched comfortably. Apart from the viscous smokes that appeared under cover of darkness, the lake and its environs were breathtakingly beautiful. The moon, having decided to rise, kept them free of noxious fumes tonight.

“I thought you were blessedly incapacitated.”

“I changed my plans.” Without his usual finesse but quietly, he added, “Do you miss her badly?”

Finrod squinted at him. “I’m drunk. I’m tired. I’ve got a fortress to plan in the morning. I’ve spent a foolish evening talking about sewage and planning a pleasure trip for Turgon round the coast on stallions worth a fortune in any jewels you care to name. Why now, Glorfindel?”

“Because I haven’t seen you relax since you came out of Alqualondë’s gates looking like a ghost. Because you were going to marry Amarië and you haven’t mentioned her name once. Because you’re too quiet by half, and when you think no-one is looking, you are tense as a strung bow. The rest of the time, you put on a show for us.”

Glorfindel looked at him and Finrod thought he was done, but he went on, “You have the look of one who is afraid, Aro, and you have never been fearful. It’s past time to talk about what’s bothering you.”

The deep voice rolled off the phrases inviting trust and confidence. Oh, to be young again, and have his cousin work his magic to right the ills of childhood, or at least comfort them.

Finrod fought off the spell. “What gives you the right to pry?”

“Aro – ” Disconcerted at the uncharacteristic attack, he pressed on. “Nothing does. Nothing except that I care and no-one else is going to ask. Have they? Have any of you discussed what happened? Do you think you will?”

Glorfindel’s arrows sank home. Despite himself, Finrod’s shoulders slumped. This was Glorfindel, after all.

“No. None of us will ever discuss it that I can imagine.” Odd, how he had never noticed that Glorfindel’s blue eyes looked as grey as Calyaro’s in the dark.

He contemplated the stars over the mountains and thought of Calyaro, patiently digging ditches tomorrow, obeying his edict to earn his place. He certainly hadn’t meant ditch-digging. Fingon could be such an ass. With a pang he nearly smiled at the phrase, a relic of their younger, more carefree days.

“What are you thinking?”

He’d forgotten his companion while he stared at the cloud-studded peaks. There were no answers that could lay some ghosts to rest.

Glorfindel asked a third time, “What’s eating away at you so badly? You seem as stricken as Turgon, and I don’t know why, unless it’s Amarië.”

Finrod turned his empty wine-cup between his hands. “Fingon was on the docks. I dream of him.”

He bent the rim of the leather cup, crushing it fiercely so the edges buckled and the leather began to split. “Morgoth, Fëanor. Even Manwë – I could be angry with any one of them. And I am. But being angry with Fingon feels wrong, like poison. I look at Galadriel, Turgon, even Idril – they don’t feel real. I keep expecting to see Elenwë and then I remember. I do my duty but nothing touches me. No-one does.

“I wonder if I can ever forgive Fingon, or forget… and then I dream of Hlápo’s face on the boy he was going to kill.”

That was when the tears spilled over and Finrod’s shoulders shook. This grief did not feel like a child’s sorrow, but hard, an adult’s serious look at what was and could never be changed, but when Glorfindel put an arm around him, Finrod did not push him away.

Glorfindel held him all that night. Together they stared across the lake, as black, stinking mists tried to thicken around them, only to be inexorably dispersed as clouds rolled aside from the moon’s gift of light.

In the cool, quiet of dawn he felt easier. Glorfindel had worked a little magic after all.  Gradually, the stubborn mists burned off from the hollows of the grasslands and the long rays of the sun over the Ethel Wethrin hunted out the last lingering tendrils from the trees.

***

Finrod made his way down round the shore a short way, and then branched off into the trees. There were paths here, where so many of them came, laid with branches where it was muddy, and then neatly stoned areas set aside for their use. Fingolfin had thought hard about this, but with so many of them, there was no choice. Facilities they must have, and facilities he provided.

Even when Barad Sirion started to go up and the planned cavalry was ready to patrol Ard-galen, a large encampment would remain here. Finrod ignored the areas which were available to use that day. It was the thunk of the new digging that he followed, and sure enough, he came upon a few elves excavating a series of neat trenches. It was temporary work, and no-one looked too unhappy. Short rotations of a lot of people into the task took care of that.

“Calyaro.” His voice cut through the digging and the staccato talk. Dig – breath – speak, was the cheerful rhythm. Calyaro was working a little clumsily among the rest, slightly apart, not one of those talking. Someone nudged him, and hissed, “The Prince wants you.”

“Leave that.” He gestured to the spade.

Calyaro walked with him. Once they were out of the trees, a little grimly, Finrod said to him, “Show me your hands.”

He inspected the nearest, the left, oddly reminded of the repaired mandolin, as he looked at the scars. “You should have said something rather than take that job on. Have you got all the feeling back?” He pressed various places, watching the shake of the head. He would have expected the musician to care far more than he showed. The hand in his felt warm and the skin was whole, only marks and the numbness remaining.

“I’ll give orders exempting you from the duty.” He nodded at the woods. “Use more common sense another time and say something.” His feelings confused him. Usually, he felt nothing. Then he would feel a surge of some anger or grief, which would disappear again. With Calyaro there were other extremes. Their history on the Ice and their amiable relationship in Tirion were at odds with his present cold bitterness over the kinslaying. Compassion and anger made very uneasy bed-fellows, he was finding. “I’ll ask that you be found some less physical work. There’s plenty to do, depending on what you know, aside from music?” Everybody shared the burden of getting necessary work done in this new, large and still chaotic settlement.

“I can figure, draw – plans, not art – and I have knowledge of hunting weapons and the sword.”

Finrod let go of the hand. All the basic skills of any child educated in Tirion. Other arts – healing, metal-work, wood-work and music – were more specialized and their teaching had depended on aptitude, opportunity and interest.

“Barad Sirion is going to take a lot of labour of all sorts. I’ll send you as aide to one of the architects. You can be attached to the project and she will find some use for you. Wait until a healer has cleared you before taking on any physical work. Make sure you see one regularly. You know where to find them?”

“Yes.”

“Then see to it. I’ll leave word with the guard. They will take you over and introduce you to the architect.”

That done, he had discharged both duty and debt alike for their odd partnership on the Helcaraxë, and he could finally dismiss him from his mind, glad to free himself from the unwelcome bond to an ugly past.

He had a fortress to plan, and his uncle would want him to make a start on it. Today they finalised the movements of all those leaving on the King’s business and readied their gear for departure. Finrod was more than willing. If he could not forget the past, he could still see what tomorrow would bring. 

Chapter End Notes

Names

Aro - short for Findaráto 

*** Twenty years later ~ The Mereth Aderthad ~ Eithel Ivrin ***

“Don’t you think they sound eerie?” Galadriel asked. She tilted her head, considering. “Wonderful, though…”

Finrod took a deep draught from the generous cup in his hand. His uncle had provided nothing but the best for this occasion and he was making the most of it. He wondered if it had been traded from the Falas Lord, Círdan, or if it came from the new vineyards in the Taras foothills. The inconsequential thought would do for conversation but it could not distract him from the pictures the music conjured.

Their Green brethren’s songs were disturbing. His shore-dwelling kin had sung in manner both like and unlike to this high, light tune. These harmonies were wilder and less formal, harder to predict and less repetitive. Almost less tuneful, but with a pattern that grew in his awareness as he listened. The plainer lyres sounded crude at first, deceptively so, for they swept the listener up into a world of tree and brook and wove their spell just the same as their ocean-loving cousins had once done with their harps. When one of their number passed close, he called out softly and asked, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar words, “Of whom do you sing?”

“Denethor.”

Finrod’s questioning look invited more. “He fell, against the Enemy you guard against. Long it took us to cross the mountains into the west, and grievous was his loss when Thingol asked our aid. But he could do no other than answer and so Amon Areb saw his end.” Contemplatively, the three of them listened by the lakeside until the end of the plaintive elegy. Galadriel and Finrod able to make out some of the words thanks to their new-learned Sindarin as the singers of Ossiriand told the tale of that bitter, desperate fight. Their accents were strange compared to the Sindar’s, and their dialect differed.

“We were pleased when you drove the wild things out with your coming. They ran where they willed too long in all the lands about, unchecked by any outside the Elven holds, until you came,” he said with shy, gentle approval before moving on.

Not all their companions were so comfortably gracious, but all were here with one interest in common – Morgoth’s defeat, and until that could be achieved, his effective containment. Mablung and Daeron, whom King Thingol had sent, seemed charged to be more witness than emissary in their role. They maintained a courteous but reserved manner and had said little so far in the discussions about treaties and leagues, committing their King to nothing. They listened watchfully, and it was easy to guess that they would report back most carefully on all the doings of these fighting incomers.

The song was over and Maglor was speaking in rounded accents that carried clearly. Courteously, he used the speech of Beleriand that all might understand him. “The song of Denethor told of the first battle joined here.” His hand circled gently to indicate the lands all around. “May we not now hear tell of the Second? It seems fitting to our purpose…”

He looked to the King quite calmly for permission. Was he proposing that he himself sing Fëanor’s tale? Maedhros kept his peace, rather than encourage his brother to raise their father’s ghost and all its bitter memories in this company. Before Fingolfin framed his answer, a voice rose from a different quarter.

“I cardi yar carilmë nauvar lindi tenn' Ambar-metta.”

The Quenya fell at odds with the Sindarin the Noldor were speaking at this gathering for the sake of their guests. The words travelled easily across the quiet of the clearing. But puzzled Sindar or Laiquendi guests were not the concern of those at the King’s table who leaned forward anxiously.

This festival marked expedience as well as common celebration after a score of years spent patiently building and consolidating their guard, their livelihoods and their dwelling places further north. Fingolfin deemed it time to reinforce the relationships that Fingon and Maedhros had mended and sought to put their forces to the best use he could, by mutually agreed resolve.

To break open wounds barely healed, to inform the Sindar of the Noldor’s recent history, in what was meant to be a gathering of hope for the future, would turn it into bitter failure. Fingolfin, about to speak in the ear of a nearby lieutenant, was cut off by a muted outburst from Fingon.

“What does he think he is doing, quoting Fëanor, today of all days? That speech can do no good here!”

The story of the flight was not one that any of the Noldor had cared to spread among their new neighbours. On the heels of a bitter enemy they had come with the waking of the sun and driven the foe to ground and kept him there. The wanderers of the Hither Shores had observed with awe and given them warm welcome. The true story was not public knowledge in Beleriand.

Most of the Noldor wanted to keep it that way. Others had counselled that their history be made explicitly known. They wanted to detail all they knew of Morgoth’s evil. Knowledge of his sly sowing of mistrust and suspicion would serve as due and prudent warning. A different caution had advised against it. He was known to be the Enemy. What more was needed? The rest could only harm their welcome here and divide their peoples.

Fingon made to order the speaker stopped, but found a hand on his shoulder.

“Leave him be.” Finrod now had his uncle’s full attention along with his cousin’s. There were officers of the King ready in a moment to do his bidding in the matter, but Fingolfin was undecided and forebore to give any orders to interfere.

Fingon, less patient, snarled with real anger in his voice, “We are here to make this peace a useful one. The North needs a unified effort, and stirring up old wounds between us is not going to achieve that. Let alone what these others will think!”

“Hush, cousin. Or they will wonder why you try and silence a singer…”

“You brought him, you stop him, if you don’t want me to!”

“Only wait a little. I doubt he will do anything to disrupt our cause…” Detachedly, he wondered if it was a more personal fear and guilt, than concern for the wider company’s fellowship, that made Fingon so defensive.

Maglor stepped forward and even with a handful of words cast the suggestion of a spell over the crowd, in just such manner as his father had. “Calyaro? You had something to say?”

Fingon subsided. The minstrel could not be silenced without reason, and they had none to give that would not betray them.

Calyaro walked oblivious of tension – or perhaps merely ignoring it – into the centre of the greensward stretching along the young Narog’s quietly bubbling course. His grey eyes wandered the throng. He glanced at Finrod, whose attention was firmly arrested. Finrod saw him take in the hand holding down an angry Prince Fingon. Faintly questioning eyebrows and a slight pause was all the concession he made to royal disapproval.

Turning back to Maglor he brought his mandolin up into both hands and plucked softly at the strings to test them.

When Fingolfin sat back, folding his arms, without a word, Fingon shook off his cousin’s hold and they relapsed into an attention far tenser than that of an audience expecting to be pleased.

People fell back to give the musician a small space to himself. He looked around and repeated the quote in Sindarin, “The deeds that we do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda.” He plucked another string, and then another, touching the pegs, and then the tuning became something else altogether as his fingers flexed and drew in earnest on the mandolin.

Major chords floated up exuberantly to fill the branches of the trees that crowded the banks to the west. They echoed off sheer rock to the north and mingled with the water’s own song. The energetic notes bounding skywards mimicked the high hopes of this gathering, with all their suggestion of creation bursting with life and beauty.

Calyaro suited him, Finrod thought, and he listened as the notes ran and grew and died only to grow again. Then, suddenly, the music jarred him as the rich pattern included an uncomfortable discord. He wondered if damaged hands were fumbling a difficult transition. A minor chord crept mournfully into the mix, and a second ominous dissonance, clearly no mistake: all the more shocking after the harmonies that had filled the air.

Clashing notes grew impossibly loud from so delicate an instrument, louder again and harsher on the ear, underpinned by a swelling base-line that filled his head and pounded uneasily in his body’s bones. High above the base cacophony, a tinkling descant and creaking string evoked the ripples of the sea against ships moored in harbour and then abruptly it all fell away into a silence that might stand for an ending – or a betrayal and a breaking of faith.

In that stillness a more martial thump began a new theme before the puzzled audience could shake off the startling effect of the awkward prelude. Keeping heavy time on the wood with his palm, forming his accompaniment from the strong chords of the opening passages, Calyaro opened his mouth and sang.

He sang of a people arriving in a new land. Of courage and determination and of horrors ranked in enmity against them in a great battle under the stars. Of attack, counter-attack and a wild pursuit. And in the end, a King surrounded undaunted, last survivor against the wielders of bitter fire, wounded unto death and rescued too late.

He sang of rocky shelter on a mountain pass, and a spirit so fiercely bright that it fled in fire to the firmament seeking Ilúvatar himself, to burn in the heavens sundered from kin until the ending of the earth.

He had written it in Quenya, but the poetic Sindarin translation he supplied at intervals over a softer holding thrum did not break the mood, but seemed rather to embrace the Sindar with the sorrow of his tale and the tale of courage of his fallen King. As Calyaro sang to the sky and finished the last cadenza his fingers carried the notes of the last phrase into an echoing fall of minor keys. When he lowered his eyes, the stars’ light seemed reflected in them still.

Finrod thought himself grown fanciful in the grip of the unearthly music.

Calyaro addressed Fingolfin in the silence. “He was my King. And I will see that he is remembered in song for so long as Arda lasts, even to the end of days.” He looked around. “I call it Nainië Elenion. He died as he lived, and I miss him.” With that, he walked away into the trees.

“He is in your service – can you not teach him some deference?” asked Fingon, ruffled.

“I’ll speak to him. But no-one told him to stop. Don’t worry – only those who were there will guess what that first part told. And none of us is going to say anything.”

Calyaro’s song had told of the battle against Morgoth’s creatures and of Fëanor’s death, but the voiceless prelude could only be the story that came before: the creation of the Silmarilli, the battle that took the ships, the ending of that voyage in betrayal at Losgar.

The sung elegy had spoken to them all. ‘Make the journey worthwhile,’ it said to Fingolfin’s people. ‘He’s dead and gone and Morgoth would gladly see you riven against one another to the undoing of all the Eldar.’

To Fëanor’s followers it spoke more simply. ‘Make his death and all his actions count, else the cost has been too great by far.’

Fingolfin signed for more food to be taken around, and wine to be poured anew, and slowly voices took up conversation. Singing of a different kind started up. Only then did he turn to scowl at his nephew. “Be sure you speak to him soon.” 

Chapter End Notes

Translation and names:

Mereth Aderthad – Feast of Reuniting

“I cardi yar carilmë nauvar lindi tenn' Ambar-metta.”

“The deeds that we do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda.”

(Lit. The deeds that we do shall be(come) songs until the end of the world.)

Nainié Elenion – Stars’ Lament 

Finrod followed Calyaro around the mere, making his way through a bog of willows and reed beds into the canyon of the falls. Gathered cold and pure by the shoulders of the mountains, the waterfall scattered icy mist and spray in its descent.

At the foot of this cliff, the musician was standing with his face to the spray. Finrod put a hand on the soaked shoulder, already wet through himself.

Calyaro stared at him blankly and then ran the back of his wrist across his eyes.

“Prince Finrod…”

“Calyaro,” he nodded to him in greeting and eyed him. “The King is uneasy and asked that I speak with you.”

“Ah. Alqualondë, is it?”

“Alqualondë,” agreed Finrod. “By the King’s command, you understand, you are not to put words to the tale, or play that prelude.”

Calyaro’s mouth twisted. “He need not worry. People will want to hear of King Finwë’s tragedy and the Trees’ passing. They will not ask for what happened at the harbour. I will have requests for the Nainië Elenion but all who know about Alqualondë know better than to ask for it in song.” The unconscious arrogance was immense.

The next moment it fell away altogether. He studied his fingers and added softly, as if talking to himself, “I was not sure I could play that prelude even once, but I owed them that much… I only wish I had followed him into worthier battles.”

Finrod could not understand how he could feel sympathy for one of Fëanor’s following at the Haven, but he had liked Calyaro, across the distance of age and scarce acquaintance. He had always liked to hear him play. He had not known until tonight that his hands had made a full recovery. On Tol Sirion, there had been no evidence of him taking up practice again.

“Is there something else?” Calyaro asked, with scant civility. “I hardly think it would take a Prince to deliver the King’s command?”

“You worried them greatly. The King counts you in my following and desired me to speak with you,” said Finrod shortly. He thought it amazing that the kinslaying was not general knowledge already. It could not be long until the story leaked; once it did, the tale would spread among the Sindar like wild-fire. In the meantime, he would see the King’s order obeyed.

“Then you have my apologies.” The grey eyes took on an older look, and remote, as if he was hearkening to shadows. “But if that is all, I came here to be alone…”

Finrod did not expect himself or any King’s messenger to be summarily dismissed, and he eyed Calyaro with a frown. “Is that how you addressed your previous lord?”

“Fëanor? We hardly stood on formality. Except by the end when no-one lightly approached him. Even Maedhros.”

“Well, your lord is dead and you have chosen to answer to me. Your arrogance is misplaced if you think it’s your place to dismiss me from your company.”

Instead of another apology, he stiffened and spoke bitterly, “Yes, he’s dead! And better had you left me where you found me!”

Finrod answered coolly. “You certainly weren’t fit to leave in a pile of bloody rags for the Lords of the Haven to find. Is that what you wanted? To be brought before King Olwë as sole scapegoat? You need only have said!”

A sharp chopping gesture greeted that. “I would willingly have faced Lord Olwë, or Lord Manwë himself! Do you think I wanted to save myself after what we had done? And better their judgement than learn of his death…” His voice sounded rusty, as might happen to anyone who sang so long and so intricate a piece.

He turned away, but not before Finrod saw his tears spill and fall, unmistakable even merged with the spray from the falls. Finrod had reached out to pull him back in rebuke but instead let his hand drop. He made to go but then paused long enough to add, “The falls are cold. You should not stay here long.”

Disturbed and unwilling to pity him, he retraced the springy grasses in their watery ground along the way he had come. He had gone perhaps ten score paces when he heard Calyaro’s clear tenor above the play of water.

He slowed to a halt as if his feet were chained by the song. The verses picked up the falling minor cadence of the last chords he had played back at the lake in a very private epilogue.

Uryala úruva, rúcina háya,
Massë nárotya?
Massë calatya?
Mana ré, vinya omentielva nó elenilanta?
 
Lírinen, enyalin alcaretya,
Ar lómissë,
Írë tintilar i eleni, yar cenner tye mahta
Undu oioliltalelta
Enyalin úretya.
 
Sára mettatya ar sára endatya,
Yón ataretya.
Enda verca,
Náro úrin,
Áni tana i tië
Ya lertan hilya
Liltien elvëa úressë menelo
Tennoio lehta Ambar-lúmello.
 
 
Burning brightly, fled far hence,
Where thy fire?
Where, thy light?
When, our reunion before stars’ fall?
 
In song I remember thy glory
And in the night
By stars’ shine, who saw thee fight
Under their endless dance,
I think of thy heat.
 
Bitter thy end and bitter thy heart,
Son of thy father.
Wild heart,
Bright fire,
Show me the path
That I may follow
To dance star light in heaven’s heat
And keep earthly time no more.

The words cut through blanketed emotion like cold crystal. Grief twisted like a knife in his heart. Amarië was all his thought, lost love a piercing sorrow that stole his breath and hurt his belly.

Finrod sat long in his tracks where the song had struck him, until the cold damp slowly percolated into his awareness. Stiffly he rose, body mirror for his heart. He had his fill of songs for one night. 

Chapter End Notes

*** Fifty Second Year of the Sun ~ River Narog below the High Faroth ***

“Glorfindel! What are you doing here?” Finrod smiled with pleasure to see him.

Glorfindel raked him up and down, and seemed not dissatisfied at what he saw. “I asked the King if I could play courier to see a bit more of the country and Galadriel has written to me… She said you thought you’d found what you were looking for. Said I should come and see it for myself. She sounded a little – sceptical about your project.”

“Since when was Galadriel ever enthusiastic about anything that involved digging?” Finrod retorted, not quite sure what Galadriel thought about anything since she had met Melian.

“Well, I wanted to see you anyway, after your little disappearing act. I am not sure your uncle is pleased with you about that, you know. You should write to him. He didn’t expect you to be gone so long. Or leave again for Doriath so soon. And I have a lot of letters for you from Orodreth.”

Orodreth was in command at Tol Sirion and not sure he was happy about it. “Then you have my thanks – and I am very glad you came. I have much to show you.” Finrod looked around. “How did you find it?”

“Galadriel said to follow the river, and when it looked impossible, keep going. Or turn back and try the higher path. She said I’d find you where the river deepened into a gorge.”

“At least King Thingol won’t be dictating who visits me here.”

“He really is going to let you settle here then?”

“So he says. It surprises me, too.” Finrod said no more than that and Glorfindel eyed him and spoke of Galadriel lingering in Doriath and her taste in silver princes – one in particular. From Finrod’s descriptions of Celeborn’s tall good looks, calm depths and hard-to-penetrate reserve, the conversation fast came round to Menegroth itself.

“The halls are finely made. I intend something like it here if I can manage it. Secure, but not gloomy.”

“From what your sister says, Thingol’s hideaway is well enough. Lots of ornamentation.” Glorfindel sounded so unimpressed, Finrod laughed.

“You are a child of the sky, Glorfindel. You always were. But even if we live underground here, the forest is still wide and high – it’s excellent hunting – and the plains across the river stretch north uninhabited. We shall have reason in plenty to be outside, and the rest of the time we would be safe and cosy, out of the weather…”

“You don’t need a cave for a rain-free bed, you know. Remember houses?” They laughed. The argument of house over forest was as old as the elves’ own history, setting decadence and comfort against the subtler, spiritual joys of the woods under an open sky. It was a joke that went on forever since the good of both would always hold true. The Noldor might not choose to sleep in trees – though they had learned the Laiquendi did so – but they would always want to walk the forests by the light of the stars.

Glorfindel was doubtless checking up on him and Finrod was glad of it, glad to see him and glad to find he could still laugh at nothing. Mostly, everyone had stopped asking Finrod why he had been off wandering alone so often. Only Thingol knew of Lord Ulmo’s visitation that had left him disquieted and compelled to hunt far and wide for a secure retreat.

Finrod was fairly sure Turgon had shared those dreams, or something very like, for he too had been travelling remote reaches since their damp night’s rest in the fens to the east. His own tight unease for the future was lifting a little after finding this place, perhaps a result of being able to do something definite. It felt good to laugh.

Barad Sirion and Minas Tirith, formidable though they stood, were only practice for what he planned to build and he was delighted to have the chance to show his cousin what he had in mind – and to get his advice. He started telling Glorfindel how he had poured out his store of jewels to see if Thingol thought he could enlist help from Ered Luin’s people.

“Trade these for pearls at the Falas,” Thingol had said. “Give Aulë’s people pearls and they will work for you content. Especially if you can share some craft with them. They love learning.” He looked a little smug among the fruits of his partnership with those same workers from Belegost. He also seemed flattered at Finrod’s genuine enthusiasm as he toured the carvings and weavings of Menegroth’s halls, looking at forest scenes of Valinor, worked intricately in stone, and Arda’s histories laid out in thread. Nowhere else had dwarves, elves and Maiar – one Maia, at least – worked to produce such a collection of art. In stone, weavings, gold and jewels – everywhere he looked in the wide halls there were examples of their skill.

He had particularly enjoyed finding Oromë and Nahar coursing through a stand of beeches and finding on the other side of the pillar a wealth of curled branches hiding animals – nested wrens, squirrel, tree-snake, pine-marten… Every pillar told a story and he learned to look for the smallest details – trailing columbine in flower, a dragonfly hovering over a foxglove, a stand of snowdrops in a copse under a dusting of snow with the Pelóri breathtaking in the distance, a panther snarling at a python coming too close to a curl of sleeping cubs.

On the wall opposite, he had come face to face with a far darker work of the Queen’s weavings than any of her histories that he had so far studied. It displayed nightmare hints of shadows yet to come – the sun darkened by smokes, Ard-galen devastated, slinking shapes advancing on Tol Sirion. The echo of Lord Ulmo’s warnings, coupled with Menegroth’s vast achievement, moved him to confide in his great uncle. Thingol consulted Melian and afterwards told him about the Ringwil’s joining to the Narog and the gorge they had cut together downstream in hard granite. He had described the Narog’s swift course and offered to show him the caves hidden there.

Glorfindel took in the shale underfoot, the vine and bracken hung cliffs, and the rivulets spilling down sheer rock. “I see Galadriel has not been exaggerating. You really have lost your mind.”

“No such thing. Come, I’ll show you.”

He took him down to the threshold of the caves, under a vast overhang of rock and set back in a series of small blind breaks in the face. “I was just going to attempt to climb down from above and see if it can be done.” He pointed up to the towering complex of hills on which the forest of the High Faroth grew, pitted with steep valleys on its western escarpment, but dropping in a solid cliff wall on this eastern face.

“We can get nearer to the river than this. I’ll show you.” He led the way along a goat track out among the damp ferns and mosses of the gorge and followed it to a small stream in a rocky bed that fell over another sheer drop into the river.

“Careful. This is steep – you don’t want to go in here.”

“Indeed.” Glorfindel looked thoughtful. “And slippery. But no-one could cross.” They stared at the walls of rock and the froth boiling past.

“As long as it is never bridged…” Finrod surveyed it with satisfaction.

“It doesn’t seem possible that it could cut through rock like that. I walked through this river at the Ginglith crossing…”

The water’s passage was wild, fast and deep in its race through the deep channel between pathless rock. Finrod looked at it with proprietorial approval.

“See, the way the hills stretch north and south along the valley behind us? With the gorge one side, cliffs the other – the western banks are the only approach, from the south or the north. And that highland to the south-east goes unbroken right across to the Gelion. An attack would have to come from the west down the Sirion vale – and cross at the ford – or cross the Wethrin or get through Hithlum and Vinyamar…”

Finrod knew he was babbling, but Glorfindel didn’t discourage him. His head was tipped a little as if listening very closely. “Go on.”

“The alternative would be for invaders to take the eastern route round Doriath and come up from the Andram, leaving them the eastern plain still to cover and then the ford. If they wanted to cross in the south it means taking the Andram drop, or the Gilion vale and once they found a ford, we would see them coming with warning to spare. Either way they face a bottleneck. We could drop them in their tracks. If they get that far. If they ever know we are here.”

Glorfindel raised his brows. Finrod waited for him to say something but his cousin only nodded understanding. They all knew the tale of the first rout of Beleriand and Finrod was planning accordingly.

“And – see up there? – there is natural camouflage all around for watch-towers on the heights, for the fortress, and for any paths we may need.” It felt right. Satisfied, he set about showing Glorfindel the caves.

***

Next day, they took to the heights.

Their attempt to descend from the Taur-en-Faroth failed as its eastern walls fell inward below them and footholds failed. Ropes were not long enough and they found no way down. They worked their way northwards back out of the Faroth and returned the long way to the bank outside the caves and its drop to grey turbulence far below.

Over rabbit and ramson stew, Finrod consulted Thingol’s elves about the topography of the plain above the Andram. With their camp set and reverie calling, Finrod sombrely faced north. “What do you think? If the day comes that we have to stand fast against the enemy here, it will mean Beleriand is utterly over-run.”

“Morgoth is too well-besieged for that to be likely at present. But since you are considering strategy, I’d caution against the assumption of wholesale attack. There is no reason a pointed sortie could not be mounted, if once he can break a force out through the northern leaguer. He shows no sign whatever of coming out of hiding – he likes not the sun and nor do his warped creations – but remember his patience in Valinor. And how by patience and guile he deceived his gaolers… He may yet find a way, which we do not forestall.”

It was unusual to find Glorfindel so weighty in his speech. Unease rippled up Finrod’s spine and diligently he continued to seek out defensive weaknesses in the site. He found few. A path there must be for access. Supplies and people must come and go and there must be the means to eat. Water must have entry and egress. Such points of access as they needed, they must guard. His collection of small scale maps grew and his notes filled the margins to overflowing.

*** Five years later ~ River Narog below the High Faroth ***

Calyaro had settled himself at the top of a rise in ground with his mandolin. Just beyond, the path dipped out of sight in its disguised wending to the Ginglith ford. Silhouetted by moonlight, he was taking no notice of anyone else.

Finrod’s gaze strayed to the player. He had filled out in the years of building and better fare, more a matter of health than size. Finrod had grown used to the sight of him on Tol Sirion; they had even talked at times. He had proved to have a good eye for detail, though his structural expertise fell far short of the experienced elves. But when it came to small touches of inspiration in design to do with best use of space, perhaps in placing a stairwell or setting an extra embrasure in a too dark hall, those in charge found he had a knack for fresh ideas, despite – or perhaps because of – his lack of formal training.

Still spare of speech, his withdrawn appearance had improved after the Mereth Aderthad, leaving him merely thoughtful instead of deadened; not an unusual trait in a minstrel. He continued to play, though he never sought the same wide stage he had claimed at Eithel Ivrin. An audience always gathered anyway and if he sometimes played the Nainië Elenion, Finrod and he had an understanding; he could sing of Fëanor all he liked – so long as he respected the King’s edict regarding the kinslaying. Findrod had ordered a watch set on Calyaro’s public playing to emphasize the point.

True to his word, Calyaro never ventured even the instrumental piece that invoked the Noldor’s secret shame. Finrod sometimes saw him quirk his brows on noticing whatever sober guard was appointed to the task, and give Finrod a wry nod. In turn, the Prince was satisfied that Calyaro knew himself to be – not exactly kept on sufferance – say rather, without the least leeway on that one matter.

Calyaro’s life on Tol Sirion stood out in one further regard; sometimes, when Maglor had travelled to Barad Eithel, he made the extra journey to Minas Tirith to see the musician. The former tutor and his outstanding pupil knew each other well. More than that, they had in common their shared love – and loss – of Fëanor.

Seeing them together had drawn Finrod’s fresh attention to Calyaro. The prince was the spitting image of his father – when he bent close and their grey eyes met in talk, it was as if Fëanor had returned to see his bard.

Calyaro started one of his preferred history ballads and Finrod was recalled from his contemplations.

“How long has he been here?” Glorfindel broke in on his thoughts curiously. Recently arrived himself, they were eating with the rest of the working parties on the flats of the path outside the caves.

Finrod shrugged. “Nearly three years ago. He came down with the first of those the King my uncle let me bring from Barad Eithel and Minas Tirith to balance the dwarves’ advice with our own experience. Thingol says his elves did a great deal at Menegroth so I’m hoping the Sindar might contribute too, if I’m persuasive enough.“

Glorfindel snorted. “By what I hear, if you’ve any jewels left after paying the dwarves I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty. If anyone ever reads Galadriel’s letters she’ll be thrown out for blatant disrespect. According to her, they’re not elves over there, they’re magpies.”

“Oh, that’s a touch of the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think?” The Noldor in Tirion had loved their jewels and embellished the city with them wherever they could and he – and Galadriel – were as guilty as the rest.

Glorfindel did not answer that but his eyes gleamed in humour. “Yon Calyaro? He doesn’t look much like a builder, picking away at that dirge.”

Finrod’s smile twitched unwillingly. It was certainly mournful. Their eyes met. Finrod cracked a laugh at the truth of it. “He’s been picking the guides’ brains for tales of Thingol’s first battle. Orcs, wolf-types and worse routing Círdan to the coast, driving the Laiquendi east or into Doriath, costing Thingol so many lives – it’s not going to be for every occasion. But he’s here with the architects, not as a musician.”

“I thought he would give up the other work once he started playing again…”

“He never asked. He plays, but as if for himself alone, though he’ll oblige if people ask. And he still composes.”

Even so, when Calyaro played, no-one disturbed him.

His performance at the Mereth Aderthad had served notice of his skill but it had done far more than that. Under the falls of the Narog’s source, it was Calyaro’s song that broke through Finrod’s numb wasteland. He was used to feelings eluding him save those flashes of anger and hollow sadness that came and went from their buried lairs. That night, his grief had come alive at last and over the years since, it had faded into a weight easier to carry, its corners rounded, its edges less abrasive.

Slowly, he had become able to hold thoughts of Amarië with gentle love, of Tirion with the affection of happy memories. The end of all Hlápo’s youthful joys still brought him to tears at times – a cloud scudding overhead could do it, or a flashing turn of some brown-haired youth, braids flying, calling out to a friend – small things at odd moments might set him off. The worst of it, the hard ugliness in him over Fingon’s fall into kinslaying, resisted such gentler transitions, but he found time lent him a softening of its effects. Even that curdled knot of grief and anger no longer distanced him from what he had once taken for granted: the solid warmth of Galadriel’s edged affection, the ease of casual laughter, the light of the stars moving him to peace.

Calyaro should have been the last person to touch him and yet… While that very private epilogue to Stars’ Lament, offered to the solitude of a wild waterfall, had breached his heart and opened him to healing, other moments too lingered in his memory. Their bitter meeting. A hand on his shoulder when he stared into another of the Helcaraxë’s heartrending traps. The image of him mud-ridden and tangled on Mithrim’s shores, no longer blank but moved to amusement, grief, resignation – above all the haunting guilt that spoke to Finrod’s own dark anger.

He had been so dishevelled in those days that Finrod was surprised on first seeing him neatly garbed. Early trade was reserved for urgently needed tools and raw materials, so for a time they all wore the simple cloths that the land yielded most quickly. The cream linens and brown wools suited him.

Glorfindel and Finrod ate their meal by starlight and talked with the music washing over them. But when Calyaro walked away northwards – perhaps to practice without trespassing on others, or perhaps just to be alone – Glorfindel returned to the subject of the singer.

“You look upon him with peculiar interest, Aro.”

“What? No! I never…” He heard the denial rising in his voice and broke off. “I was thinking about him,” he said, more calmly, “We seem to have coincided over the years when things mattered most. Even here, building this fortress, he sits there singing of the battle that warns of a future I guard against. I can’t help noticing him.”

“Have you seen much of him, then? Since he’s been here??”

“More than I did in Minas Tirith.” Glorfindel was observant, but Finrod did not know himself what he felt.

“Has anyone ever tempted you since the crossing?” Since Amarië, he meant.

“There were one or two who seemed eligible…”

“And did you favour them?”

Glorfindel’s persistence was unusual. Uncomfortably, Finrod looked away.

“Amarië is a long way away,” Glorfindel said gently. “And we are never going home. To think of another would be no betrayal.”

Finrod prodded the ground with the stick he had used to poke the fire. “I know that.”

He did know that. But – who more unsuitable could he have discovered to stir him? He wanted to dismiss Glorfindel’s perception as mere appreciation of fine music and a shared history. Calyaro had an undeniable skill for moving others with a tune, but Finrod knew that was not all. Even cast into turmoil, Calyaro had seemed to accept more than rail. The grey eyes seemed to hold a world beyond the everyday, windows to a mind searching far horizons. They drew him in, left him wanting to find out more.

He had used to like – admire – the older member of his cousins’ household. When he grew up, he had still enjoyed his music. Then came Alqualondë and cold anger had gripped him. It was not that he had forgiven him – or anyone – but the past did not hold his thoughts in the same way, or grip his heart fast.

With his own family exuberant and out-spoken, Amarië’s quiet strength had appealed to Finrod. He could not deny it appealed to him in Calyaro. He did not know what it was he felt, but when his eyes followed the path the musician had taken he was glad that Glorfindel said no more.

*** Eighty Five Years of the Sun ~ Nargothrond ***

“It’s getting done.” Finrod looked around exhilarated in the din. The ringing of hammers and picks, the grinding of wheels on rock, the calling of voices, some melodious, others gruffer, should have drowned out the singer’s song and his strings, but once in a while fell a false lull, a little silence, in which he still could be heard.

Finrod’s sweeping examination of all they had created ended back at the group of elven designers, admiring their progress so far. Their dwarven colleagues were huddled around their next project’s plan of some passages to provide a deeper level of storage and armouries.

“If we carry on like this, King Thingol will be wanting to take it over.”

They laughed but took the Prince’s comment as the compliment he intended. The Sindar among them knew that their King would never admit that anywhere could even remotely touch upon Menegroth’s wealth and brilliance, and the others had all heard what he was like. 

“Come. We’ll stop later for a break and something to eat. Then we’ll take time to bathe.” He sighed in anticipation of ridding himself of dust and grit. With one last wall in place, and the archway laid, its keystone dropped in place, and the stones placed to fill the space above they would have finished this entire level. Only the lower armouries, store-rooms, extra accommodations and storm-courses for flooding would remain undone.

Ceremonially, they went to complete the arch. Finrod pleased the dwarves mightily with both his bow and the high honour of mounting the keystone itself. The general elation was helped along by drink and they stood around giving unwanted advice to the handful of sober masons placing the remaining stones in the gap above. The masons finally climbed down the scaffolding grinning, and it was more drink all round.

Finrod declared a holiday for the rest of that day and the next. Everyone made their way out slowly, admiring the work, discussing the inner details yet to follow and ordering their tools. Tonight they would celebrate.

When they emerged into sunlight, Calyaro was playing in the opening between the caves and the river bank. Exuberantly pleased with the excavations, Finrod smiled broadly at him before he realized it. Calyaro gave him a startled nod and made to rise on being greeted so markedly, but Finrod motioned him to stay seated and passed by to shed his grey coating. He glanced up at him from the path and caught him in an odd smile.

The stars were brilliant in an unclouded sky when they came across each other again. Calyaro was pressed to play after others had all had their turn. He took to a new tune Finrod had not heard. This piece could have been written to please him personally, being about the Gelion and the people of its many-rivered vale. Finrod often travelled in Ossiriand using the excuse of enquiring for news from Amrod and Amras but in fact spending far more time with the Laiquendi. The forests there were softer than the Taur-en-Faroth, all deciduous and much warmer, being so much lower in altitude.

Finrod sprawled out and closed his eyes to listen. He talked to those who came to him, and didn’t need to worry about anything for the rest of the day and all tomorrow.

He woke in the middle of the night to a light weight falling over him. Calyaro was standing over him, smiling faintly. He had dropped a cloak on top of him. Finrod forgot for a moment why he was lying on a patch of mossy scrub resting his head against a rock. “Calyaro? That was a fine song. I meant to tell you.”

“I’m sorry I woke you. Everyone’s asleep or spread out elsewhere…” Calyaro kept his voice low. The singing was over, other bodies lay around, and only the water could be heard in its endless run below them. “It’s not my place but… you looked so different, asleep. I remembered you back in Tirion.” He shrugged and smiled, more sad than happy; Finrod knew how he felt. They were changed and their innocence was gone from them. For a little moment neither of them said anything.

Finrod sat up and Calyaro made to move off. “No. Sit down. No need to go.” All Calyaro’s grace of movement that Finrod remembered from his performances in Valinor had long since returned. He folded himself to the ground with legs outstretched, sharing Finrod’s rocky support behind his back. There was an awkward silence.

“The day is a triumph,” observed Calyaro politely.

Finrod’s mouth twitched. He said solemnly, “Thank you.” He indicated the wider banks of the river. “It is not only work well done, but done with people working better together than I ever hoped. We will still be working on it but very soon it will be fully liveable.”

“Utterly different from Tirion, but fine halls and fine workmanship. I’ll have to make a song about it.”

Finrod nodded. “No city here could ever be like Tirion, though I know my cousin would have liked to make Vinyamar resemble home. Nargothrond is nothing like it, but I would be glad if we could endure so long. I’m not so sure about that song, you know. I would hope only for a very boring one about building dust and a long peace.”

“You’re expecting something else?”

“Aren’t we all?” He gathered the cloak into his hands and passed it back. “My thanks for this but I think I’ll walk for a while. It’s far too lovely a night for sleeping.” As he got up he added, “But thank you again for tonight’s piece. Play it again soon.” He loved wandering Ossiriand, so green compared to his own fortress. Its people were a gentle folk, richly content in the company of their trees and he found their company and their stories endlessly interesting.

This time it was Calyaro who smiled at him brilliantly, startlingly, and he who smiled back, surprised.

***

He walked the rest of the night away under the trees and only near dawn did he lie down. Amidst the song of the waking birds he slept and he dreamed of Tirion’s wide streets and generous stairs, Mindon Tower bright above. He saw Amarië’s face beneath Galithilion and thought gladly that she was waiting for him, but she smiled up at a stranger and only glanced back at Finrod over her shoulder. Her eyes were calm, her face composed. In his mind he heard her words as if she had spoken them aloud. ‘You said you would return.’

Finrod turned over but could not wake. He tried to follow her to explain but the way changed before him and he came instead to Fëanor’s home and followed the sounds of laughter. It broke off when the doors swung silently open before him. The people within stood aside and all turned to look at the minstrel.

Calyaro plucked a chord. He played beside Fëanor’s chair, drawn up to his full height, his hair confined in intricate patterns, his clothes decorated with silver thread and turquoise clasp. His eyes reflected the light of the candles. The Nainië Elenion echoed through the room and Finrod wept in his sleep.

Calyaro, fallen quiet, moved toward the stairs. Finrod followed him and they emerged into a forested valley – Ossiriand – in the way of dreams.

Calyaro stopped and faced him. There was no-one here, only themselves and the trees. He took a step closer. Calyaro smiled with haunted eyes and Finrod drew him forward with one hand around his back. They breathed each other’s breath. Kissed. All the strangeness of the dream fell away.

When they drew back to look at each other they were laughing a little, almost verging on tears for what was gone. This time the kiss was a desperate thing and there were hands all over Finrod. He was pulled close and held. Body to body they shared warmth and touch and dream-like, there was nothing that said this should not be.

In the dream, there was no Alqualondë, only comfort. Nothing to stop desire or want – he ached for the comfort and clutched tightly, face against skin, lips buried against neck and throat, hands trying to please at least by offering the same strokes of back and hip that he was glad of.

In this dream, it was well that they kissed. He drew back and touched his fingertips down the prominent cheek-bone, and then the jaw. Calyaro’s eyes were grey by star light as they were by day, but darker. They wandered his face, questioning. Desiring. Intense. When they kissed again there was nothing chaste but only need, to hold and be held. To give and to take. And not to be alone. Not to be frozen in time. Not to be tied to a far shore and fail to love on this one.

His hands reached for clasps and they melted at his touch. The dream changed again and they were on Mithrim’s banks in the sun, neither of them clothed, sunlit water sparkling all around them. He reached for Calyaro – and woke…

He groaned and rested his forearm on his brow. The sun was shining across the top of the gorge and he was achingly hard. Well. He would never hear the last of this, from Glorfindel. If he did anything about it. Glorfindel had seen the attraction decades ago and after such a dream and the feelings that he woke with there was no pretence left for him to hide behind. He could choose to do nothing, but he could not pretend he felt nothing.

It was with much on his mind that he walked the rest of the way to the Ringwil’s pools where it approached the Narog and bathed away drink and sleep and dream alike in its cool waters. Back at Nargothrond, he spent a quiet day watching the comings and goings of others, reflecting on what he might choose to do. If he couldn’t help looking around for Calyaro, he made sure to do it discreetly until he had settled what he wanted in his own mind. 

Calyaro was there, standing over him. Kneeling on his bed covers, saying hush while his hands were on Finrod, his body tantalisingly close. Finally satisfied with his victim’s state of arousal, he lay back on the new-woven linen and smiled up. That smile was all amused provocation, heat and expectation. Finrod took firm hold on his ravelled control and enjoyed staring down at the naked body, glad it was his turn to tease and raise raw pleasure in that compelling voice.

He liked what he saw. Liked that he could touch the curving ribcage, and smooth the skin of sun-browned flanks. He let a hand spread out on Calyaro’s flat belly, and felt its soft heat with his thumb as he ran it in an arc back and forth. He liked the way he was allowed to do as he pleased, while the smile he was growing to love played across the angular face and warm eyes watched him.

His prick had filled, urgent not just at Calyaro’s touch but at the thought of what they might do together. Calyaro’s eyes never left his, which added an intensity that transmitted itself to his groin. His own hands started roaming where they willed. He wondered what to kiss first and delayed. He wanted to look. And touch. The skin of Calyaro’s buttocks was smooth, the creases a beautiful curve, the spare body still forming rounded soft muscles when he was relaxed. Finrod let his fingers gently explore his prick and balls and the sensitive inner thighs. He turned Calyaro on his side and cocked one leg forward so he could explore there, too. Calyaro languidly turned his head to watch him.

Finrod kissed him hard, serving notice that he wanted him and would have him if he could. He could almost feel Calyaro smiling before he met tongue with tongue and their lips and hands were all they knew.

Calyaro’s hands took to Finrod’s hair and then ran underneath it down his back and thighs. They kissed again less frantically, and then Calyaro was spreading oil on Finrod’s prick. Reaching behind him.

“I don’t mind,” Calyaro murmured to him, pausing. “Either way.” Up until that moment, Finrod thought he knew what he wanted but oh, to feel those hands there, offering to make him ready…

He flattened himself limply to the sheets and let Calyaro do whatever he liked, groaning and flexing his hands against the pallet. Calyaro laughed and made the most of it, playing with him, dragging it out, making him sing sighs and grunts and groans as hands and fingers stroked and pressed. Finrod had never known that his buttocks and groin had so many sensitive places apart from the obvious. He found it out, as strong fingers, palm and heel of hand plied him with sensation.

If it had gone on forever, Finrod would have lain there willing prisoner to pleasure he had not imagined. Instead, Calyaro drew a firm hand down the side of his spine and let it come to rest on his backside. Lying beside him he said in his ear, “Well, Prince? What would you like me to do?”

The musical voice with its low intonation completed what hands had begun. ‘Whatever you want,’ Finrod wanted to say, ‘but do it now…’

Finrod woke up cursing and threw his blanket off him. Still not sure whether he really wanted to start a relationship of a kind he had not envisaged, he stalked out into the open with his weapons and took to the soothing activity of tending his sword and his dagger with a whetstone and oilcloth.

He valued the weekly ritual and had a favourite spot overlooking one of the wide sweeps of frothing rapids. Willows hung over the water there, finding foothold on one of the series of ledges where greenery had collected up the side of the cliffs.

Mindlessly running metal over stone and checking the angle, he found his light blocked.

“My lord? Might I have a word with you?”

Calyaro rarely sought him out. Finrod sat back and looked at him. He seemed well. “What have you got on your mind?”

“The building will be entirely finished soon, all the major structural work at least.” They would still have various small-scale work that they would be finishing off for years to come. “I wondered – I wanted to ask you if I could stay on here when the others go back to Minas Tirith and Barad Eithel?”

There was no clue as to why he was asking to be gleaned from his face. “There is no reason why not, but I admit I am curious as to why you would like to stay?”

Calyaro, who was standing before him, slanted a brief look at him and then gazed down at the trees. “Because I like it here? Because there is still work to do that I am good at?”

“Is that all?” Finrod was looking closely at him, and Calyaro’s eyes had that older cast to them, and the slight smile was there. Suddenly he was sure, and stood up.

“There is also the fact that I like working for you…” the singer admitted.

“Working for me? Or do you just – like me?” He took a step forward, and a second.

“Prince Finrod, I – ” Whatever he had been going to say was lost. Finrod, deciding that waiting was not going to help matters, kissed him. It was one way of finding out.

The kiss was returned and there was an end of questions.

When they fell apart, Finrod half-laughed and half-gasped for breath, wiping his mouth and looking into the somewhat amused grey eyes.

They both said, “Yes,” at the same time. Calyaro gestured to him.

“Yes,” Finrod said mock-gravely. “You may stay on. Your turn.”

“I was just going to say, yes. I like you, not just working for you. And your hair,” he said, “I like all that golden hair…” He ran a hand down it in a curiously delicate gesture. Almost humble. Fascinated.

Finrod laughed, and shook his head. “Well, that’s alright then.” He felt a little dazed. “Ah, would you eat with me tonight?” And other things, he thought to himself with satisfaction.

Calyaro smiled his quiet smile. “Thank you, yes. I’d better take my leave, I think. For now.” He drifted toward the path, and added, “I shall look forward to it. Prince.”

Finrod felt his insides respond to the words and the thoughts that went with them and inclined his head rather than let it show by his voice failing him.

Supper came and went, and they chose the woods by starlight to get acquainted this first time.

Afterwards Finrod did not know who moved first or who pulled whom close. Their bodies were hard against each other, he knew that. He felt his own heart beat fast. The body in his arms relaxed and welcomed his embrace and when he quieted a little from the first thumping of his heart, he kissed him.

Calyaro waited for him to make that first move, but then – then there was no restraint and Calyaro had definitely done this before… Finrod smiled to himself, remembering his dream. He had supposed Calyaro was no stranger to love of his own sex, but he had only a few smiles to go on. And a kiss by the river. There was that.

He had told Galadriel he did not think of Amarië but it had not been true. He had not forgotten her. He doubted he would ever look at another woman, but he was not sure if that was to do with gender or faithfulness or just the trauma of the nature of that parting. He did not need to think about that and instead caught Calyaro’s mouth with his own.

Calyaro seemed intuitive and had broken off his attentions while Finrod got his second wind, but then he was all over Finrod, experienced and generous and thorough, and Finrod, copying him, knew it would all be well. It would be very well. He should not have waited this long to lie with someone again…

Finrod broke away from the kiss and arched heavily into Calyaro’s firm hand. He found himself held hard behind, and he forget all else but grabbed tightly the body that was so sweetly serving his until he came, gasping into the curve of sharp collar bone and shoulder.

Calyaro groaned and although things seemed very hazy, Finrod heard it and fumbling, loosed his fingernail grip on shoulders and back. He moved his hands unaccustomedly to find a comfortable fit for their bodies. Holding someone else’s erection was a matter of different angles than the unthinking tending of his own body.

Still absorbed in his own light-headed, limp pleasure, he turned sideways a little. He  got a hand under Calyaro’s waist and there held him close while his other hand more expertly grasped the tight length that waited on him. As soon as his hand took hold once more, Calyaro moaned, a hum of desire and gratitude and pent up passion that delighted Finrod.

He roused out of his own replete torpor to enjoy watching the other’s face, rather cruelly taking his time about this task, their eyes meeting when Calyaro half-opened his eyes in question at this different mood. Finrod leaned in and kissed him thoroughly, and was still kissing him when Calyaro stopped breathing, sighed and came.

Finrod propped himself up on his elbows, leaning over the lean body, so different from his own, searching the face that seemed content and alertly questioning – as if to ask, was all well between them? He kissed him again, just because he could and then gave in to drowsiness.

Later, when they woke, and idled in closeness that was in no hurry to do anything, Finrod said, “I find myself thinking about your eyes a lot. I was thinking of calling you Sindamíro on their account. You have beautiful eyes by starlight, and candlelight. Mir for short. Do you like it?”

Calyaro rolled the eyes in question. “I’m not an ornament.”

“No? What then, when we have built this place? Shall you be my singer? You would be very decorative, I assure you. I remember you standing in Fëanor’s halls. You had such a presence.” He ran a hand up Calyaro’s torso, thumbing his nipples and coming to rest across his collar bone, cupping his shoulder and neck. He lowered his voice, “I never thought I would be doing this to you, though.” He could have stroked him all night, front and back, just for the intense pleasure of giving pleasure. He looked forward to finding out all that Calyaro enjoyed most.

A silence. “No.”

“No? You want me to stop?”

“No, I do not wish to play your minstrel.”

Finrod stopped caressing him at the abrupt reply. “What then?”

“I have a few ideas. When I’m ready, I’ll tell you. Ask you,” he amended, more carefully, suddenly wary that it was a prince’s invitations he answered, not just the teasing request of a younger lover.

Finrod lay back beside him and gave up trying to do more than enjoy the closeness as they lay side by side. “There is no need to decide. This is a new venture, with room for new paths.”

Afterwards, Finrod remembered that odd little conversation. He waited, but for a time Calyaro said no more along those lines and Finrod did not ask. Sometimes he saw an oddly intent look in the singer’s eyes when the watch mustered for departure in their discreet twos and threes. Calyaro practiced determinedly with his bow, but most of the population did that for exercise and sport, whether or not bearing arms in defence of the borders was their work.

Those who applied to the watch had to meet exactingly high standards with a bow to be admitted. The task would be deadly dangerous if ever their real purpose was called upon. Finrod remembered those clues later. At the time he blindly let them pass, content to let Calyaro speak when he was ready.

Chapter End Notes

Names

Sindamíro – grey jewel 

*** 105 Years of the Sun ***

Ensconced in Nargothrond after the journey south, with the King and a glass of wine, Glorfindel said with a glint of humour, “That was a novel experience, being arrested by a minstrel…”

“I’m glad you saw him. But yes, I’ve set out a full watch on the Faroth and the Plains since you came down before. We’re still building towers though,” he added as an afterthought.

“They chose a good site at the ford to waylay me,” approved Glorfindel, judiciously. “I could see three archers in the rocks above – I presume there were more?”

Finrod nodded.

“I couldn’t have got away from them if I’d wanted to, not with those rocks cutting me off to the west. Calyaro was friendly, though he had that smile, you know the one that says, ‘Glad to see you but mustn’t show it too much, you're Lord Glorfindel,’ – you know that one? But I still don’t think I deserved to be arrested just for coming to see you…”

Finrod grinned at his laughing cousin. “You weren’t arrested and you know it. They have orders to bring in anyone who approaches. Stop complaining about what you know perfectly well they did with all courtesy and tell me how long you can stay?”

“Turgon wants me back in a month. I should tell you Galadriel wants to join us here – she’s talking about bringing Celeborn to visit before I go north.”

Finrod grinned. “She wants us to like him. I was surprised by how serious she was over him. I could never imagine her settling down with anyone before, but Celeborn…”

“You approve?”

“Of course I approve! It’s not as though there could be any possible objection.”

“Until she met him, I thought she’d live with you, to be honest.”

“She made it clear from the first that she wanted to stay in Doriath. It’s not just Celeborn.”

“Melian.”

“Melian,” agreed Finrod. They fell silent a moment, neither feeling qualified for opinions on deeper mysteries not open to them.

Glorfindel returned to the anomaly of his arrival. “Why do you set a minstrel among your watch? Are you so short of archers?” Finrod felt his face give him away on two counts. Calyaro’s service had not been his idea – or his desire.

“Finrod?”

“It is what he wants. It has been the only thing he asked me for.”

“You and Calyaro – are you saying you got together? Ha! I knew I was right about that…”

Finrod smiled ruefully and shrugged.

“Well. Well – I am pleased for you. You know that?”

“Of course. And… thank you.”

“And the succession?”

“I’m not sure that will matter – if this kingdom is destined not to last…” Finrod said it quietly, as if with foreknowledge Glorfindel lacked. But he smiled then. “It shall serve its purpose for a time, however and bring security to Beleriand while it stands, be the time long or short. Already we have extended our protection westward. Círdan is most pleased, needless to say.”

He held up an unopened bottle and gave it to Glorfindel to open. “You must come to Eglarest – you haven’t been there lately? He and I are talking of rebuilding there and at Brithombar. I miss boats and ships. He’s very good. Ocean-going vessels to deal with the worst storms… It’s a great place. Another world. We could take you sailing.”

Glorfindel sat back and drank his wine, refilled his cup. “We could do that, but for now – tell me more about Calyaro.”

“Calyaro?” Glorfindel just looked at him. Finrod laughed. “There is not much to tell. He still plays, as before, but he won’t take it up again full time. He’ll teach anyone his songs if they ask, but as soon as he discharged his last task here,” he gestured to the vault above them, indicating the fortress complex, “he asked my leave to apply to join the border watch.”

“And you agreed?”

“I laughed and said a harper had no place guarding Taleth Dirnen.” The plain guarded the easiest route from the north, geographically if not militarily, with Minas Tirith standing firm sentry on the Sirion and Orodreth competent in his stead while Finrod was here.

“What then?”

“He took to practicing his weaponry, and asked me again a year later.” Glorfindel waited. Finrod turned his cup in his hands, old, old habit. “He challenged me to an archery contest when he saw I would say no. If he won, I was to let him go.”

“He did not win against you.” It was not a question. Glorfindel stated it as fact. Finrod’s skill with a bow had rivalled Aredhel’s. Few could beat either of them, though it was Aredhel who took most pleasure in it.

“I was winning. I had one more shot. I felt – satisfied that I would get my way. And then I saw him realise he would lose…” Calyaro was across the room and glanced over, faintly questioning. His eyes rested on Finrod briefly and then he turned back to his companions, but the warmth in them was unmistakeable and Finrod smiled back, lifting his cup slightly toward him. This relationship was no secret.

He looked back at Glorfindel. “I shot wide. As soon as he applied he was accepted. He’s done well.”

“You’ll have to give him another name. Let the old Calyaro go. You’re more than ready for the future.”

Finrod looked in his cup, swilled the light reflected in the rippled surface from the candle sconce behind them. “Yes,” he said. And more softly, “Yes, I am. Whatever comes, I am ready for it.”

A last weight fell away from him as he realized Aman no longer held him in the grip of regret, grief or even anger. Tirion had been as beautiful as the rape of Alqualondë was cruel, but neither city were writ in his future. He felt a great gratitude to his cousin.

“Glorfindel, Turgon is building, too, is he not?”

Glorfindel sat very still. He said nothing.

Finrod had come to be sure after Turgon’s own travels that Lord Ulmo’s message had been offered to both of them. He had recognized the signs without Turgon having to tell him anything. Nor had he asked, knowing how he had felt himself about Nargothrond. The secrecy with which Turgon was going about his project told Finrod that what they built would not be open to visitors when it was done. He knew also that Elenwë’s death had left Glorfindel determined to protect Idril. He would not leave Turgon now.

“When he goes, are you going with him?”

A glance. A slow, single nod. They sat in silence for a little, before Finrod sighed and shifted, reaching for the wine.

“Will you come and say good-bye, before you go?”

“Ah, Finrod…” Glorfindel took a long, long drink, and opened another bottle. “I think, tonight, we should get drunk under the stars, my friend.” For a moment, Finrod thought he had come to say goodbye already and unbidden tears rose – which Glorfindel saw.

“Not yet. It won’t be yet. And I will come and say good-bye. I’m going for Idril’s sake, not just Turgon’s, though I think he needs someone.”

Finrod knew. He laid a hand briefly on Glorfindel’s arm. “Yes. But I’m glad it’s not yet.” He released a breath and let the moment pass. “We’ll need some more bottles.”

Glorfindel grinned and tipped his own prize toward his host. “That’s my lad. It will save me coming back down when we’ve finished this one.”

On the Narog’s banks, Glorfindel returned to discussing the matter of a new name for Calyaro. Finally, he pronounced, “Edrahil,” and seemed satisfied.

“I like the sound of that.”

“It means warden of the marches, or walker of the border. In Sindarin. With a bit of fiddling, at least. It’s certainly an awkward language compared to Quenya.” And then, “Shouldn’t you go and fetch him, and we can tell him? Break it in with a drink?”

The offer felt like a blessing on the relationship, and Finrod smiled and went to send someone with the invitation.

***

Finrod half-woke in the pitch dark of the unlit chamber. He always missed the stars down here. The arm that lay across him had moved. Edrahil was rising. They were used to keeping different hours and irregular times. He could subside into sleep again if he wanted, but he chose to blink himself awake.

Footsteps padded into the corridor to collect a light from the candle kept alight there. The candle-flame bobbed back into the room. Lazily, Finrod watched Edrahil dress for his return to duty in Taleth Dirnen. A smile and a kiss and he was gone but in time he would be back. For Finrod, morning would come soon enough; he went back to sleep to catch what dreams the night still offered.

Chapter End Notes

Author’s Note: Names

Edrahil – S. Border Follower, March Warden [(possible meaning) Robert Ireland, A Tolkien Dictionary]

*** 469 Years of the Sun ~ Tol-in-Gaurhoth ***

Edrahil stirred as he roused from his rest. He turned his head in Finrod’s lap and reached up to touch Finrod’s face in wordless communication. He gave little sign of tension; from the first he had seemed strangely serene in his acceptance. Finrod kept a hand on him in weary caress, comforting himself with the simple touch.

They kept watch in turn, the three of them, though mostly they were all wakeful. He and Beren talked at times, keeping their voices low. Edrahil did not seem to feel the need to talk.

How strange, that they would end here, in the corrupted deeps of the hold they had built. They had met in the dim dark of Morgoth’s mists and even now he remembered how brightly the stars on the Ice had contrasted with the shadows in Alqualondë.

Unlike the far north in those long ago days, no stars blessed them now, though they were spared the bitter cold; Edrahil felt warm to the touch. He stroked the wild hair into rough order and started to plait it, long habit, and one they both enjoyed.

The Helcaraxë had not damaged Edrahil’s hands permanently. The performance at the Mereth Aderthad had proved that beyond any doubt. Irony that a song for Fëanor could have pierced Finrod’s heart and set him on his own path of healing, at last able to mourn the belovéd of his youth and the city that had such claim on his younger heart.

The years had passed so fast. He wished he had spent more time sailing off the Falas… He never had taken Glorfindel sailing with Círdan.

He started on a plait the other side of Edrahil’s head, glad of the time they had shared.

When had he forgiven his cousin Fingon? He did not know. After his uncle had shown him Nargothrond’s caves. Before they had finished building. Life had a way of moving on. He smiled to remember.

“Edrahil,” he said, softly. “Still so quiet? It is a good name, but Sindamíro was the better. I have not told you often enough how beautiful you are.”

He had known the curse on all who followed the Kinslayers would inexorably find him out, as it had others before him. He had not known how. Yet the intervening years had been good to them. He moved his fingers gently in Edrahil’s hair, enjoying the murmured response.

When Celegorm spoke against him, Finrod had thought he would have to go alone, betrayed and abandoned, his audience ensnared by gift and curse alike.

He had been ashamed for his people though he knew they had all been trapped by Thingol’s demand, his own promise and a bitter oath. Perhaps one day he could stand before Lord Manwë. He hoped so. He had a question for him. Why had He refused their stand against the Black Enemy in these lands? Would He have preferred the shy Laiquendi and brave Sindar to stand alone, isolated and over-run in the face of Morgoth’s depredations and ambitions? And what of Men, in a land where Morgoth ruled unchecked?

Why would Manwë leave evil uncontested? Perhaps Fëanor’s accusations of cowards left behind had not been so far out. Moral cowardice in the Lord of the Valar? Ifs won no wars, but he could not help imagining Fëanor’s pursuit, sanctioned, supported and all this wide world without that oath and the cursed doom that went with it…

But Edrahil had not been afraid of Celegorm or his oath. Nor had twisted words tainted him with belief of their insidious cautions. He had looked down his nose at the two princes who knew him as their father’s servant and scorned their persuasions. He had stood with Finrod on the Ice, had built two citadels with him, and mounted a watch that had never failed them. He stood at Finrod’s side as he was betrayed in his own stronghold. He stood with him still, unflinching even here.

In these dark depths, there had been no betrayals. Twelve there had been of Nargothrond’s people who came with him. One remained. Yet buried out of light, out of hope, out of life itself, loyalty had burned like a beacon, lighting the way to Mandos’ halls.

With all else fallen away, one hope remained.

“Sindamíro, heart of my heart, I swear I will never stop looking for you in Eldamar, no matter how long Mandos keeps you. By stars’ light and Ithil’s shadows, I promise you I will be looking for you when you are returned to us.”

“And I intend to come hunting you, unless the stars have fallen first and the world ended.” Finrod could hear him smiling.

“Hush, never say so.” His heart ached at the thought of Mandos’ promise. Not lightly would the Vala pity a kinslayer.

“The world is full of beauty and we have seen more than our fair share. Shall I sing for you? One more time?”

Finrod bent to kiss him. “Yes. Shock these stones with glory, and let your song reach to the stars since their light cannot stretch down to us here.”

Out of the dark rose a bitter-sweet, familiar melody that had not lost its power to pluck his heart-strings.

Uryala úruva, rúcina háya,

Massë nárotya?

Massë calatya?

Mana ré, vinya omentielva nó elenilanta?

Lírinen, enyalin alcaretya,

Ar lómissë,

Írë tintilar i eleni, yar cenner tye mahta

Undu oioliltalelta

Enyalin úretya.

Marta mettatya ar voronda endatya,

Yón ataretya.

Enda vórima

Náro úrin,

Áni tana i tië

Ya lertan hilya

Liltien elvëa úressë menelo

Tennoio lehta Ambar-lúmello.

Unshed tears thickened Finrod’s throat at the change of words. Edrahil’s was the faithful heart, though they had all been fated. He set a hand on both companions, Beren on his right, who sat silent beside them, listening but giving them time to talk uninterrupted, and Edrahil leaning against Finrod. Finrod’s voice when he spoke resonated in the dark, defiant. “Know this, I have no regrets about my choice.”

“Nor I,” said Edrahil, warrior minstrel, rising to his feet too fast for Finrod to stop him. “Remember it, in this life and after. Hold him back!”

That last he cried to Beren, who managed to delay Finrod, despite their frantic struggle. Red points of light blinked and an evil hurring growl shook their bones.

Still lithe despite injury and lack of water, light and food, Edrahil’s steps could be heard moving out in front of them.

The beast prowled closer, and Edrahil stood his ground, feet planted motionless in the dark. Finrod fought in silence to break free and go to him, even while he listened intently for sound of Edrahil, watched in despair the eyes slinking across the pit…

His voice came out of the darkness, breathless but loving and with all his dry humour, as the wolf moved in.

“Stop fighting and listen to me. Look for me in Aman when you find yourself there, but love as love finds you with all my blessing. Years of grace you have given me, and I would not steal all your years to come in fruitless waiting. When I am spared to follow you into life once more, there will be nothing owing between us.”

Finrod’s cry as the werewolf sprang should have shattered the darkness and brought the very walls down upon them.

***

Before it returned, he had time to give Beren the translation he asked for and to teach him the song through his tears.

Burning brightly, fled far hence,

Where thy fire?

Where, thy light?

When, our reunion before stars’ fall?

In song I remember thy glory

And in the night

By stars’ shine, who saw thee fight

Under their endless dance,

I think of thy heat.

Fated thy end and faithful thy heart,

Son of thy father.

True heart,

Bright fire,

Show me the path

That I may follow

To dance star light in heaven’s heat

And keep earthly time no more.

When he stood in his turn alongside Beren, fighting ready, he murmured softly into the dark, “True heart, ‘tis I who follow thee.” He had time to smile fleetingly, as he and the werewolf leapt at the same moment – the wolf at Beren and he squarely in its path. 

Chapter End Notes

Names

Tol-in-Gaurhoth – Isle of Werewolves, once Tol Sirion.

***

In the Year of the Sun 469, Finrod died in a lightless pit of Sauron’s making on Tol-in-Gaurhoth, the captured island site of his own former citadel of Minas Tirith. Taken prisoner with thirteen others when helping Beren as Finrod was sworn to do, he survived while one by one they died as Sauron sought to discover their purpose. Throughout the bitter questioning, none betrayed the King’s identity or Beren’s intention to steal a Silmaril from Morgoth.

Edrahil had been chief among those who volunteered to go with Finrod when Celegorm, driven by his oath, spoke with great craft against any of the people of Nargothrond aiding Finrod in his mission. Finrod died saving Beren from the werewolf that attacked him. Beren escaped and from his descendants was born Elrond of Imladris.

*** Note on story structure ***

While this story was being written, a coherent structure and time-line eluded me despite advice. The above notes are what I added to expand on a story whose ending I did not explain but only told a scene from. There is the possibility of fleshing out the missing time, relationship and events, or of splitting the story into a getting together drama romance, and a separate tragic epilogue. Meanwhile, this is its present incarnation.