Hearken Still Unsated by polutropos

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A Rift

"But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song."
- Of the Sindar

They might have concluded their Song when they parted at Eithel Ivrin after many blissful nights of furtive trysts. They might have left it to thrum, untainted, in the stones and soil of that place. But there are letters, and poetry, and memories that do not fade. So they drift together at times in the empty, unclaimed spaces between realms, despite all that stands in the way of their love.

(There is a fence, of course, but there are also secrets; too many secrets. Maglor does not speak them, even for the sake of love, for to do so would be to fracture every other bond that ties him to this world.)

Daeron is standing barefoot on a mossy hillock, only a straight skirt tied around his waist. He looks out over the rolling landscape of Dor Dínen, holding a fingertip between his lips and gathering his brows.

“What are you thinking, meldanya?1” Maglor rests his head against the tree that cradles him in its spreading roots.

“I was thinking of where I would go, if love and loyalty did not hold me here.”

Love and loyalty: two things that pull Maglor in so many different directions.

“And do you know?”

“I would go back, I think. Where our ancestors came from, into the East.”

Maglor hums, reminded of the gulf that stretches between them, even now when they are so close. It is not rivers and forests that he sees and hears in his dreams but the open expanse of the Sea and the endless push and pull of waves against the shore.

But those are dreams and this is now. He rises and goes to his lover, wraps his arms around him, and presses them to his chest where flowering vines have been painted under the skin.

“Where would you go," Daeron asks, "if your oath did not constrain you?”

He means the oath to avenge a father’s death. Pieces of the truth slip through the blurred spaces between them.

“Home.” A gap opens in Maglor's soul.

Daeron’s breathing stills. “Oh.”

Maglor knows what he is thinking: across the Sundering Seas. West, as far west as one can go. He cannot tell him how much more than duty and vengeance lie between him and that home, so he draws his hair aside to look at his face and says, “But I do not know where that is.”

Starlight shines in those deep eyes. Maglor kisses him to silence the lingering question on his lips; he tastes of clean, still water.

*

Time unravels when Maglor sinks into him. Daeron’s nails cling to the earth and it gives way like soft clay. He is seeking something solid, anything to keep him here, so that he might hold this forever in memory.

Maglor presses himself deeper and moans. The sound, full and fearless, travels down and through him, flooding him with his voice. Fingers clutch wrists and eyes lock onto eyes. Maglor’s hips rock over him and there is heat, so much heat, where their bodies move against each other, with each other, seeking that blissful place between friction and coalescence.

The Sun bears witness. A sheen of sweat blossoms over his lover’s skin. Strands escape that cascade of dark hair, pulled to one side, and cling to his face, his shoulders, to Daeron’s own shining arms. He frees himself from the grip on his wrists and lifts a hand to hold it against Maglor's chest, there above him. To feel the watery warmth of his skin and the drum of his heart, now, when flesh and soul are as close to being one as they will ever be.

The hand travels up, wraps behind his neck, and pulls him down where their gasping breaths meet. Lips chase lips, kisses caught between the steady pull and thrust of bodies chasing ecstasy. Voices strain, cries as the edge draws near – too near. Do not fall over yet, let it rise higher still.

Somewhere deep in the mountains of the East, there is a roaring fall of water that topples into a turquoise lake. Though neither has been there, they both see this now, in the moment when they shatter and dissolve into each other’s Songs.

To Maedhros Faenorion, Lord of Himring, dear cousin, from Finrod Arfinion, Lord of Dorthonion and Warden of Minas Tirith:2

Please accept my warmest greetings by way of my brothers to you and yours.

I write to inform you of a matter that concerns you closely. On our most recent visit to the Kingdom of Doriath, messengers arrived from the Havens with a report of the rumours that have been circulating, as you know, concerning our coming to Beleriand. It also came to my attention during this visit that only a short while before Queen Melian was informed of the death of our grandfather and the theft of your father’s jewels.

As is his rightful duty as king, Thingol questioned my brothers and me on these matters. Know that I was greatly troubled and loath to bring charges against you and the other princes of our people, knowing well what the resurgence of griefs now forgiven could mean for our bonds of kinship and our friendships with the Thindrim.3

It is therefore with a heavy heart that I inform you that the manner of our exile from Balannor was at the last revealed. King Thingol was at first wroth and I feared that we might face the renewal of conflict between the kindreds of the Elves. I believe the King’s decree to have been merciful in the end: he has commanded his own people not to speak the language of ours, and requested that Quenya not be spoken openly within the confines of his realm. Word of this pronouncement will no doubt reach your ears soon, which is why I have sent this letter in all haste.

I trust my brothers will be able to tell you more in private conversation. I regret that I was not able to come myself but I have gone as swiftly as I might to bear these same tidings to our King in Hithlum.

Your cousin by blood and in heart, Angolodh4

As if they are not his own, Maglor watches long white fingers slide the parchment, face down, across the table. He crosses his arms over his chest and pulls his legs closely around his chair.

He cannot be sure if he thinks or speaks aloud his thanks to his cousin for bringing the letter from Himring, but he is aware of the sharp light of Aegnor’s eyes as they flick up from across the room.

“The manner of our exile?” Maglor draws out the words and then presses them back with a thumb to his lips.

Aegnor inhales like one who is about to duck below water. His mouth opens.

Maglor stops him. “Do not worry, cousin. You have nothing to fear from me. So long as you hide nothing.”

“He was not told everything.” Aegnor runs his hands down his thighs and leans forward in his chair. “Alqualondë. The Doom.”

To evil end shall all things turn. Maglor winces. “And?”

“Losgar.” The crack of burning timber. Vengeful laughter.

There is a coil tightening around Maglor’s guts. There are words rising like bile in his throat; dreadful words that are ever-present, waiting only for the right moment to tighten their hold on him and strangle his will. All of their wills.

He swallows the words down. “The oath?”

“Only that one was sworn.”

Maglor nods. A hot tear spills over the rim of one eye. His relief is only a passing breath of air, though. For is it not only a matter of time before those words rise again to constrain them? To pull them away from all else they love in the single-minded pursuit of that irrevocable promise?

But they have just won a glorious victory. Perhaps there is still time for forgiveness before the weight of words bears down upon him. Some time for bliss before the end.

The report of bloodshed and treason echoed through the caves of Menegroth when the truth came free. A dam broke in Daeron’s mind then, carrying in its flood memories of bodies floating through water and burning ships.

Love has a way of mangling reason; of allowing false harmonies to ring true. So Daeron concluded, at least, when the tears were dry and all that remained were numb fingers and a broken voice.

The relentless years pass. Now and then a thought brushes against his mind with all the coarseness of heat-scorched blades of sedge bound tightly together. Daeron cuts them into pieces and tosses them back to the winds.

“Will you never forgive?” Lúthien once asked when his music faltered. (Only she had known, whose tiny brown hand had clutched his finger as he welcomed her to life. Only she would ever know.) It was near that place where he had bared himself time and again to one who kept so much behind a shroud. Perhaps he could have forgiven the rest, but not the lies. “No,” Daeron had said, turning back into the cradle of twining branches and soft ferns. “For I serve truth above all else.”

Then a letter comes from the North on falcon’s wings. The phrases ‘should have’ and ‘would have if’ do little to move Daeron’s heart, but he can feel the graceful sweep of the handwriting as if it were a finger trailing down his spine, held to his lips, gently opening him to receive the love commingled with those lines of ink.

Even the forest mocks him for his weakness then, so he retreats to the safety of Menegroth's womb, his hand balled tightly around his wooden flute.

Melian’s harp stands gleaming in its shallow pool. Her voice is in his mind as he walks towards it: ‘My child grieves for you, Esgallind, but I cannot help you if you will not reveal your heart to me. You must listen to your own Music.’ He stops in his approach. Does she mean for him to play that harp? No. He is Eruchên. Though he may hear it, it is not for him to touch the fabric of that Music.

He lifts his flute to his mouth with trembling fingers. His eyes fall shut. With each inhalation, he invites the Music to enter his lungs. A melody unfurls in the thin air of that domed hall. His fingers move according to the sequence of notes it sets in his soul. It is a quiet song, each note sliding into the next, gaining in momentum and beauty as it progresses but never peaking. Like a gentle stream, it drifts and bends around stones and mounds of earth, finding spaces to fill along the forest floor. The rich scent of wet leaves and humus wafts around him.

He is joined by the watery cascade of a glissando upon the harp. He gasps and his fingers fumble over the holes but there is no dissonance; the misplaced notes simply disappear. The harp’s clear music resounds against the ceiling. Daeron is afraid to open his eyes, for the warmth that pools inside him with each spill of sound presages what he might see there. So his memory would betray him even here, in the very heart of this fenced and guarded realm, in the presence of that holy instrument.

His eyes are open. There, upon the stool of the Queen, Maglor sits. His fingers, as solid and real as those that once deftly braided Daeron’s hair with vines, dance across the strings. The golden light still shines, even brighter than before. Daeron burns.

He shrouds himself in the blackness of his anger. “No,” he says. “It is not you. No Child of Eru can play upon that instrument, you least of all.”

Maglor does not look at him or say a word. He only smiles and plays on, one chord and then another. The light beaming between the strings refracts into dozens of varied and vibrant colours. His chords become a melody, the sound like water, but thicker. Blood coursing through the cavities of a beating heart.

A mournful scale rings through Daeron’s skull. He asks, “Why are you here?”

The next chords spill over him like a caress of warm wind; like silken skin brushing against his own. Daeron’s nails dig into his palms as he tightens his grip on his flute, as if he would strangle the music that invited this vision here to dislodge his reason.

“To ask for your forgiveness,” Maglor says, at last turning his eyes upon him.

Daeron’s anger is thawing in the heat of their soft light. His heart pounds against his ribs and he is pulled towards the figure seated at the harp. He forgets the apparition cannot be real, so like is this image to his lover, whose touch he suddenly remembers with all the intensity of the spring melt tumbling inexorably from mighty glaciers towards the Sea.

He is in the embrace of the apparition and it is not an apparition. Maglor is flesh and blood and his lips are on Daeron’s mouth, his breath is in his lungs, his hands cup the nape of his neck. The syllables of his golden voice flood his ears. He speaks of love and desire and fate.

Daeron lets the voice pour into every part of his being. It says, “Forgive me,” and the words echo up from the well of Daeron’s memory.

“Have I not already?” he replies, weeping through his laughter, for is he not even now folded together with him, lost in passion and yes, love, to the murderer of his own kin? “What is there to forgive?” he asks, and he remembers then how he once knelt upon a lake and shouted those words to the skies.

Though there are many leagues and even more lies between them, he has never felt as close to Maglor’s mind as he does now. “Tell me,” he says, his throat bared to those supple lips, “what more is there to forgive?”

“You do not want to know.” Maglor lowers them down gently and presses himself over him. Daeron sinks into the floor and it is not cold stone but warm, turquoise water that cradles their bodies on its glassy surface.

The beats of Daeron’s hitched breathing are an ode to the hazy glow of being so surrounded, so completely enveloped in touch. He cannot imagine ever being anywhere but here.

But he hears something in the moment of their union that bites at his skin like frost. His shivering turns from pleasure to fear as the syllables of Maglor’s Song grow dark and sinister.

‘Neither law, nor love, nor league of swords, dread nor danger, not Doom itself…’

The rhythm of their bodies intensifies. A cold wind whips through the space between them as Daeron arches away but the water tightens its hold on him. Umbar insa.

‘Whoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh….’

Feeling suddenly weightless, Daeron’s eyes fly open. The water has released him. He is sinking.

‘This swear we all: death we will deal him ere day's ending, woe unto World's end! Our word hear thou, Eru Ilúvatar!’

As Maglor’s body dissolves his voice grows stronger. The water turns black and a sheet of ice encroaches from its edges. Ambar-mettá. Ilúvatar.

‘To the everlasting Darkness doom us if our deed faileth.’5

He has heard those words before. Oiyámórenna.

There is a roar of shearing and shattering. Daeron shuts his eyes and a vision is plastered against the blood-dark backs of his lids: an enormous sheet of ice cracks at the edges. A piece as large as a mountain breaks off and smashes against the rough ocean.

Beauty and perfection fall apart.

He opens his lungs to scream and the water pours in. There is no sound. He is alone, falling through timeless darkness.

 

He emerges in the hall of Menegroth. Maglor stands beside the harp in robes of blue. Still golden, still gleaming.

Daeron confronts the illusion, speaking slowly. “It is not for me to forgive you. Leave.”

Music swells around them as the harp strings are plucked by unseen hands. It is clangorous, broken, but still Song. Colours collapse into each other and fade. A string snaps and strikes Daeron’s face but he does not flinch.

The vision of Maglor breathes yet, but the light in his eyes flickers and goes out. “Nonetheless, I am sorry. For all that is to come.”

The strings begin snapping rapidly, flying in all directions. From their broken ends spurt flecks of red. There is salt and iron in Daeron’s throat. Screams of the dying are amplified by vaulted ceilings.

The beating wings and shrieking cries of gulls over the roar of a burning city. The din of thousands of swords striking thousands of skulls. The earth breaking and heaving in great waves of solid rock.

Then a sucking breath of wind drains the hall of air and sound. A foam spray blows in through arched entrances. Larger droplets are suspended in looming silence until the dome of stars begins to rattle under the weight of enormous waves swelling and breaking against the land high above.

Daeron tries to speak but his voice is swallowed by the noise. He risks touching the apparition’s thoughts. ‘You do not belong here. You never should have returned.’

The tension is lost, the last string is loosed – ringing clearly but mournfully as it unravels. The harp is dull and grey.

Water pours down the stairs and gushes through cracks in the ceiling.

Beleriand is drowning.

‘We never should have left.’ And the Sea engulfs harper, harp, and sound at once.

Chapter End Notes

1‘My love,’ Quenya.

2Arfinion, ‘son of Arfin.’ Arfin is given as the correct Sindarization of Arafinwë. In 'Shibboleth of Fëanor' (Peoples of Middle-earth), it is said that the Fin- prefix was added by Finrod only after Fingolfin’s death. ‘Lord of Dorthonion and Warden of Minas Tirith.’ Nargothrond was started in FA 52 and not completed until FA 102. I have decided that Finrod would not yet be calling himself King of Nargothrond in FA 67 (and definitely not in the context of this particular note). Minas Tirith, the tower on Tol Sirion, has recently been built.

3Sindar (in Sindarin), class plural.

4Sindarization of Ingoldo.

5From the text of the Oath of Fëanor in the The Annals of Aman, §134 in Morgoth’s Ring.

Song inspiration: Die Moldau, Remy van Kesteren with Antwerp Symphony Orchestra (Night of the Proms, 2012).

Thanks to undercat for bringing my attention to the fact that there is no canonical evidence that Thingol learns the specifics of the Oath of Fëanor, which drove the direction of this climactic moment, and for bouncing ideas around in relation to this.

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