Bearer of Chiaroscuro by AdmirableMonster

The rocks shifted beneath Mairon’s feet, and he tugged his cloak down to hide his face.  Above him, the sky was clogged with ash and dust, hiding the Sun, turning the always-dim light of day to a dark, almost impenetrable red.  He gritted his teeth and pressed a hand to his belly, a shudder running through him.  He had tried to change his shape to make it easier to leave.  It had not worked. 

If Melkor had been as he was of old, Mairon would never have escaped his notice this long.  He was a fool, he told himself.  If he could not change his shape, how could he make it to Gondolin before its fall?  Without wings, without the strong springing legs of a wolf—with only the cracked metal of his own broken form weighted down by two tiny leaden souls.  He would never make it.  But he could not help but try, any more than he could have stopped himself from following Melkor to begin with. (Or could he?  He had refused Him this, and yet a pair of powerless little Elves had put such chains upon him, and he still did not understand how.)

The pathway wound down steeply, and Mairon gritted his teeth, muttering imprecations beneath his breath.  His body was too heavy, too overset.  How could he even make it to the bottom?  He had to pause every few moments to catch his breath.

About a quarter of the way down, he found a heavy stave of wood, smoothed by wind and weather.  He did not know how it had come here, but he seized it gratefully.  Leaning upon it did not make his steps easy, but it made him feel as if they were possible.  He bit his lip.  Inside him, a fire raged.  He was going to fail—he knew he was going to fail—but he had to try.

He sheltered in the green grass of a vast mound.  The restless spirits of Men and Orcs muttered beneath it, trapped and mired in grief and held here by a memory of death as strong as a quagmire.  They whispered their own memories, over and over again, and Mairon could not but listen.

They were just Men and Orcs, he told himself, but he could not push away the memory of his joy when the first Orcs awoke.  He could not push away the thoughts of their gratitude, their love.  He had not been, then, what he was now, he thought.  But that young Maia was long gone.  He himself had seen to that.  (And Melkor?  The glory of his icy majesty all turned inward, all turned dark, like a forest through which a fire had raged that, instead of growing taller and greener in its wake, belched up black ooze and remained blasted and dead.)

The small souls shifted uneasily, and Mairon whimpered.  One of the ghosts stirred at the sound, a Woman.  Her form rose, almost lifelife, from amid the bones and long green grass, and she reached out a smokey hand towards him.

The touch of her fingers was cold, but Mairon was too exhausted to do much more than lean away from her.  Hush, little ones, she whispered.  Let me sing you the lullaby I sang to my own son.

Mairon stared at her.  She had been a beautiful, in life.  Now, in the way of some restless ghosts, the bones of her skull were visible beneath the misty outlines of her face, and her eyes were hollow.  But he had experience with such creatures, and she did not appear to offer harm to him or to the crying little ones.

“Sing then,” he told her hoarsely.

Her voice was a plangent whisper in the world, but to Mairon’s eäla and to the two unready souls within it, it was strong and sweet.

A bird beneath the bluest sky

Dancing on the wind

Met the Sun’s child climbing high

And pinned her heart to his.

They danced in hidden valleys

They sang by secret streams

Till midnight past they dallied

And parted sweet and sad.

From bluebird’s sunny marriage

A ray of sun was born

He took a moonlit carriage

And wandered to the sky.

There might have been more verses, but Mairon was exhausted, and the song was oddly soothing.  He fell asleep in the soft grass and never saw the ghostly woman vanish.

The forest was bleak and dark.  Even leaning upon his stave, Mairon found his breath heaving in his lungs, and a wet morning fog was not making it easier.  The fog itself stank of damp and decay, choking his lungs.  He shivered violently, feeling a layer of corrosion growing across his metal form, tarnishing the polished patches of his true form.  Too fast, he thought—the thoughts sluggish.

He coughed, eyes watering, and coughed again.  He was wading through knee high sludgy water, and the weeds seemed to reach up and clutch at his thighs.  Mairon had to stop, suddenly—

—His hands upon Mairon’s thighs, opening him up, Mairon taking it, the cold whisper in his ear, won’t you, won’t you, for me, Little Flame, not saying ‘no’ because he cannot deny Him but not saying ‘yes’ because it isn’t possible, he has formed his fana carefully, and he cannot, he cannot—inside, inside—heavy weight upon his thighs, upon his chest—

and he was gasping for breath, coughing and choking, on his knees in the mud, with a foul smell rising all around.

“Well, well, well,” whispered a wet-sounding sort of voice.  The reeds standing in the mud rustled, and a pair of green-yellow eyes glowed at him.  Mairon’s vision blurred, and he choked.  A long toothy snout poked out of the reeds, decorated with spongy fruiting bodies.  “It has been a long time since you have set foot here, Lord of Tol-in-Gaurhoth.”  The nostrils flared, and cold mist rose from them.  The stench intensified.  Mairon coughed again, half-seizing up, and felt the two scraps of life inside him crying out in distress.

“Stop,” he snarled.

“Oh?”  The dragon raised its head and snapped its jaws.  “First in your madness, you draw me from the murk, and then you abandon me, and now you desire to command me?  I think not, Lord.”  

He reached for his connection to the forest, but, to his dismay, he could find nothing.  The creeping corrosion grew across his skin, and he felt numb and cut off from all power.  “I am the greatest of the Maiar,” he croaked.

“I do not care,” the dragon said.  It breathed again.  Mairon’s head spun.  The children wailed, and all he could think of to do was to channel strength towards them, humming in a low voice as he tried to call upon the ancient Song.  It burned his throat and mouth, and golden blood dripped from his lips to splash into the ugly black water below.  

The dragon laughed.  “I will enjoy watching you die by inches,” it whispered.

And then there was fire, fire flaring all around him, the heat of it burning away the heavy patina forming on his limbs and weighing him down, that had been eating right into the spirit-flesh of his true form.  Mairon screamed, but strength was returning to him.  A great fiery hammer swung downwards and would have crushed the dragon’s skull if it had not pulled back with the impossible swiftness of a snake.  It spat something ugly and yellow and retreated, disappearing into the reeds with barely a ripple.

Hands caught at Mairon’s back, lifting him up and cradling him.  “You fool,” said Gothmog’s voice.  “Could you not, for once in your life, have asked for help?”

Mairon thought he must faint from the pain and the fear, but the two little souls were settling again, crying more out of plaintive reaction than out of continued anguish.  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped.  “Put me down.”

“You’ll fall over if I do that,” Gothmog pointed out mildly.

“I can walk.”

“I do not think you can, actually.”

Mairon went quiet for a moment.  “Gothmog,” he said urgently.  “Thou must return.  I cannot make thee a traitor to Him.  What I have done is bad enough, but if thou shouldst follow me—”

The sturdy balrog sighed and then, to his surprise, actually reached out and tweaked his nose.  “I have always followed thee,” he replied, in defiance of all decorum.

“This is the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted,” Mairon grumbled.  He and Gothmog were crouched in a small cave with a merry little fire flickering in a small firepit.  And he was trying to choke down a piece of roasted spider on a stick.  No one was happy about this, including Mairon’s stomach, the two little ones, or Mairon himself.

“You need to eat something,” Gothmog pointed out.  “If you had thought to bring more rations—”

“Oh, if I had thought to bring more?  Mine were lost in the swamp when I was nearly killed by a dragon!  What if you had thought to bring more?”

“I had to leave in a hurry,” Gothmog retorted.  “I was worried about you, if you’ll recall.  If you had told me any of this—”

Mairon sulked and forced himself to take another bite of the spider.  They had made it through the Pass of Anach, but instead of turning West to follow the Crissaegrim, they had been forced to make a rapid Eastwards detour to avoid the attentions of a particularly dogged group of Orcs and winged watchers.  Mairon chafed at the delay, but there were considerations that might become easier this way.  Benefits versus costs.  All of it twisting up into something that would likely end in his death, and the deaths of the two souls who had not asked for any of this, and the deaths of—

The deaths of his shadow and his smith.  He ground his teeth together.

“What happened, Mairon?” Gothmog asked quietly.  

“Bad luck?” Mairon tried, putting a hand across his swollen belly.

Gothmog’s eyebrows drew together.  “Try again,” he said, and Mairon put his chin onto his knees and stared at him miserably.  Gothmog, he was sure, knew what he had told Melkor long ago.  Knew in his bones the magnitude of the betrayal that lay within Mairon’s form right now.

“I cannot explain it,” he said softly.  “It has been so long since He saw me, I suppose.”  It was a bad explanation, and he knew it.  The thought of Melkor made him shiver.  “The things He would do, though,” he whispered, in the barest thread of a voice.  “And I would deserve them, Gothmog, but these two would not, so I have become a traitor, and I do not know how it happened.”

His friend had gone very still on the other side of the fire.  “What do you mean?” he asked, and Mairon could not read his voice.  “What would Melkor have done, Mairon?”

Mairon did not look at him.  “It is not of consequence,” he said, after a moment.  “It would be His right.  But I find I cannot accept it.  This is my choice, and no one else’s.”

He was not certain he could read the noise Gothmog made, but he chose to pretend that he had not heard it.  “I am tired,” he announced, choking down the last bite of spider.  “I need a great deal of sleep in my condition.”

Gothmog muttered something, but out loud he simply said, “All right, Mairon.  I’m tired, too.”

They slept with Gothmog’s heavy cloak thrown over them, and Mairon curled against his huge side.  Mairon made certain to wake before dawn and found that he had enough connection to the Song still to hum a heavy sleep across Gothmog.

“I’m sorry, my friend,” he said, as he made his heavy way out of the cave.  “But I will not see you die at the hands of the Gondolindrim.”

The echo of Mairon’s footsteps was loud in his own ears.  The river bed beneath was thick with silt and dust.  The walls of the canyon rose high on either side and above them he could see little.  His heart was pounding within his chest.  He could turn around, even now.  It might be safer for the children.  It would certainly be safer for him.  But he would be leaving Tyelpe and Maeglin to die, and he could not do that.  If there was anything in the world he could do to save them, he would do it.

As he walked, he became aware that the sound of his footsteps were not the only echoes.  This place was glutted with them—as if it was a kind of nexus for the Song.  He could hear the sweet tinkle of running water, which had passed this way centuries before or even longer.  He could hear the swiftness of the wind, and he could hear fragments of the leitmotifs of those who had passed through before him.

There was Tyelpe’s determined voice.  I must study the architecture!  What materials have been used for these gates, I must—

You must lie back down, my lord, you are injured.

Just one look—

The whispers faded.  And now ragged panting filled Mairon’s ears.

Ammë, is this the way?  Is it truly safe?

Stars, he sounded so young.

Hurry, Lómion.  Careful, you’ll miss your step.  Yes, it is safe.  We will be safe.

Their murmuring whispers threatened to fade as well, but Mairon tried to hold this time, following them, putting his feet down in the same places that the young Maeglin had done, years ago.  He heard a sudden soft ping, the parting of delicate metal, and the noise of something light falling to the ground.  Frowning, instinctive, he put his hand down into one of the churned-up holes in the river-bed, and his hand closed around something pointed.

Pausing for a moment, he lifted it and found he was holding a little pendant of silver-and-garnet.  The clasp had caught on something and snapped open.  The pendant itself was in the shape of a scarlet flower with long, thin petals.  He could feel his shadow’s touch upon it, and he hurried along after the echoes.

Ammë, where is your necklace?

I must have dropped it—hurry, Lómion, there is no time!  We’ll come back and find it later, I won’t lose something you made for me, love, but we must move swiftly now.

She had never returned.  Mairon swallowed, a chill settling over his soul, and he tucked the pendant into one of the pouches strapped to his waist.  Lómion.  Tyelperinquar.  I’m coming.

“So this is where you have tried to hide yourself, Mairon.”

The city was burning, and the screams of her citizens echoed in his ears.  He could feel hot blood trickling down the inside of his thigh, and it was strange, the emptiness inside him now.  But it made him laugh, because it meant no one left to protect.

“Am I hiding myself, my lord?  I thought I was standing upon the wall and defying You.”  He thought the words should burn his lips, but they did not.  Flames were all around, and flames had always been Mairon’s sanctuary.

Cold laughter rippled up his spine, and he flinched, but stood his ground.  The lady Idril might hate him, but she was no fool.  A pair of half-Maiar children might be the saving of them.  If he could buy the time, he might even keep Tyelpe and Maeglin safe.  Tyelpe, at least, would keep himself alive to care for the babies.  Maeglin—well, perhaps not, but Mairon would take what he could get, after all.

Better than nothing, the thought of Tyelpe’s crooked smile living on.

“What have you done, Little Flame?” Was that gentleness in Melkor’s voice, or censure?  Mairon trembled.  He had never been a warrior.  But he called the flames to him and away from those whom they might harm, and they surged up at his back and along his arms, till his hands each sprouted five grant fiery claws.

“They should have been my heirs.”  Melkor’s black-armored figure grew vast, till it filled all of Mairon’s vision.  Now his voice held unmistakable cold anger, and the breath froze in Mairon’s lungs.  “After all I have done for thee?”

Cold discord fought with the fire in Mairon’s blood.  “After all thou hast done to me?” he retorted, and the fire roared up in an impossible sheet.  Melkor cried out in pain.  An icy hand seemed to squeeze Mairon’s lungs, and he screamed in turn.  Melkor forced him to his knees, writhing and struggling the whole time.

It took everything in him to look up at his old lover, at the gaunt face hardly different from the ghostly mother’s, with the way the bones lurked just beneath the flesh of it, the hollow fire of its eyes, the twist of the mouth so different from the great Vala he had followed long ago.

“They will be children first,” he choked out.  “If they are heirs at all.  And never will they be thine.”

He had forgotten to give Maeglin back his mother’s necklace, and now he would likely never be able to.  What a pity.

It had been a long time since he had seen the stars, and now he looked up at them from a long, long way down.  It seemed instinctively familiar, this place, but all he could see was that single patch of starry sky, and a few strands of silvery grass framing it.

He realized slowly that there were silver chains fastened about his wrists, heavy weights pinning him down, and that he was naked and shivering a little.  He occupied no fana.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” said a voice that was not quite familiar, speaking fluting, beautiful Quenya in an accent that reached in and tugged at his heart.

That one is Wilwarin.  It was my mother’s favorite.  He remembered a hand upon his, and an impossible aching joy at the sight of those stars, when Mairon helped him and Lómion escape.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“I thought you might like company,” the voice continued.  “My name is Tinweriel.  You were very kind to my son.”

“Where am I?” Mairon asked, though he was not sure he wanted to know the answer.

“In Mandos, beneath the shaft that leads to the Máhanaxar.  The Valar have been waiting for you to wake up, I think.  Not that I have been told much of anything.  But I am quite good at finding things out.”  A warm hand patted his shoulder.  “I brought my husband—I’m not speaking to him right now, but there’s no reason you can’t.  He and Irissë will be here in a moment.  I think she was yelling at Mandos.”

“Irissë?” Mairon echoed in some confusion.

“I am Irissë.”  She was tall, hard to see in the dim light, clothed in some white stuff, with black hair falling to her waist and eyes that sparkled with the same light that Mairon remembered reflected in his lovers’ eyes.  She came right up to him, put her chin on his face and tipped it up.  “Well,” she said after a moment.  “I’m sure I should have some strong words with you, as I’m positive you must have had a hand in my brother’s death, but you saved my son, and I find that most pressing in my mind.”

Her round face with its square, determined jaw was familiar, and Mairon felt a shocked little shiver in his Song.  “I lost your necklace,” he found himself saying.  “I’m sorry.  I meant to give it back to Lómion.”

She laughed sharply.  “The necklace I lost on the way to Gondolin?  Did he find it and give it to you?”

“No, I just—picked it up,” Mairon said helplessly.

“Oh, well, he can make me another.”  She gave him a wry, kind grin, then tousled his hair with one hand.  “Curvo, come here and thank him for saving your son!”

“Thank Sauron?” scoffed a thin, freezing voice.  “I’ll come to his defense and no more.  I hope he knows my word for him may hurt him more than it helps.”  

The stars shimmered overhead.  A spiral staircase formed from glimmering specks, winding its way upward towards those few tufts of saw-edged grass.  

Mairon, once Aulendil.  Approach.  It was Námo’s voice, less a voice than a physical pronouncement of what was to occur.  Mairon could no more have held himself back than he could have held all of Gondolin together with sheer force of will.  But as his eäla began to climb the stairs, the fëar of the three Elves surrounded him like an honor guard and shadowed his steps.

The Ring of Doom itself was murky and hard to see.  The Stars above shone down a bright and piercing silver, and Mairon could feel soft moss beneath his feet.  A small ring of too-bright light illuminated just him and part of Tinweriel’s hand cupped in a comradely fashion beneath his elbow, but he could hear the whispers of the Valar as the four of them emerged from the round gateway to Mandos and stood in the center of that place.

“What are you three doing here?”  Manwë’s booming voice was so like his brother’s that Mairon’s legs gave out and he tumbled to his knees, shaking as if he had an ague.  It did not seem to frighten the Elves.  Curufin Fëanorion crossed his arms and scowled outward.  Irissë knelt beside him, not quite touching him.  “Someone has hurt you,” she murmured.  “What do you need?”

He did not know.

“We are here to speak for our sons’ lover and the father of our grandchildren!” Tinweriel announced loudly, stepping in front of him.

The whispers grew louder.  Then a voice so familiar that it made Mairon choke on a sob said, “If he has those who would speak for him, I would hear it, Manwë.”

A long pause, broken by a dreamy voice, “Yes, indeed, for have we not seen to our cost what occurs when the Firstborn are denied their freedom of choice?”

There was a long pause.  Mairon stared at the lichen before him, blurring with a thin golden sheen.  He had expected to be banished immediately to the Void.  This was far, far worse, the pain of humiliation clawing up his spine, his throat.  He flexed his hands.  He would have torn at his hair if he could.  “Send me to the Void,” he whispered.  Then, louder, “Please, I will not defend myself—” If only he could hide from the many pairs of eyes upon him.  “Do not look upon me,” he whispered, trying to cover himself with his hands.

Then some light cloth was being thrown across him.  Irissë’s hands tucked it about him, and he shrank down in it, pathetically grateful.  

“Tell us, Mairon, what you have done,” Námo ordered, with a voice more like a voice, this time, and Mairon screamed in pain as word after word tumbled from his lips, a dissonant song.  He could taste his own gold blood on his tongue and dripping down his chin.

“I see what the Valar consider justice,” Curufin’s voice said with disgust, but Mairon could not stop.  He would have begged if he could, but he could not.  Mistake after mistake was torn from him, in his own voice.  As he began to speak of what Melkor had eventually demanded of him, the grass rose around him and bound itself about his mouth, choking off the words.

“Enough.”

She did not look the same as when he had left.  In those days, she had been beautiful, and she still was, but there was a ferocity about her now.  She was not only flowers and soft growing things, but sharp with thorns; the bark of her face and limbs was gnarled and, in places, burnt.

“My lady.” Irissë bent her knee, and Yavanna smiled crookedly.

“Get up, little Irissë,” she murmured.  “Thy son’s pleas have reached my ears.  I, too, will intercede and ask for mercy for his beloved.”

“Whatever he has done, this is not the right punishment,” Irissë said.  “This is not the right recompense.  This is ripping open a wound inflicted upon him by the one the Valar freed from Mandos and infecting it.  He will not heal this way.”

“No,” Nienna agreed.  “I stand with Yavanna.  I will weep for him.”

“If he cannot even confess to his sins, how shall he atone?” Manwë demanded.

Mairon sobbed.

“Is it not atonement that led him to lay his life down for my son?” demanded Irissë.  “Is it not atonement that he was struck down in defiance of the one that all of you are now taking him to task for following?  There may be more demanded, but he does not owe you this abasement.  And if you still demand it, then you are as cruel as Morgoth himself.”

The vines gently freed his mouth.  “Please,” Mairon sobbed.  “Please, anything.”

“I will take him to Lórien.”  It was the dreamy voice again, and he recognized it this time as Irmo.  “Este will tend him.  Perhaps we can find how he is to be healed and what recompense is owed.  But Irissë is right.  Look at him, Manwë.  You who once had pity on your brother.  Can you not find it in your heart to pity his servant?”

“Not anymore,” Mairon whispered pitifully.  “I betrayed Him.  I betrayed my oaths.  I—”  He choked himself off.

A heavy sigh.  “Take him to Lórien, then.  Perhaps you are right.  I am no longer certain I trust my own counsels.”

It was Yavanna who lifted him into her arms effortlessly, holding him gently wrapped in the cloth Irissë had given him.  “Hush, little Maia,” she murmured.  “Hush and dream yourself to a better place.”

Mairon sleeps, his tattered eäla watched over by three Elves who make uneasy truce to keep their vigil over him.  In Lórien’s golden haze, Irmo sends dreams to him, fragmented but true, of past and present.  He sees Tyelpe and Lómion flee from Gondolin with Idril, hand in hand, a babe tucked in the crook of each elbow.  The babies scream when Mairon falls.  Tyelpe weeps, and Lómion holds him tightly, wordless.

From Gondolin to the mouth of the Sirion.  Tyelpe and Lómion build high walls, Lómion with an intense and unmatched loyalty to Idril, Tyelpe with a fierce animated joy that bleeds to all who help.  The children play with little Eärendil.  Ebony-skinned Morna follows him everywhere and says they will be his knight.  Pale-haired Sinde pretends they do not care for him but secretly ties up little packages of sweets and leaves them at his door.  

When the last of the Sons of Fëanor come to Sirion, Tyelpe stands before them, with Lómion at his back, and their children hidden at the water’s edge, half-grown but hand-in-hand with Elwing.  A truce is forged.

As Morgoth grows his forces, Mairon stirs in an uneasy sleep, and Irmo whispers to Manwë of mistakes and failures and abandonments.  The Valar go at last to the Elves of Beleriand.  Mairon watches the great dragon Ancalagon rise with stinking breath, and then he watches Morna and Sinde, at Eärendil’s back, rise in answer.  They are grown now.  Morna’s black hair is as long as Irissë’s, and Sinde’s silver is cut neatly to their chin.  They are opposites and complements, and their Song with Eärendil’s, brings down a dragon’s.

Tyelpe and Lómion forge weapons for the Host, exchanging kisses and concern, but unlike Mairon, Morna and Sinde return.

Beleriand sinks beneath the waves, but the family sails with Gil-Galad’s fleet to Lindon.  Morna and Sinde dote on Elrond and Elros as they once did on the twins’ father, Morna openly, Sinde secretly.

One day, they have a great picnic out in the bright sunlight.  “Will you tell us of the one who bore us?” Morna asks their fathers.  “You never speak of them.”

Lómion bites his lip and looks away.  Tyelpe smiles sadly.  “Yes,” he says.  “I will tell you his story now, and one day, I am sure you will meet him yourselves.”

The wind rustles in the trees, and the birds begin to sing as he speaks.

Far away, across an ocean, Mairon’s eyes flutter and open.