Shadows Laid Before the Sun by Idrils Scribe

But Carnistir, who loved not the sons of Finarfin, and was the harshest of the brothers and the most quick to anger, cried aloud: 'Yea more! Let not the sons of Finarfin run hither and thither with their tales to this Dark Elf in his caves! Who made them our spokesmen to deal with him? And though they be come indeed to Beleriand, let them not so swiftly forget that their father is a lord of the Noldor, though their mother be of other kin.'

…

Maitimo indeed rebuked Carnistir; but the greater part of the Noldor, of both followings, hearing his words were troubled in heart, fearing the fell spirit of the sons of Feanor that it seemed would ever be like to burst forth in rash word or violence. But Maitimo restrained his brothers, and they departed from the council, and soon afterwards they left Mithrim and went eastward beyond Aros to the wide lands about the Hill of Himring.

The Silmarillion, Quenta Silmarillion, Ch 13, Of the Return of the Noldor

Dimbar, west bank of the river Mindeb, the 7th year of the First Age.

“The bridge shall be up soon, lord.” Canissë was stern and efficient as ever, but Carnistir felt the sharp sourness of her disapproval. The captain of Maitimo’s knights studiously ignored him.

Carnistir kept a stony expression as he met Canissë’s eyes, and stood up straighter. He had expected as much from Maitimo’s loyal bloodhound.

Maitimo would not forgive Carnistir until he had dragged him all the way across Beleriand like an ill-behaved dog on a leash. His scouts had found some frigid mountain lake, as far from the Nolofinwëans as one might go without falling off the map entirely, where Carnistir was to sit and stay put until Maitimo whistled for him once more.

It was outrageous! A prince of the Eldest House of the Noldor, and he was being made to stand in the corner like an insolent brat, merely for speaking his mind. Carnistir’s anger seethed sharp and sour in his stomach. 

“Would you have us leave the pontoons afloat after the crossing?” Canissë asked Maitimo, her back turned to Carnistir. “The river is easily bridged here. Why the Sindar have not done so an Age ago is beyond me.”

Maitimo did not answer her. His mind was far away. He stood still as graven marble, staring across the shifting silver of the Mindeb’s surface.

To Carnistir’s eyes the river looked … unwholesome, somehow. Beneath the summer sun the waters that flowed from the Ered Gorgoroth seemed iridescent, but less like a rainbow than that strange, diffracting scatter of colour on the surface of rotten meat.

On the opposite bank the road ran eastwards under the eaves of Doriath. Even at this distance the trees looked twisted, strange, with oily mist trailing between the foremost boles. Deeper into the forest the great beeches were obscured by a shimmering aura of Power. Melian’s Girdle was a terror to behold, to those she considered unwelcome.

“My lord?” Canissë kept her distance. She had learned better than to risk startling Maitimo in this state. Her scar had thinned and paled, but in his mindless terror Maitimo’s blunt breadknife had bitten deep enough that her cheek was still marked.

Maitimo’s wide-eyed gaze remained fixed on the looming bulk of the Ereth Gorgoroth, snow-capped peaks falling in sheer precipes to the shadowed valley at their roots.

Nan Dungortheb, the Sindar called it. The Grey-elves’ patois was as drab as their garments, and Carnistir had not yet bothered to learn much Sindarin, but nonetheless a small shudder ran down his back. The Valley of Dreadful Death.

Beside him Maitimo stood still, but the snapping north wind stirred the heavy oxblood wool of his cloak into a moving bloodstain about him. Angband taught Maitimo to shield his mind, withdraw all of himself into a cocoon of mithril-lined steel so impenetrable that even Carnistir’s osanwë slid off uselessly, like a wooden staff off an armoured knight.  

Maitimo had been listening, though, because at that thought, he looked sideways. “Apt metaphor, Moryo. Alqualondë on your mind again?”

Carnistir did not like to be called by his childhood endearment in the presence of their retainers, but what he hated even more was to be reminded of that dreadful day of slaughter, and Maitimo knew it.

Maitimo’s look was knife-sharp as he watched the double barb sink in. “A pity the experience failed to teach you tact.”

How long would Maitimo keep punishing him for that spat with Angaráto? Anger, black and hot as bile, welled up inside Carnistir, but spewing it out would only confirm Maitimo's reproach.

On its heels came sorrow, a bone-deep yearning for the brothers they once were before their world darkened and the shadow spit them back out as lords and vassals. Longing howled like a hungry beast inside Carnistir’s chest, but he beat it back down. The Maitimo he knew in Tirion was gone. 

“The pontoons, my lord?” he asked instead, gesturing towards Canissë, Maitimo’s honorific crisp upon his tongue.

“Bridging the Mindeb would speed travel between our eastern marches and Barad Eithel,” Canissë reprised her argument. Her tone was formal, as if they stood in Maitimo’s council chamber instead of a muddy riverbank, with her lord staring blankly into the distance and shooting barbs at his disgraced brother. “If we leave the pontoons, a company of sappers could replace them with solid stone in a month.”

Carnistir wondered if she knew why, exactly, Maitimo might want a quick road to Barad Eithel. There certainly was more to it than an ardent desire for fresh gossip from the new king’s court.

At the thought, Carnistir could not help but scoff. Nolofinwë, King of the Noldor. Hah!

“We will build no bridge.” Maitimo did not look at Canissë as he spoke, his eyes fixed beyond the river, on the black roots of the mountains. Clearly ease of canoodling with Findekáno was the last thing on his mind. “Whatever inhabits that valley must be kept contained.” 

With that, Maitimo turned towards the bridge, where even now the first companies of Fëanorian warriors were starting to cross behind the starred banners of their House. The sun was sharp and bright on their silver mail and the waving plumes of their helms. 

Blood-red, Carnistir tried not to think, but did so regardless.

The soldiers’ singing blew towards them across the river, strong and stirring as always, but their marching cadence was a new one - something about kicking Nolofinwë’s usurping arse. Maitimo gave a small, exasperated sigh, and Carnistir made a note to find the song’s instigator, and reward them. 

At last Maitimo wrenched himself away from the view to face his second-in-command.

“Double the watch. No one is to venture out alone. Inform all companies that we march in closed formations until we reach Himlad.”

“What is in those mountains, sir?” Canissë was an old hand, but now her eyes flicked up to the looming mountain, and fear stirred the smooth surface of that martial mind. 

“An ancient evil,” Maitimo answered. “I know neither its name nor its nature. Not even the Enemy does, I think, for his Orcs would rather die than tread those paths.” Some terrible memory rippled his mind like a breaching sea-monster, but he forced it back down into the dark depths. He pointed at the shifting mists of the Girdle, his tone dry. “If the Sindar have learned anything, they do not deign to share their knowledge.”

He loosened the gold-laced peace-ties on his sword and slid it partly from its sheath. Blue flames licked down the metal.

Carnistir and Canissë both tensed, their hands moving to the pommels of their own weapons, but Maitimo showed not the slightest outward sign of concern.

“Whatever this is, it is hemmed in between the mountains, the river, and the Girdle, and there it should remain.”

At a small gesture, Maitimo’s esquire approached, leading his great stallion.

Maitimo swung lightly into the saddle. “Retrieve the pontoons once the final company has crossed. Then burn them.” 

Chapter End Notes

Thanks for reading along, everyone!

I'll be posting a chapter a day until Halloween. I'd love to hear what you guys think about this first chapter, and of course any thoughts and speculations about what awaits our heroes are very welcome. A comment would make me a very happy Scribe!

See you tomorrow,

IS

The corpse lay but a stone’s throw from the road, a noisy cloud of blowflies buzzing about it. 

A small mountain Orc dressed in rags, prone and spread-eagled, its face pressed into the grey grass. 

The scouts barely thought their find worth mentioning, but Maitimo insisted on seeing it with his own eyes, and so his entire staff, Carnistir included, veered off the road, their horses snorting and prancing beneath them from the charnel-stench, and gathered around the carcass. 

 “Turn it over,” Maitimo ordered, and swung himself down from his destrier. At once his esquire leapt forward to take charge of the wild-eyed stallion. Erestor, too, dismounted to stand beside his lord and study the Orc, his face rapt as if the corpse were a precious gemstone. 

Carnistir sighed inwardly. Erestor was Maitimo’s chief counsellor, like he had been Fëanáro’s before him, but he was also a loremaster of the Lambengolmor. If the old bookworm took an interest they might be held up here for hours. 

Carnistir did not like the feel of this place. Something pulled at his mind, something in the distant valley beneath the mountains, and the touch was foul. 

“No need to concern yourself with the Orc, my lord. It is dead already.” The scouts’ captain resorted to stating the blindingly obvious in her eagerness to be away from this place. 

The sun rode low and red on the western horizon in a roiling wrack of cloud, and a strange, oily mist crept across the moors. None of them relished the thought of setting up camp here. 

“Clearly,” said Maitimo, his lips tight. “But there is no blood. I wish to know what it died of .” He pointed his one hand, scarred and ghostly pale in the dying light, at the corpse in an impatient gesture. “Turn it over,” he repeated his order in a low, clipped tone. 

Maitimo never needed to raise his voice. At once the scout leapt to, and in her eyes stood something much like fear. Unwilling to touch the decaying body even for Maitimo, she reached out with the flat blade of her long-shafted glaive, wrenched it beneath the Orc’s chest, and flipped it over.

Maggots rained down from the nose and mouth in a scatter of writhing white, but that was not why this crowd of battle-hardened warriors drew backwards with gasps of dismay. 

The Orc had eight eyes.  

Sheer were the precipices of Ered Gorgoroth, and beneath their feet were shadows that were laid before the rising of the Moon. Beyond lay the wilderness of Dungortheb, where ... horror and madness walked.

The Silmarillion, Quenta Silmarillion, Ch 19, Of Beren and Lúthien

Chapter End Notes

Welcome back, my spooky friends!
A shorter one today, because there simply wasn't any other spot to cut it, but the next chapters will be a lot meatier.
Writers run on coffee and comments, and I'm dying to hear what you think is going on in this creepy valley we've wandered into. A comment would make me a very happy scribe.
See you tomorrow,
IS

“It appears to be a standard arachnid arrangement, quite similar to a wolf spider.” Erestor raised the Orc’s head from the table to turn the mangled face towards his lords. 

Maitimo and Canissë did not bat an eye, but the back of Carnistir’s throat contracted and he had to swallow down hard. Erestor had the maggots removed before starting his autopsy. Even so, the small improvement failed to make the sight palatable. 

Carnistir was well used to butchering: hart and boar in happier times, but since Alqualondë, Orcs were all he hunted. Even so, he had never handled spoiled flesh. The sweetish stench of rot stood heavy in Maitimo’s command tent despite the handfuls of dried rosemary burning on the braziers. 

In the flickering candlelight the misshapen thing was a horror to behold. Orcs were an inherently unlovely species, and this particular one had been maggot-fodder for days, but it still had an ordinary mouth full of yellow teeth and a quite normal nose. Above that the face was an arachnid constellation of far too many eyes, black with neither lids nor pupils. The candles made them gleam with an alien, reddish spark, as if some twisted remnant of life inhabited them even now. 

Carnistir’s skin crawled from more than the grisly sight alone. The pull on his mind had become constant. From somewhere deep in that accursed valley came something that was not a voice - a crawling chitter barely resembling Elvish mind-speech, but which he nonetheless understood.

Come! It droned incessantly, come to me, and I will give you what you desire!

Eerie and insistent it gnawed at the edges of his mind, growing stronger with each passing moment. 

Carnistir had no doubt that it was a trap of some kind, something dark and dreadful drawing him to that horrid valley at the black roots of the mountains like prey is drawn to a web, but the constant call was driving him to madness and he could not close it out no matter how he struggled against it.  

Some small sound of misery must have passed his lips, because Maitimo’s eyes flicked from the corpse to him in silent rebuke. Carnistir swallowed, and fought to focus on Erestor’s macabre display.

“... there has been some decay, but clearly these are all simple eyes with a single lens, not compounded like in non-arachnid arthropods.” Erestor had taken a pair of surgical forceps to dissect one eye from its socket in an anatomical demonstration. Maitimo’s chief counsellor was deep into the study of dark lore. Too deep, in Carnistir’s opinion. “The anterior median pair are the primary eyes, but there are three more pairs of secondary light receptors, with grate-type retinas providing it with -”

“How!?” Carnistir’s stomach roiled, and he cut off Erestor’s rambling before he would vomit in front of Maitimo.

“Excuse me?” Erestor was once Carnistir’s tutor, and having his lecture interrupted still produced the very same pique.  

“ How did this Orc come to have spider eyes?” Carnistir managed to utter past the bile rising in his gullet. 

“I cannot say,” Erestor said dryly, “but it was not born with them. Only the main pair possesses a normal optic nerve connected to the visual cortex, meaning they are probably the original mammalian eyes. The other six seem recent, and in the process of developing … offshoots that grow into the cranial vault, penetrating the brain - presumably in an attempt to connect to it. Which appears to be the cause of death.”

This awakened Maitimo’s interest. “Were they Sung into existence?” he asked.

“Not by any Song of Evil I am familiar with.” Erestor looked Maitimo in the eye as he moved backwards with an inviting gesture. “Though I defer to your greater ... experience in the matter.”

Maitimo did not hesitate as he stepped forward and laid his hand on the mutilated face, but his expression was pale and drawn. The tent fell silent save for the crackle of the burning braziers. No night sounds came from outside, not even a hunting owl or scurrying marten. In fact, they had met no animals at all in Nan Dungortheb. 

“I do not sense Morgoth’s hand in this creature,” Maitimo said after a long time, “nothing more than what is common to all Orcs. Neither has his lieutenant Sauron touched it.” He straightened, released the corpse, and immersed his hand in the stainless steel washbowl Erestor proffered. A strong smell of alcohol rose from it. “Something else is at play here, something just as foul, but working its own designs.”

Erestor drew a deep, shuddering breath as he set down the bowl, then swallowed audibly. “It seems that Melian has her reasons for fencing her domain.” His mind was shielded like an ice-covered lake, but such was the turmoil below that a trace of emotion bled past his guard. 

Erestor was afraid . 

Carnistir’s breath hitched, and it was all he could do not to panic. The old loremaster might be a pedantic annoyance, but he had nerves of steel. 

He looked at the corpse, laying still and horrid on Maitimo’s folding table. Eight empty eyes stared back.

Nan Dungortheb. That accursed valley tugged at Carnistir’s mind, its call growing stronger, sweeter, more insistent through the night. He had no desire to learn its exact nature. 

“I … I can feel it, Maitimo! It calls all who hear it to itself. We should not wait until morning.” He forced the words from his unwilling throat. “Let us break camp and make haste for Himlad.”

Canissë had been silent thus far, but at this she bristled. “We are the House of Fëanáro, eldest of the Noldor. We flee from nothing.” 

Carnistir scoffed. “Eldest House indeed. Had we had the good sense to fall back when needed, Fëanáro himself might still be here to lead it.”

Canissë was unimpressed. When talking strategy, their armsmistress had no qualms about contradicting her lords. 

“Will we leave whatever haunts Nan Dungortheb undisturbed, an island of evil amidst the leaguer of Angband?” She looked Maitimo straight in the eye. “If this … creature is not aiding the Enemy yet, it soon will if we let it live, and it clearly has tremendous power.” She paused for an instant, then added dryly, “I, for one, prefer my Orcs two-eyed.”

It was exactly the sort of joke Maitimo would laugh at these days.

“You are right, Canissë,” he said, his smile sharp as a whetted knife. “If the King of Doriath lacks the strength to muck out his own backyard, the House of Fëanáro shall do it for him! Assemble an expedition. All volunteers, to depart at dawn.”

He turned to Carnistir. “Brother, your sharp tongue has caused me no end of trouble. Here is a chance to redeem yourself! You are called to this valley, you say. Then lead us to it. We will find out what, exactly, is doing the calling, and present King Elwë with its head on a stake.” 

He laughed without mirth, his eyes and mind closed tight as ever. “We shall see how many eyes it has!”

The words hit Carnistir like a fist to the stomach, and he stared at his brother in mute shock. Was Maitimo trying to get him killed? 

Angband had changed him: some remnant of the Hells of Iron had come among the Elves in the depth of that terrible gaze, and without a doubt Maitimo’s gentle nature had burned away in their fires. But was he capable of sending a quarrelsome brother off into probable death against a monstrous foe? 

Carnistir could not bear the thought. Bile rose in his gorge once more, and he would have shamed himself and ruined the flooring if Maitimo had not grasped his shoulder and led him outside. 

Beyond the tent’s walls the stench thinned, and the stars stood cool and distant above the wide sloping river-lands. Carnistir gasped and retched before he could control his unruly stomach. 

“It will not be easy, brother, but it needs to be done.” Maitimo said once he had straightened himself. “And I believe we can, you and I.”

We , Maitimo said. That was more than Carnistir had dared hope for, so soon after the Angaráto incident. 

He would do much to regain Maitimo’s regard. Even this.  

Chapter End Notes

Welcome to tonight's episode of CSI:Beleriand, in which Erestor does an autopsy.
What's going on in Nan Dungortheb? Is Maitimo mad, extremely brave, or trying to rid himself of his quarrelsome brother after all?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the chapter. A comment would make my day!
See you tomorrow!

Sweat ran down Carnistir’s back beneath the padded layers of his gambeson and cuirass. He shifted in his saddle, cursing his rotten luck and this entire expedition. The suit of armour was Curufinwë’s work, diamond-studded mithril shaped and beaten until it was light as a feather. It fitted Carnistir like a second skin, but the metal still caught the sun. Summer lingered long this year, and he felt like a clam being slowly boiled alive inside its own shell. 

Beside him, Maitimo gave no sign of unease, but then he never did. Perhaps his body was so used to agony that small discomforts no longer registered, or else he meant to set their company an example of knightly stoicism. 

Canissë had found no lack of volunteers: behind them, a column of warriors stretched for half a mile. All fine soldiers in high spirits, armed and armoured to the teeth.

“Lead us to it” Maitimo had said, and though Carnistir’s skin crawled with horror at the very thought, he would not refuse his brother. There had been a time when, faced with Maitimo’s bossy moods, Carnistir would only have scoffed and called him a rust-headed idiot loud enough to scandalise even the warriors in the hindmost line. 

Not since Angband. This new Maitimo was - not brittle, as such, because no one who fought with such deadly fire could be. Nonetheless, swearing at a man so damaged seemed shameful, and so Carnistir did as he was told. 

Nan Dungortheb beckoned, but for now their route ran near the Girdle. This close, Melian’s defence was dreadful to behold. The morning had dawned cloudless and bright, but Neldoreth’s beeches could barely be seen. The trees emerged like lumbering giants from the swirling mists, but their shapes were strange and seemed to change each time the eye moved, so that one could not gain a proper orientation. 

Erestor had experimented, venturing among the mist-wrapped trees armed with a compass and secured by a long line tied about his waist.  The needle had spun wildly once he set foot within the forest, and so had Erestor’s mind. In the end he was hoisted back to safety when he cried out in his frightened confusion. Doriath might be an Elvish realm, but the House of Fëanáro would find no aid there. 

Quite the contrary: tendrils of mist leaked from the girdle, fanning across the road like searching fingers. Those unlucky enough to be struck, horse and rider both, went strange and bewildered for a time, their wide eyes flicking back and forth as they wailed at hallucinations. Their comrades had to keep them in formation or they would have wandered aimlessly into the depths of that alien forest, doubtlessly to their deaths. How this was not considered kinslaying, Carnistir could not fathom. No doubt the Sindar had some far-fetched explanation that satisfied their conscience.

He scoffed - The House of Fëanáro would not be deterred by a bunch of drab-eyed savages. The company turned their well-armoured backs to the shimmering wall of mist-wreathed wood that was Doriath, and headed towards the mountains.  

The Ereth Gorgoroth loomed over the column of knights; row upon row of  snow-capped peaks, harsh and impenetrable, falling in sheer precipes to the shadowed valley at their roots. 

The pull at Carnistir’s mind had gone from a mere call to an incessant drone. Its touch had seemed sweet at first, but this close it proved that bitter-rotten sweetness of charnel. 

“Can you feel it?” he asked Maitimo, not knowing what answer he was hoping for: to be told that it was merely an illusion conjured by his own foolish fears, or that Maitimo felt it too, and therefore the horror was real. 

Maitimo did not look aside. “Of all our House you were ever the most gifted at osanwë, and you are no coward. What you feel is real, Moryo.”

“Valar protect us.” The phrase left Carnistir’s lips before he could master himself. It was anathema, of course, and had been so ever since their own bloodied hands had severed all their House from divine grace, but in this moment of terror the old habit prevailed. 

Maitimo only laughed. “No use in praying, brother. You are not Findekáno.”

They barely took note of the first webs: on the cusp of autumn, some were to be expected. Perfectly common orb webs stretched between branches and tall grass, inhabited by perfectly ordinary - if somewhat large - diadem spiders. The webs seemed remarkable only because there was nothing for them to catch. 

Naught but spiders lived here. They found no trace of any other animal. No birds twittered in the sky, no cicadas chirped in the dry grass, no buzzing bees, no mice scurrying in the undergrowth. A leaden silence pressed upon the land. Only the north wind whistled forlornly through the shuddering gorse.

Onwards the Fëanorians marched across the sere and trackless land, and with every step the webs thickened, until the company passed entire trees spun into towers of spider-silk, webs trailing from their leafless branches like hanging nooses. 

A wide-eyed scout brought Maitimo the dry husk of an oriole, golden feathers sticking out at odd angles beneath a cocoon of silk. The web had been torn by the frightened bird’s flailing and flapping, but once tangled, the bright little thing had been spun in and sucked dry nonetheless. Maitimo shrugged it off, but Carnistir could bear to look at the tiny corpse. At least it had two eyes. 

Soon after, they had to leave the horses. The beasts were sweat-foamed and white-eyed, prancing and spooking in their terror, more of a liability than an asset. The same could be said of some of the warriors, and so Canissë mercifully ordered them to stay behind and guard their mounts. 

After that, things worsened. There were spiders all around. Spiders the size of Carnistir’s finger-nail, thousands upon thousands studding the web-wrapped trees like strange, many-legged blossoms. Spiders the size of his open hand crawling on the boles. One time, glimpsed between the dead, grey underbrush, a spider as big as a dog. 

Carnistir wondered at the size of the webs, and could not resist reaching out his hand and touching a blanket-sized orb web that sat empty between two trees. At once he was stuck in the glue-like surface of the threads. He yanked and threw himself back so his entire weight was behind the pull, but could not get loose. His panic was brief, and the blue steel of his hunting knife did release him. He carried the unsheathed blade in his hand, after that. 

It was some time before he realised why Erestor exchanged a look of concern with Maitimo: none of the countless spiders had come forth to defend its work, or had hindered their march. They were allowed to advance ever deeper into this cursed valley.

To what purpose, Carnistir dared not contemplate.

Chapter End Notes

Welcome back for another chapter, in which the tension rises and the spiders get bigger.
Of course I'd love to hear from you: what awaits poor Carnistir? And what is Maitimo up to?
A comment would make my day!
See you tomorrow for more spidery creepiness,
IS

For miles the company marched through a dreadful forest, passing glades where daylight never reached. Web-smothered trees bent over them, their branches bare and misshapen. Silence pressed upon these woods like a living, breathing thing. Even the boldest among the warriors had ceased their marching songs. There was no sound but their footsteps, muffled by years’ worth of decaying spider-silk.   

This close to its source the call battered against the walls of Carnistir’s mind, howling like a gale as it drew him ever deeper into Nan Dungortheb. He clenched his hand around his sword-hilt until its pattern of inlaid rubies stood red and sore against the bloodless white skin of his palm, desperate to keep himself from caving to that maddening summons, breaking away from the company and disappearing into the grey arcades of the forest at a run. Instead he marched onward, keeping cadence with his guards, step after miserable step.

They had to ford a brook, shimmering dark and oily in the fading light. At the water’s edge Carnistir faltered. He stood for a moment, studying the sheen of refracting colour upon the surface as he breathed in and out, grounding himself. A splash of cool water on his face might help, and so he knelt down and reached with a cupped hand. 

“Beware!” Maitimo struck, quick as a hawk, grabbing the offending hand and yanking Carnistir to his feet. “The Sindar say that the waters from Ered Gorgoroth are defiled,” he said, his voice low to keep from alarming the warriors, “that all who taste them are taken by madness and despair. I thought it superstition, but now that I have seen them with my own eyes… Do not touch that water, Carnistir.” Maitimo offered Carnistir his own waterskin. “Drink this instead.”

Maitimo’s eyes and mind were closed as ever, and Carnistir could not tell whether this was brotherly concern or mere pragmatism. Still, he took the skin and drank a gulp of clean water.

He took his place in the formation once more as they forded the stream by leaping from stone to stone. Maitimo and Erestor came last, keeping a close eye on the warriors as they crossed, but even without being ordered, all took great care not to touch those perilous waters.  

The sun dipped to the western horizon, turning the clouds massing above the mountains into a conflagration of crimson. 

Then, from the unseen distance deep within that grey wood, came the scream. 

There were words in it, garbled and strange, and at the sound Carnistir could not help but gasp in terror.

Eru intended that no other living things should possess voices like Elves. They were unlike all else, recognized at once even when ugly with pain or terror or rage. Even in Alqualondë, no Elf Carnistir ever heard had screamed like this - all wrong , an unholy sound that could not possibly have been shaped by an Elvish mouth. 

It came from somewhere ahead, amidst the darkening expanse of night in that grey forest. Once, twice, and then again and again at irregular intervals as the wind shifted. 

Theirs was a doughty company - warriors sworn to Fëanáro’s House, all kinslayers and slayers of Balrogs, and yet the scream drove many among them to mindless terror. 

“Let us return,” they begged Maitimo, and where Carnistir had expected Maitimo to drive them onwards with the flat of his blade, Maitimo nodded.

“They are no good to us in this state,” he said, indicating the tight huddle of death-pale soldiers standing before him in the dying light of dusk, their eyes downcast. “Let them turn back.”

The smaller company arranged itself in close formation, but they had not backtracked more than a few steps when a writhing, many-legged hail rained down from the trees, crawled upwards from the grass and from lairs in the soil. The Elves were clad in sturdy mail and hobnailed boots, and they brushed the things aside. Then, from the dead forest, came a pack of hound-sized spiders, pincers clicking and dripping poison, leaping at the Elves. 

A call to arms rang across the clearing, and at once a ring of Fëanorian steel beat back the horrors.

One of Carnistir’s own guards had fallen, his throat taken out by razor-sharp mandibles, dying breaths bubbling red as he bled out on a death-bed of webs. Carnistir had no desire to ever look upon a dead Elf again, but this man was his sworn vassal, and so he knelt by his side to sing the death-song with an unsteady voice. 

As he Sang he battled to remain in the here and now, but still his mind fled his grasp, dragging him back to the last time he uttered these words - Alqualondë. From within that dreaded darkness, a shadow shrieked at him, and he shivered.

Amidst the orgy of bloodshed that was Alqualondë, he had killed a silver-haired boatswain. 

She was but a slender woman, barefoot in a linen smock, but her iron-tipped boathook had sent two of Fëanáro’s mail-clad smiths over the sides with cracked skulls, trailing smoke-like clouds of blood in the churning harbour. It mattered little: seven more were leaping over the gunwale, and in her battle-rage the boatswain failed to see Carnistir behind her. 

He recalled his own wolfish bloodlust, the shameful eagerness with which he leapt to, grabbed the silver cable of her braid in his armoured fist to yank back her head and slash her throat to the bone. 

The boatswain’s blood gushed bright and ruby-red, and at once she became a dead weight, her almost-severed head at an alien angle as she dangled from Carnistir’s hand by her hair. He had tossed her overboard, the sleight weight of her barely felt, but her memory plagued him like a wound. He had killed many that day, before and after her, but her face alone stood out from the bloody tatters of his memory. He had often wondered what her name might be.

The moment the light fled the dead guard’s eyes, a shadow fell across the body. Carnistir looked up to find Maitimo standing beside him. Around them the warriors had lit a ring of torches, keeping the spiders at bay. Carnistir rose to his feet.  The leaping light painted Maitimo red as if he were doused with blood.

“Once we stopped the retreat the attack ceased at once. Those accursed things will only allow us to advance.” Maitimo had grown stern and efficient. Carnistir had not seen that fire in his eyes since Angband. 

It did nothing to quench his fear. “A trap,” he muttered. 

“Indeed.” Maitimo smiled a sharp little grin, and raised his voice. “Canissë! Gather the company together. Half will dig a trench and wall around us, the other half defend the diggers.” He spun around, pointing at the web-smothered trees. “Those trees are long dead, and powder-dry. Fell them, light a circle of watchfires, and kill anything that dares step into the light.” 

“More light may attract more spiders.” Canissë protested.

“It matters not.” Maitimo pointed at the eight-legged carcasses strewn about the clearing. “Did you see how they coordinated their attacks? These things are sentient, and they know well enough where we are!”

“You mean to dig us in here for the night, then turn back come morning?”  At the thought, he sank to his knee from the sheer brutal force of the call within his mind. Maddening. “I cannot, Maitimo. Not while it calls me still!”

Maitimo was not angry. “I know, brother. We will go on, you and I.”

Carnistir paced back and forth across the fireli glade, torn between his relief at being allowed to obey that call, and sheer terror. 

Maitimo merely donned his red-plumed helm, looking like wrath incarnate.  

Together they left the circle of light, and plunged into the darkness of the spider-haunted night.

Around them the forest was a vast pillared hall, its tree-columns misshapen and rotting beneath their burden of webs. They wandered for hours, led by that terrible call, while the gibbous moon rose pale over Nan Dungortheb.  

Then the trees thinned, and they came to a grey glade. Ugly, twisted boles surrounded a secret place. There was an air of Power here, and for a moment Carnistir recalled ancient songs from Cuivienen, warnings of dark forests where unholy things festered, as ancient as Morgoth himself. 

At the glade’s far end rose a pale, formless mass against the darkness, a bulk of webbing more massive and loathsome than any they had seen before, wholly encasing the decaying remains of a pair of mighty beeches. At its centre sat a black hole like a gaping maw. Only then did Carnistir realise what he was looking at: a giant funnel-web sat spun between the trees, the entrance man-high and wide enough for two to walk abreast. 

Out of it came a stench, not the sickly odour of decay, but a foul reek, as if filth unnameable were piled and hoarded in the dark within.

His legs refused to obey his will, and beside him Maitimo, too, stood still, a terrible understanding dawning between them. They had been drawn in.

“Maitimo …” his voice was a hoarse croak.

A white fire burned in Maitimo’s eyes, as if he were Fëanáro come face to face with the Balrogs. The naked steel of his sword shone bright and blue in his hand. 

Carnistir drew his own blade, and together they entered the web’s waiting jaw.

Chapter End Notes

Hi everyone, welcome back!
I had to skip yesterday's update, because work was an absolute madhouse and I lost all control of the day. Back in the saddle now, and I guess this story will now run until the day after Halloween!
Maitimo is either very brave, or very mad. Either way poor Carnistir is having a terrible time. And what lurks inside that giant web?
I know I say this every time, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter. A comment would make me a happy scribe!
See you tomorrow!

Inside the funnel the darkness seemed absolute, noxious like poison, a malicious will that pressed its weight upon them. Carnistir had seen this before: the belched-out remnants of eaten light. 

He shuddered as he recalled that same blackness curling like smoke around the twisted gates of Formenos. When at last they found Finwë’s body he was wide-eyed, his face a snarl of horror, and Carnistir had wept at the knowledge that his grandfather died smothered in Shadow.

Beside him, Maitimo did not flinch. His hand moved towards his belt and he opened the shutter on the lamp he carried there. The Fëanorian lantern sent forth a clear blue light from its flame imprisoned in white crystal. 

Now they could see the funnel running further into darkness, the webbing’s silken threads breaking the light with alien rainbows that played along the walls like apparitions from a fever-dream. At its very end the passage seemed to open into a larger chamber. 

“Come, Carnstir,” Maitimo said, his voice gentle as if he sensed Carnistir’s terror. “If it is her indeed, we shall avenge our grandfather.”

“If it is her , we will only give her more Finwions to feast on.” He shuddered. “How can two Elves hope to stand against Ungolianth? Feel how she calls us to her even now? She would not do so if we were a threat.”

“She is desperate indeed if she is calling the Sons of Fëanáro to her! Let her try and bite me. I will stick in her throat so deep I pierce her heart!” Maitimo’s face was pale and strange in the blue light, but there was fire in his eyes.

They advanced through the tunnel with swords aloft, a blue gleam playing along the metal. Past the narrowest point the silken walls opened into a vast hall, a nightmarish cavern of webbing. 

Strange shapes filled it, dark against the sickly white of the webbed walls. Some had been spun into the walls, others hung from the ceiling by silken threads, most lay scattered upon the floor. At first Carnistir knew not what to make of them: they were grey, bulbous and irregular, some rounded, some with strangely shaped protrusions jutting from the main bulk.

Carnistir stepped towards the foremost one. It seemed to be a man-sized spider corpse, half-spun into the tangle of webbing that was the room’s floor, as if it had been trying to claw its way out. He poked it with the tip of his blade, unwilling to step closer in case the thing would prove undead and might somehow still leap at him. The stench of decay was overwhelming, making the back of his throat contracted as he dug into the corpse. 

Then he saw the hair.

A full head of Elvish hair covered the dead spider’s cranium. In the blue light it shone silver, bright as a fallen shard of Tilion. The braids were still in it, fastened with star-shaped beads of green jade like the Iathrim would wear.

Carnistir pushed the hair aside to reveal the creature’s front. 

Eight eyes gleamed dull and dead in an Elvish face. 

A moan of horror bubbled from his lips. 

“Hush, Moryo.” Maitimo laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. A mere day ago Carnistir would have wept with relief at such kindness from his brother, but now all he could do was whimper at the nightmare that surrounded them. 

This chamber was a charnel house, filled with corpses of Elves and Orcs, doubtlessly lured here by that terrible call. All had been mutilated into hideous spider-like shapes. Eight-eyed faces, insectoid legs sprouting from back and belly, lips distorted into grotesque fang-like mouthparts. 

The only mercy was that all were dead, lying scattered about the cavern like some mad dollmaker’s refuse.

Something moved in the shadows in the back of the room, the motion jerking and unnaturally quick.

“Who goes there!?” Maedhros’ left hand raised his lamp, the stump of his right lingered by his pommel as if he could still draw the blade with it.

With a chitinous clicking the creature moved into the light, and Carnistir could not hold a cry of pure dread. 

Eight monstrous limbs supported its body - a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between the dreadful corona of its legs. Its great bulk was black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath was pale and luminous and gave forth a stench that strangled Carnistir’s breath. The legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above the back and hairs that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg's end there was a claw hooked into the webbed wall, so the creature walked upon it as if on solid ground. 

But that was not why Carnistir wept, and faltered, and called upon Varda Elentári in his foolish despair. 

The creature’s chest and head were Elvish. 

Both Elven hands and hooked spider-legs restrained the struggling body of a tiny, grey-faced Orc, spinning it around and around in a monstrous grip with dreadful coordination, close to the monstrous belly with its spinnerets from which silk threads emerged to wrap the Orc into a deadly cocoon. The Orc wept and writhed in the monster’s grip, but slowly and surely it was tied. The monster’s Elven face had spider-fangs, and they clicked with mad, trembling hunger as it spun its prey.

Carnistir could not bear to watch the Orc’s torment for a moment longer. In a heartbeat his bow was in his hand, and the string sang as he sped an arrow at the Orc’s eye. It buried itself to the fletching with a wet, definitive sound. The Orc sagged. 

At once Carnistir nocked a second arrow and aimed for the monster’s head, but Elvish eyes caught his own, and he could not bring himself to loosen upon them.   

“Hail and well met, Maedhros and Caranthir, sons of Fëanor!'' The thing had an Elvish voice, though its mouthparts should not be suitable for speech, with blade-like jaws instead of a tongue. Nonetheless Carnistir understood its Sindarin well enough.

“What are you?” he demanded.

“We are Many. You are most welcome here.”

Chapter End Notes

Hi everyone,
Tonight I proudly present the monster we've all been waiting for!
Of course I'm dying to hear what you guys think of it, so I'd be a very happy scribe indeed if you could leave a comment.
How will Maitimo and Carnistir dig themselves out of this?
See you tomorrow!
IS

“We are Many. You are most welcome here.”

Many turned the dead Orc over in his claws, raising it to the scaly appendages that emerged wriggling from where his throat should be. The grotesque things scraped across the corpse’s face, where the buried arrow’s swan-feather fletching stood stark and white against the bloody pulp of the ruined eyeball. He made a small, chittering sound.  

‘He’, Carnistir thought, but in truth he could not tell whether this Elf had once been man or maid. The torso might have been male, but the legs and what once sat between them had been melded into the bloated sac of the spider-body. 

This is no mere Elf! Carnistir thought against Maitimo’s mind. I sense a Maia’s power about him. Beware of that voice, brother!

“How did you learn our names?” Maitimo asked. He stood tall, feet grounded as if for battle, but his tone seemed wholly undisturbed, as were he talking to one of Elu Thingol’s emissaries instead of an unspeakable abomination.

Many’s Elf-head jerked up, and his spider-claws dropped the Orc, letting it fall to the webbed ground with a dreadful little thud . When its gaze - those eyes! The horror of those Sindar-blue eyes in that monstrous face! - fell on them, the force of Many’s mind struck Carnistir like a warhammer’s blow. 

Like its body, the fëa was alien and horrid and immensely powerful, but beneath the swarming horror sat an undeniable trace of Elvishness.

“No need for names.” Many approached them across the wall, spider legs clicking. “Fragments for joining. Fragments strong with the Light!” The face twisted with hunger, and a pink Elvish tongue darted out to moisten the spider jaw.

“Who are you?” Carnistir asked. It was disconcerting to see one’s conversation partner stick out horizontally from the wall.

“No me .” Many laughed, a dreadful sound for the traces of Elvishness that remained beneath the sound of air wheezing past his jutting jaws. “We are Many.”

“Why did you call us?” Carnistir demanded, but even as he spoke he realised this was somehow the wrong kind of question.

He  stretched out his fëa to touch Many’s. Instead of Elvish thoughts flowing like a single stream, Many’s mind swarmed like a cloud of blowflies, every part whirring at random, but the whole still moved with purpose. 

“What do you want!?” he groaned, staggering with the horror of it. 

Many ran a corpse-pale Elvish hand across the face of a dead orc with spider-claws for arms, much like a potter sorrowing over a broken vase. 

“All have flown!” he exclaimed. “More fragments shall make Many stronger. Better fragments - Light-Eyes, Fire-sons, Jewel-makers.” That mottled hand pointed at Maitimo and Carnistir. “ You will not fly! Wrap the spirits and shape the bodies!”

“What does he mean?” Maitimo exclaimed, sword aloft. “Can you sense his mind, Carnistir? What does he want!?”

Carnistir could have gagged with disgust, but Maitimo ordered it, and so he pressed his fëa against Many’s writhing spirit once more. With a shudder he let himself sink into the droning mass of insectoid awareness, and recoiled. 

A mad, ravenous hunger leapt at him, and he understood. 

“Superior materials!” he whispered to Maitimo. “Orcs and Moriquendi tend to die when he transforms them. He wants Calaquendi! That is why he called us!”

“You say that you are Many,” Maitimo said, indicating the scatter of mutated corpses, “but you are the only one alive … where are the others?”

The thing’s head turned back towards them, but it did not answer.

“Are you lonely?” Carnistir coaxed in turn, as if this horror were a lost child he found in the woods, but beneath the words his Power thrummed with a spell of heavy sleep. 

The enchantment slid off that strange writhing spider-mind like water from beeswax, and the Elf-eyes did not even blink. “We are Many.”

A hive-mind! Carnistir thought to Maitimo. Killing him is pointless - he is little more than a termite among many. Where are the others!?

He looked frantically around the cave, but saw naught but the decaying corpses, their Elvish hair stirring softly in a gust of cold air. 

Many advanced towards them, pincers clicking wildly. Carnistir could see clear fluid welling from the venom-glands below. A single drop would suffice. He would fall into a sleep as cold and deep as death, unto an unnatural waking once his mind was spun in a web of Song and his body mutated beyond recognition or repair.  

Diversion seemed in order. “Did your Elvish body not once have a name?” Carnistir stalled, desperate to keep Many talking, but the Elvish face now was a mask of raging hunger and the monstrous body approached swift as a huntsman spider.

“No more names,” Many hissed.

“What was your name?”

Many’s brow creased, pincers clicking as if some unholy struggle occurred within that hybrid mind. At last, an answer came, in that horrid, spidery voice. “We are Many.”

The Elf-spider leapt, mandibles dripping poison. Carnistir jerked back, sword raised, but at once Maitimo sprang forward, shielding Carnistir. 

The blue steel of Maitimo’s sword arced through the gloom, and Many recoiled. His Elf-face twisted in agony, the misshapen mouth wide and black as he howled with the pain of his severed leg. Blue spider-blood stained the webbing below. 

Carnistir made good use of Many’s weakness. Sleek and fast as a swooping hawk he dived into Many’s mind, seeking the other slave-minds, those fragmented parts that made up the monstrous whole. 

The writing mass of Many’s awareness closed around him, a horror to touch, but he pummeled it into submission by the sheer power of his mind, and from its grasp he jerked  a scatter of myriad images, alien refractions seen through many eyes; horrors drawn forth like a hunter jerks the steaming guts from his kill’s open belly. 

Webs. 

Bare branches swaying in the night wind. 

Blades of dead grass pointing sharp against the dim-starred sky. 

Carnistir sunk farther, beat harder against the droning cloud of consciousness that made up Many, and in its pain-crazed madness it submitted for a moment, letting him steer those strange eyes

Erestor and Canissë, blades in hand, their leaping forms wreathed with flame.

The dark inside of a cocoon, the bloated egg-sacs lit with their own pale corpse-light.

And Carnistir understood. 

Many is the spiders! Carnistir howled into Maitimo’s mind. Every last spider in this valley shares a single spirit! 

Maitimo’s eyes widened, but his sword did not waver. His left hand was a swift-slashing arc of steel as he beat Many back once more. 

Like Fëanáro before him, Maitimo was a loremaster of the Lambengolmor. In simpler days in Tirion he once wrote a dissertation on the most ancient songs of the Quendi. Plain and unadorned chants in the primitive tongue of Cuivienen, sung by the Fatherless Ones before they even set eyes on Oromë. 

With his usual single-minded obsession, Maitimo had covered them all. Not just the sacred hymns and canticles, the star-bright jubilations, but the ones most Elves would rather leave behind in the darkness of Middle-Earth: those chilling and half-forgotten songs that once warned the unwary of the horrors that lurked in sunless forests.

Now he slid a name into Carnistir’s consciousness.

Órembar. The mind-spinner. 

Blight of the ancient world, dark spirit descended into Arda from the Void beyond the stars, who chose to shape itself a monstrous, spider-studded hive mind ever on the hunt, vomiting threads that no hands could grasp. 

We cannot kill them all! Despair stood stark and harsh in both their minds. They could not kill this Maia any more than they could slay the north wind or the Moon.

One thing only, they could do to weaken Órembar, and Carnistir would see to it.

He had never been a great Singer, but he was Fëanáro’s son, and he had been taught well. The cantrip of revealing burned like a bright white flame, scorching clean the creature’s web-spun fëa. 

The Spinner’s threads had come undone, and behind the monster’s grey eyes now writhed a spirit in agony - deep down, beneath the miasma of knotted threads spun about the fëa, it was still an Elf. 

“What is your name?” he asked once more, pleading to whatever trace of Elvishness might lie beneath the mutilations. The Elvish face contorted in rage, meaningless sounds wheezing past the mandibles, and no answer came.  

Carnistir recalled the dead oriole, dry and withered beneath its spider-silk shroud. This mind wrapped in invisible threads was immeasurably worse, for this Elf was alive, and Carnistir shuddered at the well of horror and loathing that lay beneath the layers of the spider-spirit. 

“Come with us!” Carnistir tried to give comfort. “I shall take you to my people, there are great healers among us. We can …” 

No! The face contorted in terror, and across that Elvish mind washed wave of deep, dark shame. My defilement cannot be undone. Those who once loved me must never know.

Carnistr understood it well indeed. 

The Elf closed his eyes, wracked by shudders. I was spun inside myself, it was like a dream, a dreadful dream, but I was not wholly bound. The Elvish mind twisted and jerked, struggling against the press of Órembar’s mighty grip. Even now threads of spidery consciousness writhed at the edges, ready to reclaim their prize.  

Kill me! the Elf had been reduced to begging, his sobs wheezing past the spider-jaws.  Tears ran down the mutilated face, somehow it was a relief that with all that had been taken from him, the Elf could still weep. 

“No!” The cry wrested from Carnistir’s throat at the very thought.

Kinslayer! Elf-eyes bored into Carnistir’s, piercing him down to his very fëa. 

Carnistir could not meet that gaze. The Fëanorians had done their all to keep the secret, but somehow this Elf knew .

You have killed Elves, and you will kill Elves again. Now kill me, before the Spinner returns! 

The Elf threw back his head, baring the pale expanse of his throat to Carnistir’s blade. 

Carnistir whimpered. Even now the silver-haired boatswain mocked him. Do it, then, coward! Be useful for once, and gut him like you did me!

Carnistir stood over the Elf-spider, shaking like a leaf with his cold hand heavy  on his pommel, but he could not draw.  

Hush, woman! he wanted to scream at the nameless spectre. Fly to Mandos where you belong, and plague me no more! 

She swam before his eyes, and dissolved into the stranger’s maimed face. 

“At least tell me your name,” Carnistir begged, setting a desperate price on his blood-guilt.

Now, at last, the stranger paid it in full. “I was once Nelwë,” wheezed the ruined voice. “Nelwë of the Teleri.”

Carnistir drew, and the short hunting dagger weighed his hand like the peaks of Thangorodrim. Nelwë ‘s eyes were in his as he moved closer, wholly focused on the one who would kill him, and it seemed Nelwë was the one giving comfort, for Carnistir was crying.

Then Maitimo struck, quick as a swooping hawk. 

His blade was keen and newly forged, enough so to wholly sever Nelwë’s head. It rolled away, and Carnistir leapt back with a gasp, but there was no bright red, no jetting gush of ruby. Nelwë had truly been more spider than elf - his blood welled slow and blue.

[Ungoliant] went down into Beleriand, and dwelt beneath Ered Gorgoroth, in that dark valley that was after called Nan Dungortheb, the Valley of Dreadful Death, because of the horror that she bred there. For other foul creatures of spider form had dwelt there since the days of the delving of Angband, and she mated with them, and devoured them; and even after Ungoliant herself departed, and went whither she would into the forgotten south of the world, her offspring abode there and wove their hideous webs.

The Silmarillion, Quenta Silmarillion, Ch 9, Of the Flight of the Noldor

Chapter End Notes

Old horrors and new ones line up to torment poor Carnistir, and it seems there's something like pity left in Maitimo's heart after all.
Of course I'm dying to know what you think of Órembar/Many. He's my very first OM (Original Maia/ Original Monster), and I'm quite proud of him. Many thanks to Lyra for creating a bespoke Quenya Name for him.
What do you think of Maitimo's dubious charity?
A comment would make my day, especially on this chapter. It was a hard nut to crack, taking two full rewrites, so your feedback is very much appreciated.
Skipping Friday's update has messed with my planning a bit. I won't be able to update tomorrow, so the final chapter will be posted on Wednesday.
See you then!
IS

Even at this distance the soot stung Carnistir’s nose and throat, but tonight he found that scorched-earth stench of burning forest sweeter than Yavanna’s roses. He stood beside Maitimo, close enough that he could feel his brother’s warmth where their shoulders touched, and watched Nan Dungortheb burn. 

Erestor and Canissë had done their utmost with what supplies they had carried - including some of that vile incendiary mixture of sulphur, naphtha and quicklime that Erestor devised for the swan-ships. 

Being set alight from all directions had effectively quenched Órembar’s interest in capturing its unwilling guests. 

From this hilltop they could see the fire-lines roaring across the landscape. Sparks rose on a whirlwind of smoke, spreading the flames until they engulfed the entire web-strangled wood. 

Summer lingered still in Beleriand, and it had been a dry one, leaving yellowed grass and tinder-dry brushland. The Fëanorians had lit an inferno hot enough to raise a fire-cloud. The flames stained the mushrooming umbrella of smoke in leaping shades of crimson. Its black thunderheads had risen so high they blotted out the very stars. 

At the edges of Carnistir’s mind, Órembar’s call had turned to a roar of pain and rage, but even this conflagration had not sufficed to silence it. A horrid little shudder ran all down Carnistir’s back as he recalled the moving tide of spiders that swarmed northward towards the slopes of the Ered Gorgoroth, fleeing for the safety of bare rock and snow.

“We cannot kill it, can we?” Carnistir asked, and looked aside to see the scarred lines of Maitimo’s face harden. 

“Not even if we somehow set the very mountains on fire. A single spider is enough for it to survive, and in time it will regrow.” Maitimo passed his left hand over his face, wiping at the soot-streaks. “It is a strong and ancient Maia. Singing it out will take great Power.” 

“We were fools to attempt it.” Carnistir took care to shoulder part of the blame. 

“Not fools,” Maitimo said bluntly. “Nan Dungortheb is a flaw, a weak point in the leaguer of Angband. We had to try and seal it. At any cost.”

“Even at the cost of our lives?”

“Remember what we swore!” That wild fervour had returned to Maitimo’s eyes. “Our lives are forfeit if we fail to fulfil our Oath.” 

“Even so, we must suffer Órembar to linger here.” Carnistir breathed deeply. “It may lure in another Elf.” He shuddered at the recollection of Nelwë’s final moments.

“Thank you, Nelyo,” he blurted out, dropping the wall of formality that had grown between them. “Thank you for … dispatching Nelwë.”

Maitimo gave him a knowing look. 

Carnistir blinked against tears, and the rivers of fire below melted and bled into stains of glowing brightness before his eyes. He never told a living soul about the silver-haired boatswain, but somehow her death seemed small and meaningless in the face of all Maitimo’s suffering, and he held his tongue.

“Do you never think of it?” Carnistir asked instead, hating the pleading tone in his own voice.

“What is Alqualondë, what is all of the Elves’ paltry infighting, in the face of the battle against Morgoth?” Maitimo said quickly.

Carnistir knew not what to answer him.

For a time, Maitimo watched the conflagration in silence, red light playing across his face. “For now, Órembar is crippled,” he said at last, firmly back into his role as General of the Eastern Leaguer. “All we can hope is to contain it until the day of our victory.” 

He turned towards Carnistir, gesturing with his stump as if he still had a hand there. He forgot, at times. “Once we regain our Silmarils, we shall be the masters of Beleriand. We shall come with Song and steel and the Holy Light on our brows. That will be the end of Órembar.”

Not for the first time, Carnistir could not help but wonder on which brows, exactly, Maitimo meant to place that holy light. Even if all things went their way, three jewels for seven brothers would spell a bitter quarrel. One he dearly hoped would stop at words alone.

As he drowned in his morose musings, the hardened shell around Maitimo’s mind opened the tiniest sliver, and when Carnistir turned in surprise, their eyes met and he saw it.

Maitimo smiled. That soft smile his big brother used to show as he carried little Carnistir, small and sleepy, in the crook of his arm. The smile Carnistir believed he would never see again after Angband. 

The sight of it now filled him with terror. Maitimo was not smiling at Carnistir, but at his impossible vision of victory.

“Órembar is but a Maia, and we cannot kill it!” Carnistir pleaded, throwing out the terrible truth that sat rotting in his stomach like spoiled meat ever since they crossed the Mindeb. “Do you not see it, Nelyo!?” he pleaded, sick with despair. “We are sworn to defeat the mightiest among the Valar, but we cannot even touch a mere Maia!”

“Then we must find a way.” Maitimo’s hand shot out, and from a clump of withered gorse he plucked a writhing spiderling, and crushed it in his fist. “Our Oath is all we have left, Carnistir. I intend to keep it.”

Thus spoke Maedhros and Maglor and Celegorm, Curufin and Caranthir, Amrod and Amras, princes of the Noldor; and many quailed to hear the dread words. For so sworn, good or evil, an oath may not be broken, and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world's end.

The Silmarillion, Quenta Silmarillion, Ch 9, Of the Flight of the Noldor

Chapter End Notes

And that concludes or horrid Halloween tale. Thank you so much for sticking with me to the end
The brothers have buried the hatchet, in a way, but poor Carnistir doesn't get much comfort from it...
By now you probably know that comments are fuel to my creative fires, so please let me know your thoughts on the chapter and the story as a whole, make my day, and give me a much needed push towards finishing my WIPs!
Next up: a series of loosely connected drabbles in the Under Strange Stars 'verse for Comfortember. In the longer term, I'm working on a sequel for Northern Skies.
See you soon,
Idrils Scribe