Shadows Laid Before the Sun by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 7

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“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

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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