Part 01: Atandil by Eilinel's Ghost

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Atandil | Part 01 of the Atandil Series

- This is Part 1 of what will ultimately be a ~15-20 part series. Bear with me. This is setting the stage.

- This piece assumes the reader has either read or has a familiarity with the content of the Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth found in Morgoth’s Ring.

- Atandil: a name given to Finrod by the other Elves, meaning “friend of the Atani, or one who loves the Atani”

(Additional notes and translations at the end of the piece)

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409^th YEAR OF THE SUN, SUMMER

The North Marches of Dorthonion, the Fortress of Aegnor

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Finrod took a deep breath as he looked out over Ard-galen. Three months had passed since his sojourn in Ladros and the weight of deception lay heavy upon him. Tell him, she had charged at their parting and he gave his word, knowing full well that Andreth meant more than merely the admonition that followed. He was to tell his brother of all that had passed between them—of the hope unguessed, and of the bitter grief he could not now deny.

Yet here he found himself months later and still silence held rule of his tongue. 

At first he judged it prudent to let some little time pass. It would be rash, he thought, to raise the conversation when they had quarreled already within the first day of his arrival, tempers still hot from the council at Barad Eithel. Aegnor had broken openly with him for the first time in that assembly, but neither had the chance to address it at the time, for messengers from Ladros arrived bearing word of Boron’s death and Finrod left at once to join Bëor’s house in their time of mourning. 

The reality that their disagreement was rooted in commonality frustrated Finrod more than the conflict itself. Despite Aegnor’s accusations of complacency, they both sat uneasily under the prolonged siege, but where Aegnor’s valor was kindled to action by that threat, Finrod tended ever more toward caution in the growing conviction of its fragility. The unease had never fully left him since Aelin-uial, but of late it was becoming oppressive. Often he felt it as a tangible presence that intruded on the senses, a shadow at the edge of his sight, a pressure upon his lungs, a tinge of rot encroaching within his scent. In a way it reminded him of Valinor just before the Darkening, the vertigo of those days when there was always a third presence just out of sight, gone the moment you looked toward it but ever playing upon your peace. The vertigo was similar now, only the unsettling presence was an absence of presence: none of the others sensed it but he. 

Turukáno would have felt it, he mused, or at any rate he would have heeded that Finrod did. But where Turgon was now, only Eru could say. 

Eru and Ulmo, he corrected himself. He was certain now that he had not been the sole recipient of the Valar’s warnings and felt a fool for not considering that possibility sooner. Now those years were lost, years when they could have spoken of it while there was yet the chance or laid plans together perhaps that might have lightened the burden.

But Turgon had vanished and the other chieftains gave Felagund’s unease little heed besides a sympathetic nod, or a pointed jest from Maedhros about the badger cautioning from his den. And here upon the northern hills he could well understand his brother’s urgency and the High King’s counsel as he saw the shadow in the distance and tasted often, as he could tonight with the wind in the North, a mild, bitter tang upon the air. His own disquiet seemed indeed, as Aikanár had charged, little more than an excuse for inaction. Almost he feared that it too was a product of the Darkness, set upon him to leaden their feet and dull the chance of a definite victory.

But his heart was unconvinced of that, for he could trace its source beside the twilit waters. Neither could he shake the inexplicable certainty of heart, despite all urgency, that any preemptive assault would only hasten their destruction, not elude it. And thus Aegnor had spoken hotly against him among the gathered chieftains, and so again they had quarreled when Finrod returned from Ladros. 

He shifted in the wind, feeling still the bite of that later argument. There had been no decorum of the High King’s court to restrain their tongues and both said much in their fury of which they later repented. But pardoned or no the sting remained, and hard on the heels of such a storm was hardly the time to press on into his own confession. For confession it must be if he was to hold his word to Andreth. He could no longer escape his own culpability, and in telling his brother of their conversation he knew he must answer for it. And that would necessitate a full honesty at which he had hitherto balked. It would mean baring the pain that guided every word of his earlier counsel, and that was a wound he guarded jealously from any watching eye.

That, if he was honest with himself, was the true reason for the delay. The same foreboding washed over him that he first felt in Ladros and he saw it again: the mingled blaze of a spirit’s flame and the fires of war, rising in annihilation. He will go forth before thee and he will not wish to return. It would be only a few short years, the remaining life of an adaneth and no longer, and then Aikanár too would be lost to him till Arda’s ending. Lost to him forever, if Arda remade was naught but his own mere flight in a dream. Could he risk turning those remaining years to ice?

Of his own pain Finrod had spoken only to Belen, and then to none at all once Belen followed his father in death. He carried it as his own private agony, bitter and beautiful, the last surviving intimacy. 

Here again the regret reared its head. If he had been upfront with Aegnor from the start, it could have been a shared grief. There would be one other in Arda at least who knew the wound. Better even, one who understood it. And yet, was that not merely selfishness of another kind, to wish for camaraderie in suffering when the cost was his brother bearing the same anguish?

This was but the old reasoning reapplied. He shook his head to clear it. There was no longer even a shred of illusion to wrap about his eyes and show a path where he had the power to spare either of them. This doom was beyond him, beyond his power to circumvent and beyond his power to loose those it claimed.

A bell rang in the tower overhead and the sentinels stepped back from their posts, making way as a fresh line of soldiers ascended the walls to take their places. Finrod took another breath, then he too stepped away from the wall and looked after the departing sentries with a grimace. The bell may as well serve as his signal too. He removed a small scroll of parchment from where it lay tucked in his belt and contemplated it for a long moment, then turned his feet toward the fortress.

One thing about this unending war, he reflected darkly as he walked, was that it engendered a keen talent for flinging yourself at exactly that thing you longed to flee. Ten steps up, a short passage, an unembellished door. His feet followed the path as well-trained soldiers and crossed the threshold with only a muted protest. The rooms in this tower were less austere than the rest of the fortress. Aegnor was rigid in his principles and kept his dwellings in line with how he assessed their surroundings, a stronghold prepared for war and spare in the comforts and trappings of peace. But in this handful of rooms the severity eased and there was a simple, almost homely comfort to them that Finrod found restful. 

Aegnor was there before him, his chair tilted back on one leg and balanced at a precarious angle, his feet resting absently against the corner of the table. Like all trappings in the room, the table was simple in its design, adorned only by the four carved wolfhounds serving as its legs. Finrod smiled as he glanced at the nearest and recalled the unruly group upon which they were modeled. His aunt had brought them as a gift after Nerwen’s birth: Taltar, Rómar, Capaiton, and Rempamo. “One to mark each of your own litter,” Lalwen said to her brother as she handed him the basket of pups, and seemed endlessly amused at each subsequent visit by the chaos of these four great, bounding brutes crashing through the decorum of Arafinwë’s household. It was Rempamo holding this nearest corner, his crooked ear waiting to bruise any negligent passer. Angrod had protested the haphazard ear when the three brothers were carving, but Aegnor was firm. Rempa without his cockeyed ear was not Rempa, after all.

Finrod ran his hand over the wooden muzzle as he moved further into the room. “Who was it that Taltar doused in wine?” he asked, pouring a glass of his own from the sideboard. “Was it Ingil?”

“Mm.” Aegnor turned over the page in his hand and his lips twitched up at the edges. “Seven years of tactful diplomacy to seat those five at the same table and the merry havocs brought it to wreckage before the second course.”

“Poor Rúno,” Finrod chuckled at the memory as he joined his brother at the table, setting the rolled parchment to the side. “Never have I known a more precise steward, and he never stood a chance against five stone’s weight of fur hurling itself at him in greeting. I rather believe he thought father would dismiss him on the spot. I grant him the fear, I too had never seen him so furious.”

“The only instance, in fact, in which I ever recall him employing profanity.” Aikanár’s smile drifted mischievous and he swung the chair’s legs and his own back to the floor with a resounding thud. He gripped each side of the table and loomed up as he delivered a striking imitation of Arafinwë’s uncharacteristic wrath in a low, dangerous voice.

“That,” Finrod said as his brother finished, “was accurate to the point of discomfort.”

“I never guessed he knew such phrases.” 

Finrod raised an eyebrow as Aegnor crossed to refill his own glass of wine. “And where hadst thou the learning of them?”

“At the feet of the same teachers as thee, no doubt,” his brother retorted as he returned bearing the decanter along with him. “Who I suppose are also to answer for the vocabulary of atar aranya.”

“To the eloquence of uncles,” Finrod said as he raised his glass.

“The eloquence of uncles.” Aegnor returned the salute and sipped the wine, one luxury he did not temper, war or no. “He truly did appear ready to boil whoever set them loose.”

Finrod laughed despite himself. “Well do I remember it. It took me nearly a year to confess it was I who opened the door by mistake.” His smile faded as the words left his mouth and he drifted back into contemplation. The conscience had an uncanny way of holding you to task, he reflected as the slow minutes passed, and he settled his eyes on the wine glass in his hand. The stem was adorned with a tiny flock of cranes, their flight circling in a slow climb toward the rim, and he traced a finger along the delicate pattern. Nothing would be gained by delay. “On the topic of belated confessions, I should have told thee before that Belemir was my host in Ladros.” He felt the air go brittle between them. “He and his household.” 

“I see.” Aegnor’s face remained unmoved, except for a slight tightening of the jaw. “And is she well?”

Finrod sought vainly for a response as he recalled the bitter despair pressing through each of Andreth’s words.

“Has she wedded another, then? Is that the meaning of thy silence?” 

“Nay, she had no more inclination to that than thee.”

“Had.” Aegnor kept his voice level, but his fingers whitened against the table. “Ingoldo…”

“Nay, nay I would never keep that from thee. She lives, and is hale and strong yet.” He paused for a breath and then pressed ahead. “We spoke together during my stay, for many long hours and in great depth. She charged me to tell thee of it and, forgive me, till now I have not done so.”

“Why?”

“Because I feared the truth would anger thee, and I feared that through anger I might lose thee. But there is no explanation without the whole of it,” Finrod said as he reached for the parchment, “so I have written out the conversation. It seemed the simplest way, besides ensuring I recounted its entirety and was not tempted to overlook a detail in the telling. Though to speak truly, I believe I’d have recorded it regardless. What she told me of their traditions… Aikanár, it was a revelation—beyond anything I had imagined and my heart leapt at her words. I—” For a moment his enthusiasm had taken over and his eyes shone. Then he recalled himself to the conversation at hand and held out the pages with an apologetic grimace. Aegnor hesitated, then took them and spread them out on the table before him.

“What will I find here,” he asked, “besides your fascination with collected lore?”

“Clarity, I hope. “ Finrod’s voice was subdued again. “And honesty, though I fear not without its attendant pain.”

Aegnor’s face took on the cold impassivity of battle as he met his brother’s eye, then drew a breath and turned his eyes to the page.

Finrod lingered for several minutes, then rose and crossed to stand beside the window. His presence at the table felt suddenly intrusive, an unwelcome eavesdropper on an intimacy he had already violated as intermediary. But he knew his brother would not ask him to depart, especially when the words in question were written in his own hand. So instead he set the room’s width between them and fixed his attention outside the tower. It was a masquerade of privacy, at least.

The minutes dragged forward with only the sound of Aegnor’s fingers moving restlessly upon the table. Finrod retraced the memory as he looked out into the night and tried to gauge how quickly he might read, attempting to chart the pace and follow his progress through the debate. Would he move gradually over the words as the first echo of her voice since their parting? Or would he hurry past, a hand touching the iron as briefly as possible to gauge if it burned?

He glanced back and saw his brother outlined against the light of the hearth. Aikanár sat stiffly, the broad shoulders tense with resolve, one hand propped against his forehead, the other fidgeting over the grains and knots of the table, the golden hair burnished blood-red in the firelight. A fond smile tugged at the corners of Finrod’s lips as he took in the silhouette. The ever untamable hair danced a precarious balance of appearing both unkempt and immaculate. In its current state it was particularly striking, cropped severely these past four centuries to never allow a strand below the jawline as it declared its own silent rebuke of the Siege’s pride. The hair, the tower, the martial cut of every robe—the youngest lord of Dorthonion ensured you never forgot the war lying beyond the siege lines without ever uttering a word. And studying him now, his brother found he loved him all the more for it.

Finrod turned back toward the night air. He realized he had begun watching Aegnor these past months in the same manner he had watched Bëor as their years together drew on. Each time he caught sight of him he felt the pang of transience and gathered the image to him in deliberate preservation, solidifying it but turning the present into memory before its time.

It was a blade with no hilt, this foreknowledge of an ending, wounding the bearer more than it served as a tool.

He heard a rustle as his brother rolled the papers back together and set them on the table. A gentle sound, the wisp of a falling leaf, and as irrevocable. He stood frozen as the minutes stretched into a deafening silence, until at last he willed himself to action and turned away from the window. Aikanár’s eyes awaited him, burning.

“Was it necessary to tell me?”

“Better, I deemed, than to leave a deception between us.” Finrod’s voice faltered. “And I gave her my word.”

“Thy word could be excused with far less than this.”

“And thus ever after a fraud for binding to excuse and not integrity. Should I have lied to thee instead and kept this burden to myself?”

“A fair burden for thee to bear, I should say.”

Finrod was silent. 

“Tell me—and tell me truly, Ingoldo. Knowing this, would thy former counsel have been otherwise?”

“There is only distortion in the mirror of woulds and mights.”

“Answer my question.” Aegnor’s voice was nearly a hiss. “Would thy counsel have been otherwise or was her pain always to be the tribute paid?”

“Canst thou think it of me? What I counseled was for her sake as well as thine. But had I known before…no, hanno, I know not. Perhaps. I think still I may have tried to spare thee.”

“To spare me!” Aegnor laughed bitterly and gestured at the scroll. 

“Some agonies cannot be guessed until they are come.”

“And some are made no less bitter in the escape.”

“Nay hold thy anger until I’ve told thee all.” Finrod sought the ring on his left forefinger and seemed to draw courage from the iron band, sitting incongruously beside its fellows. “For many years I have been dishonest with thee. I found ways to ensure I never lied outright, but the omission itself has become a greater deception than I can bear. Especially with thee. Especially when…when the loss at the heart of it is a shared…” His voice broke at the crisis and he passed a hand over his face. The mask of serenity fell, leaving the pristine lines of his features drawn together in pain, and Aegnor had not seen his brother’s face so creased with exhaustion since their years on the ice. “I convinced myself the situations were different. I built labyrinths within my reason to justify the pretense, and in their twisting ways I wandered blind till faced with her grief—the tribute paid in pain, as thou hast named it. Till then I could contend that I suffered so thou might be spared; I grieved so that thou might hold love in memory untarnished. That I learned at the feet of Doom to thus keep its step from thine own neck, and so should goodness come of it. Eru forgive me, I was wrong.”

Aegnor watched him impassively. “Is this thy attempt to tell me of Bëor?”

The remaining composure drained from the king’s face and he stared at his brother. 

“Findekáno guessed it years ago.” 

“Findekáno!” The unexpectedness of this lifted Finrod’s reply higher than he intended and he was surprised by the note of panic in his own voice.

“Evidently it became clear when thou and he negotiated the northward migration with Aradan and Baran, and Bëor beside. He and Nelyo told it as rather a good joke between them—Atandil. I did not laugh,” he added as a spasm of pain crossed his brother’s face. 

Finrod crossed to the table and emptied his wine glass, hesitated a moment, then filled it again. “How long ago did he tell thee?” he asked at last.

“A few years after Bëor’s death.” Aegnor’s expression softened and he added gently, “Before thy hair had regrown.”

“Ah.” Finrod’s attempt to laugh loosed a choked sob instead. “Yes, that was foolish of me.”

“It was mourning.”

“It was careless.” Another wave of grief tightened his jaw. He returned to his chair and rested heavily against the table.

“Did it matter so greatly whether it was known?”

“No, not on the face of it. But ask thyself, would the others have hearkened to a word of my counsel on the Atani were it known I was his lover? Aught I said would have been be dismissed out of hand.”

“And likely with fair cause. Thou wert hardly an impartial advisor already, even without one as the king’s kept favorite.”

“Lá!” Finrod flinched. “Must thou term it so crudely?

“Why, is ‘vassal’ considered more decent?”

The ensuing pause was frigid. “Now thou art deliberately cruel.”

“I am granted a cruelty or two, I think.” Aikanár rose and began pacing the length of the table and back to ease his fury. “But I will confess, knowing that of thee was what brought me to seek thy guidance.”

“And receive in return not even the courtesy of truth.” Finrod leaned his face against his hands. “What a hypocrite thou must think me.”

“I think thee many things,” Aegnor replied ambiguously. “But be at peace on this at least: I knew of thy grief before the counsel that led me to this road—and knew it was the cause.”

“Intentions do not absolve the deed. To say I meant well while driving a knife through thee is nevertheless to press a blade into thy flesh.”

“Yes. And I am angry with thee. But it is Anger held alongside her sister Sorrow, and tempered thus by the company.” Aegnor left off his pacing and came to stand once more at the head of the table, where he added in a practiced voice, “Temper we have named our bent to fury, and tempered it should be ere we let it flow forth. Else we are but ruled as the darkness would have us and creatures at the mercy of fury.”

“Father’s words.”

“I will not break with thee.”

Finrod could not bring himself to raise his eyes, but reached out and clasped his brother’s hand. The grip was returned and with it he felt the vice-hold upon his spirit loosen. The remaining years would not be ice, at least, and the relief of that flooded his heart. “Ask me, then,” he said as he gradually won back his composure, “whatever it is thou wouldst know.”

“And what should I wish to know but ‘why’?”

“Why indeed. And how can I answer it but to bring thee in full view of my own pretenses?” He clasped his hands together as he sought for the words to explain. Now that the conversation was upon him, Finrod found it was not the dread of revelation that brought the greatest difficulty, rather the most daunting task was admitting the intricate web of reasoning he’d fenced about himself this past century. He had not argued it to any save Bëor, and to speak it aloud now was to conjure that ghost alongside them. Almost he wished he was faced with the blunt anger of his brother’s fists instead. He fortified himself with another draft of wine. “To understand the reasons, thou must first know that I’ve believed I inflicted far greater pain through keeping him by me than had I turned away ere a deep bond took root. Remember, we knew little of the Secondborn in those days and every difference we discovered necessarily by degrees, one year at a time, until suddenly you found your hands were empty and the reckoning come. Of course I knew, even in those first months by Thalos, that they were transitory in ways we were not, but in my naivety I assumed it was after the manner of the casári and only learned my error when it was too late. By that time, I had already brought him to dwell with me in Nargothrond. It was placing a river’s fish within the brined waves and saying to it, ‘live and breathe!’ I watched while he withered, alone among our seemingly endless spring. To all around him he was the first of his kind and a curiosity, and thus every change in him was a discovery and a fascination, which only marked time’s passage the more sharply in his own senses. I saw the suffering it bred in him. Yet he stayed for love of me, and in my selfishness I kept him.” 

His voice failed and he fell once more to twisting the plain, iron band around his finger. Aegnor watched him, but did not speak.

“I wanted to believe there was a right choice that would have prevented it,” Finrod continued at last. “I thought if I’d seen the danger earlier or shown greater control, that if I had broken with him at the start, then it might have ended differently. A brief pain, but bearable, and soon mended for each. That is what I hoped for thee. I thought if I could steer thee at the outset or warn thee soon enough, then it was within my power to spare the both of you. My failings in that regard,” he looked grimly at his brother and touched his hand to the parchment, “have been made abundantly clear, in at least half my aim.”

“In the whole of it,” Aikanár said sharply. The wine decanter was empty and he crossed to retrieve a second from the sideboard, each movement deliberate and drawing out the time. When he returned to the table, he filled both cups and then sat, facing his brother this time. “Tell me next, if thou wilt,” he said in a voice as brittle as etched glass, “how it is when it comes, the anguish unguessed?”

“The parting or what follows?”

“The parting. I can see well enough in thee what waits after.”

Finrod was quiet before answering, then drained his cup and turned to meet his brother’s eyes, letting the ósanwë move into the space between their words and expose what could not be articulated. “I was beside him when he died,” he said softly and Aegnor felt rather than heard the scream of anguish emanating from his brother’s fëa, not in memory only but a constant presence, a gaping wound ever cutting anew. “It was his that departed, but I felt my own soul tear at the severing, a searing sharper than flesh rending, and the powerless rush of free-fall. I am still falling,” he added hoarsely and pressed his palms against the table for equilibrium. “I caught hold of him and all my resolve to be steadfast at the end failed me. I pleaded by every name I knew for him to stay by me yet, to wait even an hour before the summons must be answered.” The light in his eyes dimmed as he spoke and his voice was hollow. “But I held a corpse.”

Aegnor reached out despite himself and rested a hand against his brother’s cheek.

“It is the emptiness, Aikanár. There is nothing in the wake. When we perish, there is at least the flicker at the edge of sense, the fëa held still within the same walls of time and creation. But there was nothing when he passed. There was only absence, only negation. He was beside me and then in the heart’s next beat he was utterly, irrevocably gone. Even estel shudders in the face of such,” he added in a flat voice and rose, crossing to stand once more beside the open window. He set his hand against the frame to ground himself and drew the night air into his lungs. The Valacirca had risen while they spoke and now it blazed before him in reprimand of his final words. He grimaced at the sky and turned away.

“Then hast thou naught but regret?” Aegnor’s voice drifted to him as though from a distance. “Or has any goodness remained as well?”

“Goodness?”

“In loving him. In choosing Bëor over prudence. Was it worth the cost?”

“Balan,” he corrected, and his voice was almost a caress in the intonation. “I never say his name now. I lose myself in the chorus of others’ voices and call him by the one he gave himself, the name he chose in contrariety.” He let his eyes drift back to the Sickle in the northern sky. “Yes, it was worth the cost.”

“In a time of war.”

“Even in a time of war.”

“And by what labyrinth didst thou justify it for thyself, since by such counsel I was reasoned from my own union?”

“Because there was no question of a child,” Finrod replied almost inaudibly, after a long hesitation. “And children are the foundation of that custom.”

The sharp trill of splintering glass cut through the air and Finrod spun around in alarm. But Aegnor sat motionless in the same position as before, his left hand clenching a fist so tight the nails drew blood, and the other loose upon the table where it fell after the sudden reflex hurled the wine glass from the table. The golden cranes lay in a huddled flock beside the wall while the wine bled out in a puddle around them.

“Aikanár?”

“The breadth of what thou hast taken from me…”

“Aikanáro…hanno…” Finrod crossed the space between them and knelt before the other’s chair, taking his brother’s face in his hands as he had when Aegnor was a child. “Ávatyara!”

“Forgive thee? What was thy wisdom in the end but a thief robed in compassion? I trusted thee.”

“And ever shall I rue the hurt it caused thee. I should have confessed all and instead I deceived thee, thinking in my pride that I had power to spare thee. I wronged thee.” He held for a brief moment, then the words escaped him. “But I did not command thee.”

“Do not dare,” Aegnor snarled, “do not dare speak reminders as though I’ve not impaled myself every hour since Aeluin upon my own complicity. I know this was my choice. But know also I would have chosen otherwise but for thee.”

Finrod withdrew as though struck and retreated to stand behind his own chair, his hands resting helplessly over the back. “Which nature would they inherit?” he asked at last, his voice heavy. “The father’s or the mother’s? And for which nature should one hope? For by the one inheritance a child would lose its mother ere it reached full maturity—with ever swifter passage for each successive offspring. Thus even in peacetime would the sundering we dread of war be achieved. Or should one hope instead for the alternate bequest? Would it be a kinder fate for the father to watch through ever gathering centuries as his children withered before him, his children’s children, and their children’s children—on through the endless years till he was nothing but a relic, fraught with pain?”

“Grant me the dignity of assuming I’d have pondered that before thy prompting.” 

“I do. But how could I have counseled thee to it? I had watched Baran and Belen perish already by the time you came to me—little more than children when I met them and beloved to me as my own sons.”

“I know all of this.”

“I cradled Boron as an infant in my arms and you came to me mad with love for his grandchild. Four generations between my love and thine and yet you spoke to one whose grief was a new wound. And now I’ve buried that infant as the body of a feeble old man. As I buried his father. As I buried his father’s father. Believe me when I tell thee it cannot be imagined it until it is done—and what greater agony should thou face were it thine own flesh and blood.” His tears had held back for the whole of the exchange so far, but he felt them now stinging hot upon his cheeks. “Hanno, how could I counsel thee toward what yet bled within me?”

“And how could I choose, aranya, what was contrary to thy will?”

Finrod’s face crumpled at the title and a choked cry escaped his lips. “How I am paid in bitterness for the desires of my youth!” he cried. “Manwë take all kingdoms and powers from my hands, I want them not—if this is to be the cost. I spoke to thee as a brother, not a king. As do I now.”

“The twain cannot be divided. Thou art both to me.”

“And thus thou wouldst say I am never fully either?”

“I would.” And with that Aegnor’s wrath lay spent and weariness began to seep through his voice. “But on that count, at least, it is through no fault of thine own.”

“That I find increasingly difficult to believe,” Finrod filled his own glass and passed it to his brother in place of its shattered companion, “for ever the heart seeks to claim rule of its faults, that thereby it might have power to master them.”

“Stop trying to rule for one damned minute and perhaps our words may yet have profit.”

A smile split Finrod’s face despite himself. “A point scored.” He reached down and began removing his rings, first the decorative, then the signets, and finally the twined serpents, which he set to rest between them. “There, no more trappings while we speak. This only shall remain,” he said, lifting his left hand with the iron band still clasped about the forefinger, “for the sake of honestly, given over-late. And because king or farmhand, it constrains me till the uttermost end.”

“Might not time bring renewal? Thou art still free.”

“Nay. I swore the binding words in my passion.”

“As did our father’s father, and yet we walk this earth. Death without remission,” Aegnor said quietly, “was never accounted for in our customs.”

Finrod’s glance was skeptical and he made no reply beside.

“My turn now to play the hypocrite,” Aegnor said with a wry smile. “I counsel thee to inconstancy while thou knowest full well I shall never leave Námo’s halls once granted my residence.” He turned his focus to the glass before him and in mindless imitation traced his fingers along the golden wings. “Wilt thou?”

There was a long silence before his brother replied. “I know not. Nor shall I know, I think, until the choice is before me.”

“Always supposing one is yet granted us under the ban.”

“Always supposing that. I cannot see my way to it now, but it may be that in Námo’s halls there is healing, even for such hurts as ours.”

“It may be—if such healing is to be found within the bounds of Arda. But even were it offered, Ingoldo, I should not seek it. For me, the memory of possibility and the pain of forsaking it cannot be untwined. I will not heal from it, for I will not abandon her a second time. Not even in memory.”

“Would she wish that upon thee?”

“Yes.” Aegnor laughed and the sound was a strange mixture of bitterness and affection. “Yes, she would. And far be it from me to fault her. She bears it for all her remaining years, why not I for mine? That union I will not deny.”

“As ever, thou hast the greater courage between us.” Finrod smiled sadly. “Thy spirit quails not to face the Doom head on and accept the price: pain for love’s purchase, loss for what was found, grief the wages of bliss. Whereas I, in cowardice, sought to spare thee what thou didst not fear. I was wrong.”

Finrod rose and gathered his items from the table. He hesitated, then stepped toward his brother and with three fingers brushed the hair back from his forehead, then touched his lips first between the brows, then to the hairline. It was a gesture made by their father a thousand times and Aegnor recognized it in an instant, and felt a knot of emotion tangle in his throat. 

“Forgive me, Ambaráto.”

Anger and sorrow struggled once again for mastery and Aegnor did not meet his brother’s eye until the receding footsteps had reached the door. “I will,” he managed at last as his brother laid his hand to the latch. “Only not quite yet.”

---

Chapter End Notes

TRANSLATIONS
- The names of the four wolfhounds are roughly attempting to approximate: Taltar (unsteady/wobbling one), Rómar (horn/trumpet), Capaiton (one who leaps and bounds), Rempamo (crooked one)
- Atar aranya: [Quenya] “royal father”
- Hanno: [Quenya] “brother (diminutive)”
- Lá: [Quenya] interjection, “please”
- Casári: [Quenya] term for Dwarves, based on Khazad
- Ávatyara: [Quenya] “forgive (me)”
- Aranya: [Quenya] my king
- Ambaráto: Aegnor’s given name, meaning either “Champion of Doom” or “High Champion”

ADDITIONAL NOTES
- Per The Nature of Middle-earth, Felagund was "said traditionally to have meant "den-dweller," or specifically "brock, badger" and to have been given in its Sindarized form to Finrod by the sons of Fëanor at least partly in derision.
- Nelyo: shortened form of Nelyafinwë, Maedhros' father-name