Part 03: Unfriends by Eilinel's Ghost

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Unfriends | Part 03 of the Atandil Series

A QUICK EDAIN PRIMER for anyone who doesn’t obsessively carry the Bëorian family tree around rent-free in their heads:
Balan: the Atani chieftain later known as Bëor
Baran: Balan/Bëor’s eldest son
Belen: Balan/Bëor’s second son
Original characters: Estreth (sister of Balan's deceased wife), Hathus

CW: wound/wound care

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310^th YEAR OF THE SUN, SUMMER

The Woods of Ossiriand, Near the River Thalos

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Caught in a limb above the waterline was the remains of a deer skull, stripped clean by the air and water and bleached white in the summer sun. Belen stood transfixed by the sight of it. It hung like an omen suspended above the water of the tributary stream, dangling in a patch of light over the ripples like a god of bygone days. There had been many legends among his mother’s people of the deer folk and their lords, and he found himself drawn toward the skull as he had been to those tales in childhood. It was an exceptionally large skull and must have belonged to a great stag. It had, he confirmed as he set aside his spear and climbed out onto the trunk to examine the broken antlers. Even fractured as they were, the majesty remained. They must have been two or three times the length when they were whole.

“You were a right old patriarch…” he murmured to the bones as he untangled the points from the twigs and vines. “A grand king of summers.” He rinsed it in the stream, then held it up into the sunlight where it glistened, regal, as the water dripped from its edges. An image rose in his memory of the sheer cliffsides among the passes of the Ered Luin. Across their face had run a parade of rudimentary figures painted in various poses; warriors, children, hunters and healers, a figure carrying a babe in its arms, another run through with a spear, wild beasts with small figures clutched their maws. But throughout the dance of paintings was one in particular that arrested Belen’s attention, an imposing figure that led each group through the tapering cleft, the recurring silhouette of a man’s body bearing a stag’s skull upon his head. He led the hunters, he stood among the ravaging beasts, he held out a hand to the figure bearing the infant, he bent over the healers at their work. Belen’s imagination had been captured by the skull man, as he dubbed him in juvenile shorthand, and he trailed behind their march to study the intricacies of the various depictions.

He felt a similar intrigue now at the tactile presence of the skull within his hands. He was overtaken by the impulse to enact those images himself, alone here in the woods with no brother to tease him for the frivolity or friends to laugh at his earnest fascination. He undid the leather band of his tunic and pulled it free, running it instead through gaps in the jawbone.

Belen lifted the skull and placed it on his own. It was large enough that it rested over his head rather than upon it and he shifted the position so he could peer out from the empty eyes. It was easier to see than he expected, little different from looking through the carved masks they wore during the longest night, or for celebrations at the turn of midsummer. He grinned as it stayed balanced when he removed his hands, then he tied the band firmly under his chin to hold it in place, retrieved his spear, and stepped forward, mimicking the movements of the painted figures.

Belen shifted his arms to carry the spear as the paintings had shown, his right arm extended parallel with the ground and crooked back so the lower end of the spear rested upon his upper arm while his hand braced just above, his left arm held up with the palm outward. He stepped forward slowly, easing the ball of his foot onto the pine carpet, lowering the heel deliberately to join it. It was a dance with the forest floor and with the trees about him and he moved faster with each step, surprised by how quietly he flew across the waiting ground, leaping over fallen branches and slipping between the clumps of bracken. He had become fleet as a deer, he thought wildly as he ran, he belonged to their folk.

Then suddenly he froze at the edge of a clearing. There before him in the sunlight was a young stag, tall and strong with antlers arching up in challenge. Belen was breathless as he watched. How he had managed to come this close without the creature fleeing was inexplicable. Perhaps that was why the skull man donned his helm of old, Belen mused. Estreth’s tales of the deer folk included myths of a hunter garbing himself in the herd’s hide and thus gaining his proximity unawares. If the skull man was of the deer folk as Belen’s father had surmised, then maybe what he saw on the cliff walls was this very practice.

Belen moved carefully behind the shadow of the tree beside him. He had never killed in a hunt. There had been several chances over the recent years, but ever he held back at the last moment and Baran or Hathus would take the kill. But crouched here he did not feel the creeping nausea that typically assailed him in these moments. Here, with his face shrouded behind the heavy skull, he was not quite himself. It was the skull man stalking this deer, he fancied, not Belen. It was the skull man who crouched gradually into a position where he had a clear line of sight to the grazing animal, the skull man who shifted the spear back to balance its weight in his hand. It was the skull man who lifted that spear, launched into a quick sprint, and pulled his throwing arm back into an arc as the deer’s head shot up at the approach.

It was Belen who felt a searing pain strike his side and fell senseless to the ground.

❈ ❈ ❈

Finrod retrieved another apple from the basket over his arm and held it out to the nearest donkey. Balan and his sons teased him relentlessly for having taken to tending to the little herd, but he found both the duties and the creatures a pleasant diversion. He had little exposure to them outside the few that accompanied casári trading caravans and discovered to his surprise that he quite enjoyed their company. They were affectionate and amiable souls. He smiled as this nearest one mimicked his step backward, then closed the gap between them again at his prompting and took the apple from his outstretched palm. “Yes, that one was not quite ripe, was it, little brother?” he mumbled to the beast in Quenya. “I promise thee I gleaned carefully, but the trees are withholding this season.” 

The donkey snorted as it chewed the fruit and Finrod chuckled, reaching out to scratch its neck. He reached back into the basket and procured a ripe apple as it finished.

“Here. Not a word to your brothers and sisters, but I owe thee another after that.” 

A velvety tickle against his cheek announced that his own horse had meandered over at the prospect of apples and he reached up to run his hand over her nose in greeting. Ëassarië looked over the donkeys’ pens with something akin to pity, as she was allowed to graze unrestrained around the encampment and seemed to take this as a matter of course for all creatures. She nibbled at her master’s ear in protest for the delay and he held an apple out to her with a chuckle. “Glutton. Thou canst eat them from tree or fallen whenever it pleases thee and theirs must be brought by hand. Leave them their delicacies, Váya.” He ran his hands over her ears and stroked the dappled grey shoulder affectionately. Sea-stone he had named her after the shores of Alqualondë that filled his childhood, but Váya she was now after their years together, the stormy sea that carried him where it would.

Váya finished the apple and then rested her nose on his shoulder as he continued distributing fruit to the herd, nibbling his ear now and then to see if she could cajole him into another offering.

It was a pleasant way to pass the late afternoon. Finrod reflected once again how reluctant he was to leave this peaceful existence for the sharp dance of court. He could spend another season here, surely; perhaps even winter with them before it became necessary to send word to Barad Eithel of the discovery. They could be his own yet awhile before the grudges and feuds tangled about them as well and pulled them into its mire.

He took a deep breath to clear his thoughts. That future would come in its own time. For now there was the late summer sun, the golden evening, Váya’s breath against his ear, and the contentment of simple tasks.

A ripple in the air. There was a flicker of unease and then a sudden rush.

Balan.

Finrod felt the other’s panic strike his perception like a blow and was running even before Balan’s cry reached his ear. In a glance, his eyes took in the scene before him: the camp in sudden stillness, one of the Laiquendi staggering through the clearing, a limp body slung in his arms, Balan and Baran sprinting toward him. 

It was Belen in his arms. 

Finrod ran faster and heard Estreth cry out the boy’s name as she raced after them.

Balan reached the stranger first and caught hold of his son’s shoulders, sharing the weight between them, as Baran and Finrod arrived together and each took one of the legs. An arrow protruded at an ugly angle from the boy’s side and his eyes fluttered as Estreth cupped her hands beneath his head and they carried him back into the camp.

“Hathus!” Baran shouted, “Spears and surround the perimeter. Is it goblins?” he asked in a quieter voice, looking to his father as they laid Bel gently beside the fire. 

“I don’t know.” Balan shook his head and grasped Belen’s face in his hands. “Belen, do you hear me?” He slapped the boy’s cheek when he did not respond, his voice urgent. “Belen!”

The eyes opened and he drew in a ragged gasp. “Vatta,” he whispered and caught a handful of his father’s shirt. “Vatta…”

“Hush, lad.” Balan wrapped his hand over Belen’s. “Don’t try to speak.”

“Lie back, Belen.” Estreth’s voice was a stern command and she pushed Baran aside to kneel and cut away the tunic with her knife.

“This is not an Orcish arrow,” Finrod spoke softly in Sindarin and looked up into the eyes of the Laiquendë opposite him. He recognized him now as he regarded the features. Orndaer, if he remembered aright, a young Elf distantly connected to the house of Lenwë. The fletching of the arrow matched the flock in his quiver. “What have you done?”

“It was a mistake.” Orndaer’s voice was laced with fear. “I had only a fleeting glance. I thought he was of the glamhoth.”

“Of the glamhoth!” The two Elves launched into a heated exchange and Balan could understand only the occasional word. But his eyes had followed Finrod’s and he too traced the mirrored fletching.

“Dagnir!” he hissed and leapt forward over his son.

“Balan!” Finrod caught him and dragged him back, shifting to place himself between the two of them. “It was a mistake. Do not make it a blood feud.” He pushed him back again as he fought against the restraint. “Balan!”

“He has killed my son…”

“Killed him? He—“ Finrod broke off as he recalled his previous misconceptions of their fragility and the color drained from his face. “Estreth?”

She shook her head as she examined the wound and her eyes moved to meet Balan’s. “It is rooted deep.”

Finrod knelt opposite her and moved his fingers gently over Belen’s abdomen as the boy whimpered and gritted his teeth. “Tell me the precise danger.”

“Blood loss, always,” Estreth murmured. “The lungs should be safe, it’s low enough, but it must have punctured the entrails. I can’t see how it wouldn’t, especially carried bent up as he was,” she added with a dark glance at Orndaer, who was now restrained by Baran. “If the gut is breached, there is little we can do. He will hemorrhage—or spared that, the wound will putrefy and a fever burn him away.”

“Madja…” Belen whispered and fear stood out among the drops of sweat on his face.

“Shh...” She smoothed the hair back from his forehead. “Stay still, little one. Nothing is certain.”

“I will tend to it,” Finrod said, pulling his outer tunic over his head and folding it up to set beneath Belen’s head. “I have some moderate skill in healing, and while there is much I’ve yet to learn of your kind, I can mend what you name.” He set his hand on the boy’s shoulder and met his gaze. “Have I your permission, Bel?” Belen nodded with an effort and Finrod looked up at his friend. “Balan?”

“Do what you will,” Balan’s voice was tight. “What choice have I else?”

“Build up the fire,” Estreth said, turning to Hathus, “and fetch water and any clean cloths you can lay to hand. I’ll be but a moment,” she added and sprinted back toward the huts as Balan moved to take her place beside his son.

Finrod rolled his sleeves and pulled his hair back in a swift motion. “Orndaer,” he said quietly, shifting to Sindarin once more as he wove the strands into a braid, “if I sent you to gather what I need, do I have your assurance that you would return and stay until his fate is known?”

“Yes, lord.” Orndaer did not hesitate. “I do not seek to flee. My deed was rash and I will abide by its consequences.”

“What’s he saying?” Baran asked in a gruff tone and his grip tightened about the Laiquendë’s arm.

“He answered what I asked. There are things I require and he knows what to seek.”

“No. Send someone else.” 

“Baran—“

“I will not release him till I know my brother lives.”

“Nor I,” added his father. “Till that time, he is naught but my foe.”

“Then make of your foe a tool. Time is of the essence.”

“How do I know he’ll not run back to his own folk if we turn him loose?”

“If he wished Belen’s blood on his hands, he would have let him lie where he fell.”

“And if he wished peace from my hands, he’d have broken his arrow ere he nocked it.”

“Balan!” Finrod caught hold of his arm, his voice sharp. “There is no time for this. I have his word. He will return or you will hold me accountable, even to the death if you will have it so. I need assistance and he knows what to seek—and where.”

“Send him.” Estreth had returned, bearing a heavy satchel, and she dropped to her knees beside Balan. “Don’t be a fool. We need haste.”

Balan looked from one to the other, then swore under his breath as Belen gripped his hand tighter. “On your heads be it. Let him go free,” he said to Baran, then turned back to Finrod. “But I will not answer for his fate if my boy does not live out the night.”

“I hear you.” Finrod turned back to Orndaer and gave a series of instructions, speaking too quickly for Balan to understand more than a few words as he stroked his son’s hair and leaned down to kiss the burning forehead. Orndaer disappeared into the trees, fleet as the wind, and Finrod turned back to examine the wound. “Forgive me for this,” he said softly, then took the arrow in his fingers and twisted the shaft gently. 

Belen gave a muffled cry and Balan gripped his hand tighter. 

“It moves freely,” Finrod said to Estreth, “which is some mercy.”

“Good.” She was quickly mashing a handful of leaves and honey in a bowl. “Then it’s not reached the spine. Balan, there is a pouch of willow bark in the bag—the plain pouch with the blue bead on its band. Take a few pieces and give it to him to chew, if he can.”

Finrod shook his head. “Nay, save that for when he wakes.”

“I am awake,” Belen’s voice rasped.

“I know you are, Bel.” Finrod smiled at him and retrieved a flask from the pouch at his side. He leaned over to lift Belen’s head, setting the flask to his lips. “Take a mouthful of this. Gently, now.” He set the flask aside and rested his hand over the boy’s forehead, then paused and looked up at Balan in question.

Balan nodded. Then, as it had on the hilltop beneath Menelmacar and the changeless Sickle, the other’s voice began to rise and fall with the wind, an invocation little more than a whisper, and gradually Belen’s eyes drooped shut as his breathing steadied. 

“Balan…?” Estreth’s voice rose in alarm.

“It’s alright,” Balan replied, watching as Finrod leaned down and pressed his ear to Bel’s chest, listening.

“His heart is steady.” Finrod stood and motioned for Balan to take his place as he crossed to kneel beside Estreth. He produced a small, silver knife and tested it carefully against his finger before aligning it beside the arrow’s shaft. He paused and met Balan’s eyes over the prostrate form. “It is unlikely he’ll wake ere we are through, but hold him nevertheless, on the chance that he does.”

Balan slid his arm across his son’s chest and grasped the shoulder, bracing himself should the boy wake at the blade’s touch. He watched as Finrod traced a finger gently over the flesh to chart his path, then lifted the knife and cut.

❈ ❈ ❈

Night was dark within the low hut. Balan sat on the dirt floor beside the pallet, motionless, watching the slow rise and fall of his son’s chest through the gloom. The boy was alive yet. Balan marked each breath as sand through an hourglass, grains that drew the whole ever closer to its effect. Each rise of the lungs was another Belen had survived. Just one breath more, his father pleaded silently, just one more after that, and after that, and soon the night would be mastered.

He shuddered as the images rose again in his memory. It was a lucky placement, Estreth had said as she watched Nóm work, but Balan struggled to find any fortune in it. He had seen the ugly path it took through flesh and through viscera and felt his stomach turn again at the recollection. His tolerance was typically high and he assisted the healers at need, yet for his own son he found all his stoicism dissipate and he could only steal brief glances to know what passed while he held the boy’s shoulders pinned against the ground. And even those few left him dizzy as they loomed in memory: the soft pink of the organs, shining and naked in the sunlight, Nóm’s hands moving quickly about the wreckage, the deft fingers slipping through blood, the smell of burnt flesh as they pressed heated blades to stem the bleeding.

He lifted Belen’s hand from where it rested over the coverlet and pressed it to his forehead.

There was a rustle behind him and Balan felt the familiar brush of Nóm's presence against his awareness. In the first weeks of their acquaintance, Balan had been easily startled when the other appeared beside him, the Elf’s movements indiscernible to his ears. So Finrod adopted the ritual of nudging the other’s mind as he neared to warn of his approach, and it had become a form of politeness between them. It was a gentle greeting, like fingertips brushing his arm, but it broke Balan’s reverie.

“I brought food,” Finrod said softly as he walked to join Balan beside the bed.

Balan shook his head. “I can’t eat.”

“Try a little. You’ve had naught since before midday and the night is half gone.” He crouched down beside Balan and held out a cup of broth in one hand and a chunk of bread in the other. “You may sit up all the night through sheer will, but sustenance will feed both will and body. You’ve had a shock,” he added gently, “but it is a fallacy to equate tending yourself with neglecting your son.”

Balan took the food reluctantly. Mostly he was unbothered when the other’s thought crossed into his, but now and then he found it deeply irritating to have his own perceptions articulated before he named them. Especially when they were those he had deliberately left unsaid. 

“How do you do that?” Balan’s voice was a mix of curiosity and annoyance and he bit off a bite of bread with grudging acquiescence. “One moment it’s a simple enough exchange and the next you’re prodding about in my head. How do you break in there?”

“You allow me.” Finrod glanced at him with a sidelong smile as he moved to kneel beside the pallet. He shifted the blanket and inspected the poultice covering Belen’s wound. “Or at least you do not prevent me.”

“Can I?”

“Of course.” A look of chagrin creased his features. “I fear I’ve stumbled on yet another apology owed. I thought you knew it instinctually.”

“Perhaps I do,” Balan mused as he sipped from the broth. The flavor was unfamiliar and it occurred to him Nóm must have prepared it himself, a realization that began tempering his annoyance. “I’ve never tried.”

“No?” Finrod asked, setting a strip of clean linen over the poultice, then retrieving a vial from the pouch at his belt and soaking the linen through with the liquid it contained. It filled the hut with a bitter, herbal fragrance; sharp, but not unpleasant. “You may not have tried, but you’ve succeeded before now. You were quite angry, I think, when I questioned you on the origins of your people.”

“Yes,” the hint of a genuine grin spread over Balan’s face. “I was, rather. You were like a hunter’s hound who would not leave off the trail.”

“And you an intriguingly evasive creature. I tried to reach out then while we spoke and found not even a sliver of welcome.” He set a line of leaves over the linen and bound a second cloth over those. “You bristled like a porcupine when I came near at all.”

“Did I? I’d no notion of it.”  Balan sipped the broth again and watched the other’s movements in apprehension. “How is it?” he asked as Finrod drew the coverlet back up to Belen’s chest. 

“All appears as it should so far.” Finrod washed his hands in a basin beside the bed, then moved to sit beside Balan. “I have not tended one of your folk before, but from what I’ve seen, and from what Estreth has told me, I have every hope he’ll recover fully.”

Balan nodded and his eyes drifted back to his son’s face. He could still see the infant he held in the lines of those features and felt choked by his own helplessness in the face of Bel’s pain. He drank the last of the broth and set the cup aside. “This movement in and out of thoughts,” he said to distract himself, “if I can keep you from entering, does that mean I can look toward you as well?”

“All Mirröanwi—all incarnate creatures, I think you would say—can do so. The Eldar believe, as we were instructed, that all minds are equal in their standing, despite differences in how that aptitude or strength is manifested in each kind. But the capacity is there, regardless of surrounding constraints.”

“How?”

“It is like any natural process. Here,” he reached out and placed his hand against Balan’s cheek, “close your eyes and then set your hand over mine. Follow what happens within your mind as you do so.”

Balan hesitated for a moment, then let his eyes fall shut and raised his hand to rest tentatively over the Elf’s. He needed no injunction to note what passed within his thoughts and consequently sat in fear that the other might feel the pulse pounding through his skin.

“You did not need to look to place your hand. You knew where to meet my touch by instinct. By intuition, if you will. Now move your hand forward and follow my arm to my elbow.”

He did as instructed and let his fingers trace along the forearm, feeling the firm line of the radius beneath the fabric; a thin cloth, softer than any his people knew to weave, hardly a breath between the other’s skin and his. He focused to keep his breathing steady while attempting at once to observe whatever process of the mind he was meant to study.

“Good. You may open your eyes,” Finrod added with a smile and lowered his arm to rest once more across his lap. “The communication of thought is, in some sense, the same action. Your instinct directs you to the touch, your fëa—your spirit—knows to follow it as your fingers knew, sightless, how to mark the line of my arm without fumbling.” He pressed harder into the other’s thought than he would ordinarily. “Can you feel that touch? Or rather, do you see the image that I’ve set?”

“Yes,” Balan replied as the branches of a tall pear tree reared up through his perception with a surprising urgency. “I see a tree in flower with a low, white wall stretching behind it. The wind is blowing through its leaves.”

“That is placing your hand over mine. Now follow it back toward me, if you can.”

“How?”

“You have allowed me in already. And a door once opened, if there is willingness on each side, sets a path either may tread. Shift your focus and reach out with intent along that path. I will not bar the way.”

Balan concentrated on the gently moving branches. It was difficult to conceive of it as a path and not simply a foreign presence traipsing about his mind. Welcomed, yes, or at least not denied, but breaking in nonetheless. He focused once more and looked up into the other’s eyes, then reached out.

Finrod caught his breath. He thought he was familiar after these months of encountering each mind to glean their language, and yet having one reach out in return—having Balan reach out in return—sent an unexpected flood of sensations racing through his blood. There was an earthy rootededness in the brush of the other’s perception, a fumbling touch, at once rough and gentle. He had guessed through his own inspection that their hröar had a degree of prevalence, but this was something entirely different and beyond any framework he held in his own understanding. There was somehow a physicality even in encountering the other’s fëa and it took his breath away.

“Is this how it always is for you?” Balan’s voice was awed as he felt his way through the other’s thought. He could sense the restraint as well as the welcome and knew he was seeing only a small corner, a meticulously curated room laid out and fashioned for his viewing. But even that was overwhelming in its intimate vulnerability.

“It is,” Finrod replied, carefully holding his voice steady. “Openness is the natural state of any mind of the Mirröanwi, or rather it would be in an unmarred creation. Here, as we are, it is more often thus only between those who share affinity—kin, or those bonded in love and friendship.”

“This is uncanny,” Balan breathed as he looked about and Finrod felt again the fumbling touch within his mind. It reached the few memories he had selected and laid out, it passed through the curious fascination with these new creatures, his attempts to understand their ways, it grazed against the deep love he held for each of them, it paused.

Without warning, Finrod’s heart lodged in his throat. He had stopped breathing as Balan’s thought crossed the space of unique affection he occupied. A dear and fast friend, Finrod repeated to himself as he had each day, watching their companionship weave ever closer with dizzying speed, a brother unlooked for in the darkness. Yet even as he said it, he quietly closed off additional threads of his mind from the other’s view, unexpectedly timid in the face of inspection. Finrod was taken aback by this skittishness. It was he who had offered up these thoughts to the other’s gaze, after all. This was an entirely different experience, he reasoned, entrusting your mind to someone who was fundamentally other. The very presence itself left his equilibrium reeling. Balan must have seen the fear as well, because he made only a brief pause before turning to different aspects of the other’s thought, leaving that one in peace. 

Another corridor opened, filled with knowledge Balan did not comprehend, yet laced throughout with the calm confidence of a task completed and understood, a conviction of danger eluded. Balan felt a firm pressure settle over his anxiety. It was the same sensation he had as a child when his father would kneel beside him after he woke from nightmares and wrap him tightly in a blanket, pinning him in a cocoon while the strong arms pressed him close against his father’s chest. Balan was soothed despite himself. So it was now as he felt Nóm’s quiet satisfaction with the tended wounds and the growing assurance of their efficacy. It wrapped about him like a blanket, pressed in upon him, quieted his dread. He allowed himself a long few minutes’ respite in that wash of calm, then returned to an earlier thread with a tracker’s zeal. He had crossed the remnants of a conversation with Orndaer in the other’s thought.

“You spoke with the other of your kind,” Balan said in a low voice, part question and part accusation. “Has he told you what happened?”

“Yes. Or at least I’ve learned more than we knew before, though I deem much will remain a mystery until your son wakes. He will wake, Balan,” Finrod added as the spasm of fear crossed the other’s face again.

Balan nodded and then turned his attention back toward the sleeping figure, taking his son’s hand once more in his own. But he did not, Finrod noticed with a small smile, retreat from the mingled thought, claiming without question his right to the openness due of love and friendship.

“Belen was stalking a deer,” Finrod continued gently, “and Orndaer came across him in a clearing. There have been more incursions of yrch, of goblins as you say, in recent months than his people have seen in many years. My own suspicion is that their trespass is bound to your arrival in these lands. If the Foe knew of your awakening, then the mountains would be watched so he would have forewarning if our kindreds should meet.”

“It was not a goblin arrow that felled my son.”

“No, it was Orndaer’s arrow and Orndaer’s hand that did so. He does not deny it.” Finrod was quiet before proceeding. “He mistook Belen for an orch when he saw him rise from the tree-shadow to cast his spear.”

“Nay, I do not understand it. I have seen goblins, Nóm, I have fought and killed them. Yet I am to believe that one with the keen eyes of your kindred mistook my boy for one of those tortured horrors?”

“He had bound a deer’s skull to his head, Balan. It covered his face. Yrch often wear the skulls of creatures when they venture out in sunlight for—“ he broke off as the other gave a choked cry. “Balan?”

Balan’s face was drawn with anguish, and he reached out to stroke the hair back from his son’s forehead. “The skull man…” he whispered hoarsely,  “Oh Bel, my boy, fate’s amusements are cruel.”

Finrod felt the memories rush through Balan’s thought, mingled still with his own, of the painted cliffs and Belen’s childlike intrigue, Balan continually dropping behind the march to ensure his son did not fall too far back through his fascinated study. An image of Bel’s hand tracing over the rudimentary outlines, the soft flesh of his fingers contrasting with the sharp red paint and white skull that stood across the dark rock. Finrod knew Belen and his imagination well enough that the missing elements of the story formed quickly in his understanding and he swore under his breath. Tentatively he reached out to rest a hand between Balan’s shoulders in comfort.

The touch broke what remained of Balan’s restraint and he could no longer hold back his weeping. He bent double beside the pallet, pressing one hand to his face to stifle the choking sobs while the other clung still to his son’s. At first Finrod knelt motionless, his hand pressed to the other’s back in silent sympathy, then gradually he moved forward till his arm encircled Balan’s shoulders and drew him into an embrace. Balan turned his face in against the other’s shoulder and let himself be comforted like a child, his tears soaking through the tunic that still bore stains of his son’s blood. What was this new land, so full of hope only a few days past? What good had he done by leading them here?

The other’s hand moved gently over his back. There were no words this time, no whispered melody, no assurances or distractions. Nóm remained a still figure at Balan’s side, offering nothing but his presence in the face of the other’s pain, and was amazed to feel how swiftly the tempest calmed within his arms. He held him close as the sobs gave way to ragged gasps, which moved at length to an unsteady calm, an exhausted serenity lying muffled against his shoulder. He would have turned all the world on its head, he felt in that moment, to have his arms shield this frail, precious creature from any grief. Life and limb, he thought, soul and body to protect him. Was this what a father felt, Finrod wondered for a brief moment, were these Balan’s feelings toward the figure lying before them? He dismissed it immediately with a sudden distaste. There was something wrong in that concept, despite all the pieces lying as though they should align. It was in some way unthinkable.

“When he was born,” Balan’s voice drifted up, muted by the silken tunic, and broke the contemplation, “we dwelt on plains between the great forests. There were no trees for miles and I remember holding him with his tiny head cradled in my palms and telling him what forests were, and how one day I promised I would walk with him through their towering pillars and show him their majesty. I told him we would lie on the forest floor together and look up at the woven canopy, like lace over our heads.”

“And did you?” Finrod asked, his voice drifting softly through the other’s hair.

“Yes.” There was a smile in Balan’s voice as he answered. “We returned to the forests before a year had passed. I know not if it was my words that laid it in his heart from the beginning, but he has ever loved them, has ever wandered about them on our way.” His voice drifted to a whisper again. “How do I hold the bitterness that it led him here?”

There was no answer to this and Balan pulled away, moving to sit again beside the pallet and watching Bel’s face in the flickering light. Finrod shifted to sit beside him, quiet as before, and motionless as a carved image, save when he rose from time to time to check the poultice or to place a clean wrap over the wound. The stillness remained, and not a word passed between them as the night drew on, minutes stretching to an hour, and the hours stretching on as the candle guttered down toward its end. 

“I will need to send word to my people, Balan,” Finrod said at last, as the weary dawn crept in upon their sleepless night. “Now that there has been conflict, I can no longer justify my prolonged silence. I am obligated now to send word to the High King, and to the other chieftains.”

Balan nodded, impassive. “What will that mean for my people?”

“I know not.” Finrod was quiet again. “It may mean little in the end, but it is more likely, I deem, to change much of the life you know. Some of my kin will be glad at the discovery of yours, many will be suspicious. To all you will be a curiosity.”

“You’ve accustomed us to that, at least,” Balan said with an attempted smile. “And what then, when the curiosity is sated?”

Finrod shook his head. “In this I have no foresight. But you find us in a time of war, and there are many jealous lords among us—myself not excluded. Allegiance of one kind or another will be asked, I have little doubt.”

“Then we will be sworn to you. And let us be so before your kin are upon us, that there may be no question of loyalty.”

“Be not rash in this,” Finrod felt the summer’s respite slipping through his fingers like sand, yet all the while something deep within him burst into fire at the thought of the other bound to him. 

“Rash?” Balan smiled again and this time it reached his eyes as well. “We took you as a god when you first appeared and you forbade us that. Grant us the compromise of taking you as a king.”

“Balan—“

“I am yet chieftain of my folk,” he said and his voice grew uncharacteristically stern, “and I tell you I shall serve no lord else. If allegiance is required, then take us as your own or we will serve none of your kind.”

Finrod saw the resolve in the other’s eyes, felt it like steel across his thought. “So be it as you say, then.”

“Take then my oath in fealty, pledged to you as the head of my clan. Accept my loyalty and that of my people, bound in faithfulness and truth to you as our lord, to hold dear as you hold dear, to scorn what you disdain, to serve you in constancy all our days.” He slid the small knife from his belt and nicked his wrist with the point to draw a light flow of blood.

“Balan!” Finrod exclaimed, aghast, and grasped the knife hand’s wrist in his own to hold it away from its mate. 

The atan looked up in surprise. “I only mark the oath, Nóm, it’s little harm.”

The expression of dismay eased, but did not retreat. Finrod took the bloodied wrist in his hand instead and set his fingers across the wound. “Then may healing mark its acceptance,” he said and Balan felt the bleeding taper, the skin adhere. When the fingers moved aside, the cut seemed a wound of several days' healing. How often, Balan wondered as he stared down at his mended skin in fascination, would he unravel himself to watch the other knit him back together?

“May it be so,” he said and knew with a thrill that the utterance was irrevocable. Whatever might come, they were bound—his house and the Nómin—tied till the ending of all things.

---

Chapter End Notes

TRANSLATIONS
Q = Quenya; S = Sindarin
- Glamhoth: [S] orcs, or the orc host
- Dagnir: [S] slayer, killer
- Orch/Yrch: [S] orc/orcs
- Váya: [Q] ocean, sea, ocean, (stormy) sea
- Ëassarië: [Q] pearl/sea stone (plus feminine name ending)

- Vatta is an invented term for “father”
- Madja is an invented term for “aunt (mother’s sister)”, loosely inspired by Germanic-Gothic

MISC NOTES
- Nómin: the name by which Bëor's people called the Ñoldor