Breaking Into Light by StarSpray

Four

The Mereth Aderthad continued apace. Daeron and Maglor performed often, both together and separately, and their audiences were almost equally divided on the matter of who was the greater. Glingaereth was in the Daeron camp, but she was pleased to observe that neither minstrel seemed bothered either way.

She saw Fingon nearly every day. He was clearly making a point of seeking her out, and Glingaereth was both flattered and pleased. Her sister gave her a few sidelong looks, but spoke no more warnings. If it were something truly dire, she would have spoken again, so Glingaereth let herself enjoy the attention, and, when the feast began to wind down, gave serious consideration to Fingon ’s invitation to come back to visit Hithlum.

Her mother frowned when Glingaereth told her of it. “You are free to do as you like,” she said, “but I thought your sister did not like him.”

“I like him fine,” Limbeleth said from where she sat across their fire, fletching arrows. “Just so long as Glingaereth has her eyes open, I cannot object.”

“My eyes are wide open,” said Glingaereth. “And I have made no promises, nor have had any promises made me. Anyway, would it not be to all our advantage to know a bit more of the Noldor’s settlements in the north? We have not seen Hithlum since before the Falas was besieged.”

“Take someone with you,” her mother said after some thought. “Limbeleth…?”

“No,” Limbeleth said. “I feel we will see much of Hithlum and the north lands in the coming years. I do not need to go now. What of Emlineth, or Lothríniel?”

Lothr íniel was eager to be gone to the east, when Glingaereth asked her, but Emlineth was keen to go north instead. “It has been too long since I wandered the shores of Mithrim, and saw the green fields of Ard Galen in the north,” she said. “I shall be perfectly happy to explore all that has changed while you and the prince gaze at each other longingly.” Glingaereth rolled her eyes.

Fingolfin and Fingon remained at Ivrin until the last of the others had packed up and gone. The Sindar dispersed into the mist first (starting with Mablung and Daeron—there one evening, gone by sunrise), and the Noldor slowly followed suit. Turgon and Finrod went back to Nevrast, and Aredhel left with Maedhros and Maglor to go east. Glingaereth was not sure where Finrod ’s siblings went. Perhaps back to Doriath, or to their lands in Dorthonion.

When Emlineth and Glingaereth joined Fingon and Fingolfin, the High King greeted them warmly before giving his son a rather pointed look and advancing to the front of the company. It was a very large company, with wagons filled with the detritus of the celebration as well as people. Soldiers in shining mail marched among the wagons or rode at the front and the rear, and ranging out alongside. Fingolfin set out at the head, and Glingaereth fell in beside Fingon a little behind. Emlineth excused herself to join the outriders, among whom she had friends made at the feast.

“Would you call it a success?” Glingaereth asked. “The feast, I mean.”

“Yes, I think so,” Fingon said. “I had hoped all of my cousins would come, but at least Maedhros came, and his brothers will follow his lead.”

“I confess, I am still a little uncertain as to why there has been division among your people,” Glingaereth said. “You all want the same thing, don’t you?”

“More or less,” said Fingon. “But I’m afraid the division began long before Morgoth revealed himself and slew my grandfather and the Trees. Some of his lies have grown roots too deep to easily dislodge them, and some of them have turned into truth. I don’t know why he hates the Noldor in particular. Or perhaps he doesn’t, and it is that we were the only ones foolish enough to listen to him. I don’t remember him going very often among the Vanyar or the Teleri. And…” He hesitated, as though seeking the right words. “There were ships,” he said finally. “But not enough for everyone to cross the Sea at once. We thought that Fëanor would send them back for us, but he burnt them instead. To the very end he saw my father as nothing more than a usurper. He hated all the children of Indis.

“So then, being unwilling to turn back, my father led us across the Helcaraxë. Many did not make it, and all of us suffered greatly in the cold. My brother’s wife perished. So you see how it has been difficult to forgive those who left us behind. But now all the house of Finwë has shown that we are united again, and I hope the rest of our people will follow suit.”

“It helps, I am sure, that you were the one to rescue Maedhros from the mountainside of Angband,” said Glingaereth. “Or so the tales all say.”

“It did,” Fingon agreed, “though I wasn’t thinking of the unity of the Noldor when I did it.”

“What were you thinking of?” Glingaereth asked.

“Well, mostly I was horrified at the thought of his imprisonment—and even more horrified when I realized precisely where he was.” Fingon smiled a small, rueful smile. “And a small part of me was furious that he had not been there when we arrived so that I could break his nose myself, for leaving us behind. I didn’t know then that he had spoken against the burning. And it was no small thing to speak against Fëanor by then. Maedhros and I were great friends, before the lies of Morgoth came between our families.”

“Are you great friends again now?”

“We will never be as we were before,” Fingon said. “Too much has happened. But yes, I do consider him again one of my greatest friends.”

The journey back to Hithlum passed uneventfully. There was much cheerful conversation, and the weather held, with sunny days and starry nights. The mists crept in as they crossed the mountains into Mithrim, and thence to Hithlum north of the lake. Glingaereth had visited Lake Mithrim many times, but not since the sun had risen. The land was much changed, built up and cultivated by the Noldor. Fingon dwelt with his father in a large and fair house near the lake, well fortified but also surrounded by many gardens and fields where horses grazed alongside sheep and cattle. Glingaereth saw the set of Fingolfin ’s shoulders ease once he was back at the seat of his power, and while he had been merry enough at the Mereth Aderthad, she saw now that it had taken effort—and effort to seem effortless.

With the celebrations over, life settled back into routine. Fingon rode out most days to the watch towers in the nearby mountains, the largest being at Eithel Sirion, which Glingaereth had never visited before. When she went with Fingon she laughed and said, “Now I can truly say that I have traveled the full length of the great river, from its mouth to its source!” She bent and cupped her hands in the freezing-cold spring as it bubbled up out of the rock, to fall laughing down the steep mountainside to join other streams and rivulets, and eventually other rivers, until it would grow into the mighty Sirion that roared over the falls of Sirion beneath the Amdram, and flowed thence past the willow-meads of Nan-Tathren to its wide delta far away in the south, where reeds grew thick and the gulls circled overhead. When she tasted it, the water was sweet and clean.

“And see the view,” said Fingon, gesturing widely out toward the north. Ard Galen glowed green and lush beneath the bright sun and bright blue sky, dotted with only a handful of pale clouds. There were more horses out there, and riders cantering back and forth through the grass and wildflowers. High overhead, almost invisible even to elven sight, an eagle circled. Only the dark shadow on the northern horizon marred the scene. “Ard Galen is as lovely as the most beloved of Yavanna’s meadows in Valinor. And when I think of what else I have not yet seen…” His eyes were bright and his face flushed with the wind and the exertion of climbing to the spring, as he looked out toward the east.

He was not, Glingaereth thought, made for war. Nor were any of them, really, but he had pledged himself to this fight when she could tell what he truly wanted was to wander, as she had done all her life, and see all that could be seen of the world. She found herself wishing that she could take him away from this place of high walls and bright spears, far away across the Ered Luin where they could wander where they would without a care. She looked away, back to the north. It was an impossible fancy. “Do you really think that you can win?” she asked.

Fingon looked at her, and then followed her gaze. “I don’t know,” he said. “But if the Valar will not act against him, someone must. And he—he killed my grandfather.” This was said in a low, suddenly unsteady voice—not the voice of a prince speaking of his king, but that of a grandson mourning a beloved grandfather. A cloud passed over the sun, casting them briefly into shadow. “Whatever happens,” Fingon said after a few moments, a little more steadily, “I would see it through to the end, however bitter.”

The cloud passed and the sun brightened, and Glingaereth slipped her hand into his. “I will stand with you.”