Ungoliant's Bane by polutropos

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Of Brave Eärendil

Warning for canon-typical grief and past character death. It ends well, all things considered.

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Maglor nudged another log into the dying fire. A flame leapt from its centre, reilluminating the two bodies to his right. He stole a glance at them and was met by the same condemning stares that had followed him since Sirion. 

Or so he read them, finding in their vacant expressions confirmation of his guilt. He would later learn—remember—that children felt in ways uncomplicated by the weight of years. Six-year-olds did not concern themselves with handing out judgements. And at that moment, Elrond and Elros felt only fear.

But Maglor, who knew little of children, imagined that their refusal to speak or to move was purposeful. He imagined their refusal to come into the tent and out of the biting wind was a test to discover if he would leave them for the wolves to find. 

He blinked and looked away. Had Dior’s sons been so small? Maedhros might remember but, like these children, he had stopped speaking. And he was gone. Two nights ago, with those few who still followed him, because their loyalty was all they had left. The last shred of good in their barren souls.

Maedhros hadn’t said as much (he had said nothing), but the children were a burden on the road. 

Or so Maglor had thought, then. The truth, he would learn, is that Maglor’s remorse was a burden his brother’s heart could not bear.

Maglor pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes and thought, ‘If the wolves come, let them take me, too.’ 

He glanced again at the two huddled forms. The larger one had turned his attention to something on the log beside him, and Maglor followed his gaze to a spider, as big as the tip of his thumb, completely still. The boy eyed it warily. 

Maglor kicked up a leg and pinned the spider beneath the toe of his boot. 

'No!' the child broke his silence. The other looked as shocked as his brother sounded. 'You killed it!' He turned a face contorted with disbelief and anger on Maglor.

‘It’s a spider,’ said Maglor, fumbling for a defence he had not expected he’d need to make. ‘They bite.’

‘You killed it for no reason!’

‘I thought you were scared—’

‘They cannot hurt us,’ said the smaller one. 

Maglor shrugged and bared his palms, defeated. ‘All right. I’m sorry.’ 

The words, Will you forgive me? had the sense to die on his tongue. The children retreated back into silence and shielded themselves with steely glares. Maglor squinted up at the blanket of dark clouds that promised more heavy rains. 

‘Are you scared of spiders?’ 

‘What?’ Maglor turned to find the smaller one—Elrond—watching him with an earnest expression. 

‘You killed it because you’re scared?’

‘No,’ said Maglor. ‘It just…’ 

‘You do not need to be scared,’ said Elrond. 

Elros added, ‘Our Ada slayed Ungoliant.’

A laugh leapt into Maglor’s throat and he had to hold his fist to his mouth to stifle it. 

‘He did,’ Elros asserted with a defensive bite. Maglor’s reaction had not escaped his notice.

‘Yes, I’m sure he did,’ said Maglor, gentling. An unconvincing performance, it seemed, for the two children continued to scrutinise him intently.

‘How come you don’t know the story?’ asked Elros, crinkling his nose. ‘Everyone knows the story. Uncle Círdan made a song.’

‘Where is Círdan?’ asked Elrond. ‘I want to go home.’

Maglor winced. At first, he’d ignored the questions. Then he’d lied, but it was not long before the lies turned to rot in his stomach. So he told the truth, or pieces of it. 

‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I cannot take you home. It is not safe to go back that way. We are going to my home.’

‘Your home is far.’ Elros pouted.

‘I know. But we are almost there.’

There had been opportunity to make a different choice, but Maglor, grieving, had let it slip by. At the time, keeping them, guarding them, had seemed the only way to undo what his brother had begun. No—not begun. Amrod’s last actions, whatever they were, were but one stride in a long and accelerating march of cruelties.  

The death of a spider was the latest; so said the disapproving stares of the children.

What his little brother had intended to do with Elwing’s sons, Maglor would never know. She, at least, believed they had already been slain—so said their nurse, before she too died. Perhaps he would have. Perhaps the madness that had festered in Amrod since Alqualondë had, at the last, wholly consumed him. Bile rose in Maglor’s throat. It should not be possible to even think it. Not of Amrod.

‘Ada will be home soon.’ 

The voice, tremulous as it was, was a welcome release from the mire of his thoughts. 

‘Why can’t we go home?’ Elros asked, as if this time it might bring about the answer he hoped to hear. 

‘It is not safe,’ Maglor said, again.

Because there are legions of orcs between us and Sirion. Because Morgoth has shut the path he’d left open for the Oath to do his work for him. How obvious that was now. 

Maglor finished shredding a bit of decaying wood between his fingers, tossed the pieces of the ground, and said, ‘Would you tell me the story of how your Adar slew Ungoliant?’

The boys looked at each other. They nodded in unison, but seemed to be awaiting further prompting.

‘All right,’ said Maglor. ‘Where was it?’  

‘East—’ said one, at the same time the other said, ‘South—’ and they both said, ‘No!’ and then Elros said, ‘Oh! South.’

‘Let me tell it,’ said Elrond. 

Elros pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. ‘Hmph.'

‘Win’glot went far, far, far.’ Elrond pulled a tiny arm out of the blanket to emphasise how far. ‘And it was very dead, and, and—dark. There was a big black sky. And Goliant—Ungoliant—opened her beak. Clack clack.’ The boy created the sound effect with his tongue on the roof of his mouth and grinned. Maglor could not help but smile back. ‘But Ada held his Ada’s sword aloft!’

‘Not sword,’ Elros corrected. ‘Axe.’

Elrond ignored him. ‘And belo!’

‘Behold,’ said Elros.

‘Belode! Ungoliant coiled.’ He made a trilling sound and spun his hands around each other. ‘And Ada rented her belly and out ’sploded one thousand shiny jewels! And belode! One thousand stars alighted the sky, bright as a Sil’aril! And then, and then, and then…’ He trailed off, looking to his brother for help.

‘Ulmo and Manwë,’ said Elros, ‘blew Wing’lot back home.’

‘Yes,’ Elrond said. ‘So Ungoliant is gone forever and spiders cannot hurt us and you should let them live.’

‘A good story.’ said Maglor, voice catching as he grasped at the fleeting sensation of unravelling in the tight space between his ribs—there!—tried to dredge it up—but no. It was gone, and his eyes were dry. 

‘Thank you,’ he said. Steady, flat. ‘I will not kill any more spiders.’

Their mouths fell back into two lines. But when Maglor looked at their faces—no longer fixed on him, but watching the fire—he thought he saw a little more softness there. Elros’ eyelids drooped, his head tipped forward and then adjusted to rest against his brother’s shoulder instead. 

Maglor followed Elrond’s gaze and watched the flames leap and lick at the firewood. As words took shape, he murmured softly:

‘In driest deserts    of the distant South
did foul Ungoliant    spin her nets of night—’

He paused, searching for the next line, and found Elrond’s eyes turned on him, and Elros’ squinting open. Maglor’s lips twitched around a smile. He resumed, more clearly this time.

‘And to that place    was brave Eärendil borne.
Wingelot keeled,    the winds keened—’

A clumsy line, but the boys’ attention was rapt.

‘And lo! spider loomed,    her black beak clacked.’

Elrond smiled sleepily.

‘Upon the prow    did Eärendil defy her,
With sire’s axe    her belly slit.
Therefrom gems,    jewels a thousand
as stars a thousand    to inky Ilmen stuck.
Thus was monster    by mariner slain,
And by brave Eärendil,    Spider’s bane, 
of spiders’ malice    an end was made.’

Admittedly the poem needed some work, but in this case Maglor was glad to have lulled his audience to sleep. He waited a while longer, humming quietly to the rhythm of their easy breaths. Then, carefully, he bent and scooped them up, one in each arm. As he stood, Elros’ head lolled back, and Maglor adjusted to tip it forward. His breaths were warm on Maglor’s neck. 

Maglor carried them back into the tent, lying them down on the bedroll, where they naturally shuffled together. Reluctantly, he went back out to keep watch. If the wolves came, Maglor would slay them all.

But nothing threatened their repose that night, save one small spider that came to rest on his boot. Maglor let it be.

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Chapter End Notes

For poetry month, I have attempted my own spin on alliterative verse for this chapter. If there’s any metrical pattern to this, I assure you it’s entirely accidental.

Throwing Amrod under the bus here is not without canonical support. In the Later Annals of Beleriand (HoMe V: The Lost Road), Tolkien wrote: ‘Here Damrod and Díriel [=Amrod and Amras] ravaged Sirion, and were slain. Maidros and Maglor were there, but they were sick at heart.’ This work of 1930-37 dates to the same period as the Quenta Noldorinwa (1930), the text that was the basis for the account of the third kinslaying in the published Silmarillion.