The Fissure by Dawn Felagund

The Fissure

I rise early to meet the smiths of Belegost in the forge, but the furnaces are cold and the tools lined up neatly at rest. I hesitate, uncertain if it would be welcomed for me to proceed with rousing the furnaces or if my hosts would perceive this as an overstep.

"Come, Maeglin." My father is a shadow, untouched by torchlight, in the corner of the forge. "There is no work for you today. We have been accorded a great honor to attend one of the apprentice's coming of age."

I follow him through angles and corners and down stairs—ever down—until my ears are cottoned by the pressure around me and we emerge into a room I've never seen before. It is domed, like an egg, too high for the torchlight to dispel the shadows at its furthest reaches. It might open to the sky, but for the lack of stars. The walls are painted with scenes of the First Arising, Mahal rendered as a twist of gold, the Seven Fathers' hands raised against the hammer, the painted faces without emotion.

Along the center of the floor runs a fissure, filled with dark. None assemble on its far side; there is only an altar-like stone. Upon it stands a mask.

Dwarves assemble around us by the dozens, their beards and tunics adorned with gems that gleam mutely. Despite their numbers, they are silent—treadless, voiceless.

Two detach from the crowd. I know them, a man and a woman, for they work in the forges, though they are too skilled for me to be worth their notice. Between them is their son. He is a boy, likewise apprenticed though at a higher level than me. We are not unfriendly in the forge. I am one of the multitude looped loosely around the ceremonial place, and though at the rear, I must stand out for my elvishness and my father, arrayed in galvorn and tall as a column of smoke, standing behind me? I level my gaze upon the boy and feel as though a moment of connection should pass between us—and I want his reassurance that his parents, columnar to either side of him, intend him no harm? that the fissure in the rock holds no fear for him?—but no such affinity comes. His dark eyes skirt the room and slide past me with the indifference of water off rock.

My feet feel it before my depth-clogged ears hear it: a rumbling from deep in the mountain. But then—voices? Or the mountain moving her slow shoulders? I cannot tell, for the Dwarves around me have lowered bronze masks over their faces, like to the one on the altar. For a brief moment, I think it is both—the Dwarves and the mountain, in converse with each other, or maybe one summoning the call of the other? An atavistic urge such as seizes beasts in the forest before an earthquake causes my feet to drum briefly against the floor, but my father's hands, pauldrons upon my shoulders, root me in place.

The voices crescendo; the mountain lifts her face and exhales. Flames gust from the fissure in the floor.

My chin tucks against my collarbone; my eyes squeeze shut. The heat is like to a furnace, and just when I think I cannot bear it, that I will wither like kindling in a rising flame, I feel it recede.

When I dare lift my face to look, the Dwarven boy stands on the far side of the fissure. He has already begun to lower the mask, so I am spared the sight of his face. Dying embers writhe in his beard, still silken with youth. He makes no sound, betrays no complaint. The mountain spasms, settling into sleep, but his hands betray no tremor.

"He has passed the test of fire," says my father behind me, low enough that his voice subsides beneath the first dream-sounds of the mountain, unheard by all but me. "He is a man now."

Quivering fingers rise to touch the heat-tightened skin of my face and, though it hurts, I find it still soft. My tears try to water it back to innocence but they only slide away.