The leaving of Hithlum by clotho123

The leaving of Hithlum

Tolkien multiple name syndrome strikes again!  Fandom seems to have decided Lalwen’s other name is Irimë, but in my head it’s always been Írien, partly because that seems to have been Tolkien’s latest choice, but mostly because I find Írien easier to distinguish from Irissë.  I hope readers can bear with me on this.

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Read The leaving of Hithlum

The day was dank.  Dark clouds hung low and thick across the land, almost to the tops of the foothills in the lower range of southern mountains.  The damp clung, making clothing heavy and grass slippery underfoot.  It stripped colour from the land and made the rocks loom grim and jagged. 

Írien was having the dressing on her upper arm changed when Calenor dropped down from the rocks above.  Auriel, the healer, turned to ask sharply whether he could not see that now was not a good time.

“He can talk while you work,” Írien said, concentrating to make sure she could block the pain enough to pay attention. 

“There is an Elda asking to speak to whoever leads us,” Calenor told her.  He was not quite full-grown; youth had prevented him from marching with his father and King Fingon to the battlefield.  “I’ve not seen him before, but I do not think he is one of the escaped ones.”

The survivors of Hithlum had learned to be wary of self-proclaimed escapers in the time that had passed since the great defeat.  After the third betrayal Írien  had laid down a stern rule: any who claimed to have escaped were to be given food and sent away.  There had been some hard scenes as Elves recognised friends and kindred and some had insisted on leaving themselves to go with those who had returned.  It had been a cruel rule to make, and cruel to enforce, but without it she feared there would be nothing left at all.

“Is one Elda really so important that you had to come up here?”  Írien tested the newly replaced dressing.  The wound was finally healing, thanks to Auriel’s skill in drawing out poisons, but it was clear she would still need a sling. 

“He was very insistent,” Calenor said awkwardly.  “I think he may be someone of importance, although he would not give me a name.”

“Wise of him.  I will come down.”  Auriel finished applying the sling. 

“I suppose it’s no good saying you really need to rest this?” Auriel said.

“None at all.”  Írien reached for the belt carrying her short sword and throwing knife, Auriel sighed, but helped her to buckle it on and she followed the boy down a steep, rocky track to an exposed valley between two of the lower mountain spurs.  It was a lengthy journey from the starting point, but Írien was pleased to note he had had the sense not to take their visitor into the more secret areas.

The Elf was sitting on a lump of rock near the side of the valley, with a couple of others keeping an eye on him.  Once she set eyes on him Írien understood well enough how he had been able to insist on seeing someone in charge because it was her half-nephew Amras, who was as good as most of the family at getting what he wanted.  He was wearing travel clothes with his hair braided, and for some reason he also had a cat on his shoulder.  Not one of the sleek animals that had prowled around the barns and granaries of Hithlum, back in the days before Hithlum had been overrun: no, it was typical of a Fëanorion that he had chosen for a shoulder-ornament one of the slant-eyed wild cats that seemed to be permanently in a bad temper.  The cat hissed at Írien as she crossed to stand in front of Amras and he put up a hand to pat its tawny coat. 

“Lady Lalwen,” Amras rose courteously to his feet as he greeted her.  Surprisingly the cat did not try to bite his ear off.

“Írien,” she told him.  Lalwen, the laughing one, was no longer a name that fitted.  Fortunately both her names went well enough into the Sindar tongue.  “What do you want, Amras?”

“No family pleasantries?”  Amras cocked his head.  “I am glad to see you well, at least.  We had not heard if you had survived the fall of Hithlum.”

“We had heard that you and your brothers are all alive.”  Írien  did not bother to keep a bitter note from her voice.  It was not that she actively wanted Amras dead; he was harmless enough as Fëanor’s sons went.  Yet he and his brothers lived on when Fingolfin and Fingon and all Finarfin’s sons were dead and she could not help but feel there was something wrong with that.  “No doubt you know the King is dead.” 

“Yes,” Amras said, and let all that meant lie between them.

Fingon had made his own choices, Írien reminded herself.  He had chosen to make the gamble.  They should have known that those beneath a Curse should never hope for luck. 

“You did not make this journey for a friendly reunion,” she said, making the tone conciliatory, “you came for a reason.”

“Very well, I came to see how many of my kin live, and to tell those who are free they would be welcome in the eastern lands.”

“You want more warriors,” she was not surprised.  “How many did you lose?”

“Too many.  Not all.  We can still fight.”

“Can you win?”  Írien looked him in the eye.  “No.  The numbers were in the balance before.  There are not enough of us now.”

“So what is your plan?  To skulk in the mountains, hunted down a few at a time?  Or do you dream that Thingol will admit you to his fenced off realm, or Turgon take pity on the kin he has hid from?”

“We gather as many as we may, and we go south,” Írien  said.  “Further from the watch of Angband.  There is no rebuilding here.”

“What is there for you to the south?  Do you plan to join with the old shipwright and build boats?”

“There are worse choices,” Írien said. 

“Morgoth will come for you.”

“As he will for you.”

Amras sat back down on the rock behind and gestured to Írien to join him. The cat leapt off his shoulder and seated itself against his flank, fixing Írien with an untrusting yellow glare. “I did not come here to start a family quarrel.  We are all grieving.”

After a pause she sat down on another spur of rock, not too close.  Old habit brought her eyes down to the stone, noting the unusual marble veining.  Once she would have taken time to sketch it.

“Do you really think there is no more behind my coming than a wish for warriors?” he said.  “How many of those are there here?  How many remained when Fingon marched north?”

“We are not defenceless,” Írien said, but she could not deny the point.  Fingon had stripped Hithlum of warriors, throwing everything into the gamble against Morgoth.  None of them had come back.  There were those remaining who could use a bow, a spear or an axe if they had to, but no true warriors.

“It is a true offer,” Amras said.  “I am not here for warriors to hold the line.  You can lead those who are with you to the territories set well back, as safe as any place in these lands can be.”

“Safer than Nargothrond?”

“You would have told me before now if you were going to Nargothrond.  Do you not trust Orodreth, or can you not forgive him?”

The right answer would have been that both were true.  Orodreth was a good man in his way, but Írien had little reliance in his leadership and could not entirely withhold the thought that if he had answered the King’s call the great battle might still have been won. 

“We are going to the sea,” she told Amras.  “To the south, where Círdan dwells.”

“Ah, the sea.  Do you really think there will be help from the Valar?”

“Morgoth does not care for the sea.  It gives us time.”

“Time to accomplish what?  What will be gained in the end?  If flight is what you want why not cross the east mountains?”

“We came to fight Morgoth,” Írien told him.  “We will not flee Beleriand.  And if these lands fall, can others stand?”

“Why not make your stand in the east, if you know that make it you must?”

“Do you really want a plain answer to that?”  Írien said.

“I asked the question.”

“Then we will not join with you because the Curse lies heavy on your house, and because the Oath you swore will never release you.  We will not join because there is damnation enough laid on us all, without taking on that which lies on your house alone.”

Amras was silent for a time, his left hand absently rubbing the cat’s flank.  “Well, I asked for honesty,” he said at last. 

“I must make the best choice for those that look to me.  Even if we are doomed beyond escape it falls to me to choose the ground on which to make the final stand.  I choose the south.  I choose to make the stand beside Círdan, whose alliance has not faltered.”  She had not intended the words as a reminder of Losgar, and realised they might seem a reproach only when Amras went stiff, as though repressing a flinch.

“I suppose we deserve that.”

“Who deserves what no longer matters, not to me.  We all endure what we must, but I must choose now the best means for those who follow me to do so.”  She gave him a smile without humour.  “Why this ridiculous attachment to the House of Finwë endures is beyond my understanding.  Since my father fell we have led others only to disaster, yet they will follow Finwë’s line, and so the choices fall on me.”

“And so you are a leader at last, Lady Lalwen,” said Amras returning the smile with one just as grim.

“Aye, so I am.”  Fingolfin would never have let her hear the last of it; and that she would never hear her brother exult that leadership had finally caught up with her was very hard to bear.  “We had one of our few really bad quarrels over it,” she said on an impulse, “my elder brother and myself.  Shirking responsibility he called it.  Said I was failing the Noldor by refusing an authority that would have taken time from my studies.”  She bit back the words that had almost slipped out, that he had called her as obsessional as Fëanor; that would be tactless, and she realised she was offering this confession as a strange attempt to prove to Amras he was still her kin, in spite of all.  “He even said he thought the obduracy of the women in our family could be worse than that of the men.”

He had said that, and she could see too well why.  Galadriel: shutting herself off behind the fences of Doriath, refusing to stand beside her family. Aredhel: hurting herself most of all as she sought to hurt her half-cousins for their betrayal, her father and brother Fingon for forgiving it, denying her own nature to lock herself away in Turgon’s city.  

“Worse than the men?  That would be hard,” Amras said, surprising her.  When had he developed this grim humour?  “Well, no point to my lingering, if your mind is made up.” 

 “I am sorry, kinsman.”  The words were honest.

“So am I.” Amras flipped open the pouch on his belt, a little cautiously as the cat leapt back onto his shoulder with a low hiss.  “Speaking of studies, though, I thought this might interest you, aunt.  There’s a recent rock slip on the path I followed and some splinters of veined quartz quite unusual for these parts.  Here.”  He flipped her a small, jagged piece of rock.  Írien caught it and had it raised to her eye in a moment, very close to forgetting Amras in her interest.  With all her knowledge of the mountains she’d never known of that type of quartz in these parts.  Then she forced her hand down again, remembering almost all the fruits of her long studies were burned and wrecked in Hithlum, and to mourn too much for them, when so much more was lost, made her in truth the sister of Fëanor.  Yet she smiled at Amras, remembering how she had shown pebbles to a pair of ruddy-haired small boys on a long ago day not far from Tirion.  “Thank you.  I’ll be sure to check it.” 

There was a long and awkward pause in which Amras began to speak, then stopped and finally said, “This is Farewell then.  I wish you what fortune I may.”

“Fare you well nephew, and may the stars light your path.”  It was a parting handed down from the days of the Great Journey.  Írien extended the hint of hope as the only thing she could give.

She watched him out of sight.  He did not look back, but the cat clinging to him watched her with yellow eyes the whole time.

Írien sighed, and turned to ascend the path.  As she climbed she opened the pouch on her own belt to slip the stone inside, already half-certain she would indeed check the outcrop.  Old habits could not be broken so easily.  Settling the stone into a corner her fingers touched something else, a plain ring of metal and she drew it out.  Silver for betrothal: the ring removed when the one who had placed it there refused to join the march from Tirion.  She had never, quite, abandoned the hope that it could be replaced one day.  Now she looked at the ring one last time and let it fall.  Her ears caught the tinkle of metal on stone but she did not pause.  There was much to be done.