Beating the Bounds by Kenaz

An enormous painting hung in Fingolfin’s solar, a magnificent representation in oils of Finwë’s halls in Tirion, of Finwë mounting the great stone steps. Valacirca glittered in the sky above the tallest turret, while the majestic peaks of the Pelóri rose in the background, dramatically lit by a stream of gold and silver light. Erestor regarded it often as he worked, his mouth curling with a hint of self-satisfaction: a glorious depiction, of course, but a false one. The seven stars were not visible from that vantage point; the artist had eliminated some of the lesser peaks in the mountain range and moved the icy stream to the north of the Calacirya, giving it unnatural prominence. Masterful though it was, it captured neither distance nor scale, a purely symbolic piece. This was why Erestor preferred cartography: maps captured the truth of a place, not the poetic ideal.

Hours had passed since he and his father had met with Fingolfin to review their latest surveys. He had requested a greater degree of detail in some areas and they had divided the work between them. His father had afterward departed, but Erestor remained. He preferred the light in Fingolfin’s halls, he argued, and Fingolfin had offered them a space to work because he enjoyed watching their maps take shape, frequently offering insights as he came and went. He did not mention the wine and cured meats and sweets that appeared with regularity as he labored, for the Fingolfin was not chary with his hospitality. His father had eyed him skeptically. “If I stay, I can begin the corrections straight away,” Erestor contended. “By the time we’re home, I will have forgotten half of what he’s asked for!”

“If you’ll forget so much between here and home,” his father had chided, “I ought to rethink your apprenticeship.”

But he wouldn’t, truly. In the end, he would leave Erestor to work, as he always did, on the trestle table in Fingolfin’s solar, with one eye on the painting, Laurelin’s light refracting through the leaded windows, and the occasional breeze rustling his papers. He had arrayed his rules and calipers and pens around him, each in its particular place so he could find it without looking up.

He filled in fingers of water, checking and rechecking his notes and his father’s measurements, until he had rendered every lazily-flowing bend, every winding branch. He had settled into the shading of the foreground hills when the swift descent of darkness brought up his head.

“Still working?” the source of sudden shadow inquired.

Laurelin’s rays framed Fingon in a brilliant aureole, only the glint of eyes and teeth standing out from the umbra. “What did my father have for you this time?” He leaned across the table, returning the radiance to the room, his hair spilling across the paper like ink, smudging the still-wet edges of Erestor’s most recent pen strokes. None but Fingon would he forgive for blemishing his work with such casual carelessness. Fingon he would forgive anything: this was the true reason he lingered here, bending his back at a long, flat table rather than working in comfort at a drafting board made to his specifications in his own perfectly serviceable studio.

“A minor river in Oromë’s forest and it’s lesser tributaries.” Fingon nodded with mock seriousness. “Very important.”

“It is important,” Erestor argued, edging the paper away from Fingon’s hair. “This river runs into the Outer Sea. It’s an estuary.”

“Hmmmm.” Fingon crossed his arms and cocked his head, still regarding the map upside-down. “I suppose that’s why you’ve drawn a smiling fish leaping out of the water. And a very happy egret.” He circled around the table and grasped Erestor’s shoulders from behind, giving him an experimental shake. “Your back is stiff. A ride would loosen you right up. Laurelin’s light will fade soon, and you’ve already explained to me at length that Telperion’s light is no good for drafting.”

Erestor’s heart tripped in his chest. “But your father —”

“ —doesn’t expect these now .”

Well, Erestor considered, that was true enough. “Let me tidy up, then.” He rose to gather his things from the table. “I could — Ah! —” He knocked his knee on the stretcher beam — “meet you —”

“ —Leave it, Restor!” Fingon’s words were laced with laughter Erestor knew were only mildly aimed at his expense. He laughed in the easy way of a first-born son of a great house whose way lay spread before him without a single obstacle to bar his happy passage. Nothing hampered Fingon in pursuit of his desires; nothing dared. And so Erestor left it, against his better judgment. He did take his compass; it had proven useful more than once in the course of following Fingon’s unscheduled adventures.

“How’s your knee?” Fingon asked with a chuckle, his arm draped around Erestor’s neck as they crossed the courtyard. “You gave it quite a thump.”

Erestor rolled his eyes at his own gracelessness. “Bruised, I imagine.” The heat of Fingon’s arm filtered through the sleeve of his shirt to warm his neck. “Your concern is noted.”

“I’m glad you’re coming.” Fingon’s voice was mellow now, and no longer teasing. “I enjoy your company. Especially when you’re not so busy looking at the ground and jotting notes, or squinting through your compass sights. I enjoy seeing you look up.”

Erestor’s cheeks flushed. “A cartographer must be observant of details to succeed in his work.”

“Spend so much time on the details and you’ll miss the greater picture,” Fingon purred in warning, flexing his arm and drawing Erestor even closer, his breath tickling Erestor’s ear. “We have much to see in this world, Restor.”

Erestor had only a fleeting moment to enjoy the relaxed familiarity.

“Going out, Findekáno?”

Erestor felt Fingon flinch, heard him utter an imprecation under his breath. They stopped and turned in tandem, Fingon’s grip slackening until his arm slipped from Erestor’s shoulder, taking the warmth with it. Fingolfin, apparently returning to the family wing when he spotted them, crossed the courtyard with purposeful strides. Erestor noticed how similar Fingon’s gait was to his father’s, long-legged and cavalier, yet with his body angled forward, as if every footfall was prelude to a charge. His own father’s movements were measured, quite literally; his steps were made for the marking off of yards and ells and feet. After all, a precise map was a good map.

“Yes, Atar. Unless you require me?” Fingon offered a disarming smile, but his body, still close to Erestor’s gave off a hum of irritation.

“And you’re dragging off Eressetor with you.”

Erestor stepped forward, thinking how formal his father-name sounded in Fingolfin’s voice, and offered a respectful nod. “I’ve almost finished with the details you’ve asked for, my lord,” he offered, wishing he hadn’t been so quick to leave his work behind in disarray. Fingon did that to him, made him careless, though Fingon himself could never be described as careless. His father would have a fit if he knew. “And you’re welcome to see for yourself: I’m afraid I’ve left a bit of a mess.”

“Your father’s work has always stood me in good stead,” Fingolfin tipped his head in acknowledgement. “He has trained you up well. And as you’ve left it out, I do think I will have a look, thank you.” Erestor made a bow, but Fingolfin had already turned toward his son. “How long will you be gone?”

Fingon smiled easily. “You needn’t hold dinner for me, if that’s your concern. I can forage in the kitchens on my own, if need be.”

His father did not look quite so easy. Erestor feigned ignorance of the fraught interplay between them, looking casually away. “Do you have a destination in mind?”

Fingon shrugged. “Oh, wherever we have a mind,” he offered casually, but his voice sounded smaller in his throat than it had a moment before. “Angaráto and Aikanáro may be about, somewhere.”

“Angaráto and Aikanáro, is it?”

The silence lasted a beat too long before Fingon recovered. “Perhaps we can set a race from the southern foothills up to the high ridge.” He deflected toward Erestor with a grin. “Since Erestor has drawn up all the paths, I have the advantage.”

Fingolfin’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if searching for something in his son’s face, but then his expression regained its neutrality. “Don’t defraud your cousins on an unfair wager. It isn’t sporting, and you’ll run out of friends.” With a final, mild shake of his head, he returned to his original course.

“I only make a small bets!” Fingon called in the direction of Fingolfin’s retreating back, grinning when Fingolfin dismissed him with an irritable wave.

As they tacked up the horses, Erestor’s curiosity got the best of him. “Your father had more than a passing interest in our ride. I felt like a child caught with my hand in the sweets. What does he imagine we’ll get up to?”

A cloud passed over Fingon’s face for a brief instant before it resolved back into perfection. “He would prefer I spend less time with my Fëanorian cousins.”

“Then he ought to worry about Irissë and her wild rides with Tyelkormo and Curufinwë.”

“ Everything about Irissë worries my father,” Fingolfin chuckled out of the side of his mouth. “The list neither begins nor ends with Turko and Curvo.” In spite of his jesting tone, he appeared too invested in the tightening of his billet straps and in snapping his stirrup leathers when he pulled down his irons. “Yet he is, shall we say, even less sanguine about my friendship with Maitimo.”

Maitimo , not Russo, or even Nelyo.

He had heard the rumors, of course, but being smitten, he had pushed them aside. Gossip always surrounded the Finwëans; that was the cost of royal blood, was it not? The perpetual speculations of others seemed a small price to pay for wealth, prestige, power, and the favor of the Valar. Perhaps the envious chose to willfully misinterpret a friendship out of spite. Given the disharmony between Fingolfin and Fëanor, one naturally assumed Fingolfin might look askance at a close friendship between his brother’s son and his own. Erestor’s hope had powered this conviction, and Fingon had belied it in a word.

* * *

When they left Tirion, Fingon led them not south toward the foothills, but north toward the fields and forests frequented by Fëanor’s sons.

“I decided we could use a swift gallop more than a steep climb.” Fingon answered the question Erestor had not asked, and kept his eyes forward on his path.

“Did you make plans to meet him without your father knowing?”

Fingon pulled up his horse and swiveled in the saddle. The furrow of his brows and the downward tug at the corners of his mouth gave his face a youthful and uncertain aspect, and Erestor was ashamed for having asked. And yet the specter of suspicion lingered.

“Am I your foil, Findekáno?”

“No!” He looked away for a moment. When he looked back, his anger had been schooled into something more intimate: reproachfulness. “We have hatched many schemes together, you and I, and always you have been party to their planning. Have I even once played you false?”

It occurred to Erestor that Fingon was unaccustomed to doubt in any form, but particularly the doubt of others turned on him. “No, you have never played me false. So tell me, then: what is it with you and Nelyafinwë?

Fingon looked at him, but did not answer.

“You count me among your close companions —”

“ —my closest save my kin, and  —”

“Stop.” Erestor forestalled him with an upraised hand. “If I am closer to you than any but your kin, why does so much of you remain a mystery to me? Tell me. Is it true what the gossips say? That you and Nelyafinwë are lovers?”

Their horses, impatient with waiting, had pulled their heads down to graze. Their low snuffles and rumination gave the only indication that time continued to pass during the long silence.

“Not… not as such, no.” The labored phrasing gave the impression of an admission. He exhaled heavily, the burden of his statement pressing the breath from his lungs, and Erestor could see his cheeks reddening just as he could feel the color receding from his own. “Maitimo and I are close blood,” he answered, his desultory shrug even less credible than his voice. “The Eldar do not take close blood to their beds.” It sounded like a recitation, something practiced.

When Erestor was young, his father had shown him their family’s heirloom: a primitive map of Cuiviénen and the inland sea scratched out on deer hide in ink made from soot and oak galls, the work of his father’s father. To the east of the Orocarni was written in the ancient cirth, Here be Monsters ; a warning that what lay beyond was unknown, and best left unexamined. His ancestor had not heeded his own warning: he tried to cross the Orocarni to see what lay beyond. Monsters, apparently; he had never returned.

Erestor knew, as his grandsire had known, that some things were best left unexplored. Yet like his grandsire, he pressed on in spite of this knowledge.

“And if blood did not constrain you?”

Fingon shot him a look as stony and forbidding as the Orocarni. “Leave it, Restor.” This time, there was no laughter in his words.

* * *

Fingon had been absolutely correct on one count: Erestor needed a swift gallop. They both did. Their mounts required little encouragement to stretch out their legs and fly over the old trails and meadows. They let the horses run themselves out, all four of them left hot and winded.

Buy the time they reached the shallow river issuing from the mountains, both their moods had much improved, and an unexpected greeting furthered the day’s new direction. Erestor recognized Galadriel’s voice before he saw her wading with her skirts tucked into her belt. He considered if he were the least bit inclined toward women, it would be Galadriel with whom he might be fruitlessly taken. The reach of his heart perpetually exceeded its grasp. Aegnor reclined on the bank beside her with his trousers rolled up, his feet dangling in the water. He lifted himself up onto his elbows and gave them a wave.

“The bream are running,” Galadriel remarked cheerfully.

“If it’s fish you’re after, Restor can show you a nice little stream in the south where they’re not only running, but smiling.”

Erestor punched him in the arm. Fingon laughed and took it.

Leaving the horses to graze, Erestor took a seat on the bank next to Aegnor while Fingon toed off his boots, rolled up his trousers and shirtsleeves, and joined Galadriel in the water. Flicking water at his cousin and grasping at fish, one might have been forgiven for thinking Fingon looked more like an errant schoolboy than a prince of the Noldor. Erestor made no attempt to hide the smile crossing his face, didn’t care if he appeared a besotted fool. This was how he loved Fingon best: tameless and without care. Even Aegnor’s inquisitive gaze couldn’t touch his contentment. Let him wonder . He tugged off his own boots, wanting the water on his own legs, as if he might thereby experience vicariously what it meant to be Fingon.

He watched the cousins with a sense of grateful fascination, and let his mind follow the stream in its broken path west and south. The day had reached the magical fulcrum at which both Laurelin and Telperion shed their beams over the land. Erestor loved this fleeting, limnal hour, and the accompanying sense of possibility. Anything might happen in this time out of time, anything at all.

* * *

“Well, look who it is. Finno and his map-maker.”

Idylls had a way of ending swiftly and unceremoniously. Such as, in a clatter of hoof beats, and with the sudden and unlooked for appearance of Celegorm, who had an uncanny way of making even the most innocuous sentence sound like an insult.

The man halted his horse a few yards away, but his wolfhound trotted toward them, stopping to sniff avidly at Erestor. The hound was a scant few hands shorter than Erestor’s mount and seemed to be sizing the two of them up, deciding which would make the better meal. Erestor held his breath. He was never entirely convinced Celegorm would call it off in a timely fashion if it took it into its mind to sink its teeth into someone’s thigh. When the hound moved on to investigate Aegnor, Erestor exhaled.

“Well met, cousins. Hello, Restor.” Maglor offered a warmer welcome, drawing up to the bank and dismounting to extend a hand first to Aegnor, then to Erestor. To Fingon and Galadriel he offered a good-natured salute. “Care to join our hunting party? Turko spotted a glorious stag. We’ve been tracking it for hours.”

Galadriel and Aegnor offered enthusiastic assent. Erestor sighed; he would have preferred to linger near the water and take his chances with the bream. He fished well enough, but was a passable hunter at best, and didn’t enjoy the task; as Celegorm had once loudly and succinctly put it, “Restor can draw every last tree in the forest, but he can’t hit a single one with a rock.” Aside from Fingon, only Maglor hadn’t laughed, and years later, Erestor was still grateful for it. Of all the Finwëans, he found Maglor most similar to Fingon in his bearing and temperament, though he he escaped into solitary contemplation more often than Fingon, and was not as swift to laugh.

“Are we all in, then?” Galadriel’s voice was merry. “Shall we be off?”

Celegorm shook his head. “Not yet. We’ve one more in our party. He stopped to take a —”

Galadriel tilted her head and arched her brow emphatically.

“ —to make water .” Celegorm concluded with mock gentility.

But over their laughter, Erestor heard the crackling of branches and the rustle of leaves, the brief snort of an approaching horse. Momentarily, the head of a great chestnut gelding broke through the brush, it’s tall rider ducking a branch as he entered the clearing. His hair was as brazen as his mount’s. By way of greeting, he said just one word.

“Káno.”

When Fingon turned, Erestor’s immediate thought was of the needle on his compass when it swung to find true north.

“You’ve three other cousins to greet, Russo,” Maglor remarked, “and Restor. Though I suppose we are all well accustomed to your lack of manners.”

Maedhros rolled his eyes at Maglor’s japing, but gave his horse a long rein. The horse, knowing what was expected of him, made a beeline for Fingon’s gelding. “Aiko, well met.” he said as he passed. “Artanis. I trust your fishing is successful?”

Maedhros’ horse, without any prompting that Erestor could see, nosed between his own horse and Fingon’s, separating them. The chestnut’s tail gave a disdainful twitch, and Erestor’s horse took another step to the side.

“Eressetor.”

Only elders and strangers called Erestor by his father-name. Elders, strangers, and Maedhros. It seemed less of a greeting than a challenge, especially when delivered by a mounted man in fine riding leathers to a man on a riverbank with his boots off and his trousers hiked up to his knees.

“Nelyafinwë,” he returned, for lack of any more potent retort.

Maedhros swung down off his horse with an athletic grace Erestor envied. He walked to the edge of the bank and stood with his arms crossing his chest, looking down at Fingon and Galadriel. No, not at Galadriel, at Fingon alone. Yet for such a commanding stance, Erestor was surprised to see genuine pleasure in his expression. He imagined Maedhros as being perpetually stern — though with Celegorm and Curufin running amok, Caranthir in a perennial sulk, and the twins underfoot, any man might possess a limited store of humor — and was taken aback to see how finely his features composed themselves when he smiled.

He watched Maedhros extend his hand to Fingon, watched Fingon take it. As Maedhros pulled Fingon from the water, he saw the way their eyes met, unblinking, and the way Maedhros’ thumb skimmed Fingon’s knuckles. Saw how their hands remained clasped for a moment once Fingon stood beside him on the shore. All the while, the river flowed onward, west and south, toward Lórien’s gardens and away. Whatever possibility he had imagined in the shifting light had waned with Telperion’s waxing.

“I don’t think I’ve much taste for venison tonight, Turko,” Maedhros announced, not looking at his brother.

“Let’s away, lads,” Celegorm huffed an irritated sigh. “Hunt’s over; Russo’s found his quarry.” The clear insinuation in his voice was met with uncomfortable laughter.

Fingon turned to Erestor, his expression somewhere between guilt and hope. “I’m going to talk with Maitimo for a bit.” He smiled with half his mouth, the other half angled in apology. “I don’t need to ask if you can find your way home. I expect you know every inch of the way.”

“I know the way,” Erestor replied, trying not to sound foolishly disappointed. “I looked up.”

Fingon winced. This made Erestor feel better about the situation. Not because he wished to cause Fingon pain, but because he didn’t want to think of Fingon as guileful. The slight contraction of his features convinced Erestor this meeting had indeed been a coincidence — a happy one for Fingon; less so for himself.

“I’ll need to pick up my drawings and tools. Should’ve done before we left.” This folly was ill- considered , he thought. I should have finished my work and gone home. Better yet, I should have gone home and done my work there like any right-thinking creature. “My father will be angry if I leave a mess behind. I don’t imagine your father would be pleased, either.”

Fingon’s eyes moved from Erestor to Maedhros and back again, a consideration of his actions, but not an alteration of his decision. “I won’t ask you to lie to my father —”

Erestor cut him off with the shake of his head. “You haven’t asked. But I will if I must. Just this once.”

To say this cost him much, and Fingon’s look of gratitude nearly gutted him. If that hadn’t done it, Aegnor’s look of pity or Celegorm’s look of amusement would have finished him off. Had he been in a less choleric frame of mind, he might have noticed Maedhros’ expression held a touch of surprised respect that hadn’t been there before.

“Come, Resto,” Galadriel prompted. “We’ll ride with you as far as we can.”

They set out in three different directions, two to the north, three to the south, and two alone together to forge their way in what direction Erestor did not know.

They rode most of the way in silence with Artanis cantering ahead in short bursts, Aegnor and Erestor following behind. As they neared the outskirts of Tirion, Aegnor reached over and settled his hand on Erestor’s shoulder.

“Best look another way, friend. What they have defies all explanation. You’ll find nothing but heartache there.”

Erestor’s fingers tightened on his reins and he moved his horse away. Such counsel elicited frustration, which fomented into anger Erestor directed at the wrong target: what would Aegnor ever know of loving someone he could not have?

* * *

His papers and instruments were as he had left them, in ordered chaos on the table. He rolled up the maps and slid them into their leather tube, wrapped up his pens and calipers, and checked the cork was tight in his ink.

“Findekáno did not return with you, Eressetor?”

Erestor dropped his tools, his hand flying to his throat. His heart continued to beat itself like a trapped bird against a window pane. He hadn’t seen Fingolfin when he entered, but the man had clearly been laying in wait. He would never know how he mustered the fortitude to look into Fingolfin’s face and speak anything other than the truth. “His horse pulled up foot-sore. He’s walking back, but my father is expecting me soon, so I came ahead alone.”

Fingolfin did not immediately release him from his appraising gaze. “An apprentice shouldn’t keep his master waiting,” he agreed solemnly, “even if his master is only his father. Especially if,” he amended. A wry smile played on his lips, but it hinted at annoyance beneath. Like his walk, his voice was similar to his son’s, but of a deeper timbre. He spoke with a more deliberate cadence than Fingon, as if judging the weight of each word in his mouth before allowing it to take shape. Fingon’s words flew more like arrows from his mouth, with unerring speed and accuracy backed by the confidence of youth.

“I examined your maps,” Fingolfin said as Erestor, thinking himself dismissed, reached the door. The words were benign enough, but Erestor’s neck burned with every second he endured Fingolfin’s scrutiny. Only the hearth lit the room, but it threw more than enough light for Fingolfin’s keen eyes to track the progression of color up Erestor’s neck. “You do good work. Precise work.”

“Thank you,” Erestor muttered, sketching an inadequate bow while a single bead of sweat escaped from his armpit.

 “But you’ve a terrible face for lying, boy,” Fingolfin added laconically as Erestor crossed the threshold.

 Erestor did not dare meet Fingolfin’s eyes; what courage he had in this matter had already expended itself. He employed every ounce of restraint he possessed to keep himself from bolting.

The changes were subtle at first.

Where a man’s word once sufficed to identify the periphery of his land, Erestor now found himself in high demand, drawing and redrawing maps to clarify disputes between men who had been fast friends a season before. Melkor’s lies worked swiftly and worked well: neighbors held each other in suspicion; cousin mistrusted cousin; brother turned on brother.

When Fingon wished to hunt or ride or in anywise escape the constraints of court life in Tirion, he turned to his siblings or the children of Finarfin. But mainly, he turned to Erestor. He no longer spoke of Maedhros, and Erestor knew better than to ask.

Finwë summoned Erestor and his father to his council, and they had been laying out maps for the King and his lords to render verdicts on the latest round of trivial squabbles when Fingolfin begged their pardon and drew his father away for a private discussion. They took seats at the far end of the hall while waiting for the King to resume his audience. His father looked tactfully away, but Erestor could not resist watching Fingolfin’s abrupt gesticulations, so unlike his usual fluid movements. Finwë seemed to motion for calm, but Fingolfin shook his head vehemently, pounding fist into palm. After another inaudible word from his father, he threw his hands into the air, his low tones rising to a desperate shout.

“King and father, will you not restrain the pride of Fëanor?” He thrust out his arms in remonstrance. “By what right does he speak for our people as if he were King?”

Finwë’s lips moved, but though Erestor strained forward only Fingolfin and the lords nearest the dais could have heard what response he offered. Whatever it was, it gave Fingolfin no satisfaction.

“ You , Father, bid the Quendi accept the summons of the Valar, and you led the Noldor on the perilous journey from Middle-earth to Eldamar.” He splayed his empty fingers wide. “ You , Father, not Fëanor.” Receiving no answer from Finwë, he scrubbed a hand over his jaw and tossed up his hands once more in disgust. “At least two of your sons have honored your words.”

All heads turned toward the sudden flash of daylight as the chamber doors flew wide, and all flinched at the loud crack as the doors hit the walls behind them.

“So it is even as I guessed!”

Girded for battle, Fëanor strode toward the dais, a sword swinging at his side and his seven sons sweeping in behind him like a flood.

Beside him, Erestor heard his father murmur an invocation to the All-father. Erestor thought, with no little cynicism, that if Eru planned to intervene, he ought do it soonest, and in some truly spectacular fashion. He, meanwhile, intended to watch the outrageous drama play out.

“My half-brother would come before me with my father.” Fëanor turned to address the stunned crowd in a voice strident with rage. “He would come before me in this as in all things.”

Fingolfin had by now been surrounded by Fëanor’s sons. Erestor’s eyes moved from brother to brother, trying to make sense this display. With their stiff backs toward him, he could only speculate Amras and Amrod were the least confident in their actions; Amrod appeared as if he could hardly quell the quivering of his legs. Maglor’s once-placid features were schooled to steel, but manifested no viciousness. Celegorm looked like a man spoiling for blows, but that was no different from his usual mein. Caranthir, dark as his name implied, had a glint in his eye as unpredictably dangerous as one of Celegorm’s hounds. Curufin wore his sanctimony as he did his fine-cut cloak, tossed back from his shoulder to reveal a sword akin to his father’s.

They were all of them armed! Erestor didn’t know how he could have failed to notice this from the outset. Any sardonic fascination he might have drawn from the spectacle dissolved, leaving him with the naked palpitations of fear in his stomach.

Maedhros, alone of his brothers, did not affix his eyes on his uncle. His disdainful gaze anchored on some point further down the hall. Erestor followed it as he might have reckoned some distant object through the sights of his compass: he was staring at Fingon. Erestor hadn’t even noticed Fingon enter, hadn’t seen him standing behind a thick stone pillar and silently bearing witness to his Uncle’s fury, to his cousins’ betrayal.

“Peace, brother,” Fingolfin responded in a low and even tone. “Let us discuss this matter together.”

But Fëanor turned on Fingolfin and with a sweep of his arm drew his sword. The steel sang an exquisitely lethal song as it pulled free of its scabbard. “Get thee gone,” he cried, “and take thy due place!”

“Father!” Fingon rushed forward.

Fingolfin did not take his attention from his brother, but raised one hand to Fingon signalling for him to hold. His only other movement was to glance at his father, but the High King had no eyes to spare for his second son, not when Fëanor’s fire overtook the room with its preternatural fervency. If his father’s abandonment pained him, Fingolfin hid it well. He took a cautious stride back, putting himself out of striking distance, then lifted his chin, pulled himself to his full height, turned to Finwë and the council, and bowed with more dignity than Erestor could have imagined possible. The rising hum in the hall suggested he was not alone in finding Fingolfin’s exit the height of grace under duress. Without another word or glance toward either Finwë or Fëanor, he made to depart.

Perhaps further outraged by Fingolfin’s ability to garner the favor of the masses with a single bow, Fëanor pursued him and stayed him at the threshold. Laurelin’s light glanced off the biting edge of his sword as he held it to Fingolfin’s breast. Erestor was close enough now to see the fabric of Fingolfin’s surcoat yield to the tip. “See, half -brother!” he bit out the designation like a curse. “This is sharper than thy tongue.” The surly growl made the hairs on Erestor’s neck rise. “Try once more to usurp my place and the love of my father —” he twisted the blade slowly, rucking the fabric beneath it — “and maybe it will rid the Noldor of one who seeks to be the master of thralls.”

The assembly held its collective breath, but Fingolfin’s composure was as unwavering as Fëanor’s wrath. He stepped aside from his brother’s blade, blinked once, then turned and walked into the brightness of the day beyond.

Like a dam overrun, the crowd spilled out of the halls, councilors abandoning all dignity to jostle past each other in their rush to depart. Some following Fëanor and his sons from a safe distance as though tracking a pack of rabid dogs, others following Fingolfin (who proceeded not in the direction of his own home, but toward Finarfin’s) to see how the man would answer such a grave insult.

Fingon and Finwë remained unmoved by the sweeping tide of bodies. Finwë sat on his great chair, the fingers of one hand curled around its scrolling arm, the other cradling his forehead. Fingon, however, appeared unsteady on his feet, staring vacantly out the doors where his father — and his cousins — had gone. Erestor grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him from the fray.

“I’ll get you home. We’ll go in from behind.”

He maneuvered Fingon down side streets and alleys until they reached the back gate, and it fell to Erestor to summarize the incident and raise the alarum. Once inside, Fingon recovered himself long enough to make for his room with Erestor chasing behind.

“My own uncle threatened my father with death,” he recounted in disbelief, as if Erestor had not witnessed it, as if half the population of Tirion had not witnessed it, as if the rest of the city was not at that very moment hearing of it. “Grandfather did nothing to stop it. Nothing.”

“And Maitimo…” his voice trailed off. He had become as insubstantial as a ghost, weightless and untethered. He looked up at Erestor wide-eyed and pale, and his mouth hung open but no words came out.

Erestor was loath to defend Maedhros, yet he remembered Amrod’s trembling legs and Maglor’s weary resignation. How might anyone, let alone a son, stand up to Fëanor? “I doubt he had a choice. ”

“He looked straight through me, as if he didn’t even see me!” Fingon cried. “As if I were a stranger! As though we had never —” He cut off abruptly.

“Káno—” The word slipped from his mouth. He hadn’t intended to say it aloud. “ Findekáno . I’m sorry.”

Fingon reached up and took his hand, but did not look at him. “Don’t apologize. I enjoy the way it sounds coming from your mouth.”

Erestor coughed. “I’ll fetch you a plate from the kitchen. I’ll bring you up some brandy, as well. To help you relax.”

“I have servants for that. Sit with me.”

But Erestor needed to clear his head, to direct himself away from the imminent shoals. “It won’t take long,” he insisted, leaving before Fingon could object again.

The furor of the day’s events had set the household on its head. Fingolfin had not yet returned, but even so, every last body in the house vacillated between frantic movement and arrested handwringing. While he waited for a cook to scrape together some suitable fare and for the butler to bring up the brandy, he deliberated over his course of action. Stay, or go.

Go, he decided. He was not family; all this was not his affair. Surely, Fingolfin would want to close ranks, and his presence would be an intrusion.

Yet Fingon had asked him to stay.

The sight greeting him when he returned made his breath catch. Fingon wore nothing but his linen shirt and trousers. His feet were bare, and he had taken down the braids from his hair. Fingon’s vanity had always been something of a good-natured joke amongst those close to him, and Erestor had never seen him looking anything less than a prince. Now he just appeared as a young man alone, uncertain and undone. Erestor hid the tremor of his hands when he set the tray down on the table, but it became more evident when he poured three fingers of brandy; four for good measure.

“Only one glass?”

“I cannot stay.”

“Why not?

Erestor stilled himself with a long inhalation. “It’s been a taxing day. You have much on your mind. Your father will have need of you when he comes. There are a thousand reasons, Findekáno.”

“Káno.”

“ Káno . There are a thousand reasons, Káno.”

Fingon took an audible breath through flared nostrils, nodded, and blew out through his lips. “Yes. I suppose there are.”

“If you have need of me tomorrow…” No need to finish; Fingon would understand. He turned for the door, all but deafened by the blood rushing through his ears, but not so deafened that he failed to hear the single word, the summons that came as his fingers brushed the latch.

“Stay.”

He paused, shut his eyes, swallowed. Fingon didn’t want him ; he simply didn’t want to be alone. Erestor understood, given the circumstances. And yet. He kept his hand on the door when he turned back.

Fingon’s look was not quite an entreaty; Fingon possessed too much pride to beg — he wouldn’t have known how. But the vulnerability of his bare feet, of his untucked shirt, of his unbound hair...those things asked , even as his words insisted.

“Restor,” he whispered, and even that was more a command than a name. “Stay.”

Fingon’s touch was warm against his cheek, warm as it drew Erestor’s hand to press it against his chest. That was warm, too. His heartbeat filled the room with its sturdy, steady appeal. Stay . Fingon did not ask with words, but with his hands, and then with his mouth, and at last with the considerable weight of his exquisite form.

Erestor stayed. That night, and every night after.

He stayed, and they danced together on Taniquetil through the brightest night in Aman with the bounty of the Valar all around them. For once, Erestor did not feel Maedhros’ presence in the form of his absence, and Fëanor’s attendance marked the healing of old wounds, rather than the rending of new ones. But all this concerned Erestor little, for he and Fingon were together with those whom they loved, singing and drinking and reveling, tumbling late into their bed, taking their pleasure in bursts of mingled lust and laughter until Lórien finally demanded his due, and they slept the sleep of honest, well-loved men.

They awoke to darkness, but met it side by side. Then came the black news from Formenos, and the endless night became deeper still. But two held fast where one might have faltered in his grief.

When Fëanor, encircled in torchlight on the summit of Tuná, denounced the Valar in righteous anguish, Erestor stood still and speechless at Fingon’s side, his hand crushed in Fingon’s iron grip. He watched, slack-mouthed and staring, as rebellion unfolded all around him, fomented by one man’s implacable fury and masterful words. Fëanor swore his ill-conceived and irrevocable oath and Erestor could do naught but shake his head in horror as one son after another succumbed to their father’s unappeasable will.

“Fools!” Fingolfin cried, and Turgon raised his voice to rail against his uncle’s folly. The affray roiled on, one set of voices rising to be shouted down by another, returning with increasing vehemence and volume. Only Finarfin’s measured intercession prevented a second drawing of swords.

Even as Fingon’s fingers twined with his, Erestor saw Fingon’s gaze had crossed the flaming brands and gone to Maedhros, and Maedhros’ hard steel stare had met his. He could envision the indissoluble thread, taut with longing, stretching between them. Fingon’s silence now spoke louder than any words he might have uttered.

Later, back in Fingon’s rooms, the clamor of the gathered throng rendered sleep, or even rest, impossible. Erestor sat. Fingon paced.

“I’ll send for some wine.” Erestor rubbed at the back of his neck, his twitching hands seeking occupation.

“Later.” Fingon raised a distracted hand. “We must think.”

“Think?’ Erestor blinked. Hiis stomach clenched.

Fingon turned to him, his eyes alight with feral splendor. “Little love do I have for my uncle, but not all he said was untrue. Or unreasonable.”

Erestor’s mouth fell open. He shook his head, raked a jerking hand through his hair. “Fëanor is mad, Káno! All of this is madness!”

Fingon looked with unfocused eyes at some spot in the middle distance, his jaw working in tight circles. “Is it?” he asked in a deceptively mild tone. “What if I wish to go?”

“Go?” Erestor’s parched throat expelled this single word.

Fingon bent over him and grasped his shoulders, giving him a jolt. “Yes, go!” His pupils had expanded, turning his eyes into wide black wells, yet their gleam had grown even brighter than the flames in the hearth. “You of all people must come!” His clutch tightened, grew painful. He knelt between Erestor’s knees, leaving little more than the space of breath between them. “Imagine, Restor, the lands unmapped,” he whispered. “Imagine the wilderness unguarded and unexplored!”

Erestor could imagine it well enough, and it was not unappealing. But he could also imagine how it would end. And yet he did not impede Fingon’s exhortation because he was so beautiful in his passion, and because some part of Erestor desired to be compelled, to be swept away by this force of nature. No matter how Fingon disavowed his uncle, he could not deny the blood coursing his veins, blood possessing a measure of that canny wildness given unto all of Finwë’s kindred, the incandescence that could consume souls as easily as kindle them.

“What would you do here, when you and your father have recorded every inch of Aman? What then? An eternity of defending one petty man against another because one’s orchards overran another’s grazing pasture? Is your destiny writ so small?” He released Erestor, and Erestor dizzily remembered to breathe. Fingon bounded to the writing desk, rifled through the drawers. He withdrew Erestor’s compass with a triumphant sound and displayed it in an outstretched hand, an enticement, a provocation. “What will you see through your sights when Findaráto and Ambaráto and Artanis are gone? When I am gone?”

Nothing , he wanted to say, but his mouth would not obey.

“I must go, Erestor. I go to avenge my grandfather. I go to lay waste to the darkness that would have us cower here like toothless babes. I go because I want to see the land whence our people came, the land of our people’s birth.”

You go for him , Erestor thought, but still he could not speak. His blood sped through his veins, his heart became a war-drum in his chest.

“And you, Erestor? Do you stay, and cower, and draw the same lines your father has drawn a thousand, thousand times?”

“No.” Erestor croaked, finding his voice at the last. “I will go.” I go for you.

* * *

Erestor followed Fingon out of Valinor. His father refused to part with the maps of Cuiviénen, the sole remainder of his own father’s memory. Erestor stared at them for as long as he could, committing them to mind’s eye. He took nothing with him but his warmest clothes, a sword he was loath to use, and his compass.

The clothes were not warm enough. The sword he cast into the harbor at Alqualondë after seeing what steel wrought there. He lost the compass on the Helcaraxë. It mattered little; there was nothing but ice and death in every direction, and there was no light to get a reckoning in any case.

The Ered Lómin rose starkly, a great grey jaw biting through the landscape. Erestor wished he could have sketched them, noted some points of reference or measurements for future use, but he had neither paper nor ink, and his hands were numb with the cold. When Fingolfin’s vanguard found a safe pass between two peaks, Erestor could do little more than watch the feet of the men in front of him and will his own to take one more step.

“Look up, Restor,” Fingon whispered, urging him forward with a firm hand on the small of his back.

Erestor looked up. Starlight pierced the darkness a thousand times above them, the recognizable patterns of Menelmacar and Soronúmë allowed him to get his bearings and granted a welcome sense of familiarity, though they did not glimmer in their accustomed places. He made out a broad swath of open land below, bordered in the distance by another forbidding range that passed in and out of view behind a veil of fog. Yet a new light burgeoned in the sky, glowing low on the horizon. As they trudged forward, it illuminated the remote summits and the fertile plain beneath.

Erestor reached for Fingon’s hand, and found it warmer than it had any right to be. They stood together observing the steady progression of Fingolfin’s folk down the lee slope. As the first men reached the flat of the earth below, shouts of joy rose from the gladdened hearts of those still making their descent. Fingolfin’s banners unfurled in a blaze of blue and silver, and the clarion call of trumpets rang out over their new domain.

“Hisilómë.” The word slipped from Fingon’s lips like the mist hanging low over the vale.

* * *

Fingolfin required an immediate survey of their surroundings, and Erestor spent his first weeks riding with a scouting party all the way to the remote peaks ascending in a knobby spine on the far side of the grassland. He drank from the spring bubbling up through the crags that birthed the river they named Sirion. Finrod approved of the quality of the rock there, and urged his uncle to set his stronghold in the clefts where it might guard the eastern pass.

Dampness pervaded the canvas pavilions, but they fended off the wind and the bone-chilling cold. Fingolfin’s staff had made a better job of packing their extensive household than Erestor had done with his own meagre belongings. Even in their provisional camp, Fingon had a field desk and stand for rushlights, both of which he bequeathed to Erestor. They brought him paper and pens; even a ruled straight-edge had emerged from the depths of a trunk. Knotted rope stood well enough for a surveyor’s chain, and ink could be made from oak galls and ashes in the ancient fashion. No calipers; Erestor would make do… but without a compass, he could offer only crude sketches. His initial attempt dismayed him with its primitive aspect; it may as well have been a rough rendering of the Orocarni on a deer hide, complete with an ominous warning of monsters on the margin. He threw down his pen in disgust.

“Here.” Fingon approached on light feet and set down a parcel wrapped in suede. Erestor hadn’t noticed where it came from. “I had meant to make a present of this earlier, but…other things intervened.”

Inside was an oiled wooden box containing a circumferentor larger and of far higher quality than the one Erestor had lost in their crossing. The sights glided open on their hinges, and the turntable moved with precision, degree by degree. A sundial etched in a scrolling design could be raised from the crystal or folded flat. The needle glowed with gilt and shown bright and straight in the dim light of the rushes. But the compass rose boldly painted on its face struck Erestor most deeply: the four brightest rays of the winged sun of Finwë heralded the cardinal directions, smaller rays signaled the ordinal points, and the least of the sixteen flares pointed toward intermediate points between. The rose sat on Fingon and Fingolfin’s blue field, accented with tiny stars Erestor presumed to be diamonds. The runic symbol for North was inlaid with nacre. Erestor had never received a more precious gift, and not only in its usefulness or its worth.

“It’s large enough you needn’t worry about losing it.”

“No.” Erestor’s smile, small at first, taken aback by the perfection before him, grew until it opened across his entire face. He could not tame it into anything more seemly than an astonished gape. “This one I will never lose.”

"Yours will be the first maps of our new land.”

Not the first. Erestor carried those in his mind, along with their admonition.

But that had been far from this place, and a long time before. The Noldor of Aman were wiser than their ancestors, and more skilled. Erestor looked at his compass, imagined boundaries pushed wide, the monsters of his ancestors’ imaginations slain in the wake of their explorations.

Hope awoke in Erestor’s heart. For a short while, it held.

* * *

As the host of Fingolfin advanced toward the northern shores of Lake Mithrim, the diminished host of Fëanor retreated south. The reunion, such as it was, was brief and grim.

Fingon returned from the summit with his estranged cousins pale and silent. Dark circles carved hollows beneath his unfocused eyes Erestor had not seen since the Grinding Ice. Unwilling to speak and unable to sit, he paced the tent, waving away offers of food and drink and refusing all visitors. Nothing Erestor said or did subdued the frenetic motion; he had become invisible, superfluous to whatever bleak pageant was playing out in Fingon’s mind. In utter frustration, Erestor grabbed him by the arms and planted himself in the rut Fingon had begun to wear into the dirt.

“Enough.” Now Erestor demanded rather than asked. “What did they say?”

Only then did Fingon take note of Erestor’s presence and register his surroundings. He shook himself, as if to dislodge the bleary haze from his eyes, from his spirit. He drew himself up, Findekáno, Prince of the Noldor once more, and looked at Erestor with eyes fell with fire.

"Morgoth holds Nelyafinwë at Thangorodrim.”

Of all the horrors Fingon might have imparted to him, this was not one Erestor could have expected. Just like that, Maedhros was in the room with them, as if the very mention of his name had been an invocation of his spirit. “Káno, I am sorry. This is ill news.”

Fingon nodded absently, but pulled away, his lucidity a transitory thing. He returned his fey gaze to the unknowable space between them and resumed his rhythmic steps. “I must go to him.”

“What?” Erestor snatched at him, missed, and tried again, catching the sleeve of his shirt and spinning him half-way around. “Are you mad?” The set jaw, the pursed lips, the coiled springs of his arms and legs and back spoke of a man who was questionably sane, but profoundly resolute. “Thangorodrim cannot be breached,” Erestor reasoned fruitlessly. “You cannot help him. You will die, Káno.”

"Then I die!” Fingon’s ferocity was a living thing all its own; the tent felt cramped with bodies and spectres and the cascading scree of their emotions.

“You must make me a map.” He gripped the desk, and in the paltry glow of the rushlight, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. “My chances are poor at best, I know, but, Restor, I have no hope at all without your work.”

Erestor backed away, raised his hands as if warding off a blow. “Do not ask this of me.”

“You have ridden the ridges of the Ered Wethrin and seen Thangorodrim from its peaks! You have seen it from all vantagepoints!”

Erestor shook his head. “There are three mountains there, Káno, each one higher and more treacherous than the next.” He delivered each word with precision. “Each spits flame. Each is riddled with tunnels and traps and deeps reaching to the core of the earth. Do you understand? And that is to say nothing of what guards them.” Erestor pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes until color flared beneath his lids. “Even if such a thing as a safe route to Thangorodrim exists, I could not even begin to imagine where Nelyafinwë might be held. And if, by some unfathomable grace, you do find him, and if, by some chance he still lives, what do you think your chances are of leaving that place alive?”

“All I ask is a map. The rest is my concern alone.”

“But you cannot do this alone!” Erestor’s voice rose, cracked. “Even with the whole of your father’s host, you could not do this! This is a fool’s errand, Káno. The cause is lost. I beg of you, leave it!”

“His own brothers would have me leave it!” Fingon beat his fist against the desk; the circumferentor rattled in its box. “His own brothers! I will do this alone, because no one else will!”

“Did you ever consider he has earned his fate? He’s as mad as Fëanor was! He watched his father put a sword to your father’s heart and then went willingly into exile rather than repent of a deed ill-done. He slew our kindred in Alqualondë and stole their ships with their blood still fresh on his sword!”

Fingon turned sharply, lowering his head to capture Erestor with dangerously narrowed eyes. “Your blade ran as red as his, as red as my own.”

Erestor could feel his face reddening with anger, with anguish. They had promised never to speak of what had passed that night on the quay. “We acted without malice, and without understanding. We did not know the cause of the battle,” he said evenly. “Nelyafinwë was the cause. He is a murderer.”

Fingon said nothing, crossing his arms over his chest. His gaze had drifted again; it was trained on the wall of the tent, but Erestor knew he looked for something Erestor could not see. Something beyond the tent, beyond Mithrim, something far in the east.

“Do you imagine he loved you?” Erestor asked softly, lethally. He had but one final weapon to employ. “Do you imagine he thought of you as he buried his blade in the throat of some unarmed mariner?” He crossed behind, let his low words filter into Fingon’s ears. “If he loved you, he might have taken you with him on one of his ill-gotten ships, Findekáno. But he didn’t take you, did he?”

Fingon remained mute.

“He left you to die on the ice, Findekáno. He left you to perish for want of warmth and food and safety, all of which were within his reach.” He shifted his stance, moved to face the man who stood as silent and unyielding as stone. “He stood aside, this man you love, who you imagine loves you, and he did nothing while his father set those ships alight!”

Still, Fingon said nothing.

Erestor fisted his hair in his hands then threw wide his arms before he could rip every last strand out of his head. “Why do you do this? Can you make me understand?” His frustration upended him completely. He reeled away from Fingon until he collided with the desk. The rushlight flickered, cast misshapen shadows on the wall. His quavered. “Why do you risk all for him? He, who held up his bloody hands and said ‘this is none of mine’ while we starved and froze and drowned in black water?”

Why do you cast me aside when I have been nothing but loyal ? he did not ask; it would avail him naught and he needed what little pride he still possessed. “Tell me!”

Fingon faced him then, and the rigidness had left his body. He moved toward Erestor and cupped his cheeks in his warm, broad hands. The grey eyes that had moments before looked feverish and feral had resumed their familiar clarity, but a deep line had drawn up between his brows, and the look he gave Erestor was gentle in its pity, and terrible in its remorse. When at last he spoke, his words were cruel despite their tenderness.

“Because he is Maitimo.”

With those words, Erestor knew himself defeated. The last of his hope died.

That night they took each other roughly. They left scratches, purpling bruises on throat and breast that had begun as kisses and ended as something else.

Afterward, neither man spoke.

Fingon lay still, blinking intermittently, with eyes fixed on the hipped roof of the tent, one hand idly stroking Erestor’s arm, the motion more the reflexive memory of muscle than a comfort. Erestor traced the contour of Fingon’s face, the line of his neck, drew them as he would draw a map, all the while thinking, Once, all this was mine. My hands were here. My mouth was here. I have traveled the road to my exile inch by inch; I wear the map of it on my heart. Blue veins coursed like rivers beneath fine skin; the crest of a collarbone became a mountain ridge; the cleft of his chest marked the perimeter between countries. The muscled seams of his abdomen were the pathways between rolling hillocks, the scant hairs beneath a sparse stand of trees precursing a denser forest below.

In the grey light of dawn, they parted in silence, for there was nothing to be said. Fingon held Erestor’s map rolled tight in a clenched fist. A thousand things Erestor read in his face, but mainly these: fear, determination, and grief. He once more cradled Erestor’s cheek with gentleness, yet held his gaze so hard Erestor feared he might break. He bore it, did not look away, absorbed the last light he could from those eyes flashing as bright as adamant, which were in the end just as hard. Fingon turned and was gone, gone on this quest none but he would undertake.

Erestor moved his belongings into an unoccupied tent. That Fingon would succeed, Erestor now did not doubt. He no longer laughed in the easy way he had in Aman, but he remained Fingon, and nothing hampered him in pursuit of his desires; nothing dared.

* * *

Maedhros’ skin was grey as stone, his frame more bone than flesh. Erestor had never seen a sight so ghastly. He thought Fingon had retrieved a corpse until he saw the slow and shallow breaths. Maedhros lived, but barely. And only, Erestor knew, by the sheer force of Fingon’s will.

One day during Fingolfin’s absence, Fingon had pressed into his father’s duties around the camp and had been left with no choice but to ask Erestor to change Maedhros’ dressings. Erestor had never been alone with him before, not in Aman, not here. He worked as gently as he could, trying to cause no pain, nor to show disgust at the stink of his wound, at the grotesque scar, at the disturbing absence of his hand. All the while, Maedhros’ eyes bore into him, smoldering coals from a banked fire. Erestor absorbed their heat and refused to flinch.

“You do that well,” Maedhros remarked laconically when he had finished.

“Káno taught me,” he returned, busying himself by washing his hands and wiping them on the apron wrapped around his waist. But the long silence wrong-footed him and he looked up, a trap Maedhros had been waiting to spring.

“I can imagine what else he taught you.” The wasted face appraised him sardonically. “I can image you were an apt pupil.”

Did he expect embarrassment? Shame? Regret? Erestor lifted his chin defiantly, met steel with steel, unblinking. “He deserved better than betrayal. He deserved better than to be left to his fate while you murdered and pillaged your way east.”

The grey face darkened. “Aware, Eressetor. Even now my forbearance has its limits.”

Despite his gaunt frame and the shadowed caverns beneath his eyes, Erestor could see the light within him, the fire of a mighty spirit Melkor himself had failed to vanquish. He bore a touch of Fëanor’s madness, this man, an intensity that was as striking as it was disturbing. But he also possessed the wisdom to set aside both his pride and his crown in order to make peace between the Noldor, despite the ire of his brothers — ah, yes, and he, too, knew the unique torment of betrayal, of abandonment by those he loved. Erestor could not deny it: Maedhros possessed some innate magnetism that would make men seek him as a compass needle sought true north; that would make them follow, no matter his crimes; that would make them take up oaths, no matter how terrible; that would make them love him, no matter how high the cost.

Because he is Maitimo , Fingon had told him. Now Erestor understood.

“We are done here,” Maedhros told him in a voice neither hard nor cruel, but final. And Erestor knew he meant more than the washing of his wounds. Color flooded his face and did not trust his voice to speak. He gathered up the bowl and salve and soiled bandages and turned to leave.

“Eressetor.”

He stopped, but did not turn. He did not think he could bear the radiance of those eyes boring into his soul and divesting him of further of his pride.

“Káno is a good man.”

It was as close to an acknowledgement, as close to an offering of peace, as he could expect. Erestor nodded, left the room, and shut the door behind him.

* * *

A cartographer deals in realities and practicalities, not ideals. Erestor now saw beyond the picture Fingon had painted for him of freedom and of new lands and new adventures. Besides, he had already mapped every inch of Hithlum and Mithrim and Dor-lómin. What else remained for him here?

“Where will you go?” Fingon asked. His voice was thick, rough. His eyes were overbright and limned in red, but he did not hinder Erestor’s departure.

“With Aikanáro, perhaps, or Findaráto.”

“You are taking all your maps?”

Erestor paused his packing for a moment and looked up sharply. “I have left the ones your father requested.” His jaw twitched, and he paused for a moment before continuing. “You commissioned just one work from me in all these years, and I leave that one to your keeping. I believe you were satisfied with the result; yet I have been recompensed in a currency not of my choosing.”

“Oh, Restor.” Fingon lowered his head. “Restor, I am sorry.”

When Erestor had first expressed an interest in taking up his father’s work, his father had been very happy. “You’ll begin as I did, learning the boundaries of our settlement. Be ready early; it will be a long walk.” Erestor already had some idea of where their settlement began and ended — with the great wye oak in the north, and the little stream to the south, with the low hills of the Pélori to the east and old alder forest to the west — So the sudden pain had taken him by surprise. His father held a withy branch and switched him hard across the back of the legs when they met the little stream, and again when they met the wye oak, and the foothills, and the alder stand. The blows were not enough to break skin, but they raised welts and made him whimper. Each lash stung with unexpected betrayal. When he turned, tears of shame burning in his eyes, to beg his father to stop, to ask him why, the tender expression his father wore confounded him further.

“It’s called beating the bounds, son," he had explained. "Someday, you will be called to settle some dispute, and you’ll need to know precisely where one man’s land ends and another’s begins. A little pain will help you remember.”

And that was how Erestor resolved this now: he was beating the bounds, remembering exactly where he and Fingon ended, and where Fingon and Maedhros began. No surprise, nor betrayal here, not really, but pain nonetheless. He had encroached; the pain would help him remember.

The light in his solar at this time of day was so gloriously golden it reminded Erestor of Laurelin, or of the first time he had witnessed the rising of the sun. Today, the beams spilling through the casement filled him with a sense of foreboding. He had once believed he had seen Arda’s blackest hour, but countless other hours had passed since then, and he had seen lands sundered and restored, borders drawn and redrawn. Now once again they stood on the precipice of annihilation: yet the sun rose, and the sun set, and in the time in between it burnished his birch floors and the desk at which he worked. Breezes teased his papers, and the Bruinen’s laughter lifted his spirits.

There was much a man could do when he understood the lay of the land, could see it in his mind’s eye from above and below and from each point on the compass. There was much a man could do when he had lived through three Ages of the world, and had seen its making, and unmaking, and remaking. Erestor had long since abandoned the drawing of maps for other tasks; his understanding of the land and its history made him valuable for many things: knowledge of the terrain had allowed him to offer Elrond advice on Imladris’ location and defenses; familiarity with the trade routes had made him a sharp negotiator. Remembering the stories few lived to recount? A lonely skill, that, but never without use.

Elrond’s latest request had not called upon any of these long-honed skills, but he had delivered it with such a heavy heart Erestor could never have denied him.

At the end, he would became a mapmaker again.

The facility remained in his hands even after many years set to other purpose, and he needed few instruments: he was not surveying new realms, but illustrating those already known. His pens never wanted for cleaning, but his rules and calipers did, and the knob raising his drawing board complained when he turned it; it had forgotten it possessed any other purpose than flatly holding contracts and correspondence. He took his time in selecting the stock: good vellum to withstand the elements, and hold to up under frequent rolling and unrolling, folding and unfolding.

Last of all, though he did not need it, he retrieved his compass from its oiled wooden box. Despite time and disuse, the brass barely had a patina. The hinges on the cover and sundial and sights still yielded to his touch. The crystal had been lovingly buffed and bore not a single scratch to mar its clarity. The compass rose gleamed as boldly as the winged rays of an ancient sun. He looked at it for a long while before setting himself to his assignment.

Erestor worked quickly; the task had not called for a large or detailed depiction, and this was not the first time he had been called upon with little warning to draw a safe passage for the forlorn hope.

He finished, sighed, and set it aside. The angle of the light had lengthened.

His hands still itched to work. He hadn’t expected that. He set another sheet of vellum on the drawing board. Laid paper would have been more than suitable for his purpose, but no, it would be nothing less than vellum. He did not draw for Elrond now, but for himself. He took in a breath, held it, released it, and began.

He did not hear Elrond enter, but after a time he perceived the man’s presence, a sort of compelling benevolence that shifted the air around him. Like Fingolfin. Like Fingon. Strong blood ran true.

“I have finished,” he said, but the lord of Imladris had already lifted the piece from where he had left it to dry: a map of lands to the south of the hidden valley, the detail of all known passages through the Hithaeglir, of Celebrant and Nimrodel’s secret inlets into Lórien, of each curve of the Anduin from the Old Ford to Osgiliath. A map leading to Mordor.

Elrond held it up solemnly, an offering to the sun, letting her light illuminate it. "May this guide them well.” After a long silence he added, “You are still working.” He presented this as an observation with the room to become a question.

“Something for my own eyes,” Erestor answered, knowing Elrond would not press.

And he didn’t; he rolled up the map he had come for and crossed to the door. Already the light had shifted, darkened, lost its gilt edge.

“You tread heavily on old trails, my friend.” The words were not spoken in judgment. Elrond had been privy to many of the dark circumambulations of Erestor’s mind over time, but he never attempted to follow: he understood that the paths, while sometimes intersecting, were not his own. “I worry for you. You cause yourself unnecessary sorrow.”

A rueful smile flit over Erestor’s face. He leaned across the desk to light a lamp. “Beating the bounds, my father called it.” His father had been right; the pain did help him to remember.

Elrond watched him for a moment, opened his mouth as if to speak, but in the end he nodded and closed the door, leaving Erestor to walk the borders of his memory. After all, nothing but memory remained.

His pen spoke when he could not: Here is Tirion, it said, where we were born. And Taniquetil, where we danced at the feet of the Valar, you and I.

Here is the Helcaraxë, where we nearly died.

Here are the Ered Lómin, where the moon first rose, and where we watched Fingolfin’s banners sail.

Here is where we beheld the dawning of the sun.

Here is Mithrim, where I briefly dwelt with hope in my heart, and Thangorodrim, where my hope fled and yours returned.

Strokes of ink angled and swirled across the page. He cross-hatched foothills, stippled forests. His pen moved down the paper and to the left; south and west by the compass’ reckoning, if had he used it, to Nargothrond, where he had long ago learned the art of surveying in the darkness beneath the earth, and where sanctuary had been sought and given.

And there… Ard-galen, or the Gasping Dust, as it was after called: the place where his heart had been broken, though he had not been present to see it turn from green to blood-red to blackened desolation. A blank space; nothing had remained after the battle there, nothing but bones and ruin. He traced the longitude with his fingertips, the whole of the line from Nargothrond to the Anfauglith.

“Here be monsters,” he whispered, because his grandsire had been right all along.

The map was not to scale; it lacked the precision and detail that had once made his reputation. It didn’t matter. He knew now even the best of maps were not always truthful; the mapmaker picked and chose what to include, and what to leave off. Some things were made small, others made simple. A few trees stood for ancient forests; the teeth of impassible mountains were defanged by the cartographer’s pen, shrunken into scallops of ink. The place where tens of thousands of men fell, a mighty king not least among them, became a vast and featureless plain.

He recalled the painting in Fingolfin’s hall in Tirion, the one he would glance at from the tail of his eye because he had found it both glorious and inaccurate. Had he ever been so callow, so foolish? Of course he had. In his arrogance he had failed to understand that a map’s power did not lie only in its ability to show things as they are, but also in its ability to show things as they once were.

To show things as they might have been.

To show things as a man wished they might be.

He leveled the drawing board and opened the circumferentor. He raised the sights as the last of the sunlight ebbed out of view. He turned the housing incrementally, listening to its soft clicks, until the guiding arrow was set in its place. The needle bobbed and swung before finding its home and hovering there.

The needle hovered over the north, but Erestor’s body followed the guiding arrow, turning toward the direction he travelled always in his dreams: West.

Then Erestor looked up.

Chapter End Notes

Erestor’s Quenyan name, Eressetor, comes courtesy of Darth Fingon, by way of Dawn Felagund's story "By the Light of Roses," by way of Oshun’s story "Summer's End." His pseudo-Quenyan nickname, Restor, is all my fault.