Beating the Bounds by Kenaz

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East

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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.