And Love Grew by polutropos

The night had been a symphony of violence. The roar of flames eating up thatch roofs. The clatter of combat, the clop of hooves over wooden piers, the slap and break of water as another body found its muddy grave. A thousand voices raised in terror, condemnation, prayer, command.

Now, silence choked the narrow streets of Sirion and dawn bathed the ruined city in a yellow haze.

Dornil’s horse wove a path around smoking debris and toppled merchant carts. The occasional corpse. Dornil did not see them, did not look, for her sight was fixed on the cliffs where the land climbed up from Sirion’s mouths. Against the backdrop of Cape Balar’s rocky thrust frowning in the distance was scored the memory of the jewel’s descent, a gash of silver-gold through the cool grey of morning.

The battle had jerked to a stunned halt, the city holding its breath, watching. Watching the Silmaril take flight and fall— fall, fall, and disappear in the dark waters below.

Those whose lungs still could had heaved a breath of shock and dismay, and then the battle was over. In one beautiful and horrifying moment, both sides had lost.

The first sounds to cut the silence were the confused and terrified sobs of children. Then, the scurrying of feet taking shelter behind whatever roofless, charred walls they could find; the clatter of metal as scattered contingents regrouped. Several had lurched like guttering flames towards an enemy soldier, only to stagger to a halt when they met the other’s eyes. The urge to violence foundered. There was nothing left to fight for.

As the scar of the Silmaril’s path faded from her sight, Dornil remembered her duty. She brought her destrier to a trot, seeking and rallying whatever soldiers of the sons of Fëanor she could find.

“What is the command, lady?” they asked in turn.

“I know not,” she answered. “Hold and wait. Be on your guard.”

At last she caught sight of the standard of Maedhros rising above an unroofed stone wall. She dismounted her horse and called out to the group of soldiers marching under it.

“Captain Lisgon!”

Maedhros’ High Captain turned. The four remaining fingers of his right hand clutched the standard pole so tightly that his bony knuckles were even starker white than his skin, pale as the starlight under which he was born.

“Lady Dornil, I am glad to see you living.”

Dornil swallowed the sudden urge to embrace him. This was no time for sentiment. “What are our orders?” she asked.

Lisgon cleared his throat and gave his answer to the assembled men. “All those on foot who are able are to seek out the injured and bring them to our camp. Both our own men and the people of Sirion, if they can be persuaded. If they will not come, you are to tend their wounds as best you can.”

“And if we are threatened?” Dornil asked.

“Pick up your weapons only if you have no other choice,” he replied.

Dornil bit the flesh of her cheek. “What of those who turned against us, lord?”

Oathbreakers all, condemning their lords to torment. Dornil was certain it was they had aided Lady Elwing’s flight. There had been no way of escape. Not this time. They had made sure of it: no more would fall in vain.

“Only if you have no other choice,” Lisgon repeated. “Go now. You have your orders.”

Slowly, the shock still plain on their faces, the footmen nodded and dispersed.

“Those who are mounted,” Lisgon continued, “are to cry the following message through the streets: that the battle is ended. No weapon will be raised against those with whom we would have been allies, with whom we would now make peace. All are free to remain or to take refuge wherever they see fit. Any resident of Sirion who wishes to follow us will be taken under the protection of Lord Maedhros. Any soldier who wishes to return East and stand against Morgoth has until midday to prepare and assemble at the camp of Fëanor's sons.”

Dornil grimaced. Could it be that even after the night’s hideous slaughter, even after their dearly-bought and fruitless victory, Maedhros was yet set on mercy and repentance? Even for those who had allowed their Lady to lead them headlong into ruin? It was the thief Thingol and his heirs who ought to have repented.

Dornil quenched the thought before it could consume her. It was no use: Caranthir's brothers and their following were all that remained to her. In her grief over the death of her husband and lord, she had sworn to serve Maglor, knowing the esteem in which Caranthir had held him. But after Doriath, to serve Maglor was to serve Maedhros — blindly, mindlessly, a devotion more akin to worship than fealty.

She had no choice but to keep her disdain for the counsels of Maedhros concealed, and she had done so all these long years. And yet, as vengeance slipped further out of reach, she felt the bonds of kinship and fealty unravelling. Not for the first time, she wondered if it would have been better to fall beside her husband in Menegroth.

At the camp on the outskirts of Sirion, men bearing stretchers streamed past the hastily erected tents and wagons, seeking empty patches of ground on which to set their burdens down. Others had not the comfort of a stretcher, but bellowed in pain as they staggered forwards with one arm slung over a fellow soldier’s shoulders. The place reeked of sweat and blood and the delta’s marshy rot.

Maglor passed among the bodies of the wounded and sang as well as his wrecked voice could manage. His throat had not seen such abuse since the Battle of Tears: muscles strained with Song, the soft flesh scraped raw by the heat of smoke and the acid burn of the uncontrollable retching that had seized him when the Silmaril plummeted into the sea. But he had to sing. It was the only way he knew to keep his mind from unravelling into madness.

“Enough.”

Maglor recognised Maedhros’ boot on the grass beside him. He uncurled from his crouch on the grass and stood to face him.

“There will be time for lamentation on the long retreat,” Maedhros said.

Once, Maglor would not have masked the pain of such a brusque dismissal. He might have countered with a biting word of his own. That was before he had borne witness to the erosion of the others’ loyalty to Maedhros. The fallen scraps of respect left behind by Celegorm and Curufin, Amrod and Amras, his own followers — these Maglor gathered and stitched to his heart like a patchwork of devotion. A soft and fraying casement, but protection nonetheless against the sting of little cruelties.

As for speaking to his brother mind-to-mind, to smooth over the jagged edges that made him thus? There was little hope of that. Beneath the stern comportment and commands, Maedhros’ mind was an impenetrable torrent of despair.

Maedhros’ gaze roamed the field, taking in the extent of their losses. The sunlight lent a false brightness to his dusky pallor; accentuated the scrawl of scarring on his cheek. A flicker of revulsion cramped his face. “Come,” he said, turning his back on the scene, “let us find a place apart.”

As they walked in the direction of the command tent, he said, "The ships from Balar have been sighted on the horizon. They are not equipped for warfare.”

That they would not have to fight another battle ought to have been a relief, but Maglor heard none in his brother’s voice and felt none himself. The lack of retaliation was its own quiet conquest. Shame could cut as deeply as any weapon.

“I guess that Ereinion and Círdan come to offer aid to their people," Maedhros continued. "A more appealing offer than the one we have made.”

Maglor looked over his shoulder, picking out unfamiliar figures among the ebb and flow of bodies. A grey-bearded man stooped over a sack of his belongings with an expression of dismay. A silver-haired elf with two ridged scars where her eyes had been was guided by another elf, shorter and with the slender form of one scarcely out of childhood. A woman clutched a babe to her chest, her lips moving in inaudible song.

Was Maglor right to have counselled his brother to fold these survivors into their numbers? Could they afford such a burden on the road? Was he only inviting resentment and discord into their midst, seeding future betrayals?

To persuade Maedhros, he had first spoken poetically of the power of mercy to move hearts to loyalty; then, with a mind honed for warfare, of the need for soldiers. The truth was he could not support the weight of Maedhros’ despair alone. “It disgusts me,” Maedhros had said, after Doriath, “that there are still those who look upon me with trust in their eyes.” Yet, without followers buttressing him Maedhros would collapse, and Maglor could not endure such a fall.

They could not afford to lose anyone to the succour of Ereinion.

“Then we must hasten our retreat,” said Maglor, as they drew up to the tent. A silent guard held open the flap.

Maedhros ducked inside. “We will. With so many wounded, I have decided to divide the retreat into two hosts. Those who cannot fight will travel with a guard south around Taur-im-Duinath and follow the Gelion north. The journey will be slower, but protected from any organised attack. Our best fighters will come with me and make as direct a retreat as possible by the same route we travelled along the Andram. I do not doubt that Morgoth will have tidings of these things soon, and he will know that Amon Ereb stands well-nigh defenceless. It must hold.”

Maedhros stopped beside the small folding table at the back of the tent. He splayed his fingertips over a map of the delta and pushed it across the desk’s surface. He did not look at Maglor as he said, “You will lead the second host.”

The air rushed from Maglor’s lungs as a breathless question: “What?”

“You are better suited to it than any others among us.”

“How so? What of Lisgon? These people are more likely to trust a dark elf—” Maedhros lifted his eyes only a moment to glare at him. “And you will need me on the Andram if your aim is stealth. Why then?” It was so quiet Maglor could hear his own blood rushing in his ears. “Nelyo,” he pleaded.

“Maglor. You forget that Lisgon was a thrall. They will trust him no more than they trust me. And yes, they will mistrust and despise you at first, no doubt. But you will make them love you. That is why. Now, do not make me explain myself further. You will take the second host.”

“There are other options—”

“Enough!” Maedhros shouted, then nervously glanced at the tent’s thin walls. His hand trembled. With lowered voice, he said, “You suffocate me, that is why. Your displays of remorse shame me.”

With this confession, all the defiance burning in Maglor’s breast turned to ash. How long? he thought. How long have you wished to be rid of me?

“As you command,” he muttered, and sank down onto an upturned crate. He let his head drop between his shoulders.

A moment later a triangle of sunlight sliced across the ground, shadowed down the middle, and the voice of Maedhros’ High Captain hailed them.

“Captain Lisgon. What is the news?” Maedhros said, steady, the heat of his voice contained.

“My lords,” the Captain nodded twice, acknowledging Maglor also, and stepped aside to reveal the man who accompanied him: a Green-elf, by his slight build and the lines like the veins of a leaf tattooed on his amber-brown cheeks and neck. One of few remaining who had long ago sworn fealty to Amrod and Amras.

“This is Orfion of Ossiriand,” said Lisgon. “He says that he was witness to— to the loss of the jewel, my lord.”

“Orfion," Maedhros said, as if greeting one with whom he was already acquainted. Likely he was: there were few of their followers whose names and faces Maedhros had not committed to memory. Then, forcefully, he said, "Speak."

Orfion recoiled as if struck by the command. He fell to his knees and prostrated himself. “I have betrayed my oath of fealty to your House, lord.”

Maedhros grunted, almost a laugh, and turned away. The elf tilted his face up, hands clutching at the fringes of the pelts covering the tent floor. His eyes locked onto the Maglor’s. Who could blame you? Maglor thought, watching the elf’s terror turn to confusion. Any fool would have broken an oath to the monsters Amrod and Amras had become.

“My brothers whom you served are dead,” Maedhros said slowly. “Unless you killed them yourself, I care not. Stand and speak, soldier. What happened on the cliffs?”

Orfion scrambled to his feet. Maedhros gestured to an unoccupied crate on which he could sit, and the elf accepted with noticeable relief.

“My lords,” Orfion said, “when Lord Amras was slain on the piers by… by those of your—our—own following, lord, myself and several others of his guard, not knowing where to turn in the confusion, and wanting to bring word to Lord Amrod, escaped the battle and came to where Lord Amrod and his men were guarding against flight by the western road. But Lord Amrod already knew of his brother’s fall, though not the manner, and his eyes were hollow as if his spirit too had fled, but when he heard me speak the words, that Lord Amras had fallen by the arrows of his own men, that his body had been thrown off the quay, then his whole face burned with a fey light. He passed through the stone gate, shouting and slashing—”

“What was he shouting?” Maedhros interrupted.

“My lord?”

“My brother, what was he shouting?”

“I do not know, lord. It was in your own tongue, of which I know little—”

“You served him for four centuries, Orfion. What was he saying?”

Orfion’s tongue flickered over his lips. “About the fire on the ships, lord. He cried Umbarto.”

Maedhros drew a long breath through his nose and closed his eyes. It was how Amrod’s madness always began, since Losgar.

“Carry on,” Maedhros said.

“My lord, he flung his sword about with such abandon, such hate, that I thought he might slay one of us, or himself. But it was thus stumbling into the night outside the city that he caught sight of a small group mounting the hills in the distance. Suddenly returned to himself, Lord Amrod commanded, ‘After them!’ We gave chase, but Lord Amrod ran so swiftly, as if driven by a fire within, and the men with us were weary and injured, so that all but myself fell behind. I was with him when he caught up to those we pursued, where the hills begin to rise and drop steeply into the sea, where you saw...”

Orfion paused, working his jaw around his next words.

“It was the Lady Elwing with her children and a woman-servant and their guard. I knew him for a warrior of Gondolin by his livery. He turned to engage us, but Lord Amrod paid him no mind. Swift as a hawk, he had snatched the children before the Lady or her servant were aware of him. And dropping to his knees and holding both terrified boys to his chest he held his sword to their throats.

“‘Hand over the Silmaril and they will live,’ he said. One of the children squirmed and a line of blood bloomed wet on his throat. There was no feint in Amrod’s voice. None dared to move or speak for a long moment. Then the servant spoke first, denying that her lady had the jewel with her. Lord Amrod laughed. ‘Of course you have it,’ he replied. ‘In that box you are clutching. Was it that very same in which you smuggled our birthright out of Doriath, where my brothers died in vain? Hand it over or I will slit your children’s throats.’ But Elwing had already silenced the other woman, and she drew the necklace out of the box. I thought she might hand it over, but she clasped it about her neck.

“Its light, my lord — I could scarcely breathe for the beauty of it, and the terror of the Lady wearing it. There were tears on her face that had been hidden by the darkness, and they now shone like little streams in the moonlight. I have never feared darkness before, my lord, but I did then. I fear I will evermore shun the night, having seen that light.”

Tears had gathered in Orfion’s eyes, and he sputtered to a halt. “Please forgive me, lords, I am not one prone to weeping, but the memory— it is impossible not to weep. I do not know why.”

“I do,” said Maglor. Compassion for the simple soldier who had become entangled in their doom warred with envy: it ought to have been him there, and Maedhros, looking upon the Silmaril’s light. Maglor would not have let it slip through his hands.

Orfion collected himself. “Even Lord Amrod was struck dumb,” he said, as if in answer to Maglor’s shameful thought, “and in his moment of faltering the children nearly escaped his grasp. Elwing lurched forward then, but he clutched them closer. He bared his teeth. ‘Hand it over!’ he commanded. She did not speak. She gazed long at her children, then touched the Silmaril on her breast, and for a moment I thought she would remove it. Then a fell cold light washed over the Lady’s face, and she spoke, quiet but hard, in the tongue of Men.

“And then she turned and raced to the cliff’s edge. She leapt, and as she fell she loosed a horrible cry. The light of the jewel glowed along the precipice — and then it was gone.

“All was a confusion of shouts and fighting. The woman-servant screamed her lady’s name and ran to the cliff’s edge. The guard commanded her to stop, and there was a struggle between them — I saw little of it, for Lord Amrod had risen to his feet and held again the edge of his sword to the throat of one of the children, who stood altogether still. The other wailed, and Lord Amrod drew his dagger and swung it at him. Rising and holding both blades aloft, he cursed them, saying that he would take them both with him. And then suddenly he dropped his weapons and crouched down before them and embraced them, and he murmured that he would save them, that he would spare them the burden— the burden of living.”

Orfion choked back the last words. “Then the guard leapt at Amrod, and dragged him to his feet — but as he did, Amrod drove his dagger deep into his thigh, and the man stumbled, and Amrod dropped the dagger and seized him by the neck. ‘I do not want to kill you, old friend,’ he spat. ‘Stand down, Galdor. This is not your fight.’ Then he threw the man to the ground. Amrod turned on the children again and then — my lord, I was certain he would slay them, and I could not bear it.

“I turned on him, my lords,” said Orfion, no more than a whisper. “He was not himself, I could see no other way. But I had no chance of overpowering him. He struck my face, he cut my hand and threw me away from him, away from the children. I could not see where I had fallen. But there was the clanging of swords, and I knew the one he called Galdor had risen to fight him. They fought fiercely, well-matched as they were, all the while Amrod shouting curses, wild ravings. Then he stopped. There was a long moment when I could only hear laboured breathing. Then gurgling. Still my sight was blurred, but I turned and saw the shape of Lord Amrod folded and broken on the ground. The cut to his throat had been deep — the pale dry grass was dark with his blood.”

Orfion wept freely now. Maglor ached to weep with him but the well of his tears had run dry. They had known Amrod and Amras had died — one always felt the death of a brother, and that rending of the soul was even more potent, Maglor had now learned five times over, when one was doubly bound to his kin by oath. Amras died early in the night, at the hands of their own followers. They had not known the manner of Amrod’s death until now.

“I had loved him,” Orfion said, “him and Lord Amras. I saw them both fall, and Lord Amrod because I had failed to protect him, because I had set upon him myself. I betrayed him.”

Amrod threatens Elrond and Elros by runawaymun

There was a silence. Lisgon was staring at the ground, knuckles white around his sword hilt. A grey tint had settled over Maedhros’ face. The camp noises seemed far off.

Outside the tent walls, the sun was bright and the birds twittered in mockery.

“You served him well, Orfion,” said Maedhros.

Orfion looked at him in surprise. “My lord?”

“You ensured he did not die a monster.”

Maglor looked at the ground. He could not let Maedhros see his doubt. It is what Maedhros needed to believe.

The tale-spinners had made Celegorm the villain of Doriath’s fall, and the rest of them had looked the other way as their dead brother was censured for the devastation they all had wrought. It was convenient. It was politic.

But when their youngest brothers had clamoured for blood and vengeance, and would have pursued it whether Maedhros stood with them or not, Maedhros still saw his little brothers who had done no wrong. So it was Maedhros who signed his name to their threats of violence, and Maedhros who stood at the forefront of the troops and gave the command to set fire to the perimeter and seize the boats. Maedhros who struck the first blow.

For all Maedhros’ efforts to preserve the twins’ innocence, Amrod and Amras died the villains of Sirion.

Though it cramped his heart with shame, Maglor could not bring himself to regret it. Not if it meant there was hope of forgiveness for his last living brother.

“And the children?” said Maedhros. His features brittled, fault lines slipping under the weight of memory. “Do they live?”

Of course, the children. Maglor’s shame sank deeper for the pair of twins who had escaped his thoughts altogether.

“I do not know, my lord,” Orfion said. “After the struggle between the two lords, they were gone, and the woman-servant too. The lord Galdor cried out for them, but there was no answer. He looked at me: ‘Do not follow me and I will not kill you,’ he said. Then he ran off, calling their names: ‘Gwereth! Elrond! Elros!’”

Orfion heaved a breath and looked between Maedhros and Maglor. “Thus I was able to come to you, my lords.”

“Thank you, Orfion, for your honest report. With the death of my brothers, I deem you released from your service to my House. You are free to go where you will.”

Orfion’s hands cupped his knees. “My lord, I have nowhere to go in these parts.”

Maedhros hummed in the back of his throat. “I have given all survivors of our own host and of these Havens the choice to join us in retreating East. A Silmaril is lost to the depths of the sea. Our oath binds us now to stand against Morgoth, no matter the odds. You are free to travel with us, if you wish. My brother’s host has need of guards, if you consider yourself fit for such a duty.”

Rising from the crate, Orfion said, “Lord Maedhros, Lord Maglor,” he bent twice into an awkward bow, “thank you for your mercy. I am honoured to continue to serve you in the war against the Enemy.”

Maedhros nodded. “Convene here before midday. You may leave us now.”

A taut silence followed. The names of orphaned princes hung heavily in the air: Elrond, Elros. Eluréd, Elurín.

The symmetry would make a fitting second canto to the tale of Dior’s sons that Maglor had sent singing down the rivers and through the wilds of Beleriand. How Maedhros repenting had run crying through the woods, seeking the two helpless boys; how dead Celegorm’s vengeful soldiers carried them off; how Maedhros had been in anguish when the search was given up.

All of it was true. (Save the birds: even Maglor was not so drunk on hope as to dream up a miraculous rescue by creatures of the forest. That had been the bards of west Beleriand.) The remaining sons of Fëanor had indeed grieved when they discovered the bodies of two boys frozen in the folds of an oak: they had grieved the Silmaril slipping even further from their grasp. But when none dared speak the ugly truth swaddled in a blanket of regret and repentance, omission was easy.

They were never meant to die. The blood of Lúthien had eluded them so well that death had found them before they could be made currency in the war. It had been Celegorm’s design, but they had all known. Later, when Maglor had sought to dam the flood of his brother’s guilt, Maedhros had snapped: “Make no more apologies for me! Never again will I be persuaded to employ the tactics of our Foe. We do not barter with children.”

Yet they had assailed Sirion with fire. Was that not a weapon of the Enemy?

At last Maedhros spoke, his voice heavy as if the words were dredged from a deep well of thought. “Maglor, you will return to the city and search for Elwing’s sons. Tell no one what you are doing. Ensure they are safe and unharmed.”

Maglor rose, smoothing from the edges of his mind the memory of those other children. Here was a chance for a different story.

“Yes, my lord.”

He ventured stepping closer. Close enough that he had to tilt his chin up to meet Maedhros’ eyes, close enough that he might have laid a hand on his arm, felt his pulse, felt the fear his cloaked eyes concealed. He did not.

“Maitimo,” he said. “I will find them.”

Chapter End Notes

Thank you to firstamazon and Tethys_resort for offering feedback and encouragement on this chapter. Thanks to Chestnut_pod's brilliant Elvish Name List for the names Orfion and Lisgon. Dornil and Gwereth were devised by me and I take responsibility for any misuse of language -- I like the sounds.

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“Elros! Please stop struggling!”

The child writhed and shouted and beat his fists against Gwereth’s chest. She fumbled with the latch on the cellar door, squinting and blinking furiously. It was no use: the fog came from within, from the panic that drove her stumbling through the wilds about Sirion, dragging the children behind her. Galdor had caught up to them, but not long after his wounds proved too severe for him to carry on. “Go,” he had urged her; “Go — if I am fated to live, I will recover. If not, I count this a noble end. You must find a place to hide.”

So she had fled to her friend Embor’s home on the outskirts of town, where most of those warriors of the East who had not been deceived and enslaved by the Enemy dwelt. She had not known where else to run, and she had hoped that under the protection of a warrior of Bor’s folk, burdened by age though he was, she and the children might yet survive. They might wait out the retreat of the sons of Fëanor. And perhaps — perhaps help would come before Morgoth sent his legions against them, a ruined city, defenceless without the Silmaril to preserve them.

Gwereth was relieved to find Embor’s home intact; but he was not there. There was no time to wonder or to mourn what had become of him.

Elros’ fist struck her ear as she bent to open the sloped hatch and a jolt of pain shot through her skull.

“Blood and darkness, child!” she snapped. “Stop hurting me! I am trying to help you!”

Her sharp tone silenced him and her heart cramped with regret. How could she blame him, a child of six who had lately seen his mother leap to her death, whose own life had been threatened, who had seen horrors beyond— Well, Gwereth had been nearly their age when she had watched the blood spilling from her father’s skull on the flight from Brethil, and the image haunted her still.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, cupping the back of his head and holding him closer. “I’m sorry, Elros, I know—”

He loosed a piercing wail.

Flinging the hatch open, Gwereth yanked Elrond after them down the short flight of steps. The door banged shut, smothering the room in sudden darkness but for a thin square of light around the doorframe. Gwereth fumbled for the striker to light an oil lamp that stood by the entrance. It leapt to life, and she inhaled sharply at the reminder of the ravaging flames that had blazed through the night, eating through the wood and thatch of Sirion.

She grabbed an iron rod to bar the door, then reconsidered: surely anyone finding a cellar locked from inside would suspect. A single bar would do nothing to hold off these warriors if one were determined to break in. Better to leave it, and trust to the barrels and crates and shadows to conceal them.

She tucked the rod into her belt instead. It was not much, but she was descended of both Haleth’s and Emeldir’s people, whose traditions the elders of Sirion had preserved. She knew how to fight. A bar of iron would serve as a weapon in utmost need.

Elros squirmed free and ran to the opposite end of the room where the ceiling sloped down steeply, scarcely high enough for a child to stand. He pounded his fists against the wall. “I hate you! I hate you, Gwereth!” he screamed. “We have to go back to Mama, we have to!”

Gwereth summoned all her strength to resist the urge to comfort him. Elrond, shivering and silent beside her, needed her no less.

“Elrond, my love.” She knelt before him. Blood crusted along the shallow cut on his throat and she licked her thumb to wipe some of it away. It struck her how small and fragile he was. Her own small hand covered half the girth of his neck. She held his narrow shoulders and tried to meet his eyes.

“Tell me how you are, sweet one.”

His gaze dropped to the floor, but his lips moved silently.

“I cannot hear you, love,” said Gwereth. “What is it?”

After struggling again to speak, he gestured at his trousers, and was seized by silent sobs. At the other end of the cellar, Elros fell quiet.

Gwereth patted Elrond’s trousers and found them warm and damp. He had wet himself.

“Oh, Elrond, it’s all right,” she reassured him. “It happens sometimes when we are scared. Are you scared?”

Elrond nodded. Gwereth glanced around the cellar for something she could use to clean him off. A rag covering a large storage jar would have to do.

“Elros,” she said, looking at him and then nodding in the direction of the jar, “can you fetch that rag for your brother?”

He hurried to obey, subdued by his brother’s distress.

Gwereth rubbed her hands up and down Elrond’s arms. “Can you help me take these trousers off, dear?” Elrond nodded again but did nothing, so Gwereth unlaced and shimmied them down his thighs. She guided his feet out of the soiled clothing.

Elros wandered over with the rag and stared at his brother. “It’s all right, Elrond,” he said, “it happens when you are scared.”

“That’s right,” said Gwereth.

There was no water, so Gwereth spit on the cloth and wiped him down as best she could. She removed her own headscarf and tied it into a skirt around his waist. The trousers she hung to dry on the low rafters.

“Why do we have to be here?” Elros asked. “I want to go back for Mama.”

There was a cry bubbling up inside him and Gwereth set a reassuring hand on his back. He nuzzled himself into the hollow between her chest and arm.

In the moment of quiet, she let her eyes fall shut. But plastered on the backs of her lids was a vision of her lady leaping to her death. Gwereth drew a shaky breath. Her imagination supplied the aftermath: Elwing’s graceful form beaten against the rocks, broken, and dragged out to the unknowable depths of the sea. Their lady, their Silmaril, their protection against the darkness: all gone.

Elwing had despaired.

Anguish swooped through Gwereth’s stomach. She felt as though she were toppling forward. Her eyes snapped open. Elrond stared back at her, dark brows pinched over the bridge of his nose.

She was crying. “All is well,” she said, scrubbing the tears from her cheeks.

The wells of Elrond’s silver eyes swelled and he sucked his lower lip between his teeth. He knew she was lying; of course he knew.

“Aaghh!” The yell exploded beside her, and Elros jerked free of her hold. “We have to go back!” He bolted for the door, clambering up the steps and banging his little body against it.

“We can’t,” Gwereth said, too meekly for Elros to hear through his shouting. “Elros!” she cried. “Please, you must be quiet! People are looking for us, people who want to hurt you.”

“But Galdor killed the angry elf,” he said, slamming the flats of his hands on the door and drumming his feet on the steps. “Why, why would they hurt us? We didn’t do anything bad! Aaghh!” he wailed again. “We need to go back for Mamaaa!”

His next shout ripped through Gwereth’s heart. He banged his head against the door sill, hard enough to send him toppling backwards off the steps and crashing to the floor. The back of his head thudded horribly as it hit the uneven stones. He fell silent.

Gwereth screamed and launched to his side, landing hard on her wrists. There was a terrible moment when she saw him still, eyes closed, and imagined him dead. Her breath stopped. But then his eyes blinked open, he rolled his head to the side, and her relief was so intense her arms buckled beneath her.

She fell to her elbows and cupped his face. “Oh, Elros, Elros, Elros! Elros can you hear me?”

He blinked again, stunned; stunned but alive. She stooped over him, spreading her body over him like a swan tucking her fledgling beneath her wing.

“Is he alive?” Elrond asked, squatting beside them.

“Yes, yes, he will be all right,” she reassured him. “Come, Elrond, come. We need to keep out of sight.”

She bundled Elros to her breast and shuffled on her knees towards the other end of the room, beckoning Elrond to follow.

“I’m hungry,” said Elrond.

“Ssh, ssh,” Gwereth said. “We will find you something to eat.”

As Gwereth cast her eyes about for something to fill his stomach, a voice came from the other side of the door. Gwereth froze.

“There are children here, lord.” It was a woman’s voice, speaking low but in a rush, as if agitated.

Elven-light footsteps crossed the boards above them. Elros groaned in Gwereth’s arms.

The steps stopped. “How do you know?” said another voice, deeper and steadier than the first.

“I heard them,” the woman answered curtly.

In a rush of panic, Gwereth tucked Elros, still half-limp and stunned, into an empty crate. “Elrond,” she whispered, “you need to get inside with your brother. Hide.”

He looked at her warily but did not struggle when she helped him in. He sat cross-legged, squeezed tightly in the corner, and stared at her with sorrowful eyes.

“I love you,” she said. “You’ll have to duck, sweetling. Please be quiet.”

He curled forward over the body of his brother and Gwereth pulled a cloth over the crate. Then she drew the iron rod from her belt and turned towards the door. The riot of fear inside her cooled and hardened.

The door swung open. The light of the rising sun spilled into the room, blindingly bright. Against it were silhouetted two pairs of long legs, booted in dark leather. One crouched in the opening with an arm braced on the lintel.

“Do not go in,” the woman’s voice cautioned. “You do not know who else is with them.”

“Hold your peace, Dornil,” said the man. “Wait here.”

The elf-man was tall enough to have no need of the steps, dropping down in one fluid motion and landing lightly despite his long mail shirt. His red tabard was embroidered across the breast with a silver star: the symbol of beauty and hope for Elf-kind that these soldiers had turned to a sign of fear, its eight keen points and eight piercing rays bringing to mind not a bright star of heaven but a bludgeon spiked and barbed.

Even at the higher end of the room he was too tall to stand upright, and as he approached he dropped to his knees.

Gwereth lifted the rod and lunged from the shadows. She swung.

At once a large hand, gloved in leather, was around her wrist. There was no pain: the only discomfort came from her own resistance to the warrior’s hold, and she knew then that he wielded but a fraction of his strength against her. No amount of friendly sparring had prepared Gwereth for such a foe. She felt diminished, shrunken, as Beren must have in the pits of Gorthaur, or drowsing beneath the throne of Bauglir. And Gwereth had neither Elf prince or princess to defend her, nor any great doom to protect her; and the foe she faced was, she deemed, himself a prince of Felagund’s power — and none of his virtue.

She gasped and staggered to a halt. The elf let her go.

“I have not come to hurt you,” he said. “The battle is ended.”

His voice was unlike any she had heard before. It was the clear chime of bells running together as a stream leaps over stone; but beneath this, it was the deep rumble of the sea, impenetrably dark. It was a sound so arresting she had to strain to hear the words running through it.

Sound gave way to sight as her eyes adjusted to the light. The elf wore no helm, and his dark hair was held close to his scalp by many rows of braids pulled together at the nape of his neck. Shorter curls had come loose around his face, softening the edges of his sharp elven features; his skin shone like wet clay in the lamplight. Heavy brows settled above deep eyes of the sort whose colour shifted and danced. Gwereth had always imagined it was because the Treelight that flickered within them eluded the untrained eye, ever skipping from hue to hue but never settling. It had been so with the Silmaril, too.

It was strange to see that light in the eyes of an enemy.

He said, “Have you heard the message, lady?”

Gwereth shook her head, transfixed. Dread closed in around her, groping; her limbs hung uselessly, numbly, as if severed from her body.

“The sons of Fëanor are withdrawing. All those who wish are free to follow: I urge you to consider it. The Havens will not be safe for long.”

The hold with which his arrival had seized her slackened. Her mind began to clear. “What of the Lords of Balar?” she asked. Ereinion had not been Gwereth’s king, nor Círdan her lord, but they had ever been kind to her lady. Surely they would come to their aid.

The elf was silent, his jaw stern for a long while before he answered. “I do not know.”

Gwereth wondered at his pause. She wished this elf was not her only source of news from without.

“We have also come to tend the injured,” he said. “Are you well, lady?”

He reached for her. Gwereth flinched.

“Yes. Yes, I received no hurts,” she said.

“Are there others with you?” the elf asked. His tone was gentle, but knowing, and his look stern. Of course: even had his servant not heard them, he was Elf-kind: he felt the children’s presence.

She lied all the same. “No. Only myself.”

His continued silence pressed into the corners of the room and Gwereth’s body awoke at last from its stupor. Like a frightened creature who, without hope, turns and faces its pursuer, she cried, “Leave! Leave, there is nothing here!”

But her pleas glanced off him like sticks hurled at the sturdy bole of an oak. It was as if she had not spoken at all.

“You have children with you.” It was the voice of the elf-woman in the open doorway. “Show them to us.”

“Dornil,” the other elf said firmly, keeping his eyes on Gwereth. “If you interfere once more with my errand, you will be sent to the camp to load the wagons.”

The elf-woman shrank back, a beam of light catching her pale features and revealing a flicker of hurt, as if she had not expected so harsh a reprimand, and for a moment Gwereth’s heart clenched in sympathy for the servant of so terrible a lord. No — it was not so. She was as much a part of their campaign of violence as he.

At that moment, a whimper squeaked from the shadows. The elf-lord’s eyes were drawn to it. No. Gwereth dropped to her knees, folding over and cradling her face in her hands.

“Please do not hurt them,” she begged.

“Lady,” the elf said, “I have already assured you: we mean you no harm.” He paused. “Are they wounded?”

Gwereth choked out an affirmative sob. Some desperate instinct drove her to tell the truth. “Yes. One of them. He fell. He hit his head.” She sobbed again, ashamed to confess to this failure of her care.

She did not stop the elf-lord as he made his way on folded knees towards the source of the whimper. Raising her head, Gwereth watched him lift the cloth from over the crate. Elrond sat upright, hesitant but rapt at the stranger before him.

It was so incongruous, the tenderness with which the elf cupped Elros’ head as he drew him out. He lay him down to rest against his thigh while he removed his gloves and metal bracers. He adjusted Elros’ body carefully, as Gwereth in her panic had not. The scene brought to mind a wolf Gwereth had once encountered, tending her injured cub.

All his attention was turned towards the child. Briefly, the thought entered Gwereth’s mind that now again she might strike him; but the heat of her anger had withered. She did not know if she could have found the strength to lift her weapon.

The elf’s large hands nearly encompassed Elros’ head. He breathed deliberately and slowly, watching the child.

“The hit has disturbed his brain—” he paused, as if listening, and sank his fingers into Elros’ hair at the base of his skull; “and caused a small fracture in the bone.”

Gwereth was surprised to hear herself ask, “Can you heal him?”

“Yes, I think so,” the elf said. “But this child— is he mortal or elven?”

“Mortal,” Gwereth said in a rush. “He is Mannish.”

The elf looked through her. “I think, lady, that you do not tell me the whole truth. But neither of us has been forthcoming with the other.” He scooped Elros to his breast and shifted to face her fully. “I am Maglor. Son of Fëanor.”

The revelation did not startle her as much as it ought have. In her heart she had known from the moment she heard him speak. She had encountered few in her life whose presence carried such power. Her lady had been one, as had Eärendil and his mother, ere she departed. But theirs had not been marred by evil deeds.

“I know that you suffered great hurt at the hands of my brother,” he said, “and you have reason to distrust me—”

A broken laugh leapt from Gwereth’s throat, and with it a daring defiance. “Distrust? I have reason to hate you. I have reason to kill you. Do not tell me that you are guiltless, Maglor son of Fëanor.”

“I am not—”

“Did you not lead an assault on a haven of refugees?”

“Lady, let me speak,” he said sharply.

“Why?” Gwereth said. “Why should I let you speak?”

He made no answer. Elros blinked in his arms, his head lolling to the side to face her.

“Gwereth?” he said weakly.

Then the muscles around his mouth quivered. He retched, vomit spilling onto Maglor’s thigh.

Gwereth leapt towards him. Her fingers brushed Elros’ body; then she was herself jerked backwards.

“Do not,” the elf-woman’s voice hissed in her ear, “lay hands on my lord.”

This time Maglor did not reprimand her. He was cleaning the vomit from Elros’ face with the hem of his tunic. Then he took a water skin from his belt and wet Elros’ lips, and Elros gulped greedily from the bottle’s mouth. He gasped, reviving, as it was removed.

Maglor left the sick sticking to his own garments. One more stain among many.

Only when Elros was settled did Maglor set eyes on his servant, who still held Gwereth by the arm. His gaze was penetrating, warning. The silence lengthened, and Gwereth suspected they took counsel mind-to-mind.

The breaking of the connection was palpable. Seemingly with her lord’s approval, the elf-woman tied a slender rope around Gwereth’s wrists. Her touch was firm but painless. Gwereth did not struggle.

Clarion trumpets sounded outside, a simple progression for lifting up the heart. A summoning.

Maglor scooped up Elrond with his other arm, balancing each child as if he weighed no more than a basket of herbs. Perhaps they followed Gwereth’s cue or perhaps their fear was blunted by some wizardry, but they made no effort to resist. Elrond’s fist even bunched at the collar of Maglor’s shirt, clinging to the strong, solid body.

If Gwereth had not known otherwise, she would have thought she looked upon a saviour and not a sacker of cities. But a killer he was, and a thief of children. For had he not spoken to his servant of an errand? What other could it be than to take them captive?

At least he would not kill them, as his younger brother would have done. That much she trusted, though she knew not why.

Forgive me, my lady, she beseeched Elwing, whose spirit had fled to a fate Gwereth could not know. But she prayed still because she allowed herself to hope: that Elwing was not gone beyond the Circles of the World; that she might see her children again, in some far removed time long after Gwereth and all the proud people of Haleth had faded from memory altogether.

I will protect them, she promised. With my life, I will protect them, and if by any power in me I can deliver them from their cruel captors, I swear to you, lady, dear friend: I will.

The last words she muttered softly in the tongue of her people.

Her keeper nudged her forward. “I am Dornil,” she said. “Come, Gwereth, nurse of the sons of Eärendil. For that is your name and station, is it not?” Gwereth bowed her head. “Do you accept the continuance of your charge to care for these children under the command of Lord Maglor?”

Gwereth nodded.

“Good. I will lead you to our camp. It will be better if you do not struggle.”

She guided Gwereth out the open hatch. Maglor and the children followed behind where she could not see them.

On her flight from the cliffs Gwereth had not had time to take in the sight of ruined Sirion. Now she saw neighbours, known and unknown, drifting among the wreckage: searching for possessions of their own, perhaps, or unclaimed goods that could be salvaged. If any had been slain in this quarter, their bodies had been cleared.

A cloak was cast over Gwereth’s shoulders. Dornil was not as tall as her lord, but she was taller than Gwereth by far, and under her cloak Gwereth all but disappeared. If she had friends among the lingering folk, they would not mark her. She and Dornil approached a mighty warhorse, and Gwereth was slipped free of her bonds and helped into the saddle. Dornil mounted ahead of her, forcing Gwereth to take hold of her waist to keep steady on the horse.

As they turned, Gwereth twisted towards the mouth of the river and the Isle of Balar; but they were far from the bay and the reeds grew too tall between them. If help was coming to the people of Sirion, Gwereth would likely never know.

Chapter End Notes

It's not exactly reproduced of course, but definitely had this stunning image of Maglor and Elrond and Elros by anattmar in mind writing the end of this chapter. Thank you to cuarthol for beta'ing this chapter.

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There were not many horses in Sirion. Elrond’s mother’s people were not horsemen, and his father loved ships. Elrond had been on a horse only once before, in the wildflower fields with Gwereth’s friend Embor. It had frightened him, and Embor had lifted Elrond to the ground with his strong hands, laughing kindly. They had been hiding in Embor’s house, he and Elros and Gwereth, when the elf-warriors came. Elrond could not remember seeing the horse in the stable.

The bounce and sway of the animal beneath him was uncomfortable. His legs ached, like when he had once caught fever. He and Elros were snug between the horse’s neck and the elf-warrior’s large torso: Would he let them fall if Elrond let go? He glanced down at the road — a narrow dirt path, not yet the wide cobbled streets closer to town. It was far to fall, and Elros was already hurt. And where would they go? Mother was gone, Father was gone, Galdor was gone.

Gwereth was coming with them. Gwereth would keep them safe.

Elros nodded and whimpered behind him and Elrond clung tighter, fists bunching in the horse’s mane.

Low stone roofs peeked above the reeds. They were approaching the river crossing to the quay and the centre of the town where Elrond and Elros and his mother lived — and his father, when he was not at sea. No: Mama was gone, Elrond remembered, and his throat felt tight like he had taken too big a bite. Elros had wanted to go back for Mama and Elrond did not know how to explain to his brother that she was gone. But he knew. The Silmaril was gone, too. They were not safe in Sirion anymore.

All his life Elrond had learned to fear orcs and wolves and dragons. He had only seen these monsters in paintings and wood carvings and the pictures the elf-singers painted in his mind. At first, when the warrior-elves attacked them, he had thought they were orcs, and he did not understand. How could it be? They had the Silmaril. They were safe. “No, my loves,” his mother had said when Elrond asked, “they are not the Enemy’s servants — they are his enemies, as we are, though they serve his purposes. They are elves. Fallen elves who have malice in their hearts, but elves all the same.”

Why would enemies of their Enemy make war upon them?

Elrond remembered times when his mother’s friends and counsellors let slip words in their presence about evil elves who had destroyed her home; but Mother had always shushed them, so Elrond assumed they were harmful lies. Mother fought lies. She brought the people together.

But then an elf had wanted to kill him and Elros. A terrible, fell, and beautiful elf with bright eyes like Galdor who had accused his mother of stealing a birthright from him. Mother would never steal. But then, Elrond never would have believed that Mother would run away to die without them, and she had. She had said: “Please forgive me, my loves. I do not think my doom as high as Lúthien’s, but this course alone remains to me.”

None of it made sense.

Elrond sniffed. The sky smelled burnt. Elrond had smelled cookfires before, and burned bread. He had never smelled a burned sky. It stung his eyes like when the wind off the sea blew hot smoke from a firepit in his face.

This was nothing like that, though. In the night the wind had howled and the flames had roared back, but now it was still, and even though the sun was warm Elrond was cold in nothing but his tunic and the rag Gwereth had tied around his waist. He hoped they had a new pair of trousers for him wherever they were going.

He must have shivered, because the elf-warrior’s arms narrowed and brushed Elrond’s shoulders. He shrank into himself so they would not touch. His chest tightened remembering the strong and armoured arms of the other elf-warrior, the one on the cliff, squeezing the air from his lungs.

They continued down the road and the burnt smell turned sour. Rotten. A smell so thick he could taste it and his belly bubbled in protest. He scrunched his face and water seeped from his eyes. The rotting air settled deep in his lungs and spittle forced itself through his pinched lips, and he knew if he did not release the horror coiled inside him he would be sick: he let out a sharp long wail. The elf-warrior’s body curled closer in answer, pressing in around him. It was not what he wanted at all. Elrond shrank even smaller and covered his face with the collar of his shirt.

“I remember the first time I smelled a burning body,” someone said. It was the voice of the elf-woman, the one who had taken Gwereth on her horse. Good: she was still with them. “I was of course not so young. Alas that the Doomsman’s words have brought this horror even upon children.”

The elf-warrior hummed low, like a growl caught in his throat, and said nothing.

Burning bodies. Could she mean the horrible thick rot in the air was bodies? Why were they burning bodies? The dead ought to be buried at sea. That was how they had always done it, when age or sickness or injury snuffed out a life.

Elrond swallowed, dry and bitter, and wiped the dribble from his chin with his shirt. He was messy: messy with blood and urine and spit. He thought of the sea where the dead were buried. He wanted to wash away all of this filth in the sea and never come up.

Maybe he would find his mother and the Silmaril there.

The smell worsened the closer they came to the bridge. Somehow, Elrond grew accustomed to it. He supposed you could grow accustomed to anything if you had to endure it long enough.

As they crossed the bridge, Elrond saw them at last: bodies, a great mound of them heaped on the stone quay. Or so he guessed, for it was hazy and shapes amid the heap were difficult to make out. It looked more to Elrond like the wet sand he would let drip from his fist on the beach. Drip drip drip until a wormy grey hill formed beneath his hand. Several biers ringed the great pyre. Elrond wondered who they were, and why they had deserved this special treatment when the others had not.

For the first time since they had left Embor’s house, the elf-warrior spoke. Not to them: Elrond could tell because his tone and pattern was that of adults speaking to each other. He had a clear deep voice. Its harmonious lilt was all wrong. It should be rough and sharp, like the other warrior’s; like the smoky stinging sky. Despite the clarity of his speech Elrond found him difficult to understand, as if his ears were full of water.

He was asking the woman something about his brother’s body.

“He was not recovered from the river,” she replied.

“I did not think the river so deep here.”

“No, my lord, not too deep — but when they dove to search for them the bodies had all been swept to sea. Lord Ulmo has claimed them, it seems.”

“Lord Ulmo has claimed many things this night.” He was silent another moment. “And Amrod: You said you did not find him?”

“Nay, lord. Perhaps another came to him before I did. He was gone.”

A long and heavy puff of breath brushed the back of Elrond’s head. “So be it,” the warrior said. “May their souls rest and may Ilúvatar’s pity find them.” Then, so quiet Elrond was sure he did not intend to be heard, he added, “Though my heart tells me it will not be so.”

The elf moved the reins into one hand and closed the other arm around Elrond and his brother. Elrond had already made himself as small as he could, so he sucked his breath in and held it. He felt his eyes bulge and his neck tighten. The breath escaped and he gasped, lungs pushing against the large hand that covered most of his side. The hand did not resist the expansion of his chest. He breathed again, slowly this time, and the hand rose and fell with the rhythm of it.

It reminded Elrond of the weight of a thick winter coverlet, and he fell into a heavy slumber.

The few tents that had made up their bivouac had been disassembled by the time Maglor returned to the camp with the children and Dornil and their nurse. Wagons had been loaded with both goods and people and yoked to the horses. They lined the road that had been a footpath through the tall grasses when they found it, and was now trammelled wide by the passage of their army. This host would be Maglor’s charge on the long southern route to Amon Ereb. Uncharted lands: he wondered how many, how much, they would leave behind or lose along the way.

The sun blazed directly above them: the treeless field was hot. Sweat dripped down Maglor’s chest beneath layers of linen and mail and wool.

What remained of their army stood in loose formation at the eastern end of the field. Seeing them thus assembled was like looking upon a field of rye after an errant river had swept through half the crops, leaving behind a stark scar of barren mud. How many of those missing had been casualties? How many had been deserters?

The commoners clustered about their ranks came nowhere near to making up the numbers of their losses. They were perhaps half again the size of the army, many of them elderly, crippled, children. Desperate people who believed death to be their only other choice.

All heads faced the two men standing on a wagon before them: Maedhros addressing them, so capably playing the battle commander even in his despair, and Lisgon beside him. Maedhros’ voice carried to where Maglor and Dornil sat upon their horses, watching.

“Those are your words,” Dornil said.

“In some measure,” Maglor replied. Maedhros’ speech was his own, but laced with Maglor’s words from that morning, reordered into plainer but no less subtle language. It was a skill Maglor, who had no talent for simplicity, had envied at times.

“So it was your counsel to offer mercy and bring this remnant of Sirion with us?” Dornil asked.

Maglor was too weary to rebuke her for her prying. And why should she not know? “Yes. And it is I who will lead them — and you will come with me, commander.”

Dornil exhaled, and Maglor knew another question lagged behind.

“What of these captives?” she said, gesturing to the children and their nurse. “Was it Lord Maedhros’ command to take them? Or was that your own counsel also?”

Maglor saw no need to answer, knowing Dornil had reached the correct conclusion even before asking. Ever did she see through him, even as her husband had.

When he was a child, Maglor had gathered fledglings fallen from their nests. He had set them in a basket and swaddled them in blankets and fed them from his own hand. “Children ought to be reared by their parents,” Fëanor would scold him (speaking also, Maglor later realised, of himself). “You should leave them be. It is not your role to meddle in the fates of Yavanna’s creatures.”

But Maglor had continued to nurse his fledglings for many years, hiding them away where his father could not find them. He never was able to teach them to fly, though often they discovered this ability on their own. Those who did not became dependent upon him for the remainder of their lives — and he on them. It was this realisation that had made him stop.

That is until he had set eyes upon Elwing’s orphaned sons and his heart had cried Help them.

It was this he would shortly have to explain to his brother, who had finished speaking and now wove through the crowd towards them.

He made a sign for Dornil to dismount and aid him in doing the same. Doubt swooped through his stomach. He stamped it down. He prepared to defend his choice.

Lifting Elros then Elrond down from the horse, he said to Dornil: “They are not captives.”

“You did not follow my command,” Maedhros said.

They were alone, save Lisgon who stood by as ever, a silent sentinel of support beside his lord. The boys and their nurse had been settled in a carriage with several other children and their guardians, and remained under Dornil’s watch. A healer had been summoned to attend to Elros’ injury.

“You commanded that I ensure they were safe,” said Maglor. “I judged that they would be safest with us.”

Maedhros huffed and his eyes darted about, landing on his hand. He curled and uncurled his fingers, as if testing their dexterity. Or preparing to strike. The hand instead came to rest on the hilt of a dagger at his left hip.

“And Dornil?” he said. “Did I not command you to tell no one of your errand?”

“You did. But I came upon her on my way, returning from her search for Amrod, and I trusted her to aid me. She is my chief commander.”

Maglor glanced at Lisgon, whose eyes were veiled and cast upon the ground.

“You should not trust her,” Maedhros said. “She is vengeful.”

“Nonetheless,” Maglor said, “she is loyal, and we have few such people left to us.”

“Tell me then: was it Dornil advised you to take Elwing’s children captive?”

Maglor knew if he paused too long that Maedhros would suspect, so he offered a half-truth.

“No,” he said. “I brought them here because they were hurt and needed healing.”

“You could not have healed them there?”

Leave them be, Fëanor had said. Ensure they are safe and unharmed, Maedhros had said, and they had been. Safe enough. He had felt the fierce fire of elven blood in Elros’ spirit, had known the boy would heal on his own. He might have left them there, in the care of the closest person to a mother they had left, and his brother’s command would have been fulfilled. He might have brought back the welcome news that the children lived and they two might have carried on spinning and spinning in ever tighter circles until they were all that was left.

Maglor had done otherwise. The weight of that decision hung on him like the cloak of kingship that had once been fastened across his shoulders, outsized and heavy. He had learned to bear that mantle; he would learn to bear this one, too.

“Healed them, perhaps,” he said in answer to Maedhros’ question. “And left them to an unknown fate. They need protection.”

The skin around Maedhros’ eyes twitched as if rebelling against the firm set of his lips; as if trying to smile, held back by the same stretched thread that held him back from madness.

His next words were in the language of their birth. “You believe yourself the best-suited to that task, then?” So swiftly as to be almost imperceptible, Maglor sensed Maedhros skirting the boundaries of his mind. “I thought you had given up nursing fledglings long ago, brother.”

Maglor refused to permit the intrusion. “It will not be my task,” he said. “Their nurse is with us. Their father’s return is doubtful, they have lost their mother, the nurse is the closest thing left to them—”

“Lost their mother?” Maedhros interrupted. “Tell me, how did that happen?”

“She chose to die!” Maglor cried. “She left them.”

“You think yourself guiltless then?”

“We came because our brothers would have gone without us—”

“Did you command soldiers in the sack of this Haven or not? Did your sword, your voice, not send dozens of souls to Mandos?” He did not await an answer. “We made war on these people because of our oath, Macalaurë. Not because of our brothers. No more than we sacked Lestanórë because of Tyelkormo. Do not forget that, when you write the lament of this battle.”

That last was designed to hurt, but Maglor found himself too rapt in contemplation of his brother’s tone and manner to feel it. There was no heat to his argumentation, no real condemnation. It was not what Maglor had readied himself for at all.

When Dior’s sons had been lost, Maedhros’ face had contorted with grief and rage. He had wailed and torn his hair, as he had not done since the slow trickle of rumour had reached the wilds of Ossiriand and put an end to the mute endurance of his disgrace, singing the death knell of his last hopes: that Hithlum was overrun and the High King killed.

That was the sort of raw despair Maglor had thought would surface now. He had thought he had seen it sparking in the lines of Maedhros’ face before he set out to find the children; but if he had (and he doubted it now), it had been snuffed out. For all that the tragedy of the previous night had shredded his own heart to ribbons, Maedhros was as cold and politic about the outcome of this battle as he had been about its preparations.

Maglor understood what he must do. It was not sentiment that would earn back his brother’s trust, but reason. Maglor had ever hated to wander the cool paths of reason, where the heart grew dark and silent and eventually ceased to sing altogether. It had happened to Celegorm and Curufin; it was happening to Maedhros.

“I believe the children will serve us well,” he said at last.

In the beat of quiet that followed, Maglor hoped he had been wrong and would be rebuked for his insolence. But Maedhros, who had sworn never again to take hostages, nodded and said, “Proceed.”

How easily the rest unravelled. “They are the heirs of the Houses of Nolofinwë and Elwë, and the heirs of Bëor and Hador and Haleth. I do not know what will come to pass, but should they grow to manhood sympathetic to our cause…” Maglor trailed off. He looked over his shoulder at the carriage, where Elros sat upright beside his brother and they shared a wafer between them. He looked back to Maedhros, and realised he too had been watching the children. Maedhros swallowed and cast his eyes at the ground. Perhaps his reasoning was not so cold. “Perhaps,” he said aloud, “in some way I cannot foresee, they will be our hope.”

Maedhros lifted his chin. “Very well,” he said. “Care for them well. Love them, as I know you can, and perhaps they will in time love you in return. But do not speak of hope.”

“Thank you,” Maglor breathed, a rush of relief. His knees nearly gave way beneath him. “I will not fail you. I swear I will not fail you.” The urge to move, to touch was too strong. He embraced him. “I will not fail you,” he repeated into the curve of Maedhros’ shoulder, cheek pressed to the cold metal clasp of his cloak. “I will not fail them.”

Maedhros did not return the embrace, but neither did he push Maglor away.

Maedhros stood upon a hill watching the long caravan of Maglor’s host retreat south: a grey snake winding through the golden fields. The sun curved west behind them. Beyond, the woods of Taur-im-Duinath spread across the horizon like a vast canker.

Such, also, was the shape and colour of the future Maedhros foresaw when he searched his heart.

“Tell me, Lisgon,” he said to his captain beside him, “do you think we will see them again?”

Lisgon watched the host for a long time. “Not all,” he said at last.

“My brother?” Maedhros asked.

“Aye.”

“And Elwing’s sons?”

“That I cannot see, my lord. But I think if Maglor lives, so will they.”

Chapter End Notes

Thank you to sallysavestheday for the helpful beta, and to Melesta, cuarthol, and Ettelene for the ongoing support in writing.

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A shriek rose from the forest. Dornil’s head whipped towards the sound.

Nothing but an elf-child, her finger pricked while gathering in a thicket of berries. A mortal woman knelt to examine the cut, then treated it with a kiss. The child scurried off to rejoin the others. They were Sindar and Noldor, Edain and Easterling. Not even at thriving Ost-nu-Rerir in the heady years before the Sudden Flame had Dornil witnessed cultures moving so easily between and among each other. The refugees of Sirion were as a tapestry of myriad colours and fibres.

Dornil resumed the rotation of her pestle, grinding to a powder the beech nuts she had collected that morning. It was not a proper lembas preparation, for if any pure strain of Yavanna’s seeds remained they were with women of higher birth and nobility than Dornil. She had only accepted the role of a Breadgiver begrudgingly. Neither Hithlum nor Himring had ever had a queen to dole out waybread with regal airs, but on those rare occasions when Maedhros deemed it politic to observe tradition, the duty had fallen to Dornil wife of Caranthir; then Dornil set the bloodied hands of a kinslayer to grinding of corn and kneading of dough.

When Maglor ordered their rations distributed equally among the host, he said nothing one way or the other of the lembas — so Dornil eagerly broke with tradition and passed it out among the mortals, who had greater need of it than any Elda. They had looked on her with surprise and confusion, even awe, the first time she had distributed packets of the storied waybread, and she had credited the decision to their generous leader.

Dornil allowed that Maglor may have been right to take them into their number. For now, they seemed mollified, even contented. No murmur of discord or defiance had been marked on the road to Taur-im-Duinath. A tightly knit people, they did not make space for their conquerors in their midst, but nor did they seem to wish them harm. If any did, they guarded it deep where not even the sharpest elven mind could uncover it. But for the occasional choked sob under the veil of night, the people of Sirion walked, spoke little, and carried on.

When the host reached the eaves of the forest, Maglor had ordered four days’ rest. Scouts were sent ahead to chart their course while the rest repaired and washed clothing, took inventory of their supplies, tended to injuries, and foraged for food.

Taur-im-Duinath was a strange forest. So dense with vegetation, pressing out to its very edges, as to seem untouched by any creature that fed upon things that grow. Indeed, besides small stream-dwellers and the occasional bird flitting in and out of the crowns of ancient trees, they had seen no animals. Strangest was that much of what lived here was unknown elsewhere in Beleriand. The forest, vast and deep and verdant, was a world unto its own. Silent, some called it, and by day it lay quiet indeed, its thick growth swallowing the chatter, the whinnying of horses, the scrape of the whetstone, the fall of water from wrung textile.

The sounds, too, of children laughing. Glancing up from her work, Dornil noticed the berry-gatherers’ baskets had been forgotten in favour of a game of hiding and chasing through the understory. Dornil’s eyes rose to the darkening underbelly of the clouds. Dusk was coming on.

At night, Taur-im-Duinath awoke. At night, the forest threw back echoes of the day’s noises in strained, shrill tones. Noises that swirled and churned in the mind long after they had died, turning, turning until out of the confusion of sounds voices rose. Voices speaking, shouting, singing.

Screaming, as the child had done when pricked by the bramble. The pestle slipped from Dornil’s grip, scattering the flour over the mortar’s rim. She cursed. The loss was negligible; it was the stumbling of her thoughts that unsettled her.

She would not go mad. There were no voices in the forest. They were phantasms; delusions born of weariness. They could be silenced. She had only to retake the reins of her errant mind.

Her hands trembled. She set the mortar and pestle down on the wagon she was using as a work surface and gripped one of its side panels to steady herself. She felt a familiar presence approaching from behind.

“My lord,” she said, greeting Maglor with a look over her shoulder.

He squinted into the sun, some trace of a smile behind it, then perched himself at the end of the wagon.

He spoke low, with a wry edge, in Quenya. “How much longer, I wonder, until we forgo such titles? How many followers must a man lose before he is no longer a lord?”

Dornil huffed and shook her head. Formalities between them had begun to flake away as soon as their host departed Sirion, such that the sort of friendship they had not known since the days of peace, sitting round the hearth in the opulent chambers of Barad Rerir, had sprung up from the ashes of their helpless plight.

“Do you ask out of fear of losing your titles, lord,” she asked good-naturedly, “or eagerness to be rid of them?”

Maglor’s expression firmed, considering her question. “I know not. One and then the other, I suppose, or both at once.” He crossed his arms and regarded her. “I guess that you believe it is the latter.”

“I do,” Dornil said. Something in his manner made her bold. “Was it not your intent in counselling Maitimo to join the folk of the Havens to us that he, not you, should lead them? Ever have you wished to make him a king, and ever has he refused that title and donned the mantle of leadership only grudgingly. Can you truly be surprised he gave this host over to you?”

Maglor hummed and did not answer. She did not know if his capitulation pleased or disturbed her.

Dornil watched and waited as his eyes darted from place to place, observing the activities of their camp. Then he said: “Does it not weigh on you?”

“What?” Dornil asked.

“That these people have followed us.” He looked at her. “Do you not wonder why?”

Dornil had always thought it indulgent to chase after such unknowable questions. How could one ever truly know the inner workings of another’s heart?

“Because you invited them to,” she replied plainly. “Is it not what you wanted?”

“They might have refused,” he said. “They might have turned back on the road, but none have done so.”

“Their home is destroyed,” said Dornil. “And we are few but we are strong. We command the last fortress that has not fallen into enemy hands.”

“What of Balar?” Maglor asked.

“Balar is a refuge, not a stronghold, and it is defended by the mercy of Ulmo only. There is no reason one Vala might not overcome another. Moreover,” Dornil said, her voice edged with bitterness, “the Valar are fickle and may withdraw their protection at any time. This you know as well as I. Perhaps others have come to see it also.”

Maglor nodded. “I have thought the same.” He paused and threaded his fingers together across his lap. “Though, in truth, I find myself asking again if Moringotho only waited—”

A shriek cut off his words and he stood, hand leaping to the hilt of his dagger. Dornil’s own alarm was quelled by observation of his: the ripple down his jaw, the throb of his pulse beneath it, the tightness of his shoulders. She could almost feel him straining to master his impulse as he released his hold on the dagger’s hilt.

It all passed in the space of a moment, but it was enough for Dornil to know. He heard them: the voices in the forest. Were they both mad? Was it that had led him to doubt his fitness for leadership?

“I think I understand,” she said quietly. Then when he looked sidelong at her, “Do not let it overcome you. They are not real.”

Maglor’s mind — which she had seldom dared trespass since the battle, for it was dark and unwelcoming — opened to hers, seeking confirmation of her meaning. He found it in shared memories of wailing and crying.

“Who do you think they are?” he asked.

“No one,” Dornil replied hastily. “It is as I said. They are not real.”

“I do not think so.” His eyes flickered, the light within made brighter and more immediate by the deepening dusk. “They are souls.”

“They are not. They are figments of the mind.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I thought the same when first I heard them. It is what I want to believe. But yestereve I went to them. I ventured into the forest.”

“My lord,” Dornil interrupted, “you should not wander alone.”

He waved her off. “Has your belief in me fallen so far you think I cannot ward off a few houseless spirits?” His tone aimed at levity but only wavered more for the effort.

Dornil frowned. It was not the imagined spirits she worried about. But it would likewise be an affront to suggest Maglor was not capable of overcoming and subduing any one of their host. It was not them Dornil feared, either. What she feared, she realised watching him in that moment, was that he would not defend himself at all.

She said nothing, but Maglor was unwilling to let the subject rest. He said, “I guessed you heard them when I saw you startle at that child’s cry.”

“Then why did you not begin with that?”

“I suppose I thought you might think me mad. Or that pride might cause you to equivocate, lest I think you mad and unfit for duty.”

Dornil bristled. “My duty is to truth before pride. I would not equivocate, lord. I have never lied to you. I tell you truthfully that the sounds in the forest are not spirits.”

Maglor’s face was half-obscured, angled towards the woods, but Dornil saw how it quivered. How he blinked rapidly. He was like a heart cut open and raw, still beating, and it filled Dornil with the urge to flee. For duty, she did not; but she could not bear to look such transparent pain in the face.

She watched her trembling fingers instead.

Of course Maglor, maker of laments, had been repentant from the first blood drawn at Alqualondë. Dornil had ever respected his strength in balancing repentance and perseverance. Repentance was dangerous, though, for how closely akin it was to guilt. Guilt was the poison that had wormed through Maedhros’ spirit until he was nothing but the vessel, hard but hollow, that had once housed a heart of fire.

Maglor’s guilt, Dornil saw now, had been a sleeping snake coiled at the bottom of a jar. But when Maedhros had forced their separation at Sirion he had lifted the lid. Awoken his brother’s guilt, given it room to rise, escape, and hunt.

Dornil had little faith in her ability to tame it.

“My lord,” she said, “I beg you. Hold your tears.”

Maglor sighed heavily and clasped her wrist, guiding her hand away from where she clung to him. She had not even realised she had reached for him. “Thank you, sister,” he said.

Dornil tensed, taken aback; he had seldom named her thus. But even as he did, he walked away. He whistled a series of three notes and one of the horses roaming freely in the tall grasses lifted its head in answer. Dornil understood, as the animal trotted to his side, that she was not the sort of companionship her lord needed.

“There!” said Gwereth. “How does it feel?”

Seated on the carriage bench, Elros examined his boot.

“Can you thank Embor for mending that?”

Embor leaned forwards to meet the child’s eyes but Elros continued to stare at his foot. The sole had come loose three days before — it had taken that long to get Elros’ consent to have it repaired. Gratitude for the repair was, perhaps, too much to ask. Gwereth stole a glance at her friend and returned his smile with a quirk of her lips. She had not wholly forgiven him. When he had first found them among the host, harsh words had passed between them. How could you, she had rebuked him, willingly follow the sons of Fëanor?

“I owe my life to them,” he had said. “Had it not been for Lord Maglor my grandsire would not have escaped the field of Anfauglith, nor been able to save my mother and me.”

Gwereth had spat on the ground at his feet. “They would not have hesitated to kill you in Sirion.”

“They might have tried,” Embor had said. “And I would not have hesitated to slay one of theirs to defend a friend or kinsman. It is the way of war.”

Gwereth had fallen silent. Tales were told among her people of the ancient wars before the Chieftains led their people over the mountains. There had been many wars between Men then, fought over lands and goods; even petty quarrels between chieftains set whole tribes against each other in bloody combat. Their Lady had led them away from that, to Brethil, where they had dwelt in simple peace for centuries.

Then, even in the year of Gwereth’s birth, Morgoth’s malice found her people once more. Turambar was already stained with the blood of his own kinsman when he slew himself; and his sire, grasping at vengeance, infested with Morgoth’s lies, kindled to a roar the ashes of Turambar’s violence and turned all the folk against each other. The Haladin had nearly erased themselves from history on that accursed day: for strife between the last heirs of Haldad’s line brought both men death at the hands of the other’s followers. Though she did not remember them, Gwereth bore the scars of those dark times on her heart — both the remote and the recent. She could not bear to believe that the centuries when Men and Elves stood united against their true Foe were naught but an accident in a long tale of strife and cruelty.

Gwereth did not reveal these thoughts to Embor. No doubt he would say the sons of Fëanor shared their hatred of Morgoth and would continue the fight against him from their eastern stronghold. How could he not see! Fëanor’s sons were Morgoth’s deadliest servants!

They were at an impasse; but Gwereth needed him. Embor was kind to the children and his travelling songs cheered her, too. Aged though he was, he had the strength of a warrior. If it came to it, she believed him: he would guard her and the twins against any follower of Maedhros or Maglor. At last she had ceased her questioning and vowed no longer to speak to him of their captors. She could not risk losing his sympathy.

“Thank you, Embor,” Elros mumbled at last to the carriage floor.

Embor squeezed first his then Elrond’s shoulder. “You are welcome. You will let me know if there’s anything else you need, won’t you? We can’t have you going about with mud in your shoes. You, too, Elrond.” Then he said to Gwereth, “You are always welcome to join us for a meal.”

“Yes, I know,” said Gwereth, as she had a dozen times. She had yet to accept any invitations to sup with his folk, or with any others of the host. Of hundreds who had journeyed with them from Sirion, only Gwereth and the sweet, unknowing children in her charge had been taken from their home against their wills. She felt utterly alone.

With a compassionate smile, Embor rose and left. He walked towards the nearest cookfire, and Gwereth noted several flaxen heads among the coarse dark braids of Embor’s people. Folk of Dor-lómin, then.

Gwereth blinked several times; the backs of her eyelids stung from weariness and grief. Then she turned to the twins and said as lightly as she was able: “Would you still like to join the other children picking berries?”

Elros frowned. “No. I am too tired.”

Gwereth clasped his little hand in hers. The injury wore on him. The elven healers claimed the fracture had been repaired by the strength of Elros’ own spirit, but he complained of headaches and weakness and was seldom hungry.

Elrond said nothing but he was watching the other children with longing.

“Would you like to go, Elrond?”

He shook his head as Gwereth had expected. The brothers cleaved to each other in this sea of faithless strangers who should have been friends, even as she anchored herself to them.

“Very well,” said Gwereth. She half-rose, for the carriage’s ceiling was low, and moved across it to position herself between them. “Would you like to hear a story?”

Elrond nodded, the slip of a smile curving his lips. “Would you tell us about the boy and the Eagle?”

“No,” Elros protested. “That is Papa’s story. Gwereth doesn’t know it.”

“I think I could remember it.” Gwereth decided not to remind them she had told them this tale of Gondolin many times since Eärendil had last been ashore. It was right that it should be a link to their father in their minds. It might be all they had left of him.

So she began the tale of the little boy who lived in a cave in the mountains, safe from the monsters who roamed without. She told how he was visited by an orc but defeated him — not with strength, for the boy was small and could not fight, but with cleverness. “I am only a little boy, I have no meat on my bones!” he said. “There are fat goats who live on the cliffs, they are much tastier than me,” and he sent the clumsy orc tumbling to his ruin hunting the nimble goats on the cliffs. She told how one day a great Eagle took note of the heap of orcs below the cliffs, and, thinking a mighty warrior must dwell in the mountains, he came to visit. But he found only a little boy. Then the Eagle spoke to the boy and asked him what reward he would seek for his valour. The boy asked the Eagle to show him the world without, and the Eagle consented to bear the boy upon his back.

They flew over the land, and the boy saw all that lay about: thick green forests and rivers like silver veins running through pale fields dotted with sheep and little towns standing around cold stone fortresses. And the boy asked if he could go down and explore the lands. But then the Eagle wheeled around to the great fortress in the North, black and tall and terrible, where the Lord of Orcs had his home, and he told the boy he must wait in his cave for the day when the people had gathered the strength to take it down. But when they did, the boy would be old enough to ride to war with them as a hero of his people.

As Gwereth spoke, the sun sank beneath the hills; but its light still filled the sky and painted the thinning clouds a dusty rose. The chilly teeth of night bit at Gwereth’s bare arms and she draped two blankets over the children before throwing a shawl around herself. She could not be grateful for the comforts the host had provided them, small recompense for all they had been forced to leave behind: sweaters knitted by Elwing on nights when the past left her sleepless, quilts hand-sewn by her council, toys gifted by their father and his crew.

Suddenly Elros said, “Do you think an Eagle saved Mother?”

By his tone, more pensive than curious, it was not a question to which he expected an answer. Gwereth longed to offer one nonetheless. The boys had asked few questions on the road. Whether out of compassion or cowardice or both, Gwereth had not spoken of that terrible night either.

“I had a dream she was a bird,” Elros continued, “and flew away with the Silmaril to find Father.”

Gwereth snugged the blanket around their shoulders. “That’s a lovely dream, sweetling.”

“I thought it was not a dream but Elrond says he did not see it.” He turned his eyes up on her hopefully. “Did you?”

“I am sorry, no,” Gwereth said, “I did not see it.”

“Maybe the bump on your head made you imagine it,” Elrond said, then changed the subject: “I am hungry.”

“Good, good, we’ll eat!” said Gwereth, her relief to turn to other matters rushing forth too eagerly.

As she reached for their pack of rations, a dark shape blotted out the light coming through the open carriage door. Gwereth jerked her head in its direction and landed on the shadowed face of the Kinslayer.

“What do you want?” she snapped on impulse; but like some fearful whelp no sooner had she barked than her courage curdled in her breast.

Why now? she thought. Maglor had not yet personally visited them, though it was clear he took an interest. Often he stole glances as he rode past. But otherwise his servants brought news of them to their lord. Most of it, she was sure, came to him from their carriage driver: strangely, that same Green-elf who had turned against his lord when that hideous monster, the one they called Amrod, threatened the twins. Gwereth loved the Green-elf no more for that one act of valour – belated and made meaningless by his continued allegiance.

“Orfion tells me Elros has not yet healed,” Maglor said, then addressed Elros directly: “Is that true?”

Elros shrank back but stared at him with wide curious eyes.

“You will not lay a hand on him,” Gwereth said. He had presumed to do so once, and in her frailty she had allowed it, but he would not again. Who was to say it was not the touch of a kinslayer that had delayed Elros’ healing?

“I do not intend to,” said Maglor. “But our healers have had some success treating injuries of his kind with a root discovered in the forest. I thought you might like to try it.”

He held out a steaming cup. With a wary glance, Gwereth took it.

“What is it?” she asked.

“In truth, we do not know it,” said Maglor. “But it is safe. It has been administered to both elves and mortals with no ill effects.”

Gwereth stared at the tea. It was vibrant yellow with a spiced, earthy scent. Thick slices of an umber root had sunk to the bottom.

As Gwereth scrutinised his offering, Maglor said, “I will let you decide if you wish to try it. Dornil will be by with lembas shortly.” He took a step back then paused, as if contemplating something more to say. Mercifully, he decided against it and left them at peace.

Setting the tea down, Gwereth kicked the doorstop aside and let the carriage door bang shut.

She hoped this visit from the son of Fëanor did not portend more to follow. For her, it was easy to keep the fires of her anger burning. Maglor might perform every kindness he wished. Gwereth would not forget who he was and what he had done. But Elros and Elrond were children. Though they possessed instinctive wisdom on who meant them well and who did not, their wills were no match for an elf-lord of Maglor’s power.

She would have to tell them. She would have to say: The monster who killed your mother has stolen you away and means to keep you captive. But how could one impart such news to a child with no balm of consolation at the ready? If she was to tell them they were trapped, she needed to be able to tell them how they would escape.

Elros groaned beside her. “I do not want to eat,” he said. “My stomach is upset.”

How powerless she felt, looking at him swaying and drooping over his knees. It was unbearable. She sank down beside him and set one hand on his back. With the other she retrieved the mug of tea and held it before him.

“Here,” she said, “drink this. It may settle your stomach.” As soon as the scent reached his nose, he eagerly grasped it in both hands. “Careful, it’s hot.”

He sipped and hissed at the burn, but sipped again. It was not long before he had drunk it halfway down.

He leaned back against the carriage wall and sighed. “That feels better,” he said.

“Good,” said Gwereth, and though resentment of the Kinslayer’s aid simmered in her breast, she meant it when she said, “I’m glad,” and kissed Elros’ temple.

When Dornil, his harsh commander, came by some time later, Elros nibbled his lembas rations happily and later also accepted a bowl of stew Embor brought by.

The children slept soundly that night, but Gwereth found no rest.

No phantasms disturbed Dornil on the first watch. The camp was quiet and the moon hung low and heavy, bathing the earth in pale light. If she turned her back to the looming forest, she could almost imagine herself in Lothlann when sweet grasses and wildflowers still blanketed the plains. Here was a place Morgoth’s black fingers had not reached. But nowhere in Arda was free of evil. There were other threats, as yet hidden from them. Unknown and all the more perilous for it.

Thus when Dornil sought Maglor to relieve her and found his tent vacant, her mind, sharpened by centuries of ever-present danger, was at once alert. She sped towards the forest.

No more than twenty paces past the eaves, darkness swallowed her. She lurched to a halt, finding herself short of breath. It was as if the forest, ordinarily a place of abundant breath, had drunk it all for itself. It was unnatural, as were all things about these woods.

She stood gasping while the light in her eyes kindled and adjusted to her surroundings. Thick trunks appeared like tightly packed columns, supporting the impermeable canopy.

There were no signs of movement and for a moment Dornil hoped her fears had been misplaced. Then as her sight stretched further, she spotted on the bank of a silvery stream a figure still and straight as the trees. Every step she took towards him dragged as if the ground itself grasped at the soles of her feet.

She approached cautiously, uncertain in what mood she might find him. But Maglor spoke first.

“You hear them,” he said. His eyes, which either gazed on something Dornil could not see or else pierced deeper than her own, did not move.

Dornil listened, heart half-quaking with fear that the voices would rise around her, half-hoping they would; for if they both heard them at once, would that not be confirmation that they were no illusion? That her lord, and the leader of their host, had not gone mad?

No matter how she strained her ears, she heard nothing but the soft ripple of the stream.

Maglor turned to her. “You do not hear them?” His brows bunched over the bridge of his nose. He was afraid.

Reluctantly, Dornil said, “I hear nothing but the usual sounds of a forest at night.”

“You said you heard them.” There was a strain of panic in his tone. “You do not now?”

She paused, as loath to accept his sickness as she was to reveal it to him.

“Tell me, Nornawen. If your duty is to the truth, as you claim, you must tell me.”

“No,” she confessed. “I hear no voices.”

Maglor’s face abruptly cramped. He pressed his fingertips to his temples. “I hear them so clearly. It was not them before.”

“Who?” asked Dornil.

“Pityo and Telvo,” he whispered. “They are here. They have followed us.” He paused as if listening. “They are angry. Angry with me. They blame me.”

Dornil caught him as he crumpled towards his chest. She had not held him since he had dragged her down to kneel beside him on the blood-slick stones of Menegroth and buried his face in her shoulder where he could not see the ruin of his brother’s body. A gate slammed shut on that memory. Her mind sped back to the present: to the feel of Maglor’s shirt bunched between her fingers where she held his forearms. The weight of him against her chest and the sound of his laboured breathing.

“Would you sit, my lord?”

He did not answer, but allowed himself to be guided onto a rock. She made to extricate herself but he clutched her arm.

“Forgive me, sister,” he said. “I know it is not your nature to show affection. Nor was it your husband’s, but he endured me and now you must also.” Briefly a smile slid across his face, but it turned to an agonised grimace as he lifted his hands to his ears. “Silence a moment!” he shouted as if in answer to someone. “I know, I know,” he repeated in a whisper.

He fought to master his breaths.

“They blame Maitimo, too,” he said. His words were broken by pauses, only half-spoken to her. “And it is true. It is true. We should have died with you. With them. We should have died for our Oath. But how could we? There are yet two Silmarils, two we must pursue. But we did not go to Sirion for our Oath, sister. You know that, you must know that. We went because of them, because they would have gone without us — and yet we let them die. We let them die. We held back, we were too hesitant, too heavy with remorse, and they died at the forefront of battle. We have condemned them to be loathed forever. Houseless forever, as the Doom foretold. Even their bodies we dishonoured and disgraced. Do you know what they did with Telvo? I have seen it. They quartered him with his own sword. They threw his limbs, trailing gore, into the sea.”

He held Dornil’s wrists in both his hands, clutching them so tightly her bones ached. Pausing for a breath, he seemed to notice. His grip loosened. Through the thickening darkness, she strained to find his eyes. Their light guttered, weakened by his torment.

She searched them, troubled most by his admission that the Oath had not driven him to Sirion. Let this be no more than the ramblings of an addled mind, she begged.

Though she had not sworn in the square of Tirion, Dornil had twined her vow of marriage with her husband’s vow of vengeance. She might have resisted it, once, but it was now so rooted in her soul that not even when Caranthir’s corpse spat him out like so much refuse had it loosed its hold on her. Nor would she now want it to, were it possible. The Oath, and the last two sons of Fëanor, were all she had left.

She caught Maglor’s hands in hers.

“Macalaurë,” she said. “Listen to me. You cannot have seen what became of Ambarto’s body. It is not them. Your brothers are not here. It is your own mind feeding on you. It will consume you if you let it.”

Maglor had not heard her. In a dark and distant voice, he said, “If I had held to our Oath, as they did, as our father made us swear, I would not have saved Elwing’s sons. I would have destroyed them.”

Chapter End Notes

Ost-nu-Rerir - “City under [Mount] Rerir” thank you Shihali on the SWG server for devising this name for Caranthir’s seat of power.

History of the Haladin. The recent Haladin history that Gwereth remembers is recounted in The Wanderings of Húrin published in The War of the Jewels. A fascinating bit of late First Age worldbuilding, if you haven’t read it and can get your hands on WotJ. It’s basically summarised here, but after being released from Angband, Húrin (as in CoH) finds Morwen in Brethil. What’s not in CoH is the havoc he wreaks afterwards. Long story short, his arrival stirs up conflict between the last two descendants of Haldad’s line (from Haleth’s brother Haldar, since she had no children) that ends up getting both of them killed.

Thank you to Melesta for the early input on this chapter, and to TheChasm for the helpful beta.

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The child shook. He was burning. Gwereth curled onto her side and clutched Elros closer, as much to soothe him as herself. The hard carriage floor, the burning and cramping of her stomach felt as though they were all she had ever known. Had it been a night? Two? The effort of remembering stabbed painfully behind her eyes; she squeezed them shut to hold off the nausea that always followed the pain. It was humiliating, the urgent emptying of her bowels at every hour of day and night. She had stopped eating; she could scarcely keep down water.

Gwereth had not been old enough to remember her mother’s death, but in her fevered dreams something like memories visited her: clear, stringy fluid dripping from her mother’s grey lips; her eyes so dry, so tired; her arms too weak to lift a hand to caress her daughter’s face. Hundreds had died that year after she came to the Havens, yet few now remembered them. Would any remember the Men of this host? Survivors of war once, twice, some even thrice over, lain low by disease.

She shook, clinging to Elros, and imagined the coolness of the tears she could not shed.

With a spasm, Elros vomited onto her chest. She barely noted the damp warmth seeping through her shirt. There was nothing she could do but wait. She had not even the strength to call for help, not though she could hear Orfion and Elrond speaking just outside.

“They do not often show themselves to the speaking peoples,” said Orfion, in his pleasant speech that reminded Gwereth oddly of Lady Elwing’s.

“When did you see them?” Elrond asked.

“I have not seen them since the days before the Sun.”

“You are older than the Sun?” Elrond said. “But you look younger than my father!”

Orfion chuckled. “I was born long before, child, across the mountains where there were many Onodrim. It was for love of them and of Greenwood the Great that our chieftain Denweg forsook the March. The Elves and Tree Shepherds dwelt there in friendship — still do, I imagine.” His voice took on a wistful note that for a moment stung Gwereth’s heart. Were there none left in Middle-earth who had not lost their homes? “But when the woods began to fill with monsters, I followed Denweg’s son over the mountains, into Ossiriand—”

“That is where Lord Maglor said we are going,” Elrond interrupted. “Are there no Tree Shepherds in Ossiriand?”

“There are,” said Orfion, “but not so many, and they are most often still and silent. But have you not heard the tales of your grandsire, Dior the Fair?” There was a pause. “Ah. Well, they say he and his father Beren were joined by the Onodrim in their battle with the Dwarves.”

“I have never heard that,” Elrond said. “Mother did not like to talk about her parents or where she came from.”

“Well, she was very young,” Orfion said sadly. “Perhaps she did not remember.”

“I would like to meet the Tree Shepherds,” said Elrond. “Do you think they live in this forest?”

“Almost certainly,” Orfion answered.

“Can we go look for them?”

Their converse came to an abrupt halt, for a violent shout tore through the murmur of the camp; another rose in answer. Gwereth did not need to understand their ancient tongue to know they were words of violence and anger. Physically, the elves had shown no signs of sickness — but their minds were unravelling. Some withdrew into themselves, solitary and soundless. Others the sickness seized with bouts of fear and rage, and they turned against each other in their madness.

There was a clash of steel and then another voice lifted in command. The shouts died down; Gwereth closed her eyes in relief. Much as she hated the Kinslayers, she hated more the sickening sound of a body breaking, and the horrified scream of the murderer when the madness passed and he saw a friend slain by his own hand.

“No,” Orfion said in answer to Elrond’s question, mastering the fear at the edges of his voice. “I do not think it would be wise to go looking for the Onodrim here. There is something strange about this forest. Not even I dare go near it until we know. But wait here a moment,” he said, and there was a rustle of movement, “I must bring these tinctures to your brother and Gwereth.”

“I want to come,” Elrond whined. “I want to see my brother.”

“I am sorry, child, you cannot.”

“But why! You are going.”

“It is as I have said. I am Elf-kind. I cannot become ill. Not in body,” he corrected. “But your mortal blood means you cannot risk going near them.”

Gwereth had to strain to hear Elrond’s next words. “Well if Elros is going to die then I should die too.”

“Oh, little star,” said Orfion. “Do not say such things. Your brother will not die. He has elven blood, and the blood of Melian! He will recover.”

“Then why can’t I be sick with him?”

To this Orfion only sighed; the sigh of one unused to minding children. “Wait here,” he said. “I will not be long.”

A moment later Orfion was in the carriage entrance. Gwereth felt the pity in his silence, and her flesh burned hotter with shame.

“I am sorry to trouble you,” he said. “I have brought medicines mixed by our healers.”

Gwereth said nothing. He sighed again, with less patience, and set the vials down on the bench.

“The green vial is a mixture for the stomach,” he said, “and the blue will provide the essential nourishments your body has lost.” He set down a cup. “And there is tea of the yellow root, for the head pains.”

He waited, breaths shallow, for some acknowledgement. But Elros had fallen asleep, and Gwereth was too weary to answer him. Even if she could, it would be to spurn him. She had no faith in these medicines, least of all the yellow root which she believed to be the cause of their illness.

Orfion left. He exchanged a few words with Elrond and then their voices retreated. The solid floor seemed to sink and sway around her as she drifted on the cusp of sleep. She struggled against its pull, knowing Embor would be by soon.

At last, his rough voice, gentled for her benefit, greeted them. She whimpered in answer, and with effort rose to sitting on her trembling arms. Elros she kept tucked close to her hip.

“Did you find what I asked?” Her voice creaked with the dryness of her throat.

“If this is the plant you meant, yes.” He drew a bundle of pale green leaves from a pouch on his belt. “And here,” he pulled forth a flask, “I removed the bark and boiled it in water, as you asked.”

“Yes, that is it,” said Gwereth. “Thank you.” She could not be sure the willows in these lands had the same properties as those they had harvested in the lush vale of Nan Tathren in sprintime, but the shrubs looked similar enough, and when she had chewed their stems at the onset of her illness they had relieved the fever.

He removed the cork and handed her the flask. “Careful, it’s hot.”

The familiar bitter taste comforted her. “Elros,” she murmured. His shining black curls stuck to his forehead and she brushed them aside. “Elros, love, I am sorry to wake you, but Embor has brought some medicine.”

Elros groaned and parted his lips. She touched the mouth of the flask to them, lifting his head onto her knees so the liquid would not dribble away. He grimaced.

“’s awful,” he muttered, then caught sight of the steaming tea on the bench where Orfion had set it. “What is that?”

Gwereth frowned. “It was that made you ill.”

Elros buried his face in her thigh.

“Gwereth,” Embor said tentatively, “perhaps you ought to try the elf-medicines. I do not think—”

“No. I will not, and neither will the children. Tell me: has anyone else improved from taking their medicines?”

“No,” Embor admitted.

“Then we shall all die. But at least we may ease the pain.” She fell back down against the hard wood.

“Please,” said Embor. “Perhaps they have found no remedy yet, but the Elves are great healers. They will put an end to this sickness, I am sure of it. Please, try their medicines.”

As the willow bark began to work, Gwereth’s mind stirred awake, considering. She, too, had believed in the healing powers of Elves. It was Elves who had ended the plague that killed her mother and rid the Havens of illness in the happy years that came after. Elves — and the Silmaril.

“The Kinslayers have lost all capacity for healing,” she said. “They can only destroy.” Then she flung an arm at the medicines Orfion had lined up along the bench, meaning to topple them — but missed. The effort and the shame made her flush. “Embor,” she said. “Do you not see that the curse of the sons of Fëanor follows us, as long as we are near him?”

Embor was silent a long time. “I admit I have wondered the same. The tales of my people speak of the courage of the sons of Fëanor, of the mighty voice of Maglor that sung death to foes and called life back into the bodies of friends. Aye, I share your doubts, my friend. I do not recognise the elf from those tales in our leader.”

Gwereth grasped for his hand. “You see? Help me, then. Help us.”

The healer stood, awaiting Maglor’s response. Her face was as washed of colour as the sodden landscape behind her. It was the rains; the rains rolling in from the North that brought the sickness.

She had every reason to fear him. He had not been kind when she had brought news of their losses yesterday. How easy it was to lay blame upon another for his own failings.

He dragged a hand down his face, then swallowed. He did not wish to hear the answer to his next question. “How many?”

“Twenty-seven,” the healer replied.

“Twenty-seven?” he echoed, stricken. “That is twenty more than yesterday.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“How many of them children?”

“Fifteen.”

Maglor balked. “Why so many?”

“They are small,” she explained, with the practical tone of one whose vocation is the dying. “Their reserves of water are less. Men must drink.”

Maglor fought to hold his head upright upon his shoulders. It was three days since he had tasted water; he was weary, but an Elda could go without far longer. A Man already weakened, as these were, might die of thirst in a day; the strongest could survive no more than seven.

Word had passed silently between the Eldar: it is the water, they said upon currents of thought, that sets us against each other. But it was difficult to persuade an elf already afflicted with violent hatred that what he felt, so real to him, was naught but the workings of an outer force more powerful than he. Not all had heeded the warning. Though by different means, the disease slew elves as surely as it slew mortals. But Maglor had not the courage to tell the Men their illness came from the water. It did not matter: between thirst and contagion, their only choice was death.

He dredged up the question weighing heaviest upon him. “And Elwing’s son? What of Elros?”

“He lives. But his nurse would not administer the medicines.”

Maglor swallowed his despair, holding his breath. It was true that the medicines would do nothing but postpone the end, if Elros’ spirit could not save him, but at least he might follow after his mother more comfortably.

“Thank you,” he said to the healer. “You are dismissed. I am sure you have more important work than bringing reports to me.”

The healer acknowledged him, bending at the waist, but had more to say: “There is one here to see you, lord. He says he is close in friendship with the sons of Elwing and their nurse.”

“Does he name himself?”

“He calls himself Embor. He says he is descended of Men of the East who once followed you.”

“Send him to me,” Maglor said, both apprehensive and eager to speak to one the people who had followed him, for thus far he had failed to make any connection with them.

The healer bowed again, and not a moment later the man had taken her place just beyond the awning of his tent. The sky spat a mist of rain, and it stuck like tiny crystals in his coarse black hair.

“Come in where it is dry,” Maglor said.

The man tipped his chin to his chest and stepped beneath the covering. Maglor took a closer look at him: he was a broad and dark, with thick brows and many years graven on his face. Yet strength slept behind warm brown eyes. Like ripples over still water, memories blurred the present vision, and for a moment Maglor might have said Bór himself stood before him, even as he had stood between him and the rage of Uldor on the field of Anfauglith.

“My lord,” the man said, “I am Embor son of Agida. My father fought and died for you in the Union.”

“I am sorry,” said Maglor, meaning his distracted state and hearing too late what the man had said. As if so brief an apology could remedy the tragedy to which they had led his people!

“I knew him not,” Embor said. “I was yet in my mother’s womb when he set out for battle. But my grandsire Egida escaped. As he told it, it was you who guarded him when he retreated with a small contingent of my people.”

“You come from good stock, Embor son of Agida,” said Maglor. “We owe a great debt to you and your forebears.”

“Thank you, lord. I am certain if the winds of fortune had blown otherwise, we would still be staunch allies. Perhaps we will be again.”

Maglor huffed at the suggestion. He had thought it possible, yes, in the aftermath of Sirion, but now after weeks on the road, as the people who had followed him died by the dozens, he could not indulge the hope of any sort of trust taking hold between them.

“What may I do for you? My healer tells me you are a friend of the young princes.”

“And of their nurse, Gwereth,” Embor answered. “Yes. It is for them that I have come. Elros is very ill. Even if he and his brother prevail, I fear what will become of them if Gwereth does not. I fear what will become of all of us.” He paused, hesitating.

“Go on,” Maglor said. “You may speak freely.”

“Thank you, lord.” Embor cleared his throat and clasped his hands behind his back. “I do not know what your intention is with the people you have asked to follow you from Sirion, but I cannot believe it is to let us die. You need us, as you needed us before. And yet, you have done little to earn our trust. If not for the illness crippling us, I believe people would rise against you. Indeed,” he hesitated, searching Maglor’s face, “the thought has come to me, seeing my friends waste away. But the truth is that you and your kind may be our only hope. I know you are powerful. I cannot believe there is no one among you who can discover the cause of this sickness and stop the deaths. I cannot believe that you do not care that children are dying, not now that you have triumphed over us—”

“Triumphed?” Maglor interrupted. “There was nothing triumphant about our victory at Sirion, Embor. Of course I care. But whatever tales you have heard about us, we are not saviours. My kin, perhaps, were saviours and heroes — and what became of them? They were slain and overcome by the Enemy who will overcome us all. Do I know the cause of this sickness? Yes. It is the malice of Morgoth, carried from the North and rained down upon us, poisoning the waters. That is why your people are dying, why mine are going mad. See how powerful he has become, that his hate can pursue us so far from his seat of power? Not even Fingolfin, not Felagund, not Lúthien herself could stand against him now.” Maglor laughed harshly, disguising a stab of pain between his temples. “Certainly not I, certainly not one whose only victories have been against his own kin.”

All the while, Embor stood staring at him with expressionless eyes. “Have you tried?” he asked.

“What?”

“Have you tried to wield your power against him?”

“I cannot.”

Embor’s thoughts were writ plainly on his face: his lids hooded his eyes, his lips curled in disgust. “Respectfully, lord, I do not believe you.”

It was all Maglor could do not to strike him. “Leave,” he gritted between his teeth, and turned so sharply he nearly collided with Dornil as she came round the side of the tent.

“Lord,” she said, gripping him by both shoulders to stay him. Pain sliced through his skull. It was so hard, so hard to resist the urge to violence.

“All is well, commander,” he said. “All is well.”

“Lord,” she said again, in Quenya. “Macalaurë. Elrond is missing.”

A huge tree, thicker than Elrond was tall, reclined on the forest floor. Elrond set his palm against its coat of spongy moss, experimenting with how easily it bounced back when he pressed and released. He pulled his hand away. Could the moss feel? Did the fallen tree know he was there?

This forest certainly felt awake. It was comforting, he thought, for he did not feel wholly alone here. There were no adults to protect him, but he felt somehow safer here than he did with the host. If anything happened to him, the trees would protect him. When Elros was better, he would bring him into the forest with him and they would be safe together.

He looked up and down the length of the trunk, seeking a way around. It was so long! It must have been the grandest tree in the forest when it stood upright. He set out in the direction that looked like it had been the tree’s crown. It would be narrower there and he could climb over. Soon, he came to the trickle of a stream with a strip of blackened and barren earth along its edges. Almost as though the stream had scorched it. Strange. His heart told him to stay clear of it so he leapt across — but stumbled on the other side, and shouted in alarm. The forest rustled in answer.

He called, “Is someone there?” No answer came.

As he carried on his way, he paid special attention to the uneven ground. A little blossom of fear had opened in his chest. Even if the forest was friendly, he must take care. Even the loveliest places may host hidden dangers: so Mother had said. Yet it was difficult to keep his eyes on the ground, for there were so many sights and sounds. The call of an owl drew his eyes up into the trees. He had seen an owl once, on a journey to the Cape through the birchwoods of Arvernien — bright and green, nothing like this forest — swooping between branches silent and beautiful. Distracted, Elrond slipped on a patch of muddy ground, and screamed as he felt himself tipping backwards.

But he did not hit the ground. He was caught, like a fish in a net, ropes around his arms and under his back — no, not ropes. Vines with waxy dark leaves, coiling around him. Elrond shrieked, surprised by the plant moving with such speed and purpose, but did not struggle. Somehow he knew the plant meant him no harm. If he did not struggle, he would be released. He breathed slowly, as his father had taught him, to calm himself.

Then there was a voice behind him, speaking lilting words Elrond did not recognise. Seemingly in answer, the vines unwound; Elrond was set down on the ground. He turned towards the voice.

It was a small elf — or at least Elrond thought him small, for it was hard to tell the way his shape blended into the forest, as though he were a part of his surroundings. Even his face was marked with shadows, similar to the patterns that decorated Orfion’s face — but this elf had them all over his skin and clothing.

The elf spoke again, addressing Elrond this time. The language was more like Mannish than Elvish; when Elrond stared back uncomprehending, the elf answered in a halting version of Sindarin. “A young one should not wander alone,” he said. “There are beasts who hunt young ones. Are you hurt?”

Elrond examined his dirtied clothing and the scuffs on his knees. “No,” he said. “I am exploring. I came from over there,” he pointed back to the camp, but as he did he realised he’d been turned around and was no longer sure where it was.

The elf smiled. “There,” he said, gesturing with his chin, just left of where Elrond had pointed. “What people are you?”

Elrond was not sure how to answer this. “Elves and Men,” he said. “Of all kinds.”

“You bring illness,” the elf said. Elrond recoiled at the intensity of his eyes, huge and round and black like a cat’s.

“We did not bring it,” Elrond said defensively. At the reminder of the sickness, the world went misty with sadness. “My brother is dying of it.”

Softening his manner, the elf took several silent steps towards Elrond and knelt so they were almost of a height. “Another young one? Are you many young ones?”

“Yes,” said Elrond. “Though Elros and me are the youngest. I think. Some have died already.”

The elf whispered something is his own tongue, head tilted to one side. “I see. Know you no, hmm,” he searched for a word, “…Songs?”

Elrond shook his head. “Songs don’t work. Orfion told me the elves have tried.”

“You are cursed,” the elf said. “No, not you. They are cursed. You are too young, you cannot carry curses. You say ‘the Elves’. Are you not an elf, little one?”

“Oh. Well.” Elrond hesitated. Mother had instructed him and Elros never to reveal to strangers who they were. But then, Mother was gone, and Elrond had the sense that the strangers she had hoped to guard them from had already found them. “We are peredhil,” Elrond said.

“Peredhil,” the elf repeated. “A strange thing to call yourselves. Half-elf. What is the other half?” The elf stood and smiled down at Elrond.

“Man,” Elrond answered. “My father is Eärendil son of Tuor and my mother—” Elrond abruptly stopped. He should not reveal so much.

But the elf did not inquire further. “I believe we are of a kind, then, Peredhel. I, too, am of mingled blood.”

Elrond’s mouth dropped open. “You are?”

“Yes. Though I know not if I am half, or more, or less of Man or Elf. My people mingled with the younger Children before we came over the mountains. We are many peredhil, as you say, in Taur-i-Melegyrn. But we do not call ourselves such.”

“What do you call yourselves?”

“Penni, of course. For all Speakers come of the same Father, whether of his Firstborn or his Secondborn. The stars shine upon our meeting, Elrond. I am called Nelpen.”

Elrond was brimming with questions, but one crowded out all the rest: “How old are you?”

Nelpen laughed. “We do not count years, little one. But I was born before the Sun, if that is what you want to know.”

“You are undying! That means, that means,” Elrond’s thoughts toppled one over the other, knitting together this new knowledge: he was not alone! There was a whole forest of people like him and Elros! “That means my father may return one day. That means my mother— Where do your souls go, when you die?”

Nelpen wrinkled his brows. “Go? We stay here in the forest. Sometimes our spirits make homes in the trees and rivers. Do you not hear our spirits singing?”

“Singing?” Elrond listened for a snatch of sound, but it was altogether silent. “No, I hear nothing.”

“Hm. Do not be concerned. You are a stranger still. But come,” Nelpen stooped and gently nudged Elrond’s chin up with a hooked finger: “tell me your name, son of Eärendil.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I am Elrond.”

“Elrond,” Nelpen repeated, as though puzzling out the sounds. “Were you named for the sky at night?”

“Yes!” said Elrond, “and no. I am named for Menelrond.”

“What is Menelrond?”

“You know, the great hall?” Elrond said, but Nelpen still looked uncertain. “Made in imitation of the night sky. In Menegroth. It was very famous. Have you not heard of it?”

“Menegroth, yes; we have knowledge of Menegroth. Elu is its king. Our elders knew him long ago. They say his queen is a fay. Do you come from Menegroth, Elrond?”

“No,” said Elrond, and fidgeted with his tunic. He did not like being the bearer of so much ill news. “It was destroyed a very long time ago.”

Nelpen hummed. “A long time for you, perhaps. Much has been destroyed since the bright Elves came over the Sea. Are you their friend, Elrond?”

“You mean the Noldor?” Nelpen slanted his head curiously. “Golodh,” Elrond tried. “Lechind.”

“Yes: Lechind. My sundered kindred call them this.”

“My father’s mother was one,” Elrond said intrepidly. He did not think Nelpen liked the Noldor, and Elrond wanted to be liked by him. “But they are not my friends, no.”

It was for the most part true. Perhaps Elrond had considered Noldor among his friends — he was not often sure in Sirion whether one was Noldo or Sinda or Adan or Easterling or something else — but it was Noldor who had burned their home and taken him and Elros away. If he ever had liked them, he did not think he did anymore.

“Yet you travel with them, do you not?” Nelpen asked. “You are not safe with them.”

“How do you know?”

“Death follows them,” he said simply.

There was a long silence while Elrond stared into the other peredhel’s dark eyes, searching for something of himself and Elros there. How he wished to see it! Yet Elrond felt no stronger connection to Nelpen than he did to anyone else. No — they were alone. He wanted to go back to the camp. He wanted to see Elros.

“Elrond!” a voice cried. Elrond jumped, and quick as a snake Nelpen had nocked his arrow and aimed it in the direction of the voice.

It was Orfion, and he raised his hands in submission then addressed Nelpen in his own language. Elrond looked between them as they exchanged words he could not understand. Nelpen lowered his bow.

“You know this elf?” Nelpen asked Elrond.

Elrond nodded but did not look at Orfion. He felt he would be scolded for wandering, and moreover, now that someone was here to take him back to the camp, he was not sure that he wanted to return. He did not know what he wanted.

He wanted Elros. He wanted his mother. He wanted his father, and he wanted to hear the Sea and see the familiar hump of Balar on the horizon like the back of a great whale. He wanted Círdan, or Aerandir, or Galdor, or even King Ereinion, who frightened him with his changeable moods and loud voice, but who meant well. Anyone but these two near-strangers. Elrond’s lip trembled, and he sputtered trying to contain his tears — but his uncertainty rattled around between his ribs and against his will his nose and eyes filled with fat drops of water.

Orfion dropped to his knees before him, one arm extended, but pausing just before he touched him. Orfion never touched them, and Elrond had always been glad that he did not, for Orfion was dangerous, even if he made himself gentle for them. But now Elrond needed to be touched more than anything. He threw himself into the bend of Orfion’s outstretched arm, and slowly it wrapped around him.

“There, there, child,” said Orfion. “Why did you wander?” Elrond could not answer through his sobs. “Nevermind. We have you now.”

There was a long pause, and as Elrond’s tears subsided he looked up. Orfion and Nelpen watched each other. No words passed between them, but they seemed to come to some silent agreement. Adults were always doing this around him. No one had taught him or Elros how to listen to mind-speech. They were slow to learn, like Men, and they were too young. Who would teach them now? This thought made Elrond begin to cry again.

“Come, Elig,” Orfion said at last, and the tightness in Elrond’s chest opened, like an oyster splitting its hard shell to welcome the returning tide. Orfion stood, lifting Elrond up with him. “Let us return to the camp. They are very worried about you there.”

“Farewell, Elrond Peredhel,” Nelpen whispered to their backs.

But when Elrond craned his neck for one last look at him, he was nowhere to be seen.

By day, the forest was friendlier to Maglor. The spirits roosted in the high thick canopy, perhaps, or burrowed underground. Wherever they were, they left Maglor’s mind open to recall other lost children. Elrond he called, but half-expected the echo of another name. But there were no echoes in the forest, and even Maglor’s mighty voice was swallowed by the carpets of moss and the great sheets of lichen, heavy as velvet drapes.

Yet in the silences between his calls, the sense grew in him that someone, or something, was aware of him. Not spirits, but something of flesh and bone and breath. Danger lurked in the forest, of a sort Maglor had not felt before — not here, nor anywhere in Endor. He froze like a hunted hare, forgetting for a moment his errand, forgetting even himself. Then came a growl so low he felt it rather than heard it.

“Macalaurë.” Dornil’s voice cut through his fear.

He exhaled, blinking to dispel the lingering unease.

“Sister,” he said.

“I called to you thrice. Did you not hear?”

Maglor had not. He responded with a minute shake of his head and Dornil sighed. She eyed him sternly. “I ought to have known not to trust your word. You promised to remain in the camp. Do you wish to be lost also?” When Maglor made no reply, her manner softened and she waved him forward. “Come. Orfion found the child.”

“Where?” Maglor breathed, faint with relief.

“He did not go far — he went chasing after some tales that Green-elf planted in his mind, it seems. I warned you not to entrust them to a guard you scarcely know. Let me guard them.”

“Enough,” Maglor hissed. “You speak too freely, commander. Where are they now?”

“They returned to the camp some hours ago, I have been searching for you for— Stop, Macalaurë!” she cried, as Maglor raced past her towards the eaves of the woods.

Elrond was stiff in his embrace, but Maglor’s arms refused to let him go. Not again, never again.

He had not held either child since that day he sat them on his horse and led them out of their smoking city. It was not because he did not long to; it was not right to lay his hands on these children whom he had robbed of a mother. (Yes, he: in him the ghosts of his brothers dwelt; in him their deeds commingled with his own and multiplied.)

I thought you had given up nursing fledglings long ago.

On the journey from Sirion, Maedhros’ accusations had rooted like some physical thing at the base of Maglor’s skull, sprouting doubts like weeds. Could Maglor have done otherwise? Could he have stayed, and turned himself and Elwing’s sons over to Ereinion for judgement? By placing him in command of the survivors, had Maedhros not steered him from that course? Or perhaps he had hoped he would: perhaps it had been Maedhros’ intent that Maglor defy him, stay behind and see them all safely bestowed on Balar. Had Maedhros hoped that Maglor would abandon him?

It was intolerable, the doubt that cast Maglor’s thoughts into disorder! But all of it quieted when he held Elrond, and slowly, slowly, Elrond softened into his arms.

“Why did you leave, child?” Maglor whispered. He resisted the impulse to kiss the dark curls on his head.

“I wanted to find the Tree Shepherds,” Elrond mumbled into the crook of Maglor’s arm. “I thought they might be able to help us.”

Maglor glanced up at Orfion; the elf licked his lips guiltily. “I told him a tale of the Onodrim. I did not think…”

“You only meant to entertain, Orfion,” Maglor reassured him. “Yet we must keep a closer watch. Elrond — do you understand now that the forest is not safe?”

“But it is, Lord Maglor!” Elrond twisted out of his arms. “There are kind people there! I talked to one of them. They live there.”

“What do you mean? You saw them?” Maglor looked back to Orfion, searching for an answer. Surely the elf would have reported at once if they had encountered others.

Orfion shook his head and his eyes darted to the ground before he spoke. “The child has a powerful imagination,” he said. “We saw no others.”

“Oh, Elrond,” Maglor clasped his thin arms. “You heard voices, is that it?”

“No, I saw him! Nelpen was his name.” Elrond’s pupils widened in confusion, but his pout was defiant. “He was a peredhel, like me and Elros.”

Maglor sighed and stood. “I’m sorry, Elrond. Sometimes our minds create images of things we wish to see. And this forest is strange. It has shown me images, also.” He saw Orfion’s face lift and felt the burn of his wary gaze. Let him know, Maglor thought. So I am mad — aren’t we all? “It is late,” he said to Elrond. “You should sleep. But you must not return to the forest, do you understand?”

Elrond nodded. His eyes glittered in the fading light, almost as if they housed the Light of the Trees. Or— could it be? No, of course not: there was no Silmaril caught in Elrond’s eyes. Only a sheen of tears. Maglor regretted his dismissal of the child’s imaginings. What harm would it have done to let him believe there were others like him living in the woods? What harm in letting him think he was not alone in the world?

“Take him back to his tent, Orfion,” said Maglor. “And watch him well.”

As they retreated, Maglor wondered if Dornil was right to advise him to appoint another to guard them. But of all Maglor’s followers, Orfion had the best heart, even if his loyalties pulled in several directions — Maglor was sure he would rejoin his own people, as soon as they came to Ossiriand, and he would not begrudge him such a choice. But for now, where else could he go?

Where could any of them go but onwards to Amon Ereb?

Chapter End Notes

The language was more like Mannish than Elvish: From ‘Of the Coming of Men into the West’: “It is said also that these Men had long had dealings with the Dark Elves east of the mountains, and from them had learned much of their speech; and since all the languages of the Quendi are of one origin, the language of Bëor and his folk resembled the Elven-tongue in many words and devices.” Elrond is doing his best 6-year-old linguistics here. 

Penni: One of six clans of Avari named by Tolkien, all of which are just variants of Quendi, which properly refer to all speaking people and not just elves. This is all in the essay ‘Quendi and Eldar’ in The War of the Jewels. The name Nelpen is a vibes-based attempt at constructing an Avarin name. 

I am named for Menelrond: One of two etymological explanations for Elrond’s name, and greatly preferred by me to the ‘found in a cave’ version. From ‘The Problem of Ros’ in The Peoples of Middle-earth: “Now Elrond was a word for the firmament, the starry dome as it appeared like a roof to Arda; and it was given by Elwing in memory of the great Hall of the Throne of Elwë in the midst of the stronghold of Menegroth that was called Menelrond, because by the arts and aid of Melian its high arched roof had been adorned with silver and gems set in the order and figure of the stars in the great Dome of Valmar in Aman, whence Melian came.” 

It was destroyed a very long time ago. According the Tale of Years, the fall of Doriath was actually less than 30 years earlier. This was a bad time in Beleriand :(. Lechind. Flame-eyed, a derogatory Sindarin term for the Noldor. Also discussed in ‘Quendi and Eldar’. 

leucisticpuffin did an incredibly perfect illustration of Elrond in Taur-im-Duinath

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He was still weak, his stomach raw and unable to hold much more than cooled soup, but Elros had overcome the sickness. The healers had allowed him to leave the confines of the carriage. Elrond’s bubbling joy at being able to embrace his brother again had brought Gwereth rare relief from her pain.

She listened as the twins prattled about some imagined world only understood to them, populated by a host of fantastical characters: tentacled queens who ruled over underwater kingdoms with many and lengthy names, besieged by shapeshifting whale-bears and razor-clad crabs as big as a house. Yet, for the heirs of Lúthien and of Melian the Maia, were such tales so fantastical? They seemed so, in this drear camp where the fabled powers of the immortal Elves had faltered altogether.

It was Morgoth, Embor had reported, only half-believing what Maglor had told him. How could it be, so far from his domain? The Elves blamed all evil things on the Dark King, but such tidy explanations no longer satisfied Gwereth. Evil was a seed in every person, awaiting its chance to push through the cracks of a broken soul. The souls of the sons of Fëanor and their followers were crowded with clotted ash and blood.

With the clarity of encroaching death, Gwereth could admit there once had been goodness in them. Still, she did not pity them. She would not break the promise she had made to Elwing. For her, hope was lost. But not for the twins, not for Elros and Elrond.

That night, Embor would take them to the woods and the dark-elves Elrond had met there. In time, they would find their way back to Balar. Their father would return for them.

Gwereth closed her eyes and hoped that this time would be the last.

In the end Embor had to lie and kill to escape the camp with his charges, the young princes. Two lies: that Gwereth was gone and would not wake, and that Eärendil would be at Sirion when they arrived. That he’d only had to kill once was a mercy. A single guard — Embor had not lingered on his face and therefore could not say if he knew him — who would have raised the alarm had Embor’s knife not found his throat first.

They had driven deep into the forest that night, following as straight a path as Embor could trace in the dark. With one child in his arms and another slung on his back, he wearied sooner than he would have on his own. Though the Allfather had blessed him with good health and strength of body, he was no longer young, and his heart ached and fluttered with too much exertion. Following the burble of a creek in the dark, he found a patch of spongy earth on which to rest.

Unable to see, he kept a hand on both the twins through the night. Soon after nightfall, he was startled from his rest by a piercing yowl. The children stirred but did not wake. It was followed by rumbles, rising and falling and rising again, which, though low and distant, reverberated noisily in the silent woods and seemed to come from all directions. He lay still, attuning to his instincts. Though all was dark, his senses were honed enough to know that they were being watched. He did not move.

After what may have been mere minutes or many hours of wakefulness, Elrond stirred and rolled towards him. “What is that?”

Embor tightened his grip on the child’s shoulders. “I do not know,” he admitted.

Shrugging out of his hold, Elrond propped himself up on an elbow. “Maybe the Tree Shepherds are speaking to each other.”

“Maybe.” A less disturbing guess than Embor’s own. If trees could speak, he did not think they would do so in growls — and certainly not with the harrowing cry that had first awoken him. “I think it best we remain quiet.”

“I see something,” said Elros to his other side.

“Stars in the branches,” Elrond said.

“No,” said Elros. “Eyes.”

Embor hoped they did not turn their own sharp eyes on him to witness his terror. It was one thing to know; it was another to have that knowledge confirmed by elven eyes.

“Quiet,” he said, drawing the children closer. “Be still.” And they were; finally, even, drifting back into dreams.

The day, when it came at last, dawned without colour. The sounds faded as the visible patches of sky revealed themselves in heavy greys. It must have been raining overhead, but not a drop pierced the canopy. Without the sun to guide him, Embor did not know in the this maze of trees which way would take them back west towards the mouths of the river, so they passed the morning where they were, sharing a square of lembas between them and quenching their thirst from the stream. He had been relieved to wake and see the waters here ran swift and clear.

The night’s fear was soon forgotten. But they must move before the day was up. Embor did not trust that whatever, or whoever, lurked among the branches would be content to simply watch if they lingered a second night.

“Will we be there soon?” Elros asked, in that way of children who lack for entertainment. He was sitting on the muddy bank tossing stones into the stream.

“No,” Elrond answered. “Remember how long it took to get here?”

Elros groaned and beat his heels against the sodden bank. Despite Embor’s best efforts to counsel against it, the child had removed his boots, complaining of blisters.

“Well, we do not have to go all the way back,” said Elrond. “Not if Nelpen finds us.”

“No!” Elros cried, his soft brows bunching furiously over his nose. “We are going home. Mother is there!”

How many times had Embor listened to Gwereth explain, with quavering voice, that Elwing was gone? But every day Elros needed to hear the words again: she is gone. She died. Yes, she may return, one day. We do not know. Her fate could be that of Men, or that of Elves. But no elves who died in Beleriand have returned. “Lúthien returned,” Elros had said, to which Gwereth had sadly conceded, “Yes, Lúthien returned.”

This time, Elrond saved Embor from the burden of explaining. When they did not want Embor to understand them, they spoke in Quenya, the language of their father. But it was simple enough for Embor to understand this time: “Mama is gone, Elero.”

Elros’ pout deepened; he swallowed the tears rising to his eyes, at which Embor was both relieved and saddened. A child as young as he should have no need to hold his tears. Grief should not be locked away — in his heart Embor knew that. And yet, if all who lived in these times let sorrow flow freely, all the lands would flood with despair.

“I am sorry,” Embor said. “It is not easy to lose a mother, but you will find others who care for you.”

“How did your mother die?” Elrond asked suddenly. It was not unusual in Sirion to have no family — their own mother’s parents had been slain, their father’s missing, Gwereth’s dead by the sword and by disease. But Embor had only ever spoken of his father’s heroic death in the Battle of Tears, guarding the retreat of a remnant of their people; how by this deed he had allowed Embor’s grandfather to escape, to come to him, then an infant, hiding behind Himring’s walls with his mother, and flee with them before that mighty fortress fell into the hands of Morgoth’s lieutenants.

He had elided the tale of how they came to Dor-lómin, mingled with the traitors (“For,” his grandfather had said, when Embor was older, “if the choice is between my belief in what is right, an insubstantial thing, and the survival of my family, I will always choose my family.”).

Though the years in Sirion, pasturing the horses and tending the orchards, had erased those memories, now, with Elrond and Elros in his care, the fear was roused from sleep, tingling in his bones, and he grieved for their similar fates.

“She fell ill,” Embor said, not entirely a lie. For all the abuses her body underwent at the hands of Brodda’s favoured lords, it was his mother’s mind that broke at the last. Embor often wondered if she had suffered her torment only long enough to see him become strong enough, as she thought, to stand a chance of surviving on his own.

He had survived. He had done so by lying, like all his people did, feigning loyalty while his heart sickened with guilt. But he had to stay alive, he had to stay free, if he was ever to avenge her. He never had the chance: the son of Húrin, wild with rage, had robbed him of his revenge, and in shame and anger Embor had turned to flight once more.

It was too late to save Elrond and Elros from the pain of their loss and the memories of a childhood in flight; but it was not too late to give them the chance he had not had. They deserved to avenge their mother.

The sun never showed that day, but there was little choice but to move on. Embor led the children downstream, for eventually all rivers must lead to the sea. Nor could he risk straying too far from drinking water, even if it made them easier to follow.

They walked in silence, attention on the task of navigating the slanting, uneven terrain. As the land began to level out some, Elrond asked: “Will Uncle Círdan be there?”

If only Embor could be certain they would emerge anywhere near the Bay of Balar, or find passage to the island — if they ever found the edges of this vast forest.

“That is my hope,” he answered.

The next inquiry came from Elros, the wheels of his young mind turning. “Do you know how to sail?”

Embor laughed. “I do, well enough.”

“We can help,” Elros said, quite serious. “Papa taught us all about boats.”

“Did he? Then I have no doubt we will make safe passage, with two crewmen trained by the most famous mariner of our Age.”

“Círdan, too,” Elrond chimed in. “He taught us, too.”

An ember of hope flickered awake in Embor’s heart, and for the first time he was able to envision a future in which his mission succeeded. They would come to Balar and King Ereinion would welcome his young kinsmen. Embor would redeem the failings of his youth, and prove that not all the hearts of the Eastmen were black. He would age and pass on in peace, knowing that by delivering the sons of Eärendil to safety he had given the remnant of the Free Peoples the best chance they had at survival. He had brought them hope.

They enjoyed an evening repast of salted deer meat, and Embor even risked a small fire to boil some wild carrots. The warm food cheered them all, and the twins chattered past sundown about what they recalled of Balar.

“It is rocky,” Elrond said. “With many silvery fish in the waters.”

“And seals,” Elros added.

“I lost my tooth at Círdan’s house, do you remember?” Elrond gaped, showing the space where a new tooth was breaking through his gums.

Elros pinched his own teeth between fingers and thumb, wiggling, as if one would dislodge at any moment. He pouted.

“He put it on a bracelet,” Elrond mused. “Do you think it’s still there?”

“I don’t know,” said Elros with a tone of mild resentment.

As they spoke, Embor spread their wool blankets on the ground. “All right, boys. Time for bed."

“I don’t like sleeping on a slant,” Elros protested.

“Well, I am sorry, child, but there are no flat places near us.”

Elros squinted up at the canopy. “You could build us a platform in the trees like you did in your pear tree.”

“It takes more than an evening to build a tree house,” said Embor, though the fear stirring to life at the coming darkness made him wish they could take refuge above ground. Yet, even were there time and materials, Embor no longer possessed the vigour and strength to saw and haul several dozen boards up into a tree.

The twins accepted their fate and curled close to each other on the ground. They were asleep in minutes; Embor lay beside them with one arm draped across them both. No blanket cushioned his rest or protected him from the damp cold, which was for the best. He could not risk sleeping too deeply.

It was utterly dark when he shot awake. He blinked furiously to be sure he was awake at all. The same cry that had woken him the night before came down like a rain of glass from the treetops. It was then he realised he was alone. The children were gone.

“Elrond!” he cried. “Elros!”

A cry, again, dissolving into a sob, high above. Embor could just make out the words, “Run, run!” before he was surrounded.

Now he could see them: paired pinpricks of jaundiced light surrounding him, growing bright, drawing closer. Embor drew his knife and hurled a wordless shout at the beasts whose growls he could hear but whose size or strength he could not see. One of them hissed, and a flash like two long white knives appeared in the darkness. Teeth.

Embor had seen carven images of the giant cats that roamed the great forests of the east and south in packs. He had seen with his own eyes solitary mountain lions far off on the craggy slopes of Ered Luin, and wandering the wilds about Hithlum. He had never faced one. Though trained for warfare from childhood, the only beasts Embor had fought and killed were other Men.

One of the creatures lunged at him: its claws pierced through his clothing and into his flesh; the force of the attack threw him against the bole of tree where Elrond and Elros had retreated. They would not be safe for long. These were no wolves; cats could climb. They would dispatch him and claw their way up to claim their smaller prey.

Would this be the end? After surviving the near-eradication of his people, after all his forebears had sacrificed for him, would he die alone in the dark in the maw of a cat? No, not alone — Elrond and Elros were with him, and he would die protecting them. So Felagund had done for Beren, and Lúthien had come for him.

He prayed that her descendants would be saved by a like miracle, and with a great shout, he lunged at the animals, fate guiding his knife to soft, furred flesh. The creature gave a great yowl and thrashed against the ground, nearly taking Embor with him. Embor struck again, but he was not so fortunate the second time. His weapon found nothing but empty air, and then he was dragged down by great paws upon his shoulders. But there were no claws this time: once it had him down, the cat batted at him almost playfully.

He stabbed again, finding the animal’s flank; then the claws were out, razors across his face. He was rolled onto his stomach, and the weight of a second cat bore down on his back, pressing the air from his lungs. His teeth clattered against a rock. Blood filled his mouth, gurgling in his throat as he gasped for air. He felt the creature’s breath on his neck, the damp scrape of its teeth to either side. It could have killed him easily — but that did not seem to be its intent.

The silent woods were anything but: his heart beat between his ears, the animals hissed and yowled, and through it, the faint cries of Elrond and Elros. One cat’s enormous jaw clamped around his arm, teeth like the the bars of a cage, and Embor was being dragged through the dirt, down the muddy bank. He was thrown into the water, and his wounds stung at its icy touch. What foolish courage had led him to fight? He should have run, as the children had urged him.

He was dragged and dragged, limbs and back and skull banging against rocks. How far would they take him? How long until he lost awareness? The pain was everywhere, and yet his spirit clung to life.

Sometime later — minutes, likely, though it seemed like hours — the cats came to a stop and fell silent. There was light, Embor perceived through swollen lids. But from where? He groped in the mud: the water itself was glowing. Was he dying? Was it the music and light of Allfather welcoming him home?

Before he sunk into oblivion, Embor noted two things: the white face of a cub starting at him from beneath the legs of his parent; and then, the cats suddenly scattering, retreating up the bank, as if in great fear.

Embor hoped for death ere he was found by whatever foe was fearsome enough to drive away his savage hunters.

The final, triumphant note was lost in a roar of water. The creek running through their camp stirred awake, tumbling between the tall grasses and taking up the song. Gasps and cries of wonder joined with the trill of birds, leaping into the sky in fright, then soaring in joy through spears of sunlight breaking through the clouds.

Dornil, too, felt lighter than she had in years, as she raced barefoot across the muddy ground. How long had she been asleep? Last she remembered, Maglor had been in her tent, wracked with sobs, while Dornil stood by uneasily. At last he had succumbed to sleep, and she had drawn a coverlet over him and gone to sit on her bedroll.

Then she had been woken by a swell of song, such as she had not heard from her lord since their wars with Morgoth. A different sort of music than the terror he sang at Doriath and Sirion — a music that was full and bright and stung the heart with hope.

But there was nothing hopeful about the way she found her lord, kneeling in a swirl of mud, doubled over so that the water caught strands of his hair in its onrush.

She fell to the ground beside him. “My lord, are you well?”

Maglor groaned; his head swayed, limp between his shoulder blades.

Dornil squinted at the sudden brightness of the sunlight caught in the ripples of water. A warm breeze out of the west fluttered the grasses, and they tickled the soles of Dornil’s feet. She laughed.

“Macalaurë!” she said, and rested her hand on his back. “You have done it! You have swept away the foul poison. My lord! You have defeated him!” If Maglor could yet stand against the malice of Morgoth, perhaps they were not forsaken. It was a glimmer only, but it was hope.

“Nornawen,” Maglor mumbled. “I must rest. Please, leave me. Let me be.”

As swiftly as it had arisen, Dornil’s joy plummeted into the pit of her belly. “No, my lord, no,” she said, looping her arms around his bent torso. “You are not well. I will not leave you.”

“Please,” Maglor protested weakly, but his limbs fell into place in her arms. “I was too late. Too late. Go find them, find them.” Straining, Dornil stood. Maglor hung over her shoulder. “No, leave them. Go to my Maitimo. Tell him…”

“Quiet now.” Dornil planted her feet and hoisted him over her shoulder. “You are not speaking straight. You need food and water. And rest.”

As she carried Maglor to his tent, Dornil kept her eyes ahead. She wished there was a way to avoid passing through the crowd of people, some now stirring from feverish dreams as loved ones set cups of clear water to their lips. They ought to be weeping with relief, crying out their gratitude. But they were silent, and when Dornil glimpsed the face of a Sinda elf cross-legged on the ground, he frowned and looked away. How dare they! Maglor had put forth all his power to save them!

Reaching the entrance of his tent, Dornil brushed past the guard. She dropped Maglor onto his bedroll as gently as she could, but he landed with a thud. He groaned and slapped a hand across his eyes.

“You did it,” Dornil said. His aide rushed in with a jug of clean water, which Dornil took then waved him off. She set a cup of water to his mouth.

“No.” Maglor shook his head, causing the water to dribble down his chin. “I was too late.” When Dornil was silent, he opened his eyes to look at her. His lids were swollen and pink, and the silvery glint of his irises was dim. “Don’t you see? I failed them, for I did not do it sooner.”

Dornil pushed a breath through her nose. “No, that is not true. You did not fail.”

“All those people… so many children… need not have died. Gwereth need not have fallen ill, Elrond and Elros might have remained with us.” He reached for Dornil’s forearm and gripped it tight. “We need to find them, sister. The forest isn’t safe, you know this. Curse that faithless Easterling!” Maglor’s head fell back and he laughed; at what, Dornil cold only guess. “I know not what he means to do with them. Perhaps he is well-meaning. I did not like him, but he seemed an honest man — did he not? But we have been wrong about that before, haven’t we? No matter. They will not make it. We must find them.”

“We will,” Dornil said, and did not believe it. How could they, in that terrible wood full of voices? They were likelier to run mad in the attempt. The sons of Eärendil and the man who had stolen them were almost certainly lost in its dark mazes, if not killed already.

“Go to their nurse,” Maglor bid her. “Gwereth — see that she is cared for. She will be ill-pleased to wake and see them gone.”

“What of you?”

“I will recover. You were right when you said I was not speaking straight. Thank you, sister, for your faith in me.” He gave her a thin smile. “Go now, I will be fine.”

Reluctantly, Dornil left him.

Gwereth sputtered, gasping awake at the trickle of water over her lips. She coughed and her stomach turned. She was no longer in the carriage, for whatever she lay upon was warm and firm but not hard, not pressing into her bones like the wooden bench she had grown so used to.

Her eyes still closed, she stretched an arm out. “Elros,” she said. “Little star, are you there?” No, no, of course not: she had sent him away. With his brother, and Embor, back to the Havens.

“Be still,” said a voice, then, “you need more water.” The mouth of a waterskin touched Gwereth’s lips and, now awake, her thirst overpowered all else; she greedily drank it down in great gulps.

When she lay her head back, she realised it was no cushion but a body supporting her. At last she opened her eyes. It was that wretched elf-woman, Maglor’s pitiless commander. With what strength she had, Gwereth twisted, trying to free herself from the woman’s grasp.

“Let me go,” she said, but was far too weak to do more than flail her arms in protest. “You should have let me die.”

Dornil laughed mirthlessly. “Let you die? My lord has put forth all his power to save you and your kind from death and this is how you thank us?”

“What?” Gwereth asked, resentment giving way to genuine confusion. “What happened?”

“That is what I came to ask you. What have you done with my lord’s wards? Where are Elrond and Elros?”

Gwereth grimaced, wishing she had the strength to curse, to fight, but she could do no more than groan. Her head lolled to the side and her eyes fell shut.

Dornil made a noise of disgust. “You are fortunate Maglor is so merciful. You ought to have been left to die for conspiring in their escape.”

“They are not your wards! No one consented to your taking them!” Gwereth protested, her voice shaking with the effort. “Was it not said that we were free to depart your host if we so desired?”

“You know well that Lord Maedhros did not include you and your charges when he made that promise. Do you think they will be safe out in the wilds? Where will they go? They will die, if they are not dead already.”

Gwereth spat at Dornil’s face, a pitiful thing that dribbled down her own chin. Her words died in her throat; worthless words. Her ribs closed around her heart and she began to shake. Dornil was right. She had sent them to their deaths. Her face twisted, her breaths hitched and grew ragged; her eyes were too dry to shed tears, but still she wept.

Through her trembling she made out the shaky image of the elf-woman and almost her face seemed to soften; almost she seemed to show concern. Not wanting to see what could not possibly be there, Gwereth curled away from her where she could see only the blur of sodden grass. The elf-woman clasped her tighter to her body; not tenderly, but not cruelly either.

As she exhausted the storm of her regret and succumbed to sleep, Gwereth was forced to accept that Dornil’s heart was not all stone. A heart of stone would not have stayed with her through her pain; a heart of stone would have been closed to the pull to help that persists for as long as even an ounce of goodness remains in a person’s soul.

With the clarity of a mind half-waking, Gwereth realised how slack she had allowed that pull to fall in herself.

“Let me go after them,” Gwereth pleaded. “What use am I to you now?”

Dornil shook her head. “What use would you to be us on our search? Of course we are going after them. They are valuable —” she raised her hand, knowing a bitter retort was preparing behind Gwereth’s teeth. “I speak only the truth of the matter. But even were it not so, my lord’s heart is gentle. But you will journey onwards towards Amon Ereb. The whole host cannot afford to tarry.”

Gwereth frowned but could not speak against her. Beside these elf-warriors, and weakened as she was, she was of little use. “You will join the search?” she asked.

“Aye,” Dornil answered. “If I can speak sense into Maglor.” She grimaced. “I should not have said that.”

“Why do you serve him?” Gwereth asked. “It seems your heart seldom agrees with his.”

Dornil’s head snapped in her direction. “Why do you say that? Have I ever disobeyed any command he has given me?”

“No, not that I have seen, but—”

“Good. Loyalty is not about agreeing with your leader’s every belief. It is following him even when you do not, because you must be there to save him when his judgement leads him into danger.”

This made little sense to Gwereth, whose mind had always been the mirror of her lady’s. It had never occurred to her to question Elwing, for Elwing was her guiding light. She knew no path without Elwing to show the way.

“If he chose to die, would you follow him even then?”

“I would,” said Dornil. “But death is a not a choice that our kind can make.”

“My lady chose it,” Gwereth whispered.

“And she was no one’s kind but her own.”

“No,” said Gwereth. “None but her children.”

Not for the first time, she wished she had followed Elwing in the leap of faith that Gwereth had been too afraid to take.

“Gwereth,” said Dornil, “we will find them.”

Chapter End Notes

Embor and the ‘Allfather’ (a translation of Ilúvatar used by Tolkien) — I expect the Easterlings had their own beliefs, but Embor has been converted to Eldarin ways.

Elero — A short form (made up by me) of Elerosse and Elerondo, the Quenya forms of Elros and Elrond, and probably not a correct nickname formation because it breaks up the middle of two different words (rosse and rondo) but also they’re trilingual six-year-olds, so.

“the son of Húrin, wild with rage, had robbed him of his revenge” — referring to the time Túrin returned to Dor-lómin and killed Brodda in his halls without a thought for the consequences, in true Túrin style.

Monster cats — It pained me, a devout cat person, to pay homage to the tradition of Tevildo & Company in this way. I just respect Tolkien’s vision <i>that much</i>.<hr />

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Dornil’s fists clenched and unclenched at her sides. She looked wearier than Maglor remembered seeing her: lips creased with a frown, skin faded and chapped from thirst. He knew he looked worse.

The sun had not yet risen. In the twilight, trapped within his tent’s heavy canvas walls, all was grey and dim. The sickness had passed, but its residue clung to everything.

Dornil stopped pacing and turned on him. Maglor, who sat silently, waiting, took it as a sign that she was coming around to the heart of the matter at last, and the tension in his shoulders softened.

“My lord,” began Dornil’s admission. “I do not wish to speak ill of you, but if you refuse to see for yourself, if you compel me to speak my reasons— you are unwell, and the forest is dangerous. I doubt—” she fixed her eyes on him and broke off.

“You doubt my soundness of mind,” Maglor finished. “You doubt my ability to lead.” He huffed cheerlessly.

“Have you not done enough?” she asked. “You rid the waters of contagion. You overcame the malice of the Moringotho! You put yourself at risk for these people. Take the time to heal, my lord.”

“I cannot heal,” said Maglor. Then he too rose from his chair and crossed the tent floor to stand before her. He took her hand in both of his. “Surely you know this, sister. I can heal no more than you can. All we can do is attempt to right the many wrongs we have committed; tend the many wounds we have inflicted.”

With a noise of disgust, Dornil jerked out of his hold. “Tell me: do you think to set yourself above the rest of us with such attempts? Do you think yourself worthier than your kin who have died before you? Well, brother,” she said with mockery, “I tell you: you are as vain and wilful as they.”

“Commander,” Maglor warned.

But she carried on. “Nay, but you are. It shows itself strangely in you, indeed. How intricately you weave it — what a story you tell! I admired you once for how cleverly your stories sowed compassion for our doom. I was grateful to you, for without your art to embolden us, to win us allies, we would all have despaired and perished long ago. I see now it was never for us, but for yourself. You believe your stories, do you not?”

Maglor stared at his mud-caked boots and the soiled carpet beneath them. “You are cruel,” he said, then spoke no more, for his voice trembled.

“So are we all,” she said. “So are you, son of Fëanor. Do not forget it.”

“What do you want of me?” The tips of Maglor’s fingers tingled with unspent emotion, and his hands darted before him, seeking some direction, something to hold. “Do you wish to let them perish in the wilds? Is that the vengeance you seek? They are children! They are guiltless!”

Dornil tipped her head to the ceiling and scoffed. “No; no. That would be foolish.”

“Then what is it?” Maglor pleaded.

“What will you do if you find them?”

“What?” Maglor found the back of a chair to hold him steady. “Return them to us, of course.”

“And if that is against their will, as it surely will be?”

Maglor reeled with confusion. What a picture he must make, his whole comportment proof of Dornil’s concerns. “Why should they be—”

“They hate you, Macalaurë.” Her chest rose, breath suspended as a flicker of uncertainty passed over her face, then she exhaled. “They hate all of us.”

Maglor was silent. Her words coiled like hot metal around his heart. It was not true. The children were afraid of him, yes. That was nothing unusual. Maglor had grown accustomed to inspiring fear, even before his father made warriors of them; even before they had spilled first blood at Alqualondë. Even in the Noontide of Valinor, to be a son of Fëanor was to be feared. But hate him? He did not believe there was capacity for hatred in Elwing’s sons. Whatever bitterness she had let consume herself, Elwing had kept it locked like a canker in her heart where it could not infect her children. Elrond and Elros were seeds of hope in a desolate landscape. They believed in a future: Maglor had seen it in Elrond’s wide, trusting eyes; felt it in the fierce pulse of Elros’ heart.

Maglor would protect that hope at whatever cost. If that meant returning them home, so be it. It is where they should have remained. His throat closed around a sudden surge of grief. How completely he longed to protect these children who scarcely acknowledged him!

“You are weeping,” Dornil said, not even trying to conceal her disgust. “You must let me lead the search,” she said. “I will bring them back. I will not falter in the mission your brother gave you.”

“You have overstepped, commander,” said Maglor, and thought passingly how, if she were another, she might have persuaded him, coerced him with cruelty. If she were Maedhros, she would have. “You will stay with the host, and you will lead them on to Amon Ereb. You will keep these people safe. Let no more die upon the road. When we have found Elros and Elrond, we will follow after you.”

She held her breath a moment; then, fingers unfurling, she yielded. But she said: “And if you do not find them?”

It was not a question Maglor wished to entertain. He said: “Go inform our following that you will be setting out with them at first light tomorrow.”

In time, the forest’s ghostly voices grew familiar. Maglor wore a mask of calm and said nothing of them to his company. Yet the Green-elf Orfion trailed ever close behind and watched him warily.

“Did you know the Easterling who went with him,” Maglor asked him, to break the silence. “Embor?”

“Only that he was a friend of their nurse,” said Orfion. “He never gave me cause to suspect. His forebears were loyal to your house, were they not?”

“They were, before.” Before what? Before our defeat, before our slaughters. Maglor did not finish the thought. “I spoke with him, you know, the day he fled with the children.”

“Oh, my lord?”

“Yes.” Maglor swallowed the urge to share his worry that he had pushed Embor to attempt this deed. “A brave man, I will grant him that.”

“Brave and foolish,” said Orfion.

They were interrupted by his scout Tornel up ahead giving the signal to fall silent; with a gesture, she bid them crouch low in the underbrush. Maglor dropped to his stomach and put his ear to the ground, straining to hear past the ever-present voices whispering in his mind for the vibrations of the earth. He heard only the usual hum of the forest: the thousands of creatures who crawled beneath the soil; the creak of roots reaching ever further and deeper.

Beside him Orfion whispered: “The trees speak of danger.” His hand rested between two intertwined roots. “It lurks nearby. We must not cross the ravine.”

Maglor frowned. “And if Embor and the children went that way?”

“Quiet.” Orfion closed his eyes, stroking the tree’s bark as if it were the back of a troubled friend. “They say they have marked no speaking people but the…” he trailed off, his face pinched in concentration.

“What? Who have they seen?”

“I do not understand it. But we mustn’t go that way.”

When they resumed their journey, following the eastern bank of the creek, Orfion kept far ahead of the company, now and again disappearing behind a hillock or thick stand of trees. Each time he was lost to sight, anxiety built in Maglor’s heart that he may not return.

Tornel swung down from a low branch. Her landing was noiseless; too noiseless. The Eldar may be able to elude the ears of mortals, but another Elda ought to be able to hear one of his kind easily. Not so in this forest that swallowed sound.

“My lord,” she said, “the creek leads us far off course. We must cross and turn west, if you wish to come to the Bay of Balar. Or else…”

“Or else?” Maglor prompted.

“Or we must turn back, lord.”

“We are not turning back,” said Maglor. “We are not turning back until we find the children — living or dead.” Seeing how the eyes of his company darted from him, he sighed and gentled his manner. “We have journeyed long, and you have shown yourselves committed to our cause. I understand your weariness. I understand how hopeless our quest seems, in this vast dark wood. If you have any counsel, tell me now. Speak freely. But I will not entertain turning back.”

They stared, no one speaking a word. At length Orfion drew closer, tightening their dispersed circle.

“It is possible,” he said, “that they were found by others.”

“Others? What do you mean? We have journeyed a fortnight and seen no others. None dwell here.”

“Some do,” Orfion said. “There are Moredhel. I have been aware of them since the trees warned us to stay clear of the western bank. They have tracked us.”

“Why did you say nothing of this before?”

Orfion flinched. “They do not welcome us here.”

“I care not!” Maglor barely refrained from shouting, funnelling his anger into a hiss at the last moment. “They may have seen them. They may be able to lead us to them! What else do you know? Do they have them?” He halted for a heaving breath, and noted Orfion’s eyes dart beyond him. The rest of his company had lifted their bows, arrows nocked and pointed in his direction. “What are you doing?” He gestured for them to lower their bows. A nervous, incongruous laugh escaped him. “I would not hurt him.”

“It is not me they protect,” said Orfion. “It is you.”

Maglor turned his head no more than an inch before he saw the javelin at his neck. At its other end stood a small elf, black-skinned and clad in a long skirt of stripped bark and a cloak of ferns. His thick and matted hair was plaited with beads fashioned from tree nuts.

Orfion said something to the elf in a speech unknown to Maglor, but recognisable in snatched syllables here and there. He understood young ones in Orfion’s question and an affirmative answer in the dark-elf’s reply. He lowered his javelin.

“What is he saying?” Maglor asked. “Do they have them?”

Before answering, Orfion asked a second question, then to Maglor he said: “Yes. Yes, they have them.”

“Ai, Ilúvatar!” Maglor cried, and his knees gave way. He walked on them to where the small elf stood. “Elbereth smiles upon our meeting!” The elf looked at him, puzzled. Then he laughed.

“Why does he laugh?” Maglor asked Orfion. They exchanged quick words, then Orfion said, “He has never seen elves of your kind. He means no offence, but you are… strange to him, my lord.”

Maglor looked at the elf, rather strange to him as well, then released a shout of joy at which the others startled. “No matter,” he said, “no matter. You have them. Alive? Say they are alive.” The elf nodded, seemingly understanding this word at least, then spoke swiftly to Orfion.

“They are alive,” Orfion translated. “But their companion, the Man, is dead. Killed by… cats, lord.” He asked the elf another question. “He says we were wise not to cross the river, for that way lies the beasts’ territory. It is well we listened to the forest’s warnings.”

Questions flew through Maglor’s mind, but what did any of it matter? Elros and Elrond were alive. “Take me to them,” he demanded, rising from his knees. “Please.”

The dark-elf led them on a winding path between the trees. If Maglor looked back, the forest seemed unfamiliar, as if the scenery moved and changed behind them – but with his eyes on it, its immense trees and curtains of lichen were still as stone in the close air.

At last they came to a cavern delved in the side of the ravine. Like a burrow, its entrance was little wider than Maglor’s shoulders. But some yards down the tunnel, they came to a vaulted dome of bare earth and rock, and it glowed with the pale green light of thousands of flower-like growths. They sprouted around the perimeter, the walls, and hung from the ceiling. When Maglor tapped his finger to one, it was spongy and wet.

“What you call death-feeders,” their guide explained. “They are our light.”

A woman, smaller than the elf who had found them, with a wide face and patterns inked over her face and arms, emerged from a further room. At her sides, one hand in each of hers, stood Elros and Elrond. A dam of anxiety broke within Maglor and he sprang forward, grasping for them.

Elrond cried out in fear and hid his face behind the woman’s thigh.

“Know you he?” the woman asked the twins in archaic and broken Sindarin. Elros shook his head. “He comes asking for you.”

“He is an orc,” Elros mumbled.

The woman eyed Maglor. “No, not an orc. Flame-eyes. Usurper, yes. Not orc.” Then, addressing Maglor directly, she asked: “Why come you here, Flame-eyes? We have no dealings with the outer wars. What have you with the young ones?”

Rising unsteadily, Maglor attempted to regain the composure he had let fall in his relief. “Lady—” The woman scoffed at the address. “What should I call you?”

“Nennel.”

“Nennel, then. These are Elrond and Elros—”

“Their names they have told us.”

“Yes, of course. They are Princes of Doriath.”

She exchanged quick words with the one who had guided them there, too low and swift for Maglor to make any of it out. To Maglor she said: “That realm is no more. The young ones have told us.”

“No, it is not,” Maglor admitted. “But even so, they are the heirs of Elu Thingol.”

“What of the Queen at the river mouth? It is told she is Elu’s heir.”

“Yes,” said Maglor. “She was.”

“He killed her!” Elros shouted.

Instinctively, Maglor shushed him, then winced. Nennel’s thick brows furrowed, deepening the shadows around her eyes. “Is it true?”

Maglor hesitated; the faces of both children were upon him now, expectant. “It is true that one of my people threatened her. Her fate was self-chosen.”

There was a moment of silence. Other elves appeared out of the shadows and looked between each other. “This is grievous,” Nennel said at length, as if speaking for all of them. “Elu was known to us. Ill-hap has befallen his line. But you are not of Elu’s people. Your company is of many kinds. Perhaps there are those who travel with you who are.” Maglor followed her eyes. It took him a moment to distinguish Orfion from among the crowd of dark-elves.

He stepped forward. “I am Orfion of Ossiriand, of the people of Denweg. We have no rulers, much as you.” Nennel smiled at this. “Though I have for many years, by my own choice, followed these Ódhil whose leader you now speak to.”

“Kinship and kings are not the only ties that may hold persons together,” she mused. Her penetrating eyes watched Maglor. “This we understand. Yet these are strange happenings. A leader of the Flame-eyes comes to Taur-i-Melegyrn seeking two lost princes who fear him. We do not like it. But who can say where the river will flow or the tree will fall? It is for us to make way for such movements, that is all. Come, lord. Eat with us and we will learn of your business with these young ones.”

The dark-elves led Maglor and his company deeper into their network of burrows. A low passage let out into a room as grand as any hall built upon the ground. Down its centre ran a rug of woven twigs; along its edges, rows of cushions of what appeared to be fine, woven strips of bark stuffed with dried moss. What little light there was came from basket-like globes set upon the rug: fireflies flitted in and out of the permeable lamps.

Maglor and his company had surrendered their weapons at the hall’s entrance, and they were outnumbered and vulnerable. What reason do they have to turn against you? Maglor thought. But his senses were too finely honed by hundreds of years of war. The presence of the children, found but not returned, pressed upon his fear.

Plates of boiled roots, nuts, berries, and herbed snails were set out upon the rug, and a bowl of broth set before each person. As Maglor looked over the food in silence, too distracted by uncertainties to eat, he caught sight of Elrond and Elros doing the same at some remove. He summoned a smile in their direction. They stared at him with identical unknowable expressions.

Another elf lowered himself onto the cushion next to him. “Will you not eat, Maglor?”

This one had the same broad face and patterns as those inked on Nennel’s skin, but Maglor could not recall seeing him before. “Forgive me, I do not believe I know you,” he said, as kindly as possible.

“No.” The elf’s eyes smiled. “But I know of you. I am Nelpen, brother of Nennel.”

“The stars shine upon our meeting,” said Maglor.

“May the river guide us,” Nelpen answered.

“I am grateful to you and Nennel for taking Elrond and Elros into your care.”

Nelpen hummed. “Strange that you let them leave yours. Were you a friend of the one who accompanied the young ones?”

“Embor,” Maglor said. He had all but forgotten the Man in his relief. “Was he with them when you came upon them? The one who found us told me he was dead.”

“You have many questions and offer few answers,” said Nelpen, with a peculiar glimmer in his black eyes. He raised his hands, baring his palms. “All is well, Maglor. The Penni do not demand answers from wanderers who seek us in need. It matters not to the forest who you have been, only who you are. I will tell you what I know. They were hunted; for they strayed into the domain of the great cats who rule the river’s eastern side. The young ones were fortunate, for their lives were saved by a music that came down the river. The grace of the spirits that guard these lands, perhaps. My father tracks the movements of the cats: he saw them flee from the water. He it was found the young ones scrambling down a tree, seeking their guardian. Fortunate was it that it was my father found them, for there are few among us who understand your tongue. The young ones were hurt and afraid. My father could not stay to search for your friend. We did seek for him once they were safely returned. We found no body. It is likely the cats dragged it back to their den.”

To his other side, Tornel whispered: “You saved them with your Song, lord.”

“Saved?” said Nelpen. Wonder lit his face. “You are the singer?”

“Yes.” Maglor hid his mouth with the back of his hand, for his lips quivered on the verge of laughter or tears. “Yes,” he said again, when the rush of emotion had passed. “It seems my Song chanced to save the children. But unknowingly. I sang to cure an illness that plagued my people. They journey now along the northern edge of this forest.”

“The black contagion,” said Nelpen. His features broadened with wonder, and something else Maglor could not place. “You drew it from the water? You have great power.”

On the edges of his vision, Maglor caught sight of many faces turning towards him. Not in judgement, he did not think. For the first time since he had entered their home he felt welcomed by the Penni.

One among them spoke in a small and earnest voice. “You saved us?” Maglor’s eyes were drawn down, and there was Elros staring at him with such hopefulness that Maglor almost believed himself their saviour in truth, and not by mere chance. But then Elros’ tone turned accusing: “Why did you not save Embor?”

“I was too late,” said Maglor. “I am sorry.”

Elros pouted and bunched his brows but he continued to stare directly into Maglor’s eyes. Elrond, too, was watching him. “Did you save Gwereth?” Elros asked. “I would like to see Gwereth.”

“Yes,” said Maglor. The tightness of Elros’ face unravelled. “Gwereth lives. We will go back to her, if that is what you wish.”

Then Elros burst into tears. “I do not know what I wish,” he said, and barely got out the next words: “Mama is gone.”

Maglor so wanted to reach out and hold him, but he allowed that duty to fall to Nennel, who had come to take her seat nearby.

“We will eat now,” she said. “Perhaps,” she spoke to Maglor but looked pointedly at Nelpen, “you will offer us some answers.”

Over the course of the meal, Maglor divulged the truth. Or at least, all that was necessary to explain his being there. He had not the courage to reveal himself as commander of the army that had attacked the Havens, and to keep the tale brief he spoke only of the Nauglamír in which the Silmaril was set and did not recount the history of the jewel itself, nor did he say a word of their Oath. He spoke of the greed that possessed one of his soldiers — he did not call him brother — at the sight of that heirloom, and how he went mad and drove Elwing to her death.

Speaking of Amrod, ghostly voices swelled around him, smothering those of the elves present. He had not until then noticed they had stopped, and their sudden return brought his tale to a halt.

“You are troubled,” Nelpen observed.

Maglor drew a long breath, and nodded.

“You have shared much. Perhaps enough, for now. Be at ease.” A murmur ran through the other elves who had been listening as they gradually moved their attention away from Maglor and back to each other.

From a clay pitcher, Nelpen poured a stream of clear tea, gold in the light of the fireflies, into a small cup. He passed it to Maglor.

“What is it?” Maglor asked.

“It will soothe the mind. Drink.”

Comforted by the elf’s honest face and gentle tone, and further compelled by the promise of relief, Maglor took a sip. Its warmth slid like a coverlet over his heart. As soon as it pooled in his stomach, the voices in his mind hushed to a whisper. He let his eyelids fall shut a moment, and when he opened them all seemed more vibrant than it had been before. He stole a glance at Elrond and Elros. As they no longer watched him, occupied with eating and chattering to one another, he allowed his eyes to linger.

He saw them as if for the first time. The dark specks scattered like stars on Elrond’s cheeks, down his bare forearms. The tight curls of hair coiled just below Elros’ ears. The way he used his hands to speak, while Elrond sat still, feet tucked neatly beneath him. Maglor wished he could hear their conversation — but he resisted straining his ears in that direction, knowing it was not for him to hear. He was filled with longing to know them, and remorse that it was not until this moment that it had occurred to him that he did not.

Nelpen refilled his cup. He asked: “Do you wish to tell me what it was disturbed your thoughts?”

Maglor thought a moment, weighing his desire for answers against the risk of exposing himself to Nelpen’s probing mind. In the end he confided: “I am haunted since coming to these woods. I hear a hum of voices, continuously. They ceased only when I entered your halls. But just now as I was speaking they returned. Sometimes, I have thought I recognised people I know in them.”

A knowing smile crept up Nelpen’s cheeks. To Maglor’s alarm, he laughed.

“You have heard the spirits,” Nelpen explained, still smiling. “Yes, they have wandered these woods for as long as the Penni have dwelt in them.”

“They are real?” Maglor asked. If it was so, then he was not mad!

“If by this you mean, ‘Are they present in this world,’ yes. But they have no substance. They are Houseless.”

“The souls of your people?”

Nelpen nodded slowly. “Seldom do we heed the summons across the sea.”

Maglor sipped the tea, listening to the ebb and flow of conversation around them, the clink of cups, the fall of liquid, the scrape of wooden utensils. All of it real. To Nelpen he said: “Do you hear them, too?”

“No.” Nelpen piled boiled greens onto his plate. “Not unless I invite them to speak to me. But they do not trouble the flesh-bound.”

“Unless,” Nennel interjected from across the spread of food, “he is unhappy in his flesh.” She spoke without suspicion, factually. But his company quieted when she spoke up, turning their eyes on him.

Maglor ought to have closed the conversation then, but Nelpen asked, for all their ears to hear: “Do you feel a longing to escape, Maglor?”

“To escape what?” Maglor asked, deferring an answer.

“To flee the confines of this body,” said Nennel.

Maglor threaded his fingers together, hesitating. “I do not know,” he answered. This was not the explanation he had expected. To pursue the guilty, to seek revenge — these were the intentions of which he had suspected the spirits. Not a summons to join them.

“Well,” said Nennel. “Perhaps you ought to seek the guidance of the Houseless on this matter. But come, how does your tale end? How did the young ones come to you?”

“Oh,” said Maglor. “I took them out of pity,” he said. “Since their mother was lost. I mean to guard and foster them.” The words came to him with surprising ease, like the comfort of a loved one long-resisted and finally accepted. A thick blanket cast about his shoulders and a warm drink set in his hands. Yet was it not he who ought to be holding the blanket and providing the warmth? He added: “Until a more suitable guardian can be found.”

“You do not tell us all,” Nennel said. “Yet you tell us enough. Why do you call yourself an unsuitable guardian? You are a warrior, and powerful. Will you not protect them?”

Encouraging as her words were, there was an edge of doubt to her questioning; she would not give him her goodwill as easily as her brother had.

Maglor glanced at Elros, seated in Nennel’s lap, and Elrond nestled against her thigh. “Yet I did not,” he said. “They were lost and nearly killed. Even for my Song, they might have been lost forever, had they not been found by you.”

She hummed approvingly, as if his answer pleased her. How, he could not say. She lathered oil upon two rounds of bread and set them on the children’s plates before speaking again.

“Yet they were found by us,” she said, “and you searched for them, even into the dangers of Taur-i-Melegyrn. You found them. They are well. I do not think you will let them escape your protection again.”

“What if we stay with you?” Elrond asked, breaking a long silence. He was looking at Nelpen.

“With us?” Nelpen replied. “Among the Penni, forgetting all your history and your royal titles?”

Elrond nodded. “I like it here. I like you.”

“We shall see,” said Nelpen, then gestured with his spoon at Elrond’s bowl. “Now finish your soup, young one.”

Days passed in the tunnels of the Penni. Maglor told himself he stayed to gather information, to learn the safest routes through the forest to Amon Ereb. It was good for Elrond and Elros to enjoy some respite after so much turmoil. For the first time since he had seen them placed in a carriage at Sirion, they seemed like ordinary children. They asked for stories and songs and told their own; they explored the tunnels and came back with many questions; they played; they laughed.

Sometimes, they even asked Maglor for answers. Perhaps they only mistook him in their enthusiasm as one more adult among many whose attention was as good as any other’s. Nonetheless, Maglor quietly rejoiced when he could offer an answer that satisfied their curiosity. Once, they even asked him to join their game: he could still hear their squeals of delight when he stumbled, granting them the victory in a race to the fountain that bubbled at the end of a long tunnel. When he caught up to them, they splashed the cool water in his face. There was no malice in their play.

The truth, then, was that Maglor tarried because he too was able to forget his cares wandering the womb-like warmth of the Penni’s halls. Oh, to be a creature of simple needs! Would it not have been kinder to have been born a rabbit, or a fox? What is there to lose, or long for, if one knows nothing but his tiny realm of dirt?

Maglor had said as much aloud, once, as he helped Nennel prepare flatbread, taking rounds of kneaded root flour and water from him and sticking them to the walls of a great kiln.

She had shaken her head and asked: “Is this what you think of us?”

Justly chastised, Maglor had apologised. Following that exchange, he made an effort to learn more of the Penni and their ways: how they came to dwell in these parts, passing south of the great mountains of the east, fleeing the dark; how, in their legends, it was one of their clan who found Men at their Awakening — long, long years before the coming of the Sun, as the legends of the West tell it. How their races had mingled, elf and mortal, an age before Beren came upon Lúthien in the woods of Neldoreth.

“Your wards will grow swiftly,” they told him of Elrond and Elros. “And they will succumb to sickness and injury more easily than one of unmingled blood. But they will live long. Until the End, as it is said of the Firstborn? We do not believe so. In time, all living things long for rest. We hold that the Peredhil are blessed in this, for they may leave the world at last. And knowing they are but guests, they will look on all things with wonder and gratitude. They will resist despair until the last.”

Such predictions ought to have brought Maglor hope for their future, but they only increased his longing to protect them; to treasure them.

Maglor learned of the Penni’s woodcraft, too: how there were those among them who could understand the speech of trees and beasts; he learned which plants were good to eat, which beasts could be hunted and where, and which roots and branches harvested without harming the forest’s delicate balance.

One day, gathering goods from the surrounding woodland, he told Nelpen it was time he left.

“You are prepared now for your journey, then?” Nelpen asked. “Where will you go?”

“I must return to my people. They will have arrived at Amon Ereb by now.”

Nelpen nodded. “You must,” he repeated Maglor’s words back to him. “Is it what you wish?”

“Yes,” said Maglor, and only then paused to consider. “My brother is there.”

To this, Nelpen said nothing. The foliage rustled as they passed. Maglor noted how Nelpen’s steps seemed to clear the path before them. He paid closer attention. For, if he looked out into the forest beyond, he saw only dense understory and no path at all. How would he fare, if he found himself alone, so deep in the forest?

“Did you speak to the spirits?” Nelpen asked after some time. “Have they given you counsel?”

Maglor had, the same night Nennel had advised it. Perhaps it had been too soon. Their accusations had turned to questions; terrible questions that Maglor could not answer. Did he love his brothers? Had he loved his father? If there were another path, would he take it? If there were a devotion greater than that he bore his brother, would he follow it? If he could forswear his Oath, would he do so?

He had not sought their counsel a second time.

“I did,” he said in answer to Nelpen. “They counselled much as you do: with questions.”

“That is their way.” Nelpen tapped his walking stick against a root and stooped to examine it. Seeming not to have found what he sought, he stood and carried on. In all the time he had spent with him, Maglor still found Nelpen inscrutable. Maglor suspected he quite liked being inscrutable.

“Well, you had best answer them,” Nelpen said.

That evening, Elrond and Elros were seated on a rug of moss, laid out before the hearth. The Penni burned as little as possible, but nights were becoming colder, Nelpen had informed him. And he did not think the forest would mind giving something of itself to warm the two small ones. Nennel joined them, with two other children. They were not hers: she had lost her spouse and child to the wild cats, Maglor had learned. Elrond was telling the other children a story, seemingly unaware of their puzzlement; for of course they could understand little of his Sindarin. Nonetheless, his soft, musical voice held their attention.

A thought hummed and flitted uncomfortably in Maglor’s mind. He did not want to allow it in, and yet there is was, asking to be caught.

He spoke it aloud to Nelpen, who waxed his bow beside him. “I think I understand at last what divides my mind. I must — I want to — return to my brother and our people. But Elros and Elrond do not belong there.”

Nelpen passed the waxed cloth down his bowstring a few more times, then looked at Maglor. His broad face was open, receptive, waiting for Maglor to explain himself.

“Take them,” Maglor said, barely able to speak the words for the tightness in his throat. “They will be happy living as one of you.” Nelpen’s expression gathered into one of pity. Maglor struggled to hold to his intent. “It is a kinder fate than any they could have hoped for. Please.”

As he so often did in answer to Maglor’s thoughts, Nelpen laughed. Not unkindly, though it set a chill skittering beneath Maglor’s skin all the same. “Have you learned nothing of us? We do not enter into your wars. This is no place for stolen princes. Even were it not fated that you should find them, we would not take this threat upon ourselves. They are yours to nurture now.”

Hearing Nelpen speak, Maglor felt all the peace and solace of the days he had spent there torn away, leaving him exposed; exposed to a tide of emotion, grief and joy and confusion all muddled together. He tipped forward, catching his face in his hands, and wept.

No one spoke, leaving him to carry his sorrow in silence. He thought he might drown in it, great black waves crashing over him. There was no sense, there were no words he could put to any of it. In the end, it was not long at all before it was over. Nelpen quietly passed him a cup of water. Maglor wet his thumbs and brushed the raw skin beneath his eyes with it before drinking.

The dark pool of grief he had opened was not emptied; it might never be emptied. But, for now, he could breathe again.

“It is time to go, Maglor,” said Nelpen. “But have a care. No lore or woodcraft can keep you from becoming lost in your own mind.”

Chapter End Notes

I am indebted (as always) to Melesta's talents as a beta and uncanny ability to tease out what my own brain cannot for getting this chapter ready for posting.

 “What you call death-feeders,” their guide explained. “They are our light.” Bioluminescent fungi. I made up “death-feeders”, it is not a translation of any canonical Elvish word for fungi. 

Ódhil (the name Orfion uses for the Noldor when talking to the Penni): “While the Noldor were still distinct [i.e., before their amalgamation as one Sindarin-speaking people in the west of Middle-earth], and whenever it was desired to recall their difference of origin, they were usually called Ódhil (sg. Ódhel). This as has been seen was originally a name for all the Elves that left Beleriand for Aman.” From the essay “Quendi and Eldar” in War of the Jewels. Of all the many names given in that essay, I settled on this one as the most neutral (while still recognisable to the Penni) for Orfion to use in this setting (with Lechind and even Golodh having derogatory undertones). Funnily enough, it comes from the same root, “away”, as Q. Avari. Perspectives, eh? 

Taur-i-Melegyrn. Forest of the Great Trees, a name for Taur-im-Duinath found on the Silmarillion map in War of the Jewels …

 how, in their legends, it was one of their clan who found Men at their Awakening — long, long years before the coming of the Sun, as the legends of the West tell it. A combination of two versions of the Awakening of Men, one very early and one very late in the development of the legendarium. See Tolkien Gateway for a quick overview of both. 

And knowing they are but guests, they will look on all things with wonder and gratitude. A sentiment inspired by the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth.

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Sunrise coloured the long spine of the Andram a dusty pink. Eastwards, the round height of Amon Ereb rose above the forest like an island floating atop the dark mass of trees. Dornil had not looked upon home since setting out for the Mouths of Sirion at the end of a wet spring. A sigh shuddered through her, and she lifted her hand to cover the involuntary sob trailing behind. The tip of her nose was cold against her palm. Since Morgoth’s triumph, winter’s crawl southwards hastened, arriving earlier every year. She cupped her hands around her face, warming herself with her breath.

The remnant of Sirion had fled in a hurry, unprepared for winter. So far, Dornil had lost no more upon the road, but they were weak; it would take only one night of frost to begin to pick away at the beleaguered host.

Time was short, and Maglor had not returned.

Dornil turned from the east and resumed brushing the day’s dust from her horse. In the middle distance, the forest loomed, as yet untouched by the light of dawn. But at the edge of her vision sat a figure, hunched over its knees. Dornil’s brushing slowed; she narrowed her eyes, focusing. When she took command of the host, she ordered all to stay together. None were to wander alone, least of all by night. There were grumblings, of course: that she had broken Maedhros’ promise of freedom; that she meant to keep them as prisoners of war. Let them believe what they liked about her. Her only concern was to lead them to Amon Ereb without further loss. They could thank her after they had safely arrived. Or they could go on hating her — so long as they lived, Dornil did not care.

She marched towards the lone figure, bristling at the ineffectiveness of the guard she had put on watch and wearied by the thought of reprimanding him later.

“Friend,” she called to the shape bowed upon a rock. A woman, she thought, and a mortal one by her small stature. A black shawl over her head and shoulders concealed her face. “What are you doing? You know it is not permitted to wander alone.”

The woman turned her bent shoulders towards Dornil to reveal herself: Gwereth, the person Dornil most feared to lose. Still recovering from her illness and distraught by the loss of her young charges, she had made a rash attempt on her own life. Dornil ought to have placed a personal guard on her, but pity, not sense, had guided her in extending her trust to the woman.

“You swore to me that you would not again endanger yourself,” Dornil said.

Gwereth’s lids were swollen thick around reddened eyes. She looked as though she had been weeping for hours. A sob wracked her as she struggled to answer Dornil’s admonishment.

“I have not,” she said. “See, I am here. No danger has come to me. But they— they are somewhere in there. Lost. Lost as my lady’s brothers were lost. Dead. They are dead.” Between words, her breath caught in her throat, whining pitifully.

Perhaps it was this sound, like the mewling of a kitten, that made Dornil rush to her side. Once there, she fumbled, unsure what to do. When she draped a tentative arm across her shoulders, Gwereth’s back rounded, retreating; but a moment later she seized Dornil’s hand in hers, pulling at her arm to draw it around her more tightly.

Someone kinder would have known what to say, but Dornil was not inclined to kindness. She might say she was sorry, but for what? The whole of her life since fleeing Tirion? At that thought, Dornil huffed a noise half-laughter and half-pain. If she could not bring herself to give Gwereth hope that the twins were alive, what did that mean of her hope for Maglor? A low, choked sigh escaped Dornil’s throat. It must have startled Gwereth out of her own grief, for she was suddenly still and she pulled away.

“What,” she said, “what is it? Commander?”

“They are not dead,” Dornil said, squeezing the words out with effort. “They are not dead. They are not.” She repeated the phrase again and again. Whether staving off tears or willing them to come, she did not know. She clasped both Gwereth’s hands in hers. They were small but her fingers were stout and her palms strong, roughened with use.

Not the hands Dornil expected. She had thought Gwereth weak, a woman prone to fits of emotion, too delicate for the world outside her haven. But that was not so: Gwereth was a spruce of many years, standing lonely on the mountaintop, appearing no bigger than a sapling for the cruelness of the climate, but aged, and strong. Stronger than the thousands of other seeds that had blown on the harsh winds of this age and become lost in barren cracks.

No tears came, but Dornil felt somehow more settled, as though her grief had gathered about her like a layer of fat that might be scooped away. “Gwereth,” she said. “We cannot allow despair to claim us. Not here. We are too close to home now to give up hope.”

Gwereth laughed darkly and shook her head. “Home?” she said. “You ravaged my home. Why,” her fingers tightened around Dornil’s wrists, “why did you ravage my home? None of this need to have happened, Dornil, wife of Caranthir.”

Her face snarled. Her grip was strong, but it was not what kept Dornil from striking her, as her impulse urged her. There was something unassailable about hatred so purely expressed. Dornil wanted to preserve it, sear that raw expression in her memory forever. Had anyone ever despised her so, with such open disgust? No, they had always held out their excuses for her to take, to mask herself with empty apologies so they need not look upon the monster she had become. Under Gwereth’s eyes, a curtain was pulled back to reveal the whole of her, exactly as she was: unrepentant, cruel, relentless. The relief of being so exposed was almost dizzying.

“No, it need not have happened,” Dornil said, teetering on the edge of laughter, and Gwereth’s tight expression collapsed. “It need not. But long, long before now, long before you were born or your people walked in Beleriand, these things were set in motion.”

Gwereth thrashed, hurling Dornil’s arm aside as she let go of her. “No!” she cried. “That is what your kind all say, but it is not so! How can you say, ‘Have hope,’ and yet speak thus of doom? It cannot be so! Do you know what my lady told her sons before she leapt into the sea? ‘I do not think my doom as high as Lúthien’s, but this course alone remains to me.’ She leapt because she had hope. Their father sailed because he had hope. A wild, incredible hope that things need not be as they are. Maybe they failed! Maybe the sea has claimed them both, as it claimed your Silmaril. But at least they did not march willingly towards doom, leaving a trail of destruction and death. They tried to do differently. And what of you?” She tilted her chin up, proud. “Have you done anything but to blindly follow the Doom whose path you so carefully set before you, in that time before Time? You and your ancient, all-knowing kindred.”

Dornil could not endure Gwereth’s dark eyes boring into her. She turned away, worrying her hands between her knees. “You cannot understand. But you have every right to hate us.” She slid her eyes to the side, resisting the pull to draw closer, to restore the touch they’d briefly shared. “Come back to the camp,” she said, standing. “We have reached the final stage of our journey and will cover as much ground as we can while there is light.”

She waited for Gwereth to rise. After a pause, Gwereth gathered her shawl about her and went ahead on hurrying feet. Her shoulders pulled tight, she drew her hands over her face, and then she straightened and returned to the carriage, where a group of children whose parents had succumbed to the sickness awaited her.

It was midday when Dornil spotted her scouts hurrying back. There were others with them, clad in muted browns and greens that blended into the surrounding hills. They were armed for combat by stealth, but the finely crafted mail of the Noldor peeked from beneath their long tabards as they walked.

“Rangers of the Hill!” she called to them. “I am glad to see you. What news from Amon Ereb? Have Lord Maedhros and his men returned?”

“As we are glad to see you, Commander,” said their leader, Ifrethil — a dressmaker at Ost-nu-Rerir, once, when they still had the luxury of adornment and the pursuit of craft. “Though we are troubled by the report of your scouts that Lord Maglor and the sons of Elwing are not with you. The host of Lord Maedhros arrived at Amon Ereb safely. They have begun fortifying our defences and bringing those who live about within the walls. There have been orc incursions far into the south. It is well we were patrolling these parts, for we waylaid a band gathered behind Ramdal. They were destroyed, but some of their company fled away. I fear they know of your presence here.” She looked over the host gathered behind Dornil, assessing. “You are not safe journeying in the open.”

“We have a guard,” said Dornil. In truth, their guard had been small from the outset, and was reduced to no more than a dozen now: four lost to Maglor’s search party and twice as many dead by each other’s swords in the madness of Morgoth’s contagion. They would not be able to ward off an attack by an enemy who knew their strength.

“I can spare none of my rangers to increase your numbers,” said Ifrethil. “Our orders are to rout as many of the orcs as we can, before they can come to you. But we are uncertain of their whereabouts. They may be few, or the hills may be swarming with them. We advise you retreat to the forest for the remainder of your journey.”

Dornil stood silent. The memory of ghostly cries returned to her. Were the forest’s unknown dangers any safer than a host of orcs? Even if they escaped danger, the dense woods would prolong their journey by many days. They would need to abandon most of their supplies, sending the horses and carts ahead to make their own way to Amon Ereb.

“Give me time to consider,” said Dornil, and bid the rangers rest with them a while.

Disobeying her own command, Dornil stood alone upon the eaves of the forest, palms turned towards it like a supplicant. "Will you welcome us?” she asked. But nothing moved, nothing made a sound. Even the voices who had troubled her all these days were quiet. No welcome, no warning. She would get no answer from the trees.

A marshal approached from behind. “Commander,” he said. “We have assessed our food supplies. We have enough to keep the mortals of your following alive for a fortnight, provided there is clear flowing water along the way. They will be hungry, but they will live. That is if our own people forgo nourishment. If we had more lembas—”

“No, Palannor,” said Dornil. “We have not the time, even if I could find any nut or grain with which to grind flour in these parts. We will go ahead, and pray the forest will supplement our supplies.”

Palannor nodded; his head remained bowed. He had been at Doriath: Region had not been kind to them. Though the Girdle had fallen, something of Melian’s power still lingered in the plants and creatures of her forsaken realm. Or perhaps Dior himself had laid some enchantment over the land, marshalling tree and leaf in place of the Sindarin bows and axes felled by ceaseless war; for Celegorm’s men who ate from Region’s spare winter crops endured torment for their trespass and were rendered useless by sickness. Pressed as they were, the others had no choice but to abandon them to face the wilds alone.

Palannor’s father had been among those left behind.

But what reason did Taur-im-Duinath have to oppose them? Dornil had no love for this forest; but it harboured nothing more dangerous than unhappy memories. There was no malice in its dark streams and drooping boughs. If the vast woods of the south defeated them, it would be with indifference.

Torches flickered upon the hills the night Dornil and her host retreated behind the pillars of the great trees. She spared a thought for their horses, hoping the orcs, finding naught but abandoned chests of heirlooms and oddments with no practical use, would not come upon the poor animals and turn their wrath against them.

They made slow progress. Dornil’s scouts returned nightly to report that they were still on course: it would not be long before they emerged at the place where the rangers promised to meet them for the last league of the journey. But as the trees ought to have begun to thin, their reports grew more confused.

“I cannot explain it, Commander,” one said. “It is as though we have turned round and completed the same day’s journey again.”

And another, missing for a night and returning by morning: “I ought to have reached the eaves by midday yesterday, and yet I pressed on all through the night and came no nearer. If I had not the sun to tell me otherwise, I would think we had turned south. I have lost confidence. I do not know how, but I believe we have strayed off-course.”

Not long after that, the scouts stopped returning at all. The forest began to speak to her again: How many more lives will you forfeit, it whispered, before you lay down your hopeless cause? Why push on, when all is already lost? No oath did you swear; you are no child of Fëanor. Your bond to that bloodline is no more.

“No,” Dornil said aloud, then glanced about to be sure she was alone. “No,” she said more softly, “a bond holds me to that Oath as long as any one of my husband’s kin yet lives.”

He is lost to the Dark, a voice answered.

“Who?” Dornil demanded to know. “Where?”

The howling of voices stopped so suddenly that Dornil’s hand leapt for her knife and she dropped to a crouch. What folly! She clutched her chest to steady her beating heart. What grief thrashed and groaned there! She held her breath; coerced it back into the cage of her ribs. She would not go mad.

Dornil would risk losing no more of her following to the forest’s dark maw. She sent no more scouts. The host travelled close-packed and vigilant. When Palannor tried to give her the accounting of their supplies and the number of their journey’s days, she snapped: “It will do us no good to know the reckoning of our failures. We push onwards.”

Some of the Men had grown so gaunt they had to be carried. Dornil took a turn, cradling an aged father in her arms like a child and weighing little more. For a brief moment her mind slipped, her foot catching on a stone, and she stumbled. Gwereth was suddenly beside her, hand on her arm to hold her steady.

“You,” said Dornil. Some bitter remark bubbled on her tongue about how Gwereth ought to have taken the chance to trip her; that she would find many allies to join in her mutiny. Instead she said: “I am glad to see you still on your feet.”

Gwereth hummed. “Dornil,” she said. Rank and title had fallen out of use in their desperate plight. “What was your husband like?”

Dornil nearly tripped again. “What a strange thing to ask at a time like this!” But Gwereth appeared earnest. “You have no doubt heard what he was like. Harsh and quick to anger. Immensely wealthy and unsparing of his wealth. Derisive, haughty.”

What sort of woman would wed such a man! That is what they said of her, if they remembered that she existed at all. Yet was she not the only law-sister of Fëanor’s House who remained steadfast through exile and doom and defeat? Whatever they said of her, they could never deny her devotion.

“That is not how he was spoken of among the Haladin,” said Gwereth.

“What?” Dornil blinked. Her eyes stung with weariness.

“Well: they do say he was haughty, and rich. But all Elves are haughty and rich in the tales of Men.” Gwereth laughed weakly. “They say he was a formidable warrior, a lord of great might who saved our people from certain defeat and did the Lady Haleth great honour, such as was seldom shown to women. Not all Haldad’s people wished to follow a woman, it is said — but when they saw the honour the elf-lord gave her, they were chagrined. They do not say he was unsparing. They say he was a gracious host, offering many gifts even after the Lady refused to settle in his lands. She refused those too, but not for lack of esteem for the giver, I do not think.” Then she turned to Dornil, alighting on a thought. “Did you know her?”

“I did not,” said Dornil, the corner of her mouth pulling upwards. “I was far afield, patrolling the northern border, when the orcs came through the passes and assailed the stockade. Lady Haleth had already come and gone when I returned. I wish I had known her. I daresay I would have enjoyed her company.”

Gwereth huffed lightly. “Perhaps. Or you may have found one another utterly intolerable. But tell me what Lord Caranthir was like. To you.”

“Intelligent,” said Dornil. “Fiercely loyal. He had a dreadfully coarse sense of humour, at which you could not help but laugh though you knew you should not. He had many gardens, meticulously maintained. He kept falcons. He loved those birds more than any other, even his wife. He delighted in swimming, no matter how cold the water — and Helevorn was always cold. He hated nothing more than injustice and disloyalty.”

She might have said more. She might have said that he seldom considered the hurt his words might cause until it was too late; that he did not comprehend why others gave such import to empty phrases and gestures of affection when affection could only truly be shown over time, through steadfastness and honest action; that he feared anything unknown and untested and for that reason made few friends; that he had wanted to be a father; that he had never again mentioned children after his sword drew blood at Alqualondë. That all of this had changed, after their defeat; after Uldor. That the greater part of him had died years before the axes of the Sindar found his neck.

And somehow, Dornil had kept living.

Darkness settled about the boles of the trees. The host no longer awaited Dornil’s command to halt, but came to a stop when there were too few left walking to carry those who had collapsed. They formed a circle with the soldiers on the perimetre and the weak and children at the centre. The watch was kept haphazardly, by anyone able to resist the pull of sleep. Dornil allowed herself to rest upon the ground that night. The moon waxed full, bright enough that the canopy allowed its gauzy silver light between its boughs.

She dreamed she was at the square in Tirion, surrounded by many torches. Fëanor spoke before them, as he had so long ago, and as he spoke the torches turned to great towers of flame, blazing even as the forest about Mount Rerir had burned in the wake of Glaurung’s passing. Dornil turned about in terror. She sought her husband in the conflagration, only to find she was surrounded by monsters. Hideous beasts with matted fur and bent backs, clawing and biting at each other. All was a mess of roars and shrieks and blood.

“Commander! Dornil, rise! We are being attacked!”

Dornil was on her feet before she had left the dream, a knife in each hand. Someone wailed and a hand seized her by the ankle.

“Let go!” she cried, kicking. Her heel made contact with something hard; she heard the smashing of teeth and a cry of pain. Realising it was not an attacker but one of the host who had reached out in terror, she could only say, “Hide yourself!” before she charged forwards into the dark.

She ran towards the glint of swords and the rush of arrows and the grunts and shouts of a struggle well underway. While she slept, the moon had sunk below the edge of the world; darkness shrouded all. Bumping up against the shoulder of another elf, she could only imitate their movements and hope her knife points found an enemy and not one of her own.

But the enemy, when it lunged at her, could not have been mistaken for Elf or Man. It was a great furred thing, the terror of her dream made real. Leaping out of the darkness, it threw her onto her back. She slashed her arms as she fell, seeking by whatever means she could to harm it. One knife struck flesh, and the creature roared in pain, momentarily withdrawing its forelegs. She rolled to the side, but only had time to rise to her knees before the enormous animal had pinned her between its paws. She saw its face, then, whiskered and snarling. Its cold blue eyes froze her with fear. Its black lips pulled back to reveal teeth like blades. Reeking, wet breath spattered Dornil’s cheeks, and fear gave way to revulsion; she stabbed at its eye, driving deep into its skull, and as it yowled and thrashed she drove her other knife into its neck. Hot blood engulfed her hand, ran down her wrist, and pooled in her sleeve at the bend of her elbow. The beast collapsed.

Not a moment later another of its pack had thrown her down. Its claws scraped down her back, tearing through leather and wool and digging painful tracks through her skin. She writhed, trying to turn onto her back, but the cat put the full weight of its body over her. She could not move. She was going to die, naught but hunted prey; her body would be devoured before it could be given to the fire. What would become of her soul then? Would she join with the beast, inhabiting its monstrous body?

But with a cry and a great thud, her predator was thrown off her. She scrambled to her feet: in the grey of earliest dawn, she could just make out a struggle between the cat and its assailant. The woman was no match at all for the beast, which she managed to elude only due to her small size, wriggling and curling into a ball. But her neck and face were dark with blood. Her own, or the animal’s? Dornil leapt at them, and seeing her the cat forgot its lesser prey, shaking the woman off and flipping to face Dornil, crouching low. Dornil leapt; the cat lunged. In midair, its jaw clamped around her thigh, the sheer force of it against her muscle and bone worse than the slice of its teeth. But as she lurched forward, her knives found the base of the cat’s neck. They pierced it to the hilts. The cat’s jaw slackened; it twisted and twitched on its back in eerie silence. Then it lay motionless, all its violent life force snuffed out.

Dornil’s eyes raced to take in the scene: the remaining cats were fleeing into the trees; the ground was strewn with bodies, beast and Man and Elf. Alone, she stood amid the heap of dead and injured. She crumpled, too faint to hold herself upright, and too breathless to scream when her injured leg hit the ground and sent a shock of pain through her whole body. Her breeches were torn, blood spilling in pulses from her wound.

“Help,” she said, in a voice too feeble for anyone to hear. She tore her sleeve from her shirt, twisting and knotting it above the open wound. The bleeding slowed, enough that she could crawl, dragging her numb and useless leg behind her, to where the woman who had saved her lay sprawled on her back. Her sorrowful eyes peered out from behind a mask of blood.

No, no— “Gwereth!” Dornil cried. She crawled to where the other woman lay, reaching for her. It was too late. Teeth had pierced her throat just above the join of her collarbones.

“Why? Why throw your life away for me?”

But Gwereth had no voice; she would never speak again. She could only manage a high-pitched wheeze. Dragging herself closer, Dornil lay down beside her.

“Gwereth, why?” she asked again and again. “You have come so far. It is I who should have died, and you lived.”

Why? Dornil imagined Gwereth asking. For what?

For what did any of them persist in living? Dornil craned her neck to look behind. An arm’s reach away, an elf lay face-down in the dirt: she uncurled his fingers and took the knife from his lifeless hand.

Dornil had done this too many times now to feel any hesitation. It was the kindest thing she knew how to do. Piercing with precision, she ended Gwereth’s life with one swift stroke.

Mortals believed there was a moment, between the heart failing and the flight of the soul, when the physical senses were still awake. Dornil hoped it true; she hoped Gwereth heard her regret, her gratitude, her affection when she whispered, “Farewell.”

Dornil kissed her temple. Then her head banged against the ground, and she fell into a swoon beside Gwereth’s empty corpse.

She awoke in agony. There was a storm raging within her, pain churning and churning with nowhere to go. She lay upon her back: the trees passed by overhead, the ground bounced and swayed beneath her.

She strained against bindings, gripping the edge of a stretcher. “Where are you taking me?” she demanded.

“To Amon Ereb,” said the elf who held the handles at the head of her stretcher.

“No!” Dornil cried. “Let me out of this! I can walk!”

“That is doubtful,” her bearer said.

Another ran up. “Nornawen,” she called her by her Quenya name, and Dornil knew her by her voice. Elas had been her peer, a very long time ago, studying land and water forms far in the east of Aman. But Beleriand had forced all but a few to choose between healing and warfare; Dornil chose the latter, but Elas had chosen healing. “You are awake,” she said. “That is good. Rest, please. That wound could have killed you.”

“Put me down,” Dornil said. “I do not wish to be taken to Amon Ereb.”

No one acknowledged her, but they did come to an eventual halt. They set her stretcher down on the forest floor. She tried a gentler tone, for though she felt no gratitude for it at the moment, they had saved her life: “Thank you for tending to my injuries.” She rolled her eyes back and to the sides, counting them. “Where are the others?”

“They perished, lady,” Elas answered. “It is only us left.”

“None of the Men?”

Elas shook her head. Dornil groaned, straining against her ties. “If there is any loyalty left in you, please release me.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Mírlach, the man who had been carrying her and seemed to have taken command, nodded; Elas knelt and untied her.

Dornil sat up, clamping her jaw to keep the pain at bay. “We are not going back to Amon Ereb. We will not abandon your lord and mine. Macalaurë is somewhere in these woods.”

The others exchanged doubtful glances. “What?” Dornil snapped. “Do you intend to carry a message back to his brother that you lost him? That you abandoned him to die in the forest?”

“My lady,” Elas said, “the best course of action for Lord Macalaurë is to seek help at Amon Ereb.”

“No. I have lost everyone, Elas. We will not lose him.”

“Lord Macalaurë went mad,” said Mírlach. “You cannot believe he survived the trials of the forest, in such a state, with so few to protect him? He is gone.”

Dornil screamed, ragged with anger and banked pain. “Traitors! Is that what you believe of your lord? He was not mad!” Her voice cracked. “Go then, go onwards to tell Maedhros his last brother is dead. But you will have to tell him his law-sister is dead, also, for I will not go with you.”

“Please, take your rest,” Elas said, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“No!” Dornil batted her arm off. Perhaps harder than she had meant, for Elas yelped and clutched it to her chest. Or perhaps it had been the betrayal that hurt her old friend. Dornil struggled to her elbows. She was flush with heat, fevered from the intensity of her pain. “You think we are both mad, is that so?”

Mírlach answered, “It is madness to do anything but find our way out of this place.”

“It is madness to desert your lord! It is madness to break your oaths of loyalty to his house!”

Mírlach’s mouth curled into an expression of disgust. He looked her squarely in the eyes, undaunted. “It was madness to swear loyalty to that accursed house in the first place. I am finished.” He pulled a gold band from his finger and tossed it at the ground. “May Fëanor’s band upon my hand rot in the leaves of Taur-im-Duinath. It is nothing to me.” He looked away from her, speaking to the others. “The Silmarils are beyond hope of retrieval. The war is lost. We have failed altogether in our purpose. Our commander says, ‘Go not to Amon Ereb.’ Shall we tell her the truth?” He paused a moment, then directed his words to Dornil. “We never intended to take you there. We are leaving these lands. We are going over the mountains.”

“Never!” Dornil shot upright, heedless of her pain as she seized a knife strapped to Mírlach’s thigh. “You will never make it. Vengeance for your faithlessness will find you, wherever you run.”

“Put down that knife, madwoman,” said Mírlach.

Dornil did not. She shot upward onto the knee that could still bear weight and thrust the knife at Mírlach’s waist. Her reach was weak. He dodged easily, then twisted her wrist and disarmed her.

But the damage had been done. She felt rather than saw the bodies of the company pulling away from her. They were leaving her.

“Come,” Mírlach said, addressing them as if Dornil was not there. “There is no hope for her. We carry on.”

In silence, they gathered their things. No one looked at her, no one spoke to her. They deserted her. They broke their oaths and left her to die.

She would not die. Not until she had found Maglor — or whatever remained of him.

Chapter End Notes

Ifrethil, Palannor, Elas, Mírlach (S.) - All from Chestnutpod’s Elvish name list.

Yet was she not the only law-sister of Fëanor’s House who remained steadfast through exile and doom and defeat? Yes, Maglor’s and Curufin’s wives do/did exist in this ‘verse; no, it may never come up again. We’ll see if Maglor breaks down enough for that fragment of trauma to bubble up. I promise a fic about my spitfire lady Lacheryn one day.

There is a logic to my capitalisation of Elf/elf and Man/man (or woman). It’s possible I’ve slipped up here and there, but there’s theoretically a deliberate choice behind every instance.

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A beaded strand of hair fell to Orfion’s shoulder.

“Hold still,” said Nennel, when he turned aside to look at it. She sectioned off another strand, holding it tight in one hand while the other took a bead from the bowl Orfion held.

“We stopped beading our hair after Denethor fell,” Orfion mused. He held his head straight and still for Nennel to work, running his fingers over the beads instead; feeling the smoothness of the nut shells; weighing them, light but resilient. “Because of the noise,” Orfion explained. “We were so afraid of being seen, of being heard. Even the gentle rattle of beads might draw danger. We never again enjoyed the warmth of fire. We didn’t sing, Lindi though we were. The coming of the Sun roused us to song, but even so we sang in whispers, and only by day.”

Nennel pulled back another section of hair, her fingers dragging pleasantly over his scalp. Orfion closed his eyes.

She followed the course of his thoughts: “And that is why you left your own kind to follow the Flame-eyes?”

“They were fearless. Full of fury, but full of laughter, too. And curious. They were reputed to be haughty, seeking only to expand their realms and increase their followers. Lord Amrod was not haughty. He wished to understand us, to learn our customs and our language. And he spoke openly of his griefs, so I could excuse his bouts of wrath and violence. There was much he did not say, but I did not know it then. When I learned the whole truth of their deeds, their oath — it was too late. I was tied to their cause. I loved him. I became a kinslayer twice over for him.”

“You?” said Nennel, skeptical. “I do not think you have the blood of kin upon your hands. Maglor, the others of your company: they have blood upon their hands. But you, Orfion? Who have you slain?”

Orfion was silent a moment. “I was never at the forefront of the battle. None of my people were; our lords would not allow it.”

“So you are no kinslayer.”

“What separates the man who wields the knife from the one who stands guard beside him? From the one who glorifies his deeds in song?”

Nennel’s hands rested on Orfion’s shoulders, a gentle pressure. His shoulders sank and released.

“You need not follow him any longer,” she said.

Orfion shut his eyes against the sting of his secret longing spoken aloud. “What of the children?” he whispered.

“The world is full of lost young ones. You cannot save them all.” Nennel bent and kissed the top of his head. “Wherever the river runs for the little princes, it will not bend because Orfion of Ossiriand sacrificed all joy, all rest, all of himself to stay beside them. But my heart tells me there is hope for the two little princes.”

“I pray you are right,” Orfion said, and clasped her hand upon his shoulder.

Elrond touched his palm to the warm cavern wall. How quickly you could come to think of a strange place as home, he thought, and wondered if he should share the thought with Elros. But Elros was distracted, packing and unpacking the contents of his satchel. He’d insisted on carrying his own, though Maglor said he and his company could carry all they needed. But Elros insisted, and Nennel sewed each of them leather satchels that slung across their shoulders. They did not contain much: a thin rolled up blanket, one pair of clean socks, a packet of nuts and dried berries.

Elros’s blanket was in a tangle on the bench beside him. “I need help again,” he said to Elrond.” I cannot make it fit.” Patiently, Elrond retrieved the blanket and laid it flat across the bench.

Watching him, Elros sulked. “They should let us have a knife.”

“We are too young to wield knives,” said Elrond, rolling the blanket into a neat bundle. “You don’t know how.”

Elros scuffed his shoe against the floor. “But Elero, what if we get separated again?”

“You won’t.” That was Maglor, coming through one of the hall's many archways. Elrond tensed. He did not like when adults entered into his private conversations without asking. “There are more of us to protect you this time, and we have learned the ways of the forest. But if you would feel safer carrying a weapon, perhaps you could find a stone that fits your palm? I warn you it will make your pack much harder to carry.”

Elros was unimpressed; but as soon as Maglor’s back was turned, he scanned the edges of the hall, where clay tiles gave way to the natural cave wall, and picked out a loose stone. He tossed it in his pack. “You should have one, too,” he whispered at Elrond, then he trotted up to follow Tornel, a scout in Maglor’s company whom he admitted he disliked somewhat less than the others.

Elrond felt through his shirt for the amulet Nelpen had given him. One for each of them. “It carries the spirits of your ancestors,” Nelpen had explained. “How could it?” Elros had asked. “Your ancestors are not the same as ours.” Nelpen had smiled. “Are all our ancestors not the same, in the beginning?”

Elrond was not sure. Did not all Noldor come from Tata and Tatië? Did not all Sindar come from Enel and Enelyë? Whoever the forefathers and foremothers of the Atani were, they were altogether unlike the fathers and mothers who awoke at Cuiviénen. Yet it was true, as far as Elrond understood, that his and Elros’ ancestors were all of these and others besides. Perhaps he was remotely akin to Nelpen’s ancestors. But then why was he sending them away?

“Come on!” Elros shouted.

“It’s time to go, Elrond,” Maglor said from nearby.

Elrond expected to see Maglor towering above him, but he had squatted down. Their eyes met.

“I do not want to go,” Elrond confessed. His shoulders rolled forwards and he clutched the strap of his pack.

“We must go.”

Earlier, Maglor had asked them where they wished to go: back to his fortress in the east, or back to Balar. He had wished Maglor would make the choice for them. Elros had burst into tears, and Maglor finally got out of him that it was because he could not imagine going back home if Mama was not there. He only wanted to see Gwereth again. Maglor soothed him and said that is what they would do. So Elros decided for them, and Elrond had not said what he wanted, which was to stay among the Penni, because Maglor had not given them that choice. Now that they were leaving, it all bubbled out of him.

“But why?” Elrond did not like how small his voice sounded. “We can stay with Nennel and Nelpen. And Orfion. Why can Orfion stay and we cannot?” Maglor’s face pinched, that way adults look when they do not know what to say to children. Did he think Elrond would not notice that Orfion was not with them?

“He did not say goodbye,” Elrond mumbled. He would not say that Orfion was his friend, but Elrond had thought he was kind, and he had liked his stories.

“Sometimes,” Maglor said, “when people care deeply about you, they find it difficult to say goodbye.”

Elrond nodded. He knew this, but he still thought it was not very kind to disappear.

“Orfion is akin to the Penni,” said Maglor.

It was not a satisfactory explanation, but Maglor sounded tired and Elrond doubted he would get a better one. A lump formed in his throat and quivering seized his lip. He sputtered: “They do not want us, do they?” But Nelpen and Nennel had been so kind!

“I know this is difficult to understand,” Maglor settled on his knees and put a hand on Elrond’s shoulder, “but you and your brother are very important people, and when the world is at war, as it is now, important people are in danger. Important people bring danger to those who harbour them.”

Elrond shook his head; a fat tear dripped to the floor. None of it made any sense. Maglor had brought them into danger, hadn’t he? Elrond’s memories were turbulent as the stormy seas around Cape Balar, where Father used to take him to watch the waves crashing. Where Mama had left them. No, she would never leave them. But she was gone, because there was an elf who chased her. Elrond could not remember why. Then they had fled to a closed space, and Elros had shouted and shouted and hurt himself. Try as he might, Elrond could not remember how they had come to be with Maglor. Maglor had told the Penni about it, the first night he came, but the story was confusing and Elrond could not fit it together with his memories.

“Come, Elrond,” said Maglor, resting his large hand on Elrond’s shoulder. “We have to go.” He paused. “Do you want me to carry you?”

To his own surprise, Elrond nodded. He expected to be draped over Maglor’s shoulder like Embor had carried them. But when Maglor lifted him, he hoisted him to his hip the way Mama had carried him and Elros when they were small, one on each side. They had grown too big for her to carry them both so easily, but it was no great effort for Maglor, who was bigger and stronger than her.

“You’ll have to hold on when we go through the tunnel,” said Maglor. Elrond hung under his belly, clinging with arms and legs. It seemed a long way, the walls closing in around them, until they finally emerged into the light.

It was morning and time to begin walking again. Elros threw his pack down and whined. “I am tired of travelling!”

What did his brother want him to say? Elrond was tired, too, but they had to keep going. “One of the adults would carry you if you let them.”

“No, you know I don’t mean that. I can walk, I am not too tired to walk. I want to stop moving! Shouldn’t we be there by now?”

“It’s only been three days,” said Elrond. “Maglor says it will take at least fourteen. But Gwereth will be there. You wanted to see Gwereth, remember?”

Elros stomped his foot and shouldered his pack. He mumbled at the ground. “I don’t know what I want. What if Papa comes back for us and we are gone? How will he know where we are?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Maglor will send a message.” Elrond did not think their father was coming back, but Elros had only just stopped insisting that Mama was still alive and he did not have the strength to explain this, too.

Maglor called to them: “Time to go. Are you sure you do not want to be carried?”

“No,” Elros answered for both of them. “We can keep up, you know.”

But they couldn’t. The space between them and those who walked at the forefront of the company lengthened as they journeyed. Now and then they lost sight of them altogether, and then Maglor, who always walked behind them, would whistle softly, and shortly they would come upon the others up ahead. Elrond and Elros slowed them down. Their legs were too short to keep up with the long gait of the elves. Worst was that they would slow them down whether they walked or allowed themselves to be carried. Elrond hated being a burden.

They came to a steep climb, and Elrond clambered and leapt up the stony hillside. His legs burned and his heart felt pinched between his ribs — it was just a little farther, though. He would make it, and then he could catch his breath at the top. He stumbled, scraping his palms on the coarse, dry dirt.

A hand came down on his shoulder. “Easy, little one.” It was Maglor. Elros hung from his side, arms slung around his neck. Elrond must have betrayed some incredulity, because Elros stuck out his tongue defiantly.

Maglor said, “It will not do to rush only to collapse before we’ve finished the journey.”

Elrond’s breath was coming in gasps, and now that he’d stopped his chest hurt even more. He was all flush with heat. His feet hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Maglor smiled. “You are doing very well for someone so small.”

“I’m not small!” Elrond protested absurdly. Of course he was small. He barely stood higher than Maglor’s knees. Then he felt badly because Maglor looked distressed, brows crinkled with doubt.

“Let me carry you a while?” he offered.

“You are already carrying Elros.” He knew Maglor could manage to carry them both, but it did not change how Elrond felt such a burden. He sagged down and his bottom hit the ground. He gasped, sucking back the tears. How could his little body hold so many tears!

“What’s wrong, Elero?” asked Elros.

It was too much to answer. Elrond pulled his knees up, folding his body into a ball, and shook. His tears were hot and uncomfortable and his stomach clenched with every sob. Why couldn’t he be brave! Mama was brave, Papa was brave. Beren and Lúthien had been the bravest of all, and they were his forebears. Even Gwereth was brave, wasn’t she? At that thought, a memory lit up of Gwereth holding a rod of metal, fending off an enemy. Who was it? Where had they been? He sifted through his tattered memories, looking for the face of the enemy, some clue about where they were, but it was just Gwereth, bravely defending them.

While he still had his head buried between his knees, an arm wrapped around him. Maglor scooped him up; instinctively, Elrond clung to his shoulder. Almost at once his head nodded, he drifted to sleep with a blur of questions floating around in his mind: Why had Maglor taken them into his care? Why was he so kind to them? What business did an elf-warrior have with him and Elros? Mama was gone, and Papa was away at sea. They needed someone, but Maglor was a stranger. He need not have burdened himself with them.

They would bring danger to those who harboured them, Maglor had said. Maybe no one wanted them. Why would Maglor want them?

What would he do when danger came?

Fourteen days came and went and they were still surrounded by trees that only seemed to grow thicker and taller and darker. Elrond wondered if they had passed by any Enyd, standing so still and silent that to all eyes they seemed trees themselves. Orfion had said they were friendly to elves, though he’d also warned that they did not like to be disturbed or called upon for aid. They would reveal themselves if it suited them.

“The canopy will soon blot out the sun,” said Tornel to Maglor.

Maglor threw a glance over his shoulder at Elrond and Elros. Elros was curled up asleep on the ground, but Elrond was not. He stared back at him, daring him to let Elrond hear the truth. Elrond was clever enough to know that without the sun they would not know what direction they were travelling. Maglor was not cowed. He led Tornel further off, ducking behind an immense trunk where their voices could not carry.

It was not the first time Maglor had shushed a comment or question about their plans from one of his company until he thought himself out of earshot. But Elrond had sharp ears — everyone said so. They were lost.

Elrond’s eyelids grew heavy. His shoulders slumped and he tipped sideways. He was cushioned by Elros, and tensed a moment, thinking he may have woken his brother, but Elros did not stir. So he let himself sink, resting his eyes, even if his mind could not follow.

A cry of dismay shot through him. He bolted upright and scrambled to his knees and then to standing.

Elros sat up, bleary-eyed, holding his rock. “What was that?” he asked in a thin and fearful voice.

Elrond stared in the direction he thought the sound had come from: it was the great tree behind which Maglor and Tornel had retreated.

A moment later, they came into view. Maglor had someone else slung over his shoulder. She was familiar, but it took Elrond some effort to recall why. Yes: it was the commander who had been with them before. Elrond recoiled. He did not like her. But she was so pitiful, drooping over Maglor’s shoulder and struggling to free herself.

“Let me down,” she said. “I made it this far on my own feet.”

Then her eyes fell on Elrond and Elros and her manner changed altogether. “You have them,” she breathed. “You have them. Ai Ilúvatar, you have them!”

“Yes,” said Maglor in a hush, and helped her down to sit upon the ground. She winced as he stretched out her leg. A band of cloth was wrapped around her thigh, stained brown and stiff with blood.

Maglor’s face turned ashen. He looked at Elrond and his brother, then back to her. “Bornval,” he called to one of the company. “Take the children further off.”

Elros leapt to his feet. “Why is she here? Where is Gwereth? What did you do to her?”

The elf-woman’s voice crackled, something between laughter and grief. “Clever,” she said to Maglor. “Too clever. Go.” This was meant for Elrond and Elros. “You will thank me one day, for sparing you the full account at such a tender age.” She swayed, slurring as if to herself, “Ah, you have seen too much, too much,” and then she was limp in Maglor’s arms.

“Is she dead?”

“Elros!” Elrond hissed. His brother always said exactly what came to mind without a moment’s consideration!

“No,” Maglor replied, barely audible. “But she is close to it. Please, Elros, Elrond. Go with Bornval. Dornil is right, you have seen too much.”

Trails of grey-green groped like weeds up Dornil’s leg, down her torso, gathering in a black mass around the wound in her thigh. It stank of decay; Maglor’s gut heaved.

“You never did have the stomach for gore, did you?”

Maglor skewered his law-sister with the points of his eyes. He was furiously, incandescently angry with her.

“Why did you not treat it?” The words scarcely made it past his clenched teeth.

She grabbed hold of his cloak, dragging herself up from the ground. “I lost them, Macalaurë. I lost them all.”

“That is quite obvious,” said Maglor. Compassion was not prevailing in the storm of feelings raging within him.

“But I found you. You are alive! Oh, brother, dear brother, you are alive.” She lost her grip on his cloak and would have banged her skull against the ground had Maglor not caught her fall. When she next cracked open her eyes, they roved about aimlessly, hazy and flat. “Where is my husband? Tell me he is with you. Tell me he is alive.”

She was delirious. Uncontrollable, hideous, a scream burst from Maglor’s lungs. The forest swallowed it entire, impotent, answering with a silence so abrupt and complete that Maglor lurched forward as if struck. Somewhere above the canopy, clouds gathered: another ceiling, vaster and heavier, bearing down, oppressive.

“You will not die,” Maglor told Dornil. She was too far gone to hear him. He cut the cloth away from her wounds. His vision swam, his thoughts rattled around noisily; he could barely see the extent of her infection. He blinked, forcing his eyes to clear, forcing his feeling aside. He wished he had taken a healer with his company, but the need among those he left behind had been too great. He ordered herbs and water, he soaked Dornil’s torn and festering flesh. Absurd — the rot had taken hold deep in the neglected wound, far too deep to respond to such superficial remedies. His raw and weary Song would have to serve. He had defeated the contagion in the river. He could heal her, the sister of his heart.

All through the grey afternoon, Maglor did not cease singing. It was dark by the time Dornil’s skin flushed its accustomed hue and her fever subsided. As her eyelids fluttered on the brink of wakefulness, Maglor cupped her face.

She whispered: “Carnistir?”

Maglor waited, watching the haze clear from her eyes.

“No,” she said. “No, you are not him. Water.” She swallowed. “I need water.”

It was some time before she was well enough to rise. Maglor was glad to learn they had met his brother’s people and that Maedhros was at Amon Ereb. The rest of the tale was nothing but devastation. Dornil’s guilt was raw: as raw as Maglor’s had been when Maedhros was borne back to Mithrim on the back of an Eagle; as raw as it had been when a horse — not his own, whom Glaurung had blasted to ash as he compelled Maglor to watch — bore his body, crumpled with exhaustion, through the gates of Himring. Guilt was a permanent mark on Maglor’s soul that he had borne for centuries. Part of him had admired the pride Dornil bore like a shield against shame. But now it lay shattered at her feet. She was broken, and small, lost in a vast woodland. At least she was not alone.

Elrond and Elros, whom Maglor had all but forgotten in his efforts to save Dornil, had at last fallen asleep. One of his company must have laid a blanket on the ground and shuffled them onto it. Elros still fell asleep each night with a stone clasped in his hand, but it had fallen out of his grip and rolled down the sloping ground until it came to rest against the root of a tree. Maglor picked it up and set it beside him, lest he wake and assume someone had disarmed him in the night.

Dornil rested against a fallen trunk, watching him. “You love them.”

Maglor straightened and stilled. “It is my duty to protect them.”

She huffed. “When have you ever distinguished between duty and love?”

“When have any of us?” asked Maglor, and watched her face fall. He came to sit beside her. “Perhaps our error is in our failure to separate the two.”

“Our failure,” Dornil repeated. Her voice shook. “I have failed, Macalaurë. I failed the family of my birth, when I abandoned them to follow yours. I failed your father, who welcomed me as a daughter when my own father refused to recognise me as his own. I failed my husband, when I stood by as the immensity of his shame destroyed all that was good in him. I failed you. I failed you disastrously. I lost all of them. I should have slain myself—”

Maglor snatched both her hands in his. “Speak not so. Never. Swear to me, you will never do any such thing.”

Dornil cast her eyes down. “Gwereth is gone. Their nurse. Senselessly. She threw herself at one of the beasts. She must have known it would kill her.”

Maglor thought of Fingolfin, and Finrod. He thought of Fingon, who they say stood against the Lord of Balrogs to the last. He must have known he was no match for the monster who had slain Fëanor, but he fought still, even thinking himself abandoned by them. Maglor thought of what they said of Turgon, defiant as his tower fell to ruin; of Aredhel who gave her life to save her child’s. Angrod and Aegnor, burned in the same fires that Maglor fled in disgrace. He thought of Elwing, who leapt to her death with the name of Lúthien on her lips.

Had any of them believed they would survive those feats of daring, those leaps of faith? What separated a heroic last stand from death at one’s own hand?

There had to be some distinction. Maglor could not name it.

The next day Maglor bid his company go ahead to Amon Ereb for help. Dornil, though healed of the worst of her wounds, was too weak to make much progress, and Elrond and Elros, for all their determination, could not help the shortness of their legs.

“It is no use,” Dornil said. “The forest will only lead you deeper into its web. There is no way out.”

Bornval scowled. “Will you surrender to trees, then, after all the battles we have fought?”

“No,” Maglor answered for her. “Though you would do well to watch what you say. You wasted your time in the caverns of the Penni if you have so little regard for the power of these woods. We will not surrender, for we will not make Taur-i-Melegyrn our enemy. You will go onwards, and you will find the edge of the forest, and you will send rangers for us. We will stay here.”

“You should not,” said Dornil. “It is dangerous to stay too long in one place.”

“We will stay,” said Maglor, “because we have no other choice.”

“Then I will stay behind,” said Bornval. “You, lord, ought to go ahead.”

“He is right,” said Dornil. “If only one of us makes it to Amon Ereb, it ought to be you.” Her thought brushed against his, and conjured an image of Maedhros, distorted: bloodied, orcish, enslaved to the will of the Oath.

“No.” Maglor shoved the vision aside. “I will not leave you, sister, and I will die before I leave these children behind.”

“I see,” said Bornval. “You do not trust us with them? We are not Carniyúla and Meneltir—”

“Do not utter those names!” Maglor snapped. “Have you forgotten my brother condemned their memory when he rid them of their heads?”

Saying thus, Maglor was aware that Elrond and Elros had awoken and were alert and watching them. They huddled on their blanket: Elrond hugged his knees to his chest and Elros had looped a protective arm around his brother’s leg. His other hand rested in his lap, clutching his rock.

A wet gasp hissed on its way past Maglor’s teeth. “Have they been fed?” he asked. “Elros, Elrond, have you eaten? Ah, I am sorry, little ones.”

Elros puckered his lips. “Are we going soon? You said we were almost there.”

“Ai,” Maglor sighed. He knelt before them. “We are. But Dornil is hurt. And you have journeyed so far. We are going to stay here a while and rest. Not long, only a few days, while the others go on ahead and get us help and fresh supplies from my brother’s fortress. They will bring mules that can bear you over the rough ground, and your feet can rest. Very soon you will be in warm beds, with warm food, and you will eat whatever you like, and sleep or play or do whatever it is you like. You like stories, yes? There is a library at Amon Ereb. Do you read? Do you enjoy music? There are instruments there, made for children. Perhaps you do not like music — well, there are other diversions. Tools for woodcarving: my littlest brother was a carver. Beads! Moryo kept such a collection of beads, you could string them into bracelets or sew them into designs, as he did—”

“Maglor,” someone’s voice interrupted. Dornil. “Stop.”

He clamped his jaw shut, teeth clicking into place. “I am sorry. This weariness has gotten to my head, also, as you can see. Is it all right?” he asked Elrond and Elros. “If we stay here, only a little while?”

Bornval groaned and tossed his pack at the ground. “Very well, if you insist, I too will stay. You need not send all of us away.” He picked through his pack and pulled out a packet of Dornil’s lembas, still sealed in its leaf wrapping. He broke off two pieces and offered one to each of the twins. “Here. Eat. I will see the others off and find some water for us.”

A long silence followed, then Elrond’s voice dropped into it like a leaf into a still pool.

“I like music.” The child rolled a crumb of lembas between finger and thumb, and seemed to be contemplating it deeply.

What thoughts were in his little mind? When Maglor was their age, he’d had all the leisure in the world. He might quite earnestly have contemplated a crumb for hours: tasting it, drawing it, dissecting it, attempting to capture its uniqueness in words. But Elrond was not thinking of the crumb. How could he be, after all he had endured?

“Do you, child?” Dornil asked, and Maglor felt chastened for having let Elrond’s words hang there, unanswered.

Elrond nodded. “At home we were learning to play the seashell whistles that Halfon gave us.”

“He doesn’t know Halfon,” said Elros.

“He is Falathar’s son,” Elrond said to Maglor, who of course had no more idea who Falathar was, but he did not ask. “He is older than us, but he is an elf, so he does not seem much older. Or, he didn’t. He lives on Balar now that he is studying with Círdan. I think— I hope he was with Círdan when…” Elrond trailed off.

“Ask him.” Elros nudged his brother’s knee. “Ask him, if you don’t believe me.”

Elrond vigorously shook his head.

“Don’t believe what?” Maglor asked.

“Elrond doesn’t believe me that you were part of the army that attacked us. But you are, aren’t you? You have the same spiky star on your shirt. So does she.” He pointed at Dornil.

“You ask complicated questions,” said Dornil.

“No.” Maglor silenced her. “Yes, it is complicated— but it also is not. I was part of that army. I was a leader of that army. I hated leading that army, but I did. One day, I promise, I will tell you all the history behind that assault. But now I scarcely comprehend it myself. Sometimes, people do terrible things because they are so afraid of losing something, someone they love. And then it was all lost anyway, and it was for nothing.”

Speaking openly to them, for the first time, of the circumstances that had led to them coming into his care was like swimming up a swift but shallow river, driven back by the current and beaten against the stony riverbed. He saw the task he had set for himself looming like a great iron gate between him and the two children not three feet away from him: to raise them with love, whose lives he had destroyed. How would he ever find the words to adequately tie together those two themes of destruction and salvation?

“She is crying,” said Elrond, and Maglor heard the rasping of breath and felt the sting of Elrond’s judgement.

Maglor turned to Dornil, expecting her face to be hidden. Not even when Caranthir died had she openly wept, for then she had been comforting Maglor. But she looked at him, eyes wet. A tear clung to the line of her jaw and she brushed it away with the back of her hand.

“Sister…” Maglor whispered. He walked on his knees towards her, pausing before he came too near. “May I hold you?”

Dornil drew another rasping breath and nodded. He sat beside her. She did not unfold herself, did not extend her arms to meet his embrace, but neither did she flinch or withdraw. He cupped her face, gathering her head to his chest, and he sang to her — a song of unknown provenance, in Old Quenya. In Tirion, it was sung by the King at the Festival of Arriving, so their sundered kin were never forgotten in the celebration of their coming to Aman. In Beleriand, it was sung only in private, longing for what was lost.

It was lengthy, most of its verses seldom sung, but Maglor sang it through to its conclusion. Dornil fell asleep in his arms, and he lay her down to rest in the shelter of the log. Their only remaining blanket was given over to the children, so he unclasped his cloak and laid it over her.

As he stood watching her sleep, Elrond spoke: “How do you know that song?”

Elros, too, had fallen back to sleep while Maglor sang. His head was pillowed in his brother’s lap.

“It is an ancient song that was sung in the Blessed Realm where we were born.”

Elrond made a noise of childish disagreement. “No. It was sung by Papa.”

“Your father knew it?” Maglor said, and only then pieced together why Elrond had asked: because he, too, knew the song. It was rumoured that Turgon’s Gondolin was Tirion Remade. Why would they not have celebrated the same festivals? Why would Eärendil not have learned the songs of his mother’s people?

It had been five hundred years since Maglor had seen Turgon. They had never been close, and yet there had been a quiet understanding between them; the shared of experience of a second son. The likeness had stopped there. Turgon was ambitious, bold; Maglor was not. Had Turgon ever forgiven them? What would he think to know his heirs were in Maglor’s keeping, lost in the woods, all of them now Dispossessed?

“Did you know your grandmother?” Maglor asked at length.

Elrond shook his head. “Lady Idril sailed before we were born.”

“I see. She was a remarkable lady. As I am sure you were told. She was my kin and came also from the Blessed Realm. It is likely she sang that very song to her son — who sang it to you.”

Elrond’s face bunched in thought. He was silent a while, then asked: “Are you my kin?”

Maglor released a melancholy puff of air. “I suppose I am, at some remove.”

“Is that why we are with you? Because there is no one else left?”

“You ask difficult questions.” Elrond’s face puckered again, showing his dissatisfaction with Maglor’s response. Maglor felt desperation creep through him, a compulsion to give him something, a certainty he could hold on to. Something to protect him from the darkness.

So Maglor spoke, eliding the unknown and the unspeakable into the simplest, most insufficient of words: “Yes.”

Elrond sighed. “I see.” He unknit his features, then sank lower, making a crescent around his brother’s sleeping body.

Late in the night, Maglor was roused by Bornval’s firm hand on his shoulder, jostling him from a deeper sleep than he had had since their journey began.

“Lord,” he said. “Lord, please wake.” At once Maglor marked the strain in his voice, the edge of panic. He shot upright and took hold of his wrist.

“The children. Tell me they are well.”

“They are well,” he said. The bright points of his eyes darted over him a moment, assessing. Then a grey cloud swallowed their brightness. “Dornil is gone, my lord.”

“Gone?” Maglor gasped. “Where? We must find her at once! She is not well.” Maglor scrambled, meaning to rise, but Bornval held him back.

“No,” Bornval shook his head, and swallowed. “She has passed beyond our finding. Her wound was too deep. It stopped her heart.”

A cold wave swooped through Maglor’s body, carrying with it all feeling, all sense of himself. He was as hollow and insubstantial as a reed. Was he yet upright? Did he stand? Had he fallen? Had the earth opened beneath him, swallowed him, spat him out beneath?

Bornval’s voice, his hand around Maglor’s wrist, tethered him to his physical form. “She is dead, lord.”

Then just as swiftly as his soul had emptied, Maglor was filled to overflowing, heavy, a tree trunk bloated with pestilence. He needed to see her, he needed to hold her body close to his. He needed to know, he needed to feel the emptiness of her corpse himself, to know for certain that she was gone, that he could not call her back. He would call her back! Surely, he could. It was not too late!

But he could not move. He could not speak. He folded forwards between his knees, felt a rush of nausea surging upwards as he fell, retched upon the ground, and knew nothing more.

Chapter End Notes

“We stopped beading our hair after Denethor fell … Because of the noise.” Orfion is of course talking about the First Battle, in which their leader and many others were surrounded and slaughtered, and its traumatic effects on the Green-elves: “After the battle some returned to Ossiriand, and their tidings filled the remnant of their people with great fear, so that thereafter they came never forth in open war, but kept themselves by wariness and secrecy.” (‘Of the Sindar’). It is also said (in ‘Of the Coming of Men into the West’) that “the Green-elves of that land lit no fires, nor did they sing by night.”

Lindi - what the Nandor called themselves, ‘the Singers’.

Enyd - plural of Onod, Ent.

Falathar - canonical, one of Eärendil’s crewmen.

Tornel, Bornval, Halfon (S.) - All from Chestnutpod’s Elvish name list.

Carniyúla and Meneltir a.k.a. “the cruel servants of Celegorm”, also from Chestnut_pod’s life-saving list, are, unlike most OC names in this fic regardless of character origin, in Quenya. Innnteresting.

Injuries - I have an under-informed medical explanation for Dornil’s cause of death in my mind but honestly all the things that can go wrong with bodies are terribly confusing and challenging to translate to individual experience, and we’re now well outside personal or secondhand experience that I can draw on, so please forebear from medical scrutiny.

I must (meant to a few chapters ago!) shout-out leucisticpuffin’s beautiful fic, we will call this place our home, which has helped me immensely in conceptualising Elros and Elrond as fully-realised (if tiny) people and been very influential to how I have ended up writing their characters. I will never be able to see their child-selves any other way.

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“Do you think she was really his sister?”

“He said she was his sister.” Elros was sullen and did not look up from the stream. He’d been stabbing repeatedly at a stone lodged in the bank for several minutes, knocking away chunks of mud.

“You should stop that,” said Elrond. “You’ll make the whole bank collapse.”

Seated on a rock behind them, Bornval huffed with amusement. “Takes far more than a few pokes by a little boy to make a bank collapse, even if it is just a stream.”

Elros ignored him and kept on. They did not like Bornval. He had a voice that scratched and long spidery limbs. He braided his hair back so tight it pulled his face taut.

Elrond looked back through the trees, where he could just make out Maglor stooped over the mound heaped atop his sister’s body. If she was his sister. Elrond felt badly for disliking her, now that she was dead. Maglor sat upright on his heels and stared ahead. Then he began to sing: low, sombre notes Elrond could feel more than hear.

He did not understand why Maglor sent them away. He and Elros had seen people die before; they had seen burials before. Many, many times. Perhaps he did not want them to see him weeping? But they had seen adults weeping many times, also. Sometimes, when Papa was away, Mama shed tears every day. She would shed happy tears when Papa returned.

Abruptly, Elros threw his stick at the ground and shouted. “I wish we were dead, too!”

“Elros! Don’t say such things!” Before he was aware, Elrond’s arm had leapt from his side and he’d smacked his brother in the chest. “Sorry,” he said at once, horrified.

Elros’ burst of emotion seemed to flee as quickly as it had come. “It didn’t hurt.” He started picking at his nails.

Bornval muttered to himself. Elrond could not believe he had heard him right. “What?”

“I said, you would be better off dead.”

So Elrond had heard him right.

“You cannot say that!” said Elros. He was right. It was not the sort of thing adults said to children. It was not the sort of thing anyone said to another person, unless he was especially angry.

“I have seen too much not to speak the truth, child,” said Bornval. “It is a wonder you have survived as much and as long as you have. Your line has a way of surviving, though. The Valar favour you.” He scoffed. “Not enough to save you now, it seems.”

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Elros cried. “We are going to live and we are going to become warriors and we are going to avenge our mother!”

Elrond wanted to say something but he had gone still and cold.

“Quiet yourself,” said Bornval. “Avenge your mother, will you? And who is to blame for what became of your mother? Your mother chose a stolen jewel over you. Then she slew herself. Your revenge is already exacted.”

“No!” Elros screamed. “No, no, no! You are wrong. That is not how it happened.”

“Elero!” Elrond cried, but he was too late to stop him. Elros abandoned the large stone stuck in the bank and grabbed another, too big for him. He hurled it at Bornval all the same, and it landed no more than two paces from where Elros stood. Frustrated, he stomped and balled his fists; he made a mad dash at Bornval.

The elf rose from his seat. To Elrond’s horror, he pulled a knife from a sheath at his hip and blocked himself with it. A knife! He could not seriously believe Elros posed a threat to him, could he?

“Stop, fool,” he said, but it was unnecessary because Elros had staggered to a halt the moment he saw the weapon.

“Help!” Elrond cried. “Help, help, help!”

Then, he heard a great yell and stomping. He was too afraid to turn his back on Bornval and Elros. His mind flooded, thoughts whirling and whirling: it was Maglor running to save them; it was a monster of the forest; a deer; it was nothing, a branch falling; it could not be Maglor, for Maglor was still singing; no, Maglor was not singing, it was only the memory of his song playing in Elrond’s mind—

The great body of a man launched past him, straight for Bornval. He ran with a limp. He held aloft a great club.

“Embor!” came Elros’ little voice, barely audible beneath the man’s shouting in a language Elrond did not know. Embor was alive? Yes, yes, that was him! Speaking the tongue of his people. He was going to save them! He would take them back, as he had promised. No, that wasn’t right: they were not going back, that was what they had decided. Maglor was taking them to his home, and they were nearly there.

While these thoughts leapt about like sparks from a bonfire grown too big, suddenly Bornval was on the ground. Embor lifted his club, bringing it down on Bornval’s head. No! Elrond heard someone shout, so close and loud that it could only have been himself. Why had he said it? Bornval was cruel, he had pulled his knife on Elros, didn’t he want him to die?

Maglor came charging through the trees. His mouth was wide open; he must have been shouting, but panic plugged Elrond’s ears. Maglor seized Embor’s arm, the one holding the club, and with a twist of his whole body he threw Embor to his back.

Please, no! Elrond did not think he would be able to forgive Maglor for killing Embor. But Maglor stepped back, hands held at shoulder height with his palms exposed. Embor sat up. It was then Elrond noticed the pale tracks down Embor’s face and neck: ridges of scarring. Most of his left ear was missing. And his left arm, exposed by his torn shirtsleeves, was hollowed out near the elbow, like a chunk of flesh had been torn away, leaving behind a smooth valley of scarred skin.

At some point during the fight, Elros had run to Elrond’s side. Their hands were twined between them.

Embor panted. He did not even look at them. “You are unarmed,” he said to Maglor.

“I do not want to fight you.”

Embor laughed. Something was not right: though he was big and strong, Embor had always seemed gentle, and safe. He did not seem so now: not with his ugly scars, his matted beard, and the bloodied club in his hand. Why was Maglor not armed?

“Come, son of Fëanor!” Embor heaved his great bulk up to standing. “I have hunted you for weeks, I will not have you deny me my revenge now. Fight!”

“Son of Agida,” said Maglor, and Embor blinked. How did Maglor know the name of Embor’s father? “Tell me what I have done to earn your hatred and I will make it right. I will not fight you.”

Embor swung his club. It cut through the air, narrowly missing Maglor’s head. Elrond and Elros both flinched; Maglor did not.

“Put the weapon down,” he said, firm the way Uncle Círdan was firm when he and Elros were younger and would not share their toys with other children.

Embor did not listen. He swung again, this time hitting Maglor in the chest hard enough that the thud of its impact could be heard. Maglor gasped sharply. “Stop,” he said, his voice high and unnatural. “You do not want to do this.”

“Your soldier meant to kill them!”

“What?” Maglor’s eyes darted their way, a swift look, but long enough that he did not avoid the next swing of Embor’s club.

This time Maglor staggered, feet tangling together, and fell to his back. He coughed, dragged the breath in with ragged squeals that grew fainter and fainter until no noise came at all. He was trying to speak, but no sounds followed the movement of his lips. His eyes were seeping tears.

He snarled, a terrifying picture, and lunged. He grabbed Embor by the throat, still wheezing and coughing and sputtering spit and tears as he threw him onto his back. Embor kicked and flung his arms, but Maglor was immovable, pressing down on him. Elrond had heard that Elves could summon strength far greater than their physical form suggested, but he had never seen it. Embor could do nothing but kick and squirm and beat the ground with his fists. Maglor pushed and pushed, hacking and wheezing, clearly in pain himself, and he kept opening his mouth to speak, only to cough again.

It was horrible. It was the most horrible thing Elrond had ever seen, the way Embor’s face froze in pain and alarm. He was dead. Maglor had killed him.

Maglor knelt back on his heels, coughed, then tipped forwards onto his hands to support himself. His coughs grew shorter, less laboured. He gasped, then clutched his chest with an agonised shout. A dozen emotions Elrond could not name, some he had never even seen before, rolled over Maglor’s face.

Finally, still holding his chest, he looked at him and Elros. “Is it true? Was Bornval going to kill you?”

Elros shook his head. Elrond was not so sure his brother was right, but it had been him Bornval had held the knife to.

Maglor gave a long, thin wail and rolled his eyes towards the sky. “Ai Ilúvatar, what have I done?” The effort of lifting his neck seemed to induce another fit of coughing.

Elrond looked at the two dead bodies on the ground, and Maglor kneeling and coughing at Embor’s feet. He began to shake. What would they do if Maglor died? They would be all alone in the forest full of darkness and danger. No one would ever know what had happened to them.

His brother was so much braver than him. Elros wasn’t shaking; his arms around Elrond’s ribs were all that was keeping him upright. Pushing against the tight cage of his ribs, Elrond found the breath to ask: “Are you going to die?”

“No,” said Maglor. He wheezed. “No. I am hurt, but I will be well. Come, come. Sit near me while I lie here a while.”

What could they do but go to him? Elros slid his arms off Elrond’s body and took his hand. Elrond’s feet drifted over the ground as in a dream; he could not feel them. Elros tugged at his hand, beckoning him to sit. They sank down in a heap beside Maglor.

They marched onwards, cloaked in mournful silence. Maglor’s chest screamed in pain. The trees were thinning. The forest taunted him: laying out the path of escape even as he raced against the faltering of his lung. The pressure built against his heart. He had seen enough of war to know that the longer he went without draining the wound within him, the more likely his lung would collapse entirely; the more likely he would die.

Dornil’s imagined voice admonished him: Have you learned nothing of the danger of a desperate man? And with two children in your care! Throwing yourself into harm’s way for the sake of your mercy, as you would call it. Look where mercy has gotten you.

“We will stop here for the night,” said Maglor, untangling his hands from the children’s.

“But why?” one of them asked. With pain overwhelming his thoughts, Maglor struggled to tell them apart. “We went much further the other days, and it’s still light.”

“Yes, that is true.” Maglor rested a hand on the crown of the child’s head. Elros, this one, with his quick speech. “But I am recovering from the wound I suffered this morning. We will journey further tomorrow, hm? Do you see how the trees have grown thinner? That means we are nearly out.”

Elros puckered his lips and pulled them to the side. “I was sick and I got better,” he said.

“You did,” said Maglor, and stroked his soft black curls. A cough seized him, and a stab of pain sent him to his knees.

“Are we going to eat?” Elros asked.

The coughing fit kept Maglor from answering. He waved a hand in the direction of his pack, hoping there was still something in it they could eat. He did not have the strength to forage from the woods tonight.

“Come, Elero,” said Elrond. “We’ll find something to eat.”

Maglor willed the spasms to cease. “Stay. You cannot go off alone. There is—” he coughed, “there is food in my pack.”

“We won’t go where you cannot see us,” Elrond said. “We need more food.”

“Anyway,” said Elros. “What will you do if we are threatened?”

This made Maglor laugh. A welcome release, worth the pain and risk of aggravating his lung. “Very well. Sing as you search, won’t you? So I know you are not in danger?”

They nodded.

Maglor lay back, propping his head upon a stone and forcing his eyes open. Their song was not one Maglor had heard before.

'Twas in the Land of Willows where the grass is long and green—
I was fingering my harp-strings, for a wind had crept unseen
And was speaking in the tree-tops, while the voices of the reeds
Were whispering reedy whispers as the sunset touched the meads
Inland musics subtly magic that those reeds alone could weave
'Twas in the Land of Willows that once Ylmir came at eve.

Maglor smiled each time the song was interrupted with friendly disagreements on the phrasing and on which line came next. The song concluded, they seemed to forget why they had been singing and stopped; but their conversation carried on. Maglor listened to the pleasant lilt of their voices, paying the content no mind.

Then the conversation turned to him.

“What is wrong with him? He’s not bleeding.”

“Maybe it is like when you hit your head. He’s wounded inside.”

“He keeps coughing.”

“Do you remember when you almost drowned you kept coughing?”

“I didn’t almost drown! I got water in my nose.”

“Mama said you almost drowned.”

“Mama was always worried.”

They fell silent. The sweep of an owl’s wings whooshed somewhere up above.

“What if Maglor dies?”

“He says he needs to rest. Then he will be better. I rested and I got better.”

“But what if he doesn’t?”

“He is an elf. They cannot die like that.”

“His sister died after he had already healed her.”

A pause.

“Maybe we should help him.”

“How?”

“There must be a way.”

At this they stopped talking and a moment later picked up the song again.

They returned with two cloth sacks filled with wild carrots, garlic, and a handful of the summer’s last berries. Maglor carefully propped himself on his elbows and praised their industriousness.

“The carrots are better cooked but we can eat them raw,” said Elrond.

“Yuck.” Elros spat out a berry. “It tastes like soil.”

“Don’t waste!” his brother said, alarmed. “It doesn’t matter how it tastes, it’s food.”

Elros scowled and held the handful of berries out to Maglor. “Do you want them?”

Maglor would have laughed if a cough had not robbed him of his breath. “You eat those things,” he said when the fit had passed, “I will be well without food for some time yet.”

Two pairs of wide grey eyes stared at him, disbelieving.

“Please do not worry. I will be quite all right. You’ll see.”

He was awake through the night, not coughing but breathing too shallowly and painfully to find rest. The children lay on the ground beside him. They did not shy away when he draped an arm over them. Elros’ heart thudded softly against his chest, and the comfort of another beating heart soothed his pain somewhat.

Would they truly help him, if he asked? Could he find the will, the humility to ask it of them if it came to that? Would it be worthwhile? Whether he lived or died in the attempt, would the deed not haunt them for the rest of their lives?

If it were done, it would need to be done quickly and with courage. It would be better if he prepared them for it. They might well refuse, and then it would be decided; his survival would be left to chance. He might live long enough to get them out of this wood; he might even make it to Amon Ereb, where there were healers who could bring him back. Yes: he must believe it possible. It did not matter how unlikely any of it was; despair meant only certain failure.

Tomorrow he would do it. He would instruct them on how to save his life.

By the light of morning, walking to the tune of the children’s chatter, it was more difficult to imagine broaching the subject of death. Besides, his pain had lessened somewhat; though sleepless, his rest had helped. It may yet be that his body would heal itself.

In a moment of quiet, Elrond scurried up to walk beside him. “Maglor?” he said.

“Yes?”

A string of leather hung from Elrond’s closed fist. “I want to give you this.” He opened his hand to reveal a carved wooden pendant, a perfect circle engraved at its centre. It was painted with vine-like lines that reminded Maglor of the patterns the Penni inked on their skin.

“What is it?” Maglor asked.

“An amulet for protection.”

“Where did you get it?”

Elrond’s eyes darted to the ground. “Nelpen gave them to us. He said it would protect us.”

“Do you think I need protection?”

“Well, you are sick.” Elrond’s voice faltered and he fell out of step. “Maybe you can just borrow it until you are better?”

Maglor brought them to a stop. He looked from Elrond to Elros, both of them watching him expectantly. Were they truly concerned for him? He could tell them now. It would follow naturally. They knew something was wrong; they deserved to know what it was, and what might become of him.

“That is very kind,” he said. “I will return it when I am better.” He ran his thumb over the wood and its engraving. “This is a very special gift. You have good hearts, both of you.”

For the first time since they had left the Penni behind, Elrond smiled, revealing a soft dimple high up one cheek, close to his ear.

Every night, Elrond forced himself to stay awake as long as he could. He needed to know that Maglor slept. He needed to know that he was healing. But every night, he fell asleep first, and in the morning Maglor would be up, preparing food and packing their things for the day.

“Elves need little sleep,” Maglor told him. “I am resting, even if I am not sleeping. You need not worry.”

That was not true. Elves who were injured or sick needed to sleep. They needed to visit the Gardens in their dreams. That is what Círdan told them when a beam had fallen on his head. And Maglor kept coughing and clutching his chest. He was trying to hide it from them but they saw, just like they had seen when Mama tried to hide away her sorrow.

One morning, though, Elrond was woken by Elros jabbing a finger into his side.

“Is he breathing?” Elros whispered. Elrond was lying in between his brother and Maglor. He bent his neck back, keeping the rest of his body as still as possible. Maglor’s eyes were closed.

“Yes,” Elrond said, after ascertaining that the slow rise and fall of Maglor’s chest was not an illusion. “He is asleep.”

They shuffled out from under their blankets, ever so quietly so as not to wake their guardian.

Their packs ready, Elros lingered, staring at Maglor on the ground. The sun was climbing high and still he had not stirred. “Do you think it is safe to leave him? What if we get lost?”

“We are already lost,” said Elrond.

They set out on their own. Every hundred steps, Elrond left behind a colourful pebble to mark the way back. The forest did not seem so gloomy that day. The trees here were thinner, as Maglor had said, and many were losing their leaves, opening up the canopy to more light.

“These woods remind me of Nimbrethil,” said Elros.

“Those were birches,” said Elrond, remembering the woods full of tall white trees like pillars. Papa had built Vingilot from those trees. Everyone said it was the finest ship that had yet been built this side of the Sea — but it had not remained this side of the Sea long. It had taken their father away and never brought him back.

“I know,” said Elros, “but these woods are pleasant like Nimbrethil. It doesn’t feel so dangerous here.”

Elrond said nothing. A sombre mood had fallen on him; he did not like remembering.

They carried on, walking hand-in-hand but not speaking. Elrond kept his mind busy counting steps. He counted in Sindarin, then Quenya, then Hadorian. He struggled when he came to twenty in Hadorian and needed Elros’ help. He even tried counting in the tongue of the Haladin, what little Gwereth had taught them, but he only made it to five.

He was so occupied with counting that he was down to two pebbles before he noticed they were running low. “Elros,” he said, “we have to stop. We’ve run out of trail markers.”

“Oh.” They both looked about, assessing if they’d come any closer to finding the edge of the forest. “I think it looks brighter than way,” said Elros, pointing.

Elrond considered. “I think it is only that the sun has risen in the sky. It must be nearly noon. Do you think Maglor has woken?”

Elros pouted and hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe he will see our pebbles and come find us?”

“Maybe.” Elros sank onto a tree root and opened his pack. “I am hungry.”

They snacked on nuts and the starchy berries, dried out in the sun. Elrond took time to chew each morsel carefully. He felt more full if he ate slowly, and he told Elros as much but his brother said it was all in his imagination and too little food was too little food, no matter how long you took to eat it. Well, whatever the case, taking his time eating also delayed deciding what to do next.

Just as he was rolling up his satchel and fastening the buckle, a most unexpected thing occurred. The root they were seated on moved.

Elrond leapt to his feet. “Did you feel that? The tree moved!”

Elros stood, backing away. “It did not,” he said, but with such doubt that Elrond was sure he had felt it too.

“Enyd!” Elrond cried. He tugged at Elros’ sleeve. “You remember, I told you? Orfion said they were in this forest.” Fear swept aside by excitement, he set his palm against the smooth bark; or, rather, his skin. “Lord Beech,” he said, not knowing the proper way to address an Onod, and thinking this one looked most like a beech.

His sturdy base rumbled and shook, roots uncurling, drawing toe-like tendrils from the soil. Overhead, branches shivered, bringing to mind a man waking from slumber and stretching his arms.

Elros had retreated, and now hissed: “Elrond, come away! It could be dangerous!”

But it was too late to flee, even if Elrond had wanted to. The Onod was awake, and turning his amber eyes down on them. His long mossy beard wagged as he spoke. It was nothing like any language Elrond had heard, rumbling and deep and endless, but it was language, and whatever words were in it, it seemed friendly. Though the Onod had not the expressiveness of a human face, Elrond was sure that he was smiling.

“Hello, I am Elrond,” he said. “This is my brother, Elros. I am afraid I do not speak your tongue, but I do speak three languages. A bit of some others,” he added, for he had learned some of the tongue of the Penni while they stayed with them. “Perhaps you know one of them?” Then he repeated himself in all the ways he knew how.

“Hasty little sapling!” the Onod finally answered in Sindarin, the first language Elrond had tried. “Ho hum, barararum, yes, yes. I am…” He paused for a long moment. “Neldoremmen, yes, that is it, in your tongue. That is what the Elves called me. I know the tongue of the Elves. Elrond. Elros.” He looked between them. “What are two little saplings doing alone in the forest?”

“We are looking for a way out,” Elrond said.

“Out?” said Neldoremmen. “Ho-hum, two saplings seeking a way out. I have not been Out for a very long time. Hum-hum, barum, let me see, let me see if I remember…”

The panic brought on a fit of hacking, wheezing, a pinching of his lungs, a pain so great his eyes watered with it. Maglor had no voice with which to call for them. Gone! Had they fled? What a fool he had been, to think he had earned their trust. Of course they would flee, the moment the chance came. Ai, but he should not have slept! They had come so far, they were so near, and he had lost them.

It was the last strain his lung could take. He was abruptly overcome with dizziness, swooning, and rolled onto his back, each laboured breath like a knife. He groped over the ground, absurdly, thinking in his panic that if only he could find a bit of hollowed bark he could save himself. Absurd. His hand recoiled. What use was suffering when death was certain? He reached for the knife at his hip, struggling even to unsheathe it with how his limbs shook.

As he fumbled with the knife, trying to arrange it at his throat, he heard a voice. “Stop! Maglor, stop!”

“Elros?” he mouthed. “Elrond?” The knife fell from his hand.

“You’re dying!” one of them cried, and fell to his knees beside him. “Don’t die! Maglor, no! We found the way out, don’t die.”

It seemed to Maglor that he had been lifted upon a cold, roaring wave that he rode, suspended high upon its crest, towards his end.

“A hollow branch,” he instructed. “Narrow.” One of them ran off. The other kept wailing. Maglor shoved the knife into his hand: so small, cold and clammy with sweat. “Here.” He pointed to the space between his ribs where he needed to pierce a hole.

“I have it,” said the other child.

“You want me to kill you?” the one holding the knife said.

“No. No, a hole. A hole for the wood straw. Draw…” he breathed, “draw the air out.”

“It will hurt you.”

“No time,” said Maglor. “Now. Do it.”

He barely felt the knife piercing his chest. The child had a steady hand. “Enough,” he said. “Now the straw. Push,” he urged, even as the pain of the hollow branch breaking through his new-made wound overwhelmed him. “Your mouth. You must draw…”

Somehow, they understood. The trapped air and blood was drawn from Maglor’s chest. His lung filled, pressed against his ribs. He breathed, then the great wave of pain overtook him.

“He’s waking up!” A voice, frenzied.

Maglor lay on a bed in Himring; the dragon smoke had burned his lungs. No: He was laid out on a stretcher, swaying, each jostle aggravating the bones fractured in the great tumult of their retreat.

No — that was all long ago. This was some other time; some other dance with death. Do you feel a longing to escape, Maglor? He blinked, and at once squeezed his eyes shut against the intensity of the light. The sun battered him with its rays, but he was cold, so cold. And damp; his chest was wet. His fingers found the sticky coating of blood.

“I am sorry,” the voice said. “We tried to bandage it.”

A child? Why would a child attend him?

“Maglor? Are you alive?”

Maglor peeled his eyes open again, rolling them to the side to see the face of the one who spoke to him. He gasped.

“You—” he reached for the innocent face. Freckled. “Elrond. Where is your brother?”

“I’m here,” said the other child, who knelt just behind.

“So you are,” said Maglor. “So you are. Little stars.”

Who can say where the river will flow or the tree will fall? That had been the saying among the Penni. How strange the twists of fate. He was saved.

The twins were rapt with mixed horror and fascination as Maglor cleaned and sutured and re-dressed the wound in his chest.

“You did well,” he said. “Which of you was it held the knife?”

“Me,” said Elros. “Aerandir taught us woodcarving, I even had my own set of tools, even though Gwereth said it was dangerous to use knives, but I never cut my fingers…” He trailed off. “Will it be better soon?”

“It should heal quickly now that I have tended it.” Maglor locked eyes with Elrond. He had said little since Maglor had recovered. Small wonder: his had been the most gruesome task in saving him. No child should be subjected to such horrors. Even Maglor, who had seen and treated many hideous wounds, was yet haunted by them. It would be one of Elrond’s earliest memories: sucking from the dying body of the warrior who had taken him from his home.

For now, he was docile, processing. Elros was not so. He was eager to get on and buzzing with excitement over the knowledge they had gained on their expedition.

“So we can follow Neldoremmen’s butterflies soon?” he said. “It is only a few days’ journey, he says, even for our little legs. Follow the ones with brown spotted wings. They are his friends. They will take you to the forest’s edge.”

“Yes, so you have said.” Maglor had not meant to sound so tired. But he was tired. Now that his lung had healed and he could breathe naturally again, he was aware of other pains. His ribs had been fractured in at least two places, and his fresh wound throbbed angrily.

Before Maglor could muster an excuse for further delay, Elrond spoke for him. “I think we should stay tonight and set out tomorrow.”

“Why!” Elros cried. “There are many hours of daylight left. And it is safe in these parts, remember, Neldoremmen said, he and his friends would watch us.”

“Then we will be safe staying here,” Elrond said. Maglor recognised the signs of something passing between the brothers — not mind-to-mind, but in the simple way that all siblings could speak to one another: with a narrowing or widening of the eyes, a minute flicker of the mouth.

“Fine.” Elros crossed his arms over his chest. “But tomorrow at first light we are leaving.”

“An excellent plan,” said Maglor.

Butterflies were creatures of Irmo. His Gardens glimmered with the fluttering of wings, in hues a hundredfold. Maglor remembered, vividly, thousands of them blanketing the body of Míriel; how they had fled in a great cloud of colour when he and Atya and Nelyo approached. It was not the first time they had visited her, nor the last (though they went less and less), but it was this image Maglor recalled when he thought of his grandmother. Shrouded in butterflies. How strange, he had thought, with his boyish fascination with all aspects of the world; how strange that they all should land upon a vacant corpse when there were fragrant flowers all around. But they fled before Fëanor and his sons; dashed off in all directions, disappearing in the foliage.

Maglor was always sorry to have frightened them.

“There’s one!” Elros cried, and tugged at Maglor’s hand.

These butterflies they followed were brown and spotted black, scarcely to be seen against the bark and detritus of the forest. They fanned their wings sleepily as the three of them passed.

“I see it,” said Maglor. He winced and hoped the child did not see it. Every breath still pained him.

“I see another!” Elrond called from up ahead. “How much further, do you think?”

“Hmm.” Elros tapped a finger to his lips. “What do you think, Maglor?”

“How am I to know?” Maglor smiled at him. “Why don’t you ask the butterflies?”

Elros let out an affronted puff of air and his hand slipped from Maglor’s palm. He hurried to catch up to his brother.

Brown wings darted across Maglor’s vision. What if he had died? What if they all three had died, there in Taur-im-Duinath? Or were the two children skipping ahead but a vision, drawing him deeper, through the Gardens to the Halls? Halls from which he might never return. Ah, but would it not be welcome? Bodiless and aimless, yet confined. Unable to wander, unable to err. He shook the thought loose. He had not died; because of Elros and Elrond, he had not died. And for them, he would live.

They emerged on the southeast edge of the forest on a day of wintry rains. Beyond the cover of the trees, the ground was soaked through, great pools forming wherever the land dipped. Through the mists, the grey height of Amon Ereb appeared intolerably distant. Yet there it was. One steady foot before the other, and they would come to it by nightfall.

Maglor searched himself for a spark of relief and found nothing but the cold of his hands and feet and the ache of his ribs. The weight of Elrond and Elros propped under both his arms, shivering. There would be no relief until he saw them put in dry clothes, laid out on warm beds, asleep behind guarded walls.

He was half-sleeping on his feet when the riders found them.

“Ho there!” a voice called, and Maglor looked up from under his soaked hood.

The captain’s face paled. “My lord?”

Elrond stirred awake, turned his face to the stranger.

“Lord Maglor. You are alive. They are alive.” The rider’s dark eyes scanned them. “Where… where are the others?”

“Gone, Captain Lisgon,” Maglor said. “All of them gone.”

Lisgon shook himself from his amaze, turned to his small following. “Cruinil, go with speed to Lord Maedhros. Tell him his brother has returned. With the sons of Elwing.”

They were horsed and wrapped in warmer cloaks. Elros and Elrond refused to ride with any but Maglor and sat one before and one behind. Elrond’s head tucked into the curve of his stomach, drooping to one side to rest against his arm. The side of Elros’ face rested against his back, arms snugged about his waist.

Maedhros emerged from the curtain of rain, leading his horse behind. He held his head high but looked down and to the side.

“Leave us,” Maedhros said to his captain. Lisgon trotted off with his company following, leaving Maglor forlorn.

“I am sorry,” said Maglor. His whole body shook. The children stirred and tensed, turning their faces to the warrior who stood before them. “This is my brother,” Maglor answered their unvoiced question. “We are safe now.”

At last Maedhros lifted his face, pushed back his hood to reveal hair damp with rain and grown longer than it had been the last Maglor had seen him. He held Maglor’s eyes only a moment, then walked silently towards them. He helped the children down from the horse. They clung to each other the moment their feet touched the ground.

Maglor crumpled into his brother’s arms. The tremors running through him burst their bonds.

“Maitimo,” he said, “Nelyo, I am sorry. I lost everyone.”

His brother cradled his head against his chest. Maglor felt and heard the frightened drum of Maedhros’ heart, beating too fast, betraying the emotion he attempted to strangle with stillness and silence. Maglor’s chest spasmed painfully as the press of his brother’s hand on his head, his arm on his back, squeezed at the heart of his sorrow. Tears spilled from his eyes.

At last Maedhros spoke: “You did not lose them.” Elros and Elrond drew close; one of them cleaved to Maglor’s leg. “Dearest brother,” said Maedhros, breath grazing Maglor’s temple. He kissed it. “How I feared for you.”

For a moment, at least, Maglor brushed against a feeling he had not expected ever to know again. Even here, in defeat and disgrace, love seeped into the fissures carved by grief. Hope kindled.

The healers tended Maglor’s wounds. Maedhros came to him, now and then, and asked if he was recovering well. Quieted him when he tried to fill the taut silence with explanations and muddled accounts of his journey. “Later,” Maedhros soothed. “You need not recall it now.”

Only when Maglor rose from bed, hale enough to walk about the fortress and rediscover life within stone walls, life as lord of a shattered people, did Maedhros let his tears fall. He spoke of remorse. He told Maglor they would never again be parted, for they alone remained.

Maglor thought of the twin boys, wound together for comfort, sleeping on a nest of blankets by the fire in his own room, for they refused still to sleep without him near, and he thought: not altogether alone. Not yet.

Art by starshadeemily

Great was the sorrow of Eärendil and Elwing for the ruin of the havens of Sirion, and the captivity of their sons, and they feared that they would be slain; but it was not so. For Maglor took pity upon Elros and Elrond, and he cherished them, and love grew after between them, as little might be thought; but Maglor’s heart was sick and weary with the burden of the dreadful oath.

- The Silmarillion, 'Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath'

Chapter End Notes

Neldoremmen (“tangled beech”), Cruinil - From Chestnutpod’s Elvish name list.

Aerandir - Canonical, another of Eärendil’s crewmen.

Elrond and Elros’ song - From ‘The Horns of Ylmir’, a poem by Tolkien introduced thus: “Tuor recalleth in a song sung to his son Eärendil the visions that Ylmir's conches once called before him in the twilight in the Land of Willows.”

Maglor’s Injury - As I said re: Dornil’s injury, all the things that can go wrong with a body confuse me. I am not sure that what happens to Maglor would make it into a biology textbook. Maglor has a collapsed lung (pneumothorax) from the impact of Embor’s club; at first only partial and (because apparently Fëanorians love pretending everything is fine when they are fatally wounded) and becoming severe. While researching, I found this very interesting passage from a 13th century poem recounting a “tube thoracostomy,” which is what I followed in describing what is done to Maglor. Please, you need to read this:

He grasped a branch of the linden tree,
slipped the bark off like a tube–
he was no fool in the matter of wounds–
and inserted it into the body through the wound.
Then he bade the woman suck on it
until blood flowed toward her.

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Original Characters

Bornval, a Noldo soldier in the company Maglor takes to search for Elrond and Elros.

Dornil (Q. Nornawen), the widow of Caranthir and Maglor's chief commander. A Noldo.

Embor, an Easterling descended of the followers of Bór. A friend of Gwereth who voluntarily joins the sons of Feanor after the sack of Sirion. His father and grandfather fought in the Nirnaeth under Maglor and Maedhros.

Gwereth, a woman of the people of Haleth who fled Brethil as a young child. Also an orphan, she was friends with Elwing from childhood and became her children's nurse.

Lisgon, a Sinda of north Beleriand and former thrall of Angband. Maedhros' High Captain.

Orfion, a Green-elf of Ossiriand who became a follower of Amrod and Amras and swore himself to the service of Maedhros and Maglor after his lords died at Sirion.

Tornel, a scout in the company Maglor takes to search for Elrond and Elros.

This list is only those who play a significant role and appear in more than one chapter.

Chapter Summaries

Summary of Chapter 1: Last and Cruellest Slaying

Dornil, widow of Caranthir and commander under Maglor, witnesses the loss of the Silmaril from the streets of Sirion. Lisgon, High Captain of Maedhros, finds her and delivers the command from their lords that the survivors are to be invited to join the Feanorian retreat. Dornil departs to carry out her orders.

At the Feanorian camp, Maglor sings to the wounded. Maedhros takes him aside and tells him that ships have been sighted coming from Balar. He tells Maglor that he intends to send him south with a group of civilians. They are interrupted by the arrival of Lisgon and a Green-elf, Orfion, who served Amrod and Amras. Orfion tells them the story of how the Silmaril was lost on the cliffs between Sirion and Cape Balar: Amrod spotted Elwing with her servant (Gwereth), her two children, and a guard (Galdor). Amrod threatened Elrond and Elros and Elwing jumped wearing the Silmaril. Orfion stopped Amrod from killing Elrond and Elros and was cast off. There is a struggle and Galdor slays Amrod. Gwereth and the twins flee, Galdor running after them.

After the story, Maedhros invites Orfion to join their company on the retreat. Maedhros commands Maglor to find Elrond and Elros and ensure they are “safe and unharmed.” He is to tell no one of his errand. Maglor departs.

This chapter title is an allusion to: And so there came to pass the last and cruellest of the slayings of Elf by Elf; and that was the third of the great wrongs achieved by the accursed oath.

Summary of Chapter 2: Taken Captive

Gwereth, Elrond, and Elros escape to the vacant home of Gwereth’s friend Embor, an Easterling, and take refuge in the cellar. Gwereth struggles to calm Elros, who is crying to return to get Elwing. She discovers meanwhile that Elrond has wet himself out of fear and replaces his soiled trousers with a rag. Elros becomes panicked and while beating on the cellar door falls backwards and hits his head, momentarily losing consciousness. It is then that Gwereth hears two elves approaching; she hides the twins in a crate.

Maglor comes into the cellar, leaving his commander Dornil to guard the entrance. He conveys to her the message that the people of Sirion are invited to join the host of the sons of Fëanor. She asks about aid from Balar, to which Maglor says he does not know. She tries to resist his questioning but eventually admits that the children are with her. Maglor goes to them and begins to tend to Elros, who vomits while he is holding him. Maglor asks her whether the children are elves or mortals, and Gwereth replies that they are mortal; but Maglor knows she is not telling the whole truth and then introduces himself to her. Gwereth lunges to attack him and Dornil is suddenly behind her, holding her back. Her hands are tied and she is led out of the cellar and onto Dornil’s horse. Maglor brings the twins with him on his horse, and they depart.

This chapter title is an allusion to: Then such few of that people as did not perish in the assault joined themselves to Gil-galad, and went with him to Balar; and they told that Elros and Elrond were taken captive

Summary of Chapter 3: They Alone Remained Thereafter

Maglor, with Elrond and Elros, and Dornil, with Gwereth, make their way back to the Fëanorian camp. Elrond struggles to understand what has happened to him and his family, and why he is being taken away. He smells and then sees a great mound of burning bodies. He overhears Maglor asking Dornil about Amras’ body, which was not recovered from the sea, and Amrod’s, which Dornil had been sent to look for and did not find.

At the camp, Maedhros and Maglor discuss his choice to take Elwing’s sons with them. Maglor’s reasons are complex and not wholly understood to him, but he gives Maedhros the rationale that they will benefit from raising the two princes sympathetic to their cause. Maedhros assents. The chapter closes with Maedhros and his captain, Lisgon, watching Maglor’s host moving towards Taur-im-Duinath.

This chapter title is an allusion to: ...but Maedhros and Maglor won the day, though they alone remained thereafter of the sons of Feanor.

Summary of Chapter 4: Sick and Weary

Dornil makes lembas for the host. Maglor comes to her with anxieties about leading the people whose home he destroyed. She tells him that he is their best hope of survival. They both realise they have heard voices in the forest. Dornil, fearful for Maglor’s mind (and her own), tries unsuccessfully to persuade him they are not real.

Gwereth attempts to entertain Elrond and Elros, who is still suffering the effects of his head injury and is too tired to play with the other children. She tells them a story about a boy and Eagles, and Elros asks if an Eagle might have saved Elwing. He says he saw he turn into a bird, but Elrond convinced him it was a dream. Maglor comes by with a yellow-root tea that is meant to relieve Elros’ pain. Gwereth is loath to take it, but when Elros refuses to eat, she decides to give it to him.

That night on her watch, Dornil notices Maglor is missing. She finds him the forest, half-mad, seemingly listening to the voices of Amras and Amrod accusing him of betraying their oath. Dornil attempts to console him.

This chapter title is an allusion to: ...but Maglor’s heart was sick and weary with the burden of the dreadful oath.

Summary of Chapter 5: The Half-elven

Gwereth and Elros are very ill and confined to their carriage. Elrond is kept separate from his brother, watched over by the Green-elf in Maglor’s host, Orfion. Orfion tells him about Ents. The elves, while not physically affected by the sickness, are going mad, some becoming violent with each other. Gwereth, suspicious of the elvish medicine, refuses to take it or administer it to Elros.

Embor visits them with a herb Gwereth had requested. Embor admits that he is losing confidence in Maglor, who he would have thought capable of curing the disease. Gwereth begs him to help them.

A healer reports on the losses of life to Maglor. Many children are dying. Embor visits Maglor’s tent. He introduces himself as an Easterling descended from those who followed Maglor and Maedhros in the Nirnaeth. He confronts Maglor about his inaction. Maglor responds that he is not powerful enough to fight Morgoth, who has sent the disease in the rains. Embor challenges him, asking him if he has tried. Maglor dismisses him. Dornil arrives and reports that Elrond is missing.

Elrond explores the forest. He is found by a dark-elf named Nelpen. He learns that Nelpen is, in fact, half-elven like him, for his people (the Penni) mingled with Men in the distant past. Orfion finds Elrond with Nelpen. Elrond becomes upset and overwhelmed with emotion. He goes with Orfion back to the camp.

As Maglor is searching in another part of the forest, Dornil finds him and reprimands him for having left the camp. She tells him Elrond was found and he rushes back. Maglor embraces Elrond in his relief. He reflects on what Maedhros had truly wanted him to do with them. Elrond tells Maglor he met someone in the forest. Maglor assumes he means the voices he also hears. Orfion lies, telling him they saw no one.

This chapter title is an allusion to the opening of Chapter 24 of The Silmarillion: Bright Earendil was then lord of the people that dwelt nigh to Sirion’s mouths; and he took to wife Elwing the fair, and she bore to him Elrond and Elros, who are called the Half-elven.

Summary of Chapter 6: Put Forth All His Power

Elros has recovered from his illness, but Gwereth’s state worsens. Having given instructions to Embor to take the twins back to Balar, she falls asleep.

Embor leads the twins into Taur-im-Duinath. They hear strange sounds and see eyes in the night. Later, they are attacked by a group of wild cats. Elrond and Elros escape up a tree, but Embor fights the animals. He is taken down and dragged off by them, but a sudden music and light in the water drive them off.

Back at the camp, Maglor has sung Morgoth’s poison from the waters and is exhausted by the effort. Dornil carries him back to his tent. He despairs that he was too late to save Elrond and Elros. He insists they must find them. He sends Dornil to see to Gwereth.

Gwereth awakes to find Dornil tending her. Dornil reproachfully asks her where she has sent Elrond and Elros. Gwereth does not answer, but realises in the way Dornil tends her that she is not as hard-hearted as she seems. Later, Gwereth asks to accompany the search for the twins. Dornil refuses, but says she will be going. They discuss Dornil’s loyalty to Maglor. The conversation ends with Dornil reassuring Gwereth that they will find the twins.

This chapter title is an allusion to Finrod in the chapter 'Of Beren and Lúthien': But when the wolf came for Beren, Felagund put forth all his power, and burst his bonds.

Summary of Chapter 7: Guests

Dornil attempts to dissuade Maglor from leading a search party for Elrond and Elros, saying he should take time to recover after expending himself curing the contagion with Song. They have a tense conversation about Maglor’s belief that they can heal the hurts they have caused, with Dornil telling him that Elrond and Elros hate him. Maglor dismisses her and puts her in charge of leading the host onwards.

In Taur-im-Duinath, Orfion, who has joined Maglor’s search party, tells them that the trees are warning them of danger nearby. Later, he reveals his knowledge of the Penni by suggesting that Elrond and Elros may have been found by others. Just then, one of the Penni comes upon them. With Orfion helping to interpret, they learn that they do have Elrond and Elros and follow him back to the hidden caves of the Penni.

There they meet Nennel, sister of Nelpen, who is looking after Elrond and Elros. Maglor and his company dine with the Penni. Nelpen reveals to Maglor that the twins were found by his father, but that they found no trace of Embor who was likely dragged off by the cats who had attacked him when they fled at the light and music that came down the river. The Penni marvel to learn that Maglor was responsible for the Song. Maglor reveals some but not all of the details of how he came upon Elrond and Elros. He also inquires about the voices he has been hearing and learns that they are spirits of Houseless Penni and can provide counsel. Over the course of the conversation, Maglor gains the sympathy of the Penni and the interest, at least, of Elrond and Elros.

Maglor’s company remains for some time in the caves of the Penni. Maglor learns of their ways and begins to grow closer to Elrond and Elros. Realising he cannot stay with them forever and must return to Amon Ereb, in grief he nonetheless asks Nelpen to take Elrond and Elros. Nelpen tells him they cannot; they do not involve themselves in the wars of the world outside their woods.

This chapter title is an allusion to the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth: '...To me the difference seems like that between one who visits a strange country, and abides there a while (but need not), and one who has lived in that land always (and must). To the former all things that he sees are new and strange, and in that degree lovable. To the other all things are familiar, the only things that are his own, and in that degree precious.'
'If you mean that Men are the guests,' said Andreth.
'You have said the word,' said Finrod: 'that name we have given to you.'

Summary of Chapter 8: Scattered

Dornil finds Gwereth grieving near the eaves of the forest. Gwereth questions Dornil’s convictions on doom and inevitability.

Rangers from Amon Ereb arrive and report that there are orcs patrolling the hills. They advise Dornil to travel under the cover of Taur-im-Duinath.

The host becomes lost in the mazes of the forest. Exhausted, they are attacked at night by a band of the wild cats. Dornil fights them and is nearly killed, but Gwereth saves her and is then killed herself.

Dornil wakes on a stretcher. Only a handful of her followers remain. They refuse to stay and look for Maglor, saying they are going east over the mountains to start anew. Dornil threatens their leader, and they abandon her.

This chapter title is an allusion to: ...and the sons of Feanor wandered as leaves before the wind. Their arms were scattered, and their league broken; and they took to a wild and woodland life...

Summary of Chapter 9: Burden

Orfion has his hair braided by Nennel and she allays his concerns about choosing to stay with the Penni. Elrond, Elros, and Maglor’s company prepare to depart. Elrond becomes emotional about leaving, and realises the reason Maglor did not offer them the opportunity to stay is because the Penni do want them. He wonders why Maglor would want him.

They journey through the forest and it becomes evident to Elrond that Maglor is lost, though he tries to keep this from them. Some time into their journey, Dornil finds them. She is gravely wounded. Maglor sends Elrond and Elros away with one of his company, Bornval, while he attempts to heal Dornil’s wound. In her delirium, Dornil does not know where she is. Maglor is forced to use Song to heal her.

The next day Maglor bids his company go ahead without them while he waits for Dornil to fully recover. Bornval says Maglor doesn’t have to be the one to stay, but Maglor insists. Bornval says he will also stay behind, then.

While Bornval is off seeking water, Elrond, at Elros’ prompting, asks Maglor if he was part of the army that attacked Sirion. He admits he was, and tries to explain the complicated situation to the children. Listening to him, Dornil weeps. Maglor comforts her with a song, and then Elrond asks Maglor how he knows it; Eärendil used to sing it to him and Elros. It comes out that Maglor and he share kinship, and Elrond asks if that’s why he is looking after them; Maglor says yes.

In the night, Dornil dies. The wound was not fully healed and her heart stopped. Maglor collapses in grief.

This chapter title is an allusion to: ...but Maglor’s heart was sick and weary with the burden of the dreadful oath.

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Canons
The canons of the late First Age are a bit of a special interest of mine. Tolkien wrote many Silmarillion drafts, but he only ever completed one in the prose narrative ‘Quenta’ style once: the 1930 Quenta Noldorinwa (in The Shaping of Middle-earth), Christopher Tolkien’s main source for much of the last three chapters of the published Quenta Silmarillion.

The events from the fall of Doriath to the end of the First Age had to be reconstructed for the published Silmarillion from this and other versions of the legendarium that were much earlier than the ones Christopher was able to draw from for most of the previous twenty-one chapters of the book. Christopher did an admirable job, preserving as much of his father’s original words as he could. But he had to make choices, and those choices influenced the final shape the story took.

I have taken delight in honouring those choices in this story. But I have also taken delight in mixing in ingredients from the many versions that didn’t make it into the final version.

Maglor’s Singing

In Maglor’s first appearance in the fic, he is singing over the bodies of the wounded. Pretty typical Maglor behaviour, but there is an additional reason I chose this as his entrance.
In The Sketch of the Mythology (in The Shaping of Middle-earth), the first prose summary of his legendarium, which Tolkien penned around 1926, we find the following:

In a battle all the sons of Fëanor save Maidros [footnote: Maidros and Maglor] were slain, but the last folk of Gondolin were destroyed or forced to go away and join the people of Maidros [footnote: Written in the margin: Maglor sat and sang by the sea in repentance].

This marginal note makes me very excited. When researching for the Maglor bio for the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild, I realised that you can actually trace in the texts Maglor moving from Maglor the Mighty, with nothing in particular to distinguish him, to Maglor the Mighty Singer. At the same time, his place as one of the more sympathetic of Fëanor’s sons emerges. This marginal note in the ‘Sketch’ captures, I believe, Tolkien in the act of developing the Maglor we know from the published Silmarillion. “Sat and sang by the sea in repentance” is an early spark of the idea of Maglor’s fate as the repentant wandering bard. His first appearance in this fic is my nod to that marginal note.

Amrod and Amras as the aggressors in the third kinslaying

This comes from the Annals of Beleriand, both the ‘Earlier’ (in The Shaping of Middle-earth and ‘Later’ (in The Lost Road), written between 1930 and 1937:

229 Here Damrod and Díriel [=Amrod and Amras] ravaged Sirion, and were slain. Maidros and Maglor gave reluctant aid. Sirion’s folk were slain or taken into the company of Maidros. Elrond was taken to nurture by Maglor. Elwing cast herself into the sea, but by Ulmo’s aid in the shape of a bird flew to Eärendel and found him returning.

and

329 [529] Here Damrod and Díriel ravaged Sirion, and were slain. Maidros and Maglor were there, but they were sick at heart. This was the third kinslaying. The folk of Sirion were taken into the people of Maidros, such as yet remained; and Elrond was taken to nurture by Maglor.

Christopher Tolkien did not use the Annals of Beleriand much for the published Silmarillion, so this detail does not appear there. I love it though because I think it adds to the Silmarillion’s largely sympathetic portrayal of Maedhros and Maglor, and it also parallels Celegorm as the main aggressor in the sack of Doriath. Taking the narrative and annalistic versions of the Silmarillion together gives a much clearer picture of a Maedhros and Maglor who are just so done and have been operating out of “weariness and loathing” more than a real drive to get the Silmarils back long before this phrase occurs in the published text (i.e., right before they steal them from Eönwë’s camp). I think many readers come to this conclusion about them with or without the other versions, but it’s nice to have it reaffirmed.

I wrote the beginning of a flashback scene of the conversation at Amon Ereb where Amrod and Amras clamour to kinslay, but it didn’t make it into the fic. I posted it on my Tumblr, if you’re curious.

Elwing’s Choice

Deciding how to write Elwing’s… death? suicide? mad leap? deliberate leap? was such a headache. Any time I sit down to write about Elwing, a clamour of discourse rattles around in the back of my mind such that it’s impossible for me to hear my own thoughts. Having the whole thing filtered through Orfion’s retelling gave me a degree of narrative remove that made it feel less like typing on a keyboard of landmines. Her actions only ever being interpreted by others meant I did not have to commit to what’s going on in her head (to do that, I would need to know what’s going on in mine, and as I said I cannot hear it). I give her that last line: “Please forgive me, my loves. I do not think my doom as high as Lúthien’s, but this course alone remains to me,” — which I fully intended as cryptic.

I skirted around making a strong authorial statement on Elwing’s role in all of this, but it is still my hope that the reader’s takeaway, like mine, is sympathetic.

Here’s how Elwing’s choice is written in the 1930 Quenta Noldorinwa:

…for Elwing seeing that all was lost and her child Elrond [footnote: > her children Elros and Elrond] taken captive, eluded the host of Maidros, and with the Nauglafring upon her breast she cast herself into the sea, and perished as folk thought.

For one, though only subtly different, I find this version of Elwing’s choice more obviously sympathetic. In the published Silmarillion, her motive is left rather vague: “and [the survivors of Sirion] told [the people of Gil-galad] that Elros and Elrond were taken captive, but Elwing with the Silmaril upon her breast had cast herself into the sea.” In the Quenta Noldorinwa, it’s 1) she saw that her children were taken captive, 2) she cast herself into the sea. That is why I chose to have Amrod literally holding a knife to their throats when she leaps. Is it possible she could have stopped him? Probably; Orfion and Galdor manage to. Did she, in her despair (and knowing what the sons of Fëanor did to her brothers in Doriath) believe he could be stopped? No, I don’t believe she did.

Later in the story, characters try to interpret her actions. Gwereth at first sees it as suicide committed in despair but her later conversation with Dornil reveals that she now (or also?) sees her former lady’s leap as heroic and courageous. Little Elrond doesn’t know what to make of it: he knows his mother loved them, but he can’t understand why she would have left them. When Bornval suggests to the twins that she abandoned them, Elros reacts with rage. They don’t know why Elwing did what she did, but they know she must have had a really good reason. Maglor, for his part, is too wrapped up in his guilt about his role in her (as he believes) death to think too hard about why she did it.

Elrond and Elros as Captives

One thing I committed to with respect to Elwing’s choice/leap is that no one knows she survived it (except maybe Elros, but he has that thought snuffed out). The strongest reason for me to believe that the Fëanorians did not know she had survived is what Maglor says to Maedhros when the Silmaril reappears in the sky: “If it be truly the Silmaril which we saw cast into the sea that rises again by the power of the Valar…” Maglor and Maedhros seem to have believed that the Silmaril was gone. And if they thought the Silmaril was gone, Elwing was gone with it.

I still took some time deciding on the matter, though. I don’t think the various texts rule out the possibility that the sons of Fëanor knew she and the Silmaril had survived in some manner. But for me it makes Maglor — to whom the narrative is very kind! — look pretty bad. It twists his “pity” into a hostage situation in which the sons of Fëanor intend to trade the children for the jewel. Which is in obvious tension with the feelings and motives emphatically given in the text: he “took pity” on them; “he cherished them”; because (the semicolon implies) his “heart was sick and weary with the burden of the dreadful oath.” The two things just don’t line up to me. (If I was leaning into the conceit of the biased/unreliable narrator for this fic, things would be different; but I’m not.)

That being said, the various texts consistently refer to them as “taken captive”; so, how to reconcile it with the love that grew?

By throwing mad, sad, murderous Amrod under the bus, of course.

I made Amrod the villain in the situation, 1) because as we have seen he and Amras are the villains in the Annals of Beleriand, and 2) while it could have been Maglor who took the twins captive at first and developed compassion towards them later (and I know the two things aren’t mutually exclusive, but they are in conflict), the more obvious solution to me is that it’s a different son of Fëanor acting without his elder brothers’ knowledge or permission, which agrees well with Maedhros and Maglor giving reluctant aid or standing aside as in the Annals of Beleriand.

But since my intent was to combine all canons, I still wanted to address the fact that Maedhros and Maglor keep them even after the Silmaril and Elwing are out of reach. So even pinning the worst of the crimes against Elwing and her sons on Amrod left me having to explain why Maglor keeps them. I admit I have reservations about how I muddled together motives: a not-entirely-selfless caregiver impulse combined with the justification that having the heirs of, well, everyone on their side certainly won’t hurt the reputation of the sons of Fëanor in the long run. I’m still not confident I made it work, but there it is.

It’s not a great look for Maglor, but it’s a better look than an alternative where he plays a more active role in the violence. (If you’ve interacted with me in the fandom, you’ll know I love a dark, even disturbing, take on Maglor’s kidnapdoption, but that wasn’t the story I set out to write here.)

The survivors of Sirion joining with Maedhros and the complicated question of Gil-galad (and Círdan)

In the Annals of Beleriand passages quoted above, not only are Amras and Amrod the aggressors, but the aftermath of the sack of Sirion has the survivors joining Maedhros (!?). This is actually the case in every version of the third kinslaying that Tolkien wrote where he mentioned the survivors at all, which I find fascinating and a very different story from the published Silmarillion in which Gil-galad takes the place of Maedhros as the endtimes guy to follow.

Here’s the passage in the Quenta Noldorinwa:

And so came in the end to pass the last and cruellest of the slayings of Elf by Elf; and that was the third of the great wrongs achieved by the accursed oath. For the sons of Fëanor came down upon the exiles of Gondolin and the remnant of Doriath and destroyed them. Though some of their folk stood aside, and some few rebelled and were slain upon the other part aiding Elwing against their own lords (for such was the sorrow and confusion in the hearts of Elfinesse in those days), yet Maidros and Maglor won the day. Alone they now remained of the sons of Fëanor, for in that battle Damrod and Díriel were slain; but the folk of Sirion perished of fled away, or departed of need to join the people of Maidros, who claimed now the lordship of all the Elves of the Outer Lands. And yet Maidros gained not the Silmaril, for Elwing seeing that all was lost and her child Elrond [footnote: > her children Elros and Elrond] taken captive, eluded the host of Maidros, and with the Nauglafring upon her breast she cast herself into the sea, and perished as folk thought.

For comparison, here’s the published Silmarillion:

And so there came to pass the last and cruellest of the slayings of Elf by Elf; and that was the third of the great wrongs achieved by the accursed oath.

For the sons of Fëanor that yet lived came down suddenly upon the exiles of Gondolin and the remnant of Doriath, and destroyed them. In that battle some of their people stood aside, and some few rebelled and were slain upon the other part aiding Elwing against their own lords (for such was the sorrow and confusion in the hearts of the Eldar in those days); but Maedhros and Maglor won the day, though they alone remained thereafter of the sons of Fëanor, for both Amrod and Amras were slain. Too late the ships of Cirdan and Gil-galad the High King came hasting to the aid of the Elves of Sirion; and Elwing was gone, and her sons. Then such few of that people as did not perish in the assault joined themselves to Gil-galad, and went with him to Balar; and they told that Elros and Elrond were taken captive, but Elwing with the Silmaril upon her breast had cast herself into the sea.

Thus Maedhros and Maglor gained not the jewel; but it was not lost. For Ulmo bore up Elwing out of the waves, and he gave her the likeness of a great white bird, and upon her breast there shone as a star the Silmaril, as she flew over the water to seek Eärendil her beloved.

The bolded part mentioning the ships of Gil-galad and Círdan is an editorial invention. Not without logic: Tolkien, who first ‘invented’ Gil-galad in a 1936 account of the Fall of Númenor and then gave him a prominent place in the legendary backdrop of The Lord of the Rings, never actually integrated him into the Silmarillion. That was left to Christopher, who I suppose looked at this passage about the people joining themselves to Maedhros and asked the reasonable question: “What of Gil-galad?” (And Círdan, who also isn’t mentioned, despite ‘existing’ in 1930.) Surely the people of Sirion would not join Maedhros if there’s a non-murderous High King right there. Bringing Gil-galad into the narrative here was a sensible choice.

But where does that leave Maglor? With no one else to care for them, I find his pity and love for Elrond and Elros much less complicated and easier to sympathise with as a reason for taking them into his care — as I believe the text enthusiastically invites us to do (more on that in this Maglor bio). The way the published text presents it, however, leaves me and other fans also asking, but for different reasons: “What of Gil-galad?” Surely it can’t have been all about pity and love when a non-murderous guardian is right there.

Because I love hurting my brain, I looked at these two things and thought, Why not have some of the survivors of Sirion join Maedhros, and some remain behind with Gil-galad? Why not let Maglor’s act be compassionate and self-interested?”

The conflict created by the presence of Gil-galad and Círdan is central to the fic, especially the decision-making that goes on in the first three chapters. Círdan, in later chapters, maintains more of a “What if?” presence than Gil-galad because Gil-galad is such a blank slate at this time in his very long character arc that I find it easier to write him off as a potentially better foster parent than Maglor (purely in terms of parental care and protection and not the legitimacy of either of their ‘claims’ to them — Gil-galad wins there no matter whose kid he is). But how do you defend depriving them of Círdan’s fosterage? I can’t imagine a better fosterdad in all Middle-earth!

On the other hand, the situation in the Quenta Noldorinwa in which the survivors join with Maedhros rather than Gil-galad, in my view, makes Maglor’s choice a little more sympathetic; small consolation, perhaps, but at least some of Elrond and Elros’ community is still with them (for now).

The objectively right thing to do would have been to ensure Elros and Elrond were safely bestowed with a more suitable, morally uncomplicated guardian. This, in fact, seems to be what Maedhros, laden with guilt over Eluréd and Elurín, wants. If any readers think he comes out looking morally better than Maglor, that was quite intentional. (Here’s a bit of meta I wrote on the textual history of Maedhros searching for Eluréd and Elurín and how I also think it muddles characterisations and motives — in a way that is pleasing to the imagination.)

However, I wanted to convey that Maglor choosing to raise them himself was not the worst outcome — and suggest that, in some strange way, it was a good outcome: “and love grew after between them, as little might be thought.” I’m just picking up what Tolkien put down.

The Finding of Elros and Elrond

There’s a version of the finding of Elrond and Elros that is, in my opinion, almost wholly incompatible with all other versions. It appears in number 211 of Tolkien’s Letters:

Elrond, Elros. *rondō was a prim[itive] Elvish word for ‘cavern’. Cf. Nargothrond (fortified cavern by the R. Narog), Aglarond, etc. *rossē meant 'dew, spray (of fall or fountain)’. Elrond and Elros, children of Eärendil (sea-lover) and Elwing (Elf-foam), were so called, because they were carried off by the sons of Fëanor, in the last act of the feud between the high-elven houses of the Noldorin princes concerning the Silmarils […] The infants were not slain, but left like 'babes in the wood’, in a cave with a fall of water over the entrance. There they were found: Elrond within the cave, and Elros dabbling in the water.

I wrote some meta about this version of my Tumblr.

While I am not a fan of this etymological fairytale version of events, it is the reason I stuck Gwereth, Elrond, and Elros in a cave-like cellar when they are found by Maglor and Dornil. A little nod to Letter 211.

Maglor as Sole Fosterdad

I have talked enough about my preference for Maglor as the sole foster parent of Elrond and Elros to annoy at least one anonymous person on the internet into bringing their displeasure to my Tumblr Inbox. I deleted the Ask post-haste but if I recall correctly it contained the (literal or implied) question, “Why do you hate Maedhros?”

I don’t hate Maedhros. But, dear people of the jury, do you see Maedhros mentioned here?

Great was the sorrow of Eärendil and Elwing for the ruin of the havens of Sirion, and the captivity of their sons, and they feared that they would be slain; but it was not so. For Maglor took pity upon Elros and Elrond, and he cherished them, and love grew after between them, as little might be thought; but Maglor’s heart was sick and weary with the burden of the dreadful oath.

I rest my— “But polutropos!” the defense cries. “You’re obviously well aware of all the versions of these events, surely you know that it was Maedhros who took pity on Elrond in the earliest drafts! Surely you know that in the Tale of Years ‘Text C’ in The War of the Jewels, a text from the 1950s and therefore later than all these versions with Maglor, has Maedhros as the foster parent!”

“Quite true,” I say with a nod. “Much swapping of roles. Always just one or the other, though, isn’t it?” In the published Silmarillion, and in my heart (the most reputable source for all choices in fiction), it’s Maglor.

But I have not ignored that it was, at various points, Maedhros. I had it in mind when writing Maedhros in this fic, and I do hope it shows. That is why, for example, he represents the more selfless, ethically ‘correct’ view on what to do with the sons of Elwing, i.e., leave them in the care of literally anyone else. It’s also why, after conceding to Maglor’s desire to keep them, he is so concerned for their well-being. Maedhros cares about them, and will care about them as they grow up under Maglor’s fosterage.

But Maglor took pity upon Elros and Elrond. Maglor cherished them. Love grew after between Maglor and them. Maglor’s heart was sick and weary with the burden of the dreadful oath.

Which leads me to another nagging question: “What of Maedhros?” Why is it only Maglor? Maedhros is right there!

Or is he? What if the reason this is the one thing that Maglor and Maedhros do not do as a pair is because they were not, in fact, a pair at the time? Thus, the story told in this fic.

People, Cultures, and Creatures

Gwereth, Embor, and Men at Sirion. I love the later legendarium notes that suggest a truly diverse population at the Havens and wanted to lean into that. That there were Haladin present is implied by the presence of Drúedain, who lived among the Haladin, mentioned in the essay on that people in Unfinished Tales. The presence of Hadorians is suggested by the presence of Dírhaval, the Hadorian author of the Narn i chîn Húrin mentioned in the chapter ‘Ælfwine and Dírhaval’ in The War of the Jewels. I am not aware of any source confirming the presence of Easterlings, either of the followings of Ulfang/Uldor or Bór, but the survivors had to flee somewhere.

Galdor. He is a Lord of Gondolin who survives the fall in the Lost Tales version of the Fall of Gondolin. If we follow Lost Tales canon, he also survives the sack of Sirion. I got the idea for a former Lord of Gondolin as a bodyguard for Elwing from swanmaids.

Lisgon. Maedhros’ High Captain is northern Sindarin (Mithrim). I am not confident as to whether there’s clear evidence that any of the Sindar followed any of the sons of Fëanor, but I think in general there was a lot more cultural mingling than the surface-level impression the Silmarillion gives. The sons of Fëanor were probably the least ‘mingled’ (for your typical sons of Fëanor reasons) but I cannot believe that at least a few Sindar didn’t choose to follow them in the time that they were dwelling around Lake Mithrim. Lisgon, being an escaped thrall, has added motive to stick by Maedhros.

Orfion. It’s not canon, as far as I am aware, that there were any Green-elves sworn to serve the sons of Fëanor, but we do know that they were allied. From the Silmarillion:

…but Caranthir fled and joined the remnant of his people to the scattered folk of the hunters, Amrod and Amras, and they retreated and passed Ramdal in the south. Upon Amon Ereb they maintained a watch and some strength of war, and they had aid of the Green-elves.

And of course after the Nirnaeth it is said the sons of Fëanor, “took to a wild and woodland life beneath the feet of Ered Lindon, mingling with the Green-elves of Ossiriand.” I find this association between the sons of Fëanor and Nandor fascinating and wanted to take it further in the character of Orfion.

The Penni. One of the few things we know about Taur-im-Duinath is that Avari lived there:

But south of the Andram, between Sirion and Gelion, was a wild land of tangled forest in which no folk went, save here and there a few Dark Elves wandering; Taur-im-Duinath it was named, the Forest between the Rivers.

Penni are one of the tribes of Avari mentioned in the essay ‘Quendi and Eldar’ in The War of the Jewels. I chose them as the Avar inhabitants of Taur-im-Duinath simply because I liked the sound of their tribe name, and also because it sounded ‘closer’ to a Sindarin form of Quendi (I have no idea if this is linguistically true) and since I was situating them geographically close to the Sindar, this made sense to me.

I was delighted, when I actually bothered to look up the passage, to find they were the tribe “among the most friendly to the fugitives of Beleriand, and held themselves akin to the remnants of the Sindar.” The same passage also suggests that they never crossed over the Anduin and on into Beleriand, but well. The Avari are mysterious.

The idea that they mingled with mortals early in their history was a complete surprise to me, only entering the story when Nelpen told Elrond he was half-elven. I was too pleased with the idea to cut it for canon-compliance reasons, and as I said in the endnotes to Chapter 5, there is at least basis for cultural interaction between Avari and Men. I don’t see why they couldn’t have made a few babies.

The Cats. The genesis of the monster cats in Taur-im-Duinath actually had nothing to do with Tevildo. I was thinking it would be neat if Taur-im-Duinath was an ecological remnant of prehistoric times; of Almaren before the continents were reshaped. And I wanted monsters not directly in the service of Morgoth. What if this prehistoric forest house prehistoric creatures, descended perhaps from early experiments by Melkor but no longer under his command? What if they were something like sabre tooth tigers? Knowing that Tolkien was no great fan of cats (alas), and recalling Tevildo and company, the sabre tooth tiger direction for my monsters seemed the right one.

Women. I knew I wanted my story to have women. I also knew I wanted my story to take place in the world Tolkien created which, like ours, is a world where men lead by default. Any instance of a woman leading is an exception. Fortunately, First Age Beleriand is full of exceptional circumstances. Unhappy, miserable ones — but exceptional. Cultures have a way of elevating the status of the most marginalised in times of greatest decline and distress. I see possibilities for the same thing happening in late-stage Beleriand. Idril leading the Gondolindrim to safety; Elwing ruling the Sindar. Why not Caranthir’s widow commanding an army?

In Laws and Customs of the Eldar, it says: “There are, however, no matters which among the Eldar only a ner [man] can think or do, or others with which only a nis [woman] is concerned.” But it then goes on to describe various tendencies that elf-men and elf-women have, boiling down to: killing and not-killing fall along gendered lines. Still: “…in dire straits or desperate defence, the nissi fought valiantly, and there was less difference in strength and speed between elven-men and elven-women that had not borne child than is seen among mortals.” (We’ll not get into “had not borne child,” that’s a whole other thing.)

Well, Beleriand certainly presents a buffet of “dire straits”! So where are all the valiant women in the Silmarillion? In his later years Tolkien was cooking something up with Galadriel, but he never seems to have gotten around to actually putting his theories of Elf-anthropology (Eldalogy?) into his stories. There are no elven women fighters. He also, and perhaps not unrelatedly, never got around to saying anything about the people Caranthir and Maglor were married to — how serendipitous for me, the fic writer! Thus, Dornil. Thus also Tornel the scout in Maglor’s company, and Ifrethil the ranger.

But I also wanted to showcase women doing more traditionally (real-world and Tolkien-world) feminine things like being caregivers (Gwereth, Nennel) and healers (Elas).

Still, men far outnumber women in this story: Maglor, Maedhros, Lisgon, Orfion, Embor, Nelpen; Mírlach, Palannor, Bornval; Elrond and Elros are unique for being children, but they are male children — even Neldoremmen the Ent is ‘he’. It’s a story about men because it’s a story that heavily features traditionally masculine activities and roles: warfare, exploration, leadership. Still, I’m proud of the female characters I managed to slot between the cracks of a society in decline.

Inspirations

The Odyssey

My initial inspiration for the story structure was Homer’s Odyssey. It is a very basic and very ancient story structure. A hero sets out for home; faces a series of conflicts and obstacles along the way; encounters things monstrous, strange, and wonderful; touches the liminal and the divine; loses everyone and everything along the way; makes it back home transformed in some way.

That’s about where the Odyssey similarities in this story end. Nobody gets turned into a pig, crunched by a Cyclops, or seduced by a goddess, and it doesn’t end with a mass slaughter (though it does begin with one). More than that, the world of this fic — its logic, its culture, its philosophies — is very different from the Homeric Greek world.

The Lord of the Rings

Perhaps it seems a bit silly to cite LotR as inspiration for a Silmarillion fic. It’s all Tolkien, isn’t it? Well, yes: but they are quite different books; quite different registers of storytelling. I spent much more time thinking about LotR and The Hobbit writing this than I have for others of my fics.

I wanted to write a story that felt true to his world. A canon gap-filler but also a self-contained story set in the mythic framework of the Elder Days. LotR and The Hobbit are obvious models for such a story; that is, in a sense, what they are. But I was several chapters into writing before I realised how much inspiration I was taking from them. When I saw it happening, around the time that Maglor and his company come to the caves of the Penni, I leaned into it as the remaining plot unfurled. I won’t pick out every element that was inspired by LotR or The Hobbit, but if you think you see it; yes, you do.

I am imagining myself looking back on these reflections in a few years or a decade and scoffing. “Yes, yes, very good; you figured out that all stories draw on the same ancient tropes and follow the same basic structures. Very quaint.” And it’s true. Ten chapters and 50k words might be a couple months of writing for some people. For me it was one and a half years. I’ve never told a story this long before. I went from the immense hubris of thinking I could do it in a few months, to the rude awakening that I was in way over my head, through to creative paralysis, then to dogged determination to just get it done to the best of my ability, and finally through the other side looking back at what I’ve written and thinking it’s actually pretty darn good.

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