The Election Farce of Nargothrond: Of Dumbness, Treachery, and Brotherly Love by Dawn Felagund

Chapter 1: Finrod Has Visitors

Chapter 1: Finrod Has Visitors

Finrod Felagund swept a lock of blond hair the color of summer sunbeams behind his ear and sat down at his desk. He sighed and looked around him. He wondered why he was suddenly so unhappy, why dread seemed to be constantly peeking over his shoulder like his dumb little brother Orodreth during lettering tests back in their schooldays in Valinor.

“Perhaps it is because I live in a cave?” Finrod wondered aloud and looked around himself again.

Yes, he did live in a cave. But when that cave was actually a massive underground palace carved from rock the color of blushing marble, when the light was that of starlight captured in stone and when the air was laden with the scent of roses and sang with the music of fountains, it almost ceased to count as a cave. In his study, it was certainly easy to forget that he was underground and not sitting in a fragrant forest with the stars winking overhead, even if the trees and vines that curled around him were carved from stone and colored with the dust of emeralds and the starlight came from a sprinkling of Fëanorian lamps strung overhead. He sighed again, moved his diamond paperweight aside, and opened his diary.

“Dear Diary,” he wrote,” I cannot dispel the feeling of foreboding that suddenly weighs upon my chest like a bag of rocks. Even my fair Nargothrond is darkened by my apprehension. What could be the cause? Possibly the Oath? Perhaps I should have listened to my father when he said that the Noldor should never swear Oaths--”

Finrod planned to launch into a diatribe about the un-wisdom of his Uncle Fëanor and his unruly pack of sons swearing that infamous Oath, topped off by a scathing longueur about the absolute dumbness of his Uncle Fingolfin previously swearing an Oath of allegiance to Uncle Fëanor when he knew that Uncle Fëanor was a couple rocks short of a lavalier, but he was interrupted by a sudden pounding on his door. He tried to ignore it, thinking instead about how his Oath was different: After all, it was sworn to a Man, and everyone knew that the lives of Men were but flickers against the interminable existence of the Eldar; furthermore, Men had a strange habit of losing their minds long before they succumbed to death, memories flooding from their heads like sand from a cracked hourglass. So Finrod felt fairly safe in swearing an Oath to a creature that would likely be dead long before he could collect on his debt and had a memory that faded faster than Finrod got out of the bathtub in the evenings. But all of these comforting thoughts were interrupted by the insistent pounding on his door.

He stood up, went to the door, and threw it open in a very un-Kingly manner. “What?” he barked.

It was hard to believe that the little Elf who stood on the other side could have possibly been the cause of such ruckus. The young page bowed low. “My King, I am sorry to interrupt your study, but we have visitors at the gate.”

“Visitors?” He pondered the little Elf in front of him, his big, earnest eyes and his small, trembling hands. “We don’t get visitors here. Is this another one of Orodreth’s pranks?”

His younger brother Orodreth came up with the most tedious, unimaginative pranks of anyone Finrod had ever known. In the midst of Orodreth’s pranks, Finrod missed even the humiliating, painful capers of the Fëanorians.

“No, my King. There are two … individuals … waiting outside the doors. They might be Elves, but it is hard to tell through all the mud and blood--”

“Blood!?”

“Yes, my King. But they claim to be kin of yours and demand entry, although they look rather unsavory, even for Men, much less Elves--”

Finrod pushed past the young page and headed in the direction of the front doors of his palace.

“But my kingdom is supposed to be secret!” he cried to no one in particular, cursing Orodreth for the loud harp music that he had a tendency to play after drinking too much wine in the evening. He had told his brother at least four hundred times that it was only a matter of time before such hubbub drew Orcs.

And now it seemed that it had.

His palace guards were all assembled in the vestibule, looking nervous. They had stuck a couple of chairs against the doors. “Who calls upon us?” Finrod shouted to the guard, but the only answer he got was a couple of shifty glances. “Who will answer his King?”

“We know them not,” a perky little upstart by the name of Yaman replied at last.

Yaman’s reply started a flood of echoes from the rest of the guard, a senseless babble of “Yes, sirs” and “They call you kin!” Finrod strode to the middle door--he had three, aptly named the Doors of Felagund--and looked out the peephole.

All he saw was pouring rain.

“There’s no one out there!”

“Perhaps they moved to one of the other two doors?” Yaman suggested, having the wisdom to phrase the suggestion as a question at the last moment.

Finrod paced to the door on the right side. He peeped out. No one. He grumbled and strode to the lefthand door.

“Aah!” Two Orcs stood in the pouring rain, dressed in the ragged raiment typical of their kind, slathered with mud and gobs of black blood and bits of things even more unspeakable than that. “Orcs!”

Finrod must have shouted too loudly in his alarm, for the Orcs began shouting as well and pounding on the door. “We know you are in there, Cousin Finrod! Do not deny your kin from the fair days of Valinor! Turn not aside your own flesh and blood in their hour of need!”

Their voices were not the voices of Orcs but rather fair, and Finrod stretched to look through the peep hole again and noticed that one of them had a tendril of golden hair escaping from his cloak and the other wore a very dear sapphire necklace. And gleaming upon each of their heads were matching silver circlets, denoting them Noldorin princes.

Finrod threw open the door to receive his cousins Celegorm and Curufin into his home.