#the silmarillion

46. …out of envy or jealousy (came out sort of a “missing scene” type thing for my fic Opening)

Mairon’s curling fingers pressed into the soft places beneath Finrod’s jaw. He would not be easily appeased: so he told himself. He would have what he craved. He would not allow himself to be distracted or dissuaded: things Finrod was too skilled at by half. He was master of this isle and all who breathed on and under it.

The image of Finrod’s unbound hair, glinting in the torchlight and mantling him as it moved in the dance, returned to haunt him. He had catalogued, distantly, the faces of the human thralls who had gathered with him. With welding-torch vividity he remembered the flare of Finrod’s smile amid a rippling laugh. Sweet had its sound been, sweeter than the crude singing.

“Stand,” he snapped.

Finrod rose with the maximum grace one could expect of someone who had knelt on the rough flagstones at Mairon’s command a day entire. He rolled his shoulders in an unselfconscious way that Mairon still suspected of having been staged allure. He found he could not tell, however, which tempted him to believe it was not. He thought, absurdly, of comforting him. No—Mairon would keep his focus. After all, he was still angry.

“Give me thy hands.”

Finrod frowned, but held them out, palms up. He arched a dark-gold brow, and cast a sweeping glance down across the dirt-stained knees of his flimsy robe. “Has your trust in me declined so precipitously? I confess myself disappointed.”

Oh—he thought Mairon meant to bind his wrists. This expectation annoyed Mairon unreasonably.

He took Finrod’s hands in his own, flickering ones and gripped them. It was only when the Elf flinched that he realized he was clasping them with too much strength. He tugged him nearer none too gently, and himself glided back. Finrod’s bare feet hastened to catch up.

After a moment, Finrod’s lips quirked, and some awareness sparked to life in his light-filled eyes and spirit.

Thinking of that smiling vision, the one before him was almost enough. Enough to whet his appetite, if not to satiate it. Art amused? Mairon might ask. Laugh for me. Laugh.

“Strange have thy desires been of late, Mairon,” Finrod was saying. He spoke Mairon’s name like a caress, and Mairon suspected having shared it he would never hear another ‘lord of Tol Sirion’ from him. “If I were not thy captive, I could almost imagine that we were dancing.”

Caught, Mairon felt his fana contort instantly into a scowl. His grip upon Finrod’s hands scorched, growing clawed and viselike; yet he drew Finrod nearer, and nearer yet. He heard a pained sound, and smothered it with his mouth. He imagined he could draw the Elf’s spirit out through his parted lips, his lush heat. Finrod’s joy was there; inside him like a treasure in a lockbox. At last, unsatisfied, he released Finrod and he fell, short of the air Mairon did not need to breathe.

“Thou wilt remember thou hast offered me obedience,” Mairon spat.

Finrod wiped at his mouth and his knuckles came away red; either hand or mouth was bloodied. “I remember exactly what I owe thee.”

…desperately.

All is fire, and has been, and ever shall be. So thinks Maedhros on the ramparts at Himring, watching a sea of flame pass him by.

Once begun there had been no way to staunch it, only to kill the orcs and goblins who ran a-fore and alongside that molten flood, whipping at its bleeding flanks like cruel horsemen.

Maedhros ordered the gates flung open, and now the yard is filled with mingling wildness: beasts and half of Himlad, his brothers and his nephew among them, and men also. All houseless, all needing fed, clothed, accommodated. Some part of Maedhros’ mind works already at this domestic geometry. The better part will not be pried from the horizon, where he has lately seen fell shapes against the reddened sky and heard a violent chorale on the wind.

I will tell him when he comes: I will say, that was not your best performance. And he will hit me on the arm. He will leave a bruise there. Oh how I should treasure such a sweet small hurt, if he comes back to me out of the east! I should not have sent him there. Why did I? Why? Because I trust him, Eru take me, and if I have condemned him thus let me burn atop this tower forever–

And so he stands in vigil many hours, holding a torch. Himring has not fallen, Maedhros says to the night. And when the call comes at last–riders approaching!–he looks not to the east, but to the south, from whence the ragged remains of Maglor’s cavalry have come circuitously, picking their way through cooling clots of rock, still bearing their tattered standard.

Maedhros has no awareness of leaving the ramparts, though by the burn of his lungs and legs and the hammering of his heart he has run from them, making the yard before the first rider.

Maglor is covered head to toe in soot, his light armor charred obsidian. He wears no helm. His dark hair streams behind him, settling around his shoulders as he reins in his horse and slides from its back.

“Vain thing,” Maedhros says. “You’ll get yourself bloody well killed.”

“Yes,” says Maglor. He looks dazed. “I rather thought I might.”

“You’ll come with me,” says Maedhros, wrenching Maglor by the arm. “Right away, you’ll come with me, I will have your report–”

Or some such nonsense, some such babble. Anything to draw Maglor away from the yard, away from fire and chaos and death, away from any but Maedhros so he might crowd Maglor against a shadow-veiled wall.

“Easy,” Maglor gasps. His fingers smear ash on Maedhros’ face as though he is drawing in charcoal. “Nelyo. I am here.”

Maedhros kisses him. His tongue finds the bloody socket of a missing tooth. Maglor moans into his mouth, but Maedhros holds him as he means to henceforth: until his body breaks.

39. Because time’s run out.

Celegorm has not slept in many nights. He will not sleep this night, either. They must be gone by morning and there seems much to do, though in truth there is very little. They need not pack; they will be allowed nothing but what they can carry, and Orodreth will not miss his inspection.

“So we go forth ragged and empty-handed. No different to the Sudden Flame,” Celegorm says to Curufin, shrugging and swigging wine. He has liberated several bottles from Finrod’s cellars. Never fear, cousin, wherever you are. I mean to finish them by morning. One last toast, if you please.

Curufin glowers. He will leave much in Nargothrond, will spend their final hours here lamenting the loss of many great works. That is your trouble, Celegorm wants to tell him. You cannot help but make things, and then you cannot help but grow attached.

Celegorm leaves him to his fretting and sifting and goes out into the corridor. He looks for the great grey bulk of Huan, but he is nowhere to be seen. The halls of Nargothrond are silent save the rap of his boot-soles on the flagstones. Celegorm has the strange desire to race up and down these halls, to let his feet carry him to Finrod’s old sealed chamber where his regent soaks in drink and prays to Eru for his fool brother to come back to him. Orodreth has always been a pale imitation, the end of a run of etchings, grown warped and soft by pressure.

What fool would cast a crown in silver, Curufin said of Finrod. And of Orodreth, he ought not to have picked it up at all.

Presently there comes another set of footsteps. Celegorm stands fast and does not turn to look. He stares into the shadows and gives no sign he hears anything at all until Celebrimbor stands beside him, clearing his throat and shifting foot to foot, for he can never bear to think he is being ignored.

“Have you cleared your chambers?“ asks Celegorm. "Cobwebs out of every corner? There will be some young lord slavering to move in on the morrow, the moment we are gone.”

“I am not going with you,” Celebrimbor says.

“I heard that rumor. You are late for your own grand announcement.”

Celebrimbor speaks no word in reply. Yet he says much, for Celegorm knows other ways to listen. Celebrimbor’s blood runs hot. His young heart thrums, be-feared. A foul sweat gathers under his arms.

“Your nerves,” says Celegorm, laughing. “Are you sure you will not come? It seems hardly worth it, to remain here all a-quiver. Where’s the fun in that?”

“You have run mad.”

“Oh, maybe so, maybe so.”

“You will all die out there,” Celebrimbor says.

“No,” says Celegorm softly. “You want to run along ahead and catch Felagund for that.”

At this, Celebrimbor is bested. He gives a small pained cry and folds about himself as though stabbed in the belly. He drops to the stone and Celegorm follows, gathers him up, would take him by the wrists and ankles like a dead hart did he not squirm so. Celegorm draws his arms tighter and tighter about Celebrimbor’s ribs. Such soft bones. Springy, like new green wood.

“Like to make a very fine bow,” says Celegorm.

His mind wanders these days. He sleeps not, hunts less. He wants Huan. Celebrimbor in his arms is taut as catgut.

“Uncle, you are hurting me.”

“You are a little coward, Tyelpe.”

The boy moans. “No.” He struggles as though he might free himself. He kicks out and Celegorm wraps around him like a snake, tangling their legs together.

“You come to me that you may say your piece to me and not your father. You forsake him, you forswear our oath, and yet you will not even tell him yourself.”

Spittle flies hot against Celebrimbor’s cheek. Celegorm nips at his ear. Fine as a willow leaf, it is. Celegorm said as much when he was yet wet from his mother’s warm body.

He is your spit, Curvo, he said also.

Celegorm suckles at his earlobe. Celebrimbor shudders. He wears a stud there fashioned of raw diamond. The works of Celegorm’s hands are rough only, and he rarely claims them.

“Am I a liar?”

“Tyelkormo.”

The name is a wound. But O, that dark, warm whisper. Celegorm will never hear it again.

“Am I a liar?”

“Please.”

Celegorm kisses him. There is no more time. He will not tell Curufin, but then he will not have to.

Much later, and very far away, he finds the diamond in his pocket. He casts it away. He claims it is nothing, but nothing ever is. The stone finds its way into the water and into the earth, where it sits and waits and listens for a song.