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“Anything yet?”
It was the third time Amrod had asked in as many days. Only the edge of exhaustion in his voice, heavy and badly disguised, kept Maedhros from snapping at him. They were all exhausted, Maedhros no less than his younger brothers. Amon Ereb was built to hold thrice their current number, and between provisioning the keep, maintaining a guard, and patrolling the surrounding lands to keep Morgoth’s creatures from breaking through to the south, he and his brothers and all of their remaining followers were stretched far too thin. Shadows kept flickering at the edges of his vision, darting out of view as soon as he tried to look at them directly. He hadn’t slept since their messenger had departed for Sirion.
“Nothing. You'll know as soon as I do, as I’ve said. Probably sooner; you spend more time than I outside the walls, and will likely see Eredwen returning long before I will.”
Amrod began to pace, his feet unerringly finding the same threadbare track in the rug that Maedhros’ had worn over the last decade. “She ought to have returned already. It’s been nearly two weeks! We used to make the journey between here and Sirion in half that time.” He glared at the map spread out on Maedhros’s desk, which made the distance he was discussing look deceptively small.
“Beleriand was kindlier then, and the roads considerably safer,” said Maglor, shouldering his way into the study with a flask and four cups. They had run out of wine ages ago, for vineyards were a luxury they could ill afford, but their soldiers had taken to brewing a liquor from grain and potato scraps instead. It stung the eyes and burned the throat, but Maedhros had to admit it got the job done a lot faster than wine ever had. Balancing the flask in the crook of his elbow, Maglor swept aside the weights holding the map open, letting it spring back into a roll. He blithely ignored his brother’s exasperated sigh as he set out the cups and flask where the map had sat. Pouring out a cup, he raised it in a mocking toast. “Beleriand, Beleriand, 'tis grown a wild and wary land!”
Amrod eyed him. “You started early,” he accused.
“Hardly; you returned late.” Maglor poured out two more cups, handing one to Amrod and nudging the other toward Maedhros. “Catch up, brothers. Where is Amras?”
“Seeing to the venison.”
“Your hunt was successful, then?”
Amrod bit his lip. “It nearly wasn’t. Maedhros—the hart led us south.” Maedhros stiffened. “There was a moment early on when Amras might have felled it, and didn’t. He had a clear shot. And then, when we did kill it… it was like he didn’t notice. He just kept going, as if he couldn’t hear the rest of us calling him, as if he were still on the hunt. Or as if he were being hunted.” Amrod shuddered. “It was nearly a league before he hearkened to my voice.”
The sardonic humour had faded from Maglor’s face as Amrod spoke, and all at once he drained his cup. Pouring himself another, he turned to Maedhros. “It grows stronger. I know you’ve felt it too.”
It was only his imagination, Maedhros told himself. Only his imagination that the shadows at the corners of his vision had grown darker and more numerous of late, crowding at him from the north, driving him toward the river and the sea, malevolent and furtive like the winged shades that had ferried him scraps of food on Thangorodrim. Only his imagination, and fatigue. Understandable, as he hadn’t slept in weeks. If anyone asked, well, it would hardly be fair of him to ask his soldiers to take on longer watch shifts than their commander. The dreams that had begun to plague him once more were nobody’s business but his own.
“We will not attack a child,” he said, voice hard. Not while there is hope of gaining the Silmaril peacefully.
And if that hope fails? asked a voice in his mind that sounded eerily like his father—no, like the semblance Sauron had taken of his father’s voice, to mock at Maedhros’ failures in the dungeons of Angband.
“No,” Maglor agreed, and then lifted his cup again. “But this does less and less to quiet it, nowadays.”
Amrod said quietly, “I do not know how much longer—” He broke off abruptly, and a moment later Amras walked into the room, still smelling faintly of blood from the meat he had just butchered.
“A fine chase he led us, but we got him in the end!” he said, with blatantly false cheer. The words dropped like jangling coins into the silence. He looked around at his brothers’ stony gazes, then rounded on Amrod. “You told them.”
Amrod nodded, looking faintly abashed.
“I told you to say nothing! I can manage it!” Whirling to face Maedhros, he added, “I will not be confined to the keep.” Amrod stepped forward to stand beside him in wordless reassurance, and despite having just snapped at him Amras straightened a little as his twin’s shoulder brushed his own. The shadows seemed to stretch and loom above them.
Maedhros exhaled. “Much as it might ease my mind to order it, I cannot afford to confine any of you to the keep. But you will hunt east of here, from now on.”
Amras’s voice turned pleading. “And there is no word?”
“None, yet.” Maglor tossed Amras a cup and then, rather more carefully, passed him the flask. Amras poured himself a measure of the liquor, sipped at it, and grimaced. “We were only just discussing what dangers might have befallen Eredwen on the road.”
Amrod’s fingers were drumming compulsively against his knife-hilt. “She can hold her own against Orcs and spiders, but I have heard rumour of a gaur in the woods west of here…”
“She will meet with peril enough even if she evades all of those,” Maglor responded with a grim smile. “Sirion is a refuge, but it is not wholly unguarded, and I can hardly imagine its folk would let a messenger of the sons of Fëanor pass unhindered.”
“Eredwen is our swiftest rider and as sure a shot as any, and she is no kinslayer.” Maedhros leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk, resisting the urge to rub his eyes. “We chose her for this task because she was born on these shores and was not with us at Doriath, and she accepted knowing the risks. They may not welcome her, but I do not believe they will harm her. I have not given up hope of a favourable answer.”
There was a long silence. Like as not Eredwen is dead, the same insidious voice whispered. Will you not avenge her? Around him the shadows seemed to crowd close.
Be silent, he told the voice.
At last, Amras admitted, “Nor I. But I do not think I can stomach much more of this waiting.”
“Could you stomach another Doriath?” Maglor asked, his golden voice cutting but his gaze bleak. Amrod glared at him. Amras looked away.
Maedhros stood. “Enough.” He nodded to the twins. “You two should get some rest. You aren’t due on watch for a few hours yet; you had better sleep while you can. There will not be another Doriath.”
Maglor remained behind as Amrod and Amras left, refilling his cup and taking a deep draught from it. “Sleep while you can,” he mimicked, mocking. “And when was the last time you slept, brother mine?”
“I’m fine,” said Maedhros automatically.
Maglor’s snort made clear what he thought of that. “You have not been fine since we lost—” He stopped.
Say it, Maedhros thought. Go ahead, say it. He himself could not, but someone ought to; someone ought to put a name to the price of his failures. Shall I? that silken voice in his head whispered. Shall I name the kings and kinsfolk who fell to your folly? The bodies and banners ground into dirt? The scuttling shadows seemed to grow agitated at its words, roiling amid the rafters.
“Forgive me,” Maglor said instead, and took another swallow of liquor. “Eredwen may yet return.” He stared into his cup as if he might divine her fate, and by extension theirs, in the clear liquid.
“So must we hope.” Swiftly Maedhros took his own cup, untouched till now, and drained it. It scorched going down, as though setting him afire from the inside out, and for a moment he imagined burning as his father had burned, and the swan-ships, and scarred Anfauglith, disintegrating to ash and nothingness. But it was only liquor, and offered only a brief reprieve, not an end.
He must have been even more exhausted than he had realized, though, or else they’d brewed this batch stronger than usual, for just the one draught made him feel muzzy-headed and hazy. Perhaps I should sleep, he thought, and the terror of that prospect seemed somehow dulled, further away. “Well,” he said aloud, “I will get no more use out of staring at maps of a route I cannot travel myself.”
Maglor raised an eyebrow. “Is that sense I hear from Maedhros Fëanorion, mad lord of cold Himring?”
“I hold Himring no longer.” Another of his failures.
Maglor shrugged. “In Beleriand under the Shadow, one pile of stones is much like another. At least this one isn’t so bloody cold.”
“There is that. Very well, I shall at least pace my rooms instead of the walls, and spare the guards on duty the bother of my presence. Will that satisfy you?”
“Not in the least. But this will,” and he caught up the now half-empty flask and left.
Alone, Maedhros sat back down and began slowly to unbuckle the fastenings of his false hand. The fingers of his living hand felt stiff and clumsy, and as he squinted at the leather straps, flickering bat-like shades seemed to fill the rest of his field of vision. Phantom pains flared that he hadn’t felt in years—You felt them at the Nirnaeth, and at Doriath, came the treacherous whisper in his mind—sending spikes of fire up his wrist and arm.
“I need not listen to you,” he said, out loud.
“No?” came another voice, behind his shoulder, though no one had entered. He stood and whirled, drawing his sword and sending the chair clattering to the floor, but the room held only shadows.
“You are not real,” he whispered.
“I had hoped for a better welcome, little thrall,” and yes, that was Sauron’s voice, and then Morgoth’s cruel lieutenant stepped forward, seemingly clad in the swirling shadows from which he emerged.
Maedhros swung his sword, grimly pleased to note that his left hand at least was steady now—but Sauron seemed to disintegrate around it, re-forming behind him.
“You are not real,” Maedhros repeated. “You cannot take me back.”
“Back?” said Sauron, amused. “What need have I to bring you back? You do my work better here than ever you did in my care.”
Maedhros recoiled. “Liar! I have ever fought you, and him you serve. I do not do your work.”
“Do you not?”
I refused to do your work. He clung fiercely to the thought. I succumbed to your knife, over and over again, rather than wield it as you would have had me. I wished to die rather than live as your master’s thrall.
He had not died though, for all that he had meant to, asked to, even; for all that he would have, had it not been for the cold mercy of Manwë and the blazing stubbornness of—
“Yes, and what of him,” the silken voice interrupted, as though Maedhros had spoken aloud, “who came so valiantly to your rescue? Did he ever realise what it was he brought back from the mountain, and what, precisely, he left hanging there? More than a hand, certainly.” He read the answer easily in Maedhros’ eyes. “Ah, but you never told him! Did you think to spare him? To win back his trust?”
He laughed, lifting his hand as if to backhand Maedhros across the face. Maedhros clenched his teeth, refusing to flinch from the blow, but Sauron’s hand did not land. Instead he let the sharp points of his nails hover a hairsbreadth from a scarred cheek, letting the memory of helplessness do what mere pain could not. He was little more than voice and shadow, Maedhros told himself, little more than his own doubts made visible by liquor and weariness; yet still he could not suppress a shudder at the almost-touch.
“How well you succeeded; trust you he did, and to his downfall! Truly, you have learned well my arts, Maitimo.”
“I no longer bear that name.”
“No? A pity. Well-shaped, well-made; and see how exquisitely we have shaped you. A name of foresight indeed. They were right to call your mother wise.”
Maedhros gritted his teeth. To hear his torturer speak so mockingly of Nerdanel was bad enough; worse was the sneaking thought that perhaps Sauron was right after all. Perhaps his mother had glimpsed what would become of him when she named him; perhaps his old name had been meant as the cruel joke it had become. No, that is the Enemy talking, he told himself firmly. That is the doubt he sows. She loved us, all of us, and if there was any marring to that love then it was of our own making. Not that there was much more reassurance to be had from that thought.
“None among your own folk would call you beautiful now,” Sauron continued. “Yet I, I look at you and see near-perfection.” He stroked a hand along the contour of Maedhros’ face and neck, again nearly but not quite touching, but his breath was enough to stir the stray wisps of Maedhros’ hair that had escaped their clasps. “We could make your body beautiful again, as you reckon beauty, if you wanted, for what are scars but a memory aid for the lessons you learned to earn them? And you have learned them so well! You need no aids.”
“You are lying. You have always lied,” growled Maedhros.
“Your father made little of your skill with the forge, but I think he was much mistaken. In his scorn he underestimated you. See what strong and well-wrought shackles you have made, though you forged them with but one hand! They drive you to slaughter your own kin, who should be your allies; they drive you to deeds even Angband’s chains could not force from you.”
“You are not real.” And if that was true? If this was not, in fact, some sending of the Enemy’s, but only Maedhros’ own mind playing tricks on him… then what? He could no more escape self-judgement than he could the Oath.
“Orc-work, I have heard them call your deeds at fallen Doriath, the thralls who fled your swords and found ours. Yet even they underestimate you! Orcs would simply have slain the sons of Nimloth outright—but to force them into the woods, to feign pity even as it was your voice that drove them deeper, your sword dripping with their family’s blood… Orcs cannot appreciate such elegance.”
A sharp ache like tears was swelling behind Maedhros’ eyes, but no tears fell.
“Your messenger will not return,” Sauron, or the thing that looked like Sauron, told him. “Or if she does, it will not be with the tidings you wish to hear.”
“Elwing is a child of Doriath,” Maedhros forced out. It was madness to argue with a Maia, even more with a hallucination, but the alternative was accepting its words, and that he would not do. “If nothing else good came of our deeds there, at least it means she is not blind to what refusal will call down upon her people. And she knows their safety depends on our protection; they have not the force to hold the Andram Wall unaided. She will not sacrifice her people for a Silmaril.”
“No? How many have you sacrificed, Nelyafinwë who once was king, for your father’s gems?” The apparition’s tone was conversational, almost playful. “You were too far away to see your king fall, when you mustered an army to our gates; but I saw it. Did you know he called for you, in his last desperate hour?”
“Stop,” Maedhros whispered, though he knew it wouldn’t help.
“You were his battle-cry, and his final plea, and both fell on deaf ears. But then, he refused your last order to him as king; perhaps it was only fitting that you did not heed his.”
“Stop.”
“Who remains to heed your orders now? You have but three brothers left. Will they follow you, to reclaim the Silmaril that awaits now at the Havens of Sirion? Will they obey you, if you bid them wait? Will you sacrifice them too?”
At least in Angband it had been stone and iron holding back the Oath, not his own fading will. At least in Angband it had been Morgoth against whom the Oath drove him, not refugees and children.
“You cannot take me back,” Maedhros said again, but now it carried less defiance than despair. Better I had died, Finno. Better you had killed me as I asked.
“And waste the work you have done, and squander all you have yet to do? Nay, Maitimo, you are not meant for death, not yet. Brighter even than your father you burn, and many yet shall be scorched by that flame ere it devours you too.
“We thought ourselves cheated, my Master and I, when you were snatched from your chains. He was angry, yes, very angry. Yet see how in the end even this setback is bent to serve his ends! You spend yourself keeping my creatures from the Havens; but who will hold you back?”
“It will not come to that.”
“Let us see.” With a careless gesture the apparition of Sauron sent the shadows swarming toward Maedhros, blocking his vision and stopping his breath. A part of him thought, Let this be an end, then, and welcomed it, but against his will his body struggled for air, for life, as it had struggled against his will on Thorondor’s back all those years ago. Shadows made solid flapped and beat against him, pooling at his eyes and mouth and wrapping tightly around the hand fumbling for his sword—when had he dropped his sword—
He seemed to hear Fingon’s voice as he had heard it then, calling his name, dragging him to consciousness—but no, Fingon had called to him in Quenya—this voice was speaking in Sindarin—
“Maedhros. Maedhros!”
He was slumped over his desk, his cheek pressed against the smooth wood, a fold of his cloak flung across his face, stifling his airways. The face swimming in and out focus above him wore black hair and an expression of panicked fury, but it was too pale for Fingon and there was no gold in the braids.
And Fingon, of course, was dead.
Maglor, then.
Behind him the twins came into focus, they too looking rather concerned.
Violently Maedhros tore his cloak from his face and shoved himself upright, forcing himself to breathe through the dizziness that assailed him as soon as he rose.
“We thought you asleep. But then we heard noises, and when I came in you were—struggling,” said Maglor softly, stepping back.
“I’m fine,” Maedhros said, hating that he could not keep the weariness from his voice and knowing none of them would believe him. Then, looking more closely at Maglor’s expression, he added, “What is it?”
It was Amrod who spoke. “Eredwen has returned. She is unharmed.” Beside him, wordlessly, Amras held out the letter, still folded and sealed.
Maedhros broke the seal; the first few lines were enough. Looking back at his brothers, he saw from their faces that they had read Elwing’s answer in his.
And out of the corners of his eyes he saw the shadows swell, triumphant.