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It was Curufin who first observed the ravens.

Even at their loneliest, the sons of Fëanor had enough followers to spare them from the taxing (and, for Maedhros, nigh impossible) labor of laying stone on stone. Still, Curufin was his father’s heir in both skill and jealousy, and he built a good deal of Himring’s fortifications himself, while Maedhros kept watch and directed laborers he could not properly join.

They traveled together, in those after-days. When facing servants of the Enemy, they were as one: fell and magnificent. When they were alone, they sniped and quarreled. Maedhros knew that some of them—Curufin perhaps most of all—were angry at him for forfeiting kingship. It might be right to call that anger hatred, of a kind. They were all Fëanor’s heirs in grudge and bitterness, after all.

He stood by Curufin most often, though, when Himring was built; Curufin had the most to teach him. And Curufin shaded his eyes with one long hand, looking too much like their father in the red-raging dusk, and he said,

“Ai! Listen to them gossip.”

With his only hand, Maedhros steadied the post piercing the nearest patch of hard grey earth. “The birds?”

“Ravens are clever little devils,” Curufin said, turning back to his work. He had made a paste of ground granite and was using it to found an outer wall. Dust from this effort streaked the braids at his temple, mingling black with grey. “Celegorm can speak their tongue, though you know he cares not for winged things. A little to the left, Nelyo—we want to have it very straight.”

Curufin used all their old names, still; out of spite rather than affection.

Maedhros dragged the pole a little to the left, and Curufin poured the thick paste around it, cementing it in place.

Overhead, the ravens wheeled: black-ash wings and coarse voices. They flew far, even towards the crimson darkness of Thangorodrim’s storm-choked crown, and seemed to be almost without fear.

Himring stood with unflinching defiance, such that its name, and the name of its Lord, were whispered in even the unfriendliest reaches of Beleriand. Stone could not flinch, and flesh, though imperfect, could be taught to nearly match it.

It was all a question of what one believed.

The Enemy, whose assaults were varied in form though not in relentless pace, believed in the weakness of flesh.

When the first winter set in like a hand clenched around a throat, Himring did not break with the shifting of frozen ground.

From its frost-crusted battlements, Maedhros watched the ravens. His collar was fastened high around his throat, but his bright head was uncovered. Snow swirled down around him like falling stars.

He misliked his chambers. They were not beautiful, but nor was he, any longer, and he valued utility more in this frigid outland than ever before. The hard cot, the plain writing desk, the shelves already overflowing with parchments and letters—his sole indulgence of unruliness, for he was always jerking one or another out of place for reference or review—all these were inoffensive. It was the walls of the place, impenetrable and firm, that crowded him in with old, delirious memories.

“Hang a tapestry or two,” Finrod said, when he visited. Finrod looked all wrong in the stark and barren halls. He had gems embedded in his armor and glistening through his hair. He came shortly after the departure of Maedhros’ brothers for their respective posts, and that was for the best: there was unease between them.  

“To what end?” Maedhros had answered sardonically, splashing too much wine into his cousin’s cup—and his own. He did not need the threads of dull Sindar craftsmanship to come alive with malice in the fearful hours of night.

He had the fireplace for that.

On the parapets, the ravens often kept their distance from each other, he noticed. Of an evening, one came wheeling in from the direction of the Gap.

Maglor had been loath to leave him, Maedhros knew. But if they were to survive, none of them could afford to waste their time with coddling. His maimed arm would never be whole again; the scars on his body could not be unwritten.

He was otherwise fit for the task at hand—

And there. Even in thought, the irony stung.

The tips of his ears were numb, but he heard well how the newcomer croaked a throaty greeting. Maedhros blinked in the wind, and croaked back.

The bird lifted one foot, considering. Then it was gone.

Scouts reported that the orcs were growing bolder. They traveled in scores by night, and quickly. Maedhros sent what forces he could to strengthen the new cavalry stationed in the Gap. His lieutenants disagreed with this decision. Though cautious in the first months since construction and order, they had begun to make such disagreements known.

“My Lord,” said Argoldo, “How is Himring to stand, if we are weakened by loss of numbers?”

“These walls, and our courage, ensure that we are not,” Maedhros answered. He stood at the head of the council-table, with his right arm tucked against his chest and his left hand resting on the pommel of his sword. The elves of Himring were always armed, when outside their private chambers. Even so, Maedhros was still uncertain as to the most appropriate and commanding posture. His height and features lent him an imposing appearance, but almost since his birth, he had been taught the importance of demeanor also.

In the early days of his recovery, his maimed wrist had been bound in a sling. Now he aped that old pose, only thinking to question how much it revealed after he had already assumed it. “I will dispatch my troops as I see fit. The High King and his lords will be aided by our position here in more ways than one, if we are to rightly call this hill a stronghold.”

Argoldo subsided.

Maedhros reviewed the finer details of the scouts’ reports, and sent out swift runners with two messages, on parchment covered in letters not his own.

Maglor, with his lofty ideals of form, would not be shocked by Maedhros’ decision to keep a secretary.

Fingon would doubtless prefer the shaky scrawl of his left hand; would be pleased to see that hand put to some other use than swordplay.

Fingon would be disappointed.

Maedhros retired from the council to the battlements.

He should have asked Celegorm to teach him the raven-tongue, or Curufin. He had not heard from those two in some time. They would be far more disagreeable than his lieutenants, if they were to hear that he had ceded troops to a common cause. True, it was a cause they shared, but they shared it cautiously. In their hearts, they had not abandoned the hope of a new kingdom, free from the influence of their other kin.

The ravens that had just arrived spoke rapidly. Though they roosted apart, they did not ignore one another. Maedhros hadn’t understood this, at first. They regarded one another in the sidelong manner particular to all creatures whose eyes were fixed on opposite sides, and they answered the chorus of news with guttural caws. Maedhros curled his gloved fingers against his palm, counting the number of syllables in each call and response.

Someone had lit a fire in his room. The tension in his shoulders that had gathered in the teeth of the wind did not ease. With his back to the rosy glow, he made for the shelves and plucked out a handful of fresh scrolls.

He did not unfasten his cloak. Nor did he tend to his hair, which tumbled, wind-tattered, over his shoulders.

Two years’ growth had lengthened it to his shoulder-blades. It was more an inconvenience than anything else, but he let it be.

He wrote in the flickering light for a painstaking hour, coding the ravens’ voices in a language of simple symbols. His father would have laughed at the attempt, but laughed fondly, perhaps, if he was in one of his kinder moods.

When the ink had begun to smear like fresh blood, Maedhros set the pen aside. He rummaged about for blotting sand and found it, and when he had shaken it away, he spread his cramping hand flat upon the desktop.

The prolonged, focused sight of his own flesh, even visible merely in the blurred angle of his nose and this single hand, filled him with disgust. Bile flooded his mouth and he swallowed, miserably, before he rose, kicking the chair from under him a little more harshly than necessary.

He should, he knew, try to sleep.

But the shadows were growing.

He had put his mail away, and hung his sword on its wall-rack. His hand flitted to his collar, which was fastened with clasps that he could undo more easily than laces, but before he had even released one, he found that he could bear it no longer.

To the hearth, then, he stepped, slowly and doggedly, seemingly dragged by an unseen power. His gaze bent to the glowing coals, as on every other night.

And as on many nights—too many, even when the count of them lessened—the embers shifted fluidly, revealing the planes and hollows of a face.

The ravens had thirty variations for their calls, emanations rather like speech-syllables, if one broke them down to the essential shapes of sound. How they combined and ordered them, and in particular the speed with which they delivered them, gave Maedhros most of his opportunities for study.

From his shelves, he selected the scraps of sheet music Maglor had left behind—drafts of compositions he had dreamt of, while idling away the days at Maedhros’ bedside. His brother’s penmanship was as fluid as ever. The notes, for harp or flute or voice, ran down the parchment like tendrils of light over water.

The first time he unfurled them, Maedhros touched the dried ink with a fingertip. He could hear his pulse in his ears.

With Maglor’s unwitting aid, Maedhros charted the language of ravens. He could not yet read it yet, but slowly, he wrote it down.

Maedhros’ secretary was an elf named Quennar, whose left knee had been shattered and burned by an attack of the valaraukar. As such, he could not walk upright without the assistance of a crutch. Maedhros had chosen him for his meticulous memory, and his skill in copying down dictation with an unbroken, feather-light hand. He had not chosen him out of pity.

The healers said that Quennar’s knee would heal again, with time. Maedhros was fascinated by the lurch in the elf’s step, but he was careful never to be seen watching.

As was their custom, Quennar rapped at the door of his lord’s chambers two hours before midnight. He had his quills in hand, and his crutch dragged along the stones in the hall enough to give warning.

Why warning might be needed, Quennar and his lord did not acknowledge.

Quennar knocked, and the door was flung open. There was a heat-flush on Maedhros’ cheeks. He could feel it; he could not wholly blame it on the wind he had faced that day.

“Come in,” he said. “I have not much to trouble you, tonight.”

“It is no trouble,” Quennar answered, hobbling across the floor. Quennar did not so much as look at the fire, which was crackling merrily. Maedhros followed him, and drew out the chair from the desk with his left hand, that the other elf might be seated.

“Having cut our warriors by a score,” Maedhros said, hovering behind Quennar’s shoulders, “We will need to reorganize the guard roster. Artaher’s squadron has some of our stealthiest scouts; I am thinking of devoting it solely to that purpose, but at half the present number. If we sent…I think, a dozen to the outer walls, to replace those who departed for the Gap, we would be able to maintain pairs or triples at each station. A slightly thinner defense, but not dangerously so.”

Quennar nodded, and as Maedhros listed the names of each guard, and their changed assignments, his pen darted over his parchment. Watching the figures form, Maedhros felt a wave of longing—or perhaps it was nausea. He lifted his fist to his lips.

When Quennar had blotted his work, he asked, “Is there anything else, sir? Any letters?”

He had already sent word of his recent decision to Maglor and Fingon, along with sundry other messages of a more personal nature. He had also notified Fingolfin of the movement of troops before he told his own lieutenants. That way, word of reinforcements would not long precede the reinforcements themselves.

“That is all, Quennar. Thank you.”

Quennar rose, with an unsteadiness about him that was ugly to see. Then he stopped short, resting both hands on the edge of the desk. “Beg pardon, my lord—”

—Maedhros wished they would not call him that, since it reeked of past torment more than anyone knew—

“Do you make music?”

Flushed by more than wind and flame, Maedhros reached out to snatch away his scribblings. “Nothing. No. I—it is nothing.”

“I beg pardon.” Quennar bowed his head. “I only know the talents of Lord Maglor, and imagined that they might extend—”

Maedhros had crumpled the parchment in his hand, more than he intended to, but he lacked the benefit of another to assist in smoothing it out. He dropped it awkwardly beside Quennar’s annotations.

“My apologies,” he said stiffly. “Think nothing of it.”

“My sister made music.” Quennar’s gaze shifted, seeking something farther-flung than the four cold walls.

“She is not here, in Himring?”

“She married one of Fingolfin’s people,” Quennar answered, appending no title to the High King’s name. “She perished on the Grinding Ice.”

Maedhros had asked the question so that the cruelty of its answer might sting him. Still, he had not expected this. “That is a great sorrow.”

“Indeed it is.” Quennar smiled faintly. “An even greater guilt.”

“Yes.” The room was unbearably warm. “I…” The Lord of Himring must not be at a loss for words. “I do not know if I should thank you, for choosing to serve…here. Or if such thanks would be further insult.”

“You did not see me,” Quennar said, “But we watched them burn the ships together, and did not take part.” He shrugged, steadying his crutch beneath his arm. “At the time, it seemed like enough. Good night, my lord.”

Maedhros waited until Quennar’s uneven tread had died away down the hall. Then he knelt before the hearth, his face turned squarely towards the fire, since that was what he deserved.

He woke with a chill slicing down to his bones. His right arm was numb, pinned beneath him, and he floundered a little as he dragged himself upright. With no feeling in his maimed limb, it was horribly easy to forget that it was maimed. The impulse to flex a hand that was no longer there—that had not been there for three years, now—

Maedhros thrust his left hand out, forcing himself to look at it. There was only the white light of day in the room, and very little of that, but the shape of his pale fingers was unmistakable.

The gleam of morning shafted through the glazed-glass window high up in the wall, narrow as an arrow-shaft. The old embers lay as grey and flaked as a heap of rotted flesh.

Maedhros cursed savagely under his breath. The need to make some sound was strong enough that he knew he had to choose between speech and craven mewling.

The chest of clothes at the foot of his cot was unlocked; he lifted the lid and rummaged through it for a fresh tunic and breeches. Once dressed, he raked his matted hair back from his forehead. It was untidy enough, now, that he could not face his soldiers for drills without subduing it.

There had been a time, in the first year, when it had not yet been long enough to tie or braid. With a knife held awkwardly in his left hand, he had taken to hacking a ghastly fringe at the front, to keep it out of his eyes. He tucked the rest behind the points of his ears.

Fingon, who wore the same gold thread in his dark braids as always, and who somehow kept both thread and braids very beautiful and neat, had been properly horrified.  

Maedhros had a comb, somewhere in the remnants of his things, but he could not find it. He settled for teasing out the worst of the tangles with his fingers, then pinning it atop his head with the anchoring aid of his stump.

It was a tricky business. He managed to wind a length of bowstring around the coiled locks, only to have the knot unspool, sending the lot of it cascading down over his shoulders.

He cursed again. Then he strode to the wall-rack, took down his hauberk and his sword, and closed the door of his chambers firmly behind him.

There was no noticeable deficiency in his swordsmanship. It was the first (in some ways, the only) skill he had honed after—after Fingon cut off his hand instead of letting him die. Fingon had left a good deal more than Maedhros’s hand on the slopes of Thangorodrim, but Maedhros made certain that neither his cousin nor his sword knew that.

Concealment was a difficult business; Fingon was sharper than the blade.

Maedhros’ guards did not complain of their lord’s brutality on the practice court, even when they nursed bruises and worse than bruises from their training.

Their lord had risen late this morning, and as such, he had not eaten. Rations were always something to be watched with a hawk’s eye, anyway, and were not passed out late to anyone—regardless of rank.

Eating seemed superfluous, when Maedhros fought. At the conclusion of the very first combat round, he bore down on Ilinsor, who gasped and yielded under the weight of a blunt sword-hilt. Maedhros released him and reversed the direction of the blade with a twist of his hand, bringing the keen edge to the elf’s throat.

“You are a little sluggish today,” he said, spitting out a mouthful of hair. “Orc-filth will be glad of it.”

“Forgive me,” Ilinsor mumbled.

“My forgiveness,” said Maedhros, with a half-smile, “Will not do you any good.”

He spent the first hour of the afternoon with the ravens. It was not an idle pursuit. He had watched their flight patterns as well as listening to their conversations, and he had determined that they could be as useful as the fleet-footed scouts who traveled hither and yon.

To know a creature, to know a chance, one had to spend time beside it.

His father had known that better than anyone.

It would soon—soon indeed, by the count of old time—be forty years since Fëanor was slain.

Maedhros set his jaw as he directed his glance to the grim glow of the Enemy’s mountain. There was ever malice brewing there, and more than malice.

The Enemy looked outwards, too.  

“A letter,” said Irildë, who was one of Himring’s best runners. She had a nasty slash oozing across one cheekbone, but she executed her duty before she sought out the healers. “From Lord Fingon in Dor-lómin.”

Maedhros was eager to have the letter; too eager. His right shoulder trembled a little as he held his right wrist from reaching, handless, to take it.

“You had trouble on the road?”

“A band of orcs, sir.” Irildë flashed her teeth in a feral grin. “There were six.”

“Were.” Maedhros lifted the leather-bound scroll from her outstretched palm. “Your blood is fresh; did you meet them close to Himring?”

She nodded. “I think they were scouting, just as we are.”

Maedhros digested this information. It made for a poor breakfast. He flicked another glance at Irildë, and saw that she was too pale. There was a dark stain on her jerkin, below the breast.  

“Get to the healers’,” Maedhros ordered abruptly. “Do not try to uphold the appearance of strength for pride’s sake—or mine.”

Her grin was a grimace, now, and she clicked her heels before she strode away. One of the gate sentries helped her.

Maedhros breathed wrong. The grey sky was far from a lowering storm, if one looked straight above, but when he tipped his chin back, he was spine-arched and split-open again.

Black spots swam before his eyes. They were not ravens.

He turned on his heel and made double time to his chambers.

To Russandol, Lord of Himring:

All (that you would worry over) is well. I know that you would ask after that first, if we were face to face, and so I answer it first, though this letter has other news.

Namely, I am riding for Himring myself. This is no errand of my father’s, lest you worry that some unrest brews in Mithrim that must be conveyed personally and secretly. Rather, I am coming because I find myself remiss in my cousinly affections. Finrod has already seen your keep, and I have not. Let me remedy this, though I be wrapped in enough furs to keep ten of me warm.

As for all that is not well (with the world), I’d rather speak of it over a flagon. You may expect me within two days of receiving this; I travel with a small company. We are well-stocked, and shall not burden you but for the permission to sleep in a courtyard.

Findekáno, Lord of Very Little

“Quennar,” Maedhros said, when the secretary came to his chambers that night, and had made a few edits to the apportionment of winter rations, “I have a favor to ask you.”

Quennar pinched the end of his quill in his fingers, to clear it of excess ink, and then tucked it in the pocket of his outer vest. The pocket was stained anyway. Maedhros kept his eyes fixed on the stain, for a moment, since the favor was not without humiliation, and it was easier to stare at blotted fabric than into the eyes of a comrade.

“Anything, of course,” said Quennar.

 Maedhros pressed his lips together. Hesitation was weakness.

(Everything was weakness.)

“It will not surprise you to learn,” Maedhros said, “That I cannot plait my hair.”

Quennar cleared his throat. Then he said, “I had rather thought its current state a preference.”

Maedhros blinked.

Quennar ducked his head, and said, “Forgive me, my lord. It was a poor attempt at jest.”

“It was amusing,” Maedhros said, without changing his expression. “But be that as it may, I believe you know what I am asking.”

“Yes.” Quennar spoke softly. “I would be honoured.”

“Don’t be. It’s fit for birds to nest in.” Maedhros stalked to the chair that his secretary had recently vacated, and sat down. “I had a comb. Once. I haven’t now.”

“Shall I fetch my own?”

“Not unless you must.” Maedhros curled his fingers around the edge of the desk, feigning an interest in his bruised nails. His stump, he rested on his thigh. “You may remember that it was shorn off, when I had little say in the matter. Perhaps there was some merit in the idea after all.”

“I do not think so,” Quennar said mildly. He must have settled his crutch under his arm, but Maedhros only thought of that now—how it might not be easy for the elf to stand. He had been…distracted. “To wear our hair freely is our birthright, wherever we may be.”

Maglor had been the one to cut away the strands rotted and ruined by Thangorodrim’s foul fumes and blistering winds. He had been gentle about it, because he was always gentle. Maedhros had even seen him plunge a blade to its hilt in a Teleri throat with something like poetry in the tragic lines of his arm and shoulders.

Quennar was gentle, too. His fingers probed at the stubborn knots with the same cleverness he relied on in his writing. Maedhros counted his nails, and each scar scraped over his knuckles, so as not to remember the touch of any other to the tender skin of his scalp.

When he was finished, he stepped away, and Maedhros rose before he even thanked him.

“Goodnight,” he said, keeping his hand curled loosely at his side. “I…”

“I will not speak of this to anyone.” The crippled elf looked him squarely, honestly in the eye.

Maedhros was chagrinned. “I did not think you would.”

The door was shut. The lamp burning on his desk was the only light; there was no fire on the hearth, though fresh wood lay there, ready for kindling.

Maedhros lifted his hand to the braids that lay above his left temple and ear. They ran back to join those on the opposite side, fastened above the nape of his neck with a narrow riband. The unbraided locks beneath, though rippled through with an untamed wave, were not nearly so snarled as before.

He felt the corner of his lips stitch up; a muscle memory that frightened him. He bit down on the fear until it turned to anger. Narrowing his eyes, he approached the fireplace, and struck flint.

If the ravens were ever to speak to him, Maedhros must speak to the ravens. He took great precautions to be certain that he was alone on the battlements, and then he greeted them in the Sindar tongue.

It had occurred to him that that language, more widely spoken than was Quenya, would be useful.

This became a habit of some days and weeks. At first, the birds were skeptical. He watched their moods long enough to know what their moods were. Still, they lingered to listen when he told them of Himring, of the weather they sheltered from, and his own name. Maedhros cared not at all for the frost on his breath and eyelashes, when they cocked their ruffled heads and muttered among themselves.

There was intelligence in those beadlike eyes. He was sure of it. Elves loved to make everything speak; this had been true in Valinor, when no need existed for such inquiry. With battle and blood as motivation, with the Enemy on the horizon, the same could be true here, too.

He wished Celegorm was beside him, to tell him if he was merely a fool, or worse, if he was consorting with spies of the Enemy.

As it was, he had to decide the safety and sense of the plan himself. He had been at the Enemy’s mocking mercy long enough to recognize when a creature desired freedom above all else.  

(It had been difficult for Celegorm to see the handless, useless arm. It was difficult for Maedhros to forget how he had looked when his eyes fell upon it.)

Harh-hring, croaked the nearest of the ravens. Harn-ring.

“Himring,” Maedhros answered, eagerly. “Yes—Himring.”

The flames climbed up in the hollow of the wall. Maedhros set his jaw and squared his shoulders.

With time, the wood flaked and crumbled. When a log burned, its veins were not so much revealed as remade. Rivulets of copper-bright destruction proceeded in an almost orderly fashion, carving patterns straight and deep before all was turned, with time, to ash.

Maedhros waited. He did not pray. Eru had forgotten him, and the Valar were not his lords.

My lord, whispered the copper brightness, tender as branded flesh. And yet: no features, no white-throated, white-heated grin.

Sweat pearled on his brow. Maedhros did not kneel, tonight. He stood with his arms at his sides, his unblinking stare fixed on the shadows that leapt behind the golden tongues.

For such insolence, we might have your tongue.

“Reveal yourself,” Maedhros hissed, between his teeth. “Reveal yourself.”

Maitimo…

He would rather remember the knife slipping between his wide-wrenched jaws, teasing at the soft flesh of his tongue and palate until blood filled his gullet, choking him. He would rather be flayed from breast to waist, over and over (for flesh could be regrown, in Angband’s dungeons), than hear that voice again.

He shut his eyes (everything was weakness). When he opened them again, there was a face rising from the embers at last, but it was not his mother’s.

It was his own.

Sweat ran down and salted his eyes. He blinked it away. His left hand was clenched as tightly as a vice. His stump had no such strength or certainty, nor could it, but his right elbow was locked fast.

Maedhros in the flames was beautiful: molten and unflawed. The arch of its nose was clean and unscarred. The lidless golden gaze roved as if it could truly see. The jawbone had never been broken. The ember teeth had never been plucked out and fed again into a bleeding, misshapen maw.

It was proud and savage and perfect, this fire-mask.

Maedhros had seen it before.

“Reveal yourself,” he cried, hoarsely.

And, with a laugh that shook the stone foundations, Mairon came.

The day of Fingon’s arrival dawned colder than any that Maedhros had known in Himring. He himself was not as conscious of the cold as his companions were; thirty years’ exposure had graced him with an unusual understanding of comfort. He kept his throat covered because it bore the angry scars left by an iron shackle, not because he feared the wrath of winter.

He did not know, precisely, when Fingon would arrive. He watched the ravens, and rather shyly, he tried to teach them to say Findekáno.

They did not oblige him.

Maedhros heaved in a lungful of the icy air. The Enemy’s storm had spread in the night. There was a flicker of pale lightning at its blood-dark heart. Even that flicker brought the iron slopes of Thangorodrim perilously near.

But from the west, a blue-and-silver banner—

The lord of Himring raced down the stone steps of his fortress three and four at a time.

Fingon was not wearing ten fur-lined cloaks, but he did look a good deal more bundled than usual. Maedhros, standing stock-still in the courtyard that lay beyond Himring’s gates, would have known his quicksilver laughter anywhere.

(He had known his quicksilver voice through a haze of pain, in the last hours of decades’ despair.)

“Russandol!” cried Fingon, dismounting. “I bring the greetings of all Hithlum! And the heads of a dozen orcs, but we left those on the plains behind us.”

“We have a superfluity, these days,” Maedhros said, taking Fingon’s left hand firmly in his. He kept the stump beneath his cloak; a foolish vanity, since Fingon had made it. “I trust the journey was otherwise uneventful?”

They did not embrace, but walked side-by-side into the main keep. Curufin had helped to build this, too. As with their father’s forge, in Valinor long-lost, Maedhros could sometimes hear his voice in the walls.

“It was a long ride,” said Fingon. “But I knew I should see you at the end of it.” His eyes twinkled.

All of Fingolfin’s line had eyes that twinkled.

Fingon was not wounded. Maedhros watched him carefully, out of the corners of his eyes, and detected no imbalance in his stride, no unnatural flush or pallor.

“This is an impressive keep,” Fingon said, when he’d been given what amounted to a seat of honour at the long table where Maedhros and his lieutenants held council and took their humble meals. “Your brothers helped to raise it, no doubt?”

“Yes,” Maedhros said, breaking bread with a twist of his fingers. He wondered if he should have worn one of the clever contraptions that Curufin had made him, to fill the place where the hand had been. Maybe it would have made Fingon happier, to see him looking whole.

Fingon did not look unhappy, exactly, though his face had grown a little grave.

“Have they returned since then?”

“No.” 

Fingon chewed his bread, and swallowed it, and said deliberately, “I’m sure they had their reasons.” From Fingon, that was as good as a curse.

Maedhros had missed him. He had no more appetite for dry waybread than he ordinarily did, but he drained his goblet and wanted to smile without pain. “Come up to the battlements,” he said. “Unless you are too weary from riding.”

“I’m never too weary for fresh air,” Fingon said. At the door of the hall, he paused, as if he had other words on his tongue, but then he swept his hand, still gloved for riding, towards the winding stair that led to the open promenade. “Let us go!”

Maedhros hoped the ravens would present themselves. There was nothing else to be seen but the ash-drift of snow and the lowering north. He wondered if Fingon would look on Thangorodrim and feel a knife in his hand again.

The wind lashed at them at once. Fingon tucked his plaited hair under his fur collar and smiled, close-lipped.

“I don’t mind the cold,” Maedhros said. Even those words felt like saying too much. Fingon, after all, hadn’t asked. He ducked his chin and paced the length of the wall.

No ravens.

“You know, Finrod is rather partial to caves.” Fingon did not have so long a stride as Maedhros, but he kept abreast. He had always been quick, in his movements. Always eager to see what lay a yard ahead of him, even when they believed (as did all their kin) that they had endless time to learn the lay of the world. “And I myself would wither like a leaf if I were to be lord of a place such as this. But! I confess I am a friend of the wind, no matter how sternly it blows.”

“Of course,” Maedhros said, quietly enough that the same wind might carry his words away. He was thinking of the great eagle.

Damn the ravens, would they not—

There was a flurry of black wings, and the bird alighted on Fingon’s shoulder.

Fingon froze.

“Don’t be afraid,” Maedhros said hastily, as if Fingon would ever be afraid. “They’re—” Friendly was not a word that suited them; it was not a word that suited him insofar as his relations to most living beings (save the one beside him). He had not devoted much time to devising new descriptors for the occupants of Himring.

Káno, croaked the raven.

The points of Fingon’s ears were already pink with cold, but his cheeks flushed merrily. “Have you been teaching them?” he cried, leaping with sprightly ease from thought to conclusion, as he was wont to do.

With his hand clasping his stump, beneath his cloak, Maedhros squinted out at the cloudbanks. “A little.” He spoke in a space left by the wind, which had calmed. “They have their own language. Celegorm knows it; Curufin too.”

“But you have given them our language!” Fingon tugged off his glove, foolishly exposing his fingers to the raven’s harsh beak. But the bird only poked at his knuckles. It did not so much as nip. “Greetings, friend.” Fingon paused, then muttered a few rough calls. It made him sound like a nestling eagle.

Maedhros bit his lip to keep a sober countenance. The raven, not so restrained, squawked and flew away.

“Ah,” Fingon conceded, with a sigh. “I have much to learn.” He shot Maedhros a coaxing glance. “What have you to teach me?”

“I have charted the arcs of their songs,” Maedhros said. “It helped to think of them as such; almost as lyrics. They are not melodious, it is true, but there is a rhythm and pattern to their discourse that is not so different in form from the speeches of our people. In birds, then: a song, made up of syllables rather than words.” He traced the ink-dotted notes as he spoke, with the forefinger of his left hand. “Up and down, when they are giving what I believe to be reports…but in warning they are urgent and monotonous, even though here, and here, you see, are the same sounds.”

“Fascinating,” Fingon said, leaning so far forward that a loose curl bobbed down towards the parchment. “This is a firm line, Russandol—and this one also. Your penmanship is recognizably yours.”

Maedhros frowned. “I did not mean to show you the scrolls,” he said gruffly, but because it was Fingon, he only folded his arms. He did not take the scrolls away.

Fingon tilted his gaze up, even though he still stooped by the desk. “Why not?” he asked.

“I did not mean to show anyone the scrolls. They are…they are a child’s amusement.” He felt stupid and old and young. Not for the first time.

“They are not. You are the lord of a land without much ingress or egress, save by air.” Fingon, when he raised his voice a little and pinched his straight black brows together, looked and sounded like Fingolfin. “It is wisdom, not idleness, which tasks your mind with the business of envoys and spies. Truly, Russandol. It is.”

Maedhros shrugged. He unfastened his cloak—he did not need help in doing so—and tossed it on the cot. There was no fire. It was better so.

Fingon was still wrapped in his furs.

“I could sing this,” suggested Fingon.

“Aye, the raven up above cherished your song mightily.”

“Have a little mercy! I did not know the proper meter!” And Fingon snatched up the parchment, as if to make it a real challenge, and stood with his shoulders back as he had stood on all occasions but one, singing.

Maedhros did not know, in truth, how Fingon had held himself on the mountainside below.

Fingon croaked out the raven-song. Maedhros’ laughter surprised them both.

“There now,” said Fingon, a little breathlessly. “That is the proper meter.”

Maedhros did not answer. Words felt as fragile as pearls, in his mouth.

Fingon lifted the furs from his shoulders and laid them carefully beside Maedhros’ cloak. There was a new, red scar carved along the joint of his left thumb.

“I can have more wine brought up,” said Maedhros, who had filled the space in conversations with strong drink since he was an anxious youth, trying not to seem so, in Tirion.

“Perhaps we could warm it in a pot. That would be pleasant.”

There was no fire. The hair rose on the back of Maedhros’ neck.

“Perhaps,” he said.

They did not go down to dine. Maedhros rolled up the scrolls of raven-speak and thrust them into the gaping sockets of his untidy shelves. Then he called for some meat and dried fruit—Maglor’s gift, though Maglor had not brought himself with it—to be carried to his chambers, along with mulled wine and more bread.

“A feast!” Fingon said. “Himring puts the south to shame. This meat is remarkably tender.”

“It’s been boiled,” Maedhros said. “And it is for you—I haven’t much appetite.”

“But you look well.”

Having once been called well-formed, half the word would never suffice. Maedhros said, “We must keep strong and sparing here, with the Enemy near.”

“The Enemy is always near.” Fingon speared a little meat on the end of his knife, and moved it to Maedhros’ plate without asking whether it was wanted. “And always far. That is what I have chosen to make of Beleriand, cousin. It is a land that is always living, and hopeful, even while it is dead with despair. They have seasons as we hadn’t, long ago. Evil could mar Arda, and it did, until Valinor itself was as cruel as the Helcaraxë. Much we cared for eternal summer, when darkness fell.”

Maedhros had reached Finwë’s body first. Thus, when the first body of an elf he killed fell before him, laid open and scarlet by his blade, he told himself that it was necessary vengeance.

Need was endless and gaping, a hollow left where a heart should be.

“Does it hurt you,” Maedhros asked, “To speak of it?”

“It hurts you to hear of it.” Fingon bowed his head. “For that, forgive me.”

“You have no claim on my forgiveness,” Maedhros reminded him. “You have, after all, done nothing wrong.”

They raised their cups in silence. Maedhros drank, and tasted blood.

His father had perished bravely. The sons who lay shackled by his words, limned in grey death by his ashes, had no time and no desire, to question his courage.

Much he left you, the thundering voice pondered, before Maedhros was stripped of armor and hair and beauty and hand. Much for you to bear.

“How fares the High King?” Maedhros asked. Fingon had taken up his fur-trimmed mantle again. The room was dark, and a candle burned, and even that flame—

Oh, it was enough.

“Father is just and wise, and thus just as he was,” Fingon said. He was pleasantly drunk, but his drunkenness meant that he did not hide, so well, how cold he was. He shivered, and burrowed into the folds of his cloak. “We are all flung so far and wide. I have heard tell of your brothers, but I have only seen Caranthir. Nosing about, as is his wont, and not very inclined to friendly conversation.”

Maedhros missed Caranthir. His relentless rants. His stubborn inquiries. More important, though, at present, was the fact that the moon was rising. It was near Quennar’s hour; Quennar, having been asked one favor, might try to proffer another.

Sure enough: a rapping at the door.

“Varda’s Stars,” Fingon drawled, startled from his reverie, but Maedhros waved—well, his only hand.

“Stay there, my unsteady one.” He made for the door and opened it narrowly.

“My lord,” said Quennar, “I know you are preoccupied.”

“Thank you,” Maedhros said, dry-tongued. “Indeed, I have no tasks for you, tonight.”

But it was too late. Quennar beckoned, and a guard stepped forward with a fresh supply of kindling under his arm.

“These halls are cold,” said Quennar. “I thought you might have need—”

“Just the thing!” Fingon could not exactly loom over Maedhros’ shoulder, but he caught the edge of the door and drew it wider. “Come in, my good elves. Have you already dined? We have a little meat and drink left.”

Quennar looked at Maedhros, then at Fingon, and he bowed as well as his crutch would allow. The guard followed suit. Fingon’s bright gaze did not waver from Quennar’s misshapen stance. Fingon did not look away from others’ hurts; he would not shame them so.

(It had been necessary to remove the fragments of bone, and draw down the skin over the severed tendons, that it might be sewn shut. This left the wrist shorter than a wrist should be, and seamed with a scar on the inner edge.)

“We shall not stay, my lord,” Quennar answered. “But we thank you.”

Fingon took the kindling, and bid them a pleasant rest.

“You do let you your men rest here, don’t you?”

“Of course.” Maedhros lifted a brow, keeping his eyes away from the bundle in Fingon’s arms. “When they are not keeping watch, sparring, scouting, and the like.”

“They love you.”

“They are loyal. It is enough.” Ordinarily he would rise himself, in the hour before dawn, and take a watch on the battlements. A long, lonely, last span of hours—right for a leader to bear. This, without the company of any birds. Without any light in the sky except that which was fell.

Fingon stepped to the hearth. He arranged the pyre with deft care, and reached for Maedhros’ flint.

There was no chance, no reason to stop him.

(Mairon—had risen, the mockery of elvish features, the mockery of burnished tresses, and the mockery of kingly garb all flowing down in golden and unbearable heat. So it was each night, and so it had been then again, as Maedhros stood, drawn taut by chains he bound round his own limbs by memory and fear.

Mairon collared Maedhros’ cringing throat with searing hands, until the breath left his body and the sweat ran down his skin like blood. Mairon smiled, with Fëanor’s dead and melting mouth.)

Fingon sat cross-legged, the serpent-tongues lapping at the square, open bones of his face. Maedhros stood, horribly tall, scorched though he was half in shadow.

He was not brave. Not now; not on the Mountain.

Unlike his father, he had had too much time.

“Fingon,” he said, or tried to. The name was a hoarse husk, and Fingon didn’t hear it.

“I had a dream,” Fingon said, sounding very peaceable in the coal-coils of a dozen serpents. “I was hunting by the river in the north, and we had camped by its bank. I dreamt of Himring—though I’d never seen it, as you well know.”

Maedhros staggered to the desk, and poured the rest of the wine for himself. When he had drained the cup, catching a few sour droplets in his unraveling braids, he dragged his sleeve across his lips.

He shut his eyes and opened them again.

The red eyes and sliding bodies, twining in Fingon’s dark hair, were gone.

“What was the rest of your dream?”

“What?”

“Surely, you saw not Himring alone.”

Fingon drew his knees up to his chest. He linked his arms around them, linked his hands. “I saw you die,” he said. “And I knew I had to come.”

“I cannot die,” Maedhros replied, his gaze fixed on Fingon, and naught else…as if Fingon was not all fire and light, suffused and surrounded. “Because you bought back my life. Do you not remember? You would not give me death, and I will not be the one to brook your judgment, cousin.”

(That is not why.)

“Nonetheless,” Fingon said, with a heavy sigh. “You frighten me. In how you put us all to shame—facing down the darkness, and its foul might, with so little distance between you and…and it.. We let you go, Russandol. We oughtn’t—you gave your kin a gift. Kingly and eternal. What have we given you?”

“Life.”

(It is a lie, but he does mean it.)

(The lie is not Fingon’s.)

“It is a cold keep.” Fingon pitched a little forward, and Maedhros thrust out his right arm, where his cousin could not see. Then he drew it back. “A cold keep, but a strong one. And I am brightened in hope—nay, I am overjoyed, to see you rule it. To see you rule both elves and ravens.”

Maedhros went to him. Fingon was ready for him, and held up one hand. Maedhros gripped it in his left, almost as he had in greeting, and he lifted Fingon to his feet.

Fingon threw both arms around him.

“There,” he said muzzily. Still drunk; he’d never held dark wine beyond a few sips. It was strong stuff. “I would have been as childish below, but there was your lordly dignity to think of.” He hiccoughed into Maedhros’ shoulder. He could reach no higher.

Maedhros pressed his cheek against the gold-threaded braids. Not since Maglor’s departure had anyone held him so.

“You have never cared for lordly dignity,” Maedhros said at last. He stepped back first; he had to. It was the same with his brothers. “Yours or mine.”

“I suppose not,” Fingon said, a sleep-soft smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “I…suppose not. But I care for your gifts. You ought to make gifts to the ravens, cousin. Celegorm told me once that they…”

“What? You speak nonsense.”

“I don’t! Feather of M-manwë, I’m telling the truth. They like things that glitter. Most birds do.”

“I shall give them orc fangs, and a few shriveled eyeballs besides. Will that suffice?”

“Not at all.” Fingon tottered to the chair, where his mantle had found its latest station. “It’s here. The stone.” Then he shook himself, and let the mantle fall. “But what am I saying? You do not need it. You are well, Russandol. That is what gives me joy.”

Maedhros ground his teeth together, both the ones that grew in his head, and the ones that Curufin had made him to fill the places where they had been plucked out.

If he ever stooped so low as to tear orc-fangs from orc-jaws, it would be in vengeance, too.

“Take the cot,” he said. “You need rest. You are not keeping watch, or sparring, or scouting. At the moment.”

“I said I’d sleep in the courtyard.” Even half-awake and less than half-sober, Fingon was too sharp. “So no, I shall not oust you from your own quarters. I shall warm myself on the hearth.”

When Maedhros lay in the healing tents by Lake Mithrim, swathed in bandages and drenched in herbs, he had not really slept. Bitter draughts were coaxed at his lips until he swallowed and slipped deep in dreamless stupors, all so that he could heal.

Fingon’s company had been made comfortable in Himring’s guardhouse. Their lord made himself comfortable here, curling on his side like a squirrel in the hollow of a tree, with his magnificent mantle tucked beneath his head and shoulders.

Maedhros cast a tortured glance at the waiting coals.

He did not know where he was, or if his eyes were still his own. The forge spun in rings of heat and pain, settling with iron-banded oppression upon his naked bones.

The maia, with three eyes swimming amid the fierce plates of his fair features, stretched out hands that formed finger by finger in the iron air.

He buried those hands in Maedhros’ trembling breast.

Here, said Mairon, with the golden thing fluttering and flickering in his talons. Here you are.

He did not undress, though he thought he had. He thought he had stretched out on the unforgiving cot, to watch the shadows dance on the arched roof above his head. Yet, the hands that shook him did so in the broken space between dreaming and waking.

The stone-walled chamber spun in rings of heat and pain.

“Russandol,” begged Fingon. “Russandol! Come back.”

He knew it, even before the maia spoke, in silken tones, of what it was. His fëa, his life-force lit by Eru Himself.

Maedhros wept, though his eyes were not his own.

The gleaming spirit spun in the maia’s hands, as if it was trying to flee. Was Maedhros hröa only, then, capable of neither life nor thought?

Was he only fear, and bleeding flesh, with no escape?

The glow darkened. Poison, from the maia’s malice. And then those false fingers tightened, and plunged, and Maedhros—

—was whole again, in a mockery of all that wholeness meant—

Now, I shall always be with you.

“Have a little wine,” Fingon said. His arm was firm around Maedhros’ shoulders. His face was pale, too close to the color of death. “A sip—oh, what I would give to have some miruvórë! One of my guards has—”

“I live,” Maedhros rasped in answer. The bar of Fingon’s arm, the swift patter of worry…he had been here before. In and out of time, on the back of the eagle, when the feathers shifted to cover them both like fallen leaves. “Fingon, let me go.”

Fingon released him, gently. Maedhros lay on the flagstones, with the fire snapping innocently mere paces away.

“I saw you die,” Fingon said, above. Choked.

“I am not dead,” Maedhros answered. “That is…that is the trouble.” He tried to laugh, but the fear was still caught in his throat.

Now, I shall always be with you.

He had spent…it was little enough, he knew. Little enough of the months, the years, the near-age he had borne suspended. He had been their plaything of thought; not, despite his scars, of transformation. They had not carved and shaped him into grey-black, hateful flesh. He was not an orc.

He did not know, in truth, what he was. What his wounds and wildness made him.

“No trouble,” Fingon said. “Only…” and he had crouched down again, bringing an unasked goblet to Maedhros’ lips—“What did you see? There in the fire, Russandol. What—”

Three ravens, one larger than the other two, huddled side-by-side at the corner joint of the wall.

“There we might be,” Fingon said, lightly laughing. “You and Finrod and I. In the old days.”

“We never knew cold, then.”

“True. Still, you are the one in the middle.”

The wind cried out, but the birds did not reply. They were holding their peace.

They were resting on the edge of war.

“Did you not see?”

“No,” said Fingon. “Only that you crawled clear across me, as if to hurl yourself into the embers, face-first. But I did not…there was nothing.”

Maedhros felt the madness climb his throat as the fear had done. Felt it pour from between his lips with his breath. Felt it mark and stain him.

“I shall not tell you, then,” he said. “I do not wish on you the curses that were wrought in me.”

Or the oaths.

“Rubbish,” Fingon said. “I shall not let you bear them alone! I care not for the Enemy’s wiles, for his treacheries and cruelties. His divisions are not ours.” He paused, and then said firmly, “No more than were our families’. Our fathers’.”

Maedhros levered himself upright. He leaned on his hand, and he laid the ugly severed wrist across his right knee, which was in turn drawn towards his chest.

“The knife at your belt.” He nodded. “Is it the same?”

Fingon said farewell on the eighth morning. For days, they had walked the battlements together, debating the finer points of the ravens’ language. Maedhros considered himself something of an expert, by now, but he could never deny Fingon the pleasure of his little theories as to greetings and gibes. They had sparred in the courtyard. They had hunted, with Fingon’s company and the recently returned scouts of Himring. Twice they brought back meat for the tables and storehouses; twice they slew orcs who had ventured out.

At night, they drank and talked over maps, with a candle between them. To sleep, Fingon sought the warmth of his mantle. He did not stoke the fire high.

“It is not the same.” Fingon’s face twisted, but not because he lied. Maedhros had known him a thousand years and more, by the count of this world, and he had never seen him speak, except to speak truth.

He could not even lie with his eyes.

“But you have kept it?” Maedhros pressed. “The same?”

“Yes.” Then, because Fingon could press also: “Why?”

“I am no longer Maitimo, who was whole.” Maedhros gazed up at him. The sweat was drying cool upon his brow. Strength had left him. If Mairon came again—

He knew not, truly, whether Mairon had come at all.

“I know that. And yet…you are.”

“Nor am I Russandol, who took your hand in friendship.” He smiled. He wondered, in a half-formed thought, if it was his father’s smile. “Is that how you intended to take mine? In friendship?”

Fingon shook his head. There were tears in his eyes. The fire still burned with brightness such that tears could glitter, and be thus revealed. “Hear me, cousin,” he said. “I kept the knife with which I cut you free because of the deed it did. Unkind, maybe, in answer to your wish. Ungentle, surely. But I will not call it cruel. I wielded that blade to save the soul of you. I kept the blade to honour us both.”

Here you are, Morgoth’s lieutenant had said, strangling the fëa in his immortal grasp.

“My soul is poisoned,” Maedhros said softly. “That is what I see, night after night.”

“Then my dream did not speak wrongly,” Fingon said firmly. “For it is death, of a sort, to be alone with an evil past. It is a death we all might have died, on the Ice.”

He did not shy away from others’ hurts, or his own.

Maedhros could not hear the voice of Mairon, any more than he ordinarily could. And yet, he was weary. The nightmares would come again.

“What am I to do?”

“Seek the night with me.” Fingon reached for his discarded cloak. “Wrap up warmly, Russandol. Even you, so hardy in this barren north, will be in want of a layer between you and the frost.”

So it was that they climbed to the battlements. Fingon, with a few words, sent the guards down below for food and drink.

The stars were poised like arrows, straining to contend with the Enemy’s storm. Fingon shivered down to his bones, and then he laughed, as clear and melodious as any of his old songs.

Maedhros stirred; something deep in his chest did, too. Perhaps the hollow where his heart should be. “What is it?”

“You are still Russandol,” Fingon said, smiling like another arrow, in the dark. “As long as I live, I will not cease to call you by that name.”

Maedhros was silent.

“I spoke of our fathers,” Fingon was graver, now. “And it pained you. Yet you are different from your blood. I have here the proof: your father’s gift.”

That (flame) was not a memory that Maedhros held. He had seen the green stone when his world and he were young. He had offered it to Fingon when he could walk again, on the shores of Mithrim’s mirrored lake.

The loss in between was that of the breaking of worlds. If mountains bled (fire), and the sky rained (ash)—mayhap the death of Fëanor would pass again before the willing eyes of his eldest.

In Fingon’s palm, under night and shadow and distant storm, the green stone glowed.

There is no greatness in it, Fëanor said, sighing. It shall not capture what I wish it to. Still, through it can be seen that which was fair.

Atar, Maedhros asked, affection both blinding him and urging him to ask, to please: Is not all of Valinor fair?

“Look through the stone,” Fingon urged. “Whatever plagues you, in the watches of darkness, or in the heart of flames—look through the stone and be freed.”

So his father had said, of shining stones that bound them. Maedhros shook his head.

“I cannot.”

“Why?”

“None of it would be real. Think, Káno. I left—I left them behind. Our home. My kin, though you found me. My…my mother. To see it all again would be nothing more than another deceit. Another trick of flame, no matter how eternally it burns for others.”

“By your precious ravens,” said Fingon, and he sounded sad, “You are determined to be tragic!” Then he lifted up his hand, and the stone with it. His face was radiant, and lit with earthly light as if he lay amid a meadow in springtime, his cheek pressed to the grass.

Maedhros clenched his fist.

“I can see us,” Fingon breathed. “All of us.”

He said no more. He did not have to.

Maedhros’ eyes blurred. Surely, they were stung by the cold.

At last the glow faded, and the stars dimmed too, in some showing of dignity. Fingon tucked the stone in the pocket of his jerkin, and turned to face Maedhros in the first gleam of dawn.

“Your father,” he said, “My uncle, for all his faults, made this to heal.”

“I know.”

“It is a precious thing.” Fingon bowed his head. “Its giver’s generosity to me, I hold even more dear.”

“I cannot be healed.” There is no greatness—

“All that is not well in the world,” said Fingon, “Would fill our eyes and ears until the ending of the age."

Maedhros coughed. “Doubtless.”

“We guard the Gap.” Fingon’s voice rose a little, with Fingolfin’s plain, stern inflection. Yet—it was Fingon’s voice. “We send soldiers we cannot afford to lose. We plant gardens. We speak to the trees. Yes, already, Finrod speaks to the trees! We slay the servants of the Enemy. We build keeps at the edge of safety. We ride to greet each other, and drink wine. Would we do these things, if we were wise? Would we have spurned the protection of the Valar, to seek new lands, if we were wise?”

“I rode out to face the Enemy himself, and was trussed in iron for my troubles,” Maedhros reminded him, bitterly. “I am not wise.”

“Yet you love. And I love, and your brothers, in their contrary way, love. And here is Fëanor’s stone—and though he did not always love, I can feel its healing in my very fingertips.”

Maedhros went to him. He could not ask for healing; not with his voice, which had been twisted and wronged. He stood before Fingon in silence, until his cousin laid one square and calloused palm against his brow.

The morning blushed in the heavens, though it sent no warmth to earth. But Fingon’s hand was warm, and Fingon’s eyes were bright and strong, looking away no more from healing than they did from hurt.

The fëa, which was from Eru, could be taken by none other. Maedhros could see that, now.

He did not see Fingon weep again, however, until the last morning, when they chattered with the ravens a final time. Maedhros, to his own surprise, did much of the chattering. The birds were cheerful, as if they felt at home, and they spoke of their nests and their kin. Maedhros told them of the land that stretched south. There were rivers, he promised them, as if they did not already know. Rivers and lakes and mountains that lifted smoother spines and kinder crevices. Forests and plains. Friends, as well as foes.

When he turned to look at Fingon, who must soon depart, the tears were standing out on his straight dark lashes.

“Fingon,” said Maedhros. “What has grieved you?”

“Nothing,” said Fingon, sputtering. “It is the wind.”

But for once, there was no wind.