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They didn’t bother to bind Finrod’s eyes this time he was led from the rooms that had been Orodreth’s, down the winding stairs and vaulted halls of Minas Tirith. The stone hummed beneath his bare feet as he walked, and he blinked in the light.
Ten years it had been since the Bragollach: the lingering traces of smoke still darkened the tower's high ceilings. Not for the first time, Finrod found himself grateful Orodreth and his people had retreated. His soft-spoken nephew had Angrod's eyes. The thought of him sent a pang through Finrod’s chest. Look after them, Ulmo, if I ever sought to do your bidding.
Drapes and weavings were tattered rags where they remained at all, the lovely reliefs of the elegant watchtower tarnished and marred. Little remained of its original beauty, Noldorin stonecraft in the style of the arching spires by which the Teleri saw afar at sea. It was one of the first things Finrod had sought to craft in Middle-earth—had wished to see standing graceful and defiant even in the Enemy’s shadow. Sauron's banners had been thrown over the lot, a crimson eye upon the pure black background of the Enemy, who used no particular sign. It meant something, didn't it, that the Maia had his own emblem, where his master had none? Finrod didn't have time to dwell on the thought, because the sorcerer turned towards him.
"Mirbhoz," Sauron reproached. The name was a caress. "To me."
There was no sense protesting curtness to Morgoth’s second-in-command. He stepped closer lightly, as if the command and the name didn't weigh on him. When he walked alongside Sauron, as the Maia demanded, Sauron took his wrist, unearthly fingers pressing against his pulse.
“Dost thou remember what thou hast sworn?"
None leave here but by my will, resounded in his mind simultaneously, the dissonance jarring.
It was plain his question awaited an answer, even as that strange touch made Finrod's blood tremble.
"Yes," Finrod said. I remember perfectly.
It had been not one day ago. Once more, Finrod had sworn to remain, and obey, within the limits they bargained over, and to tell the truth, he thought they both might enjoy the bargaining of it more than either ought to.
This time, he had not made any promise not to harm Sauron or work against him—though the Maia had demanded he agree not to harm his own hröa, the result of a few particularly effective threats in the past month. He wondered if the former was an oversight, or if the spirit merely considered himself untouchable.
Maybe he was.
The Maia studied him a moment longer. His hand slipped from Finrod's wrist; a burning touch slid over his cheek, trailing down his chest where the sheer robe parted. Finrod felt himself flush and shielded what was in his mind with opaque care.
"I would so hate to lose thee," Sauron continued, voice as silkily beautiful as the cloth he held.
Would he? Finrod was pleased; he was perilously close to believing himself prized, and that should come with further opportunities, further safety for his companions. Sauron was far more than a thrall of the Enemy: he had his own intelligence, his own cruelty, and his own desires. Finrod thought of the different standard, the thousand red eyes watching him from the tower's black hangings. It was possible that the Maia's enthrallment made him all the more possessive, all the more desirous, and thus Finrod might have succeeded in offering him things that would be hard to replace. For the Maia's benefit, his expression feigned rather more doubt than he felt. But Finrod had never been a good liar, and his delight shone in his eyes as he caught his tongue between his teeth, thinking of how to reply.
If Edrahil had been at his side, he thought with a sudden pang—as his captain had meant to be when they departed, not imprisoned no matter how fine the cell was now—he would have knocked Finrod upside the head for both the delight and the lack of its concealment, the same way he scolded Finrod for going out with no guard or getting lost for hours when he did discussing birth rites with cousin Caranthir's human allies or some other group he was meant to be wary of.
Yet he was not there, and Finrod must not even think of him, lest their identities show through the magic that cloaked them.
A couple of human thralls passed them by in the hall, and Finrod flinched: they looked so very like those who had bled and begged him for aid in his mind's eye, back in that freezing cell with the whole force of Morgoth's lieutenant's being pressing in upon him, changing what visions he saw. It had taken all the strength he possessed to not answer. He had sobbed and shaken on the flagstones, holding to the threads of the tower.
Finrod blinked and opened his eyes to scorching orange ones with white-blue flame at their heart.
"No," Sauron said as if to himself, his gaze piercing. He took hold of Finrod's shoulders in a bruising, burning grip. "No."
"What is it you protest to?" Finrod said mildly, grimacing, trying to hide how shaken the moment of memory had made him. "If you free another of my companions, I'll endeavor to prevent it."
Sauron released him, and Finrod stumbled back, the chains between his ankles ringing. He was grateful that he caught himself and did not fall, for he thought the Maia enjoyed making him endure indignity only because he managed at times to hold onto some. The Men looked at him and hastily averted their eyes. Finrod smiled at them, as though to say everything were alright, as if they were not both nearly naked in a defiled and ugly fortress beneath the grey light that passed in the Enemy's domains for Sun.
"Begone," Sauron growled, sounding like one of his wolves.
The Men fled.
"Mirbhoz," Sauron said, and continued in Quenya, speech honey-sweet—and eerily familiar: though the Maia spoke always to him in Quenya, as if to brandish his knowledge that Finrod was Noldorin, Finrod was still most used to it as a private tongue, since the Ban, used among family and loved ones. Its use made it all the more difficult to remember with whom he dealt. "Let me help you to my throne room."
The words were infused with power, like a weighty hand over Finrod's fëa, and Finrod did let him take his hand. But Sauron looked sharply at him as he did so, despite the sweetness of his voice. Finrod rolled his shoulders, letting the sparse torchlight illuminate his half-bared chest (for torches were needed in the lower rooms even at noon, such was the fog of smoke and cloud) to what he thought was his better advantage.
"What hast thou in mind?" Finrod said, lips quirking upwards and chin lifting to expose his throat with a confidence he didn't quite feel. He had not missed the sharp glance.
"Thou," Sauron said, laying emphasis upon the familiarity and inferiority which Finrod was not meant to have a right to employ, "art fool indeed, if thou thinkest to understand the mind of one who sang in the music that created the world."
And look what became of thee since, Finrod bit back. But then something odd happened. He felt the flickering fingers of the Maia's spirit against his fëa, questing and seeking. Sauron was a being of raw power, and he could not easily be contained within himself, much as the fana he wore changed and slipped, Finrod had seen, when his moods were upon him. And thus Finrod felt a flood of emotion wash over him for a moment, and something very like concern beneath a burning frustration like grit in a polished lens.
His eyes widened. Sauron looked impassively upon him. Despite what the Maia had just said, and that closed look, Finrod felt himself in that moment rather more capable of understanding the soul of a being more ancient than stardust. Dangerously capable, indeed.
Edrahil would have told him how stupid he was being.
He shrugged, still staring into those beautiful, strange irises. "You already know me to be a fool," Finrod said freely.
Do I? Sauron seemed to whisper at the edges of his mind. He made no answer aloud but a short contemptuous laugh and a tug at Finrod's manacles instead of his hand.
Ranks of the Enemy's servants parted before them in what had been Orodreth's great hall. Finrod made a cursory attempt at categorizing them into type and regiment, but instead of forming up at attention as he had thought they might, they scattered to the room's far reaches, as far from the Maia's distracted attention as possible.
Distracted, because that spirit probed incessantly at Finrod's fëa, even when the flamelike eyes were not fixed upon him.
For his part, Finrod surveyed the hall, adorned with the same ugly banners, and tried not to show that the gazes of thralls, Orcs, and wolves even reached him. The room was dirty beneath his bare feet, unlike in the suite Sauron had claimed as his own. A stray shaft of sunlight managed to illuminate a little of it, besides the torches, and even that pure light seemed dirtied, hanging as it did in the abruptly-stilled air.
Once, Finrod had feasted in this vaulted chamber, at the head of a long table, and then he had visited his nephew's feasts… It had not been his throne room. He had provided formal audiences to his people in a smaller room, past a doorway he could now spot, which had doubled as the room for counsel and command: the tower was no kingdom like Nargothrond had become, but a fortification, if (Finrod sighed a little at the dingy ceiling) a beautiful one.
Sauron had made it a throne room. The hall was clear of the tables and fountains of feasting, and was dominated instead by a dais and a great, iron chair with a certain jagged elegance. Indeed, though Finrod had not had the chance to get a good look at it being otherwise occupied, he had already been before that dais and that throne. There he had summoned up songs of power, and there he had swayed and at last fallen.
The Maia was not looking at the throne, but at a spot some paces in front of it. Was it Finrod’s imagination that it appeared lighter than the rest of the hall?
Sauron smiled sharply to see him looking too. He settled into the throne, gesturing for Finrod to follow him to the dais. “That is where you stood.”
“Mm,” Finrod said. A shiver prickled over his skin. It was not a good memory.
Besides, it was cold in the hall. No matter that heat, lesser or greater, always radiated from the Maia that had served Aulë.
A wolf lurked behind the throne, he saw now, its immense body curled lazily about the chair. It roused a little with interest at the activity, and its slavering jaws came rather too close for comfort to Finrod’s ankles.
“Draugluin,” Sauron laughed. “This one is not for you, but for me.” And turning to Finrod, he said silkily, “I think you should sit on my knee.”
Very well. Finrod settled upon his lap, looking out at the hall. The Maia had no heart or heartbeat within his fana, no matter how like one of the Children it looked, but Finrod could hear his own beat more quickly, traitorous thing that it was.
“No control over your creations?” Finrod said lightly.
Sauron narrowed his eyes, at which Finrod couldn’t help but beam. “Or do you need an excuse to hold me close? Am I its audience? If so, I confess myself flattered. I have to say I thought you omnipotent within these walls.” The last was a blatant lie, but he could hardly resist.
Displease me, and thou shalt feel more of my power than thou hast yet, Sauron spoke into his mind, and it was accompanied by an invasion Finrod carefully rebuffed, shielding his thoughts.
Certainly Sauron could do worse to him than he had. But break him? Finrod generously allowed himself a little doubt. If Sauron could—or maybe it was better to say wished to, don’t be overeager, Findaráto—break him, he would have done it instead of treating with him or toying with him this way. Hadn’t he already made efforts to, and Finrod had withstood them?
Also, the sorcerer’s latest riposte had not been his best.
He sensed a sort of warm confusion from the overflowing spirit beside him. The Maia wound a slender, vambraced hand into Finrod’s hair, which he used to tip Finrod’s face away from him and towards the dark hall, beyond which a series of great doors, Finrod knew, opened out onto the bridge over the Sirion.
“Fool,” Sauron whispered in his ear.
Once when he was very young Finrod had seen his uncle Fëanáro do a demonstration with a series of lodestones set in a mechanism. Finrod had not paid much attention to the elaborate point Fëanáro was making, eager instead to speak with his cousins who he saw more rarely than the Nolofinwëans, but he remembered the movement of the iron filings along the magnet’s path. This was like that.
Who was he if something within him felt the call of Sauron the Abhorred, second to the Black Enemy himself?
Finrod had shared his body freely out of love before his capture, and he was still sharing it for love—the love of his companions. Worse, though, it might not only be for that, Finrod thought. It was more, somehow, than the pleasure that could be wrung from his body against his will. Each touch they exchanged—or rather more frequently, he accepted—seemed to draw his own soul inexorably closer to the Maia’s spirit, and he could not deny there was something thrilling in thinking himself valued by this being of fire and darkness, older than Eä itself, who was supposed to prize naught but cruelty and harm. If Finrod could exert some influence upon him in return, was there any harm in enjoying that? Was it losing focus?
Finrod’s gaze found the place where he had stood in the hall. It had not been a trick of the eyes: it was lighter than the surrounding flagstones, strangely so, along the whole line where he had shielded the group of them.
He banished the shame and confusion he felt. He reached along the threads of the tower, assuring himself of his companions’ comfortable breathing. He knew, he thought, himself and his adversary: he had to know at least one of those.
“What drove you to think you could stand a chance?” Sauron mocked.
"I did not think of chances," Finrod said. "I forgot odds and armaments when you began to attack. I have never been good with those things."
The Maia made a noise of contempt, but Finrod felt curiosity brush his fëa.
Perhaps he was playing this too freely. Still his thin spell of concealment held with the strength of finely woven fabric.
Finrod shrugged in reply—as much as anyone could shrug upon the throne of Morgoth's lieutenant, eerily aware of the lack of mortal breaths against his neck from Sauron's lips. "If I had thought of them, I daresay I would never have begun."
"Why didst thou? Thou wert lost."
No, Finrod thought grimly, not yet.
"Because I love those who accompanied me." Why else?
Sauron turned Finrod's head by the hand in his unbound hair, so that Finrod faced him once more, breath catching on a flash of pain—he had grabbed none too gently. His flame-eyes were narrowed. The expression the spirit wore would have been comical if he had not forced his way against Finrod's mind with such power at the same time, and again Finrod's own look went blank focused only on repelling him.
"Hadst thou missed this point in thy analysis?" Finrod said, when he could breathe more easily again.
Sauron rested his free hand against Finrod's throat, pressing lightly into the gold he wore there. Finrod spluttered again, but the Maia continued to survey him as though he were some kind of strange specimen.
"Dost thou suppose they would perform the same feats for thee that thou hast for them, thrall?"
"I know they would,” Finrod said with quiet gravity. Before his eyes flashed the wolves in the dark. “I have seen it."
Sauron waved a graceful hand, releasing him. His fingertips flamed. "What you have seen can change." His voice had a dark edge to it.
So he believed then what Finrod had said about his foresight. It was hard not to feel a little satisfaction about that.
“Even if their loyalty changed, mine would not.”
“I grow weary of hearing of thy companions,” the Maia snarled.
Finrod shrugged again. “‘Twas thou that asked.” He trailed a hand up the sorcerer’s shoulder, covered as it was in a fur mantle. Why did a spirit bother with furs? Finrod was half-inclined to ask. “You,” he pretended to correct himself, smiling, “lord of Tol Sirion.”
Sauron made a harsh noise like laughter.
The knife had not been so difficult to manage as Finrod had expected it to be—unless Sauron was toying with him, of course. The Maia had wearied of feeding his pet and must have considered himself beyond any mortal threat, so knives appeared upon the table to cut the meat of indeterminate origin that Sauron seemed to expect Finrod would find to his taste. One had fallen to the floor a week ago when they dined together—certain activities had disrupted both the “dining” and the “table” at which it occurred—and all that was to be done then was ensure that it did not get cleared away, which was all things considered rather easy.
That week, Finrod had sworn not to harm the Maia or his servants. All he had done was weave what charm he could with his song dampened about the object and conceal it near at hand under a corner of the mattress.
Now he had given no such word: he barely went about with hands bound. Tomorrow the terms of both their oaths would end once more.
Finrod tried to think counter to his nature. If there was the slightest chance to rid the free peoples of Middle-earth of such a power as Sauron’s at the Enemy’s command, or weaken its form, did he not have a duty to take it? Was it not such a chance that he had awaited, doing all this? Even if it were to cost his life and the lives of those who had been most loyal to him, did not the grisly arithmetic of war weigh still in his favor?
Be not a fool in truth, Findaráto, he told himself, when he considered the bright wash of life within that twisted, glowing spirit.
Beings such as Mairon did not sleep. As Mirbhoz lay beside him in the slumber curious to Eru’s children, Mairon’s conscious spirit dispersed across the tower and the gloom of the surrounding island in the river Sirion. He filed away a thousand details of the machines that churned now in the tower’s depths, of the battalions and thralls that served him, knowing always that his eye could turn thus upon them even when they seemed alone. Grasses were daring to emerge in the gray mud of the wolf-pits, and the river overflowing had overtaken part of the ground where the wolves were wont to run. But in the newly-expanded forges the furnaces, molten-red, burned on like the heart of the place. Amid all the imperfections, that knowledge was almost like pleasure.
He was drawn back to his fana like a coiled spring and was astonished to feel pain.
Mairon cursed and took hold of the singer in hands that bore a strength beyond that of Elves or Men. The throat of the form he wore poured blood onto Mirbhoz’s chest as he flipped their positions, pressing the Elf back into the bed with the force he would use to break stone. Distantly, he was aware that the windows of the chamber had just flown open and the lock snapped off of the heavy door, but he paid them no mind, though they were not his doing. His fana’s throat healed clumsily, in fits and starts, but he looked down at Mirbhoz as though he, and not the Elf, had tasted blood.
He looked down at Mirbhoz, and saw wide light-filled Noldorin eyes. Fear spilled from that carefully-closed-off fëa like wine from a broken vessel, but its taste was bitter, bitter as Mairon’s wine had been two months ago.
“We’ve been playing,” Mairon snarled in a voice that was lightning-sharp. His nails spread into claws, and he dug them through the Elf’s pale flesh with no regard to how it might be resung together. The knife had already fallen from Mirbhoz’s elegant hand. “You have eleven wretches left of those who came with you.”
“No,” the Elf whimpered, “no.”
“You can stand to lose a few,” Mairon went on, the words bending like incandescent wire. It was almost a laugh.
“No, please! I can—I will—”
“I can stand to lose a few of them,” Mairon said, voice dropping. “Give me something of value or I’ll do it.”
There was a silence broken only by the Elf’s labored breathing. “Swear you won’t harm them first.”
Mairon did laugh, then, though mirth was the furthest thing from his spirit. He pressed harder. “I will speak no such words. Act quickly now, or I’ll make their lives worse than their deaths. Tell me who you are.” For a start.
One breath—two. Mairon could see him shaking, as though his hröa were fana and made itself of flickering soul.
“I am Finrod, called Felagund,” Mirbhoz said.
Mairon released him and he fell back upon the rich bed, marring the sheets with their mingled blood.
Of course he was. Of course. It made sense, didn't it? How had Mairon not seen it before? A golden-haired Elf who spoke Taliska as easily as Quenya, versed in songs of power. The scion of a princely house… Fingolfin or Finarfin would make the most sense. He had said it himself—and yet something had kept him from seeing it.
Finrod Finarfinion called Felagund, king of Nargothrond, bearer of the Nauglamír.
I am used to wearing others’ gifts, he had said, smiling.
Mairon laughed, high and wild.
What a prize for Melkor! One of the Finwëans—Finrod the beloved, Finrod the fair! The Elf was a wellspring of information. He would know the workings of Nargothrond, how it could be entered within the caves, each detail of the forces there and the wealth at hand. He would know more than their spies did about Himring and Hithlum. He often visited girded Doriath, where spies could not yet even penetrate. Was it not said he had been close in friendship with Turgon too? Closer than anyone else, at any rate. They would break him down slowly, sapping him of all that he might tell, pressing further the tipping point of what he would not find worth any price to share and shattering him utterly when he was stretched thin enough, for their wills always shrank to contemptuously little past a certain desperate point. He had seen it often enough: tens of thousands of times, now—he had perfected it.
Well, Mairon would have to be the one to break Findaráto. Melkor was clumsy about these things: a blunt axe where a sharp knife was required. There was a reason Mairon, and not his… he had found the secrets to breeding Eldar into Orcs, and turning both the first- and secondborn into thralls for the use of their expertise. Wouldn’t there be some satisfaction in being the one to do it? The Elf had given himself airs long enough. Mairon had seen the flickers of prideful security in his Treelit eyes. His soul was a graceful mechanism, and maybe in taking it apart Mairon would see the way each piece fit together.
When it was done, Melkor would want to do something ridiculous like hang him on Thangorodrim or send his torn limbs to each Elvish realm in Arda. There would probably even be some false talk of a ransom or some privileges traded for the giving or keeping of the Noldo, as if Melkor would ever give a Finwëan Noldo up. No, Finrod would never leave Angband once he entered it.
Must he enter it?
Something spiteful in Mairon asked himself, looking down at his Mirbhoz, about the centuries he had labored for the dark Vala. Without him, would Melkor possess a single soldier, weapon, or machine—would he have ever returned to fresh fortifications from his imprisonment? Tirelessly he had served, had he not? And for what reward? Was one Finwëan not as good as another for him—but had he, Mairon, ever wanted something so much?
In any case, could he not announce the gift later? Could he not be trusted to lure out what information he could from the Elf as he wished without shattering its vessel?
Mairon’s sharp gaze wandered over his prisoner, bright of hair and eye despite the darkness that hung about the room: beautiful, with Mairon's fana's blood crumbling into soot on his bare chest. And about him, there was still that glimmer of song, alluring and distant. Beneath their blood, he still bore the gentler marks of Mairon’s desirous touch.
He was beautiful. Mairon had embodied and crafted many beautiful things before his works had begun to corrode, and even still, but none quite like this. Mirbhoz was something different, something new, and sweet as the name Mairon had given him.
"Finrod Finarfin’s son," Mairon purred. "What high honor. I should have known." I would have known, if you had not prevented it.
"It occurs to me," Finrod said through bloodied lips, his breast still rising and falling with pain, "why do you possess a bedchamber if you have no need of it?"
Mairon cocked his head quizzically, trailing a finger through Finrod the beloved's blood: the last of his own had evaporated.
"You assume I do not sleep."
"Do you?"
"No," Mairon said, stymied.
Finrod nodded to himself, breaths growing shallow. "Then why… your being needs no raiment, so… does the space lend more privacy than abandoning form would? Is it the association with reign of possessing the former ruler's chambers? Or is it for the benefit of your followers who are creatures of hröa and respect such things?"
Did one consider simply being? When had he begun…? "None of those," Mairon said. This was what occupied his mind?
The Elf was slipping from consciousness, his fëa dazed and fragile with less, Mairon saw now, veiling it away. Mairon sang, then, a now-familiar song, and the dark bruising vanished, the cuts closed. That fëa briefly flashed brighter.
The light of the Trees gleamed as ever in Mirbhoz’s—Finrod's eyes. But his glow had dimmed another fraction, Mairon thought with a fanatical categorization of detail. When Mairon raised a hand to his golden hair, the Elf went still. When Mairon kissed him, licking into his mouth, he shivered and did not respond. Mairon felt his spirit beating against his tongue, against the palms of Mairon’s fana covering his wrists.
“Findaráto,” Mairon murmured, serpentlike, as Finrod flinched.
How was he to give him up before he knew how to restore the luster slipping away from this jewel? His hands were too clumsy. What was a little time in lives such as theirs? Mairon had merited this much.