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Celegorm did not intend to eavesdrop, but his quarters were right next to his brother’s. It was hardly his fault that the air vents in Nargothrond’s caverns were not soundproof, or that Curufin had their father’s gift for making his voice carry without raising it.
“Well, Tyelpë?”
Huan’s hackles rose at Curufin’s tone. Celegorm laid a hand on his silky head, and the hound quieted, but after a moment he shook off his master’s touch. Celegorm sighed. The brat princess of Doriath had cost him much, not least of which was the instinctive trust he and Huan had once shared.
“It was ill done.” His nephew’s voice was shaking, though whether with anger or fear or something else, Celegorm couldn’t tell. “Cousin Findaráto might have lived, if—”
“Findaráto was a fool, to swear an oath that brought him into direct conflict with ours.”
“They were only in conflict because you betrayed him!” Celebrimbor cried. “If we had helped him, mustered a force to go with him… you might have had all of Nargothrond behind you if—maybe we could have—”
“Could have what, Tyelperinquar? Defeated the Enemy? Won peace for all Beleriand?” Curufin’s voice held the coiled tension of a snake preparing to strike. “Regained the Silmarils?”
From Celebrimbor, silence.
When had they known, Celegorm wondered? Had it been at Maedhros’ capture, when they had realised their best hope for him was death, and learnt what a horror hope could be? Or when he returned to them, having paid a hand and a crown for the knowledge that to attempt an assault on Angband was only to choose the darkness of the Enemy’s pits over that of the Void? Certainly by the time Celegorm had fled Himlad with acrid smoke burning in his throat, the realisation sat leaden within him, unuttered and unutterable, cold even against dragonflame: their Oath would go unfulfilled.
But Curufin had always been the best of them at masking despair with guile, terror with contempt. Even their brothers could rarely see through the façade.
“That dotard in Doriath meant his bride-price as a death sentence, make no mistake. All of Findaráto’s vaunted wisdom was of little use if it could not tell him that. But then, our Arafinwëan cousins were always eager enough to dandle in Thingol’s lap. Lay not the blame for that at my feet.”
“No, nothing is ever your fault, is it?” snapped Celebrimbor, who had not been there when his father received news of Finrod’s death, and so had not seen Curufin’s hands go still and face go white, bloodless lips clamping over a cry that would never be released. Celebrimbor had not learnt, yet, that survival held little room for trust and none at all for regret that would only get them killed. It was precisely because Curufin had spared him that lesson that he could indulge now in bitter accusation. “Do you know they are talking of exiling you from Nargothrond?”
The silence that followed set Huan growling, so low that Celegorm wouldn’t have known it but for the faint vibration against his leg. And so long did that silence last that he was on the point of barging into his brother’s rooms to break it when Curufin finally spoke.
“And you, Tyelpë? If we left these caves, would you follow, or would you cling snivelling to Artaresto’s robes?”
“I have no wish to see it come to that!” Celebrimbor’s voice nearly broke. “If you would just apologise, and show that you are willing to make amends, I’m sure Cousin Artaresto would—”
“I owe Artaresto no apology for his own incompetence. Nor did I think I had raised a fool. You received an education in statecraft as well as smithcraft, did you not? Put it to use.”
“I doubt I could turn their opinions even if I tried, not after all you have done! And…” His voice dropped enough that Celegorm had to strain to hear what came next. “And I am not sure I want to try.”
Celegorm couldn’t see Curufin’s face. But he recognised the quality of his brother’s silence, for he had heard it before when Maglor ordered them to send no rescue after Maedhros, and again when Maedhros told them he was giving up the crown.
“If your only purpose in speaking to me was to berate me for my deeds,” Curufin said at last, a quiet silkiness to his words, “then you might at least have mustered the courage to do so in public. Do not feign concern for my welfare within my rooms, even as you affect agreement with my enemies outside them.”
“They would not be your enemies, Atar, if—”
“Enough, Tyelperinquar. Go. Convey my answer to your precious Artaresto, for unless I miss my guess it was at his bidding that you came.”
Celegorm did not know what unspoken communication passed between them, but after a time he heard the door open and then close. Celebrimbor’s retreating footsteps were heavier than usual on the stone floor of the corridor. At Celegorm’s side Huan whined, low, and nudged at his thigh, and for all the unease between them of late, he was grateful for that small comfort.
For Curufin’s sake he waited some minutes before leaving his own room and crossing to his brother’s.
“You heard, I take it.” Curufin was leaning over his desk, back to the door, scrutinising some scroll Celegorm couldn’t decipher from this distance. But his hands, braced against the surface of the desk, were balled into fists, pressing down so hard that Celegorm could almost feel the wood creak. “Should we start packing?”
Leaving Nargothrond would be… an inconvenience, if they were driven to it, but Celegorm had sparred enough with his brother to recognise a deflection when he saw one. “You will drive him away, if the two of you keep on like that.”
Curufin whirled to face him. His eyes were narrowed nearly to slits, nostrils flared wide enough to mark sharp dents in the flesh of his nose.
“I’ll thank you not to instruct me how to parent my son,” he spat. “Unless you have some experience with fatherhood of which I am somehow unaware. Ah, wait, no, you have none. My wife might be dead, but at least she shared my affections; the woman you sought to bed found you less appealing than the feeble mortal who got our cousin killed—”
“Curvo!”
It was more growl than speech. Curufin wielded his words to hurt, and even the knowledge that he did so only because Celegorm had touched a nerve did little to blunt their edge. Only the distance between them, more than an arm’s length, kept him from striking his brother. Rage rose like a wave within him, flooding him with the urge to lash out as Curvo had lashed out at him, little difference between them but the fact that Celegorm’s choice of weapon was more often fist than tongue.
Huan bumped against the back of his thigh. At the touch, Celegorm exhaled through gritted teeth. He had little practice and still less interest in being the responsible one, but neither of his older brothers was here to do it. “Ridicule me all you want, but—”
“Get out, Turko.”
More than anything, Curufin sounded tired. Bone-weary.
Celegorm turned and left.
§
Celegorm took no small satisfaction in seeing Finrod’s precious courtiers, who thought themselves so civilised, reduced to a seething mob. He cast them a feral grin, half hoping someone would break ranks and throw the first blow. He would have welcomed a fight. Anything to cut through the miasma of barbed insinuations and cold sneers and—not remorse, not self-doubt, he had neither space nor patience for those, but… well, he had always found weapons easier than words. And he was already a kinslayer; he risked less than they.
But Orodreth restrained them, and the judgement he pronounced was banishment, not death. Celegorm, standing shoulder to shoulder with his brother and facing Orodreth across the length of Nargothrond’s main hall, was almost impressed. This might have been the most backbone he had seen from this particular cousin in his life.
He waited, but of those who had fled with them from Aglon, many of whom owed him or Curufin their lives, not one stepped forward to join them. Celegorm made sure to find the eyes of each deserter in the throng. None could hold his gaze for long.
Beside him, though, Curufin was making a different search. When he found his target, he spoke only two words.
“Well, Tyelpë?”
The hall fell silent as half the crowd turned to look at Celebrimbor, who found himself standing suddenly alone as those beside him stepped away. Even at this distance, Celegorm could see him swallow.
“I will not follow you.”
Celegorm looked sharply at his brother, but Curufin wore a knife-edged smile.
“You think you will find a warm welcome here, after we depart? Look around you, Curufinwë Tyelperinquar, and ask yourself if the people who cast out the father will be glad to shelter the son.”
Celebrimbor’s eyes flickered toward Orodreth, but only for the briefest moment before they landed on his father again. The breath he drew in was shaky, but when he spoke, it was with an even voice. “If I must make my own path henceforth, so be it. I know only that I will not follow yours. No part will I have in your doings from now on. By your deeds you have relinquished any right to succour here; by those same deeds you have given up any claim to the allegiance of those who once called you lord.”
Celegorm reached out by instinct in an abortive gesture to catch his brother’s arm, but it was needless; Curufin hadn’t moved.
“You did not only call me lord, Tyelpë,” he murmured, eyes glittering. “What of the allegiance between father and son?”
“You are my father,” Celebrimbor admitted. “Yet—”
“A son would stay by his father’s side,” Curufin interrupted, and Celegorm thought of their own father, and of Curufin’s wild charge after him into a haze of smoke through which they could see only the flashes of fiery whips. “A son would follow his father, even unto death.”
Celebrimbor’s voice was thick with unshed tears. “Unto death I would have followed you. Into evil I cannot. No longer can I give you my loyalty or my obedience blindly. No longer can I give them at all. Atar—”
“Then call me Atar no longer!”
The fury in Curufin’s voice crested, almost triumphant. Celebrimbor recoiled back as though slapped, though he stood half the hall’s length from Curufin. At his brother’s side, Celegorm felt himself grow cold. So this was the break, then.
“Stay if you will, Tyelperinquar, but do not name me so. I am no father, for I have no son.”
Curufin’s voice rang out, making blades of his words as he always had. But there was no way to fit handles to blades such as these, and they cut him too as he let them fly. At least Celebrimbor did not seem to realise, blinded as he was by the tears he could no longer hold back.
Celegorm was the only one who saw his brother bleed.
§
Curufin rode thundering from Nargothrond as though pursued by some fearsome foe, but Celegorm knew full well that memory could be foe enough. He said nothing until they were half a day’s ride away.
Eventually, though, they had to rest the horses, and take stock, and decide where to go next. “Curvo,” he called, drawing his destrier up. Huan, at least, had followed, and stopped beside the horse.
Curufin rode on another few lengths before he too halted. He dismounted in stony silence.
“Curvo,” Celegorm tried again, walking carefully toward his brother. Curufin didn’t respond. “We should make for Himring, I think.”
At last Curufin turned to face him. There was a wild look in his eyes that Celegorm found familiar, somehow, but couldn’t place. He kept his own voice low, steady, speaking in the same tones he might use to gentle a panicked horse.
“Himring yet stands, Curvo, and Nelyo will know what to do.”
“Nelyo!” Their brother's name might as well have been a piece of gristle, the way Curufin spat it out. “What does Nelyo know? The most he ever had to cut off was a hand!”
Only then did Celegorm recognise the expression in his brother’s eyes. Curufin had worn it just once before: years ago on a smoke-shrouded mountainside, as the ravenous wind snatched Fëanor’s ashes from his hands and the Oath from his lips.
Anyone else would have read that look as anger. Celegorm knew it for terrible, all-consuming grief.
He realised the truth even as the words left him. “You meant for him to stay.”
“‘On the House of Fëanor the wrath of the Valar lieth from the West to the uttermost East, and upon all that will follow them,’” Curufin recited, bitter. “But I have cast him from our House, and he proclaimed for all to hear that he follows us no longer.”
He turned away and looked back, westward toward Nargothrond, and beyond it. “The Valar have no care for us, but they must at least abide by their own words, must they not?”
Celegorm stared for a long time at his brother’s tense back. “You might have told him,” he murmured eventually.
Curufin would not have suffered the sound that ripped from his throat to be called a sob. In consideration of this, Celegorm decided it must have been a bleak laugh instead.
“Told him? And trusted to gentle Námo’s mercy that the Doom is only half-true, so that a feigned sundering might suffice? I think I have already told you, Turko, to spare me instruction in fatherhood from one who has no child. No, he must believe it, if there is to be any chance at all.”
Celegorm had no reply to that. After a moment Curufin nodded to himself, without turning, a single, sharp jerk of his chin. “Himring, you said. We should waste no more time here.”
He mounted up again, and did not wait for Celegorm’s response before wheeling his horse northward and away.