Chapter Text
“'Go now, lord, while time is! For in you lives the last hope of the Eldar, and while Gondolin stands Morgoth shall still know fear in his heart.'
But Turgon answered: 'Not long now can Gondolin be hidden; and being discovered it must fall.'
Then Huor spoke and said: 'Yet if it stands but a little while, then out of your house shall come the hope of Elves and Men. This I say to you, lord, with the eyes of death: though we part here for ever, and I shall not look on your white walls again, from you and from me a new star shall arise. Farewell!'
And Maeglin, Turgon's sister-son, who stood by, heard these words, and did not forget them; but he said nothing.”
~ Quenta Silmarillion, “Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad”
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F.A. 496
Fourteen Years Until the Fall of Gondolin
It was a beautiful day in Gondolin. The sun reflected with brilliant radiance off the gleaming white stone, the birds gossiped prettily in their golden-leaved trees, fair music billowed over the artists’ district, and Maeglin hated everything, with a few notable exceptions.
A list of things that Maeglin liked:
- Moles.
- Drama.
- The color black.
- Working in his smithy.
- Calligraphy.
- The stars.
- Lists.
- Being alone.
A list of things that Maeglin hated:
- Bright lights.
- Crying.
- Itchy clothes.
- Other people.
- Dancing.
- Alcohol.
- Heights.
- Idril.
- Vulnerability.
- Beets.
- This entire damned city.
- Everything.
- Maeglin hated everything.
Well. Everything was, perhaps, a tad bit melodramatic. But Maeglin thought he had earned the right to be melodramatic, all things considered. For one, the sunlight had been giving him a pounding migraine all day; for two, he had just been forced to listen to Turgon and the lords of Gondolin talk about that exasperating mortal, Tuor, for two hours straight; for three, his cousin Idril was currently walking his way.
“Cousin,” said Idril, stopping beside him. Maeglin, who had been quite openly making his way toward the exit, was forced by propriety to halt and linger alongside her.
“Cousin,” he said, dipping his head slightly.
He did not bow to her. She did not bow to him.
Idril, princess of Gondolin, was a beautiful elf with her father’s strong features and her mother’s cloud of sunlit-gold hair. Her feet were wrought cleverly from mithril, replaced after the Grinding Ice. Her eyes were blue as a winter sky, and they flickered with Treelight and secrets.
From the moment Maeglin had laid eyes on her, he had known. He had known this would be his sworn nemesis until the end of time.
“I trust you are well,” said Idril, with perfect pleasantness, despite the fact that they had been sitting in the same room for the past two hours—one on each side of Turgon’s throne—and had, in fact, spent much of those two hours shooting one other surreptitious looks of condescending scrutiny.
Maeglin did not bother to make himself sound pleasant. “Perfectly well,” he said. “And yourself?”
“Also perfectly well, thank you,” said Idril, ignoring his icy tone. “My father wishes to know if you will be attending the family dinner he invited you to next month.”
“Certainly,” said Maeglin, who absolutely could have informed Turgon of this himself. “I meant to write my reply this evening.”
“You need not bother; I will tell him.”
“Nay, dear cousin, I should hate to ever be disrespectful,” said Maeglin (Idril’s pale brows lifted a fraction in skepticism). “Besides, I do enjoy the art of letter-writing.”
“Your letters are most beautiful,” said Idril sweetly. “It is a shame the art is so temporary in nature.”
“Many beautiful things are temporary.”
“Certainly.” Idril’s smile had an edge to it. “Cities, even.”
Well, if they were going there, then they were going there, Maeglin thought sourly, and re-summoned all the vitriol he had felt during the discussion—sans Tuor himself—of their mortal guest. “You seemed most defensive of the counsel of Tuor today,” he said, folding his arms.
“He spoke well,” Idril returned evenly, “and what he spoke of reflects the warning which lies ever in my heart.”
“He did speak well, and with the air of his father Huor about him,” said Maeglin. It was more a taunt than a concession; he never missed an opportunity to remind Idril that he had fought in the Nirnaeth and she had not—especially when he could also imply that Turgon had insisted she remain behind not because he trusted her to run the city, but because he thought her too frail to leave it. “Well I recall that my uncle heeded Huor’s words, once. Strange that he should mislike the words of Huor’s son.”
Strange—but not unwelcome. Not to Maeglin, at least. It had been . . . gratifying, in a way, to glance to his left and see the veil of doubt clouding Turgon’s features, where every other lord and lady were eager to drink up every last word out of Tuor’s Vala-blessed mouth.
Bitterly, Maeglin recalled his own initial reception in Gondolin. As the son of their beloved princess, he ought to have been more warmly welcomed than a Secondborn nobody who bore only ill news—but no. Death had come on his heels, and his father’s eyes looked out at them from his face, and no one would ever let him forget it. He had clawed and scraped and snarled for every bit of the respect he currently held—worked in Gondolin’s forges until his back ached, drafted improvement after improvement for safety systems in the mines, learned every last custom and detail of etiquette a prince of the Noldor ought to know—and still, still, all the prestige he had was only thanks to the king’s favor. Everyone knew it, and some people were quite willing to say it.
And then this Man had waltzed in, shining with holy self-righteousness, and heralded the fall of everything Maeglin had ever worked for—the second home he’d ever had—and no one seemed to hold it against him. Even Idril—who, despite their constant friction, Maeglin generally held to be a sensible woman—looked at Tuor like he’d hung the damned stars.
Not Maeglin. The first words he’d spoken to Tuor son of Huor had been, Welcome to Gondolin. Do not expect to leave. Most of the words they exchanged from that point on were considerably less civil in nature.
“A son is not his father,” said Idril, softly, and her eyes hit his with cold precision.
Maeglin smiled—not kindly—and held her gaze; she, alone among the lords and ladies of Gondolin, could consistently hold his own piercing stare, and could block out entirely his probing tendrils of ósanwë against her mind. “Nor a daughter her father,” he shot back, “for you seem less certain than the king of the strength of Ondolindë.”
“It is not its strength which I doubt.”
“Merely its king, then.”
Her look was knowing. “I do not doubt my father,” she said coolly, raising her brows, “but neither do I doubt our messenger’s warning, or the Vala from which it came.”
“That seems mutually exclusive,” Maeglin said.
“And what cause have you to doubt Ulmo’s word?”
“I have none in particular to hold to it,” he returned, “given that I have never met him.”
“Of course,” said Idril, with an indulgent, apologetic smile. “I forget, sometimes.”
Forgot what—that he had never seen Aman’s splendor, that he was so much younger than she; that he was not, and never had been, one of them? A sharp breath left Maeglin’s nose, a huff that was not quite a laugh: “You do not,” he snapped, “no one does.”
“Peace, Necelmo!” said Idril, raising her hands with a bright, merry laugh that grated on his ears. “I didn’t come to quarrel.”
The use of the epessë—one that Idril had coined herself, and that only she ever used—was as pointed as everything else in their conversation had been.
“Hardly,” said Maeglin coldly. “But you always prove willing to do so anyway. Good evening, princess.”
He made to sweep out of the council room, which was nearly entirely empty by now—though he was well aware of that the eyes of those who remained were fixed firmly on himself and Idril.
“I look forward to that dinner, Necelmo!” Idril called after him.
“I am certain you do, Remillë,” he said without turning around, matching her with his own epessë for her. “I am certain you do.”
“May your day be as lovely as yourself, my dear cousin!” said Idril cheerfully, because she just had to have the last word.
Lifting his chin, Maeglin stalked out the door.
He nearly ran straight into his fellow lord—Glorfindel, of the House of the Golden Flower.
“Oh!” Glorfindel exclaimed, while Maeglin blinked the blinding sunshine—made even more blinding by the shine of Glorfindel’s very blond hair—out of his eyes. “I beg your pardon, Prince Maeglin.”
“Hmm,” Maeglin grunted.
“Are you well?” said Glorfindel, examining him. “You look pained.”
“I am fine,” he snapped, making to push past him. Somehow, Glorfindel managed to turn smoothly with the motion and catch his arm—a light, regardful touch, the embroidered black silk of Maeglin’s sleeve slipping between his golden fingers.
“Here,” said Glorfindel softly, “come into the shade.”
And he led Maeglin beneath a golden-green tree, so the shade from the leaves slid over his tumbling golden hair and softened the glare of the light. It did not dull his brightness—Glorfindel was like the dawn, a swath of bright laughter and shining-pale colors, a blur in the corner of Maeglin’s eye that hurt to look at and warmed the air itself—but it cast a layer of gentle shadow over the glow, and at last, Maeglin could look at him.
He was not certain to make of what he saw.
His fellow lord was looking at him with pensive, polite concern, and not a hint of mistrust. Maeglin had always liked that about Glorfindel—he did not appear disturbed by Maeglin’s aversion to sunlight. He did not appear disturbed by Maeglin in general, actually; he was very serious about the safety of Gondolin, and Maeglin had been wary around him at first. But Glorfindel seemed to view Maeglin chiefly as Turgon’s ward, and by extension a prince of Gondolin, rather than an outsider who might posit a threat. (Consequently, given that Glorfindel did not expend much energy keeping an eye on Maeglin, Maeglin did not expend much energy giving Glorfindel the time of day.)
Still, being pitied over his sensitivity wasn’t much more enjoyable. Maeglin snatched his arm from Glorfindel’s, letting his natural scowl settle back over his face.
Glorfindel seemed unaffected. “It’s very bright out,” he observed, with his usual cheer, “isn’t it?”
“Very,” said Maeglin, flatly.
“I am sure my garden appreciates the light,” said Glorfindel, with a dreamy, half-present tilt of his golden head, “but too much, of course, and they will wilt.” His focus drifted back to Maeglin, who stiffened automatically at the sweep of scrutiny over his form.
“Forgive me for saying so,” said Glorfindel, “but you look terribly close to wilting yourself, my prince.”
Maeglin lifted his chin, eyebrows raised. “Do I.”
Glorfindel shrugged, apologetic, and his golden hair—scandalously unbound, except for a white lily braided behind his ear—rippled over his shoulders, shimmering, like veins of gold ore. “You look tired.”
“Astutely observed, Lord Laurefindelë,” said Maeglin dryly, “but I’m afraid this is how I always look.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to insult you!” Glorfindel exclaimed, looking quite abashed at the thought. “You are as fair a night-blossoming flower as ever, of course, and no less fair for seeming a little wilted around the edges.”
Maeglin turned over those words in his head, then looked at Glorfindel—looked at him, straight in the soft, spring-green, up-tilted eyes, piercing through them and sliding his way into the undercurrent of his thoughts. Like his craft, Glorfindel’s mind was a garden, sunlit and colorful; Maeglin slipped into the shade beneath, reading the thoughts flickering beneath the surface of each petal and leaf. Politeness, concern . . . uncertainty . . . a touch of awkwardness . . .
“I do not think,” said Maeglin, rather than voice the fact that he had just been reading Glorfindel’s mind, “that I am much like a flower.”
“Why, certainly you are!” said Glorfindel. He tapped his lips and eyed Maeglin thoughtfully, as though drawing up various flowers to measure him against in his mind: “A rose, perhaps, to match Princess Itarillë’s thorny apellation for you. Or a foxglove. Yes, a foxglove.”
“A foxglove, my lord?” Maeglin echoed, half-amused.
Glorfindel looked oddly proud of himself. “Yes, indeed!” he said brightly. “A lovely blossom, preferring shade to sunlight, and quick to thrive in many conditions.”
“And very poisonous.”
“Well, yes.” Glorfindel glanced at him, then away. “That too. But so is the celandine, and I still took that as my symbol!” He offered his signature grin—a blinding, sickeningly sweet thing that never failed to make Maeglin throw up a little in his mouth. “A little toxicity is nothing to scorn.”
You want something, thought Maeglin, looking the golden lord up and down without hiding his disdain, what do you want? But Glorfindel only hovered there, perfectly pleasant as always, his mind sun-dappled and rolling with the flickers of innocuous, everyday matters.
This was the point in the conversation where Maeglin would typically mutter out his farewells and stalk away. But something held him there—a lingering irritation with Idril; the balm of the shade; the slight, petty little memory that Glorfindel had agreed with him more than once during today’s council meeting.
That he had steered Maeglin into the shade.
It was . . . a small, perplexing kindness, and Maeglin found himself almost half-believing that Glorfindel had done it with no ulterior motive, other than to be kind.
Almost.
“I think,” said Maeglin softly, “I am more like my own House’s symbol than yours, Laurefindelë.”
“Perhaps so!” said Glorfindel, laughing. “You know, I have always wondered. Why did you pick a mole?”
“Why not?”
“Well,” said Glorfindel, tapping his lips again, “what is so exceptional about the mole?”
Lifting a brow, Maeglin fired back, “What is so exceptional about the golden flower?”
“I like flowers,” said Glorfindel, “and I like gold.”
His voice gained an edge of defensiveness: “Well, I like moles.”
“But you must admit they are a less obvious choice than flowers and gold.”
“They’re clever,” said Maeglin, shrugging, “and they love the gifts of the earth.”
Glorfindel laughed again, and Maeglin bristled instinctively, although the sound carried no hint of mocking. “Ah, you are not so unlike your mother’s cousin Findaráto, who was called Felagund—cave-hewer, den-dweller!” The corners of Glorfindel’s smile slipped down. “You would have liked him, I think.”
“He sounds sensible,” said Maeglin, tactfully ignoring the flicker of wistful grief that was crossing Glorfindel’s face. “My mother told me of Nargothrond, though she never saw it herself.”
“Nor have I, but I think you would have liked it. No bright sun, and pretty stones and veins of ore never far too away!” Glorfindel sighed. “Perhaps not for me, though. I doubt a garden would keep so well, in the dark.”
Maeglin snorted. “Is that the Noldor’s belief?” he said, when Glorfindel turned to him, startled. “There are ways to grow gardens in the dark, you know. I grew up in a forest where the light rarely touched the forest floor—and yet there was life.”
If Glorfindel took notice of the way he had referred to their people—the Noldor, as though he were not one of them—he restrained himself from commenting on it. Perhaps because Glorfindel was half-Vanya himself; perhaps because he was simply too polite. In any case, his face and surface thoughts betrayed no particular reaction to the reminder of Maeglin’s other heritage; his face appeared merely thoughtful, and his surface thoughts were flickering idly through various types of shade-loving plants.
He had always thought Glorfindel a little vapid; too vapid, perhaps, for the intricacies of what Maeglin’s heritage symbolized to occur to him. Now, he flirted with the thought that perhaps Glorfindel simply didn’t care.
By now, Maeglin had long since memorized the unspoken rules of society: exactly how and when to use each type of fork, spoon, and chopsticks; how to wear his hair depending upon where he was going and who he planned to meet; how many layers of robes to wear in the morning versus the evening; how to speak in perfect Quenya; how deeply to bow to a kinsman, a lord, a peer. How to keep a lord’s household, to oversee a district of smithies and mines. How to walk in the sun without flinching from the light. How to forge a Noldorin-style blade; how to hammer out and lace together the various traditional combinations of lamellar and laminar metal armor.
How to be a lord of the Noldor, and not a brat too much of an Avari for Doriath, too much of a Noldo for Nan Elmoth, and too much of a Sinda for Gondolin.
He did make arms and armor in his original style, and it seeped into his more Noldorin work as well. More than once, clientele had commented on it as exotic. Maeglin found that eyebrow-raising, given that they had all lived in Beleriand for centuries and should be thoroughly accustomed to Sindarin styles by now. (But then again, his particular version of “Sindarin” was not, he’d realized, universal. Eöl’s Avari roots, his dealings with Dwarves, and the solitary nature of Nan Elmoth had made his craft—and Maeglin’s upbringing—unique.)
Still. The peculiar brand of attention made his skin itch. He had the feeling that he could wear intricate braids every day of his life and produce nothing but Noldorin steel, and he’d still catch the epithet on bystanders’ lips—the Moriquendë.
“I never thought of it that way,” Glorfindel mused, and Maeglin wrenched his bitter train of thought back to the matter at hand: flowers. Naturally. “I know plants that prefer the shade, or the coolness, or the starlight of Beleriand before the sun and moon, but not of plants that can thrive with no light at all.”
“Some you would be familiar with,” said Maeglin, “which grew by way of my father’s sorcery rather than light. And some thrived quite well on their own.”
He caught a negative shudder run through Glorfindel’s mind at the mention of Maeglin’s father, which made his mouth curl upward in a wry half-smile. But Glorfindel said nothing of it aloud.
“You will have to tell me of them,” he said instead, with that bright, sweet smile. (It made Maeglin grimace, as usual. And as usual, Glorfindel ignored that.) “Perhaps while visiting my garden?”
Despite himself, Maeglin’s mouth fell open slightly.
“If you aren’t opposed to it, of course!” Glorfindel hurried to add.
He looks terribly handsome, fluttered across the surface of Glorfindel’s thoughts. I would like to kiss him.
Maeglin paused with a dry remark halfway onto his lips, and restrained himself from raising his eyebrows.
Silently, he slipped deeper into Glorfindel’s mind, beyond the surface thoughts, twisting between the tightly-interlocking branches that made up his mental shield—made himself a point of thought, needle-thin, sharp enough to slide in without even being noticed.
There. Maeglin spotted it, a flicker-bloom of a tiny red rosebud, and pounced.
Desire.
Maeglin caught it up with mental fingers and examined it before it flitted away: a soft, shy sort of attraction, laced with a quiet, uncertain shame, hovering just beyond the surface of Glorfindel’s mind. It was stamped down almost immediately, drowned by a leafy-dark inflorescence of oh, dear and he's too young and I shouldn’t! that curled around the rosebud and concealed it utterly from view.
But Maeglin knew it had been there.
It was not terribly rare for Maeglin to catch people admiring him in such a way, but it was usually stifled by their wariness of him—the strange, unsociable, ill-tempered, outsider prince, beloved of King Turgon and really no one else. It was, however, the first time he had sensed such a feeling in Glorfindel. The Lord of the Golden Flower was a tolerable enough man, he supposed, but he had never been particularly interesting to Maeglin; there was not much, after all, that he could offer him. He was thoroughly, transparently, boringly upstanding—no scandals or secrets Maeglin could pry into and leverage against anyone.
Withdrawing from Glorfindel’s mind, Maeglin scanned his face instead. Dappled by the shade; his features open, earnest. Nothing to suggest that somewhere in the mid-level depths of his mind, Glorfindel had just been half-imagining taking Maeglin’s chin in his hand and kissing him.
. . . Interesting.
Very interesting.
Maeglin tucked the information away, gave Glorfindel the barest edge of a smile, and said, “I would quite like to visit you, I think. In the evening, obviously. I don’t fancy being blinded by the midday sun glaring off whatever ostentatious trappings you surely bedeck your grounds with.”
“My sense of decoration is quite tasteful, I’ll have you know!” cried Glorfindel, but he was grinning.
“If your sense of fashion is any indication, I might have to disagree.”
Glorfindel gasped in mock offense. “And what is wrong with my fashion sense, exactly?” he demanded.
Maeglin made a show of looking Glorfindel’s outfit up and down—a thin, billowy turquoise outer robe, embroidered with glimmering pink and gold flowers; a rich green tunic with diamond buttons; fine leather boots, set with bronze buckles and dyed a striking violet; a blazing topaz earring dangling from one ear, and a delicate vine-shaped cuff snaking around the other.
“Gaudy,” Maeglin dismissed.
“Gaudy!” Glorfindel cried, his eyes theatrically wide. “Gaudy! This is one of my more austere ensembles, I’ll have you know!”
Maeglin’s lips twitched. “Exactly.”
“I am hardly going to take such criticism from a man who is apparently only aware of one color!” Glorfindel announced, drawing himself up haughtily, but he was shaking a little with suppressed laughter.
“Oh, give me some credit, Lord Laurefindelë. I’m aware of at least two.”
Glorfindel’s eyes fixed on him skeptically. “Name them.”
“Black and gray.”
“You,” said Glorfindel, shaking his head, “are eternally dreary.”
“You astonish me,” said Maeglin, smoothing a hand over his sable tunic. He turned to leave, but not before catching Glorfindel’s gaze trailing after the movement of his hand: longing, lingering, like a touchless caress.
“’Til next we meet, Lord Maeglin!” Glorfindel called after him.
Maeglin flicked a hand in acknowledgement.
Possibility unfurled in his mind’s eye as he left without a farewell, already listing seven different ways he could leverage a potential alliance with Glorfindel against his cousin, Tuor, or both. The fact that Glorfindel apparently harbored some level of desire for him was less intriguing to him than the fact that he was suppressing it; that he had not approached Maeglin with the intention of seducing him.
(That seemed a thoroughly inconvenient way of getting something out of someone, anyway. Bonds were messy; hearts were snares. Maeglin had always preferred to work from a distance.)
But Glorfindel wanted something from him, that was clear. And Maeglin doubted he had come to him today as a matter of coincidence. Whether or not Glorfindel was aware of it, he was moving in a wider game now—one that Maeglin had historically played without factoring Glorfindel in much at all.
. . . Maybe Glorfindel wasn’t so vapid and tiresome, after all.
Yes. This could prove very interesting, indeed.