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Chapter Text

Her mistake is showing her hand. It is not a mistake she ought to be making; her uncle’s deeds and her father’s failures ought to have taught her better. But Finduilas is young, drunk on her successes and the barely-watered wine and the admiration of her fellow street thieves, a gang of Mannish youths, all from here or else from the Fen of Serech, who have come to view her as awfully worldly and perhaps even magical, some good-luck charm from far away lands. Rodnor , they call to her, Rodnor, show me how you picked the locks of the great halls—tell me what words their guards say—do you really write? Can you write my name? 

The day is waning, and they are overstaying their welcome in the corner of the shoddiest inn of the shoddy little town. The blazing eye— emblem of the Necromancer—is stamped onto the decorative wood behind the counter, but it is dusty and little tended to, quite easy to ignore. Then the usual trappings of such an establishment—round tables crudely carved from wood, marbled and many-eyed, three-legged stools of every height, stubby and scrawny and middling as the Men themselves; dirty old collie-dog curled up and sleeping atop a grayish sheepskin. 

Outside it is cold, the last days of winter stubbornly insisting on their due, and every hour one of them will rise to buy something from the innkeeper to avoid exile. For the most part it is wine, watered and passed between them, or hard bread, yesterday’s fare. 

They are not alone in the establishment, of course, but it is easy to pay the rest no mind. A young couple, sallow and sad-faced, plainly fleeing from other lands; a group of workers, anonymous and grey-cloaked, drinking by the bar; three women, quick-eyed, offering to read their fortunes as they pass; a lone traveler, all in black, that Finduilas stops to watch for a moment. He is a striking silhouette, so tall she wonders if he is elven; a black bycocket is pulled low over his head, hiding his ears. She thinks something is odd about his figure, but cannot say what at first. Then, watching him fumble to cut his meat, she sees he is one-handed, his left hand severed at the elbow. On his shoulder sits a hawk, a very pretty hunting-bird. An odd coloration, she thinks, a golden-hawk as the one her uncle kept, long ago. Of the finest sort for falconry: rare and valuable, odd for a traveler to flaunt in so poor and dirty a place. But who would know it, here, for what it is? Who would see anything other than an unusually handsome bird? 

She remembers herself; she ought to be wiser than to stare too long at a stranger, even one who must be used to drawing eyes, and to look, especially, at what is likely the most costly thing he owns. So she turns away, forcing her gaze to her own company, and takes care to look little at the bird. 

Her little gang is all Mannish, of course, mostly boys. There is only Luin: a small blond girl with bright blue eyes, who will not tell them her real name, who seems capable of changing ages to suit her whims; a child one morning and a buxom young woman the next, who would be able to sell flint and steel to a man in the middle of a forest fire. And Finduilas, of course, but she does not count, for they do not know her. 

(She has scrapped with a few of them, and wonders what they might think to know her sex. But she is not foolish enough, not then, to take anyone into her confidence.) 

They’re talking in hushed tones of picking locks. Now and then they turn to her, to seek her judgment— you think you could do that, Rodnor?— but for the first while Finduilas is content to listen and drink, sitting as she does on the outer edges of the crowd. Her hands are under the table; she has her silver brooch half out of her sleeve and she runs its sharp edge over her fingers, feeling it bounce against each callus.  

But then one of them speaks—a dark haired youth, whom they call only Woodwose, and who is known firstly for his skill and secondly for his terrible luck, the way best-laid plans seem to fall to dust at his touch—and Finduilas finds herself suddenly quite tuned in to the conversation. 

“The locks on the Isle of Werewolves are enchanted,” he says, “none could pick them, for they would take no pick nor key.”

“They are locks as any other,” Finduilas says, “heavy, and ill-oiled, but with no enchantment at all. A well-crafted pick—something of elven-silver, or dwarvish steel, that will not break the weight—would do just fine with them.” 

“How can you know?” Woodwose asks her. “None imprisoned in the Isle have returned to tell the tale.” 

“Then how can you know they are enchanted, shit-for-brains?” another boy asks him, and he turns, pale face flushing, and maybe they would scrap, except Finduilas speaks. 

“I did,” she says, “I was there, and I picked the locks, and I left.”

For a moment all are silent. Then a boy laughs, and goes to slap her on the shoulder. “I always knew you for a braggart, Rodnor, but this is a spit and a half too far.”     

Here she ought to drop it. But Finduilas flushes, anger rising sharp in her chest—she did not come so far to be doubted!—and yanks up her sleeve, crying out, “So I did! I was held in the dungeons but I picked the locks, and I spoke to the stone, and I tricked the wolves, and I was carried by the river, and indeed I bear the mark to prove it!” 

Speaking so she holds out her arm, for all to see. The emblem of the eye has been cut into her right wrist, where the first manacles had set, and scars ugly on her skin. The thieves around her lean in closer to look at it. Woodwose’s eyes go very wide, his pale face paler. Luin lets out a low whistle. 

The trouble is that Finduilas likes too well to impress people. She would stand now and perhaps tell them some fragment of the tale, except that she feels eyes on her back. Turns, and sees that the grey-cloaked men have turned to her; that one of them has pulled back his hood to reveal an orcish face. 

Knows then the weight of her mistake. 

She slips away from the table, bracing her feet against the wooden floor. Around her time seems to slow. She cannot allow panic to touch her; she will not live, if she does. On her belt is a dagger, which she palms but does not draw. Her little silver brooch she takes between her fingers, hiding its glint in her tunic. 

Never run when you can hide. Never fight when you can run. 

The orc turns to her, sneering. “Do you know the price on your head, boy?” 

Finduilas turns, and leaps out the window. 

The cold outside air hits her like sinking under water, and she stumbles, slightly tipsy—why, why did she drink?— over the porch steps, catches herself against the walls of the inn. Horses, in front of her, black horses—not good, not good at all, but if she can vanish before they might be saddleback… 

The street before her is narrow cobblestone, brownish two-storey houses pressed closed to one another as though to ward out the cold. Might fit under the steps, she thinks, or in through the half open window, or behind the— 

Someone in the inn screams out in an orcish tongue she does not know, abrasive to her ears. She flinches, goes to run, but a stout figure steps out from behind the horses, slashing through the air in front of her with a curved dagger, and she yelps and steps back, stumbling and falling on her ass to the dirty cobblestone. 

The other orcs are emerging now from the inn. Their eyes are on her, heavy, oppressive as the eye of the Necromancer himself. One in front of her, dagger out; only for the great Judge to know how many more behind. No time to rise, no time to— 

One of them grabs her by the cloak, yanking her up. Knocks back her hat, and though Finduilas flattens her ears back against her head she knows it is too late.  

She lashes out, sinking her silver brooch-pin deep into the thigh of the orc that had grabbed her; yanks it out with a meaty slorch , sending red blood spilling onto the cobblestone. He cries out, curses, lets her go, and she leaps away.

But another one grabs her by the wrist, yanking her hand up over her head, and though she kicks at him she cannot equal him in strength.  He grabs for her pin, bloodied, but she lets it fall into her sleeve, away, hoping to buy some time, and clacks her teeth at him. 

The orc laughs. “A trapped fox, are you? But not the sense to keep your mouth shut.” 

She hisses at him through her teeth. She wants a curse to throw at him, but any cleverness has abandoned her, and all that comes to mind is childhood taunts, too small and weak to be tossed out in the fight. Her panic chokes her. 

She will not let them kill her. She cannot, having come so far. She knows the reasonable way now, knows how to survive—knows to play defeated, to bow, to draw no more attention to herself than necessary. Once she has done it, and she ought to be able to again, and yet— 

And yet they might take her back, and some part of her feels it worse than death. Some part would throw it all away; some part would die fighting. 

She has the chance to do neither. Somewhere behind her she hears a sharp thud, the unmistakable sound of bones breaking, the call of a hawk and the song of a blade flying through air. The orc lets her go, she falls to her hands and knees, rolling again, and turns back to look.

The figure all in black stands in the semi circle of orcs, much taller than them, as a watchtower riding among the shorter buildings of the city. One—the one that had grabbed Finduilas—has fallen already, dark blood spilling onto the cobblestone, the side of his face bashed in, blunt damage, though she cannot tell what has done it. 

The dark rider’s sword glints in the moonlight. For a moment its song, full of the violence that had occurred just moments prior and the promise of new, different violence, is enough to hold back the orcs, but that moment does not last. 

Finduilas watches his face as two of them rush him; the grim satisfaction in the set of his mouth. The almost-laugh, joyless, as he beheads the first, stepping out of the way of the other. 

She has seen elves fight before. Her father’s figure steps often into her dreams, slender and silver, armed with his long star-strewn blade. The lords of Nargothrond fought how they danced: easy and graceful, their swordsmanship weightless.

That is not how the elf in black fights. His figure is off-kilter, off-balance, one side of his body more hale and stronger than the other, as though his intact left hand is much heavier than the stump of his right. It gives his body an odd, off-balance movement—he seems to cant dangerously in one direction and then course-correct last moment, a sudden, jerky motion. 

It ought not work in his favor. Yet it does—he never seems to be in the same motion his opponents expect of him. There he is, leftwards, as the orcish blade moves right; rightwards as it slashes at his center. And there goes the third orc, pierced through with a messy, jerky force.

He cannot get them all, Finduilas thinks, I ought to run, while I have the chance. 

Yet she is rooted to the spot. She watches as the elf—for she is certain he must be,from his stature and the silver flame of his eyes and the length of his sword— shoves down the fourth orc, kicking at the side of his head with the iron tip of his boot. Only two more orcs remain. 

They would have a better chance, Finduilas thinks, if they rushed him both at once. But they hesitate, hang back, seeing the fates of their comrades. The elf raises an eyebrow in challenge, in mockery, perhaps even in something like understanding. Go, while you still can.

I would go, Finduilas thinks, I would run, if I were them. 

Pride must blaze hot in the heart of the shorter orc, for he lunges again for the elf, and meets his doom on the end of his blade, pierced through the throat with the gleaming great-sword. The last orc, the most timid of the lot, turns on his heel and runs. 

The elf turns to watch him go, his mouth a flat, thin line. He weighs his sword in his hand, thoughtful, then throws it with force at the fleeing orc’s back. The last figure crumbles. 

Perhaps Finduilas was wrong. Perhaps he would have had a better chance if he had fought. 

She knows her gasp is audible. The elf turns to her and mistakes her expression. Explains, in soft tones, as though talking to a child, “If I had let him run they would have known better where to search for us. It is not pleasant, but it needs doing.” 

The body cracks under his foot as he yanks out the blade, wiping it on the dark shirt of the fallen orc. The golden hawk, Finduilas sees, is circling overhead. 

He steps forwards, towards her. Holds out his left hand, his fingers splayed out, his nails dirty and black glove slightly bloodied. His grip is firm when she takes it. 

“We’d best be off, you and I,” he says, and raises the stump of his right arm. The hawk lands on his bicep. “Come, my horse is quite as black as theirs, but much bigger. The hawk will guide us.” 

Finduilas nods, numb. “Clever bird,” she says, just to say something—just to stop him looking at her like that, like she’s some lost kid, some fragile thing. 

The elf laughs. “You don’t know the half of it, son.” 

Chapter Text

The elf’s horse is as black as his garb; a huge, barrel-chested beast, very much as the horses Finduilas has usually seen pull carts and plows in Nargothrond’s underground gardens. She had little opportunity to ride herself, for hunts and long journeys both were rare, and when she went she took very different horses. Fondly she remembers her chestnut mare, fine-featured and light on her feet as a bird in the air. 

But that horse is gone now, of course, gone as the city, and she cannot let herself stay long in the memory of either. The dark elf swings into the saddle, then yanks her up after himself in a rather undignified manner, grabbing her by the upper arm to pull her in front of his saddle. She yelps. Winces, to be treated as a child, but there is no time to complain of it. 

The elf slaps the rump of the great black horse and they are off. He rides in the Noldor style: saddle-back, with stirrups and a bridle. Finduilas, who has only seen the sport done bare-back, wonders if the horse is offended by such patronizing treatment. But he does not seem to mind, so Finduilas decides it is not her place to mind it either. 

After all there is quite a lot more to worry about. They ride towards the woods; the town fades quickly from view as they turn towards the forest eaves, following paths Finduilas ill-knows. She feels the tug of the river Sirion to their west, can see that the terrain before them fades into wooded mountains. As a girl she dwelt some brief time on the Island, ere it was cursed, but she had left it still a child in her father’s arms, and known little of its surroundings. 

“We pass the Crissaegrim,” the elf says, as though in answer to her question, “we will not be watched here, for the eagles leave no space in the sky for the vampire-bats of the Necromancer, but we ought not stay long, for it is sheer and impassable. I mean to stay one night, and move tomorrow towards the ford.” 

“Oh,” Finduilas says. She has heard stories of the eagles, and thinks well of them, but the bare mountains do not look welcoming, and already she feels exposed. “I cannot say that I have been.” 

( I would be dead, she reminds herself, if not for his intervention, his judgment — I may listen to it, and see what comes. ) 

“No,” says the black rider, “not many have. But I forget my manners; I have not given you my name. I am called Maedhros, though in the towns here you may have heard me called Dœgred Winsterhand, for that name I often take among Men.” 

Finduilas’ stomach twists with recognition. She thinks briefly of Maedhros the Tall, Maedhros the Ill-fated, Feanor’s son—wonders what mother would leave her child with so ill a name, or what elf would steal the name of a dead prince. Does not ask, not yet.  

“It is a pleasure,” she says, and wonders how sincere she sounds. 

“And your name, boy?” Maedhros asks her.  

She turns where she sits to face him. His face is all sharp, severe angles, pink-white scars branching over his skin as cracks on a ceramic plate, his eyes burning with grey flame terrible to behold, dark red hair hanging lank and untended around his face. Next to him Finduilas feels herself a child, and resents it. 

“Ereinion,” she says, “I am called Ereinion.” 

The elf laughs. “A big name,” he says, “for so scrawny a thing. And whose son are you, Ereinion?” 

Her father’s face comes to her mind, head bowed under the weight of the little silver crown, eyes dark and warm and awfully sad. But she cannot bring his ghost here, and swallows down the memory. “I am the son of none,” she says, “but only the grief and anger of the broken land made flesh.” 

At that he laughs again, and claps her shoulder. “I like you, son,” he says, “and I much like your purpose. But I shan’t call a thing what it is not; come then, little mouse, scion of street thieves, and see the eagles overhead.” 

He looks up, and she follows his gaze. There, far above them, are the shadows of great eagles, their wingspan easily twice her height. She has seen them, there and again, but rarely more than one at a time, and certainly not so close. How beautiful they are, and how very intimidating. How small the shadow of the golden hawk among them, as a guppy darting between the bulks of catfish. 

It really is a fetching bird. It does one circle around the eagles, then two, then swoops back down, landing on Maedhros’ shoulder. 

He turns, and does something she has never seen a falconer do; he presses his lips to the bird’s head, lingering a moment on the kiss, and nuzzles against it with his cheek. She is shocked the bird lets him, that he would try it at all. He has gone soft on it, she thinks. He does not see it as he ought, for the animal it is. Birds do not wish to be kissed. 

The hawk takes a hopping step on Maedhros’ shoulder, and catches his ear in its beak. Tweaks it, as if grooming, and Maedhros laughs, bats it away. “Gentle, you old sap,” he says, “I have no feathers for you to groom, and that hurts me.” 

“Probably it thinks you are its mate,” Finduilas says, somewhat judgmentally. “Falcons do that, raised in captivity. My uncle kept many; it is ill for them to see no others of their kind.” 

For some reason Maedhros finds that quite funny. She scowls, and offers no more advice. 

“The night comes,” Maedhros says thoughtfully. “Even the summer day cannot last much longer than this. We must stop soon.” 

Finduilas hm s. “I have found it is often safer to ride through the night,” she says, though of course her experience is limited. “None expect you, none seek for you.” 

“So it may be,” Maedhros says, “but we will stop.” 

It is his horse, his judgment, his journey. Finduilas offers him a skeptical look, but says nothing more. Soon he hops down from the saddle, offers her a hand down—which she does not take, light on her feet and burning with the pride of her house—and leads them both to a little opening in the grey cliffs, some snatches of brownish grass holding on stubbornly to the light covering of dirt on the rock. 

Finduilas yawns, turning away so he does not see. The day is only now beginning to wash over her, waves of regret warring with interest, curiosity, fear. “Maedhros?” she asks. 

He looks over at her, humming his, “Yes?” 

“Where are we going?” she asks. “After the ford, I mean. Do you mean to bring me somewhere? You did an awfully kind thing, and I mean not to doubt your purpose, but…” But this is all sudden, and strange, and she finds herself quite alone here in the darkness, with an elf who seems at once both good and ill. 

“Ah,” Maedhros says, “yes. I suppose we ought to talk of it. You left the Isle of Werewolves?” 

“Yes,” she says, “so I did.” 

“And to the Isle of Werewolves I plan to return,” he answers. “I shall not ask you to come with me if such is not your purpose, but I would hear all that you may tell of it.” 

Alone, she thinks, with a madman. 

He must see her stricken expression, because again he laughs. She has the feeling there is no humor in it, but only some uncertainty, some wound.  “Go,” he says, “and see what wood might be found for the fire. I will tend to Rochernil, as I might.” 

She heeds him, for her words betray her, and there is nothing else to do. The forest here is sparse, dry; she pulls on the branches of a low pine and feels them snap and give under her hands. It feels, somehow, as though she has been cruel, and she apologizes to the trees. 

They are silent. The eagles soar overhead, and Finduilas shivers, feeling watched. She walks the long way, counting the mossy rocks underfoot, turns over and over in her mind the conversation. To the Isle of Werewolves I plan to return. To the Isle of Werewolves I plan to return. To the Isle of Werewolves I plan to return. 

There are things she does not like to admit to herself. Her own vigilance, the watch she had kept over the little border town, the way she had set aside ill-gotten money and eyed ill-made swords. The thoughts of revenge, forged of grief but dull, not yet raised against their mark. Has she not pictured it, laying awake at night, what it would be to hew off the head of the Necromancer? 

Mad , she thinks, mad. But am I not quite as mad myself? Madder—I wish the same, and have not the skill in combat to do it. 

She returns as the sun begins to sink below the horizon, nearly bumping against Maedhros as he makes his way out of the cave. He turns to her, as though slightly surprised. 

“I had almost thought you made a run for it, Mouse,” he says. “Stopped to pick up every branch between here and the riverbank?” 

“I was only thinking,” she says, “about the Isle. I will tell you all I know—I will show you, and ask in return one thing only.” 

Maedhros lifts one eyebrow, plainly expecting to be had. “And what is that?” 

“I wish to come with you,” she says, “and to have the chance to exact my revenge also.” 

Maedhros grins at her. This time she thinks his smile genuine—it is huge and toothy and not at all charming—and when he goes to clap her on the shoulder there is true affection in it. “Ah,” he says, “perhaps fate has brought us together for a reason, after all.” He seems to want to say more of it, and indeed Finduilas expects him to—but he turns, and casts an anxious look to the sunset. “Listen, son, we will speak of it in the morning. Go and make a fire in the cave. Sleep if you can; do not wait for me.” 

Finduilas frowns. “What? Why? Will you not come?” 

“I wish some time to walk, and to think,” Maedhros says, “and if the fancy strikes me I shall sleep in the bushes, for I well know them. It is best that way; I am a horrible sleeper, and indeed may bite if bothered. Wait not, wait not.” 

 Finduilas putters about for some time after he goes. Checks on the black stallion, who sleeps standing by the cave entrance; stacks sticks and weeds to make a fire. Sees the hawk sitting alone by the saddle-bags and hoods it, noticing Maedhros has neglected the task. Now, she thinks, quite pleased with herself, the poor thing can rest. Perhaps on this journey she might teach Maedhros something or other of the care of raptor-birds, and help the poor creature to a better-balanced existence. 

At the entrance to the cave there is a rock formation, shaped something like a hunched-over, cloaked man, and she climbs atop it, squinting by the fading light of the sun to make sure Maedhros does not yet return. She can see far ahead, even in the fading light, and finds nothing; his walk must be long indeed, and she might have some time. 

She hops down then and begins to go through his bags. How odd, she thinks, that he has gone walking and left his sword behind; but quite fortunate for her, for she might have a close look at it. She picks it up first, looking over the well-decorated leather scabbard, the hilt made of silver and gold. The design on the hilt is of two trees, one of each metal, their crowns twisted together, bowing towards each other. Below them are set two light-stones of such beauty as she has not seen even among the gems of Nargothrond; in the light they are diamonds, but in the darkness as iridescent opals, and they glow with a pure shine of their own, as the light of the moon. A third stone once sat between them, but it has been pried loose, and there is a gap where it had been, unpolished and ugly. Still the sword must be quite as valuable, she thinks, as the hawk. More, perhaps. 

What disgraced noble is he, Finduilas wonders, to wander so aimlessly with such fine things? She goes to pull loose the rest of his things, but finds few answers in them. 

There is a little drinking-horn. Dried way-bread, of which she breaks off a square, thinking it unlikely to be missed. A leather book, which she would open; except that it is bound with a silver chain, and she knows not if she has the time to pick locks. Then what—arrows, though only six, and a bow, well-made but unstrung. A harp, small, made from the shell of a tortoise, and many hair-things. Quite a contrast, she thinks, laughing a little to herself, to Maedhros’ plain appearance; he must be somewhat too concerned with his appearance, in truth. 

There is a little falconry leash, well-decorated but plainly little used. Finduilas thinks it pretty, turns to see how it might fit the leather straps on the bird’s legs, and only then sees that the bird is gone, and its hood torn on the ground. 

She cannot see how it happened, nor where the bird could possibly have gone, at night. But the fact remains, cold and true; Maedhros is going to kill her. 

Finduilas swallows, picks up the hood. Spends some time looking around the cave, knowing the search is in vain, that the bird has flown. But she was not the one to tie down the hawk — she had only hooded it. Maedhros has none to blame but himself, though somehow that little reassures her. He has not, in their short acquaintance, given her the impression of a man driven by rationality. 

She stacks his things inside his bags, glad they seemed to have been rather messily arranged to begin with, and comes again to look out at the dark path in front of the cave, rising on her tip-toes to see if he returns. It has been some time, and the night has grown decidedly dark. She waits a moment for her eyes to adjust after the brightness of fire-flame. Watches the horizon; she can see quite well, with the bushes so sparse, the road rather at an incline. 

But there is no one, no one at all. Finduilas swallows, and pulls herself back up on top of the rocks. Stays there some time, able to see down onto the whole of the path they ascended, and sees Maedhros does not come. 

But something else moves in the bushes. She squints at it, and thinks for a moment it is a lone straggler deer, or a perhaps a lost dog. Then it slips out from the bush, and she freezes in cold fear, seeing its silhouette, the unmistakable motion of its stride. A wolf. 

A wolf, dark and terrible, with an odd, stumbling step, as the scarred beasts of the Isle. It is moving across the flat side of the hill. Perhaps towards her; perhaps only on some business of its own. Finduilas stops breathing. 

Could it have smelled her, she wonders, from so far away? Certainly it shall, when it gets closer. And then what—will it lunge? Can a wolf scale the rocks she has climbed? Likely not, she thinks—a dog could not, even a capable hunting-hound. But if it comes to stand below her she will be trapped; how long might it wait below? Would Maedhros come, and aid her? 

But Maedhros walked away unarmed, and would be of no use against such a beast. Indeed perhaps he does not come because he has already been killed by this very monster, and Finduilas is on her own, and her hiding-place will be her doom, for she cannot balance forever. 

Perhaps the fire might scare the wolf. Perhaps not—then she must fight. 

She leaps down from the rocks and runs, her feet slapping too loudly against the stone floor, for the sword. Takes it up in her hands, knowing that she will be imprecise with it, for it is as long as she is tall and heavier by far than any weapon she has ever had to wield. 

Then she comes to stand in front of the fire, at the cave entrance, and watches the shadow of the wolf move closer and closer, and breathes in deeply, feeling the cold air of the night around her. 

I am not powerless now as I was then, she tells herself. I can kill it. I can kill it. I can kill it. 

The silver blade quivers in her hands. She imagines bringing it down, steadies herself with the thought of dark blood upon the rock. The wolf gets closer; now she can hear its breaths, can see the flash of its eyes in the moonlight. Something is off in its step, she sees, some prominent limp on one of its front legs. Still it is fast, and powerful. 

Ten feet away from the cave entrance it pauses, staring at her, its head cocked to better hear. Finduilas waves the sword in the air, meaning to scare it; but she must look small, uncertain, pathetic, for it exhales sharply and takes another two leaps forward. 

Then there comes another sound; a whistle in the air, two notes, as though the kee-ah of a hawk. She and the wolf both turn to the sound.

A figure stands some forty feet away on the hillside, cloaked, long hair billowing in the wind. An elf, plain to see, the sharp peaks of his ears visible even in the moonlight. He whistles once more, then calls out in Quenya, half-singing, “Come, now, my dear.” 

The wolf turns, and sprints full-speed at him, and Finduilas winces, frozen to the spot. She will see him die, she thinks, will see— 

The wolf leaps at the elf, and the elf catches him, and strokes his back and his ears, as he would a dog’s. They turn together, and walk away, into the darkness. 

* * * 

In the morning she relays the story to Maedhros, who returns with his hawk on his shoulder and in a rather distracted mood, yawning and batting at the air as though hoping to knock away the rays of the sun. He listens, but must not believe her, because he only shrugs. 

“Very odd,” he says, in a tone of voice that suggests it is indeed perfectly ordinary, “perhaps you dreamed it.” 

“I think I could tell dream from waking memory,” Finduilas argues, “and beyond that, the hood of the hawk is torn in truth.” 

“Ah,” Maedhros says, “well, you’d best mend it. I have a needle and thread. Do not put it on the bird again without my saying.” 

Finduilas sighs, and takes the sewing implements from him. Sits, for some time, following the torn line of stitches. Thinks of her approach. 

“I took up your sword, in fear,” she says, “and happened to notice…” 

Maedhros huffs. “My father’s stones, I suppose.” 

“They are quite pretty,” Finduilas says, “I have never before seen their like.” 

“And you shall not again,” Maedhros says, “for that craft died with my father, and of these he made only three.” 

She looks up at the hilt of the sword, now on his hip. “Someone took the third, then,” she says. 

“Mm,” Maedhros says, “so indeed.” 

He lifts up the sword so she may see it, letting the gems catch the light. “The one here, on the tree of gold—it is my grandfather’s gem, and holds some part of his essence, though he is long dead. It glints with the color of his eyes, and shines with the flame of his soul. And this one, with the tree of silver— that is my father’s gem, and holds some part of him within it, and glows with his cunning, warning me when danger is near.” 

Privately Finduilas doubts it is so, and not rather a trick of the light; the sword had seen no light the night before, when the wolf came. 

“And the missing one?” she asks. 

“That was my gem,” Maedhros says, “for I am the eldest of my father’s sons, and his heir, and his spirit of fire lives in some part in my own breast. But it is gone; another is master of my fate, and shall be until I reclaim it.” 

“The Necromancer,” Finduilas says. 

“The Necromancer,” Maedhros echoes, “let us be off, Mouse. The sun rises, and it is ill to waste the day.” 

Chapter Text

“I think we are being followed by wolves,” Finduilas tells Maedhros, on the third day of their journey, “or—a wolf at least. I have heard it each night, and twice seen it, and it unsettles me.” 

“Mm,” Maedhros says, popping a green pea into his mouth, “I really wouldn’t worry about it.” 

They have stopped halfway to the ford, on the edges of a farmer’s land, where stray crops have run wild and grow untended in the forest, a little dry to eat and a little bitter. Maedhros’ bread has run out; he says he would like to avoid being spotted as long as possible, and so will not let Finduilas into the village itself to look for food. 

“I suppose I shall have to prove it to you,” Finduilas says, “for it seems ever you are gone when I see it. I shall take up your sword,” there a playful mood strikes her, and she grabs for it—he lets her, so she pulls it free of its scabbard, “and I shall behead it, and then you will see very well that it is wise to trust my words.” 

“I am sure I would,” Maedhros says, laughing as though at some private joke, “but holding your sword so, Ereinion?” 

Finduilas scowls, looking down at her hands, tight on the hilt. She thinks she holds it about how her father held his own blade—though of course it had been smaller, sleeker, more as a parry-blade than the great sword—but in truth it all blends together in her mind, and she cannot be sure where he had put his dominant hand, or how he had swung it.  

Maedhros waits, apparently expecting her to correct her grip, and her scowl deepens. “What’s wrong with how I hold it?” 

It is Maedhros’ turn to frown. The line of his eyebrows rises, knitting together in concern, and he asks, his tone a little softer, “What sort of noble family does not teach their son to hold his sword?” 

Finduilas’ heart beats hard in her ears. She freezes, as she had earlier, seeing the wolf before her. “I,” she says, fumbling for a lie, “I was not noble.” 

“Tch,” Maedhros says, “with that accent?” 

Finduilas grimaces. She knows the Quenya lilt is audible in her voice, but she had thought… 

“And what of yours?” she asks. “You say yourself you were but the son of a craftsman.” 

Maedhros laughs, and answers her not. He reaches over, and, steadying the blade with the stump of his right arm, adjusts her grip, turning her wrist here, switching the placement of her hands. “Though learning on my sword is near-useless for you,” he says, “it is longer than you are tall; indeed a well-cut stick would suit better.” 

Finduilas knows that she has flushed; the shame of not knowing makes it hard to learn. She swallows it, and commits to memory the way he positions her hands. The weight of the sword is imposing in her hands, quite real, though some part of her wonders if she is not better off holding her little brooch as a weapon; that, at least, she knows how to use. 

“We cannot expect the horse to bear both of us much longer,” Maedhros says. “He is not made for it, and he is dear to me. Why don’t you ride today, and I will lead him?” 

Finduilas bristles. “I am not a child,” she says, “to be led saddle-back.” 

“Yes,” Maedhros says, very much in the tone of one indulging a child, “but the fact remains that you are much smaller than me, with much shorter strides, and that Rochernil will follow none but me.” 

Finduilas rides the horse. Quickly enough she begins to suspect that Maedhros has put her on the horse not out of some mislaid sense of chivalry towards a child but to cut off any route of escape. He is full of questions, and none of them pleasant to answer. 

“You have seen werewolves before,” he says, looking up over the horizon.  The hawk cries out, sharp, and pushes off his shoulder, taking off in a great arc. 

By then Finduilas is rather used to its comings and goings, unusually free for a hunting-bird, and gives it no notice. “Do you think it’s a werewolf? It could be, of course—it seemed ill, it seemed ill…” 

But he waves that off. “No,” he says, “I speak of the Isle.” 

“Ah,” Finduilas says. Looking down she can see that he expects her to flinch, that he expects to have to work through it slowly. She has met elves like that, a few times, escaped thralls—elves who turned inwards, and spoke not of the weights of their pasts. Her friend Gwindor had been only a child when he was taken, on one of the last hunts the nobility of Nargothrond had ridden on, and when he had returned— 

Finduilas swallows. Keeps her voice clear and sharp, as the notes of rain falling onto the surface of the pools of Ivrin. “Terrible beasts, though they did not frighten me,” she says. “What would you know of them?” 

“You passed them,” Maedhros says, and when she nods, asks, “How? A wolf’s nose is a sensitive thing, and the Necromancer’s wolves are keen-eyed and hungry.” 

“Yes,” Finduilas says, “but when I slipped away it was through the servant’s quarters, where the unhappy thralls tend to the washing-things and scrounge up the blood to feed his vampires, and cook the meat, and process all the things he needs for his concoctions—there is a terrible load of things, plant and animal and bile and blood, mineral and salt, all bubbling and turning and…” 

For a moment she is there, and yellow bile slips between her fingers. She feels the world narrow, darken. Splays out her fingers to touch the pelt of the black horse. 

Maedhros reaches up, covering her hand with his own. The leather of his glove is cool to the touch, a little weathered. “You are well,” he says, “you are free.” 

Finduilas thinks that if she were not saddle-back she would bite him. “I know,” she snaps, “leave it, I said naught.” 

“Yes,” Maedhros says. He drops his left hand, where he holds the reins of the horse, then hesitates. “Show me your right hand.” 

Finduilas listens on impulse, though she burns yet with anger and with shame. “Why?” 

He holds out the stump of his own right hand, white where it was severed. Finduilas winces, looking at the scars; messy torn things, blunt force, torn as though by the teeth of some animal. And underneath— 

“We share the same scar,” Maedhros says, “though less of mine remains.” 

It is the burn-scar, the hot manacle. Only the lower half of the eye that had once sat on his wrist remains, and even that is twisted where skin had once been pulled taught by the amputation, the line broken at the corner. It gives it a look a little bit as though crying, or melting. 

Finduilas looks at the bright lines of the scar on her own hand, fresh-healed. Her stomach twists. She casts her eyes away, watching the landscape pass them by, her eyes caught on the lush summer leaves, the thick green bushes. A rabbit sits a moment beneath a raspberry-bush then is gone. 

“I rolled in wolf shit,” she says, to get the conversation to end. 

That night they settle in a structure that was once a stable. In places the wood sides have rotted and fallen through, and the late-afternoon light peeks through the holes. A man comes from the house some half a mile away, but catches one glimpse of Maedhros’ black horse and black clothes and black sword and turns away, taking him for a servant of the Enemy. 

Finduilas yawns, settling in the corner and pulling hay around herself. She is exhausted, more than she expected, but fears somewhat the intrusion of the wolf. 

“Shan’t you sleep here tonight?” she asks Maedhros. In the past two nights she has not seen him sleep at all, but only go wandering just before sunset. 

“I shall, I shall,” Maedhros says, “as I did last night; you did not see, for you were sleeping when I returned.” 

Finduilas is a horribly light sleeper, and wonders how he managed it. But he was near when she woke, so there must be some truth to it. 

He takes off his sword, and lays it between them. Then he sits for some time and writes in the book that had the chain about it, facing away from Finduilas so she cannot see what he is writing. She stands, once, and rises on her tip-toes, trying to mask the movement as a stretch. But he turns the book very slightly, and she cannot see. The key to the lock he tucks into his inner pocket. 

“Were you a scribe?” she asks. She cannot think of who would have a blank parchment-book to write in. Even her uncle—let his soul find rest among the glittering stars—had done his plant-sketches on rice paper. 

“No,” Maedhros says, “but very fond of privacy, and leather is hard to tear and easy to bind tight with chains.” He locks the book and stands. “I will walk, then, Mouse. Do not wait for me. Sleep.” 

“Ever you go unarmed,” Finduilas says, “what will you do if the forces of the enemy come upon you?” 

Maedhros laughs. “Bite, I suppose.”  

Then he is gone, and Finduilas pulls the sword to lay in her lap, and rests against the wall of the barn, and thinks she shan’t sleep, and sleeps some while. 

Footsteps wake her. 

She opens her eyes and sees leather boots. It is dark outside, and in that darkness she thinks briefly that Maedhros has returned. But on a second look she sees the feet are too small to be his, and that the intruder wears a loose blue cloak, covered in silver stars.  He has picked up Maedhros’ saddle-bags, and goes through them with a casual air. 

Finduilas watches him, feigning sleep. She can tell plainly by his eyes and his ears that he is elven; his movements are graceful, quite at home. On her lap the sword glints in the moonlight, the stone set into the silver tree seeming to glow with reflected light. 

(Which, she tries to remember, had been the father’s stone?) 

He takes the little leather book from the bag, and pulls a silver key from the folds of his robe. It is the same one, Finduilas is almost sure, that Maedhros had used. 

Maedhros gave it to him, she thinks; then, he’s killed Maedhros, and taken it. 

She opens her eyes just a sliver wider, looking over the cloaked figure of the elf. She sees no weapons on him; no sword-bulge nor arrow-quiver. Nothing but the clothes on his back, and the glinting golden earrings in his ears, made in the shapes of the rising sun. 

But of course he could have a dagger beneath his cloak, and she would be no wiser. 

He flips through the book, squinting at the lines of soldier-straight Tengwar Maedhros left behind, casting occasional glances down at Finduilas, as though to check she still sleeps. 

Then he takes up the quill and ink pot, and sits down to write something in the book, tilting it towards the broken walls to get a little moonlight. It would be quite odd, Finduilas thinks, for a killer to act so. And beyond that, by instinct she trusts elves, especially elves like this one: whole and fair, no thrall-scars on his dark skin, the smile dancing across his lips warm, kind. 

She sits up, and draws up the sword between them anyhow. It is heavy in her hands, clumsy as anything. If nothing else she could whack him with it. 

“Did Maedhros give you that?” she asks.

He glances over at her. Dark curls, bound loosely with golden ribbons, frame his face. For a moment she thinks he looks young, but he does not, not really. 

“No,” he says, “I have my very own. You are traveling with him, then?” 

“He is traveling with me,” Finduilas says. It is her due, she thinks—after all, does she not lead them? 

The elf laughs. Nods down at the text. Finduilas wonders if he is reading Maedhros’ diary. Wants quite badly to have a crack at it herself. “Mouse, was it?” 

“Ereinion,” she says. 

“Ereinion,” he echoes, as though trying out the shape of the word. “Oh, that’s pretty.” 

Finduilas draws her knees up to her chest, watching him. The endless manners-lessons of Nargothrond somehow failed to inform her of the way to proceed in an introduction to a strange man writing in the journal of a travel companion in the middle of the night. 

“You are a… friend of Maedhros’, then?” she asks. 

“Oh,” he says, then bends to press his lips to the page of the journal, smearing the ink with the kiss. Blows on it, to dry it out, a dark spot clinging to the corner of his lips. “Yes, of a sort.” 

Finduilas stares. She ought not ask—such things are not polite—but it is very late and she is very tired and he is being very, very blatant. “Are you—”  the word lovers dies on her lips, “companions of the night?” 

He laughs, a deep, full-throated laugh, richer and warmer than Maedhros’. He is, Finduilas thinks, a little too beautiful to waste his life on a former thrall; yet she can see it is so. “I suppose,” he says, “that it is the only sort of companion I might be.” Then he closes the journal and locks it. Stands. “Maedhros shall not be back, I think, until late morning, and there is a journey I must make before the rising of the sun. Try to sleep.” 

Finduilas thinks she shall not, and does. 

In the morning it all feels like a dream. The sun rises, and Maedhros is gone, his things messily shoved back into the saddle-bag. The hawk, too, is nowhere to be seen. 

(Perhaps, Finduilas thinks, it was on Maedhros’ shoulder when he left. But truly she does not recall so.)

Finduilas sighs, sitting up. She bit off her own braid some months ago, and her hair is too short to properly style. Still she takes up Maedhros’ comb and tends to it. Three days and she has not seen Maedhros wear once the hair-beads he carries, and her wariness of him has rather faded, so she reaches into his bag and picks out two; one in the shape of a dragonfly, a fetching pale blue, and a gold lion’s head. She works these into the locks of hair framing her face, and thinks of perhaps borrowing another, but just then the loose barn door creaks open, and Maedhros enters. 

The hawk, as she had guessed, is with him; he carries it rather like a babe, in the crook of his elbow, and it tucks itself against his chest, its eyes shut. He has slung a bag over his shoulder, and in his hand he carries a long, thin thing, dirty metal. 

“Here,” he says, tossing it at her feet, “this ought to be a better size.” 

She picks it up. It is a sword, slightly rusted and covered in fresh black soil, but clearly well-made. Some work, and she could perhaps see the intricate designs on the handle. “Where did you get this?” 

“Dug open a grave,” Maedhros says. “Do not worry; all the bones are quite returned.” 

Finduilas had not thought to worry about it. “Who—?” 

Maedhros waves her off. “A family friend.” 

“Rust has set into its seams,” she says, looking it over. “Rust, and the smell of death.” 

“Rust is easy enough to remove; I will set you to work on it now,  with vinegar and twisted steel wire, while I map out our route,” Maedhros says. “And the smell of death well-suits a sword.” 

Finduilas hums her agreement. It is at least evidence that he will honor his word; certainly, if they come upon the Isle together she will be more useful armed. 

Maedhros tucks the hawk into the inner pocket of his shirt—there Finduilas sees a spot of something dark on its beak, and wonders if it had somehow managed to peck at the ink pot—and kneels down to show her what he means for her to do to the blade. 

Only then he sees the beads she had put in her hair, and his eyebrows shoot up. “I see,” he says, “that you have made yourself familiar with my things, Mouse.” 

“There was an elf here that came to write in your journal,” Finduilas says. “He said he was a friend of yours, and told me it was well enough to wear them, since you did not.” 

It is a gamble. The little she saw of the night visitor’s character makes her think he would be likely to say such things; and indeed she is right, for Maedhros laughs. “Leave it to him to give away all he has as gifts. But I am sure it pleased him; and after all they are his. Did he say much, of me?” 

“Uh-uh,” Finduilas says. She begins to scrub at the sword, exactly how Maedhros had. The sound does not please her. “Only that you are friends, and that at night he keeps you company. He left sealed a kiss in your book.” 

Maedhros nods. He reaches for the book, and touches it, but does not unlock it now, nor read it. Instead he takes out his maps, and studies them for some time. 

“There were orc-bands,” he says, “on the path I planned to take. We will need to take the long way around, and pass by the wizard’s tower.” 

Finduilas is vaguely aware of the place. A lone spire of white, built into the sediment of the rock, living with song and with faith. Some say an old murderer lives there, or a queen sealed away, cursed for disloyalty to the throne, or the singer of the mountains and stones, or a king stained with blood. 

“Is it dangerous?” she asks. 

“No,” Maedhros says, “and indeed I think its inhabitant would welcome us, though I will avoid it.” 

Finduilas perks up. “Do you know him?” 

“Mm,” Maedhros says, “in a sense.” 

“A sense?” Finduilas asks. She gets the feeling that at times Maedhros delights in obscurity, and intends not to let this go. “In what sense?” 

Maedhros says, “In that we are brothers,” he says, “but quiet now; let me think a moment on this.” 

They trade wooded roads for wide, open plains. Long grasses sway on the wind, golden, and Finduilas—who has forgotten to resent her position on horseback—shuts her eyes and feels the soft caress of the sun in her hair. The air smells of summer, and of wild apple, though she cannot see the trees themselves. 

As she rides she tells Maedhros of the passages in the stones, the dark towers that had once been Tol Sirion that whisper still in the language of the river. Speaks of the places where the fortress was twisted into its current shape, the cracks where the rock was unyielding and unwilling. 

“And the inner locks are simple,” she says. “They are heavy and ornate, of beautiful make; they look imposing. The outer doors are harder, for they were made to last a siege, but all the inner-doors were between friends. He did not notice, or did not bother to replace them; he bent the crafts-work to his own ill ends but the structure remains the same. It is child’s play, to pick them with the sharp side of a lady’s brooch.” She pauses, then remembers herself. “Or with—with something else. Long and thin like that.” 

“Ah,” Maedhros says, “I see it so. And whose brooch did you use, Ereinion?” 

Finduilas flushes and glances away. “I am a thief,” she says. 

“Certainly,” Maedhros answers. 

For some time they walk in silence. Finduilas splays her fingers out on the horse’s neck, running her finger-pads over his short, soft fur. Thinks of the Isle until suddenly she cannot stand it. 

“What will you do?” she asks. “When you get there. Your—your gem. You will take it back?” 

“Ah,” Maedhros says, “how I wish it might be returned to me, and to the sword where it once sat. And indeed at times I dream I might.”

“But you do not believe it.” 

“Mm,” Maedhros says, “no.” He raises his head, looking up at the sun, hidden now behind the clouds. “It is as links in a chain. So long as his curse lies upon me he will live, for his essence is tied to it; so long as night and day do not converge(?)touch the curse will lie upon me; so long as the great music of Arda sounds there shall be night, and day.” 

Finduilas swallows. She had known, on an instinctual level, that some Doom was laid on her companion, but it is another thing to hear it spoken aloud. “The way you speak,” she says, “it is hopeless.” 

“No,” Maedhros says. “Take out one link in the chain and it is broken, and can hold no more. The curse cannot touch me if I do not live; I must only ensure my death is his death also.” 

Just then the hawk, which had been flying overhead, glides down, and lands on Maedhros’ shoulder. Maedhros turns to it. For a moment the indifference and good humor drop from his face, and he looks terribly sad. 

“Two half-lives I will trade for one death,” he says, “for there is no other way.” 

“Oh,” Finduilas says. She is surprised, though only to hear it spoken; she realizes she has guessed for some time it could be so. If the Necromancer could easily be slain certainly he would have been. “Do you know how it can be done?” 

“Yes,” Maedhros says, “or at the very least I guess.” 

Finduilas looks down, expectant. He pauses, seeming to consider. His eyes, she sees, skim over the mark on her wrist; he reaches by impulse to rub at his own. But for some reason he chooses to trust her, and speaks.

“It was not Tol-in-Gaurhoth, where I was kept,” Maedhros says. “Indeed that Isle had not at all been lost.” 

“It was lost three decades ago,” Finduilas says, “more or less. Were you—” 

“Three hundred and fifty years ago,” Maedhros says, “in the ruined castle of the damned god. The great grey tower, and the hole in the earth where the body had been hewn down. Then it had smoked yet with the heat of his anger, and upon it I burned the fingers of my right hand.” 

Automatically Finduilas turns to look. He catches the gesture, and laughs at her, waving the stump of his arm.

“How old are you?” she asks, before she can help herself. 

“Six hundred and twenty-eight,” Maedhros says, “laugh now how you might, but long ago the circumstances of the year of my birth were thought to be quite auspicious, and I was meant to be blessed with good fortune, the eldest of my father’s sons and his heir.” 

Finduilas shivers. Counts in her head, to be sure she thinks of the right year. “The fall of Morgoth,” she says.

Maedhros hums. “The year before, if we speak precisely. But I was born three days after the rising of the sun, on the first dance of the sun and the moon across the sky. My father looked out at them, and knew they loved each other, and felt me blessed.” 

A realization strikes Finduilas then, an impossibility. She looks down at the elf leading her horse and wonders— 

( But would he not, she thinks, have a kingdom whole to reclaim? What is he doing here? ) 

But he speaks, before she might ask. “And how old are you, Mouse?” 

“Er,” Finduilas has wandered deep enough in her thoughts that she, unthinking, gives the true answer, “Forty-seven. My mother said I was born in the year of the lancer; my father called it the year of the silver bull.” 

“So your mother was Sinda,” Maedhros says, “and your father of my people.” 

Finduilas grimaces. She had not expected to give away so much. But it is a fair trade, she supposes, for what she gained. And she is not so young, she thinks, as she looks — only three years shy of adulthood. Four, when Nargothrond was taken. 

“Your brooch,” Maedhros says, “the one you have set on the inside of your sleeve. I have seen its edge glint, catching the sunlight. Was it your sweetheart’s?” 

Finduilas is silent. She shuts her eyes against the afternoon sun. Feels tears prick at her. For a long moment there is nothing but the breathing of the horse, and of Maedhros, and the humid summer air about them; her own deep, desperate inhales. Do not cry. Do not cry. Do not cry. 

And perhaps then she might weep, or speak, or something else entirely, but suddenly she feels the horse come to a sudden halt as Maedhros jerks the reins. His whisper is urgent, sharp and clear in the summer silence. 

“Orcs,” he say. “Be still. Be quiet.” 

And she sees them, a small group coming out of the clearing some fifty feet ahead of them. Finduilas counts them automatically, picking out grey faces among the green-cloaked crowd — one, two, three, six. Their horses are black, their dark bent-oak bows and lances at their sides.  

Maedhros’ hawk pushes away from his shoulder and takes flight, circling above them. It is trained to bring intelligence, Finduilas thinks, though she is not sure how precisely that is done, or what a bird might say. She leans forward, to get a better look at the regiment, and sees then the detail sewn into the green cloaks. Recognizes the edges of the designs, the darkness of bloodstains, the specks of pearl still clinging to the fabric.  

Banners. 

Banners from Nargothrond, taken as trophies, worn in mockery. 

She hears the hawk call above her. Her vision goes red. Maedhros , she thinks distantly, will understand. We’re the same, he and I. 

Chapter Text

Later Finduilas will struggle to remember exactly how the fight had gone. She will not be able to say how she had covered the fifty-some feet between her and the orcs, nor exactly when she had drawn the rusted sword, nor who had been on horseback and who had not, the sequence of movement as bodies living and dead fell on to the grassy knoll. She will not remember if Maedhros had tried to stop her; if he had spoken to her or cried out, when he had drawn his greatsword. 

She will find the gash deep in her left shoulder and wonder how she came to possess it; will not identify it, without a healer’s touch, as the mark of a lance. She will not notice, between the heat of the moment after the battle and the desperate drumbeat of her own heart, that she is bleeding at all. 

Other things she will remember forever, held crystal clear in the river-basin of memory. The way the half-rusted blade of the sword catches and pulls at flesh, coming out of a wound with tatters of skin clinging to it; the different sensation of the brooch, clutched somehow in her left-hand, sinking into an eyeball. Maedhros, somewhere far above her, cleaving off a head whole. 

She will remember that she fell backwards, and stared at the sky above, oddly blue and oddly cheerful for the massacre. She will remember the graceful arc of that last arrow, loosed in error by a falling foe. 

She will remember the way the bird had fallen. How Maedhros had screamed, so deep and hoarse and pained that she had been sure he was dying. 

Then the aftermath, the greyish black horse that had kicked out, missing her ribs by a hair; the messy work of hacking at a wounded orc with her dull, rusted sword; the banners torn and bloodstained; pearls scattered on the grass gleaming white as bone. 

Maedhros on his knees, hand clutched to his chest, black cloak formless around him as the raiment of a ghost. Guilt, soaking through her rage, her grief — she had imagined she might be struck down, but had not thought of him. 

Then what? 

She rushes to him. Runs her hands over his chest, his shoulders, looking for a mortal wound. Thinks of her father’s features twisting in a death-grin, blood spilling from his neck; thinks of Finrod pulled apart far away, feels it is all her fault, knows it— 

But she can find nothing with her panicked hands, though Maedhros shakes, though his breaths rasp, and finally she sees it is only fear that grips him, that in his hands— 

“The hawk,” he says, again and again, “the hawk, the hawk.” 

He has it cradled against his chest, his hand pressing the bird to the fabric of his robes. Finduilas cannot see where the arrow has struck, under his hand, under the feathers—its chest, or its stomach, or the junction of its shoulder and its wing. Maedhros sobs openly, his features so twisted by grief that Finduilas thinks they would fit a carnival mask. 

“No,” he says, “no, no, no—let it not be, let it not end thus. Not now, not—”  

It’s only a bird, she wants to say, you do not die. But some instinct stops her. Deep down she knows that is not quite true.  

“Hush,” she says, keeping her own voice kind but firm, as though talking to a child, “hush, do not hold it so tightly. If it is alive that might hurt it; be gentle, now. It is hurt, and it must be scared. Treat it tenderly, no?” 

Then she shuts her eyes, if only for a second, and prays to the maiden in the stars and the lord of the air that the bird lives indeed. She does not know what she might do, if it does not. 

When she opens her eyes, she sees that Maedhros has loosened his grip, that his hand shakes, as the hand of a drunken Man. “Always I fail him,” he mutters, under his breath, “always I hurt him—always I lack tenderness, lack love—” 

“Hush,” Finduilas says, reaching to run her hands over the bird’s feathers. She speaks, distractedly, as she feels the wound. “Hush, now. You are an admirable falconer, if a little over-involved. He likes you very much.” 

Maedhros starts laughing. It is an unpleasant, hysterical sound, entirely humorless. 

Finduilas swallows. The heartbeat of the bird, under her fingers, is sluggish, coming in spurts then not at all. There is no blood, for the arrow staunches it. “See,” she says, “see, only wounded. It hit the right; the shoulder, where the wing joins his body.” 

“Wounded,” Maedhros gasps, looking up. “Only wounded.” 

It might not fly again, Finduilas thinks. Perhaps death would be kinder. But not to Maedhros, and him I care for more than the bird. Let it live now, if it must to please him. 

“Be gentle,” she says again. “Speak softly—yes, yes, there you are. Pet its feathers, no? Good, good. Oh—I did not ask, and now I wonder at myself. Surely he has a name.” 

Maedhros swallows, and nods. He turns down his face, and presses his lips to the bird’s head, and for a moment Finduilas thinks he will not speak. But then he swallows, and murmurs, low, “Fino,” and again, “Fino.” 

“Fino,” Finduilas says, “quite charming. Here, let us walk from the site of the battle. Let us bring him to safety, and calm your horse, yes? See, your horse is well.” 

Maedhros nods. He lets Finduilas pull him up by the elbow. Walks as a man in a dream, one foot in front of the other, as she leads him away. But by the time they reach the forest he has thought of something, and speaks. 

“There are four hours at most left of the day,” he says, “and then the sun will set.” 

Finduilas hums. “Yes,” she says, not seeing his meaning, “yes, that is so.” 

“It is perhaps three to the wizard’s tower,” Maedhros says, “for a lone elf on horseback. And should one be delayed—” he swallows. “Should a wolf scent blood, or see a child alone…” 

Finduilas blinks. “The wizard’s tower? A wolf?” 

“You must take him,” Maedhros declares. “You must ride as fast as you can, and you must go without me, and you must find my brother and you must say I sent you.” 

“Maedhros—” 

“Go,” he says, “waste no more time.” 

Finduilas is moving already, though the thought of leaving him behind pleases her little, especially after he slings his sword onto the saddle-bag, apparently intending to give it to her despite her own new weapon. 

“But where will you go?” she asks. “What will you do?” 

“Ask me not,” Maedhros says, “where I go when the night comes. Go and find the tower and the wizard, and tell him all that has come to pass, and pray the bird lives, for that battle, and that blood, is on your hands.” 

Finduilas breathes in deeply. Then she nods, and takes the bird from him, and takes off the reins of the horse, to ride bare-handed and bareback, as her mother taught her. 

Maedhros did not say so outright, but Finduilas feels deep in her bones that she must get to the tower before nightfall, that something might go terribly wrong if she does not. She clings to the bird with one hand, keeping him tucked against her chest, and stops only to be sure of her path. In the race against the sun she does not stop to think that she has never gone so far on horseback, nor to fear passing orc patrols, nor to examine the odd landscape, the bone-white rocks dotted with thickets of odd, scraggly trees with wine-dark leaves. 

She sings to the horse, as Sindar riders do, guiding him more through mind-touch than body. After some time the line between her and the horse seems to grow thinner, and she feels Rochernil’s hoofbeats on the rock as her own footsteps, feels the stone take up her song and thrum with it, feels the sun slow slightly in her path in response to her desperate prayers. Now and then the bird wakes and cries out, beating its good wing weakly against her, and she holds it tight and speaks to it until it quiets (more from exhaustion, she fears, than from comfort). But it lives yet.

She wonders distantly whether the elf with the gold in his hair might find Maedhros in the night, as he found her, if he will be there again to seek the journal to write in. But somehow she knows that it is not so; that wherever Maedhros has gone, he will be quite as lonely as the silver moon. 

By the second hour of her ride, when the sun draws closer to the horizon, her light now faintly tinged with orange, Finduilas begins to fear she has gone off course. The tower is meant to be a grand structure, its peak visible for miles around, its slanted roof hidden among the clouds — why does she see nothing but the white stone and the red trees and the fog, the sound of the river behind her growing every fainter? 

She would turn, but she has gone too long in this direction. She has no time to search, and cannot locate her mistake; has she taken the path east instead of west? Has she gone to the hills? She can only keep going, for certainly if she has gone astray she will not reach her destination before sundown. 

The tower does not appear, and she despairs. Turns her attention to the horse’s exhaustion, the pain in his legs.

Then the bird makes a small noise, and she looks down. In the pinkish glow of the sunset something of the bird is different. It looks up at her, as though finding her eyes and—Finduilas is a little unsettled, to see it— holds them, some fragment of intelligence in its eyes that was not there before. Finduilas forgets the cooing she did earlier, and speaks to it in earnest. 

“I am trying,” she says. “Maedhros sends us to the wizard’s tower, little thing, do you see? Only I do not know if I have come the right way, for he did not ride with us, and I fear—” 

The bird calls, once, sharp, and looks up over her shoulder. 

Finduilas turns. 

And there it is. 

Finduilas has the urge to protest. To cry that buildings ought not work so; that it ought not be possible for a structure of that size to sneak up on her; that the landscape is flat; that she ought to have seen it miles and miles away, and not come upon it at the doorstep. 

“Thank you,” she says, to the bird and the horse both, running her free hand over the dark flank of the horse. “Shining Elbereth. Thank you.” 

Then she slips off the back of the horse, landing on the stone softly. Walks forward, towards the jutting structure. 

She thinks it is limestone. It does not look like something built by elven hands; there is something to it more like a natural outcropping of rocks, unevenly worn away by the wind and the rain, plainly ancient. There are no bricks, no doors, no windows but the cracks where the stones meet each other.  

Yet there is no way such a structure ought to exist in nature; not so thin nor so tall, not leaning as it does at a precarious angle, not with the carefully maintained herbs spilling from the many thin rock windows. Chamomile, she sees— milk thistle, feverfew, goldenseal. 

The wind whistles about them. Finduilas swallows, clears her throat, and calls up to the open windows. “Help! Help! Let me in.” 

For a long moment she thinks no one will answer her, but then a voice calls out, deep as the sea and musical as a bell. 

“Who are you?” it asks her. “What is your errand?” 

The first question she ignores, for it feels here she ought not lie. “I bring you a bird,” she says, “a hawk. A very beautiful bird.”

“I am no falconer,” answers the voice, “go elsewhere, child. Let it fly, if you cannot tame it.” 

“It is wounded,” Finduilas says, “it was shot down.” 

There is a moment’s pause. Finduilas feels hesitation, but the voice speaks again, absolute. “I am not skilled particularly in the healing or cooking of birds. Find another to suit you.” 

“It is your brother’s,” Finduilas says, “and he cannot come. I bear his sword, and his horse, and come on his errand.” 

“Why did you not say so sooner?” the voice asks, and in front of her there is a door, so plain she cannot tell how she did not notice it before. “Enter, then, and bear his sword and his horse and his bird, but know that if you have spoken falsely to me you shall not again set forth.” 

Finduilas thinks herself rather ill-suited to that test, but there is nothing else to do. She pulls open the door, feeling heavy marble glide smoothly out of her way, and steps inside. A staircase greets her, and the smell of herbs, so overwhelming inside that for a moment her head swims in it, earthy scents warring with cloying florals. The room is dark, no sun reaching through the wall-cracks except for the westernmost side of the room, where slivers of orange-pink light sneak through the stone. 

She leads the horse inside, but must let him go when she comes to the bottom of the stairs. He lowers his head, beginning to nibble at some plant growing out of the floor of the first room, and she can only hope that it is well enough for him to eat it. 

Her heels click musically on the marble of the step, and outside the sound of the wind turns into song, the air catching melodically in the hollow dome of the tower. Finduilas hears footsteps above her, riding-boots on stone. He sounded very far away, when he spoke to her; but she has barely climbed three steps before she sees him running down the winding hallway. 

The elf standing above her is pale and sharp-eyed, dressed in deep green devotional robes, loose waves of long oak-dark hair falling down his back and brushing against his hips. The only things he has in common with Maedhros are his grey eyes, his freckles, and perhaps some fraction of his height. There is a lightness to him entirely absent in Maedhros, his face as the face of a statue well-carved from marble. It is hard, however, to call him handsome, or even beautiful, though each of his features is unquestionably attractive on its own. The round, wide-set eyes, framed by thick dark lashes, the long, straight nose pierced through with silver, the pronounced cupid’s bow of his lips—all of it has a slightly discordant air, as though picked from many different handsome faces. 

He holds out his hands. Finduilas hesitates a moment, then drops the bird into them. Watches as he takes it up, holding it against the fading sunlight. 

“I am Maglor,” he says. “Come through here— to the lilac room.” 

Finduilas knows she ought to introduce herself in turn; instead she tries to understand the layout of the place. She is sure she has spent barely any time at all on the stairs—she is sure the tower is quite narrow—but she follows Maglor into a room that seems quite high up and wide, with odd slanting windows. 

(Is this what the enchanted rocks of Tol Sirion had felt like, to those who did not know its tune? Is that what the twisted passages of the Isle feel like, to those who cannot see past the deception?) 

The walls here are painted a soft purple; plants crowd under the low slanted windows. The floor is wooden, laid over stone. Many knick-knacks, candles and beads and basins, are strewn over low wooden tables along the walls. Three beds are laid out, medicinal beds on the floor in the Noldor style, decorated with bright green and yellow covers. 

Her host sits on the corner of the table, holding the bird in his hands, and looks long and hard at the wound. 

“Can you help?” Finduilas asks, inching forward. 

“Mm,” her host answers, “not until the night comes. But that is a matter of a few minutes. Go, child, and see to the horse. I will find you later.” 

“I can help—” Finduilas starts. But Maglor throws her a look, and she falls silent.

She steps outside the room, but does not go down the stairs, knowing that her horse is well. If she steps away from the door she can feel she will not find it again, and so she keeps a hand on the door-handle, even as Maglor locks it. Breathes in deeply, sitting down on the step in front of it, and leans against it to listen. 

She hears the sounds of Maglor puttering about; hitting flint against steel to light candles, clinking together ceremonial glasses, humming to himself. She hears the bird whistle, once, and he shushes it, gentle as though speaking to a child. His footsteps trace the perimeter of the room. 

Finduilas toys with her silver brooch, poking its ends at her finger-pads. Presses the tips of her nails to the flat head of the curling snake, following the line of its body where it upholds the crown of flowers, down to its tail, joined to the other biting snake. She thinks of her uncle’s hands on the brooch, affixing it to her breast, her uncle’s lips brushing against the crown of her head. Her uncle’s voice, long-gone: There. And now we match. 

She turns away, pulling herself forcefully out of the memory. It is odd, she thinks, that despite the gaps between the stones of the walls she feels no wind here; she stretches out her hand to touch one of the openings and finds it solid. 

Glass. Glass so crystal-clear she could not have seen it at all. She smudges it, for her hands are covered yet with a thin layer of dirt and sweat and the residue of feathers, for there is dried blood (her own?) under her fingernails. 

Outside the light fades. In the room Maglor shuffles here and there. A spoon clinks melodically against the side of a ceramic cup. Finduilas feels the pain of her shoulder wound. Somewhere Maedhros is alone. The bird is out of her hands. Despite herself she thinks she might fall asleep, sitting just there on the step, if only she shut her eyes. She presses the sharp tip of the brooch to the pad of her thumb. The prick of pain feels like nothing at all. 

In the dark she can see that luminescent moon-stones have been set into the white walls of the tower, adhering so perfectly to the limestone that she could not tell them apart in the light. They are in the shapes of trees, silver and gold, and glow as the gems set into the great-sword Maedhros entrusted to her. 

A voice calls out inside the room, low and pained. She knows it. It is not Maglor’s. I am dreaming, Finduilas thinks, looking out at the impossible hall, her ears twitching in sympathy. The pain in her finger-pad grounds her. It is not real, she thinks, it is not real until I see it, though I know well what I will see. 

On the other side of the door Maglor begins to sing. Finduilas knows the tune of the song, used often by healers tending to the wounded after battle, usually accompanied by the ceremonial laying of flowers. It is a grounding song, meant to tether the soul to the body before true healing can begin. O stars of silver and roses gold; o blades not risen and truths not told… 

She breathes in deeply, the air so humid and heavy with the smell of herbs it feels like choking down over-brewed herbal tea, and rises, though she is dizzy. The silver brooch slips out of her sleeve as naturally as a part of her body. 

The faint clinking of her tool against the lock sounds as part of the melody, as a thing that was always meant to be. 

Chapter Text

Maglor sees her when she steps inside, but he will not pause in his work. She knew it would be so. Battle-healers do not stop, lest they are struck down, lest life and limb take precedence over the magick; and even then not always, for the rush of it is very much as the heat of the fight. 

His displeasure flickers briefly over his face, then is gone. Finduilas stops in the doorway and watches him, holding the great-sword to her chest for comfort. One of the stones set into the hilt flickers and loses its spark. 

Maglor stands by the center bed, in his arms a huge white bowl of oil and flowers. His grey eyes glow slightly with the power of Song; his hair moves as the tendrils of some great squid, or a bed of snakes. The surface of the oil is as uneasy as the waves of the Sea. Herbs are burning. The smell would be pleasant in moderation, but now Finduilas is light-headed with its intensity. 

On the bed in front of Maglor there is an elf. 

He is pushing himself up very slightly on his elbows, his lips moving as though he is speaking—though what he says is lost in the sound of the song. An arrow juts from his breast, on the right, at the junction of his shoulder and his arm. His dark curls are bound with gold. His cloak, blue and silver, is torn. He turns, and catches Finduilas’ eye, holding for a moment her gaze. 

Then he falls back, his back flat now against the mattress. 

There is only one thing to do. As the song peaks and starts to fall, Finduilas inches forward. She sits down on the floor, the wood oddly warm and welcoming under her touch, and she takes the hand of the elf who had once been a hawk. 

His hand is cold and clammy, though he squeezes with vigor. Finduilas looks down at his fingers, her eyes catching on the golden engagement-band on his finger. To her eyes it is a very old-fashioned design, many rays stemming off the edge of the band as the light of the sun. There is a strap of leather still caught on his wrist, she sees; falconry bands, as had been around the bird’s leg. 

Wizardry most foul. But has she, on the cursed isle, not seen its like? 

Maglor sings the last notes of the song. For a long moment there is silence, but for the flickering of the candles, all of them caught in a drawn-out, exhausted sort of state, then Maglor moves forward, coming to rest on his knees by the floor-bed. 

“I will pull the arrow, cousin,” he says, “and hope my song is enough to keep you tethered through it.” 

Finduilas takes a moment to imagine the trees of relation and grimaces. Ah. Very well, then. 

“It is a whole lot of fuss,” the elf who had been a hawk says, the pain clear in his voice. “I am certain I shall be fine, and your hands are capable.” 

“Mm,” Maglor says, and turns a look of dissatisfaction onto Finduilas, “do you want Russo’s girl gone, Fingon?” 

“He is a boy, I think,” Fingon answers, and turns, too, to face her. “Which are you, then?”

Finduilas shrugs. 

Fingon waits a moment, then glances again to Maglor, his expression weary. He holds still Finduilas’ hand. “Either way he is fine.” 

So they pay her no more heed, and Finduilas watches the removal of the arrow, which is rather long and very bloody. 

* * * 

“I suppose then you know the whole sordid tale,” Maglor says. They sit together in one corner of the room, drinking tea, away from where Fingon sleeps in the other corner, curled up on his side. The oil in the bowl has gone red. Maglor says the danger has passed, so long as the magick coming with the light of the sun does not upset the wound. 

“Er,” Finduilas says, “I would… like some details filled in. You know Maedhros is not generous with his words.” 

Maglor whistles through his teeth. “Do not lie to a liar, child.” 

That is enough to have her worked up again, and she sets down her tea-cup to gesture. “I have not lied! No falsehoods, you have said, upon my coming here, and I—” 

“Have been very careful in your selection of words,” Maglor says, laughing now, “yes, yes, very well. Eavesdropping and lock-picking and disobedience I will lay upon you as charges in the two hours that have passed since your coming, but I will not say you have been a liar.” 

“Thank you,” Finduilas says, picking up her tea cup again. Maglor’s tea is chamomile, mixed with a little honey and what she thinks must be brandy. He seems unlikely to volunteer more information without at least a little provoking, so she sets herself to that task. “I do think I have pieced it together, now. I know who he is, and more or less what was done to him, and by whom, and I understand for the most part his mission.” 

“His mission, mm?” Maglor asks. “It is good, despite the circumstances, that you have come here. I have much to tell him, and he would not heed my call, not until now. If Fingon lives—and I have all hope Fingon shall live—that quest and its end might after all be averted.” 

Finduilas leans forward. “Is that so?” 

“Yes,” Maglor says. “But tell me first what you have learned.” 

“I know that by day Maedhros lives, and his lover takes the form of a bird. I guess that by night it is the reverse, and Maedhros must take the form of a wolf. I know that the Necromancer has a gem in his possession which binds Maedhros to him; I know Maedhros means to destroy it and him at once, though I do not know how. I know I will lead him there.” Finduilas breathes in deeply. Everything afterwards is guesswork; but she must make of it what she can, or hear nothing. “I know that Fingon must be the mourning king’s son, the prince of the eastern lands. And Maedhros then is the lost king, the last of the dispossessed to rule; his name I know from history and fairy-tale alike.” 

“Ah,” Maglor says, “you were quite interested in the histories, then.”

“I know a little,” Finduilas says, “though I come from… a rather lonesome place, where not much was told.” 

“So I see,” Maglor says, “tell me then what you remember.” 

Finduilas had been a very poor student indeed, and has the feeling he has noticed, somehow, that he might have a laugh at her expense.  “Must I? You are certainly my elder, and have lived much of what I have to tell.” 

“Still I like to hear it told,” Maglor says, “you cannot imagine how much a story gains in the telling, and how differently I hear the events of my own life told back to me as the years go by. Tell it, I beg you—if nothing else, to entertain an old man’s whims.” 

You are not so old, Finduilas would say, but the words catch in her throat. She sighs and shuts her eyes, imagining the dusty air of her uncle’s study. 

She starts with familiar territory, the firm grounding of ancient history repeated year after year by her tutors. At times she finds herself slipping naturally into Finrod’s manner. He loved histories, and him alone she liked to hear tell them. “Long ago, before the coming of Men and Dwarves, before even the rising of the Sun and Moon, before the battle in the sky and the fall of the Lord of Darkness,” she says, “the elven-folk of Middle-earth were one people. But we were fruitful, and there were many more of us then than there are now, and soon divisions came between our people. Thingol Greymantle, who is yet king, ruled in the West, and Finwë Ill-fated and Ignwë Golden in the East. The sea was given to Olwë, and to Cirdan, who is lord now of the Falas.” 

Maglor hums. She wonders if he is disappointed in so dry and so slow a start; but she must ground herself in the tale if she is to keep track of the names. Privately she is keeping a different score. Finwë, she thinks, who was my great-grandsire, and Olwë also; Thingol with whom I can claim kinship; Ingwë who was my great-grandmother’s brother. Scion of Kings, and their blood, so much as your brother laughs and calls me Mouse. It is most inconvenient, in such circumstances, to be a girl. 

  “As time passed, distance and strife came between the kings,” Finduilas says, “which now we think to be the work of the Enemy, for a drunken insult traveled further and more readily than words of friendship. Thingol had to wife one among the gods, and from then he and his people grew odd, and the woods of Doriath heavy with magick and hard to find, and messengers which came to him often would not been seen again for decades, and would come back singing in the ancient tongue. They warned of a darkness in the land, but we did not well listen.

“Now then I must—oh, I need to go back. Finwë’s wives.” Finduilas sighs, and looks glumly at Maglor. “Shall you have me tell that? I would not wish to cause offense.” 

“Oh, by all means,” Maglor says. 

Finduilas drinks deeply of her tea. The brandy does help. “Finwë was the king in the East,” she says. “I think I said that—by the lake, by Lake Mithrim. Of all the kings of old he had the most children, but it did not easily come to pass. His first wife was—was Serinde, the broideress, and I think she was of his people. When she was near a year with child Finwë thought to visit Thingol, long his friend, to celebrate the birth of his firstborn. Together they journeyed to Doriath, where Thingol dwelt, but the woods were dark and confounded them, and then there was nothing to see by but the stars, and soon they were lost. There Serinde stepped upon a coiled viper, and was stung. Their journey much delayed, they could not find their way to Doriath before she was very ill indeed, and upon their coming Melian, the forest-spirit who was the wife of Thingol, spoke to Finwë very gravely. 

“Your wife will not live, she said, but your son might, so long as you are quick. And so the babe was cut from her, and in that effort she died. But Finwë remembered the name which she had intended for him, and called him Fëanor, spirit of fire—and gave him also his own name and his lordship and all indeed he had, for to that boy he was father and mother both. Later it was said that some in Doriath had put the viper in their way on purpose, out of some ill will to the king, or some jealousy of the queen, but those tales are lies, for in truth Finwë and Thingol were the dearest of friends, and stayed so even after the death of his queen. Still Finwë was much too grieved to return again to Doriath.”  

“Is that how that tale was told to you?” Maglor asks. 

“Yes,” Finduilas says, a little insecure. “But he is not my father. Perhaps you know it differently.” 

“So I do,” Maglor says, “but carry on; tell me what happened after.” 

The night is thick with more than herb-smoke. Finduilas’ shoulder aches, distant. It may be enough to keep her awake, but only barely. Still the story comes, in words as she has heard her uncle tell it. 

“Fëanor grew older,” Finduilas says, “and though motherless he was hale, and tall, and fair, and of the Eldar the quickest of mind and the sharpest of word. But he was hurt and his judgment was rash, and his father’s favor he hoarded jealously, as a drake upon its treasure.” She looks to Maglor, wondering if he might protest. But he does not, so she continues. “Finwë grieved for his wife, and despite his son’s love his heart was unhappy, for always he had wished for a home with many children and a wife by his side, and where the dead go none can say. So it came to pass that he said he would wed again, and Fëanor was little pleased by it. I think— I think I heard a few different reasons why. Perhaps it was his jealousy, or perhaps he wished his father to wed his wet-nurse, whom he had loved once as a mother, or perhaps he wished to learn the magick of the gods and return to life Serinde.” 

Maglor stifles a laugh. Finduilas sighs. “No, no,” he says, “go on. Whom did he wed?” 

“Indis,” Finduilas says, “the sister of Ignwë, who ruled the lands beside his. She was fair and tall, and it is said well-liked by all save Fëanor. To him she bore two sons and two daughters. Her elder son was Fingolfin, who now is king of the Noldor in the East—the younger Finarfin, the fairest, who with his father was slain when the war began.” She pauses. “Will you have me name all their sons? There are many.” 

“You can start with the sons of Feanor,” Maglor says. 

“Well,” Finduilas answers, “well, Maedhros, Ill-fated. He was king, and left Fingolfin as regent upon his going. Then— well, you.” 

“You have two for free,” Maglor says, “you need only five more.” 

Finduilas drinks, and yawns. It is hard, despite the company of a stranger, to keep open her eyes. 

“Celegorm,” she says, “he started a coup.” 

“So he did,” Maglor says, “and then?” 

“Four more, so…” Finduilas hesitates. None of them have been relevant enough in histories to have stuck particularly in her mind. “I think there were twins.” 

Maglor waits, then asks, when she cannot name more. “And what of the children of Fingolfin?” 

“Oh,” Finduilas says, “Turgon. Fingon. They had a sister—she vanished, she vanished with Turgon. Aredhel.” 

“And of Finarfin?” 

Finduilas is so relieved to hear a question she can answer she does not think of how much she gives away. She is after all quite tired, and the brandy has loosened her tongue. “Finrod Felagund,” she says, “let his soul find peace among the stars. Orodreth—” she chokes on the name, but must carry on, and says nothing at all of him. “Angrod, who held the highlands, and Aegnor, whose soul was as a flame. Galadriel, their sister, who dwells in Doriath.” 

“Ah,” Maglor says, “very good. Indeed I cannot say I think many elves your age would so readily name them all, gone as they are from the face of the earth.” 

She waits for an accusation, but he does not make it. The candles cast uneven orange light onto the walls. Somewhere far away, outside, a wolf howls. 

“You have the principal players, then,” he says, as Finduilas leans back against the wall, shutting her eyes for a moment against the light. “Indeed you have more than you need. Tell me what has come to pass, and how.” 

Finduilas does not open her eyes, but traces the edge of the tea-cup, thinking. Again she grounds herself in the parts of the story she well knows. 

“Morgoth,” she says. “Morgoth was released, and the Necromancer and the spirits of fire felt it, and began to sow discord among us, and to wage battle on our settlements, and to craft from clay creatures most foul. They moved into the east, the closest to the Noldor, and waged war against Finwë.” 

She yawns, and goes to feel for the sword. 

“That must have been when your father crafted the gems, was it not?” 

“The first of them,” Maglor says, “the last was not made until after the birth of the sun, when Maedhros too was born.” 

“Mm,” Finduilas says. She runs her hand over the stone, trying to imagine it. “Then—the battle over the ice. Morgoth cut down, by the gods of the west, and the oceans melted. The mountains that came up, over the sea. The sun and the moon. They never came here, but to drag the dark God away in chains, and some of his servants remained. Gothmog, the lord of the Balrogs came in battle against Finwë and his sons, and struck down Fëanor, and Fingolfin, who choked on his smoke—but Finarfin came from behind, and overtook him, and buried his sword in his back. And so Gothmog was slain, but Finarfin fell also, burned by the heat of his death.” 

The next thought comes to her with the uncertain resonances of foresight—the rhyming words of the next line of song, easy to slot into the tune. And so I will die, Finduilas thinks, for I am his blood, and I shall be his mirror. 

It swims in front of her eyes. The silver lance, the heat of battle. The terrible fire of the Necromancer. 

Maglor says something. She is not sure what. She lives another life. 

“Pardon me,” she says softly, and far too late, “I did not hear.” 

“I asked of Finwë, child.” Maglor says. “What of him?” 

Finduilas opens her eyes, and stares at the flickering candle-light, and shakes off her grandfather’s ghost. “He died,” she says, and cannot muster the feeling for it. “His two eldest sons lived, and Fëanor was king. And there was—there was a schism, wasn’t there? Between him and Fingolfin. They did not well love each other.” 

Finduilas cannot remember why that detail is relevant. Maglor corrects her, his tone gentle. “My father did not well love Fingolfin.” 

“Yes,” Finduilas says. History lessons swirl in her mind as laundry escaped from the washing-basket and loose in a stream. “Uh—oh, this is Turgon, who goes with an army to an enchanted valley, and does not return. That is then.” 

“Yes,” Maglor says, “yes—then the world is really quite full of holes, as it might be after the battle of the gods.” 

Finduilas thinks of Turgon, falling and falling and falling, all his men in their silver and gold armor with their swan’s wing shields, caught where the world had turned inwards. Finrod had been sure that somewhere Turgon yet lived—but Finrod had loved him, yet, and could not speak without hope. 

“The building of Nargothrond is paused, then,” Finduilas says, “it will not be finished until after Maedhros’ doom, when the Necromancer’s forces retreat.” 

“Yes,” Maglor says, “but you get ahead of yourself, and indeed of our tale. How does Maedhros come to be on the throne?” 

“Fëanor’s gambit,” Finduilas says. Her father had not been there, for he was called upon to hold Tol Sirion; but Finrod had fought, and had once described to her the maneuver. “He faked defeat. He let the enemy into his capitol, and in the city he ambushed them. It was a victory, though the city burned, and more were lost then than in any other battle. Fingolfin advised against it, and did not go.” 

“Yes. The gems were taken then.” Maglor says. “Who was slain, do you recall?” 

Finduilas shakes her head.  “Fëanor,” she says. “Who else I cannot say.” 

“Caranthir,” Maglor says. “He was the middle brother of us, and often forgotten. And Amras, the younger of the twins.” 

“Oh,” Finduilas says. It sounds familiar, now, told back to her. “I am sorry.” 

Maglor shrugs. “They knew,” he says, “that they went to battle.” 

Yes, Finduilas wants to say, yes, but— 

But she will not speak of her city, or her uncle, or her father. She swallows down her words. “So Maedhros reigned. It was—not very long, yes? Some thirty years.” 

Maglor hums acknowledgment. 

“They were more peaceable, I think,” Finduilas says, remembering more clearly, “for at first the forces of darkness were weakened, and there was peace too between the houses. But Maedhros it was that started the last assault, where the plains burned and many were lost.” 

“Yes,” Maglor says, “he went too far, in search of his father’s sword, and of the gems which the Necromancer yet held. He was captured.” 

“He left Fingolfin as regent,” Finduilas says. “Fingon, Fingolfin’s son, went after him, against his father’s wishes. He was not seen again; so Fingolfin reigns alone, and all his children are lost.” She does not mention the coup, nor Celegorm’s death. “How did you come to leave?” 

“I devoted myself to the study of magick,” Maglor says, “for naught, I thought, for long—but now I have come to learn that my efforts may be rewarded. But we get ahead of ourselves. Maedhros was captured—Fingon missing. What happened then?” 

“The Necromancer laid a terrible curse on them,” Finduilas says, “that much is plain to see. Such magick is not easy to craft—not for a wizard, and not even for a god.” 

“No,” Maglor says, “but look down, on your own lap.” 

Finduilas does. The silver blade of the sword catches the moonlight. She swallows, then yawns. “He pried free the gem,” she says, “which was bound to Maedhros’ soul. But what of Fingon?” 

“He came willingly,” Maglor says, “but he was caught. In Sauron’s throne room he sang a Song of Power, and vowed in it that so long as he might see his lover he would not lose hope, nor valor, and would best all between them. And so the Necromancer laughed, and he took the words and twisted them.” 

Finduilas shivers. Her eyes flick over to the bed, where Fingon sleeps, one arm thrown over his face. “He let them go?” 

Maglor laughs, dry and humorless as his brother. “No,” he says, “no. Together they were caged, and in truth I think Sauron meant for Maedhros to eat him once the night fell. But Fingon slipped through the bars of the cage, and called in the tongue of the birds to the eagles, who came down and broke the lock. But the night came, and they were frightened of the werewolf, and fled.” 

“They must have run,” Finduilas says. She thinks of the severed arm, and adds. “He was caught in a wolf-trap.” 

“Yes,” Maglor says, “and Fingon cut him free.” 

“Why did they not go back, curse or no? Why let all think them dead?” Finduilas asks. But the answer comes to her before Maglor can open his mouth to answer. “Oh—oh. They write back and forth in the journal. They do not remember what happens, when they lose their elven forms. A wolf—” 

“Yes,” Maglor says again, then gestures to Fingon, “and what prince might live only by night?” 

Finduilas feels cold, with exhaustion and with the night, with the ending of the story. Love, brought to foul ends. 

“He says he will die,” she says, “to end the curse.” 

“And I thought he would,” Maglor says, “though I could not accept it. Long I have spent reading books of magick and reading Songs of Power, and divining what I might from the stars. And now I know it was with purpose, for soon it will be both night and day at once, and for some time the curse will be confounded. It is good you came; it is Fate.” 

“Such things cannot be,” Finduilas says, with little conviction, “it is either night or it is day; it cannot be both at once.” 

“Certainly it could,” Maglor says. “But why do you not rest a while? Plainly you are quite tired.” 

Finduilas does not argue. She turns from him, and sleeps on one of the free mattresses, curling slightly around the blade Maedhros has given to her keeping. In the room Maglor sings as he picks up the dishes, and somewhere far away a wolf howls. 

She dreams that the moon comes down from the sky, holding out his hands, and that little stars surround him. He skates on the surface of a frozen lake, which reflects the night, and soon the sun descends to him, in her chariot of fire, and takes his hands, and together they twirl. 

Soon the ice will melt, and they will fall through. 

Chapter Text

Someone shakes her by the shoulder. “Finduilas,” calls a voice, soft and elven, faintly accented with Quenya, “Finduilas, wake.” 

Finduilas tosses her elbow over her face and groans. “Father,” she says, “let me rest some while more. The sun—” here she cracks open an eye, for though she does not look she is sure the sun has not yet risen, and needs only to see it is so. 

Above her is the white ceiling of the wizard’s tower. She looks to her side, and sees that Maglor sits there, and that the golden hawk is nested on the pillows of the other bed, nearly buried under the covers. Maglor has bandaged the shallow wound on her shoulder, though he did not undress her, and she wears still the torn tunic and cloak. 

“I did not tell you that name,” she says. 

“No,” Maglor answers, “but by your accent it is plain you are of noble birth. By your face it is plain you are of mixed ancestry; by your manner clear you were educated in the Noldor style. You have your father’s nose and your uncle’s brooch. You are little interested in history, but intimately familiar with the house of Finarfin.” He clicks his tongue. “And what a coincidence, seeing it all, that only one child was born to that house in recent memory—a daughter, half-Sindar, only a little older than what I would have given you, who dwelled long in the house of Finrod. You can tell much of an elf by how they tell the histories, child.” 

Finduilas swallows. A denial seems beyond her. “Your brother calls me Mouse,” she says. 

Maglor huffs out something like a laugh. “Then so shall I,” he says, “if being yourself is quite too much.” 

I am not sure, Finduilas thinks, that that maid lives. 

But that thought she does not voice. Instead she looks to the hawk. “Is Fingon—” 

“Well enough,” Maglor says, “though badly in need of rest. You were too, and I would not have woken you, except it is far past noon and my brother wishes to see I did not kill you both. There is supper to be had.” 

Finduilas, realizing then that she is very hungry, sits up so fast she is dizzy with it.

She had been wrong; time has gone all smudged around the ending, and it is far past morning. The day is bright. The sun’s rays catch in the glass between the stones, no longer so translucent and twinkling in the colors of light pulled apart. Finduilas stretches, one side and then the next. “Did you make this place?” 

“No,” Maglor says, “of course not. I only found it, and brought it again to life. A hermit crab, picking up a shell on the shore. But it is woven of song, and fits me well.” 

Finduilas hums. On the other bed the bird stirs, and she reaches out without thinking to pet it. Him. “Maedhros came?” 

“As I knew he would,” Maglor says. “His sense of direction is much superior in the form of the wolf, and ever he seeks his mate. He was whining and scratching at my doors long before the sun rose.” 

“That must have scared you,” Finduilas says. 

Maglor raises an eyebrow. “Why should it? He would not bite me, so far as I can tell.” 

“Still he is awful to behold,” Finduilas answers. “May I bring the bird down?” 

“Indeed you likely ought.” Maglor picks up a folded square of wool, blue and covered in silver stars, and lays it over her outstretched hands. He picks up the hawk delicately, placing it over the wool, and the bird settles back into sleep. 

“It has to be strange,” Finduilas says, “to be so light. I would not like it.” 

“No?” asks Maglor. “Would you prefer the wolf?” 

Finduilas does not hesitate. “Yes. I would be terrible and ugly, but at least I could tear people to shreds.” 

Maglor laughs, and claps her between the shoulders. “What bloodthirsty cubs Maedhros sends me,” he says, “but then again I would not expect him to keep the company of a wise young lady.” 

Finduilas would elbow him, but she is carrying the bird, and devotes herself to that task with a perfect concentration. “Are we going down the stairs, or up?” 

Maglor waves his hand as though it does not matter. “Either,” he says, “it is all the same here.” 

Finduilas goes down, because her calves ache. She had entered at ground level, and ascended one flight of stairs the night before. Now she climbs down three, pulls open a door built into the rock wall, and finds herself at the very top of the tower. 

She turns to face Maglor, scolding. “It is overflowing with magick,” she says, “you ought to be more careful with it.” 

“I really do not see why,” Maglor says, “I am not Finrod Felagund, nor Fëanor my father, to make a science of Power.” 

Finduilas sighs, and slips inside the room, which is much wider on the inside than the tower whole ought to be. 

It is a dining room, painted a stark blueish white along the ceiling and upper walls, and a perfect crimson red on the lower sides. The colors are beautiful, but Finduilas little likes them. Too much they put her to mind of white silk stained with blood, or of the stained kitchens on the Wretched Isle. 

But no matter. Maedhros sits on the other side of the room; not at the table, but lounging across one of the reclining-couches. He stands as soon as he sees them, rushing to take from her the hawk. 

His eyes are bloodshot, the dark circles on his face prominent. A bruise blooms on the side of his jaw. “Oh,” he says, in a low crooning tone that is quite unlike him, an obvious gentling of his words. “Oh, my dear. Let me have a look at you.” Then, in his usual manner: “Clip my sword back onto my belt, Mouse, there’s a good lad.” 

Finduilas has little time for him. The table is laid in full formal cookware, though none of it matches. Of the three plates laid out two are white, painted with blue leaves, though in somewhat different styles, one spiky and the other flowing and impressionistic. The third plate is black, painted with brilliant violet and pink flowers; the tureen is a sparkling red-and-gold; the vase an odd crystal; one platter gold and one ceramic, detailed to look like a peacock spreading its tail feathers. 

Finduilas waits for a cue as to how to proceed. She has not eaten at a formal table since the fall of Nargothrond; her father would always insist on a blessing before they ate, and a toast also. But Maedhros reaches over her for the rice, and Maglor begins filling glasses, and she gathers there is no formality at all, and investigates the food. 

It seems fresh-made, and is unfamiliar to her. She burns her lips on hot candied flowers, crunches on an unknown pickled vine, looks to Maglor for guidance as to how to eat the little red fish—apparently whole—and stirs the spicy eggplant and mushroom preserves onto her rice, uncertain what else to do with them. 

Maedhros takes mostly rice, and pushes all else around his plate. “Have you anything else, Káno?” he asks, picking the pepper out of his eggplant and the bones out of his fish. 

“If you had sent a messenger-bird to sing to me of your coming,” Maglor says, “then I would have thought to boil potatoes and go to town for butter; as you did not, you will have to eat as I do.” His words are tinged, for the first time, with some note of resentment. 

Maedhros shuts his eyes in annoyance and drinks deeply of his wine glass. He does not return to his food after the rice is gone, but sits only stroking the feathers of the hawk. 

“Well, I think it’s quite nice,” Finduilas says, surprising herself with the declaration. “you ought to try a little more and you shall like it.” Maedhros turns his venomous look on her, and she laughs, but she does mean it—the food is pleasantly herbal, if more heavily spiced than anything she is used to. 

“The point still stands that I did not plan to come,” Maedhros says. “It is only a terrible accident that put me on the path at all—” he pauses, then glances vindictively over at Finduilas, “—and do not smirk, son, for you know full well the blame is yours.” 

“I do not smirk,” Finduilas cries, hurt only more because she knows he speaks justly, “I am smiling only because I think it is well we came here, and that indeed an ill thing has brought us to a good one, for Maglor says he knows how the curse might be lifted.” 

Maglor drops his fork. Maedhros looks up, sharp, and pulls the bird close to his chest. It makes a little whistling noise, jostled, and Maedhros settles it more comfortably against himself, still breathing far too quick. “Maglor? Is this true?” 

“I,” Maglor says, “I was not planning to say it so, but—er, yes. I suppose.” 

“Is it a potion?” Maedhros asks. “Is it a healing-herb? Is it something we might take now, here? Fino first—here, why have you not already given it to him?” 

“Peace, peace,” Maglor says, “it is not a potion, nor an herb, nor anything I might have done while you were gone.” 

“A ritual, then,” Maedhros says, “a Song of Power, cast over both of us, a—” 

“No,” Maglor says, “no. Slow down, and let me speak, if we have come now to this.” He folds his hands on the table in front of him, and breathes in deeply. “It is an arrangement of the stars; a coming time, when it shall so happen to pass that the sun and moon will join hands, and dance together for some ten minutes, and your curse—” 

“Ten minutes!” Maedhros cries. “Ten minutes you offer me!” His voice tips upwards, to a hysterical laugh. “How generous, after three hundred and fifty years, to live fully for ten minutes—ten minutes, with one who ought to have half my soul! Ah, perhaps we might share three lines of conversation—” 

He stands, and Maglor stands also, the table clattering with their movements. “Maedhros—” 

“I am tired, Maglor,” Maedhros says, “I am tired of your promises and your studies, your endless refrains to have hope —where have they brought us? What have they given me, while the Necromancer grows stronger on his Isle? How can you say this to me, again, after all this?” 

“I have faith.” Maglor reaches to him. “Have faith, have faith in the stars above—” 

Maedhros laughs bitterly. “Look at me again, brother. Look me in the eyes and tell me to have faith.” 

Maglor swallows. He looks up, but meeting the heat of Maedhros’ gaze he falters, and Maedhros shoves him away. “We are going, Mouse,” he tosses out over his shoulder. “Take my leather bag; I have my hand full.” 

He presses his lips once to the head of the hawk, as though in reassurance, and storms towards the door. Finduilas swallows, then grabs his bag and follows. 

There is nowhere to go but down. Maedhros takes the steps four at a time, hunched around the bird he carries in the crook of his arm, and Finduilas stumbles after him, nearly tripping over her own feet. The white marble steps feel entirely too big, carved for someone much taller and more graceful than she.. 

Then somehow they are on the lower levels, and Finduilas, at Maedhros’ word, is dressing the horse. Maedhros breathes heavily, his pale face flushed. 

“I ought to leave you here,” he says, “I ought to leave you here, boy, to find your own way, for see what your deeds have brought upon us.” 

He nods down, at the hawk. At his lover, who does not look back. 

She turns to face him. Tilts her chin up to meet his eye, and finds that her pride runs quite as deeply as the pride of princes before her. She is sorry, but cannot bring herself to apologize. 

“I saw my father’s cloth upon them,” she says, “and I could not stay my hand; perhaps you would have held yourself differently.” A moment. She breathes in deeply and says. “But it was reckless, and ill accomplished my purpose. Next time I will think clearer, think better. I would cut down the mountain-bridge beneath them, or hide in the trees to shoot them dead with your bow.” 

Maedhros laughs, disbelieving. “Some case you make, son!” 

“I will not beg,” Finduilas says. “Take me or not. Such is your choice.” You need me, she thinks, but does not say, for then his pride will sting him. You cannot do this alone. 

Maedhros must think the same, because he nods once, a sharp, annoyed gesture. “Go to Maglor,” he says, “and get bandages; have him instruct you on how to change the dressing on the wound in the night.” 

Finduilas hesitates for only a moment. He could leave without me, she thinks, looking at him in profile, turned from her, perhaps he seeks to send me away and slip into the wild. 

But why should he? She has made it clear she will not go after him, if he will not have her. Her pride does not allow it. She sighs, leans down to rub at her calves, and trudges again up the stairs. 

Maglor’s anger is a tangible thing, weighing down his hands as he folds white bandages into the leather-bag, and as he speaks in quick, brittle words of healing rites and the uses of herbs. Finduilas sits and listens, then swallows some fraction of her pride to offer, uncertain: “I did not think it would so upset him.” 

“No,” Maglor says, “you did not. I would have brought it up differently.” He breathes in deeply, and covers his face with his hands. She thinks for a moment that he might start screaming, or throwing things, but when he lets his hands drop his expression is impassive. “I ought to have brought it up differently to you, as well. Ten minutes unshackled from his fate, ten minutes unshackled from the tune! Ten minutes, to sing a new song and take back the gem…” 

“Perhaps,” Finduilas says gently, “if you lay it all out…” 

Maglor shakes his head. “We must give it time. He has worked himself up, now; truly Fingon’s wound scared him, and he has been working himself up to this for a long time. He does not want it, but sees it as his only choice, and it frightens him to hear me speak otherwise.” 

“You think,” Finduilas says, “that he does not wish to die.” 

Maglor shrugs. “At the very least he does not wish Fingon dead.” 

“Oh,” Finduilas says, “yes.” She takes the bag from him, holding it close to her chest. “What do we do?” 

“I do not know,” Maglor says, “we do not have time for him to waver, changing his mind this way and that, and we cannot do this without him. Oh, if only he had come sooner…” 

“We need play him, then,” Finduilas says, “he is going to the Isle; we must make sure he gets there at the time when night and day will cease, and we must use that moment, whether or not he is willing. Hasten or delay him, where necessary, and find what we can about the magick.” 

It is a foolhardy plan. But they have no choice, if they are to have hope at all, and Maglor looks down at her, and nods. 

“Yes,” he says, “my thoughts walked the same paths. But we have not much time. Open your mind to me, so we might speak in that way, even as you depart.” 

Finduilas swallows. Maglor knows her name, and can guess, in all likelihood, the greater part of her story. She has little to fear in being found out. But she has not spoken in the language of thought since her city burned, and she finds herself unwilling to open herself to it. 

“I shall,” she says, “if I must. But I do not wish to.” 

Maglor waits a moment, as though expecting her to elaborate. When she does not, he sighs. “I will send a messenger bird,” he says, “during the night, when Maedhros is not around. We will talk then.” 

Finduilas exhales, sharp, relieved. “Thank you,” she says, “you are kinder than you ought to be.” 

“I would not say so,” Maglor answers. “Now tell me again which herbs you will use to quell the flow of blood, and which to dull pain.” 

Finduilas names them, and points them out in the leather bag. Maglor hums, satisfied. 

“If it worsens, Maedhros will return here,” Maglor says, “but I hope it does not. Already you will come to the Isle with only a few days to spare; I cannot imagine you will travel quickly. Expect that I might be a little ahead of you.” 

Finduilas nods, and stands. “Good-bye,” she says, in case they do not see each other again, and then she slips out the door and back to the stairwell. 

“You will ride,” Maedhros tells her, as she folds Maglor’s herbs into the saddle-bags, “you have two hands, to better hold the bird.” 

He has taken already the reins. He does not forgive her, Finduilas can see; but perhaps his liking for her has not fully faded, perhaps in some part he trusts her still. She takes the hawk from him, smoothing back the feathers on his head. 

“He seemed well enough,” she says. “He said we were fussing.” 

The doors of the white tower open to let them out. Finduilas has the feeling it would not be easy to find again, should they return. 

“That does sound like him,” Maedhros says. “Did he say much of me?” 

Finduilas remembers well that he did not. The education of a courtly lady in Nargothrond did not well prepare her to wield in battle a sword, or to scavenge for food in burned plains. But she lies as easily as she breathes, especially about matters of the heart. “He misses you,” she says, “he wished you might be there, and speak to him, and hold his hand. He has hope, to see again the sun.” 

Maedhros shudders, like the words cause him pain. “I am pleased to hear so,” he says.

Chapter Text

“How much are you aware, as the wolf?” Finduilas asks. 

They are on the grass in a meadow, the bank of the river Sirion near them. Queen Miriel’s Lace sways on the breeze, the flowers white against the sunlight. Finduilas butters their bread. Maedhros feeds the hawk scraps of fresh-cut venison. 

“I am still upset he told you that,” Maedhros says, though really he does not sound so. 

“He did not,” Finduilas says, “I spied.” It is true enough. “But how much?” 

Maedhros shrugs. “Not much. I do not well remember it, upon waking; some faint impression stays, as  of a dream.” 

“What do you understand,” Finduilas asks, “of words?” 

“I do not know,” Maedhros says, “perhaps nothing at all. We might test it, if you like.” He looks down at the hawk. “Look up,” he says, and the bird does not. “Look up, dear. Fino?” 

The hawk’s eyes open, and he swivels his head over. 

“Ah,” Maedhros says, “I must admit I am a little surprised. Do you understand much of my speech, Fino?” 

The bird looks up at him, and goes to butt his head against Maedhros’ nose. Finduilas leans forward, over-eager. 

“Would you perhaps extend your good wing?” she asks. “Raise your wing, to show us you hear.” 

The bird does not move. Maedhros nudges him. “Raise your wing,” he repeats, to no effect. “Fino.” 

Again the bird looks at him with a steady brown gaze, and still he does not move. 

“I suppose we might say he knows his name,” Finduilas says, disappointed. 

Maedhros shrugs. “It is more than I thought. We have no memory of it, no control. It is not living as you might imagine it, son. I tire of your questions.” 

“I ask with purpose,” Finduilas answers, “for I think our entry to the Isle may be helped by it. The werewolves.” 

“I see,” Maedhros says, and the two of them are silent for some time. Then he asks, quirking up an eyebrow: “Tell me how you would do it if you could reason with the wolf. As a person, or as a well-trained hound.” 

“Then it would be easy.” Finduilas says. “You would blend in among them; Fingon and I might pretend to be dead or horribly injured, and you would drag us in, as prey.” 

“Ah,” Maedhros says, and stops to think about it. At first he is calm, but the constraints of the task seem to frustrate him. “If only I could think!” he cries. “If only Fingon was here— ever he had a good mind for plans and schemes, and I…” 

He stands, and begins to pace, holding the hawk close to his chest. 

“Maedhros,” Finduilas says, privately frustrated. In her mind she is doing her own calculation. Maedhros is bound by the gem, Fingon by the song. Both must be unraveled, before the curse can be undone. Does that mean she must have both of them on the Isle? She must try, she thinks; she must try. Certainly that will be his goal as well. 

“He was my general, you know,” Maedhros says, “before—” a vague gesture, there, but she need not hear him say it. “It was a gesture of unity, and I wished him close at hand.” He laughs, mirthless. “But really he was brilliant. He warned me against that last charge.” 

“I suppose I will have to speak to him,” Finduilas says, shrugging. “Come and finish your meal. The night comes, and you have a lot to write.” 

“I cannot remember,” Maedhros says, returning to sit by her, and picking up his bread, “when I allowed you to issue orders to me.” 

“The wolf will come,” Fingon warns her. He has seen a little of her fear, and Finduilas is embarrassed to have shown it. 

“Let him,” she says, pulling tight the new, clean bandages around Fingon’s shoulder, “I ought to be getting used to him. It is trouble otherwise.” 

She cannot be sure the animal will not tear her to shreds, but that she does not voice. She focuses her attention on her work, though it is rote. Nothing has swollen; nothing seems worse. Fingon’s wound has knitted together remarkably well, better than Maglor had described it would. 

Her eyes catch on the lines of tattoos over his skin, no doubt old, drawn in the black ink favored by the Noldor. Racing horses, the spiky silhouettes of pines over his back. The outline of the rising sun, tucked on his inner wrist. 

“What do they mean?” she asks, gesturing to them. “Why the horses, why the tiger?” 

Fingon shrugs. He has looked down, to read what is written in the journal on his lap. “I like pretty pictures,” he says. Warmth is left yet in his laugh. 

“The hawk does not have them,” Finduilas says. 

“The hawk does not,” Fingon echoes. He flips back, tapping his fingernails—old golden polish chips off his thumb—against the page. “Ah, I missed this. Maedhros asks if I allowed you to borrow my hair-things.” 

“You should tell him you did,” Finduilas says. 

Again Fingon laughs, and writes something down. 

Finduilas sits down on the ground next to him, resting her wrists on her folded knees. She watches Fingon write for some moments, wondering what he is thinking. How much Maedhros told him. 

“We are going to the Isle,” she says, “we will confront the Necromancer.” 

“Yes,” Fingon says, “I know.” 

“I am breaking us in,” Finduilas says, “we have talked about it, though we do not yet know in full detail how.” 

“Yes,” Fingon says, “I know.” 

Finduilas raps her fingernails against her brooch, runs its sharp edge over the pads of her fingers. “I do not think that Maedhros intends to live through it.” 

“Yes,” Fingon says again, “I know.” 

Somehow Finduilas had expected he might not, and now she is guilty for it. “What do you think?” 

“If it brings Sauron’s doom,” Fingon says, “then it will have been worth it, for us to perish with him.” There is no satisfaction in his words, as there had been for Maedhros. “I fear only that it will be for naught. He has some vague sense that he might reclaim the stone and destroy it; that the magick within might be channeled against our foe.” 

Finduilas breathes in sharply in surprise. “You do not think it can be done.” 

“I do not think it cannot be done,” Fingon answers, and would say something further, except there is movement close by, and Finduilas sees the silhouette of the limping wolf in the doorway of the dilapidated barn where they have stopped for the night. 

For all her words, she freezes in fear, her hand falling, unthinking, to the sword. The beast’s eyes follow her, glowing with an unnatural grayish light. Fingon sits up, making a grimace of pain.

“Likely he shan’t hurt you,” he says to her, “he seems to remember his people.” Then, to the wolf: “Well, come in, then. I do not wish to rise.” 

The beast stalks forward. Finduilas stops breathing, but it has no eyes at all for her. It crosses the room to Fingon, bowing its huge head to nose at his chest, his shoulders. Fingon raises a hand, and strokes it between the ears. In the darkness it had looked black; here, with the light of the gems on its fur, Finduilas can see there is a faint reddish undertone to the color. 

It whines, low, and presses its nose to Fingon’s ribs. Fingon raises his hands and strokes its ears. “Hey-ho,” he says, “hey-ho.” The wolf shakes, and looks sharply at the door. Fingon frowns. “You may go alone,” he says, “or settle here. I will not go with you; I am hurt.”

The wolf does neither. It opens its maw and licks at Fingon’s face, a few quick, frenetic licks, then paws at his hands. 

“Ai,” Fingon says, “go out and hunt, love. You are restless, and I will not please you.” 

The wolf moves away from him, but only to pace uncertainly around the perimeter of the barn, looking with each step back over its shoulder. Fingon sighs, and turns to Finduilas. 

“He is not usually so,” he says, “I suppose he must remember I was hurt, and does not wish to leave me.” 

“What does he understand?” Finduilas asks. 

Fingon shrugs. “Not very much, I think. He knows when I speak to him.” He whistles, and the wolf turns to him. “Babe,” he says, “baby, come here and lay.” 

The wolf comes to him, and sits for a moment by his feet. Finduilas’ mouth is dry, but she breathes deeply to quiet the beating of her heart and sticks a hand out. 

“Maedhros,” she says, “do you hear me?” 

The wolf sniffs her with little interest, and returns to its restless pacing. 

“It is well,” Fingon says, “he thought nothing of you. He is not good with strangers.” 

“You ought to have told me earlier,” Finduilas says, laughing with fright. She swallows, and sits on the floor next to him. “Will he follow you? If you are to go?” 

“Yes,” Fingon says, “I am quite certain he will.” 

“And he shall tolerate Maglor?” Finduilas asks. “Run to him, if called?” 

“Yes,” Fingon says again. 

“Then we need only to bring two elves upon the isle,” Finduilas says, “and our task grows easier.”

“Tell me truly, then, what you are capable of,” Fingon says. 

And so the wolf paces, and they sit in the straw and talk, and something like a plan blooms between them. 

“You mean to destroy the gem,” Finduilas says. The movement of the horse is almost hypnotic for its ease, its smoothness. Next to her, Maedhros walks, his eyes cast down, his expression set. He looks as though he slept badly. 

“Yes,” Maedhros says. 

“How?” Finduilas asks. 

“He has it set on the highest point of the tower that was once been Minas Tirith,” Maedhros says, “to taunt me, and lure me closer, I am certain. I will follow its light, and I will cast it down upon the stones in the river.” 

Finduilas hums. It is a simple enough plan, and sound. If some part of the Necromancer’s power is within the gem, certainly it shall hurt him. If some part of Maedhros’ spirit is also, certainly he might die. 

“You can pass close to the isle, as the wolf,” she says, “but you will need me to navigate the tower. To speak to the stones. To undo the locks within.” Maedhros bristles at need . Finduilas eyes him, and cedes ground. “I would be useful to you, at least.” 

“Yes,” Maedhros says, “so indeed.” 

Finduilas runs her fingers across the hilt of the little sword Maedhros has given her, where she cleaned off the rust. “I have an idea,” she says, “though we will need your brother—no, no, let me speak it before you cast that look at me.” 

Far away the light on the top of the watchtower glints as a captured star. Around them the landscape grows sparser, less well. Finduilas feels an odd pang of grief for the ratty fern by the riverbank, the scattered, slimy, pale mushrooms. Elsewhere they would be good eating.

* * * 

“It shan’t be long, then,” Fingon says. Tonight they have stopped at a hastily-constructed shelter in the woods. Finduilas cannot imagine who built it, so close to the Cursed Isle. It seems too well-kept to have come from goblins or orcs out on patrol. Fleeing thralls? Some lone traveler, hiding where none might expect them? 

She does not light a fire. It is best not to light fires in places like this, and it is best not to sleep. Which is well enough, because Finduilas is much too tightly wound to sleep. 

She swats at a fat black mosquito that has landed on her bicep, smearing bug guts and blood over her arm. “It was not like this before,” she says, “elves lived in harmony with the river, once, and no bug would sting us.” 

“Mm,” Fingon says, “I knew not that you came from this place.” He has almost finished, Finduilas can see, stringing his bow. 

“I remember only a few things, in truth,” Finduilas says, “I was very young when we left. It is mostly the words of…” Of my father, she would say, but she chokes on the words. Of my uncle. 

She has not spoken of them much by choice; has not spoken of her kin at all. To call them here would be to invite the Finduilas who had loved them; the child; the weak, useless girl, who had not followed Finrod, had not taken up arms during that last battle, who had not managed, even, to keep her father’s blood inside his body— 

“What do you remember?” Fingon asks softly. 

Finduilas looks up sharply. “What?” 

“Only a few things, you say. What are they?” 

Finduilas swallows. “The boats,” she says, “I would go with—with my parents, and they would row out on the river, and I would dangle my hands off the edge of the boat and into the water. It was cool, and clear, and little red fish would dance around my fingers. Then the—the hanging gardens. They were a wonder to look upon. They were built by—built by Finrod Felagund, when he held the isle. Some system of water-ways drew the river up to the top of the tower and back down again, and our crops and flowers alike were planted along that waterfall. The whole tower was green, then. Plants grew between each stone.” 

“I wish I had seen it,” Fingon says, “it sounds beautiful.” 

“It was, I think,” Finduilas says. “Sometimes I wonder if I remember the tower itself, or the tower as it was described to me. But the stones knew me, when I came again.” She swallows, and changes the subject, unwilling to dwell too long on her return, either. “I remember the dances, too. I remember them well in Tol Sirion, for then my mother lived.” 

She has few memories of her mother; it is strange to go back to that time, like looking through an imperfect mirror at a girl who might share her eyes and her nose and her silverish hair, but none of the fundamental facts of her life. Finduilas of Tol Sirion, age six, whose father is a mountaineer and whose mother is a craftswoman, who little knows her uncles and her aunts, who plays in the waters of the river and knows nothing ill will come to her stronghold. 

If she lives, perhaps in a hundred years time she will look back and find no echoes here either, in the elf huddled down on the ground with her legs pressed to her chest, trying not to think of her father. She’ll be someone else, she thinks, and the vision swims in front of her mind—an elven lord in armor, dark-eyed and silver-haired, proud and unafraid. How much she longs not to be so small. 

“I loved to watch their silhouettes,” she finds herself saying, “my mother in sunset-orange; my father in lilac-pink. I could pick them out in the crowd. We had—we had our style of dancing, quick and graceful at once. My father was proud of me, for I learned very young, and never forgot a step.” 

“Show me?” Fingon asks. 

Finduilas runs her fingers over the sharp end of her brooch, feeling its cold edges against her finger-pads. “What, now?” 

“Might be my last chance,” Fingon says, “I have not danced, Ereinion, in some three hundred and fifty years. Show me how they danced on Tol Sirion.” 

“Oh, very well,” Finduilas says, “except we will have to keep the tune in our minds, so we are not heard.” She thinks about it for a moment, then adds: “And you must dance the girl’s part.” 

Fingon laughs, rising. “You sound like Maedhros,” he says, and holds out a hand. Finduilas takes it. 

It takes a moment for her body to remember the movement. Even then she has not led before, at least not in the ballroom; now and then, practicing with the other maids of Nargothrond, or joking with one of the princes. (Gwindor, she remembers. Joking with Gwindor.)

But the tune lives still inside her, and she finds the steps. Without thinking she opens her mind slightly to Fingon, just enough for him to hear the tune and follow her rhythm. They twirl, and step in time, and Fingon is a good enough sport to duck under Finduilas’ arm when she tugs him, though it is a hard fit. 

The gold warmth of Nargothrond blooms around them, the warmth of magick and song and memory. For a moment Finduilas sees the lighting-gems brought by elven hands, the swishing of colorful dress, the gleam of harp and drum far above. 

Then they run out of space; Fingon bumps his shoulder against the edge of one of the fallen pieces of wood and falls, laughing, onto the ground. “Thank you,” he says, “that was well.” 

Finduilas sits down next to him. She reaches, without thinking, for her brooch. Runs her fingers over the smooth edges of the snake. She means to say something about the dancing. She means to say something about the day ahead. 

What comes instead, small and more earnest than she means, is: “I do not want you to die.” 

Fingon glances up. “Ereinion,” he says. 

“I do not want Maedhros to die,” Finduilas says. “I want—” 

It has never been so clear to her before, what would happen on the eve of battle. Maedhros has resigned himself to it, though she can see Maglor hopes otherwise. She would stop him if she could — if she were cruel enough to leave him to the curse. 

“I have faced impossible odds before,” Fingon says. 

Finduilas thinks of Finrod, and her mouth is dry.  But the wolf appears then in the doorway, carrying in his jaws a broken-necked rabbit, and hot on his heels are the hoofbeats of Maglor’s horse. 

Chapter Text

“Did he say much of me?” Maedhros asks. He has taken to asking, now. 

“Yes,” Finduilas lies,  now more or less by habit, “he misses you, and loves you well. He hopes to see you, at least once.” Then, on a stroke of inspiration: “He wished to dance with you.”  

“At least once,” Maedhros echoes. He looks up; for the hawk, Finduilas thinks at first, but then sees he is looking at the rising sun. The hawk’s hood is in his hand, stretched over his fingers. He bunches the leather, plainly anxious. “Well. I suppose that will depend on the day’s events. Do not fail me, Mouse.” 

“Yes,” Finduilas squeaks. 

Maglor is behind her, finishing the last strands of the illusion-braid in her hair. The song is next; it must be done last, so she may hold it as long as possible. 

The wolf had gone to greet him when he arrived, leaping up on him with delight and licking his face, but Maedhros himself is sulking yet, and has spoken no word to his brother. Finduilas tries not to feel the tension between them, the string pulled taut. She knows—or wishes to think—that when it is time to part Maedhros will not be so cold, that he will see Maglor’s love and honor it, and kiss him goodbye as a brother ought. 

(She thinks of her father, his crown ill-fitting, his arms around Finrod’s neck, weeping.) 

“I need the hawk down,” Maglor says, “as we continue.”  

Maedhros does not answer him in words, but whistles. The bird above them circles once, and Finduilas thinks it will not listen; but then it swoops down. Maedhros holds up his arm for it to land on; without thinking Finduilas mirrors him, and the hawk glides past him, and lands on her arm. 

Maedhros turns, glowering. Finduilas grimaces. 

“He must have remembered he is to go with me,” she says. “Clever bird, yes?” 

“Yes,” Maedhros says dully. He reaches to stroke the hawk with his fingers, tipping its head up to look at him. He holds its gaze a moment, looking almost on the verge of tears, then with one sharp gesture hoods it. 

“Did you wish, perhaps, to say goodbye?” Finduilas asks. 

“There is no point,” Maedhros says, “he shall not know it. Excuse me; I will walk, while Maglor works his magick.” 

The land is treacherous, but he knows this. Finduilas sighs, and reaches to scratch the chin of the hooded bird. It moves away from her, making a little noise she assumes is displeasure. 

“Ill moods,” she says, turning to Maglor, “no matter where I turn.” 

“I think he is only hood-shy,” Maglor says, his voice distracted. “It is best not to read too much into these things, I have found.” 

Finduilas thinks of the way the wolf had greeted him, the easy affection. She raises her hand, and sifts it through the bird’s feathers. “Poor thing.” 

Maglor says nothing, but only moves forward. Finduilas looks down at his hands, his sleeves—fine dark silk, embroidered with bright cornflower-blue horses. He lays out ceremonial candles, lighting them each with a flick of his fingers, a hum of Song, and Finduilas finds herself fascinated watching the flow of Power through his hands. 

He takes hold of her hair from behind, pulling it back over her shoulders. Finduilas swallows. “Ought I shut my eyes, for the next bit?” 

“You can, if you’d like,” Maglor says. “Hold the bird steady.” 

Finduilas brings it closer to her chest, bracing it against her body. Its heart beats under her fingers, quick as though frightened but strong.  Behind her Maglor begins to sing, soft at first but building. 

At first she is determined to pay attention to the words; something, she hears, of travelers’ lies and the protection of fables, the lady of stars and the luck of the draw and something about scavengers. It ought to be discordant, but the rhymes he weaves adhere, and make sense, though she could not retell it herself and keep the meaning. 

But his voice is so fair that soon she loses herself in it; its power so great that it feels not as an elven-voice at all but as some great and powerful instrument. Thrice she looks back, certain that he has started to play some harp or lyre, that someone is accompanying him on the flute. 

But nothing. It is only his voice, which is high and low at once; only his power, holding a note in the air for longer than it ought, bending the sun and light around them. 

Finduilas thinks at first to keep her eyes open, and to watch the magick. She sees the bird’s feathers ripple in front of her, sees its curved pale yellow beak grow longer and redden, sees her own hands go wrong in front of her, dead and grayish, too large, too— 

Her head spins. The world is not as it ought to be, and the music that was beautiful feels stifling, overwhelming. She swallows down rising bile in her throat, and shuts her eyes. 

That is better. The world settles. Her stomach settles. The music does not quiet, but its presence grows less unbearable, and she makes out something of the words. Dusk Maglor calls upon, and hidden treasures, and the god of thieves. 

Then he holds a wordless note, high and clear as well, and slowly his voice fades. Finduilas shivers, feeling oddly naked without the song. 

“Look at the bird,” Maglor says, “what do you think?” 

Finduilas looks, and finds herself holding a vulture, red-headed and red-beaked and ugly as Morgoth’s drowned bastard. 

“Ack,” she says, reminding herself by some force of will that she holds the same hawk as before, “perfectly awful.” 

“Yes,” Maglor says, “and now turn to me, and look up.” 

She does. He is holding a black surface to use as a looking-glass, and in it she sees her own face; her face ugly and scarred, her eyes dark, sunken in, the tips of her ears turned inwards, the bones of her skull visible, just slightly, under the grayish skin. Only a few strands of her hair remain, clinging to dirty skin of her scalp—she raises a hand, alarmed, to touch it— 

And feels her hair, unharmed, even as the mirror tells her she ought to be touching skin. She opens her mouth—runs her tongue over the smooth line of her teeth and sees a forked tongue slide over sharp bat-teeth. She looks down at her clothes—which seem now the typical brownish rags of the lower ranks of the Necromancer’s servants—and whistles. 

“A proper goblin you’ve made me,” she says. 

“Yes,” Maglor says. “Some of my best work, if I do say so myself. But you must not speak, Mouse; your voice I cannot disguise, and it is plainly elvish.” 

“But how shall I talk to the others?” Finduilas asks, scowling. 

Maglor shrugs. “Grunt or squeal if you must, I suppose. We will hope you need not do much talking.” 

Finduilas huffs, and sets the bird on her shoulder. She turns once, admiring Maglor’s work in the dark mirror, and checks the little sword on her belt. It has not changed. 

“Let me see that,” Maglor says, and she heeds him. 

“Maedhros gave it to me,” Finduilas says, “I think it elven-made.” 

“So indeed,” Maglor answers, holding it up to the light. “I suppose it might be mistaken for a war-trophy, but try to keep it hidden.” Then he frowns. “I recognize it, and it is a cruel thing he has done.” 

“Cruel?” Finduilas asks. 

“This was the sword of one of his officers,” Maglor says, “who came with him on the doomed journey, and was slain. I did not think he would give such a thing to you.” 

“Ah,” Finduilas says. But she does not see the harm in it. “He pledged his sword to Maedhros, did he not?” 

“Yes,” Maglor starts, “and yet—” 

But that and yet she does not get to hear, for a terrible noise interrupts them. Finduilas turns, peeking out from the hastily-constructed shelter, and tries to make sense of the riot of light in front of her. The clash of sword and lance, the gleaming of orcish armor, the desperate light-post shine of the two gems, held high above the dark land. 

(Their peer, gleaming in answer in the tower over the sea.) 

Maedhros has been spotted, then, by some passing patrol. There are not very many of them; some three orcs with maybe eight goblin-servants, who hang back from the fight and lob stones in Maedhros’ direction, their aim poor enough they often strike their own. A scouting-party, following a habitual path, which had not expected to see anyone passing through. 

But of course Maedhros had not been cautious. 

Maglor grimaces, and trades his herbs for twin blades of silver, gleaming as the moon under the power of his magick. “Fool,” he mutters, “thrice cursed, hot-headed fool, I ought not come to your aid—” 

But he is already moving. Finduilas moves with him, hiding her sword again in the folds of her robe. He pauses, and turns to catch her eye. 

No words are spoken between them. Neither do they touch minds. And still the same thought comes to them, and they know what must be done. 

To the orc day-riders, the servants of the Necromancer, the events of the morning go something like this: 

They set out against the rising sun, though everything in their blood calls them to sleep then, and rise only when the night comes and the fell things of the world are about. The day is almost unbearably unpleasant; the sun has come out, with no clouds nor fog to shield them from her hot rays. The goblins following them are sluggish and lazy, paying little attention to anything but their inane games and the dark crows on their shoulders, except for the sudden bouts of violence that break out among them. Here and there one will step over the line, and bite or elbow too hard, or try to steal something or other from one of its peers. Almost inevitably one of the dark-eyed goblin boys will run to his orcish leaders and tattle on the others—a habit formed by too long in the service of Ugog, who likes to sow competition on his underlings, but which irritates Sircad and Urga. 

They ride for some hours, and nearly miss the elvish intruder, tall and terrible, so scarred he must be an escaped thrall. They think little of him, at first—the ghosts of elves hollowed out by their master are little threat. If he surrenders we will kill him, Urga says, if he fights or begs for death we will drag him back to the isle. Sircad laughs his agreement. 

But the elf is not easily dealt with. 

When they near him he draws a terrible sword, full of light as the upper chambers of the Tower Unliving, and takes Urga’s ear clean off before anything else might be done. They stumble, blinded, and the cursed goblins are of no use at all, and worse yet, another elf comes to aid him, armed with song and Power and clean river-silver. 

In truth, the orcs are relieved when the elves fall back, and do not pursue them as they run away from the borders. There is some squabbling as Urga stops to staunch the bleeding ear, Sircad laughing at him for it, and then as they move one of the goblin-servants comes again to complain of something. 

He points at another goblin, a taller boy with sparse silver hair and a vulture on his shoulder, who bares yellowish teeth in answer. Urga has no patience for it, and backhands him across the face to silence the whining. 

They continue on. For some time the battle-rush keeps them awake, but in an hour they are yawning again and swatting flies. Sircad silently cuts their patrol short, and Urga says nothing of it, though he could speak, for his ear pains him and he has no great eagerness for another fight. Of all the goblins only one is useful at all, running to fetch what is asked for and pointing out silhouettes on the horizon; the boy with the vulture, and after they cross on the ferry to the Isle Urga turns to him, and asks his name. 

For a moment panic is plain in the goblin’s eyes, and Urga sneers. Good; let them be scared, for no work would otherwise be done. 

“Rat, sir,” the goblin boy says in a hissed whisper. One of the other goblins turns to give him a dirty look, but Rat stares stubbornly down at the ground. 

“Well, Rat,” Urga says, bending low to speak out of Sircad’s hearing, “run ahead and bring inside our ledger to the lord of darkness; tell the kitchen-thralls we have come in and need our dinner early; say an escaped elf slave has been slain on the border and is being eaten by carrion, and that Urga Foul-mouth would take the reward. Then you may go and eat.” 

The boy nods, and murmurs something that might be yessir under his nose, and then he is off, shuddering slightly at the howling wolves. Urga lobs a stone at him, to make him run faster, and laughs as he stumbles and the vulture’s wings flap wildly. 

He thinks nothing of it when he does not see hide or hair of the boy that night. By the time he notices no reward has come for him, it is much, much too late. 

For a moment Finduilas fears that the Isle won’t know her; that the tower won’t know her; that the river and the rocks will not know her. The song Maglor has woven around her will hold well for some time yet, and she does not know her own reflection in the water. The girl who played in the water of the river is long gone; the youth who had run from the Isle is no more; her name and her guise both she leaves behind. 

And indeed at first it is so. She tries not to cast terrified looks back at the wolves as she moves further into the half-darkness of the Isle, closer to the dark mossy cobble of the tower. She hears no song from the water, and when she lays her splayed hands on the stones they are silent. She leans closer, and whispers to them. 

“It is I,” she says, “I have taken only a different form. It is Finduilas, who was once your child; through your windows I learned the sunlight, and onto your walls I planted the first seeds of spring; you taught me the song of the river, for rock and river are as elf and bird, and called the water here to kiss my feet. Know me, dear old tower, and let me enter.” 

She leans her cheek against the rock, cold and unlovely as it is, and feels it sing in answer to her, a long mournful note. What has become of you, dear daughter of the old king? What has come to you, little silver otter?

“It is only a trick,” Finduilas answers, “for if they saw me in truth, they would take me up and kill me. Give me shelter, for otherwise they will seize me.” 

It is not your guise which I meant, the tower says, but your spirit. 

But the stones part, and holding the bird close to her chest she slips into the grooves on the tower which had once been the aqueducts for the plants. The tower catches her, and holds her, and in its voice she hears her uncle’s voice, low to the ground, in song; and in its touch is her father’s touch, firm and tender at once. 

She crawls, thus buffered, until she comes upon a little window on the seventh of eight floors, and there she sits, and picks the locks from the outside. 

Before the Necromancer took hold of the fortress, such an entry would not be possible. Water had flowed through the rock, making it slippery and treacherous where it is now dry; a thick wall of plants, loyal to the elves inside, protected each window, catching even stray arrows. The Necromancer burned the plants, for they had angered him, and left the path clear and dry. 

Finduilas shuts her eyes, praying to the Lord of the Air that she has well remembered the layout of the tower, that she has come the right way. Before she put together her plan to run from the Isle she spent some time hiding in the rafters and the thrall-passages and aqueducts and the closets and the kitchen-things, for no one had taken stock of the number of prisoners. If she remembers well this is a closet; its ornate window hides nothing but shelves of herbs and ground-up bone. 

Let me not be seen, Lord of Eagles, she says, let me be quiet as a dropping hawk, and let me live. 

The window does not creak when she opens it. Inside it is dark, and Finduilas does not see what room she drops into, but the floorboards do not creak under her feet. 

She does not breathe as her eyes adjust to the darkness. And that is a good thing, for she sees the room is large, and there are no shelves of ingredients, nor pieces of bone. Instead she is greeted by an old bedroom, lined with vanities and writing-tables. Once, she remembers, it belonged to one of her father’s lords. 

But now there is no bed in it, for its current resident sleeps not. Its vanities are lined with perfume bottles of blood, the papers on the writing table are covered in horrible sketches of many-geared machines, their images spitting ill smoke. A smell a little like a forest fire and a little like rotten flowers hangs in the air. 

The Necromancer himself sits with his back to her. He works, and curses in a language she does not know. For a few moments she stands completely still and watches him; his many soot-red hands bending in every direction at every joint, gears and bolts and spikes falling through his fingers. She is certain that he has heard her, that he toys with her. 

But he does not turn, and she makes no sound. 

Lord and Lady, she thinks, squeezing the bird closer to her chest to keep it quiet, lord and lady. Lord and lady. She can muster no other prayer. 

But perhaps they hear, or perhaps the tower loves her well. The wood is silent under her feet, and the shadows still. Step by step she grows closer to him.

She stands just behind him. Her free hand falls to her belt, where the sword is. If she drove it now between his shoulder-blades, would he be slain? Can dark fire be put out by mere elven silver? 

Without thinking she draws the blade a few inches. Do it, Maedhros’ voice whispers in her mind, you will not again have such a chance. 

The sun casts its rays through the window. The bird stirs slightly in her arms, its heart-beat slow and trusting. Finduilas swallows and takes one step forward, one back. The stone, she thinks, the stone is still above them. 

The door across from her is very slightly ajar. That one will creak, she knows, if she moves it. She sucks her stomach in, flattening as much as she is able— 

Step outside, into the dark hall. Resist the urge to run, but tip-toe, still barely breathing, across the pathway, and find the closet door, and slip inside. 

The instincts of a thief have not been with her as long as the instincts of a lady; yet they seem to have taken firmer root. She does not look, and yet she palms something from the vanity before she goes. 

Chapter Text

“What is it?” Fingon asks, seeing her fidget. He sits on the floor of the storage closet; she perches on the shelves, dangling her feet down. He holds in his hands the little silver daggers she has carried in her boots. Perhaps he would be better-served to bear the sword Maedhros gave her, but she does not offer and he does not ask. 

“Nothing,” Finduilas says; then: “a mirror.” 

He holds out his hand, inquisitive. She holds it up for him to see. It is of elvish make, the layered surface scratched by claws around the handle, the flower pattern still visible under the deformations. Something dark clouds the edges of the surface, a little as smoke, but the center is still clear. 

Fingon examines it, his face reflecting no understanding at all, and hands it back to her. “Is it yours?” 

“I suppose it is now,” she says, and he laughs. She says nothing of the Necromancer’s room, nor how close she had come to him. 

For a few minutes longer she entertains herself with the mirror. Maglor’s magick has come loose as a wool shawl, strands hanging free; Fingon’s transformation has stretched then torn it. Now and then she catches glimpses of vulture-feathers still clinging to Fingon’s hair, and her own face is oddly fragmented, here and there splattered with goblin-gray. It makes her dizzy to see for too long her own reflection, but she cannot tear herself from it. 

“What if he does not come?” she asks. 

“He will come,” Fingon says. “I could not leave him if I tried.” He laughs, shaking his head, and his eyes are far away. Finduilas does not ask. 

“What if they know he is not one of them?” Finduilas asks. “What if they attack him?” 

“Then he will fight, and he will be torn to pieces,” Fingon answers. “There would be naught we could do; not here, not against so many wolves. Perhaps the curse would keep him alive. I daresay more likely than not it would, and that he would prefer death in place of what would come after.” 

Finduilas shudders. Fingon shuts his eyes, and turns his head away. 

“He knew it was a possibility, Ereinion,” Fingon says softly. “We all knew it, coming. You did, too—what if you had been taken, and I with you? These games are played against deadly odds.” 

“At least I have my reason,” Finduilas says, “and think on my feet.” 

Some part of her is convinced yet that she is too clever to die, despite all evidence to the contrary. 

“So you do,” says Fingon. He pulls thoughtlessly at his hair. Finduilas thinks perhaps he wants to pace, but knows any sound might draw attention to them. “The same fell magic is upon him as the rest of them,” he says. “In all likelihood they will not know him as anything but one of their own.” 

“Mm,” Finduilas says, “were they elves, once?” 

Fingon shrugs. “Perhaps they were beasts,” he says. “How am I to say?” 

Finduilas traces the design on the mirror. Outside a wolf howls and snarls. Someone screams. The smell of smoke comes from the kitchens. Finduilas looks back into the mirror, and sees her own face, fragmented. 

“He was not much for hunting,” Fingon says, “when we were young.” 

Finduilas looks up. “No?” 

“Not with birds, and not with hounds,” Fingon says. “He would go—when his father lived it was often the easiest way for us to see each other, and to be for some time alone—but he would ride alongside me and be not at all helpful, speaking instead of matters of philosophy, or reading poems. I remember at times I was rather caught up in the sport and impatient with him; nothing, I told him, ought to heat the blood of a young elven man quite so much as the hunt. Do you know what he said?” 

“What?” Finduilas asks. 

“He said he liked his blood lukewarm,” Fingon says, and old amusement flits over his face at the joke. Then his expression twists, shifts. Finduilas thinks of the wolf stalking the night, and wonders if he can love it. That he does not say. 

“Why your cousin?” she asks. 

Fingon turns to her. She thinks for a moment she has offended him with the question. But he huffs, something like a laugh. They really are quite similar in that, she thinks, Maedhros and Fingon—they laugh in place of offense, of anger, of sorrow. Perhaps Fingon’s is warmer. 

“Why not?” he asks her. Then: “It is not a thing one chooses.” 

Then they both sit in silence, and wonder if it was that sin that brought the curse upon them. It seems like a very little sin indeed. 

“Do you regret it?” she asks. 

Fingon leans his head back against the wall. “He thinks I ought to,” he says. “Has he been speaking to you?” 

“Yes,” Finduilas says, “not on that, not much. I was only thinking…” 

“That I would be the crown prince now, and free,” Fingon says, “and he dead, perhaps, as he wishes. He will not say so directly when he writes, but I think he regrets my deeds.” 

“And you?” Finduilas asks. 

Fingon looks away, towards the mirror in Finduilas’ hands. He wraps his hair around his fingers, pursing his lips. “He is more practical than I,” Fingon says, “or more kind. He would cut my throat before dooming me to this half-life; would seek the quiet darkness of the void before a life of torment. But I cannot.” 

He breathes in deeply, covering the lower half of his face with his hand. 

“I cannot set aflame my own city,” he says. “I cannot let my own love fall to ash. I could have chosen death for us both, three hundred and fifty years ago; I did not then, and I do not now.” 

Finduilas swallows, watching fragments of light play on the wall opposite her, reflected in the mirror. She thinks of her father; thinks of Nargothrond, burning. 

“I wish,” she says, but does not finish the sentence. That he had run again, as he had from Tol Sirion? That she had never been foolish enough to run her mouth, and had not met Maedhros, and had not come to care, and had not returned here? 

“Yes,” Fingon says, when she does not speak further. 

Finduilas yawns out of nervousness, and reaches for her brooch. She can hear a building wave of noise below them, the sounds of the midnight feast. “We had best get to work,” she says, “while no one can hear.” 

Together they stand at the top window of the closet, too narrow to fit most elves full-grown—even Finduilas, some few years away from adulthood and quite small for her age, will have a hard time slipping out—and they work free the window-shell and bars across it. 

(They had not been there when Finduilas had used the window to slip out. But she can tell now she ought not taken the other one for it—the window of the bedroom was far too wide.) 

 They finish the work just before sunrise. Fingon shakes loose his fingers and turns to catch her eye, the corner of his mouth quirking in a smile. 

“We will do something of good,” Fingon says. “We must. The strands of fate would not have brought us so far; the Lord of Waters would not have let us pass.” 

She reaches out a hand to him. They brush their fingers together, just briefly, something of a cheering gesture. 

Then he turns into a bird and flies out the window, and Finduilas faces the sunrise. 

* * * 

The light of the sun barely pierces the gloom of the Isle, some fragments of pink-orange light shattering into the dark water. The wolves sleep, carnage from the thralls thrown to them during the night’s feasting still staining the rocks about them. They would wake, if someone came from the water. 

She looks to pick out the form of an elf on the rocks, and wonders what she will do if she cannot find it. If something ill has happened to the wolf—if Maedhros cannot come. She might run, she thinks, and have some chance of living. Would Fingon know, to go? 

Perhaps the wolf has been torn apart, and they have not heard. Something like fur bobs indeed on the dark water, and— 

And a silhouette, its clothes soaked, covered in seaweed and wolf-dung, picks its way towards the tower with the deliberate jerky movements of a crab. Finduilas could cry in relief; instead she scampers down the wall, whistling a hawk’s call to catch his attention. 

He crosses over quickly. She holds her nose. 

“Mouse,” he says, in a gruff whisper. “Aren’t you a frightful sight, son.” 

He gestures up. Finduilas, who has forgotten about the broken illusion, smiles. “I might say the same to you,” she answers, “quick—quick. The servants’ entrance. Get the worst of the muck off yourself and try to seem downcast. It oughtn’t be hard.” 

He nods. Finduilas knows no one is watching them, not now—if they had been seen they would know, and they are past the worst of the watchers surrounding the tower. Most of the denizens of the watchtower sleep during the day. Still she cannot suppress her shudder, and ducks low her head.

The door is locked. Finduilas breathes in deeply through her nose and does not look as she slides the end of the brooch pin inside it, affecting nonchalance, the air of a tired servant-girl with a true key. It does not yield at first; but when she hits one pin she hits the others, and it springs loose, turning almost of its own accord, as though in relief. The door follows its momentum, opens outwards with a creak of old wood. 

It is cut so low that Maedhros musk duck to enter. Finduilas thinks it had not been so, when the island was fair and well-tended to, when the tower had been her father’s. No doorway then had been insultingly small, no kitchen grimy with soot and stained with reddish fluids. 

But it is so now. This is a waste-passage, and the waste of the Necromancer’s feasts is of a most unpleasant kind. The room is dark, though they can make out shapes around them. Something squelches underfoot as they walk. Finduilas wishes for earlier the smell of fish and wolf-dung, rather than whatever it may be that hangs now in the air. 

An elven thrall lies sleeping in the corner, seemingly oblivious to all around her. Her hair is dark and matted; she wears a dark dress of some rough-knit fabric, and no shoes. When they come too close she sits up, and blinks at them, and speaks in slurred Sindarin, “Name your errand.” 

“We fetch fish,” Finduilas says, “from the river. We were given leave, for it is for the goblin-watchers’ use.” 

Maedhros pats his pockets, as though they might contain fish. Finduilas gestures at her bag and does not open it. 

The thrall grimaces, then stands. “There is no fish in the river,” she says, “nothing at least that might be caught.” 

Finduilas’ heart beats in her ears. She grasps in her pockets for a lie, and what she finds doesn’t impress her. “I,” she says, “the goblins told us there would be—” 

Is it not the manner of the ill lot of the Isle to lie, and put others in danger playing cruel jokes. 

The thrall’s face darkens. “You are a child,” she says, “and must be new here, for I see your face is unmarred. You do not know the way of things. But you—” and here she jams her finger accusatorially in Maedhros’ direction, “ought to know better.” 

Maedhros clears his throat, both awkward and angry. The thrall snaps her teeth at him. 

“I might be flayed,” she says, “if word gets out I said nothing. But worse will happen to you, and to the child. Do you understand?” 

Finduilas looks up, and sees that Maedhros has braced himself for a fight. She does not know if he has listened at all to the words, if he has taken a different meaning if— 

With nothing else to do, she reaches for his mind. Brushes the steel walls of his thought with osanwe, and speaks softly. Wait. Wait, let me speak with her. Follow me. 

She can feel when Maedhros opens his mind to her, its gates creaking open just as uncertainly as her own. His anger pierces her, his tension echoing in her back, her shoulders. She knows her words are tinged with her fear and her unease, with the nausea she herself had not taken stock of. It brings her closer to her own body, to see it through his eyes. She little likes it. 

Still she keeps her innermost self sealed from him; he does the same. 

Time— Maedhros starts. She can feel his meaning before he finishes the phrase. 

Finduilas reaches for his wrist and squeezes it. We cannot afford the noise. 

“Forgive us,” she says, “me and my—my companion also. He does not speak, or he would voice his regret. It was my doing. I wished to breathe the air.” 

She can feel the woman is soft on her, and she is not disappointed. The thrall sighs, and gestures them roughly in. “Return to your posts,” she says. “I will lock the door twice, and sit by it. If I so much as see you again…” 

“Yes,” Finduilas says, “yes, of course, thank—” she swallows it in the last moment, “—thank the Great Eye.” Inside she could dance. She thought we were going the other way. We are well, we are safe, we— 

There she nudges Maedhros. He nods, though when Finduilas turns to look at him she thinks him worse at forcing fear into features. 

“Where did you come from?” the thrall woman asks. 

“Upstairs,” Finduilas answers, glumly. 

“Oh,” and there is real pity, now, in her voice, “and so young, too.” Finduilas hopes with a sudden ferocity she did not do her act a little too well. “Well. You best hurry. Likely no one has woken. Take the third stairs, here.” 

It is a wise move on her part. The third stairs have been walled off, and would not allow Finduilas to slip away anywhere before the fourth floor, given over to the vampires. It is an ill fate, to be let up them. 

Finduilas nods, and pulls Maedhros along by the stump of his wrist. Hisses “watch your step,” and moves very slowly, as to stop the ancient wood from creaking. It is easy for her; she is light, and quick on her feet. She would bet Maedhros is twice her weight , or something on that order, and the tower likes him less. The wood feels the curse clinging to him, and the stone mistrusts him. 

Having spoken once in their minds, Finduilas defaults to it. Walk slowly. Try to make no noise. All doors are blocked until the fourth floor; there we will need to cross the room to get to the next set of stairs, without waking the vampires. They sleep upside-down, hanging in skins of bats. 

Ah, Maedhros answers, lovely. They have made a real maze of the watchtower, have they not? 

Finduilas’ rage and grief spike, a better answer than words. Maedhros brushes their minds together; his anger is a warm, stable, calming thing. 

He has hurt himself, he says, with such changes. It is a poorer watchtower; less orderly, less clean. Too many small intrigues play out here. Even he cannot keep track of them all, so much as he thinks he can. He tosses sharks and snakes and leeches into his goldfish pond and wonders when the pond is ill and they all eat each other. 

The tone surprises Finduilas. It is almost hope, she thinks; hope forged in the shape of steel-sharp practicality. She catches the feeling, letting it flow through her. Shuts her mind, lest she catch more than that. 

On the steps by the heavy door to the fourth floor she nearly slips and falls, for something slick is underfoot. Maedhros catches her by the waist, bumping the metal hook painfully against her ribs. She bites down a curse, but only barely. Thrice damned— 

It is perfectly dark. Finduilas reaches for the door and knows without seeing it what it looks like. One of the old doors, which had long stood in the watch-tower. They had been good wood, heavy wood, carried on barges from the other coast, and thick. The Necromancer had not bothered to ship in his own wood, but only carved away the designs, turning the wooden trees to flame and the ever-present design of the eye, though the wood had hated it and splintered. 

Finduilas lays a hand on the door and feels good elven silver. She need not pick the lock; she brushes her hand against it and it knows her, and lets her enter. Slowly she draws Maedhros into the room behind her, then holds a hand out, fingers splayed out, stopping him from taking a second step inside. 

The stench of the room is overwhelming. Finduilas has seen the Necromancer’s vampires eat once before, had watched their huge curved teeth leave gouges on the face and arms of an elven victim. They do not pierce; they tear and lick at the gushing blood, leaving behind scraps of skin and flesh, and they do not notice their own mess. 

She can feel them now, sleeping. They are no bigger than a goblin, wrapped tightly in their pale fleshy wings, sharp-toothed faces hidden from the light. Sound or touch will wake them. 

They hang just above you, she whispers into the space between their minds. Get down, soft. Crawl. 

She does the same. She can feel the tower around her, pulsing and guiding; perhaps she feels her father’s ghost. Step here, not here. Duck down, lower. You will slip. 

There is nothing to do. She taps Maedhros twice on the back of the hand, to warn him. Then she bares her awareness to him, showing him the way, letting him hear the whispers of the tower. 

For a long moment Maedhros is silent. Then he speaks, quiet in the boundaries of their minds, This is your castle, he says. This is your birthright. 

She says nothing, but only moves forward. Something squelches under her hand, a scrap of meat or of rotted wood. She swallows bile. One foot, then two. The door to the other staircase is near. 

You are Finrod’s son, Maedhros says, or Orodreth’s. 

The door is ahead of them. Finduilas feels a wooden splinter catch on the edge of Maedhros’ robe, and runs her hand over the floor, bidding it silently to let him go. It is just past dawn; she tries to count how long they have been climbing for, how much time they have left until the fateful ten minutes are upon them. Wonders what would happen if the sun went down while Fingon was mid-flight, if it ever has. 

Finduilas breathes shallowly. She not grown used to the odor, but perhaps it touches her less. She rises, bracing herself against the door. It is locked, but the lock is quite the same as the others. She had picked locks first when she was a girl, curious about the contents of cellars and treasuries, slipping into her uncle’s armories to admire his pretty silver knives. Some of those, she thinks, had been harder. 

It opens inwards. Finduilas holds it, so it might not open more than a sliver and risk hitting a sleeping beast, so that it lets as little light in as it might, and gestures to Maedhros with her mind. He crawls forward, quick as a silverfish. 

She follows him, and shuts the door. They leave dirty tracks as they climb up the stairs, reddish brown, and they do not speak until they have crossed a flight. There Maedhros braces himself against the wall, breathing in deeply. Finduilas turns from him, and looks up, to the thin window atop the wall that has not been covered. The mid-morning light, still, is good.  

Come, Maedhros says in their minds, look at me. 

She spins around. She can see herself reflected in his gray eyes, and knows what he is looking for. Does he see it, she wonders? Is her hair silver-blond as her father’s had been in his youth, or too dark, too mousy? Is there some fleck of her uncle’s spirit in her brown eyes, so unlike his? Are their ghosts here, in her chin, her lips, her nose? 

Whose son are you, boy? 

She swallows. She cannot bring herself to speak in their minds, and whispers aloud instead, her voice hoarse: “Ereinion. I am Ereinion.” 

“Oh,” Maedhros says, “very well, then.” 

She holds out a hand, and he takes it. Outside, far past the window, she thinks she sees the shadow of a hawk in flight. 

Chapter Text

The stairs are not precisely stairs, as in any tower which is so full of living magick. Finduilas feels the ache in her calves as she climbs them; they had not been so steep, so hard to climb, when she washad been younger. Part of her wonders if the stone warns her to turn back, but of course it does not sing that song. 

They pass the door to the sixth floor, and the seventh. There the stairs are walled off, and the windows without bars, wide and easy to pass through. Finduilas knows some desperate elves have managed to run this far, seeing no way down, and leapt to their dooms. The cold water of Sirion, far below them, seems welcoming. The lurking shapes of the wolves do not. 

“They keep it open,” Finduilas says, “because the Necromancer and his vampires fly sometimes to the roof. We have no wings, and will need to climb.” 

She is not fond of the thought. The bricks are old, the aqueducts in places broken. Their hands are slick with whatever fluid was on the floor, with seaweed, with mud. She looks down at Maedhros’ single hand with some doubt. She is light, and may climb easily. But he… 

“I have rope,” she says, “I will go ahead, and find something to tie it to, and throw it to you.” 

“Let me see it,” Maedhros says, holding out his hand. She hands it over, thinking nothing of it. He hums, tucks it over his shoulder, and scampers out the window. 

It is something, to watch from below. He climbs with the same graceless efficiency he moves with; sharp, jerky, jamming the hook between the stones so roughly that Finduilas thinks he might get stuck. But he does not, and indeed he covers the distance much faster than Finduilas might have. 

Soon he dangles the rope to her, and, when she takes it, waits not for her to climb but simply yanks her up. 

“It helps,” he says, “to be tall.”

Then for a moment they stand, and breathe the cool morning air. Finduilas does not need the thin mind-bond between them to know that they have the same thought; that getting down will be harder than getting up, that only madmen seek to break into the tower so many wish to escape. That in all likelihood they have come to the end of their journey, and that it is nice now to breathe the clean air. 

Maedhros holds out his hand. “Shall we?” he asks, and he is smiling; wry and grim, but with true feeling behind it. Finduilas takes it, and smiles back, and together they walk to the peak of the tower. 

When it was a watchtower a ring of torches had been lit there, a beacon that had shone through the darkness of the last battle. Now the torches have been wrenched free, and fire dances around the middle of the ring , fuelled by some oil below. In the center, held by dark wrought iron, is a single shining silver gem, bright as a star. 

They look for a moment, trying to gauge the best way to retrieve it. Finduilas has heard that the flame is part of the great evil thing living in the tower, and that to touch it is to wake him; she turns to Maedhros. 

“Hoist me up,” she says. “I will grab on to the metal and avoid the fire, and then I will get down the stone.” 

“Very well,” he answers, “we may do it so, though little will it matter in the end.” 

He bends down, and she stands with her feet on his shoulders. Reaches up, until her finger-tips brush the edge of the twisted metal structure, and then hops and takes hold of it. Then she walks, balancing as easily as a squirrel upon a branch, to its center. 

There she touches the gem, warm under her hands as a living being, and tries to coax it from the metal setting. But it does not let go.

She takes out her sword, the little rusted thing Maedhros gave her. She can feel it is fearful, and weary, but she works it under the gem anyhow, and puts all her weight against it, until— 

The sword bends, and she near loses her balance. The gem is stuck. 

“Wait!” Maedhros calls from below. “Wait!” 

She looks down. Sshe  sees the platform of the tower, and beyond that the rushing river, the mist forming around the rocks, the tiny figures of sluggish orc guards below. The sun shines , and she feels something odd about its light, something weakened. Birds call, but she cannot see them. 

Maedhros is holding out his sword to her, holding it by the blade. She takes it, and thinks to use its blade instead, but when she positions it as a lever he calls from down below, urgent: “Not so, little fool! Let it go home!” 

She turns the sword. Holds the empty setting up to the gem, and speaks to it. “Return to your maker,” she says, “return to your father, and your grandfather; be as you were meant.” 

It yields, and falls from the dark iron as a ripe apple blown from the tree, finding its place again on the sword hilt. Finduilas holds the sword by the blade and passes it down, again, to him. 

It seems very little real at all, that they have done it. 

Before she speaks any word against it Maedhros takes off his dark cloak, and throws it over the fire. Bends down, to check. 

“It is quite out,” he calls, “you might jump, and not be burned.” 

What is done is done, then. Finduilas jumps down, landing lightly on her feet. Without the fire it is dark, and she shivers. It ought to be mid-morning, but the sun is half-hidden, far from them, and the air feels much colder than it did before. Birds grow louder. 

Maedhros offers her a hand up. She stands, and together they walk to the edge of the wall, where a little brick side-fence edges along the roof. He looks down, at the rocks below, the sheen of the water. Holds out the sword. 

“You will let them all fall,” Finduilas says, “you will let them all break?” 

“It is better that way,” Maedhros says. He breathes in deeply, and his hand shakes. “It is better,” he repeats, “nothing will touch us.” Still he does not let go. The sky goes dark around them, as though in warning. “Nothing will touch us,” he says again, quieter. “It will be quiet. It will be peaceful.” 

Shining Elbereth, it’s dark. It ought not be so dark, but the light of the sun is gone, and the gem casts odd shadows on Maedhros’ face. 

“Maedhros,” Finduilas says softly, and she does not know if she means let it go or step away. There is no getting down. There is no turning back. They both knew it would be so. 

But whatever she means to say, she does not get the chance. There is a sound behind them as claws dragging over rock. They turn as one, Maedhros’ sword hand falling by his side, and see that the Necromancer has landed on the rooftop across from them. 

His wings fall back as a cloak between his arms. He wears an elven shape, but something of it is uncanny, wrong; it takes Finduilas a moment to realize she cannot tell where his scarlet and gold skin ends and where his scarlet and gold robes begin, that the body itself is not him but a raiment, easily discarded. His eight-fingered hands move, busy, fingers bending as the joints of centipedes, many glistening rings catching gem-light. His dark eyes flick over her with little interest. Finduilas has seen that look before among nobility, and often. He is a creature of hierarchy; he has taken one look at her and dismissed her as Maedhros’ servant. 

“Ah,” the Necromancer says, speaking only to him, “I expected you back sooner, little red king. Willll you throw it, then? It will hurt you a great deal more than it will hurt me.” 

Maedhros’ hand twitches. First towards the edge of the roof, then upwards, as though to strike. He does neither. He is rooted to the spot, his pale scarred face a mask of fear and rage and grief, his mind shut. 

“Oh,” the Necromancer says, and he is laughing now—a mean laugh that makes the stones cringe back, grinding unpleasantly against each other. “Oh, do you mean to run me through? Try, if you might. I cannot die by your hand and I shall not.” 

Finduilas thinks she recognizes him, the way Maglor has recognized her. A liar knows a liar knows a liar. He’s just saying things. He’ll say anything, anything at all. 

But his lies, perhaps, are different from hers. If he keeps saying them, she feels, they’ll worm their way into the Great Song; will latch on to the truth and carve a space within it. She pulls out her brooch, and runs her fingers over its sharp end, pressing it against her finger-pads. 

It’s dark. The birds have gone quiet. Maedhros breathes, shallow panicked breaths. He’s been preparing for this, but not well enough. 

“Damn you,” Maedhros says, “damn you—I will hear you not. Before you can touch me I shall cast away the stone, and I shall weaken your power, and I shall break your grip upon me, and even in my dying you will not win.” 

“Go on,” the Necromancer answers, “throw it in the river, which I have broken, and taken under my control. Leave your elven soul; let it flow free in the waters with your father and grandfather’s ghosts. Join the mindless beasts below; always I am in want of another wolf. I have taken you, and made you mine. Deep down you know so.” 

The sword trembles in Maedhros’ hand. Part of Finduilas thinks he might drop it without thought, as his hope shatters around him. The power of the Necromancer’s attention is not on her; she is not caught in the sway of his voice.  She tries again to reach Maedhros’ mind, to whisper, he lies, he lies, but she cannot. 

“There is no curse,” Maedhros says, though the words are hollow, empty, “that cannot be broken. You cannot tie a knot that may not be untied; you cannot twist the Song so it may not be untwisted.” 

“Certainly,” says the Necromancer, “when the sun sets down her golden chariot in the sky and rises no more; when the moon falls and sleeps upon the water; when this world comes undone and earth falls to the sea, when night and day are as one, your curse will break. Perhaps, if I am feeling gracious, I may even let you die.” 

“That is all well and good,” says a voice behind them, though Finduilas cannot see the speaker in the darkness, “but tell me, if you please, if it is now night or day.” 

The three—four—of them turn as one, to look up at the sky. There is a moment where they do not see the sun at all, and then she surfaces, just for an instant, a ring of fire visible around the circle of the moon. They are holding hands, Finduilas thinks; they twirl together, in dance. 

“Those wayward scoundrels,” the Necromancer cries. “They break their paths, they skirt their duties—”  

“For love’s sake,” says Fingon, and he begins to sing. 

It is a disorienting thing, to watch him. Far above the sun and the moon dance through the clouds, and they are gone one minute and back the next, a series of odd, flickering eclipses. It gives an otherworldly look, the gold in his eyes and his hair catching the golden sun. Finduilas has seen him only in the darkness, under the flickering light of the stars; she had thought him beautiful even then, but in gold he is kingly. 

His voice is low and melodious, though he has not Maglor’s skill of magick. The song is beautiful and quite easy to follow, easy to see in front of her eyes as it unfolds. 

One hundred and twenty-seven thousand sunsets have called him; one hundred and twenty-seven thousand sunrises have banished him. He has taken up a knife and cut loose a monster’s paw, and nursed that beast to health with the care of a lover. Has walked the earth and flown between the clouds, senseless and thoughtless as a bird. Has despaired, and grown enraged, has lost his kin and bloodied his hands and felt the terrible weight of the curse upon him. 

He reaches for Maedhros’ hand, drawing him nearer. The sword with the three gems in its hilt falls by their feet as Maedhros lets it go, and that clatter too is a seamless part of the song. 

One hundred and twenty-seven thousand sunsets have called him; one hundred and twenty-seven thousand sunrises have banished him, and Fingon has not lost love. He has loved the boy he had known in his youth, before the plains of Hithlum were touched by war; has loved the soldier standing carrying his father’s shield and plumes of red; has loved the grief-stricken king in his copper crown; has loved the lonesome prisoner; has loved the ghost of his companion scrawled between the pages of the journal; has loved the wolf, the monster. 

One hundred and twenty-seven thousand sunsets might call him; one hundred and twenty-seven thousand sunrises might banish him, and the curse will touch his innermost self no more than it has. The Necromancer might take from him his body, and his mind, and his reason—but he will not take his goodness and his hope and his love, will not do what he most desires. 

Night and day mingle, Fingon sings, and I stand before you just the same. 

And Finduilas can feel it, when the curse falls. Perhaps it would have, all along; perhaps it waited only for the eclipse. But still it breaks on Fingon’s words, on the touch of their hands, on the earnestness and truthfulness of the song. 

It is not magick, Finduilas thinks, for it is not a lie. 

The sun shines, and the moon is gone, and Fingon and Maedhros stand, hand in hand, before the eyes of the Lord of Darkness. 

Fingon is caught still in the song, shining with sunlight and with power, and he turns, and rises on his tip-toes to kiss his lover. It is beautiful, that kiss, though Maedhros is covered yet in mud and blood and seaweed and wolf dung, though they stand on the edge of certain doom, though the stones gleam forgotten by their feet. 

“Oh, very well,” the Necromancer says, suddenly sounding quite out of patience, “the curse is lifted; how very good for you. Let us waste no more time on that matter.” 

He reaches for his belt, and pulls free the awful black whip he carries into battle, stepping closer. Terrible magick swirls around him. His three eyes are angry and red, trained on the elves in front of him—in his impatience he means to kill them, Finduilas is sure, for there is no cleverness left in his features, for he is ugly with rage. 

He takes no notice of Finduilas, even as he passes by her. 

He has taken no notice of Finduilas for as long as she has stood, one hand braced on the wrought iron that had held the gem, watching the scene unfold. To him she is nothing; no more than whatever servant had borne the bent and rusted sword the first time. 

She is not sure how she does it. The stones help her, telling her where to step; the ring that once held torches helps her, boosting her up; the tower’s song helps her, covering her step. But some part of it is her, her grief and her anger and her hope. I do not want you to die. I do not want— 

In her hand is her brooch, its sharp pin-end out, the curled silver snake nestled against her thumb. She leaps up, behind the Necromancer, and grasps with her free hand the cloak that is also his wings, fleshy and terrible under her fingers, and pulls herself up, and stabs the end of the brooch deep into his jugular. Twists it, feels something give and rip. 

She yanks it out. He stands, still looking ahead at Maedhros, uncomprehending. The wound gushes blood, dark as acid and hot enough to burn, and Finduilas falls back, landing ungracefully on her back, the stones stinging along her spine.

She sees the figure of the Necromancer above her, shaking but rooted yet to his spot. The whip falls from his hands; he raises them, to quench the bleeding, and quite too late. His scarlet skin darkens, tinged with black as burning wood, and stretches. Terrible fire lurks underneath it, and Finduilas can see it shall burst. 

There is no time to get away, no time to stand, to run, and behind her is only the great drop into the river. She reaches down, and feels the bent sword, feels another shape, the rounded edges, elven silver. 

In front of her the Necromancer bursts into terrible fire and dark-light, and she hides her face in the crook of her hand and holds out the silver mirror as a shield. 

She feels the fire catch her cloak. All around her the world is very very hot, and the stones thrum with power, and the golden light of the sun is over-bright. The sound of the mirror falling against the stone tells her she has dropped it. The pin she still clings to, though the metal in her hand is bent and broken. 

Elven voices. Someone tosses cloth over her, shouts put it out, and Ereinion, and all is dark. 

Chapter Text

There is a great deal of noise. Her body hurts, her shoulders, her knees, her ribs. She feels a fragment of silver beneath the skin of her right hand, and when she tries to bend her fingers she regrets it dreadfully, and lets her body go limp again. 

Someone is carrying her. Cool metal brushes against the underside of her knees, and a hand is on her back, which does not hurt. Someone shouts, as though in pain. The stones speak, their voices overlapping, Quenya and Sindarin mingling in odd ways. All of them want her attention, but she can pick out no one voice within the crowd, nor bid them to be quiet. 

Then she feels drops of water cold on her skin, and hears Maglor’s cool ocean-voice, and thinks she is dreaming; then she is dreaming in truth, because she hears her father and her uncles. She thinks she is sitting on a velvet day bed in the dark, facing away from some gathering. She hears the clatter of dice; hears Angrod’s rising voice and Finrod’s bell-like laugh, hears her father’s soft measured tone and the sound of wine glasses being set down. But she cannot rise to meet them, and as she tries to listen to their words they get fainter and less audible, further and further away, and then they are gone. 

Grass pokes into her cheek. She smells dirt, and rainwater, and horses. 

Cracks open an eye and finds that she is lying on the ground, some indistinct mass of cloth tucked under her head. She raises a hand—which pulls at some tender bit of skin over her chest and her arm, and hurts horribly—and sees that she is dressed in Fingon’s blue robes, dotted with stars. They are much too big on her; she supposes if they have all gotten out alive Fingon wears something of Maedhros’ or of Maglor’s, much too big on him in turn. 

“Are you awake, son?” Maedhros’ voice, somewhere above her head. She flicks her eyes up but cannot find him. The words warm her, though; if they had changed her clothes while she was unconscious they might have seen the truth of her sex. But he says son, not girl or sweetheart or dear . 

“Mmhm,” she manages, “’s he dead?” 

“Oh,” Maedhros says, “oh no, not at all.” He comes into view from the side, and Finduilas does her best not to notice the little purple love-bite bruises along his neck. “He’s only gone out for wood, he’ll—” 

Finduilas raises a hand, her fingers splayed out. Swallows down ash, in her throat. “Necromancer,” she forces out, “’s he dead?” 

“Oh,” Maedhros says, “that I cannot answer. I do not know, in truth, if something like him can be killed. But there was nothing left behind, except for blood and smoke.” 

He takes her by the shoulder to pull her up to sit, though her head spins, and gives her water. She swirls it around her mouth, washing out the ash, and spits. Drinks. It’s from the river, and there’s fire in it. 

He helps her back down. There are other things she would ask; she can feel the weight of the questions on her tongue but not their shape. There is no time, for again the dark takes her. 

In her dreams she is in the river. The water is clean; no fire nor blood taints it, and it holds starlight only. She walks into it, feeling its touch cool on the soles of her feet. She soaks the fringe of her white dress, and as she walks deeper it floats around her as the dome of a jellyfish, bubbling with the current. 

Do you want to stay here, Finduilas, island-daughter, stone-daughter, river-daughter? the river asks her, and its voice is kind. She thinks she knows it, that woman’s voice, but she cannot say where from. 

“There are things,” she says, “there are things I must do.” 

Water flows around her, as though in answer. She feels it stripping away pieces of her being; feels the dirt of Nargothrond washed from her, and mourns it. 

Shall it be you, Finduilas? The river asks her. 

She does not know. She looks down, and sees the reflection in the water is not of a maiden in white, but of an elven lord. His silver braids fall to his waist; in his left hand there is a lance, and in his right a silver shield. He wears a crown, deep silver, and upon it is a field of stars. 

At first she thinks him her father. But her eyes catch on the upturned nose, the spatter of freckles over the cheeks, the dark brown eyes, and she knows she is looking at her own reflection. She can hear the echo in the music, the same tune played in a different key, and knows they are two sides of the same spirit, the maiden in white and the silver lord.

But other voices call her. And she is not sure, in the end, who leaves the river. 

“Ereinion—” 

It is morning. She is curled up on her right side, and her left is warm under the sun. She cranks open one eye, and sees that she is outside, a bed roll tucked under her, and that next to her Maedhros is folding some length of cloth into his saddlebags. Somewhere close she can hear the deep breaths of the horse. Somewhere someone is singing, a quiet, cheerful thing. She knows the voice, far too beautiful to keep track of the words. 

“Ereinion—” This one is Fingon’s voice, certainly. He taps her wrist—the one that is not burnt—and she looks up. He is bending over her. He looks well. The simpler braid he has swapped for many small braids, pulled together into a bun over his head. There is something in his cupped hands. 

“Oh, do not wake him for—” Maedhros, now. 

Finduilas pushes herself up on her elbow. “Eurgh,” she says. 

“Do you want a blackberry?” Fingon asks her. “They were growing wild just where we slept. I saw them only by daylight.” 

“Elbereth, son, go back to sleep,” Maedhros says to her. 

Finduilas holds out her hand. “Yes,” she says. 

“They are a little sour,” Fingon says, and tips his handful into her palm.  

Finduilas eats them, dropping them one by one onto her tongue. They burst around the core; they are warm, with the sun’s rays, and soft. 

“I like them well,” she says, reaching to brush away hair that has stuck with sweat to her forehead. It is good, she thinks, that it is too short to properly mat. It is good it did not catch fire. “How did we get down?” she asks. “From the tower.” 

Fingon sits down across from her. Maedhros goes on packing. By some instinct she looks in the air for the hawk. 

“Maedhros bound your hands with rope and put them about his neck, and climbed down with you dangling so,” Fingon says. “It is good you do not remember, for it looked uncomfortable.” 

“I meant more the goblins and the vampires and the orcs,” Finduilas says, “and all those unlovely and dreadful things. The wolves—the wolves as a matter of course.” 

“Without the will of their master, that was a much different task,” Maedhros says. “The vampires screamed out and fled the sunlight and the song; the goblins and the orcs squabbled amongst each other and stumbled in the confusion and knew not whom to blame or what to do; the werewolves turned to naught but beasts, animals as those that stalk the forest, and retreated from the fire and the noise and all those things which are unlovely to them. What little trouble we had was solved easily enough with sword and bow.” 

“Oh,” Finduilas says. It makes sense; the Isle had been forced into a shape it did not wish to hold, as a spring pressed down, all things inside working against their nature. “I think I remember that Maglor came.” 

“Yes,” Fingon  says, “he came on a rowboat. He’d been waiting.” 

Finduilas nods. The memory still feels as a dream, but that is natural enough. “Where are we going, now?” 

“Home,” Fingon says, “Hithlum. I have left my father waiting long enough.” 

Finduilas has not been, though she has heard stories enough to picture it, the lake and the mountains, the grieving king. 

“If he lets Fingon live,” Maedhros says, his smile wry, “we have an urgent matter to attend to, and I do hope your presence is not in question, Ereinion.” 

“And what is that?” Finduilas asks. 

“Three hundred and fifty years is a horribly long time for an engagement,” Maedhros says. “We ought to be done with it, as soon as possible.” 

Fingon laughs, and flicks a squished berry in his direction. “Really, Ereinion,” he says, “this would not have come to pass without you, and we call you to sit at our table, and keep for as long as you like in our company.” 

Finduilas smiles. Some day fate will call her away, she knows; the Isle will call her name, and she will heed it. But well it pleases her now, to follow them, and be among kin.