Chapter Text
Gwindor’s words, threat, plea and promise all at once, rang in Túrin’s mind as he raced back to Nargothrond. The strength of Nargothrond was broken. Its king and the greater part of its military were broken upon the swords and spears of Angband. Still more had burned in the flames of the Great Worm. Those few had survived beside him had long since fled. To where, Túrin could not say. Even after coming to manhood amongst the Elves, it was nigh impossible for him to track Elves both desperate to go unnoticed and canny enough to take the necessary precautions to achieve that end. Possibly they had gone to the defense of Nargothrond.
It didn’t matter. That didn’t matter. The survivors of Tumhalad could flee and cower in the wilderness, and do so for the rest of time, as far as Túrin cared. He ran back to Nargothrond with the wind under his feet, and aching muscles and searing lungs could hardly slow him down.
“And this last I say to you: she alone stands between you and your doom. If you fail her, it shall not fail to find you.”
Those words had the ring of truth to them, and bore a weight Túrin could not have denied even if he wished to—he could feel that weight even now, pressing on him from all sides. But growing clearer and sharper with each moment was the memory of the massacre on Amon Rûdh, and what had come afterwards. Finduilas would doubtless be borne away to Angband, if she wasn’t killed outright before then. There had been a time when Túrin himself had been driven down the dark road to Angband, and he remembered, like a man remembered the knife that had slipped between his ribs, what he had seen when light was shed on that path.
Beleg had died following him, slain by Túrin’s own hand. Now Gwindor joined him in the shadowed lands of the Elven dead, and if Túrin had not killed him directly, his death was on Túrin’s hands, regardless. But Túrin would sooner taste death on his own tongue than allow Finduilas to join their ranks. Since the beginning, she had been light, a pillar of gold flame in the darkness. She, at least, he would not fail.
Túrin found Nargothrond a smoking ruin, its stones scorched black and the very bridge he had ordered built for the ease of Nargothrond’s troops crawling with Orcs. The Orcs fled before him, but soon Túrin found one who would not flee, and found reason to remember something else Gwindor had told him, what seemed like an eternity ago.
“Glaurung has great power in his voice and in his gaze. He can deceive and compel even the strongest-willed, inciting them to act in ways that go against their desires, against their very natures. He does not speak except to lie. If ever you should encounter him—and I pray you do not!—you must be wary, and not trust anything he says to you.”
Later, when dragons were more commonplace in the lands east of the Sea, it would be said that the unwary made more vulnerable targets for a dragon’s guile, and that the way, depending on the strength of their will, could resist it in part or in whole. For now, Túrin would have his will tested, and see if it endured—or if the dragon broke it upon his tongue.
-0-0-0-
Túrin was turned loose from Glaurung’s snares dazed, reeling, torn in mind and in heart. The reek of blood and foul smoke clogged in the back of his throat, and he stumbled as he set away from Nargothrond. Finduilas’s cries filled his ears, tearing uneven sobs from his mouth, as much form confusion as torment. Ever were his eyes trained upon the north, as he scrabbled over the rocks and the hills.
“As thralls your mother and your sister live in Dor-lómin, in misery and want. You are arrayed as a prince, but they go in rags. For you they yearn, but you care not for that.”
Blood welled up on his palm as Túrin cut his hand open on one of the rocks of the Talath Dirnen. The pain was like a spur, driving him forward.
“No heed did you give to the cries of the Elf-woman. Will you deny also the bond of your blood?”
There was a game Beleg had taught him, when he was young. Two of your companions have been taken captive by Orcs. They have been carried off in opposite directions, and you can only save one. Who do you choose to save, and who do you sacrifice? The decision had been difficult enough when it was only a game. Now…
Finally, Túrin collapsed, exhausted against the trunk of a withered birch tree, its branches stripped of leaves by the high winds and the unseasonable cold of the early autumn. He buried his head in his hands, struggling to clear his mind.
Finduilas would be taken to Angband. Killed? Maybe. Tortured? Maybe. Put to work in the mines? Maybe. He knew for certain that she would suffer, that Morgoth would put her to torment. There were none who went to Angband without tasting anguish, and a Noldorin princess would make great sport for the Enemy. Meanwhile, his mother and sister languished in Dor-lómin, women of the House of Hador made thralls to the meanest of Morgoth’s servants, or so Glaurung had said.
Túrin had not forgotten Gwindor’s words to him regarding the dragon—he knew Glaurung to be a liar, and knew him to be capable of making Túrin go against his own instincts and desires. It was the truth, it was plain truth that even now Finduilas was being driven on to Angband, and that once she passed beyond the gates, any hope of rescue would be all but dead.
It was true as well that Túrin did not know for sure if his mother and sister still lived on Dor-lómin (And bitterly he rued never making any attempt to contact them after leaving the shelter of Menegroth). Glaurung may well have spoken to lie, and they had fled Dor-lómin long ago. But Túrin knew Morwen—he could scarcely believe that she would abandon her home while she still had left so much as a sliver of pride, nor even the barest hope that Húrin would return and set things to rights. She had been driven from Ladros as a girl, and would never again consent to being ejected from her home. And given the difficulty with which she had sent Túrin away from her, it seemed impossible that she would be parted from Niënor as well.
At least one thing from Glaurung’s mouth had been true. Túrin had grown up in comfort in Doriath, while Morwen and Niënor had labored in subjection to base Men who made thralls of the Edain, despite being thralls themselves. For as long as he had dwelled in Menegroth and in Nargothrond, he had never known hunger (memories of keen hunger in the wilderness slipped away from him now), but Niënor had known it from her earliest days, and might feel hunger’s bite even now. Who was he to live in comfort while they suffered? Who was he to strike out against the forces of Angband in the south of Beleriand, and make not even one attempt to rescue them from the suffering they endured in the north?
If Morwen and Niënor lived still, it seemed unlikely that the Easterlings would kill them now. It seemed unlikely that they would suddenly begin mistreating them worse now than they had before. And how much of his distress was manufactured by the voice of Glaurung, anyways? Finduilas, meanwhile, might meet her death very soon now. But the idea of leaving his mother and sister to suffer for any longer than they already had, that was like the knife twisting deeper and deeper into his ribs.
Túrin got unsteadily up to his feet, swallowing hard. He mopped his face with his hand, and readied himself to continue northwards. As he did, something caught his eye. In the gray wilderness, there was a faint glimmer of gold.
-0-0-0-
Nargothrond was not entirely without recourse, in case of a siege or assault. The city had been constructed by the Kasari, after all—those who dwelled under mountains understood the importance of having more than one door out of their cities. In particular, Nargothrond’s ‘back doors’ were a network of escape tunnels that snaked for miles under the Taur-en-Faroth and the Talath Dirnen, opening at many points on the surface. Of course, the alternate doors could not be so large that enemies would detect them; that would defeat the point of having them in the first place. What that meant, simply, was that if Nargothrond ever needed to be evacuated through those doors, they could not escape all at once.
Finduilas took some small satisfaction in the knowledge that most of her people (those who had not gone to fight on Tumhalad, anyways) had managed to escape before Glaurung’s host fell upon Nargothrond. They had had advance warning soon enough to manage that. When the dragon and the Orcs arrived, they found only a few hundred Edhil remaining. The final defense of Nargothrond had been pitiful, perhaps, and well-nigh all of the defenders slain, but the invaders did not find the great bounty of prisoners they had no doubt been hoping for.
It would have been wiser, Finduilas knew, to have left at the head of the escape parties. It would have been wiser to lead Nargothrond’s people to safety herself, instead of staying behind like this, stubbornly refusing to go until they had all gone. She had lingered beyond all hope of escape, had been captured, and had only a small consolation that the Orcs, judging from their thwarted rage, had not found the doors into the tunnels.
A clawed hand, thick with knotted muscle, buried itself in Finduilas’s hair, yanking her head back. She stared up into the milky eyes of the Orc-captain, her expression calm, even as he jerked her head further back.
“Where have your people gone?” he snarled, his lips curling back to reveal broken teeth.
“Is it not said that the Eldar can vanish from sight of their own will?” A hard, ringing laugh tore from her mouth. “They are here, all around us.”
Hope was not kind to Finduilas. It had not been since before the Nirnaeth, when she had watched Gwindor ride away and she had hoped that he would return to her soon, alive and unharmed. Hope had turned cruel and faithless, and yet Finduilas had still dared to taste of it. Her father was dead. That much had been reported to her by the messengers who had fled Tumhalad. Her father was dead, and could not help her. But there had been no report of either Túrin or Gwindor, no report of whether they were slain or lived still. Finduilas had hoped, dared to hope that one or both of them would return and aid her, and beyond that, it seemed too cruel for them to hurry back to Nargothrond and find her gone. Impractical as it might have been, she couldn’t bear the idea of either of them searching for her, without knowing where she had gone.
But hope had proven itself no friend to Finduilas, once again. Gwindor was nowhere to be found, and Túrin… No matter how she had cried out to him, no matter how she had screamed for him to hear her, his eyes had remained transfixed upon the dragon, and his ears deaf to her pleas.
Finduilas had been driven out from Nargothrond with around twenty other nissi—a few noble girls, her cupbearer, three household guards who had been stripped of their weapons before their hands had been bound, and others whom Finduilas did not know. The Orcs drove them on swiftly, spurring on anyone who lagged behind with a none-too-gentle nudge with the butts of their spears. Nargothrond had passed out of sight; if Finduilas gazed backwards, there was but a spire of black smoke to mark where her despoiled home had been.
For what was either the fourth or fifth time now, Finduilas tested the strength of the leather bonds that had been strapped around her wrists just after crossing the bridge. She grimaced as the edges of the bonds cut into her wrists, but strained against them, nonetheless. They didn’t give, not even slightly, and she bit her lip, and tried again. Still nothing. She cast a surreptitious glance at her fellow captives, the guards had been given bonds of rope rather than leather, and one of them, Melwen, was doing much the same as Finduilas was, and struggling furiously against the rope, but to no avail.
If she struggled against the leather long enough, surely it must give way. That was what Finduilas told herself as she tried again to loosen her bonds. It would give way, and her hands would be free—then, she would have a better chance of escape, and would take it. The Orcs were armed only with swords and spears, and were on foot; no arrows to shoot Finduilas down from a distance, and no mounts to carry the Orcs to her speedily. If she could just get past them quickly, it would be simple.
Asides from Melwen, the others made no attempt to break free of their bonds. They stared straight ahead, dull-eyed as they stumbled down the Orcs’ path. If Finduilas escaped, she would have to leave them behind. Don’t think about that. She sucked in a deep breath, and told herself not to dwell on it, just as she couldn’t dwell on the fact that her home since birth was now the domain of Orcs and the Father of Dragons, and couldn’t dwell on the fact that her father lied dead beneath the open sky. She couldn’t dwell on the fact that Túrin and Gwindor and many others whom she had called ‘friend’ were likely dead with them. She had to find a way back to what remained of her people. She could not pass through the gates of Angband.
“Gwindor?”
Finduilas slid her hand over Gwindor’s shoulder, only to draw it swiftly back when he flinched and started, as though he’d not heard her when she had come into the room. On second though, that likely was the case, after all. That was how it had been the last time she was called here.
Gwindor stared uncomprehendingly at her, but after a moment, his gray eyes cleared, and he smiled. That smile twitched and faltered, and evaporated hardly a moment later. “Finduilas…” His voice, at least, was still the same as Finduilas had remembered, but that made the sting but keener, when nothing else about him was. Gwindor stayed in his seat on the low couch in Guilin’s chambers, staring up at her as though she wasn’t quite real. Even after a month back desperately thin; there was a gaunt hunger in his face that clean clothes and all of his father and betrothed’s ministrations could not hide. “Why…”
The smile that Finduilas put up was no more convincing than Gwindor’s. She could see its reflection in his eyes and it was about as lifelike as one of the smiles seen on the statues in one of Nargothrond’s many courtyards. “Your father called for me. He said you seemed…” Guilin’s panicked face when Finduilas had opened her door for him rose to mind, and she frowned slightly. “…distressed.”
Gwindor looked away, his shoulders stiffening. “It’s nothing for you to concern yourself with,” he said shortly. After a moment, he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, and the muscles in his lined, scarred face snapped taut. “And it’s over now,” he added lamely.
Finduilas sat down beside him, silent. Just as silently, Gwindor reached out and grasped her hand in his own, rubbing his thumb over the silver band on her finger. His hand shook slightly. Finduilas clamped her mouth shut, and told herself that a month was not nearly enough time to overcome the ill effects of eighteen years’ imprisonment in Angband.
“Do you know?” he whispered, his shaking hand curling tighter around hers. “I don’t think I dreamed even once when I was there. The days and nights are all the same there, hidden under smoke. When I was awake, it was the clanging of the hammer on the anvil, the rumble of Thangorodrim, the crack of the whip. When I slept, it was all the same. It’s all so…” He stared helplessly at Finduilas, who stared helplessly back. “It’s so quiet here,” he choked out.
Finduilas knew well what awaited her in Angband.
The bonds would not break, they would not fray, they would not even give a little. Finduilas had not thought that she possessed so little strength in her limbs, but her muscles were no equal to leather, it seemed. I should have left while there was still time, she berated herself. What sort of ruler am I if I concern myself more with my own wants than with the welfare of my people? They weren’t coming, anyways. Gwindor and Túrin, if either of them were still alive, could not have known which way the Orcs had taken her, and how likely was it that they lived still, anyways? Gwindor had never returned from Tumhalad, and it was rare indeed that Glaurung allowed foes to escape from him.
Finduilas looked back towards Nargothrond—the last time, she told herself. The wind whipped cold and biting across the plains, and it was perhaps for that reason that the plume of smoke rising from the city had already thinned, becoming fainter to the eye. Come the morning, it might be gone, if Glaurung did not care to set a fresh blaze. There would be nothing to mark where Nargothrond had been.
With each step further from the coast, the possibility of reaching a safe haven grew dimmer. The realms of northern Beleriand were all destroyed, save for Turgon’s hidden city, and Finduilas had no confidence in her ability to find it. Doriath was open to her, but not to the better part of her people, and Finduilas knew that Thingol’s heart would not soften enough to allow the Noldor of Nargothrond to dwell in his kingdom, just because she asked. The only safe place now was the Bay of Balar, and the isle near to it. But between here and there were innumerable Orcs and other fell creatures of Morgoth, and Finduilas knew that the escape tunnels opened at various points on the plains, but she knew not where to look for the doors.
A flash of movement in the distance caught Finduilas’s eye, and she frowned. Someone was running towards them, tearing across the hills. Finduilas’s eyes showed her a distorted face, whose mouth bared sharp, oversized teeth. One of the Orcs, then, but why? Did they bear a message from Glaurung or the Orc-captain? Were they to be conducted back to Nargothrond, and if so, to what purpose? Were they to be killed here instead?
Finduilas would not have to wait long to receive her answer; the Orc ran as though the very sting of death threatened to prick them if they stopped. But suddenly, they drew their sword, and Finduilas’s heart seized in her chest.
The sword’s blade was black.
Túrin had come, after all.
In the years before Túrin came to Nargothrond, Finduilas had heard many rumors of a warrior with a helmet whose visage was so terrifying that his enemies would often flee from him rather than do battle. Finduilas could remember her father sending word to this warrior, instructing him not to engage any Orcs within Nargothrond’s borders. She had guessed the warrior in question to be Túrin when she first saw the Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin, and she saw now that the reputation of the helmet and the warrior who bore it to be in no way exaggerated.
At the very moment that Gurthang cut into its first victim, fully half the Orcs fled the sight of the Dragon-helm. Melwen dove at the fallen Orc, taking a knife from his belt and using it to cut through the rope binding her hands. While Melwen freed the other two guards, and the three of them dove into the fray, Finduilas and the rest of the captives backed away from the fight. Many of the captives who still had their hands bound huddled close together, averting their gaze from the battle. Finduilas stood apart from them, her eyes transfixed upon Túrin.
She had never seen him fight. Finduilas had never been to war, had never so much as held a sword, let alone used one to kill. When someone was called valiant and mighty in battle, Finduilas understood it intellectually, but not viscerally. Here, now, she saw Túrin cut through the Orcs that remained as though they were made of water. The dead grass was splattered with their blood, and their bodies collapsed on the hard earth like stone statues cast over by careless children. Finduilas bit her lip. It was amazing to behold, but terrible as well.
He was alive. Finduilas had not thought that, once snared, Glaurung would allow Túrin to leave Nargothrond alive. He would be incinerated in dragon-fire, or made sport for the Orcs. Finduilas could scarcely imagine how he had gotten away, but it didn’t matter. He had come for her, after all. That was enough.
The battle was over soon enough. Túrin and the three guards made short work of the Orcs who hadn’t fled in the face of the Dragon-helm. When the last Orc collapsed to the ground, a peculiar silence fell over the survivors. Melwen and her fellow guards set about freeing the hands of those who were still bound, saying not a word as they did so. The ones they freed nodded or smiled gratefully, and were similarly silent.
Túrin and Finduilas stared at each other, the former’s eyes shining almost wildly under his helmet, and the latter’s heart too full to let her speak. Finally, Túrin closed the space between them, his gait slightly unsteady, though Finduilas could discern no sign of injury. He pulled his helmet from his head and let it fall to the ground with a clatter, making the Edhel nearest to them jump. He drew a small knife from his belt. “I’ll cut the straps off of your wrists,” he muttered, not meeting her gaze.
Finduilas smiled weakly, and held her bound hands out to him. “Thank you.”
The bonds that she’d not been able even to loosen split like butter under Túrin’s knife. Finduilas rubbed her chafed wrists, wincing slightly to touch her raw skin. However, the pain was worth it, she supposed, if it meant she would not die today. (She didn’t allow herself the time to think that it would have been better if her father was still alive as well. There would be time for that later.)
Túrin reached out as if to touch her shoulder, but stopped, and after a long moment let his hand fall limp at his side. Despite everything, Finduilas felt a spike of frustration rear inside of her. He never touched her. She had always been something remote to him, something too important to be touched. But it didn’t matter now. There were more important things to worry about.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not.” In that, Finduilas was luckier than most. “How… did you find us?”
At that, something like a laugh, such a soft sound, slipped from Túrin’s mouth. “Your dress.”
“Ah.” Finduilas glanced down at the gold fabric of her surcoat and her gown underneath, and almost felt like laughing herself. “I see.”
Finduilas felt several pairs of eyes on her back, and she turned to face the Edhil who had been taken from Nargothrond with her, drawing up to her full height. Any attempt at royal dignity was marred by her muddied skirt and disheveled hair, but she said to them, in a clear, even voice, “Our first priority should be finding shelter. Do any of you know if one of the evacuation tunnels opens nearby?”
One of the nissi whom Finduilas didn’t know, a tall nís with dark hair and eyes, stepped forward and nodded. “There should be a door a few miles south of here.”
“Good. Lead us there.”
The next hour was passed in tense silence, everyone watching the horizon for any sign of Orcs. Finduilas and the nís acting as their guide were at the head of the party, Túrin close behind, the tip of his sword dragging the ground. The three guards took up positions at each side of the group, and at the rear, their eyes keen and their faces grim. This bid for escape could so easily be thwarted by even a small party of Orcs, and if they accidentally gave away one of the entrances to the tunnels…
At length, the nís guiding them stopped at a boulder that towered even over Túrin. She circled round it, running her hand over the mossy rock. Finally, she found what it was she was looking for and paused, murmuring a few words to the stone.
Finduilas watched, amazed, as the seemingly seamless rock slid aside to reveal a passageway down into the tunnels. The passageway was not completely dark—besides from the daylight pouring into it, Finduilas spied several pinpricks of light flickering down in the gloom. There were Fëanorian lamps placed at intervals in the tunnels, but their blue light did not flicker as this light did. If the light was torchlight, as Finduilas suspected it was, that was a good sign—there were Nargothrond Edhil close enough nearby for the torches to be light, and not yet burned down.
“Everyone, please go inside, and go down the steps one at a time,” their guide instructed them. “I will close the door once everyone is inside.”
“Impressive,” Finduilas heard Túrin murmur as they discerned the narrow staircase. His voice held a note she had often heard there before, that of an attempt to restrain surprise.
“Indeed,” Finduilas agreed, nodding even though she doubted he could see her doing so. At the same time, she wished she had asked Finrod or Orodreth (who would have been apprised of such things upon becoming king) more about what had gone into the tunnels’ construction. This would have been useful for her to know beforehand.
The tunnels were not that far underground, here; Finduilas counted thirty steps in total before reaching the bottom of the staircase into them. Hopefully there was enough earth between them and the surface that any Orc passing by overhead wouldn’t be able to hear them. Finduilas looked around her, brow furrowed.
As a child, she had played in the mouths of the tunnels, where they opened on Nargothrond; many had done the same as her. There the tunnels were cool but not unpleasantly so, amply lit by the Fëanorian lamps, and the walls were engraved with carvings of deer browsing in forest and vale, of ships on the open sea, the Ainur singing the world into being, and many other things beside. Finduilas hadn’t expected this particular stretch of the tunnels to resemble what she remembered from her childhood, not so far from Nargothrond, but the differences were stark, still.
The walls and ceilings were of the same rough stone as they were at their mouths in Nargothrond, but the only markings Finduilas saw were ones directly across from the staircase, that read ‘southwest’ and ‘northeast’, depending on what direction a traveler took. The Fëanorian lamps were fewer here, set so far apart that each one was just a dim glimmer of blue light in the distance. Torches had been lit nearby; Finduilas saw a succession of flickering orange lights to the southwest. At least I have a good idea of which way to go.
When she started down the southwest path, no one gainsaid her, not even Túrin, who when decisions were made usually at least had an opinion ready to air. They followed after her in silence, and for a long time, the only sounds that came to Finduilas’s ears were the dull thud of footsteps on the hard-packed earth, the occasional grunt when someone stubbed their toe against a rock, and the whistling of Túrin’s labored breathing just behind her.
How many will we find here? Finduilas wondered. She had commanded those who’d not gone to battle to travel directly to Balar, when word had first come of what transpired on Tumhalad. If that command had been disobeyed by some, Finduilas was willing to forgive it—those who waited, or who went in entirely the wrong directly, were acting from the same motivations that had led her to stay in Nargothrond, even as the enemy drew ever nearer.
But how many were still down here? The tunnels didn’t stretch all the way to Balar; anyone traveling to the coast would have to leave the shelter of the tunnels and go aboveground eventually. How many Edhil were still somewhere in the tunnels? The tunnels were large, wide enough that ten adults could comfortably stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Finduilas could see some of the less enterprising of her people preferring to hide here until things had quieted down outside, rather than head directly for Balar.
Eventually, Finduilas began to hear voices. The sound was faint at first, like the current of a river heard from far off in the distance. As she drew closer, that faint noise grew louder and louder, until it was a cacophony of panic and relief, of shouts and crying.
Almost as soon as Finduilas began to be able to distinguish individual voices, she was able to discern the physical forms of the speakers in the gloom. As she drew nearer, Finduilas saw that this was no small group of Edhil, their voices magnified by the tunnel walls. Close to one hundred Edhil were gathered in the tunnel, all in varying states of distress. Finduilas searched the faces in the crowd, hoping against hope to see Gwindor there, or at the least, someone that she knew.
That attempt was soon foiled when the first Edhel from the other group recognized her in the shadows. “Princess!” Soon, Finduilas found herself fairly swarmed by Edhil who pushed and jostled at one another to get closer to her. She found herself patting people’s shoulders and murmuring ‘Thank you’ and ‘I’m well enough’ and ‘I’m sorry’ and many other things that would escape her later.
“Lady Finduilas.”
A voice, far calmer than the rest, sounded in Finduilas’s ear. She turned, and a smile, weak as it might have been, sprang to her lips when she saw the one the voice belonged to. Aderthon, one of her father’s captains, stood at her shoulder. He looked slightly burnt, but otherwise none the worse for wear. “Captain,” she said warmly. “I am happy to see you alive.”
Aderthon nodded briefly. “As am I to see you well, your Highness.” He grimaced something dark flashing in his eyes. “Though it is a pity the same cannot be said for more.”
“I see.” Finduilas couldn’t quite bring herself to ask after Gwindor, though she longed more than ever to know. The trouble was that she suspected she already knew the answer. “Have you come upon any other survivors of the battle here in the tunnels?”
“No, your Highness, none. Well, except…” Aderthon’s eyes strayed past Finduilas. His grim, smoke-stained face broke in a grin. He strode past Finduilas and clapped Túrin on the shoulder. “Well, I should have known dragon fire wouldn’t be enough to kill you.”
Túrin smiled briefly back at Aderthon. “If they want to kill me, they’ll have to send something made of sterner stuff than a dragon. I don’t think I’m fated to die quite so prosaically.”
“They’ll have to send a Balrog, then. That’s suitably dramatic for you.”
Túrin let out a barking laugh. “That would be a sight to see.”
The sound of Túrin’s voice mercifully took some of the attention off of Finduilas, as several of the Edhil gathered around her moved towards him instead. Most showed the same relief and happiness they had exhibited when approaching Finduilas. However, the mood was not universally welcoming.
“You!” a voice cried out in the crowd. “If not for your bridge, we would still have a home!”
“The Mormegil has brought ruin upon us all with his evil counsels!” another shouted. “Sone of Ill-Fate, indeed!”
A few more muttered likewise, though at the very least, most of the Edhil seemed unmoved by such arguments. Túrin, however, seemed not to notice that it was only a few out of more than a hundred who felt that way. All the color drained from his face, the muscles in his jaw going taut.
Unable to see those who had shouted, Finduilas glared at those who had muttered. “Fine time to be casting blame,” she snapped, “when none of us are out of danger yet. And I don’t—“ She raised her voice enough for all to hear “—remember too many protesting the construction of that bridge, when it was first proposed.”
Those who had muttered had the grace to look abashed. Those who shouted, Finduilas didn’t know. From their silence, she could guess.
Finduilas had another concern, though. She turned her attention back to Túrin, who stared cagily at the crowd, as though one or more might leap forward and attack him at any moment. “May I have a word with you?” she asked him quietly, gesturing towards the deserted stretch of the tunnel they had come from.
Túrin straightened and nodded, trying visibly to reassemble his face into something suitably composed, though he stopped short at ‘stiff.’ “Of course.”
She led him back a-ways from the crowd, far enough that if they spoke quietly, no one would be able to hear them. Once Finduilas stopped, and turned back to him, Túrin’s attempt at composure promptly shattered. He ran his hands through his hair and groaned. “Are you going to berate me over that blasted bridge as well?” he asked, a peculiar mixture of misery and defiance in his voice. “You have every right to; as I recall, you did not wish it built.”
How easily affected he is by the ill-will of others. “I meant what I said,” Finduilas told him gently. “Nothing is accomplished by casting blame; if anything, it only distracts from the task at hand.” She sighed. “Besides, once they know where we were, it was only a matter of time. With the bridge, they drove us out in a day. Without it, they would have starved us out over weeks or even months, and kept too close a watch on the Talath Dirnen for any of us to have escaped through the tunnels.”
Túrin nodded jerkily. “Perhaps.” He looked at Finduilas then, his eyes wide, opening his mouth and shutting it again. “Finduilas… Gwindor…”
“…Is dead,” Finduilas supplied flatly.
He nodded mutely.
Finduilas shut her eyes, and turned away.
The news seemed almost anticlimactic, in more ways than one. She’d told herself over and over that he was dead, and even if that was primarily to avoid the snares of false hope, finally learning that Gwindor was indeed dead wasn’t quite so great a shock as it should have been. Finduilas had spent the better part of eighteen years believing him dead. Now that she knew him to be dead, it seemed her sorrow had burned itself out, and left numbness in its place.
But it really was anticlimactic, wasn’t it? Gwindor had survived nigh to twenty years’ imprisonment in Angband, had managed to escape and return to Nargothrond, only to die now. Finduilas had wished better for him, but then, she imagined that to him, any happy future would have involved the two of them marrying, and not involved her heart turning to another.
“Was he in great pain?” The question was designed to hurt, and yet Finduilas found herself asking it anyways.
Túrin hesitated for a moment, before shaking his head. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t think he was.”
Finduilas paused only a moment to wonder if he was lying, before deciding that it didn’t matter much. Whether or not Gwindor had been in pain, he wasn’t anymore. There were other things she needed to concern herself with. “We will make for Balar; that’s the safest place for us now. Hopefully the Orcs haven’t found the—“
“Finduilas.” Túrin’s voice cracked on her name. His face twisted, breath whistling through gritted teeth. “I cannot stay.”
“What?” She stared incredulously at him. “If this is about what those Edhil said, you shouldn’t take it to heart. They only spoke thusly because they were in pain, and wanted someone to blame. If you had not been close at hand, they might well have turned on me instead of you.”
“That’s not why.”
“Then what is it?”
“My… My mother and sister are shut up in Dor-lómin,” Túrin explained with visible difficulty. “I must go to them, and rescue them, if I can.”
Finduilas frowned deeply. Túrin had spoken of his family to her in bits and pieces, relaying anecdotes and memories, but never where they had lived. Once she knew for certain who he was, she’d known that he must have been born in Dor-lómin before removing to Doriath, but it was still a little startling to hear him speak of it aloud. This isn’t like him. Not once in five years do I hear him speak of any desire to liberate his family—I had supposed them all dead, from how he spoke of them. And now, the desire comes hot upon him so suddenly. Suspicious pricked at the corners of Finduilas’s mind. “Who told you of this?”
Túrin squared his jaw and said nothing.
Finduilas took a step forward and rested her hand upon his arm. “Who told you of this?”
“…Glaurung taunted me with it when I spoke with him” Túrin explained slowly, crossing his arms around his chest, his shoulders stiff.
“But the dragon speaks only to deceive!” Finduilas protested. “You’ve not been in contact with your family for as long as you’ve lived in Nargothrond; you don’t even know if they’re still in Dor-lómin at all. Why would he tell you that except to lure you into some kind of trap?”
“I know this!” Túrin exclaimed, his nostrils flaring. “Not for a moment do I think Glaurung said this to me out of compassion for them!”
“Then why do this? And with winter approaching as well!”
Túrin swallowed hard, his eyes over-bright. Finduilas didn’t think she had ever seen such a look of panic on his face as she saw there now. She’d never known him to panic, no matter how bad a situation he had gotten into. Shout, maybe, or alternately grow cold and silent, but though he might be impulsive, he wasn’t prone to panicking. Was this the dragon’s work as well? “I have to do this,” he said thickly.
Finduilas stared up into his face, aghast. She could already guess that, one way or another, Túrin would not find what he sought in Dor-lómin. She suspected that Túrin knew that, too, so there would be no use appealing to him to stay using that angle.
She would not use force to restrain him. After the short work Túrin had made of the Orcs aboveground, Finduilas was uncertain that any of her rattled, desperate people down here could constrain him for long. Finduilas was quite certain, though, that if she attempted to keep Túrin with the group that way, it would cost her every ounce of respect and regard he had for her. That was a price she could not pay, not ever.
Then what was she to say, to keep him from going off into the Orc-infested wilderness alone? What was she to say, to keep him at her side? Tell him she loved him? Finduilas could have laughed at the thought, if the idea didn’t make her stomach twist itself into knots. She had held back out of respect for Gwindor. It didn’t matter that she was no longer in love with him, as she had been; she had no desire to add to his suffering, nor to the humiliation he felt at being pushed aside in the king’s counsel in favor of Túrin. Well, Gwindor was not even cold in his grave, and Finduilas found her guilt over causing him pain lessened not even slightly.
On top of all that, Finduilas had her people to think about. She had lingered in Nargothrond too long simply out of some hope of seeing Túrin or Gwindor again, and had nearly paid for it with her freedom, or even her life. Finduilas was supposed to be a leader to her people, and with her father dead, that was more true now than it had ever been before. She could not abandon them, not for one Adan, and she could not devote all her energy to keeping him with her when she had them to think about.
“Túrin…”
He flinched and pulled his cloak closer about him. “Don’t call me by that name,” Túrin muttered, his gaze traveling to the crowd behind them. “I’d sooner you called me ‘Thurin’ than that.”
Finduilas smiled softly at him. “But that’s not your name,” she replied, echoing what he had said when she first gave him that name. “And the name your parents gave you isn’t something you can cast on and off like a cloak.” She sighed heavily. “If you wish to go to Dor-lómin, I will not stop you. …Tell me, what are your mother and sister’s names?”
Túrin tilted his head slightly. “My mother’s name is Morwen, and my sister’s, Niënor. Why?”
“I may make some inquiries of my own. Now, I believe I saw a passage up to the surface near the rest of the party. It would be better to use that one than go all the way back to the one we used to get down here.”
Finduilas kept her gaze straight in front of her as she led Túrin back to the rest of the group, and to the exit point back to the surface. She would have liked to have kept her emotions off of her face, but judging from the way the Edhil in her path drew back and looked away, she doubted she had managed it.
She followed Túrin to the top of the steps, silent, her heart pounding. He pushed the door open, gray light flooding into passageway. Just as he was about to leave, Finduilas found her voice enough to call, “Túrin? Wait a moment.”
He looked back at her from the doorway, searching her face with his brow knit. “What is it?” Túrin asked quietly.
Finduilas drew a deep breath. “I… I’m not sure how long your errand will take you. Nor what you will find. But… when you are done…” She paused, swallowing. It shouldn’t be so difficult to ask. It’s a simple thing, and he’s already sworn his loyalty to Nargothrond once. “…When you are done, will you come back to me?”
Túrin paused, his hand braced on the threshold of the door. But then, he nodded, and smiled, like clouds passing from the sun on a gray winter day. “If there is any way I can return to you, I will.”
As she pulled the door shut behind him, Finduilas rested her hand on the stone, and wondered with a heavy heart when that might be.