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They have put him into a song. Maglor’s work, thinks Fingon, but with a touch to the songcraft that is Finrod’s also: the lilting slant at the end of each line, the sharp emphatic sibilance, the carefully-constructed chiasmus. Easier to think of it so, in dispassionate technical terms, nod his head in appreciation of his cousins’ poetry and smile benevolently at the minstrel as he sings. It is only a song, after all. No matter that he does not recognise himself in the gilded mirror they have held up to him: it is only a song.
The youth Fingon remembers in Aman always sang his own compositions, but Maglor too is changed in this new world, no longer seems very keen to perform. Fingon finds him, as expected, in Maedhros’ tent, where he has made his way as hastily as possible — barely pausing to nod politely at the nervous, beaming singer. “An interesting welcome you have prepared for me today,” he says. He keeps his voice low: Maedhros is sleeping, for a change.
Maglor is preparing a new salve, his long slender fingers smeared with sticky green paste. The sharp herbal tang of it pierces Fingon’s senses, still a little dulled after his long years on the lifeless Ice, or else by the acrid smoke of the mountain. “You sound displeased,” he observes, without looking up.
“I am not a story, Makalaurë,” says Fingon. “Not a character for you to mould and shape into rhyming couplets as you will.” He gestures sharply with his chin to Maedhros’ unconscious form. “Neither is he.”
But Maglor’s eyes, when he too glances over at his brother, are sad. “I made a lament for him, while he was gone,” he murmurs. “It was very lovely.”
“That is not the only lament you have made these past years, I am told,” says Fingon.
Maglor looks at him, thoughtful. “You might understand better, should you hear the Noldolantë performed,” he says.
Fingon scoffs.
“It was never just yours, Findekáno,” Maglor murmurs. “The story, the sorrow, the guilt. You are a prince of the Noldor, and must pay the price for that.”
“I have paid enough,” says Fingon. He looks at Maedhros again. “Your brother, too.”
Maglor smiles, and bends over Maedhros when he stirs and murmurs something in his sleep, and says nothing.
He does not share these thoughts with Maedhros for some time: of course at first Maedhros is barely coherent enough to hear them, and even after his recovery has begun to come on more swiftly Fingon thinks it selfish to unburden himself to him, cannot bear the thought of Maedhros exerting himself to soothe Fingon’s petty bitterness. But at the feast they hold to mark the abdication — another shock that, and a sign Fingon still does not know Maedhros’ heart as closely as he thought — the song of the rescue on Thangorodrim is sung again: of Fingon bold and fearless on the Eagle’s back, and his song echoing off the craggy mountain-top, and the swift clean strike that severed Maedhros’ chains.
“But that is not how it was,” Fingon cannot help but say, later. He and Maedhros walk by the lake by the light of the new Moon, hand in hand at last. Maedhros’s skin gleams like ivory, his hair like strands of woven copper, as though it was in truth one of Nerdanel’s statues Fingon bore back from Thangorodrim, no living elf-prince but the marble ideal of one. “You know, Russo. You ought to tell your brother not to make it — lovely. It was not lovely.”
“My brother knew what he was doing when he made the song, Finno,” Maedhros says, after a moment’s quiet thought. His eyes are bright and sharp. They looked so when the song was performed, too: no trace of discomfort at having so painful a moment so publicly relived, only a cool swift assessment of how the hall took to it. “I will not interfere with his craft.”
“How pretty he made it all seem!” Fingon says, still angry. “How very logical also: you begged me to slay you, and so I bent my bow to do it, for love of you, and then Thorondor came just in time to intercept my arrow — do you not gasp, do you not hold your breath to hear it, is it not thrilling to you?”
“I think,” says Maedhros, slowly, “you were very angry, when you bent your bow. Perhaps you would have done it — or perhaps mercy would not have won out after all, and you would have failed to let your arrow fly.”
“Perhaps I would have,” says Fingon. “I did not slay you as you asked the second time, either — I do not know if you recall it, except now I suppose your brother has put it all into a pretty rhyme for you to sing should it slip your mind—”
“Would it irk you less,” Maedhros asks, his eyes glinting with infuriating amusement, “if it did not rhyme?”
“Do you like being a spectacle?” Fingon demands.
Maedhros laughs. “I have been a trophy long enough already, Finno. Being yours is rather nicer than being Morgoth’s.”
“You ought not to say that,” Fingon says dully, all his anger draining away at once. It is so easy to become angry with Maedhros, and so hard to maintain it. “That is not — it is not why I came. You are no trophy, no pawn in our fathers’ endless politics.”
“It was not why you came,” Maedhros agrees, taking his hand and squeezing it gently, “but that is precisely why your coming was such a stroke of genius, beloved. The Noldor would be at war this very moment were it not for you: how convenient then that we might claim with honesty that you never thought of that, that you came through the very gates of hell for me solely because you loved me, that you could not bring yourself to slay me only because you did not wish me to be dead! Heroes like you are a rare thing: then do not fault Káno for making much of it. Our people have few enough gods these days — and we all of us need someone to worship.”
“You make me sound a fool,” says Fingon, “a lovesick idiot who would have thrown away his life for the cousin he thought had betrayed him. That is not why I came, either.”
“Why did you come, Finno?” asks Maedhros. Then he smiles, and before Fingon can answer adds, “But you see it matters little. What matters is the story that comes of it: a story where the Valar have not entirely forsaken us, and the King of Eagles himself will bless a Kinslayer, and make him a hero of fable. I am sorry, Finno. But such is the role you have been given: and now you must play it.”
“What role is yours, then?” Fingon asks. “Not a King, after all.”
But Maedhros looks at him, his grey eyes suddenly dark with feeling, and then raises Fingon’s hand to his lips and kisses it with such reverence that Fingon does not think he wants an answer, suddenly.
Vinyamar is a beautiful city, all high-wrought stone and glittering ornamental canals through which, if you are lucky enough and patient enough, the glint of gold from darting fish might be sighted. Fingon is impressed by how swiftly Turgon has made his little corner of Beleriand so lovely, but not truly surprised, for his brother’s cool efficiency has only been sharpened by the lean years on the Ice. But he marvels all the same at how quickly the walls of the palace have been decorated by frescoes and mosaics, and sculptures of gold and bronze placed along every city walkway.
“Itarillë likes it,” Turgon will say, distant, when asked about a particular decoration; or else, “Írissë insisted on that one.” He seems to take little pleasure in his lovely city himself, regards all the industry with sombre dispassion, and shrugs when Fingon makes some attempt to praise it.
Fingon misses his brother: and knows, too, that he can never again be what Turgon wants of him.
He has not come to quarrel. Still he stops short when he catches sight of one of the mosaics in the town square — still his voice comes out sharper than he means it to when he says, “What is this?”
Turgon looks at him slowly. “You know what it is, Finno.”
“I would not think you would stand for an image of one of the sons of Fëanor in your city,” says Fingon.
“That is not an image of a son of Fëanor,” Turgon counters, flicking his hand to the single gleam of bright red that is Maedhros on the mountain. (It was not like that. They like, in paintings and the like, to identify the eldest and youngest sons of Fëanor by the ruddy brilliance of their hair; but those decades on the mountain had rendered Maedhros’ lovely mane black and matted with filth, and it took long months of care before they had regained their coppery lustre again.) “It is an image of you, o hero of the Noldor, and your great act of courage.”
Take it down, Fingon wishes to cry out, tear down every little tile of coloured stone and put up something else in its place — a statue of Manwë the Lord of Breath or of great Ulmo whom you have always loved, only do not place me on a pedestal beside them— But he will not raise his voice. He will not scream: that is not befitting of a hero-prince, after all.
“You need not make it so,” he says, and then pauses, trying to put his thoughts together. In Aman he so often felt slow and fumbling beside his quicker-tongued, quicker-witted cousins, caught between Maedhros’ effortless rhetoric and Finrod’s charm and Maglor’s silvered poetry; liked little to while away his days in his grandfather’s court, and remind the world again and again that Nolofinwë’s heir was no glibly-spoken politician. But in Middle-earth, he has discovered, there is more room for indulgence. No-one expects a hero to be articulate, too. “So permanent. Would not a fresco have sufficed — something that could be painted over should the mood of our people change?”
Turgon shrugs, gone distant again in a moment. “There is nothing truly permanent, Finno,” he says, with that melancholy look in his eyes that Fingon thinks, at the time, means he is remembering Elenwë. It is only when his brother and sister disappear, and lovely Vinyamar is left hollow and empty, a ghost-city, that he thinks — too late — to suspect that Turgon was hiding something from him.
After that blow there is no question of complaint: Fingolfin and his heir cannot be seen to be in anything less than perfect unity, Fingon his father’s able deputy, beloved of their people. He sits for royal portraits dressed in dark blue robes, and braids his hair with silver, and makes sure to keep smiling.
“You ought to marry,” Maedhros tells him when Fingon at last visits Himring, some three years after Turgon vanished with a third of their host. “It would take a weight off your father’s mind, to know the succession is secured.”
“What clever schemes you think up!” Fingon says. They are lying tangled together in the sheets of Maedhros’ great four-poster — the only concession to luxury in his bare and austere apartments, for Fingon is sure he would sleep curled up on the cold stone floor had Fingon not put his foot down on his very first visit. He runs a hand now down Maedhros’ side, letting it come to rest on his naked hip and listening to the way Maedhros’ breath catches. “But I do not think you selfless enough to agree to it, in truth.”
“Perhaps not,” Maedhros murmurs. He turns his head to press a kiss to Fingon’s collarbone. Fingon likes to see him so, languid and affectionate, his long white limbs loose and his eyes half-lidded. “All the same it would be best for the Noldor to see you wed — everyone likes a fairy-story.”
“I would wed if only—” Fingon begins.
“And wed to one other than your Kinslaying cousin!” Maedhros says, amused. But there is no heat in his words. “No, I would be selfish about it, you are right. I’d ride into the middle of your wedding-feast on a great white charger and abduct you before everyone, and bring you away to snow-bound Himring to keep you for my own.”
It is foolish lover’s-talk, nothing more. Maedhros, who can so little abide a chain, would never think to restrain another. Still the pulse of longing that runs through Fingon surprises him. “I would not mind that,” he says quietly.
Maedhros winds his long lean body around Fingon, warming them both with the blaze of him. Fingon wonders sometimes, in fanciful moments, whether a Balrog’s whip can possibly burn fiercer.
“They need you,” Maedhros murmurs, his breath soft and hot on Fingon’s neck. “I cannot claim you for my own, I fear.”
Fingon thinks he means it as reassurance — he must, he who so little wants to be possessed. How can Fingon say, then, But I would like to be only yours?
Maedhros must read some of the sentiment in his eyes even so, for he says, “It need not be forever, Finno. I know you are tired: I know how much your father asks of you. But once the war is won for good—”
“Do not bring my father into it,” Fingon says, sharply. “He does not ask any more of me than what I am willing to give.”
“I make no criticism of your father,” Maedhros says hastily; “do not mistake me, beloved. It is only that I know a little of what a lonely and thankless task has befallen you. I too have been the crown prince of the Noldor.”
“That depends a great deal on the High King one serves under,” says Fingon, still annoyed. “My father treats me with every honour.”
“As he should!” says Maedhros, yielding. He always yields. “Talk to me of other things, then. You say your father has given up the search? That seems wise to me, for if in three years no trace of them has been found than it is unlikely one will turn up now. What will be done about Nevrast? I do not like the thought of leaving so prime a position on the coast unguarded. Círdan watches over the Falas: the Noldor too ought to have a port looking West over the Sundering Seas.”
“I do not know,” says Fingon, irritated; he does not like to be irritated by Maedhros, but he cannot understand why he must always poke so. “Our numbers are rather depleted of late, you may have noticed. We have not the people enough to spare from Hithlum to send west. And Morgoth is unlikely to attack by sea, anyway; he has always feared Ulmo’s domain. Might not you think now of some pleasanter pillow-talk?”
Maedhros shrugs. “Perhaps a wife would do so, should you take one.”
“But I do not want a wife,” says Fingon. He sits up and twines a hand loosely in Maedhros’ unbound hair, admiring the way it glints copper-gold in the firelight. They do not paint Maedhros so, all soft white curves and starry grey eyes and rosy flushed lips: what few depictions of him adorn the walls of Himring show him armoured, a scarlet plume in his helm the only concession to colour. Strange to think that so much of Maedhros exists only to Fingon, that no-one else knows of the bewitching gleam of his lashes and the wet heat of his mouth and the way he shudders when Fingon takes him in hand—
“A convincing argument, certainly,” Maedhros breathes, throwing his head back to expose more of his white neck to Fingon’s lips; and they speak no more of marriage, which is an oath all of its own.
By the time the dragon appears it is all second nature. “My prince!” cries one of Fingolfin’s guards, riding at high speed into the courtyard of Fingon’s modest little dwelling in his own holding of Dor-lómin. “There is trouble—”
“Orcs?” Fingon demands, already halfway through buckling on his armour. “How did they break through the Leaguer?”
“Not orcs, lord,” pants the guard, flushed and dishevelled. He must have ridden from Barad Eithel without stopping even to water his mount. “The Enemy has sent forth a great Worm — those who look into its eyes faint dead away at once or else stand spellbound — its breath is poison to plants and animals alike and its scales are harder than iron—”
“Nonsense!” Fingon says, cheerfully brisk. “The Enemy has not the inventiveness for such a beast. More likely it is simply some overgrown Balrog or the like — we will drive it back easily enough. Does my father send orders?”
“You are summoned at once to Barad Eithel,” says the guard, “where a war-council is being assembled.”
Privately Fingon thinks this must be an exaggeration, but when he arrives at Barad Eithel that evening it is quite the opposite: his father’s council-room is plastered all over with maps tracking the beast’s progress across Ard-galen, and with careful lists of those who have been displaced from their homesteads and will require reimbursement. The gratitude in Fingolfin’s eyes, when he looks up to find his first and last son standing in the doorway, is a painful, private thing; the High King ought not to look at his heir so, as though he is surprised to see his summons answered.
Fingon puts on his sunniest smile. “I hear there is some little trouble in Ard-galen,” he says. “With your leave, lord, I shall take a party of swift archers, and drive this beast back to the pit whence it came.”
His father does not like to commit too rashly to any course of action — afraid, thinks Fingon sometimes, of echoing dead Fëanor too closely — but he sees the relieved gleams in the other councillors’ eyes immediately, and knows before the debate is even commenced what its conclusion will be. Of course Fingon the Valiant will save the Noldor once again! That is what he is good at, after all.
It is of no difficulty then to gather together a company of archers to ride against the drake: many of them were of his party long ago during the passage over the Grinding Ice, and recall yet those cold days in the dark where Fingon’s advance scouts saved the host of the Noldor from more than one half-formed beast come out of the shadows at the edge of the world. By comparison this new adventure will only be a little thing, they all agree, a flirtation with peril for nostalgia’s sake.
This is how they tell the story, after. They sing of the brightness of Fingon’s smile and the ring of his laugh fiercer than the dragon’s baleful snarl; they paint his hands sure and swift and steady on his bow, and the tremors in his fingers are forgotten. They highlight all the gleams of gold in his dark braids, and dull the hypnotic shine of the fire-drake’s eyes to a mundane brownish-amber — but it was not so, in truth.
How then to explain that even this soft half-formed dragon was the most terrifying creature Fingon had ever seen, that no horror of the Helcaraxë could ever come close to what Morgoth’s wicked mind dreams up? How to say, He looked into my eyes and knew me better than anyone ever has, knew me for a charlatan and a fraud, knew all my so-called heroics for blind luck? He does not know if his archers felt as cold all over as he did: he does know that many of them sat frozen in the saddle for five minutes or more, and that it was only when the dragon released them all from its spell that he managed to cry out hoarsely for them to shoot.
He tries to explain it all to Maedhros, when next the Lord of Himring comes to Barad Eithel to congratulate the crown prince on his latest victory. But after all his tongue has never been called silver, and he does not know how he might fully convey the awfulness of the beast. But he has promised — he has promised himself to be honest with Maedhros always, and so he must try.
Maedhros listens, and holds Fingon while he shivers, and then says carefully, “But you did drive the drake away, Finno. It would have issued against your father, or perhaps the highlands of Ladros, had you not ridden against it.”
“No — no — you do not understand,” Fingon croaks. “It did not leave because of us — it looked at us amused, as though we were merely little playthings in some game greater than we might ever comprehend — nothing we did could have frightened it away.”
“All the same it cannot have much liked the sensation of arrows in its flesh,” Maedhros says sensibly. “So it was driven away — and whether by fear or more practical considerations matters little.”
“You are not listening,” says Fingon, growing more distressed as he speaks; “you do not grasp what I say.”
“If you are trying to tell me that we cannot defeat this creature—” Maedhros begins.
But of course there is no use in telling Maedhros, who has been brought in chains before Morgoth himself, about hopelessness. No use in explaining how it feels to be the smallest thing in the whole world.
Fingon pastes on a smile. “That is not what I said,” he says, and kisses Maedhros’ soft sweet mouth until he smiles, too. “Of course we can defeat him! Have we not always put paid to Morgoth in open war? Does not my father always say that only by treachery shall the Leaguer ever break? No, this mean little beastling was no match for our darts. It only — frightened me for a moment, that is all.”
“But you were not really afraid, Finno,” says Maedhros, his grey eyes wide and very soft. How very delicate he looks naked in Fingon’s bed, all white skin and trembling lips and his hair a violent blaze of colour against the blue-silk sheets; how earnest his voice, as though Fingon is telling him a pretty fairy-story before he falls asleep.
Fingon had not considered it, before: that even Maedhros needs him to be someone more than what he is.
“Of course I was not,” he says, and Maedhros smiles again.
He does not know how they will sing of this. Certainly it does not quite seem to fit with the popular image of Fingon the Valiant, hero-prince of the Noldor: there are no paintings that depict him trussed up like a pig, dark bruises blooming on his cheek and his hair matted with twigs and dirt.
“I am going hunting in Dorthonion,” he told his father cheerfully, five days ago.
Fingolfin frowned. “I have heard reports of a party of orcs lurking that way. I would rather you did not, Finno.”
“Why do you think I go?” Fingon had returned, still cheerful. “I plan to flush them out. Aiko and Ango will join me for the hunt also, I am sure.”
But when he arrived in Ladros he found his cousins were both busy: Angrod and his wife away in Minas Tirith visiting their son, and martial Aegnor occupied with the season’s latest drills and unwilling to be distracted. Undeterred, Fingon continued alone into Dorthonion, reasoning that he might have a pleasant enough trip hunting for sport instead, and that Aegnor’s watchfulness was sure to to stop any orc-party from entering the highlands proper.
He plans to have words with his cousin now, should he ever see him again.
He sighted the orcs before they sighted him: fifteen of them, certainly a number he ought to be able to take on by himself. And would not that, some part of him thought, be a feat they could rightly immortalise — scrub out the lingering sting of the fire-drake and the ancient sourness of the fumes of Thangorodrim and replace it with a deed truly worthy of praise! Foolish, so desperately foolish: now they have taken him, and marked him as a prince from his golden jewellery at once — and they will try to ransom him to his father who will give up the security of all the Noldor to have his last son back, or else take him into the bowels of Angband and torment him until the secrets of the Leaguer’s little weakness come bubbling from his mouth, or send his despoiled corpse to Himring and drive Maedhros mad in truth.
Fingon is weeping, and cannot even raise his bound hands to wipe the tears away.
He does not understand the orc-tongues — has refused to try to learn them, no matter how many times Maedhros has tried to convince him of the strategic advantage of knowing them. Yet he thinks, from the tone of the orcs’ debate, that some conclusion has been agreed upon between them. They knew from the first that they had found too valuable a prize to gut and feast upon immediately, as happens to those more fortunate of the elves who are happened upon alone in the woods. Now it seems they have decided also where to take him, for they load him up onto the rough wooden sled they have fashioned from some felled trees, and begin to drag him along behind them.
He does not know for how long the journey lasts; perhaps three days pass of being dragged along like meat by daylight, and tossed between the orcs for sport by night. Too soon by far for anyone to suspect that he is missing — and even then it will be long before they think to set out searching for him. Who would think that their hero-prince might need rescuing himself, after all?
Maedhros would, Fingon thinks. Maedhros would save him, gladly and recklessly, if he thought there was a need. But Fingon cannot allow him to think there is one. He cannot destroy Maedhros’ image of him, cannot let the idol he tends so adoringly to crumble into ash. Who ever heard of a hero who could not even save himself?
Between beatings Fingon begins to plan his flight: he will use the ropes binding his wrists to strangle the orc guarding him to death, and then cut his bonds on its jagged sword — then surely it will not be so much harder to retrieve his own weapons, for after all they are only a ragtag little band of orcs—
There is a glint of gold in the corner of Fingon’s eye, as though the fire-drake is watching him.
Before another day passes he takes his chance; there is a wrench of savage satisfaction in his gut as he presses the length of rope against the orc’s thick leathery neck, and watches as it suffocates, its legs kicking fruitlessly. But that is as far as his victory goes, for although his kill was swift and silent the blur of motion does not go unnoticed, and the leader of the gang looks up from their campfire and raises the alarm almost immediately.
Fingon gives up on winning back his confiscated weapons, and makes instead to flee — but his ankles are still bound, and he stumbles, graceless, before he has gone three steps — and there are hands in his hair, where only Maedhros’ have ever lingered before, and one of his own arrows protruding suddenly from his breast — oh, they will take him and put him to torment, and the tale will run all around Beleriand, and yet another of their deities will be proved false, and Morgoth will demand a ransom from his father and Maedhros will be sent the bloodied ribbons of gold they have unravelled from his braids and Fingon will never see Maedhros again and he cannot bear it, where is Maedhros—
He never once expected, on Thangorodrim, to hear his defiant little song echoed back to him. In Aman Maedhros did not much like to sing — no-one would, with Maglor for a brother, and he always claimed his voice was a thin tremulous thing, not fit for company. Fingon had not heard a lovelier sound than its ring against those bleak grey crags — at least before today, and the unmistakeable war-shout that now carries to his ears.
His head is aching, and every clang of metal upon metal sends a sharp little pulse of agony through him, and his vision has gone a strange pale tint of yellow. The last thing he is aware of before losing consciousness is a hand pressed against his cheek, and Maedhros murmuring, “Safe, darling, I promise.”
“Really I do not think anyone needs to hear about this,” Fingon says, once he has woken and been given a little water.
Maedhros kisses him instead of answering. “Had I not been nearby when you called for me,” he says, and then leaves the thought unfinished.
Fingon had not meant to call. He had not meant to need Maedhros.
“O, beloved,” Maedhros breathes. He presses a cloth against the bloody puncture on Fingon’s breast. “You have been very brave for very long — but let me tend you now. I am glad to do it.”
“It is meant to be the other way around,” Fingon croaks, too exhausted to dissemble. “I am supposed to save you, not—”
“Finno,” Maedhros murmurs. “Being a hero need not mean you cannot ask for help yourself, you know. Perhaps I have not always been as true a friend to you as you deserve — I have worried too often about trivial matters, reputation and rumour and what rhymes people make about you — but I promise you need not do everything alone. Should you find yourself in trouble again, will you not call upon me? I will come when you do: you know that now, I think.”
“But,” says Fingon, and then his energy deserts him, and he manages only to whisper, “yes.”
Maedhros puts his lips to Fingon’s brow, and holds him until he falls asleep.
There is another Balrog behind him. With a lash of its blazing whip it brings him to his knees, and Gothmog in front of him raises his axe for the final blow. The burn does sting, after all, as though Fingon’s very flesh is being sloughed from the bone, crueller by far than the heat of Maedhros’ embrace.
Even with the bloody mud squished beneath his knees — even with the flaming axe raised above his head, and the knowledge of Turgon too far away to save him and his father’s broken body in the Eagle’s talons and Húrin and Huor struggling to hold the rearguard — Fingon cannot quite yet believe that it is over, not like this.
Russo, he calls out, touching his mind to Maedhros’ far away. Russo, help— Maedhros promised, after all—
The axe falls.