The Days have gone Down

Deep chill had fallen on the ruined lands. Each morning saw a frost, not pure but blackened from the filthy air of war. Winds blew sharp and biting, and yet the tattered mists would never clear. In the long nights they gathered thick and choking, as they had long ago around Mithrim, the grey lake now already lost beneath the seas. The once fair land where Amrod and Amras had been lords remained as yet, although the ground was riven and treacherous and salt in the waters gave warning of the rising seas. Even those who had roamed the land through bitter years could no longer find the old paths and soon there would be no choice but an eastern retreat. Yet word said that on the high ground to the north the Host of Valinor remained, and so for the ragged band camped in the doomed lands the last withdrawal would not come quite yet.

Celebrimbor had been privileged with a light shelter made of skins, not because of his lineage but because of the value placed on his smith-craft although the work was now little more than patching armour and putting new edges on blades. Most evenings he would have invited others to join him, but this night he felt bleak, expectant hush in which few, if any, sought companionship. Even in the hardest times there had most often been songs, but this night the camp was silent. So he had retired alone, to lie without rest, mind dwelling on the future and what choices he might make. The Summons of the Valar had reached even here, although he did not know whether pardon could ever be extended to one of Fëanor’s line, even one who had no blood of elves upon his hands.

So he was awake when someone entered, pushing aside the curtain of skins without word or ceremony. Celebrimbor, not altogether surprised, sat up, and brightened the flame of the lamp he had left burning low. It was one of the few remaining silver lamps of Tirion, another smith’s privilege. The blue light showed him the stern, gaunt face of his eldest uncle.

“What is it you have come to say?” Celebrimbor asked. There was really no point in pleasantries.

Maedhros settled himself on the ground, from which Celebrimbor concluded that whatever he had come for would not be dealt with in a few words.

“My brother and I sent to Eonwë of the Maia after word of Morgoth’s final downfall reached us.” Ever since his return from Thangorodrim Maedhros’s voice had held a slight, distinctive, rasp, and even now it always took Celebrimbor a few sentences to get used to it. “We required of him the two Silmarils that remained in the Iron Crown, in fulfilment of our Oath. Lately we received his refusal, and summons to surrender to the judgement of the Valar.”

“Did you expect anything else?” Celebrimbor said harshly. That he had rejoined his kin did not mean he condoned their deeds, or even that he wished the words of disowning his father had spoken in Nargothrond to be withdrawn. The mere names of Doriath and Sirion still sickened him, and he would not forget those names when he spoke with Maedhros or Maglor.

“I did not. But it was necessary to try.”

“And will you submit?”

Maedhros surprised him. “If I thought their judgement would be death I would weigh the choice. But they will not wish their land stained once more with blood, not even Kinslayer blood. And I will not carry the Oath unfulfilled into Valinor.”

Celebrimbor looked at the lamp, because he did not want to know what might be in his uncle’s face. He had not expected to hear they would submit, but he still pursued a faint fool’s hope. “It may be the Valar can release the Oath.”

“I do not believe they can. If any time these years of the Sun an emissary of the Valar had come before us and said the Oath could be undone, even the most obdurate of my brothers might have cast all pride away and begged them for release at any price. But we in our madness invoked the name of Ilúvater, who is above the Valar and does not hold converse with the Eldar.” His voice held no expression, carefully schooled. “Before we marched from Tirion, Manwë strove to change our course with words, yet his message to my father was ‘by thine Oath art exiled.’ Did that not declare none within Arda can free us? And beyond the Circles of the World we cannot pass.”

“What if the Valar would return the Silmarils?” Celebrimbor argued. “Have you thought on that?”

“Eonwë, who is herald to the Valar, was clear they hold our right void.”

“That yet leaves mercy.” He did not believe it, could not even think it should be granted.

“It is unlikely they would give so much to us now, when there has been so little to those far more guiltless these last centuries. Nor is there any reason they should be merciful. I do not fault their dealings with our House. But the risk is too great. There has to be an end.”

“Then what do you choose?” Celebrimbor felt cruel with defeat. “It is over late for self-slaughter.”

“You mean,” said Maedhros not at all discomposed, “that if I would break the Oath, I should have taken my own life before we took Doriath. You are right, although I doubt the Oath would have been ended even then. There is still the power of the Unhoused, which in one of our kindred would be fearsome indeed. But I do not claim that is an excuse.

“Nor did I say I mean to break the Oath now. The Silmarils are not yet beyond our reach.”

Celebrimbor did look round then. “Would you do battle then against the whole host of Valinor? Do you think any will follow you in that?”

“Only Maglor, who is as bound as I am,” said Maedhros. “And I would not fight a whole host if it can be avoided.”

“Have there not been deaths enough?” said Celebrimbor furiously.

“Too many, and that is why we must go. Not for the Oath alone. For what it is worth, I do not plan to long outlive its completion, supposing that can yet be accomplished.” He smiled bleakly. “Do not suppose you behold me filled with repentance. If I could live the past century over my choices would not be any different in the main. But I do not deny that payment is due. I have only one death to pay with, but it counts for something,” and as still sometimes happened a chink opened in the walls Maedhros kept between himself and others and all the passion and vitality of his spirit blazed forth “for even now I do love my life, and with it this scarred, marred world we have entered!”

Celebrimbor closed his eyes briefly. Even for him it was too easy to be drawn by that yet bright flame. Carefully he thought over what he had heard. “You said not for the Oath alone. Then why?”

“What do you believe will come to pass if the Silmarils fare West?” Maedhros had closed the walls again. “Do you think all seeds of woe departed Aman with our hosts? Even when the Trees still lived the Light in the Silmarils bred ill thoughts, and not least in the heart of my father, their maker. Now, when the Light lives in them alone, how long will peace rule in Aman if the Silmarils fare there? How long did it reign in Doriath, when a Silmaril dwelt there first? Not all the blood shed for the Light is on our hands.”

“You speak as though you think them evil!”

“Not evil. Too fair for Arda Marred. My father should have broken them when Yavanna asked, but it is too late for that. Maglor did right in Sirion, when he laid the Doom of Wandering on the Jewel there. That one will suffer no keeping until Arda’s end. Two remain.”

“Can you not trust the Valar to deal wisely with them?” Celebrimbor said, but the words sounded weak even as he spoke them.

It was Maedhros’s turn to briefly close his eyes. “Brother-son, my view in such a matter may be warped. So I ask: can you say why the wisdom of the Valar in this matter should be trusted?”

The Valar who had freed Morgoth. Who had so praised the gifts and work of Fëanor, knowing no more than the Eldar to what end they would lead. Celebrimbor was silent.

Maedhros nodded. “I thought not. They must not go West, nor should they remain here. So at last our Oath may accomplish something other than saving Morgoth some slaughter.” Celebrimbor looked at his face then, and wished that he had not. Maedhros smiled grimly.

“Who else could place a Silmaril beyond reach of hand? Could even you, who have reason enough to wish they were never wrought, bring yourself to do it? No, this is our deed, my brother and myself. If I could I would keep Maglor from it, but I cannot do this alone. Not with only one hand.”

Never, in all the years since Maedhros recovered enough to hold sword again, had Celebrimbor heard him admit to any limitation caused by the missing right hand. His words might be madness, but he believed what he said. And Celebrimbor wondered if the madness in Fëanor’s line had come upon himself, for he believed it also. He might have dismissed it as a Kinslayer’s fantasy or delusion of the Oath, but he remembered the laments for Elu Thingol’s fall, and he believed.

“And if the deed fails?” he said.

“There was a prophecy of Mandos long ago. Air, Sea and Earth: the doom of the Silmarils. If, as I believe, there is a working of fate and Eru here, then the deed will not fail, whatever be the price. If it does,” Maedhros made a movement of acceptance with his left hand, “we can only abide what we must.”

“And if it succeeds?”

“Maglor must make his own choices, if he has the chance. There will be a few more verses to add to the Noldolantë. For myself I will take no mercy of the Valar, save for one thing. Not that I look to be offered more, we were promised their wrath long ago. But I will chance no undue lenience, that would only invite further workings of the Oath.”

“And the one mercy you would take?”

“Mandos: not the Darkness,” said Maedhros, very quietly. Celebrimbor could not bear to ask whether he thought it likely or even possible.

For all his horror at the Kinslayings of Doriath and Sirion he had never doubted the power of the Oath. A choice between Eternal Dark and the lives of strangers; strangers who could have held the Darkness back by returning the Silmaril stolen from a greater thief.… Eru Ilúvater, what would he have chosen?

“This is not fair.” The Oath, he meant. It had never been fair: words spoken in the heat of passion binding lives beyond release. Such a waste of the gifts of his house.

“There are certain laws in the world,” said Maedhros. “If a child puts a hand in the fire, the hand will be burned, but the fire is not to blame. And we were not children.”

Maedhros would be easier to deal with, Celebrimbor thought, if he would stoop to a little self-pity occasionally. Perhaps it would have gone better with all Fëanor’s sons if they could have borne to ask pity for their terrible Oath. Yet how could they ask, after Alqualondë and Losgar, how could they dare to ask it?

“Why did you really come here?” he said at last. “Not just for a discussion of the Oath of Fëanor.”

“No, I came to ask a thing of you. You may have guessed it already?” Maedhros paused, but Celebrimbor did not reply so he went on. “We go north tomorrow, my brother and myself. Our people will be leaderless, and they will look to you.”

Celebrimbor had indeed guessed why Maedhros had come, but that did not mean he welcomed the visit.

“They look in the wrong place,” he said. “I am no leader.”

“You cannot say that until you have been tried. I am asking only that you take the lead until they have a chance for thought, and to know where they can or wish to turn.”

“Why should they look still to Fëanor’s line? What is the sense in that?”

“Very little sense,” said Maedhros. “But what has sense to do with it? Why any of them still follow is beyond my understanding.”

Celebrimbor shrugged, a gesture he had picked up from mortals on Balar. “When those who hated Morgoth looked for a place to rally there was little choice enough for long enough. Almost no choice after Nargothrond fell. To stand against the Dark can seem virtue enough, for those who are desperate. And loyalty is a habit hard to break.” So he had found, when he made the choice to ride eastward with the Dispossessed rather than remain with Gil-galad on Balar, nor had he been the only one to rejoin an allegiance once forsaken at that time. In their utter lack of hope, and the endurance with which they faced it, the last of the Oathbound had been harder to abandon than they could ever have been in victory.

Maedhros gave a sudden breath of genuine laughter, and with it a flicker again of all that lay behind the guarded barricades, a good half of the answer to his own riddle. “Morgoth can make even Kinslayers seem noble? Though what a painful thing, that we should have caused others to think us champions of right, only because they knew nothing better. If we were the best they could find to follow, then matters were bad indeed!

“But we debate again. Good or bad, those who have followed so long will still look to our house. A habit hard to break, as you say. And you are the last.”

“What would you have me do?”

“I have told you. Take the lead, at least for a while. All else will be your own choice. I do not lay any further duty.”

No further duty, unlike Fëanor who had died laying it on his sons to fulfil an Oath already damning. Of those that had landed with the ships, and the others who had joined the standard later or been born on these shores, so very few remained. What would Fëanor have said, if he had known to what end his words of fire would lead? Likely he would have cursed the Valar again, or even his sons for failing him.

Yet his own skill came from Fëanor by birth, and had been tutored by his father Curufin. He could not flee from his inheritance, which was why he had chosen to face it.

Maedhros must have seen his decision in his eyes, for they rose at the same time.

“I will do what I can,” Celebrimbor said.

Maedhros did not thank him, merely inclined his head. “You deserve better than to have been born into this house, Celebrimbor. I hope you may yet go free of our Doom.”

He extended something and Celebrimbor put out his hand to take it. It was a ring, made of silver, that he had known all his life. Maedhros must have been holding it loosely throughout their talk, for it is not easy to work a ring from one’s own finger one-handed. Slowly he took the ring, and Maedhros closed his fingers over it.

“Farewell, brother-son. You will understand if I say I hope we do not meet again.”

He turned, and pulled aside part of the curtain of skins to leave the shelter. Yet it seemed even Maedhros could not could not stay quite unyielding at this moment, for he paused. The lamplight cast shadows on his face, but fell full on the old burn scar across his throat.

“Surely” he said, “surely it cannot all have been ill-done....”

The half-plea was spoken barely above a whisper, before Celebrimbor could frame any answer his uncle was gone.

Celebrimbor unclasped his right hand, and raised the ring that Maedhros had given him to the lamplight. It was thick and plain, a work of Noldor craft from the days before they had learned of Aulë. Not beautiful to his eyes, its only decoration was an inscription in the old runes of Rúmil. F·NWË. It had never been a token of kingship, but it had belonged to the first king before he even wore a crown. Maedhros had yielded the title of king to Fingolfin, but he had kept the ring.

He dimmed the lamp again, and lay down on the blanket that was his only bedding. Tomorrow, Maedhros had said, he and Maglor would leave their last followers. This then, was the final end of the torchlit day of his early memory, the day that Fëanor and his sons had sworn their Oath. Celebrimbor wrapped his arms across his ribs against the chill. A very few years older and he would likely have sworn with them.

No use dwelling on what his fate would have been then, for he had a future to think on and no longer for himself alone. East lay the unknown land where Dwarves and Men must flee. Westward Valinor and pardon, if indeed there could be pardon for any who had followed the Dispossessed this far. Well, the company must make their own choices, he would not attempt to hold them together. East first though, he thought. East, and more time to choose.

He weighed the ring in his hand, and wondered if Finwë walked again alive in Tirion. Perhaps not, for the reports said it was Finarfin who led the host of the Noldor Unexiled, and he bore the title of King. Perhaps Finwë would not leave Míriel once he had found her again. Perhaps though, others would be restored in Valinor before long. If they permitted return for the survivors surely the Valar could not forever withhold rembodiment for the slain, not for those who had only followed and shed no elven blood. Then perhaps Valinor would be as it should have been, with no Silmarils blazing like a scar across its bliss, no House of Fëanor to breed unrest.

The vision almost stopped his breath. Valinor without his house! Ah Fëanor, you were wrong! It was not Finwë’s second marriage that should never have been but his first. Valinor would have been shorn a few works of art, but who would have known? Without the rebellion of the Noldor the Valar might have come to the aid of Beleriand before so much slaughter was wrought. The Noldor would have remained one; Finrod and so many more would never have died. His mother and his grandmother would have wedded others and been happy.

He knew then he would not return to Valinor, where his lineage could be only a shadow of things that ought never to have happened. Marred Middle-earth might be more forgiving. He did think of his mother, but he had not forgotten the unhesitating firmness with which she had put his hand in his father’s before she turned to join her own mother’s Telerin kin. Would she in truth wish for the return of her Noldo son, so like his father in face and gifts? He could not think it. She might take another to husband; she might already have chosen one and be waiting only for the word of Mandos to wed again. There could be little doubt what the judgement would be on Curufin Fëanorion if he had passed within the Halls and if he had not (to Eternal Darkness doom us…) he still would never walk the earth again. Mandos would surely not refuse her release.

The Elves in the West might live at last as though his house and its crimes had never been. He found it in his heart to hope they would and, hoping that, resolved he would remain in the East, where there might be work to do even for Fëanor’s heir. Most of the company, he thought would likely linger also, Kinslayers as so many were. The Unmarred Lands would only make their own stains harder to endure. Here there could be new beginnings.

He slipped the ring on his finger.

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