Beyond Hope

They called him swift-footed, but now his feet dragged as he ran through the rain and the shadows ran with him. He knew what it was held him back, driving and hindering, cruel as a whiplash. He fought it with all his will, for this was their only chance.

Suddenly his sight cleared and what he saw caused him to stop, reeling on his feet like an infant child of Men. The pursuit had carried him to an outcrop of the cliffs above the sea and she stood there, on the edge. She was fair, but he did not see that. He saw only the Light, and it scalded his mind, cruel embodiment of all that he had lost. Yet still he reached for it, other hand closed on his sword, for here was freedom. She moved back a little, which he would not have thought possible without falling, and he halted.

“Give it to me.” The voice was ugly; it should not be his.

“I will not.”

“It is not yours.”

“Murderer!” she spat. “You have no right! You will not gain it by slaughter.”

“I slew your mother.” He had been a master of language, he should find better words, but his mind was grown brutish as an orc. She almost recoiled, but recalled in time, teetering on the brink. He fought the thing that tore his spirit, he was not this, he knew he was not, and yet it held him in iron claws.

“You are not like her.” It was not meant to be cruelty, but it was so hard to know what one whose mind was all his own would say. Dark hair, plastered to her head with rain, where the other’s hair was silver; but that was not what he had meant. The other had fought, she had been armed with bow and long knife; this one had no weapons. He held that thought, clinging to anything that might return a little of himself. She was typical of this whole place: no defences, scant watch, had they thought the Jewel would protect them?

The Jewel. He could never keep his thought from it for long. The Dark was very close, and it gibbered; within he felt the press of faces, blind hands reaching. He inched forward.

“You shall not have it! Living I shall hold to it, and dead my hand shall hold it in the depths.”

The lost hands clawed at him, wraiths he had once called father, brothers. All his brothers save for one now, for he had felt the fall of the two youngest, the moment flesh was torn from spirit echoed through the blood bond. He could not tell whether the creatures in the Dark were indeed his kindred or delusions of the Oath; it was enough they might be real.

If she leapt now then the Jewel would never be regained. Again he fought to hold his mind, he was of Finwë’s line and he would not give in. This was what the Oath desired. She would leap: and they would all be lost to the Darkness, souls trapped beyond hope until the final days when Arda was broken and perhaps beyond.

“Give it to me,” he said “and I will not harm you.”

“You lie.” Rage seethed, still he fought on.

“I do not want you dead. Give it to me, and the slaughter may end.”

“I will not. Generations of my line have died for it, Lúthien and Beren suffered to gain it!”

“That was their choice!” he snarled. “And what do you know of torment?”

What did she know? What could she guess of the years of growing agony, the struggle to hold to a self gradually devoured by the Dark they had summoned, the slow loss of all good, all intellect, all power save the power to slay? And all the time the Oath growing, tormenting, until all dreams were horrors and days walked with phantoms, until he would have clawed the eyes from this mixed-blood child for but a short spell of peace.

“I shall not yield it to the murderers of my house. I shall not allow it to be sullied by your touch. Thingol and my father died to keep it, so shall I!”

“They were fools!” he hissed, but already he saw the future unfolding. She would leap, filled with the stubbornness of her line; he saw her sink to the depths, saw her body lie there in coldness and rot, the creatures of the deep gnawing away at clothes and flesh until the bones only lay there, and still the dead hand held the stone and the Oath would never be fulfilled.

It took all that he had to keep from lunging his sword towards her; the thing within him howled for her blood but that was not the way. One more step and she would leap.

“Be it so!” Desperation leant a new strength. He could not stop her, he could not take it, but he might yet ensure no hand should hold it, live or dead.

Fëanor had not made the Light, but he had caught it in the crystal cage. Fëanor’s power was on them still and he was Fëanor’s son, knowing some of his secrets and with blood claim on the works of his hands. Fëanor’s craft had been possessive; the Stones would know still who made them, whatever spells had been laid since.

“You shall not hold it: nor any other. Hear me, Gem of Curufinwë!”

The Light blazed, he thought he saw a trace of flame within. He was answered. Song had made this world, and however ruined he was still a singer. He summoned all of his power: he was not all lost, not yet! Perhaps the spirits in the Darkness leant their aid, this one time he could defy his own destruction, recall the strength he had been gifted.

“Sea shall not cover you, Earth shall not bear you.

No hand shall hold you, No rest will be given you

Wanderer you will be, Never be ownéd”

There was more than his power in the words; he could feel it. Something else was lending all its force; it was in the rain that whipped against him and the crashing of the sea below. Still he continued though he had to fight to hold his breath.

“Endure never resting, Suffer no keeping

No place to remain, No abiding in water,

No abiding in ground, unheld be forever

Until Arda’s ending, this Doom do I lay

Remember!”

He was shuddering as he ended, wracked by the forces he had called upon. He knew she understood, that she was shaken. Yet still she would not yield.

“So be it!” Her eyes blazed, and he saw for the first time a glimmer of the Ainur in her, the heritage of Melian.

“Let no hand hold the Silmaril nor keep it. Let it find no rest on land or in sea, until the ending of Arda when all things are unmade.”

He knew that each word bound the fate more tightly, and still the greater power sang through the rain, entered her words as it had entered his.

“Let the Jewel wander unowned, unbound. But you shall not have it, and you shall not hold its fellows. They will suffer not your touch, and you will seek the Sea again!”

She stepped back then, and fell, without a sound.

He was laughing. The laughter tore its way outwards, convulsing his body. He had fallen to his knees on the outcrop, in the rain, and his own laughter shook in his ears.

“Do not! Pray, do not!” One of the warriors who followed. He could not put a name to him and did not care.

“Why not?” he said. “Can you not hear the laughter of Angband?” Another fit racked him, and he choked. “Do you suppose the Valar laugh? Or pay no heed at all? You cannot think they pity these.” His arm swept backwards, encompassing the stained streets where the dead lay. “They drowned them.” Not these dead, but their kindred. Penitents and guiltless alike, their bodies cast up on the shore. He had not been there, but he knew.

“The sea! Look to the sea!”

He looked up, and his sight cleared. There were white sails far out, the ships of Balar, yet more kin turned enemies. He dragged himself up. The Jewel was gone.

“Pull back, pull back!” He raised his voice above the fighting, strong still although no longer fair. “We pull out!”

His limbs felt heavy as he drove himself back down the slope. It was not far to the white house, and there were men of his following clustered around. Anything useful would be taken; the Dispossessed had not survived this long without practicality. One of them pushed forward, saying something he did not take in at first. Then he saw two of them were holding frightened children.

They could be left. The ships would be here soon. Perhaps not soon enough, the wind was against them and he had thought he’d caught a warg’s howl. Morgoth would have creatures near here surely. Morgoth would have expected this day, even if the fools of Sirion had not.

“Bring them,” he said, and only in the act of turning away thought to halt and say, “Do not hurt them.”

~ ~ ~

Some hours later he knelt and drank from cupped hands. They had halted to rest warriors and horses by a stream, a small tributary of great Sirion. The water ran across the pebbles with a ripple of notes that was nothing remarkable as the sound of streams went; yet he heeded it with the wonder of a soul long parched.

He could hear music again. Such a simple thing, so utterly taken for granted until it was lost. For too long all notes had been ugly and dull, barely to be distinguished, now despite the exhaustion of his spirit he could again hear beauty. He might see it, if the clouds rolled back to show the stars. The hold of the Oath was loosening: the Stone was out of reach.

The Oath would lie dormant so long as all within reason was done to fulfil it, as it had lain the long years when they held the Siege. It had stirred when a Silmaril was bought out of Angband, but not awakened to full strength: for the Girdle of Melian was as fenced against them as the towers of Morgoth. After the Girdle failed matters had been otherwise; but only in these last years, as they fought to defy their Oath, had Fëanor’s remaining sons learned the full strength of the power they had summoned.

Now the Jewel was gone. They could not recover it but nor would any other hold it long; to that extent the Oath was null. Thus he was beginning to come back to himself. He was not free: no, he could still feel it lurking, mocking, awaiting its time to rise again; but the slaughter of Sirion had gained a respite.

He drank some more, and savoured the water. It was still a labour to think clearly but they could not remain here. His last brother had said as much, passing him briefly. “We cannot stay long. There are Morgoth’s creatures abroad in these parts.” Those were the only words he had had from Maedhros since the sack.

Maedhros had held up better than the rest beneath the Oath’s weight, his will the strongest since its brutal tempering. Yet it had seemed more and more that there was little left of him but naked will, hard and glittering as the sword that he was never seen without. It had been only Maedhros’s will that had held them from Sirion so long, but he had always known there would come a day when that would not be enough, as it had not been enough before Doriath.

For his youngest brothers he could only send out an anguished longing, too bleak to be called hope, too cursed for prayer, a desperate wish that Mandos had opened for them. Mandos, not the Darkness. Even through his own slow destruction he had seen their own, or perhaps he had seen the more sharply for his own state, perhaps even some had been only in his own mind not in them. He had seen them grown feral and savage in thought, shreds of reason barely holding as the Oath drove and devoured until they seemed barely elven, as lost almost as the dark wolves that hunted the lands. Yet wolves who still knew that they had once been Elves.

He knew the horror of what they had done in Sirion, yet he could not call himself repentant, knowing the Oath too strong for resistance. Had she who withheld the Jewel not understood?

In the act of turning from the stream he saw the children again, each with one of the following keeping a controlling hand on the shoulder. They were silent, not struggling, but taut with tension. He stood for a moment, considering, but he had ordered them brought here and they were his kindred.

Taking the cup from his leather water flask, he filled it from the stream. As the water brushed his fingers he found himself recalling again the cliff-top, and the terrible power he had felt in the rain and the waves. Power beyond that of the Eldar. Ulmo? But why? It was whispered the Sea-lord might still lend help at times to the Exiles, but surely not to one of the Oath-bound.

He crouched, bringing his eyes level with the faces of the boys. He had feared to see Elwing or her mother in them; had thought perhaps to see Turgon. But they merely looked like children, such as might have been born to one of his own followers. They seemed as though they had been crying, but neither was doing so now.

“I am not going to hurt you,” he said in Sindarian. “There is no need to be afraid.”

They did not seem to believe him, but one took the cup and swallowed thirstily before checking and passing it to the other. They were the same age he noticed, and much alike in face. Twins, like his lost brothers. Almost he shivered.

Had dying to pursue the Oath been enough to keep the Darkness from them? He doubted they had tried hard to hold to their lives; it had not been desire for the Jewel that had driven Amrod and Amras, ever the least warlike of Fëanor’s sons, to say at last that if none would go with them then they would go to Sirion alone. It had been pure desperation, frantic craving for escape. The same dread, the same madness, that pursued him; but he could not throw his life away, he was too closely bound to the Music.

Now, at last, he could go back to the Lament. The great Tale of the Downfall, begun but far from complete, another agony to him these last years of endurance, as he felt what was missed almost within reach, unable to add a single note or word, he had felt it at the edge of his mind but he could not quite hear, and yet he knew it for his greatest creation, the greatest song that lay in his power, perhaps the greatest work of song that any Elf would make.

He was his father’s son after all. As Fëanor would have laid all Arda to waste for his gems, so it seemed he could not grieve for Sirion when the deaths there had bought completion for his Lament.

The flask was drained, the boys were watching him with fear but no hatred; they could not understand yet what had happened. “I’ll get more water.” To the followers he added, “You can let them go.”

Were they mortal or elven, he wondered, as he filled the flask a second time. Would they live long enough to learn? Would he? He doubted the Oath had done with him yet. This time he did shiver, for the first time understanding why Maedhros had been so angered by the fate of Dior’s sons. Dior, fool that he was, had had a choice; all the choice left to him and his brothers had been of how long to hold their hands. Yet he understood now: blood shed was still blood shed. How had they come to this?

The Oath would devour him, unless death came first; and even death might hold no refuge. He had a respite, nothing more. Yet what would he do with that time? Would he be Fëanor still, and count life lightly beside the works of his skill? Could he be other? Perhaps he had had to stare into the abyss to understand its depth. Knowledge brought no escape, but in this space of time he still had choice

He rose from the water, refreshed once again by the play of its notes, and turned back to the children. He felt drained, more spent in spirit than he had ever been, and yet he would revive. He was Noldo of Aman; he could regain strength even now, ravaged as he had been by the force they had so unthinkingly summoned. For this time he could be what he chose to be; not what the Oath, or the blood of his father, would make of him.

“I am your kinsman,” he said to them, “Your cousin through your father’s line. My name is Maglor.”

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