Shadows Laid Before the Sun by Idrils Scribe

| | |

Chapter 5

For miles the company marched through a dreadful forest, passing glades where daylight never reached. Web-smothered trees bent over them, their branches bare and misshapen. Silence pressed upon these woods like a living, breathing thing. Even the boldest among the warriors had ceased their marching songs. There was no sound but their footsteps, muffled by years’ worth of decaying spider-silk.   

This close to its source the call battered against the walls of Carnistir’s mind, howling like a gale as it drew him ever deeper into Nan Dungortheb. He clenched his hand around his sword-hilt until its pattern of inlaid rubies stood red and sore against the bloodless white skin of his palm, desperate to keep himself from caving to that maddening summons, breaking away from the company and disappearing into the grey arcades of the forest at a run. Instead he marched onward, keeping cadence with his guards, step after miserable step.

They had to ford a brook, shimmering dark and oily in the fading light. At the water’s edge Carnistir faltered. He stood for a moment, studying the sheen of refracting colour upon the surface as he breathed in and out, grounding himself. A splash of cool water on his face might help, and so he knelt down and reached with a cupped hand. 

“Beware!” Maitimo struck, quick as a hawk, grabbing the offending hand and yanking Carnistir to his feet. “The Sindar say that the waters from Ered Gorgoroth are defiled,” he said, his voice low to keep from alarming the warriors, “that all who taste them are taken by madness and despair. I thought it superstition, but now that I have seen them with my own eyes… Do not touch that water, Carnistir.” Maitimo offered Carnistir his own waterskin. “Drink this instead.”

Maitimo’s eyes and mind were closed as ever, and Carnistir could not tell whether this was brotherly concern or mere pragmatism. Still, he took the skin and drank a gulp of clean water.

He took his place in the formation once more as they forded the stream by leaping from stone to stone. Maitimo and Erestor came last, keeping a close eye on the warriors as they crossed, but even without being ordered, all took great care not to touch those perilous waters.  

The sun dipped to the western horizon, turning the clouds massing above the mountains into a conflagration of crimson. 

Then, from the unseen distance deep within that grey wood, came the scream. 

There were words in it, garbled and strange, and at the sound Carnistir could not help but gasp in terror.

Eru intended that no other living things should possess voices like Elves. They were unlike all else, recognized at once even when ugly with pain or terror or rage. Even in Alqualondë, no Elf Carnistir ever heard had screamed like this - all wrong , an unholy sound that could not possibly have been shaped by an Elvish mouth. 

It came from somewhere ahead, amidst the darkening expanse of night in that grey forest. Once, twice, and then again and again at irregular intervals as the wind shifted. 

Theirs was a doughty company - warriors sworn to Fëanáro’s House, all kinslayers and slayers of Balrogs, and yet the scream drove many among them to mindless terror. 

“Let us return,” they begged Maitimo, and where Carnistir had expected Maitimo to drive them onwards with the flat of his blade, Maitimo nodded.

“They are no good to us in this state,” he said, indicating the tight huddle of death-pale soldiers standing before him in the dying light of dusk, their eyes downcast. “Let them turn back.”

The smaller company arranged itself in close formation, but they had not backtracked more than a few steps when a writhing, many-legged hail rained down from the trees, crawled upwards from the grass and from lairs in the soil. The Elves were clad in sturdy mail and hobnailed boots, and they brushed the things aside. Then, from the dead forest, came a pack of hound-sized spiders, pincers clicking and dripping poison, leaping at the Elves. 

A call to arms rang across the clearing, and at once a ring of Fëanorian steel beat back the horrors.

One of Carnistir’s own guards had fallen, his throat taken out by razor-sharp mandibles, dying breaths bubbling red as he bled out on a death-bed of webs. Carnistir had no desire to ever look upon a dead Elf again, but this man was his sworn vassal, and so he knelt by his side to sing the death-song with an unsteady voice. 

As he Sang he battled to remain in the here and now, but still his mind fled his grasp, dragging him back to the last time he uttered these words - Alqualondë. From within that dreaded darkness, a shadow shrieked at him, and he shivered.

Amidst the orgy of bloodshed that was Alqualondë, he had killed a silver-haired boatswain. 

She was but a slender woman, barefoot in a linen smock, but her iron-tipped boathook had sent two of Fëanáro’s mail-clad smiths over the sides with cracked skulls, trailing smoke-like clouds of blood in the churning harbour. It mattered little: seven more were leaping over the gunwale, and in her battle-rage the boatswain failed to see Carnistir behind her. 

He recalled his own wolfish bloodlust, the shameful eagerness with which he leapt to, grabbed the silver cable of her braid in his armoured fist to yank back her head and slash her throat to the bone. 

The boatswain’s blood gushed bright and ruby-red, and at once she became a dead weight, her almost-severed head at an alien angle as she dangled from Carnistir’s hand by her hair. He had tossed her overboard, the sleight weight of her barely felt, but her memory plagued him like a wound. He had killed many that day, before and after her, but her face alone stood out from the bloody tatters of his memory. He had often wondered what her name might be.

The moment the light fled the dead guard’s eyes, a shadow fell across the body. Carnistir looked up to find Maitimo standing beside him. Around them the warriors had lit a ring of torches, keeping the spiders at bay. Carnistir rose to his feet.  The leaping light painted Maitimo red as if he were doused with blood.

“Once we stopped the retreat the attack ceased at once. Those accursed things will only allow us to advance.” Maitimo had grown stern and efficient. Carnistir had not seen that fire in his eyes since Angband. 

It did nothing to quench his fear. “A trap,” he muttered. 

“Indeed.” Maitimo smiled a sharp little grin, and raised his voice. “Canissë! Gather the company together. Half will dig a trench and wall around us, the other half defend the diggers.” He spun around, pointing at the web-smothered trees. “Those trees are long dead, and powder-dry. Fell them, light a circle of watchfires, and kill anything that dares step into the light.” 

“More light may attract more spiders.” Canissë protested.

“It matters not.” Maitimo pointed at the eight-legged carcasses strewn about the clearing. “Did you see how they coordinated their attacks? These things are sentient, and they know well enough where we are!”

“You mean to dig us in here for the night, then turn back come morning?”  At the thought, he sank to his knee from the sheer brutal force of the call within his mind. Maddening. “I cannot, Maitimo. Not while it calls me still!”

Maitimo was not angry. “I know, brother. We will go on, you and I.”

Carnistir paced back and forth across the fireli glade, torn between his relief at being allowed to obey that call, and sheer terror. 

Maitimo merely donned his red-plumed helm, looking like wrath incarnate.  

Together they left the circle of light, and plunged into the darkness of the spider-haunted night.

Around them the forest was a vast pillared hall, its tree-columns misshapen and rotting beneath their burden of webs. They wandered for hours, led by that terrible call, while the gibbous moon rose pale over Nan Dungortheb.  

Then the trees thinned, and they came to a grey glade. Ugly, twisted boles surrounded a secret place. There was an air of Power here, and for a moment Carnistir recalled ancient songs from Cuivienen, warnings of dark forests where unholy things festered, as ancient as Morgoth himself. 

At the glade’s far end rose a pale, formless mass against the darkness, a bulk of webbing more massive and loathsome than any they had seen before, wholly encasing the decaying remains of a pair of mighty beeches. At its centre sat a black hole like a gaping maw. Only then did Carnistir realise what he was looking at: a giant funnel-web sat spun between the trees, the entrance man-high and wide enough for two to walk abreast. 

Out of it came a stench, not the sickly odour of decay, but a foul reek, as if filth unnameable were piled and hoarded in the dark within.

His legs refused to obey his will, and beside him Maitimo, too, stood still, a terrible understanding dawning between them. They had been drawn in.

“Maitimo …” his voice was a hoarse croak.

A white fire burned in Maitimo’s eyes, as if he were Fëanáro come face to face with the Balrogs. The naked steel of his sword shone bright and blue in his hand. 

Carnistir drew his own blade, and together they entered the web’s waiting jaw.

Chapter End Notes

Hi everyone, welcome back!
I had to skip yesterday's update, because work was an absolute madhouse and I lost all control of the day. Back in the saddle now, and I guess this story will now run until the day after Halloween!
Maitimo is either very brave, or very mad. Either way poor Carnistir is having a terrible time. And what lurks inside that giant web?
I know I say this every time, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter. A comment would make me a happy scribe!
See you tomorrow!

Table of Contents | Leave a Comment