Atandil by Eilinel's Ghost  

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15. Darkly the Sundering Flood

Here too the king’s presence was distant. Permeable almost, as though he stood half in the glade and half out of time—another wraith, Beren thought with affinity, drifting through the wood.

At the Pools of Ivrin on their road nothwards, Finrod, Beren, and their ten companions rest for one final day of safety before setting out toward the Pass of Sirion. 

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“Darkly the sundering flood rolls past!
To this my long way comes at last—
a hunger and a loneliness,
enchanted waters pitiless.”
—The Lay of Leithian, Canto III

1465th YEAR OF THE SUN, AUTUMN
The Pools of Ivrin

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“There is a line of smoke to the north-east.”

Finrod’s scalp prickled at the words. It was a strange thing, how time could double back upon itself in an instant. A glance, a smell, an ordinary phrase and the threads of memory looped around to meet amid the weaving. And certainly there was comfort to be found within these plaited moments, echoing outward with the passing years. But memory was a bitter thing now, both solace and wound, fracture and support. He would never discard it and he could not escape it.

He joined Edrahil atop the boulder where the captain sat watch and peered out at the foothills he indicated. “Ours or the enemy’s?”

Edrahil shook his head. “I’ve no certainty. I suspect the enemy, for our folk would not move openly this far to the north. Unless it may be that some of Galdor’s people are passing through the mountains—Húrin’s people, I should say. They know many routes through the Ered Wethrin that we have ventured not.”

“Little reason would they have to wander so far with wolves and Orcs roaming.”

“Indeed.” Edrahil drew the cloak from his shoulders and bundled it to the side. The sun had risen above the tree line and doused the basin in a pleasant warmth. “Thus of the enemy lies my guess.”

“You’ve the right of it, I deem.” Finrod squinted as he watched the smoke twist against the bright mid-morning. It was distant yet, more than a day’s journey. “But whether foe or friend, they are too far to reach us ere nightfall—nor would they yet dare the Eithel Ivrin unless they have grown very bold of late. We may rest still awhile.”

“We, says my lord, and yet here he sits awake beyond his watch.”

“Mm. Two-faced of him, is it not?” The hint of a smile twitched at Finrod’s lips and he drew his legs up upon the rock. “Sleep is an elusive quarry today.”

“And the day before, and the day before that.” Edrahil’s glance held a mild reprimand, but he stooped to retrieve a thin cake of waybread from his pack, breaking it along the middle and passing half to the king.

Finrod took it with a nod of thanks and bit off a corner as his eyes drifted over the mere before them. In the dark of Araman, he had sat alone amid the grief and fury of his father’s departure, his back turned pointedly towards Aman until the fading line of the returning passed beyond sight. He would not look back, he told himself. Never again would he allow his eyes to dart behind at what was forsaken—nay, his bitterness cried out, at what had forsaken him—till their road was followed and the journey complete. He would face the dark, he would face the Ice, and walk headlong into their doom with never another glance of regret. Or so, at least, he had purposed in his grief. 

It was Meril who sought him out at last and found him with the angry tears still hot upon his cheeks. She had stood before him then, a tall specter amid the clinging mists, and placed a wafer of lembas upon his palm. Rise, herunya, for these that remain are thine.

He bit again from the edge of this new waybread, savoring the mild sweetness on his tongue. It fortified his resolve even as that first had done, this too bestowed from Meril’s hand; once again a blessing and an edict. All doors had been closed as they made their silent way through the city, all windows shuttered. But Meril was there awaiting them at the Annon Aearon, tall and silver against the dark passage, and she held the provisions before her in open defiance. “Go now, herunya,” she had kissed his forehead and placed the parcel in his empty hands, “in folly perhaps, but not in dishonor. And may the bread of our people’s Great Journey hold thee sustained now through the steps of thine own.” 

It had been bitter comfort at the time, for she would offer no wisdom for their road and jealously did he covet such counsel. Meril had ever been at his side—from the break in Araman to the founding of his kingdom, to its governance and keeping, and thence to its loss. Even in that hour she had held, grim and quiet at his right while the storm rose about him and drowned every word from his lips.

It was strange to think back on it. The whole affair lurked as a half-formed memory along the edges of his mind—seared upon him, yet scattering before his grasp whenever he sought it. He held snatches of imagery, the rolling roar of the assembly, the revelation of his own impotence, but it all passed before him as though viewed through another’s eyes, helpless and blurred. Indeed, he remembered seeing their reflection in the polished shield of one of his guards—it was Medlineth, third from the right—Celegorm poised like an adder, Curufin a half step behind, the murmuring lords who lingered yet, his own figure braced against the gale and distorted in the curving pane. His downfall mirrored back to him, a feckless observer.

There had been a child near the front of the gathering, seated on the floor at her father’s feet and galloping a toy horse to and fro across the stone. She was tiny yet, born just before the Bragollach, and Finrod’s eyes rested on her with an eerie sense of juxtaposition. He knew those wooden hooves and each intricacy of the flowing mane. His own hands had carved it, his own hands bestowed it—a gift and the king’s blessing upon the birth of the marshal's child, four months before the fires came. She sat now in the lamplight, watching the uproar with the same wide, curious eyes that had peered into his while he spoke the benediction over her, nai amanya onnalya ter coivierya. May your child be blessed…She had cowered against her father’s leg as the shouting grew. What use was the king’s blessing when it was the king’s word that bound them all to the crisis?

But they were his people too, Beren’s folk—sworn and bound in fealty as he too was bound by the lord’s vow in return, long before his word to Barahir. They were his, in love and obligation. And Thingol had, with damnable flippancy, condemned one of the few survivors of Ladros to torment and death without a even a word in courtesy to Beren’s liege. Beren, last son of that beloved line, whose every remnant was more dear to him than any treasure. His wrath rose again at the thought.

That it had been a jest, Finrod had little doubt. He knew Elwë well enough to hear the bite beneath the words, the dry parry giving vent to his fury. The scorn carefully masking his fear. But Beren, borne down by desperation and grief, had taken him at his word and named it back to him in challenge. He would see it done. And Thingol—here lay the bent of Finrod’s own fury—had not disabused him, but rather sat by while Beren stumbled forth to seek an end of anguish and despair. Folly, he had shouted at Edrahil when the final letter from Doriath was read and hurled upon the table in rage, senseless, arrogant folly!

But in truth, what better were his own actions? His intercession had served only to anchor Thingol’s purpose—assume a jape if you will, kinsman, but it is the mortal’s sworn word, and to his word I shall hold him—jest turned to edict, mockery to steadfast purpose. Nor had his hospitality achieved aught but to lead his guest before another stone-hewn court where Beren’s worth and integrity were once again cast in derision. And what would his own aid offer in the end but to stumble beside him into the gaping maw?

Tol Sirion had been his promise. With all the host of Nargothrond united, they could repel what the defenders alone could not withstand; they would cast out the festering evil and cleanse the isle. It would but drive Gorthaur into Taur-nu-Fuin till a new assault came, but it would be enough: sufficient time to re-garrison the tower and time too for Findekáno to send strength from Hithlum, for Húrin to cross from Dor-lómin. They would come. Surely, they would come. The loss of Sirion was an ever mounting blow and regaining the pass was beyond value if there was to be any hope of rebuilding the Siege. And if they did not and the tower fell once more, still it would not be in vain. For if the Foe’s eyes were drawn to a renewed offensive, a small detachment might achieve through stealth that which seemed beyond the—

He took a sharp breath to break the circling thought. There was no host, there would be no renewed assault. Even this had been twisted into the blade that unkinged him, the strategy proof of his fickle loyalty, the tower’s worth counted only when measuring Atani interests—else why had he not ridden out when Gorthaur came, why only now was the offensive drawn? It had been Orodreth’s question too, indignant when he was brought overlate to join Finrod and Edrahil in their calculations. Why only now did he seek to stay its fall?

The waybread was bitter upon his tongue. Meril had sent him forth with its benediction, but it passed down his throat as a talisman of accusation: the life-bread granted to sustain the road of death. How quickly his hands had been emptied! How quickly the reckoning had come. He felt the whisper echoing again through every fiber, Curufin’s voice a breath as he passed amid the growing turmoil, “A king is he that can hold his own, Cullingwincë.”

The sound of rasping metal drew Finrod back to the present. Edrahil had begun sharpening his sword and the steady rhythm drifted like a heartbeat through the glade. Ivrin was ever a place out of time, still and glad and filled yet with Anar’s warmth. An island within the gathering shadow. His eyes drifted to rest on the upper falls, full from the recent rains and roaring down to push the waterline high above the basin. He dreaded passing their torrent, as he knew he would ere the day was done, for his feet would be summoned irresistibly to the ascent and the view across the valley, to the bitter outlook where he would draw memory’s specter against his side, embraced in cold communion. Turgon who was gone, Balan who was gone, he who soon would be gone—and still the water flowed laughing while they passed like wraiths before its cadence.

“Why did you hold, Hilyo?” Finrod’s voice was nearly covered by the sound of the whetstone. “Gwindor’s anger was rightly placed—I whose last folly cost his brother’s life, pleading once more for that trust I’ve no right to claim. Yet Sídhon was bound to Gelmir and that loss was his as well, and the Fen cost you nigh the whole of the guard. I have earned your ire—and Sídhon’s—as much as Gwindor’s.” 

For a long moment Edrahil was silent and his hands fell still in their work. “Perhaps,” he said at last. “But I it was who saw you half-dead where Barahir’s men had dragged you, and Sídhon who tended you through all the long road back. No blame could we place upon you greater than what you placed upon yourself.”

Finrod’s hand moved reflexively to rest against his side. It had been years since the scar pained him, but still the ache reached along its puckered tendrils whenever the massacre rose in his mind. It was the soul’s wound, he thought with morbid fascination, prodding its counterpart to waking once more. Long it had festered in the nightmare months following the Fen; its mending so slow that the healers grew concerned and whispered hushed fears of new poisons, venoms of the blade as yet unlearned, some new devilry pouring forth with the dragons’ fire. But he had languished in the shadow of their concern while the smell of smoke permeated every inch of the tower, harsh and bitter and burning his lungs with the ash of the dead. His malady was no new poison, he knew—it was the waking horror of living on while all those who followed him were lost. 

“I too owe a debt to Barahir.” Edrahil's voice cut through his thoughts. He had turned back to the whetstone and once again the water’s meter was punctuated by the steady rasp. “My duty it is to preserve the king’s life, and I watched over a sea of foes while you were driven from me to a certain end amid the mires. And so it would have been, had he not fulfilled my own duty and drawn you back, alive beyond hope.” He turned the sword to its other edge. “I would follow you upon any road, aranya. And gladly too will I give my life for his son.”

A shiver ran along Finrod’s spine. Well did he remember the meadow and the charred pine grove, the haunted look in Edrahil’s eyes as he stood near, watching Gildor hold him down while Celiel cleaned the filth from the wound and bound it against the journey back. He had nearly bitten through the stick Gildor slid between his teeth, and he could taste still the bitter sap oozing over his tongue with the force of his pain. They were too near the enemy yet to risk a cry, and the wound had been deep, the Fen’s mud foul. Edrahil had not spoken through all those hours but hovered, haggard and weary with his hair shorn already in mourning, and never once shifted from his side. 

And now it was Guilin’s voice echoing through his thought, cold and quiet amid the gathered council when Finrod took them into his confidence only a fortnight past. With respect, my lord, this is not the first time you have pressed forward in folly—yes, I say in folly—to serve the few who are already doomed over those who might yet live; as this Beren can surely attest, for it cost his father great losses to bear you forth from the last result. The knife slipped in and twisted, as though that guilt did not plague him through every waking moment, or haunt every sleepless night.

The wind sighed through the valley and Finrod filled his lungs in tandem with its movement.  It was done now, and no reappraisal would change its course. “I was a good king once,” he said at last, his voice nearly lost amid the water.

“Arto. Thou wert ever a good king.” There was only a slight hitch as Edrahil continued drawing the whetstone along the blade. “And I am proud to stand by thee yet.”

A wry chuckle escaped Finrod’s lips. “Thy king still, thy fool also? Both kind and tactful.” He fell quiet for a long moment and his gaze drifted out over Ivrin’s waters. “Far better than this didst thou deserve, Hilyo.”

“True enough.” It was Edrahil whose dry laugh echoed now, a quick grin handed between them like the shared waybread. “But it will come for each of us, our stalking Doom. Better to meet it by willing choice than to flee before it till the hounds have outlasted you—and better too to determine in what cause you bear your neck to its bite.” He set the whetstone aside and ran a cloth over the blade, its edge glinting in the sunlight as he held it up to inspect the bevel.

Celegorm’s blade had flashed even so in the lamplight of the great hall, sharp and deadly as his eyes, and both trained upon Beren. Finrod flinched again despite the distance of memory. He was between them in an instant and the light ping of metal striking gemstone rippled still in his ears—the point of his kinsman’s sword against the Dwarven necklace. He had donned it in defiance, he realized later, the gems of Valinor carried forth to spite his uncle’s words and displayed now in tangible memory of what cost had already been paid that rival Oath. Even so, he had nearly faltered when the point rested against his breast and Edrahil stepped forward, his hand upon his own sword. 

But Beren was there behind him, clothed in a tunic of midnight blue with Menelmacar’s sword reaching over the right shoulder—a ghost of the past holding him anchored still.

He was bound—by oath, and oath, and oath. He was no longer his own. Indeed, he had not been his own since he lay beneath a summer’s night and guided Balan’s hand along the woven stars, the touch of his skin still new and unfamiliar. Nay, he had not been his own since he looked through the trees and saw them, strange and beautiful, and knew against all reason that he belonged here among these perplexing creatures. He was home when he ran through the green woods with Balan keeping pace at his side. Home, when Baran’s sharp teasing drew out his smile, when Estreth watched him with half-affectionate suspicion. Home, when Balan loosed his blood and swore that they would ever be his, there in the long watch beside Belen’s prostrate form. How young the boy had been, so eager and earnest; how impossible it seemed still that any could mistake him for an Orc with naught but a skull obscuring his face...

The thought trailed off and his eyes shifted back to the distant smoke. There was only one fire, he was sure of it. Two at most. It would be a small company that made such a camp, not a force seeking battle. Twenty, thirty perhaps. “The roaming bands that come down from the pass, how many are in their number?”

Edrahil frowned as he stood and returned the sword to its sheath. “They vary greatly. Some are a hundred or more, others less than ten swords among them. Sedril has said the small bands venture furthest, similar to what we saw in the days of the Long Peace when raiding parties would slip through the leaguer.”

Finrod was quiet for a moment, then nodded toward the rising tendrils. “The company there—would you deem there are few enough for us to overcome?”

“Perhaps.” The captain peered again into the distance, then shook his head. “No more than fifty, certainly.  At a guess, I would say fewer even. If they were unguarded and taken by surprise, we would have little trouble.”

“Good,” Finrod said, “so I thought as well.” He peered again into the distance and set the last bite of waybread upon his tongue.

❈❈❈

Beren woke, disoriented, to sunlight streaming through the branches. He had dreamt of Ladros for the first time in months—not as the charred house of haunts that so often stalked his rest, but as he remembered it from his youth. The rolling grasses along the slopes, the wind in the spruce grove, his father’s garden meandering down from their door. He could smell the herbs as he traced the well-known steps, he heard his mother’s laughter on the breeze and drew his fingers over the mead crocks, the clay rough against his skin. His sister’s hound came bounding through the green and the familiar bay washed through Beren’s heart with a deep, insatiable ache.

Ash. The green meadows, the open window. Barahir’s herbs too, the hyssop and thyme, the golden calendula blossoms, all ash in the wind. 

He sat abruptly and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, looking out over the glade. Most of the others were sleeping still and lay clustered in a haphazard formation along the rocks. As too should he be, Beren thought ruefully, for it was hardly mid-afternoon. But instead, he brushed the leaves from his cloak and rolled it, tucking it beside his pack, then rose and made his way toward the shore. Sleep was past. 

It was a short walk to the clearing by the mere’s edge. Their guard was loosened here beside the crystal waters, inviolate yet in the quiet of the valley, but nevertheless they slept within sight of the watch. Beren filled his lungs as he passed between the trees and felt his heart lift despite the melancholy. The day was bright, infused with the surprising warmth that rallied ever after the first frost; and as he walked, he found he was glad after all to have wakened. They would lie concealed through every daylit hour once east of the Narog. Who knew when he might walk again unhindered beneath the sun?

He hesitated at the edge of the trees. His hope had been to find the king on watch duty; or barring that, to come across Edrahil. They had grown close during his weeks in Nargothrond—Beren, the captain, and the king—for they were closeted long hours disputing the merit of each grim strategy while they awaited Thingol’s dispatches. It was intelligence gathering, they explained to any who queried: gleaning every detail Beren recalled from Dorthonion that they might equip the lords of the Ñoldor toward any future campaign. This had been true, of course, but anything of note had been documented within the first days, and more besides. 

But Beren had passed Edrahil as he moved toward the shore, curled among those resting in the glade, and Finrod was nowhere in sight. 

Sídhon it was who knelt along the shoreline as sentry, laying out berries and nuts upon a flat boulder in the grass. His ear twitched at the sensed approach and he looked up, poised and wary till he sighted Beren at the edge of the tree line. Then his features eased into a smile and he beckoned him forward.

“Haelis!” he said as he retrieved a small collection of apples and added them to the stone.

“Haelis,” Beren responded in kind then crossed to join him, lingering a few steps away lest his presence was an intrusion.

But Sídhon’s smile was warm and he held out an apple. “You took the first watch already, anorhín, and there are many hours yet till sundown.”

“Aye, and many past since sunrise. I’ve had rest enough.”

Sídhon watched as he leaned back against a tree and began polishing the apple on his shirt. What a change there was from the merry child he remembered in the hills of Ladros. That boy had been a riot of laughter, quick and bright and darting each way with an exuberance that spread to all around him. He was missing a tooth the last time Sídhon saw him, second from the center, and they had all laughed at the roguish air it lent that otherwise innocent face. But his manner was reserved since arriving in Nargothrond; quiet, his smile scarce. It was little surprise given all that passed between, but it grieved Sídhon nonetheless to see those cheerful eyes darkened, to find the child’s laughter stilled. And then, once the betrayal was full wrought and their course chosen, that reservation had shifted to despair. Beren was withdrawn through the brief preparations, silent through their departure. The self-reproach hung heavy upon him and he had spoken little on the road so far. 

Sídhon selected a few berries from the pile and turned them about on his palm. “I remember your father well.” 

Beren glanced up in surprise. The other’s voice drifted toward him with unexpected warmth, the Taliska easy upon his tongue.

 “I knew him during his three years’ service in Nargothrond, of course—both he and his brother—but I remember him most vividly in Ladros. We danced on the lea when he wed your mother, a merry riot with all your folk singing through the late watches of the night.”

“Aye, she told us of it often—that the king rode from Sirion to Ladros for no reason other than to give a blessing and witness the oaths.” A smile twitched at Beren’s lips as he remembered Emeldir recounting the story and he moved to sit alongside the other. “My father held it over my uncle for years.”

Sídhon chuckled. “Your uncle’s marriage was at the time of the High King’s council else I doubt not he would have received the same.” He transferred half the berries and nuts to a wide leaf and slid it across the stone where Beren could reach them. “It took much for my lord to decline the rite, for dearly does he hold the honor. Truly,” he added after a pause, “one cannot hold it otherwise.”

“Have you stood as a witness also, then?” Beren asked, hearing the catch in his voice.

“Aye, I have.”

“I knew not that any but the king had done so—of your folk, that is.” He leaned against the boulder behind him and for a moment the old grin creased his face, and his eyes lightened. “I am glad to hear of it. Was it for one of my kin?”

“It was.” Sídhon met the smile with his own as he raised a handful of berries to his lips. “But I’ll say no more than that.” Beren laughed despite himself and Sídhon was pleased to see the guarded posture loosen, the pained lines ease. The right edge of his smile was a scant breadth higher than the left, even as his forefather’s had been when he leaned against that same rock more than a century past and sipped miruvórë in the sun, his wry laugh drifting on the breeze.

Beren finished the apple and threw the core into the thicket. “Do all of you speak our tongue, then?” 

“Nay, most do not. Of our company here, only Edrahil and I—and my lord, of course. Hilyo was oft with the king when he rode to Estolad.”

“Yes, I remember him in Ladros when I was a child.” Beren glanced at the other in curiosity. “When did you learn?”

“I have been the king’s attendant since ere the sun first sailed,” Sídhon replied, sorting the dried nuts into various arrangements, “and I assisted Bëor as well when he dwelt among us. It seemed only courteous to do so in his own tongue.”

“That was kindly of you.”

“Not overmuch.” Sídhon drew a packet of waybread from the bag beside him, a tinge of embarrassment in his smile. “Languages are a delight of my people, and my own particular interest. His offered a fascinating study.” He lifted a cake from its wrapping and broke it, holding out a chunk to Beren. “He was a good and dear friend. Bitterly did we all feel his loss.”

Beren took the lembas and turned it over on his palm, his eyes distant as he traced a finger over the stamped design.“When my sister and I were children, we would carry dried honey cakes up Alaf Hill. Our aunt—our father’s aunt, rather—said our people were forbidden the Elven bread, so we would pretend my mother’s cakes were our own lembas, bestowed by special edict and carried through all our play, till we ate them in solemn ritual upon the hilltop.”

“Apportion it not to the Secondborn, lest through its sustenance they find weariness where gift was laid, and among the Firstborn long to dwell. Yes, I’ve heard it said.” Sídhon chuckled as he recited the maxim, then glanced at Beren with a brow lifted. “Little danger here, I think.”

“When I’ve the malady already?” He laughed and broke off a bite. “Aye, fair enough. Naught here that bread can worsen.”

“Felagund would tell you it’s nonsense—proverbs invented by those who’ve never spent a full day among Men.” Sídhon finished his own mouthful and the quick smile flashed out once more. “Few things are more certain to raise his disdain than willful ignorance of your people.” He watched as Beren progressed through the waybread, each bite broken off with the childhood reverence he described, and slowly his mirth drifted quiet.

Does he go to his own kind in Dor-lómin? Celegorm’s voice had torn through the great hall, his sword bright as blood in the lamplight—bringing with it the dread sensation of standing once more upon Túna amid the dark. Nay, it is to us that he comes, to our strength that he appeals in lust’s whim. Shall it be our blood poured out in satiation? Let the apanónar look to the lands they were given and reach not for our own to spend, nor seek to purchase their debts through the price of our birthright. 

The king’s wrath was an instant fire. He had been calm till then, measured and steady against the  onslaught, but the brothers knew too well where the armor’s weakness lay. His fury lashed out in defense, the show of preference was twisted round his neck, the crown hurled upon the stone. Sídhon raged still at the memory. What knew Celegorm of mortals or their love, that bitter beauty, precious and fleeting, so dear to his lord? What knew Curufin of an oath sworn from devotion and not vengeance? 

Beren had finished his portion of lembas while Sídhon’s thoughts wandered, and now was collecting the crumbs with his finger, lifting each carefully to his lips. He took nothing lightly, this boy. Every kindness was held with warmth, every gift received with quiet solemnity. 

They had feared for his life throughout the one night they tarried in Nargothrond, uncertain whether the brothers were content to hold the quest as executioner, or whether their Oath demanded a more immediate satisfaction. Every corridor was heavy with fear. Peril seeped like perspiration from the stone. But Beren had thanked the king quietly and retired to his chambers without alarm—Death may hunt me if he will, he had quipped with a mirthless twist of his lips. No door of mine is barred to him. Nevertheless, they had watched the Bëorian apartments throughout the dark hours: the king sitting guard at one door, Edrahil at the other.

“Where is he?” Beren’s voice broke through the patchwork of recollections. “He was not among those resting in the thicket. I thought I might find him here.”

“So he was when I took my watch, but he departed to climb the upper falls an hour or two past.” Sídhon gestured toward the tumult behind him. “The summit commands a fair view of the valley and the lands north of the river. He wished to examine our road while the sun is yet above the hills.”

Beren nodded and glanced up toward the crest of the falls, their spray blinding with the refracted sunlight. “Then I may join him—I too would glimpse our road ere we hazard its passage. Unless it is solitude he seeks as well?”

“Aye, doubtless.” Sídhon reached for another berry. “But he would not count your presence an interruption. Rotavva Wrotenni,” he added with a smile and his voice was nearly lost amid the roar of the falls. “Ever has he loved your people, more than many understand.”

❈ ❈ ❈

He found his way easily enough. The foot of the path was just as Sídhon described and he followed its track between pines and beeches, winding gently up the hillside. In some places steps had been shaped within the stone, worn now and smooth against his feet—a far contrast from the crumbling rocks that shifted and gave way when he clambered over the Falls of Sirion and sighted the highlands through the rain, a last fragment of hope.

Those hills lay beyond his sight now, nothing but a haze along the horizon when he gazed from the crest of these falls. The valley and headwaters of the Narog were spread before him in somber array and he shivered as he looked out over their expanse, at the forest draping a shroud across the foothills, the river a winding line of steel. It was beautiful—and foreboding spilled over every edge. Even Anar touched the land with suspicion, shifting the autumn leaves of the valley to fire but leaving the plain beyond in shadow.

And there at the edge of his sight: Brethil.

Brethil, whose fingers reached the Esgalduin. Brethil, whose boughs might gaze across the Mindeb and glimpse the twilight of Neldoreth, whose leaves danced in the same wind that carried Tinúviel’s song.

Tinúviel! Tinúviel! His heart faltered. The roaring falls beckoned with a siren’s voice. The plummet reached out to him, slender arms twining about his shoulders, drawing him down as Lúthien drew him to her side beneath the stars, beneath the boughs…and all his longing was to slip forward into that embrace, to tumble down in flight through the singing air and meet oblivion in the memory of her arms.

Beren caught his breath and staggered back, dizzy. For in that moment he had felt it there behind him, the light amid the air and the whispered song, the stillness potent and teeming—the tone of Neldoreth. Irresistible, it drew him from the precipice and he followed it without hesitation, drifting along the branching streams till he passed the eaves of an alder grove and a heavy quiet fell through the boughs. The stream babbled on. But the sound had clarified and sharpened, alive in the same way the light about him was alive, each threaded through with motion, with vibrance, with unmeasured thought.

He was at once lost in the familiarity and muddled by the difference. Beeches there were amid the alder trees, but they grew in snatches rather than the standing multitude where Lúthien had danced. Did she dance there still? Would she seek his memory among those boughs as he clung to hers here beneath this blood-red canopy, swathed in gold? Listlessness overtook him as his steps moved along the bank, for they were the same dull rhythm of the previous autumn, marking hours between the trees, losing days beneath the boughs. A wraith longing only for a fleeting glimpse of her beauty.

As if in answer, there was a flicker at the edge of his sight and he turned toward it in reflex, his heart pounding. Only now it was the king’s form he saw through the slender trunks, bright against the crags from which the stream’s source poured. The same rush of enchantment dizzied Beren’s senses—there before him, beautiful and fay, an apparition beneath the trees. But Lúthien had danced as starlight incarnate, whereas the figure before him was a creature of day, all golden sunlight cascading through the branches.

Finrod was still as the stone about him, a graven image in the gap between the rocks; one hand propped loosely against his lips, the other folded across his abdomen, and his eyes followed the water as one in a dream. He was no longer shrouded in the grey uniform of the Silent Guard, but had laid that tunic aside to reveal a faded blue shirt, frayed at the edges and embroidered in patterns of red and gold. Even from this vantage, Beren recognized the Atani designs—and here too, as in the apartments in Nargothrond, their form was of more than a century gone. 

And here too the king’s presence was distant. Permeable almost, as though he stood half in the glade and half out of time—another wraith, Beren thought with affinity, drifting through the wood. Guilt passed over him with the recognition, for he knew that he watched uninvited and eavesdropped on the other’s solitude. It was the same conviction he recalled from the night his grandfather passed—he woke in the midnight hours and saw his father across the Hall, bent double in mourning, his mother’s hand set lightly against his neck. It was a simple gesture, and ordinary, but he had felt a voyeur to look on the quiet intimacy without their knowledge. 

Beren stepped forward, rustling the leaves beneath his feet as he moved into the clearing, and the king turned sharply at the sound. For a moment his expression froze, a tangled mix of discovery and hope, then recognition settled and and his features eased into the familiar welcome.

“Beren,” he said, and though he smiled his voice was rough, “forgive my surprise, I did not hear your approach.”

“Nay, lord, the apology is mine. I’ve broken your solitude.”

Finrod dismissed this with a wave of his hand and moved to sit on a low boulder. “A welcome diversion,” he said, motioning for Beren to join him by the water. “I am always glad of your company.”

Beren crossed the clearing and his scalp prickled as he neared the water. “What is this place?” 

“Ulmo’s Well it is called—a place of reverence. I believe your traditions would name it a holy spring.” Finrod felt his heart falter as Beren crouched down in the gap between the stones and dipped his fingers beneath the water. He could mark the differences easily enough after these weeks in Beren’s company, but still at times the resemblance would leap up without warning and bind a knot through all his senses. Navá Guënidan, ananiujan tagas eil… “Then in the water, Aelthes washed,” he murmured without thought. “And of the water Aelthes drank. A healing draught, a cleansing balm. And the withering fell from her like scales…”

Beren looked back at the king in surprise. “It is long since I’ve heard that recited,” he said, and a smile eased his features. “Few tell the tales any longer, but my mother would read them aloud each night by the fire in the Hall. ‘Know the path your forefathers set,’ she would tell me. And ‘it is a fool who heeds not his past.’ It was an old book handed down through her line—it held all these tales we’ve come near to forgetting.”

“Yes, I remember it.” Finrod’s fingers sought the iron band about his forefinger, turning it absently as he spoke. “Long years he spent in its making, and glad indeed would he be to know it held these back from loss.”

“Of course,” Beren’s voice was stunned as the stark difference reared its head once more. “You were there in the margins…” He knew it well enough in reason, that this who sat beside him had walked the world ere the sun, that his own love had walked it longer still, and would walk on till its ending. But ever he was dizzied by the tangible marks—those treasured items on the shelves in Nargothrond, these same eyes that rested upon him had shone in the woods where his forebears were found, his own history a recent memory. Beren shivered. “Is this Guënid’s spring, then?”

“Nay, if such was more than myth, it lay far to the east, beyond the Ered Lindon.” There was a forced lightness to his tone and he trailed into silence, his fingers falling still against the ring.

Beren rose and let the breeze fill his lungs. His senses were awash in the scent of leaves, the sun upon his face, the wind sighing like water through the branches. “It reminds me of Neldoreth,” he breathed, stepping away from the water, and in his memory Lúthien’s arms were about his waist, her voice against his ear summoning him forward, drawing him into the whirling dance. 

“That is the presence of an Ainu’s spirit.” It was Finrod’s voice that met him in reply, and this too was warm and golden, dawn instead of twilight. “Here the lord of waters reaches through the stream, through every pool, sustaining and guiding each eddy and growing bough. In the far woods it was Melian’s power you felt, the life-blood of Doriath.”

“The life-blood, aye—and Lúthien the heartbeat, each season held in time by her dance.” Beren’s murmur was worshipful, and a smile slipped out despite himself. “She drew me to its rhythm too,” he added, glancing toward the king with a lightened face. Come! dance now, Beren, dance with me! The lines of care had eased and for a moment his youth shone through. “I would sit and watch her weave those steps, all joy in the beholding, while she chided till I rose and joined her. ‘Woo more nimbly, Beren, the deer and squirrels out-pace thy dancing!’”

Finrod’s laugh rippled out, clear as the spring beside them. “Even so,” he said, and mirth was alight once more in his eyes. “I remember my first visit to Menegroth. I was out of place and hesitant amid the unfamiliar customs, and she slipped from the dancing to hover before me, laughing at my reticence. ‘Ye Noldor are strange creatures, coz—limbed of stone, ‘twould seem. How long wilt thou watch in study to learn the joy ere thou wilt join it?’ Then she took me by the arm and pulled me into the dance before I could protest.”

Beren smiled again, but he turned to look into the grove and weariness seeped back into his features.

“After that, I would bring stories with each visit,” the king continued with a smile, “tales of what lay beyond the forest borders. I told her of your people, of Estolad and the plains, of Ladros.”

A choked sound escaped Beren at this and his fingers sought the callous where his father’s ring once rested. He had returned it to Finrod on their last night in Nargothrond, when they lingered weary and shaken from the fury of the great hall. Thine oath paid is now mine own debt to carry. But still his hands fiddled in their restless habit and he clasped them now to stay their movement. “I wondered,” he said at last. “She knew my home ere I described it—and a balm unlooked for that was, for I could not then recall any form but its ash.” Again he saw the slopes with their smoldering wreckage, the skeletons of homes and hall sprawled like a stripped carcass along the ridge, and the knot strangled in his throat. 

Lúthien held him beneath the starlight when at last his grief was loosed; and he had wept against her in breathless sobs till she drew him down upon her lap and sang, long and low, her fingers trailing paths through his hair. Within her voice was the lament he could not speak, and within her song the memory of life, of those same beams planted and raised, his people’s voices singing in time with their labor. She had built it anew in the cadence of that music—from Finrod’s stories he realized now—and returned to him what the darkness had stolen.

 “I know it sounds folly to find home in the glance of a stranger’s eye, but I have never known such joy as those months, Nóm.” Beren’s voice was hoarse as he held back the renewed wave of grief. “I was a hunted thing, helpless and wretched, but she sought me out night after night and in her gaze I dwelt without suspicion.”

“Seen and known and named, as only one can name you.” Finrod’s words were quiet. He had risen and stepped into the gap between the crags, and he reached out to rest his hand upon the stone. “And made whole thereby.”

“Yes.” There was a new note in the king’s voice and Beren looked back at him in curiosity.

“We’ve each of us our Neldoreth,” Finrod murmured, answering the question in the other’s gaze rather than his words. A distant smile tugged at his lips and his eyes were warm, unguarded. “Though to speak truly, mine was upon other foothills, amid the pines and not alder trees. But here was it spoken.” 

And then, as though a haze had lifted, Beren saw the king’s arm caught in the sunlight against the rock and the pigment etched above his wrist. A vertical stroke, crossed at its midpoint, a dot on each side of the intersecting line. Emeldir and Barahir had each born a similar mark, as had his mother’s father, his aunt. By what illusion had he not seen it till now? His breath drew in with sharp surprise—the king was wed, and to one of Beren’s own people. His thoughts spun as the realization settled upon him. “Who?” he blurted out, attempting too late to restrain the stunned query and felt the color leap across his features. “Forgive me, lord, that was a presumption.”

“Nay, thou hast more right than any to ask—dear son of dear sons, as I’ve named thee before. Dear son of his sons.” Finrod’s voice caught and for a moment his knuckles whitened against the stone. Then a laugh slipped from his lips and he looked back at Beren with a wry grin. “‘Know the path your forefathers set,’ was that not the phrase? Ever keen, thy mother’s words.”

The knowledge shifted together like a mirage once neared. The king before him in the frayed and faded shirt, the patterns of the long wandering marked about its hems. Each pointed insinuation that had lurked beneath his cousins’ accusations. A shrine of items upon the stone shelves, each piece a herald of that first generation. The cracked harp and the spare clothes. Nóm’s voice greeting him with the language of his own people, naming him son as he clasped him within his arms. And throughout all, a faded scrawl in Emeldir’s book of lore, Whom among us can resist the draw of Light? Forgive me, Bel, I heeded not the cry of the raven. Yet neither can I find it in me to regret.

“Bëor,” he heard himself say, then flinched at the incredulity in his tone.

“Balan.” The king’s smile was weary now and his thumb turned the iron ring round and about his finger. “Brief it was and foolish, and bitter in the ending—as all such barters must be. But of all my years, his shall ever be the center.”

“But was he not—” This time Beren cut himself off in time, yet nevertheless felt Finrod’s eyes resting on him in amusement.

“Was he not wed to another?”

“I…forgive me, again I have spoken out of turn.”

“And again I correct thee—ask as thou wilt, there is no offense.” Finrod turned back toward the gleaming waters, the old grief and the old jealousies rising together with the question. “Yes, he was wed, some years before; but Esrid’s death was long ere thy people crossed the mountains. Of that suspicion at least thou canst absolve us. Nay, he was unbound—weary and alone when we met beneath the pines of Thalos’ spring.” He chuckled as he glanced back toward Beren. “And no doubt he would tell thee the same of me. We recognized each other at once, in some way, there across the dying embers. He was the first of them to wake.” Balan had ever been a light sleeper, poised and half-ready for the crisis, unless he held him gathered close. Then the breathing would slow, the tucked arms ease, and the solid warmth of him lie loose and heavy within Finrod’s embrace. He had held him every night in his age, for otherwise sleep came only in restless snatches, strewn throughout the hours—and Balan needed the warmth then too, of course. The emptiness ached in his arms. “It was the first time I’d looked in the eyes of your people,” he managed after a long pause, “the first time I saw that depth and fire, the vibrance and despair. I can see that moment still—the embers gleaming like gems amid the ash, the many sleeping bundles scattered about the clearing, then one of them stirring and his face lifted and looking up over his shoulder, Isil’s light washing him with silver…” His words trailed off, then after a moment he laughed and met Beren’s eye, teasing once more dancing through his voice. “No footing have I to fault devotion to a stranger singing in the woods.”

“No indeed,” Beren replied, the other’s laughter crossing to his own lips, “not when thou wert the songbird.”

“Ah, but twas I saw him first you know. I watched them for hours from the shadow of the trees and could not take my eyes from him as he sang beside the fire. Mind you,” he added with another flash of mirth, “he had not the voice of a nightingale.”

Beren laughed again, then felt the wave of incredulity rising once more, dizzying his senses. 

It had been a crude punchline among the older boys in his youth, something contradicted with indignation, not anything he gave a moment’s credence—the cause of his first fight. Pretty as a peach, that mouth. Little wonder they say old Bëor chased after him to those caves. Hávar had muttered it in his ear as they watched the king’s guard ride out toward the plains, chuckling as he glanced toward Bregolas’ sons. On the lookout for a new bedfellow, do you think? And Beren had leapt on him, small fists flying, till Barahir hauled him back with nose bloodied and a split lip. 

A jest. And yet here the king stood, a widow’s grief etched within the smile Beren had known since childhood. Nóm was a fixed point through all his memories before the burning—laughing at his grandfather’s jests, his voice raised in a funeral lament for the same, or flitting from note to note with the childish ballads he taught them. He would sit by the Hall’s fire in midwinter and carve toys while Beren and the other children gathered around him in a brood, watching the intricate precision of his knife in fascination. He danced alongside them at midsummer or in the reels of wedding celebrations—Sídhon had spoken truly in that, the king would appear over the ridge of Ladros for a surprising number of these. He had spoken blessings over each child of Bëor’s house in turn, his palm laid gently upon their tiny heads. Beren remembered the king murmuring those words over his sister when she was an infant of sleepless nights, then cradling her in his arms and tucking her against the embroidered silk, singing through the long hours while Barahir and Emeldir slept. 

And throughout all, Beren realized, there flowed a river of grief—where each new life must have marked the loss anew, each death recalled the pain of that first. Yet Nóm was a spirit of joy in all these memories, his laughter ever-present and the generations of Beren’s people knit together in his song. How had he borne it? 

His mother’s words rose through the tangle of memory. Emeldir’s hand had rested upon her son’s shoulder while the king sang a lament over the elder Beren’s body, his death early and unexpected amid the cruel winter. Know this of your king, little one: ever has he held us in honor. From our earliest days he marked our people with dignity, even in our passing. And then as though in afterthought, it is said he arrived in full mourning for the forefather of our House.

A new revelation struck and Beren felt his blood run hot with fury. “Is this what he meant?” 

“Who?”

“The lord Curufin. Before the assembly when he spoke of duties and allegiance.”

“Ah.” A muscle twitched along Finrod’s jaw and he looked away. “Shorn like a widow for some usurper?” His voice was tight as he repeated his cousin’s words. “Yes. This is what he meant.”

Beren’s anger smoldered anew. He could see the king’s pale face in the lamplight still, frozen in an instant to a mask of its usual poise, eyes bewildered and in pain as they rested on his cousin. The abrupt stillness had been jarring in the wake of his impassioned retorts to Curufin’s brother. The accusations from Celegorm, he murmured to Beren in the aftermath, had been expected. It was the personal he did not anticipate—the cold, measured calculation of it. The cruelty. Beren had not pressed further at the time, but now his fists clenched as he watched Finrod shift forward to stand at the water’s edge and saw a tremor ripple along his shoulders. Brittle as glass, he thought, then without warning was plunged into a vision of Lúthien, hovering before him in the light. She too stood beside a shoreline, only it was Esgalduin’s waters that brushed against her feet and starlight that lit her features, that glistened within her hair. But the same tremor shivered through her frame and Beren felt a choking dread as she turned and walked into the shadow of the trees.

He started after her and the vision dissolved, leaving him once more forsaken in the woods beside the shore, stumbling to a halt and breathing fast. The hunger and the loneliness threatened to overwhelm him. This time she had been so near he was certain he could have touched her arm, had he reached out in time.

“Tell me truly, Nóm,” he managed at last in a cracked whisper, “to what pain am I leaving her?” Again he thought of the shelves in Nargothrond, their shabby collection held in preservation amid the long-empty apartments. “Do you regret it?”

For long Finrod was silent, then he took a deep breath and turned back to meet Beren’s gaze. “I did,” he said quietly. “In that first pain of parting, yea and for many years following, I believed I had chosen wrongly—from weakness, from foolishness.” A dry laugh escaped him and he shifted his shoulders as though shrugging a garment loose. “I found many words to castigate then, many reasons I should have held my course, or parted at once, or sent him back to Estolad when I knew my resolve could not hold. I buried my grief within regret, berated myself that I might see it as wisdom gained, to judge thus with prudence through its dear-bought insight. And, Valar forgive me, I gave counsel from that belief.” A spasm crossed his face and for a moment he faltered, then the breeze lifted once more and a smile spread gradually over his lips. “But I would not wish away a single breath of the time I was his. The memory of him dwells ever in my breast—the wound of him, I would have named it to thee only a handful of years ago. But in truth it is a balm and not a blade, a physic that soothes the long ache and that which binds the wound together, as he himself once told me. As he wrote in that same book thy mother read to thee. He holds me still, my anchor amid the grief of this passing world, and ever shall I hold him in return. Every moment of him I carry with me, forever undimmed till the ending of Arda.” Balan’s hand had rested against this stone, Finrod recalled as his own pressed against its rough chill. He had watched him slam it against this same outcropping in fury, and with such force that Finrod feared he must have broken it. “Nay,” he added quietly as his fingers traced over the calcite veins, “my only regret is that I tarried. Precious time was lost while I stumbled in fetters I bound upon myself, when I should have done as Lúthien—set my hand in his and walked out from these woods in joyful defiance.”

Her hand had been cool when she reached for Beren under the sighing boughs, his own trembling as his palm met the corporality of her skin. Even after he caught her in his arms, he still half-believed she would be revealed as one more mirage upon that shadowed road of phantoms—beauty come to torment now instead of clinging horror. But her hand wrapped about his and her pulse flowed between their fingers, grounding him, every fiber of him more vibrantly alive than he had ever known. “Why did you hesitate?” he asked, and clasped his hands together that he might not feel their emptiness. 

Finrod’s fingers continued to follow the calcite, its path branching like rivers along the rock face. “The doom of my people, the fate of thine, the danger of souls bound across that distance, the ever-present Siege and the conviction that I had transgressed already by desiring that with which I was entrusted…” He shuddered and passed his hands over his face. “Fear,” he said with bitter precision. “Nothing more than that. I was afraid of the pain, I was afraid of drowning, of the loneliness of years. I spun reasons aplenty from the threads we held—and their philosophies were not wrong, but the convictions restrained me not once fear’s grip had loosed me. But for a century and more I have watched his sons grow and flourish, I have held their daughters and their sons, and the sons and daughters of these. Ever new and ever brimming over in wonder. I have lived surrounded by the fierce beauty of your people and never could I have guessed at such a joy, to see the echo of him travel down the lengthening generations…Yes, there was grief. And there was joy too—there is joy." He glanced across at Beren with affection, then slipped without thought into Taliska. “You are an echo very like him.”

“Am I?” Beren’s voice was bright with surprise.

“In face and voice. Only somewhat in demeanor.” A small smile played at Finrod’s lips as he strayed back through memory. “He was not a warrior.”

Beren’s brow lifted in amused skepticism. “He chose Dorthonion for his people, did he not?”

Finrod chuckled. “Nay, he left all that to Baran. He and I both chose scrolls over swords whenever the chance allowed. Book mice, Bel called us, scurrying ever back to our scribes’ larder. Yes,” he added in response to the other’s querying glance, “his sons knew. Belen dwelt alongside us for a time in Nargothrond.” His thumb moved across the mark on his wrist and his eyes grew distant. “Indeed, he stood as one witness.”

“The effigy in Ladros was not a likeness then.” There was mischief in Beren’s quick grin and he was rewarded with a full laugh from the king.

“Nay, not a likeness. That too was more of Baran than his father—though there is little surprise in that. Through Baran’s youth their similarity was striking and in the intervening years we always spoke of them as such. When Belegor shaped the Hall’s carvings, he knew only Baran’s visage and drew up the likeness from there. A tall chieftain, fierce and strong, with spear brandished and all your people’s brash valor shining from his face…” His lips twitched in amused affection. “You are very like him as well.” Finrod’s eyes drifted again to the gap between the crags with its sloping moss lining the path to the water. “Mistake me not, though,” he added quietly, “Bëor was no coward. He had more courage than many I’ve known—a steadfast courage, fixed and level, stubbornly so. It centered me. Truly, it holds me grounded still.”

Beren watched him long in silence. What of his own self would Lúthien bear forward through the years? Of courage he had shown little but the rash bravado in her father’s court. Of constancy, of dedication at least he had given more evidence. In that she had the memory of his footsteps seeking after her through the seasons. But would she remember that with joy? Or would that desperate chase too become mired in the grief of their sundering, tangled with her father’s fury and her own parting words. Stubborn fool, I would have fled with thee…How would she speak of him when a century had passed? When an Age was gone? Would he be wound or balm? 

“We are ever taught to honor our forefathers,” he said at last, and there was strain in his voice, “and thus he has been a relic to my mind, separated by time and reverence, static as the figure in Belegor’s woodcarving. I wish now that I could have met him.”

“And I that he could meet you.” Finrod smiled still, but the lines of weariness had returned at the edges of his lips. “I confess that has shadowed my joy in these years among your people, that I have the chance to know you and he does not—how he would have loved each one of you.” Then illumination rushed over his face and his eyes were bright once more. “That I cannot remedy, but I can show thee a better likeness than Belegor’s rendering.”

He rose and retrieved a shell from the niche cut into the stone, then crossed to the waterfront and cast about till he found a wide divot within one of the lower crags. Beren watched as he filled the shell from the spring and poured it over the stone, repeating the process until the hollow was filled to its edges. 

“This I learned of my sister,” Finrod murmured as he crouched beside the rock and glanced up at Beren with a quick smile, “who in turn learned it of the lady of Doriath.” He took a breath and let it pass over the water, sending ripples traveling out across its surface, then he sat back on his heels and watched while they settled once more into stillness. ”Many things may be gleaned of the water’s eye, both knowledge and mystery, guidance and obscurity. Perilous it is to set a course through its wisdom, for past and present may appear together without distinction, intermingled as well with those things whose time has not come. But in this it is a tool well-suited: I will show thee memory, if thou wilt look upon it.”

“Memory?” Beren moved across the glade, mesmerized by the silken veneer pooling upon the rock. 

“My own. It will show as I command for such a purpose—and I am willing, shouldst thou wish to know his face.”

Finrod’s hand had shifted to rest upon the edge of the boulder and Beren was captivated by the serpents lying side by side with the iron band. There had been a crest in the first leaf of his mother’s book, the Bëorian sigil painted in bright, Elven ink, the twin serpents wrapped in embrace about its edges and their crown markedly absent. The four-point set in the center was filled with the colors of the king’s house…gods all, had they been blind? It was here all along, in the heirlooms of their line, in the heraldry they painted yet on shield and helm. In his bones, even. He knelt beside the king and set his own palm upon the rock. “I will look, lord,” he said. “I would know the one whose path I tread.”

There was a flicker of gratitude in the king’s eyes and he shifted to make room as Beren bent forward over the makeshift basin. The water was still, unnaturally so with the autumn breeze rising yet through the clearing, and upon that plane the leaves above were mirrored, bright as dancing flames. The hair along his neck prickled as he noticed that his own reflection was absent, and the heartbeat grew louder in his ears. Then abruptly the pool went dark, flat and without any reflection, as though looking out into the night. 

Which, Beren realized as his eyes grew accustomed, was exactly what he was doing. There were leaves still, grey now amid the darkness, moving with the breath of a gentler wind. Slender trunks passed on each side of his vision as though he moved between them, gliding forward through the night air. There was a brush of orange through the boughs and for a moment Beren thought the reflection was returning, but it took the form of fire instead, its light spilling out between the trees. There were figures seated around the edge, others milling about through the clearing in familiar tasks. And then with a brush of the other’s thought, it seemed to him that he heard voices singing.

And here in earth beneath our feet
the flesh of gods, the steady beat
of Melishk’s heart will mark our way.
Here at last the rooted clay,
the darkness left, the waking day.

It was his own tongue, the singer’s voice pleasant and rough, the tune a hymn they had since preserved through each new generation—Bëor chanting to mark the mountains safe passage. Beren could see him beside the fire in glimpses stolen between the boughs. Middling height, his profile sharp against the flames, laughing as he traded the melody with the man beside him. Even from the distance, he recognized this second as the visage carved into the Hall at Ladros; though young here, younger than Beren, and his eyes lit with mirth rather than the fire of battle. 

The same clearing again, only it was daylight now. There were huts scattered throughout the trees, some half-built, donkeys and sheep penned within woven hawthorn boughs. A group sat in another circle, perched on various logs and stools, but a bowl had been placed in the center and each took turns dropping a pebble and attempting to strike it into the vessel mid-air with the sticks they held. Hallus’n aurkeis—stone in the pot—Beren knew it well. They had played it beside Tarn Aeluin throughout the dark winters and young Hathaldir was nearly unbested. In the water’s vision another youth struck a pebble with the same twist of his wrist, the stone fell into the vessel with the same precision. Laughter ran through the group as he twirled the stick in victory and the nearest figure, whose dark nest of hair had blocked half the vision so far, glanced over his shoulder, grinning. Beren’s breath caught as the image met his eye. Smile lines were scattered across his features, crinkled along the ridge of his nose, and his lips were parted mid-laugh. The dark eyes looked directly into his own, but in the warmth of their glance, the intimacy of that quick affection, he knew at once his own intrusion.

The water too seemed to sense the trespass, for it shifted at once to the caverns, vast and many-pillared, lit with lamps of gold. The great hall of Nargothrond, Beren noted without hesitation—fixed as it was within his memory, within his guilt. A figure moved toward him along the same aisle he had walked at the king’s side, and the light hung about him as a garment. Indeed, it was caught within his robes, dancing from him as the lamplight had refracted from the king when Beren arrived, weary and stumbling before his table. Yet Beren recognized him at once—it was the same cloud of waving hair, the same ease of presence, the dark eyes once more meeting his in challenge and devotion as he knelt. Then a brief image of the king’s hand reaching out and resting against the other’s cheek.

Memory flinched away from this as well, or rather flinched into what followed, seeming to leap against its will to hover before the rocks where Beren knelt. Bëor stood in the gap between them, his chin thrown back as if braced against a coming blow, and the same shirt the king wore now hung  loose about his shoulders. Nearly at once the vision faltered and became fluid as the water that held it, images rippling one into the other—Bëor’s face cupped within the king’s hands, the same again with tears streaming from his eyes, the spring rushing past, Bëor turning away in fury, the cockle shell filled with water. The vista of the upper falls with Bëor’s profile sharp against the sunlight. 

Nargothrond again, memory had retreated. The image was of the chambers Beren knew from his own stay, looking back from the hearthside toward the principal room. Bëor sat sprawled upon the bed with a book propped against his knee. He was clad in the same shirt, rolled to his elbows and worn unbound over a pair of loose breeches, boyish somehow despite the steel grey of his hair. He held a trimmed quill between his teeth as he turned the page, then retrieved it and dipped it in an inkwell before jotting a note along the margin. 

For a long moment, the water held steady upon this image of his face, each detail pristine in recollection. How different he was to what Beren had imagined—Bëor the Old, wizened and dignified, a sage presence and not this man with a sardonic smile creased into the lines of his face, glancing at the king with teasing and challenge.

The memory faltered. Then the reflection showed the same view, only it rushed now toward the bed in a mad scramble and there was a brief image of Bëor’s face, lined and frail now, set unmistakably in that final stillness.

Finrod’s hand struck the water with a choked exclamation and the vision scattered. 

The puddle fell dark and Beren was startled to see his own reflection return, wobbling along the surface as the ripples coursed through the basin. 

“Nóm?” he whispered and looked up in concern. The king’s face was still as marble, his eyes fixed yet on the gathered water, and his expression an unreadable mask, save only for the tears tricking down his cheeks.

But Finrod shook his head and smiled when their eyes met, and there was peace within his own. “I am well,” he murmured. “Truly.”

Beren nodded, but could not find any words in reply. His thoughts were reeling, caught between the revelation’s initial shock and the eerie fascination of having looked into his ancestor’s eyes. And more, of having looked into those eyes and seen himself there. “We have always named him the Old,” he said at last, his voice distant, contemplative. “I never thought to imagine him merry.” Then a smile broke over his own face as he heard Finrod’s chuckle in response, and he glanced back at the king in warm gratitude. “Thank you. I am glad to know his face.”

“And a balm it was to show thee.” Finrod looked down as he dried his hand on the hem of his shirt. “It has eased my heart—and I am grateful.”

Once again the pattern drew Beren’s fascination. Those lines had danced too on the robe he wore before the great hall, trailing in seed pearls along the sleeves and hems. “Was his the tunic you lent me?” he asked, knowing already the answer, for its cut too matched those he had seen in the water’s eye.

“It was. I wanted to remind them—for them to think of him when told of thy need. Most would have remembered him before that same hall, swearing your people to ours; they would have remembered the countless feasts, or their children who called him uncle and sat at his feet to hear tales of those lands beyond the Lindon. I wanted them to remember.” A muscle twitched along his jaw and he stood, turning away toward the spring. “But those children have long since grown, and none of them are among our number. Do any remember but I?”

Beren was silent. It was eerie to hear the same question from the king’s lips that his own had roared at the blackened stones of Ladros. The land had forgotten, the beasts had forgotten, the stars overhead shone on without pity—they too bore little of his people in mind. Only in his own memory did they live on in remembrance, only in his were they mourned, or so he had believed at the time. “Heavy it is,” he said at last, “to carry the dead alone.” His voice was tight with feeling and he rose to stand beside the king. “And those of us who must bear it know better than any the worth of its bitter joy.”

Finrod nodded, not drawing his gaze from the chattering waters. “In goodness our paths have crossed,” he murmured in the Atani fashion. “In parting, the same dust carries upon our feet.” His voice trailed off, then he turned toward Beren and met his eye with a smile. “So you see, my son, I would have sought to aid thee regardless—for thy sake alone, but also for his. And, this to my further shame, for the sake of one whose own bitter joy I denied by my counsel.” Beren’s silence once again pressed forward in query and Finrod fidgeted with the iron band as he answered. “It was my brother’s wish to wed thy kinswoman—and my word that dissuaded him.” 

Another facet shifted, the hints and asides took on meaning, tales from Dorthonion’s fall fell into place. “That is why she walked out onto the heath.”

“Who?”

“Madjatta,” Beren replied in a breath. “Saelind—amid the Bragollach.”

“I know not thy meaning.” Finrod’s posture took on a wariness, tensed for a new wound. “What was it she did?”

“When the lord Aegnor was slain...” Beren looked at him in surprise. “Have none told you?”

“No.” Finrod shook his head and the eagerness in his eyes was mingled with dread. “Exiles there were of Angrod’s folk, but none came to us from the eastern highlands. I could learn naught but what I knew already from my own spirit—he was gone, and the fires took what was left.”

“Aye, so it was.” He shifted his weight from one leg to the other and thought back on the ragged group that found them amid the ash. His own sister had been among them, Hathaldir as well and Radhruin beside them. Hathaldir and Radhruin had been side by side again at Aeluin, and amid the blood and wreckage Beren could hardly tell the brothers apart. He shuddered. “More can I tell you, lord, though I fear it may be of little comfort.”

“Yet where truth lies, fear knows its measure. I would hear the tale if thou wilt tell it. Indeed, I would beg it of thee.”

Beren was quiet for a moment, then nodded. “The assault made first for Ladros instead of the central defenses, for the pass was easier to breach, and moreover they believed our kind to be weak. We were, of course, against such a number. But we sold our lives dearly and fled only when the land was burned from under us, and then the retreat broke in every direction. I and my mother found ourselves in the hills east of Aeluin—of my father you know. Another large contingent fled to Barad Tirnen to shelter with the lord Aegnor. Within a day it too was cut off by fire and foe, with no hope of aid from the western marches. But there were passages through the rock and secret ways along the hills that could still be passed if only a few dared them at a time. Many of those exiles found their way to us, and so we learned of what befell. My sister was one, and among the last to flee the tower.” Beren broke off for a long moment, then recollected himself and pressed forward. “She told me all I know of it. It was there that Bregolas fell and many of our warriors beside him. But till the last, lord, your brother held the gate, and nearly all our folk were able to flee. Hiril saw the breach while they hid among the hills. The enemy bore in like a sea and by then he had been wounded. He was surrounded and forced out from the gate, but still they could not take him alive, and he fell at last with a spear through his chest, his sword broken. They pulled back from him then and set a line of archers.” He faltered again as he saw the tears streaming from the king’s eyes and he shook his head. “Lord, forgive me, I’ve brought only greater hurt—”

“Please.” Finrod’s voice was a whisper, taut and brittle. “Let me hear till the end.”

“They needed only one round of arrows, Hiril said. That, at least, was merciful.” Beren’s own voice was choked with tears as he relayed his sister’s words. “And here is what I never understood till now: Andreth walked out from the gate when he had fallen, slow with age, but tall yet and proud. She carried no weapon, but knelt where he lay and took the body within her arms. My sister and two others watched till the full dark of night shrouded her from their sight, but while they watched, no Orc dared approach, so great was the fury of her spirit.”

Beren’s voice tapered into silence. The king’s eyes remained fixed on the spring, palm pressed against his lips and shoulders shaking with mute sobs. For long neither spoke and once again the only sound was water, and the sighing wind through the trees. Leaves drifted down into the current and were captured by its swirling eddies, spun round and back again to roll against the shore, lapping in layers against the stone. Beren saw fire in this as well—the motion of the flames, the dance of its varied hues. Fire was in everything now, the scent of smoke always half-upon his senses.

“I am sorry, Nóm,” he said at last, heavy with the sorrow, and found with surprise that he was desperately weary despite the day’s rest. “Again I have brought you naught but sorrow.”

Finrod steadied his composure, then turned back toward him, shaking his head. “Nay, think not so.” He reached out to rest a hand along the other’s face. The touch was gentle and the quiet tenderness of it called up the old ache within Beren’s heart, the memory of Barahir’s own hand tousling his hair, the calloused palm brushing his cheek. “It is strange comfort, but comfort nonetheless to know the grief in full. In truth, my heart is eased—for a known sorrow is a kinder thing. Every horror I would imagine, and in the uncertainty every horror was true.” A wan smile broke through the lines of grief and he let his hand fall back to his side. “Thy words have laid those to rest, Beren, and I am at peace now in my mourning. Do not offer apologies.” 

The king bent to retrieve the polished shell and crossed once more to kneel beside the water. Beren watched as he lifted it and drank, and felt his own grief brimming over, tired and hopeless. There were only speculated ways before them now, he reflected darkly. And while one sorrow he may have eased, a thousand new he brought to take its place. There was no comfort on the road he asked of them. 

His house had been built with Nóm at its root, half-upholding the foundation from the start, and ever constant. Bëor had held him bound in love, the new generations followed in faithfulness, Barahir drew him back from death’s maw. And Beren, the last of Bëor’s sons, had wound all of them into a noose about his neck. Shame clawed at his resolve. 

Had he known that it would end thus, Beren wondered? Had he known when he saw their faces flickering through the trees? When he sang beside their dying fire?

The king knelt still beside the shore, his fingers trailing in the current, weariness showing through every feature as the sharp line of his shoulders slackened. 

“Aiya Ulmo, heru ëari.” Nóm’s voice drifted back from the water, a breath amid the rustling wind. “My will falters, I know not thine.”

❈❈❈

A last apple clung to the tree, suspended like a bauble of gold from the hoary fingers. It caught the fading sun within its skin and threw it back into the twilight, glistening and uncanny. An echo of Laurelin, Finrod mused as he watched it shift in the breeze, one final golden fruit offered from the dead branches.

That was a cheerless thought. There would be despair enough upon the journey without such a beginning. Nay, shift the image to promise, for was not Arien’s vessel wrought from that selfsame offering? And this too had grown from death, from a fruit fallen and buried, wrapped within the dark of the earth. Return now to the soil that shaped us, and from it grow again in life anew. They were ever in mind, those words he had whispered over Balan in the darkest grief, when his fingers traced their last path along the still face. Grain for our sustenance, fruit for our delight, the oak tree tall for our shelter. 

Gildor had tossed an apple core aside during one of their pilgrimages at Yestarë. He and Bëor were deep in conversation—what was the debate…some opinion Gildor had drawn from Belen that Belen’s father was keen to disabuse—laughing and quibbling over the divergent details. Balan had tossed his own apple shortly thereafter, and Finrod could still see the sharp flick of his wrist as he sent it arcing across the clearing. Truly, this tree could have grown from those very seeds, for they were near this glade if he remembered aright. Or had it been beside the cove? Balan’s hair was grey in the memory, so it was not in those early years with their heady dives beneath the water, when each new spring recalled the intoxication of the first, and the long afternoons were spent stretched in the sun. In later years they sat more often beneath the boughs and watched while others swam, their own hands seeking each other through the long grass, quiet and content. Perhaps it was indeed this clearing and his feet had returned hither of their own longing. 

Balan had slept in his arms that night, tucked behind a cluster of boulders—there, even those where Canneth sat contemplating the woods—and the memory of his steady breathing still pulsed in Finrod’s ears, an aching echo.

He reached out and loosed the apple from its branch. It was far more likely this was an unrelated fruit, a tree spawned from squirrel’s plunder or some wayward badger’s meal. His amusement flickered briefly at the thought. The wayward badger was he, the apple his own passing feast—the last of the tree’s yield, and the last of his tasting perhaps. Few fruit trees would linger yet between the Talath Dirnen and the pass, and none at all once they were through.

It was crisp and sweet as he bit into it, something of cinnamon and honey to the juice that ran over his tongue. He was reminded of slipping into Yavanna’s orchards as a child, or of the apples they roasted with cheese in Estolad during the Longest Night—but no, those had been tart. It was the fruit in Ossiriand he had in mind, when he would perch upon the low oak branch and pass them to Honeg and the rest of the herd, indulging alongside them throughout the slow afternoons.

He took another bite. It was comforting to think of this as Balan’s tree or Gildor’s; to eat from the fruit of that gladness, even here amid the growing dark. Gildor! Would word now have reached the havens? The one balm amidst the treachery had been that his foster-son sat in Eglarest when the oath came due, safely out of reach of the reckoning. But how bitter the loss of that farewell—and how bitter too the betrayal when Gildor should learn of what befell and find himself new-orphaned, by choice now and not mischance. Meril had sworn to hold the news as long as she was able, but even she could not stem gossip indefinitely, and it could easily have passed on through merchant or messenger to the coast. Would he have ridden out when he learned of it? Galloped back to seek out their trail? He would have received Finrod’s letter if he passed through Nargothrond on his return, and surely he would have honored that last plea—stay and do not follow, lend Orodreth support in his need. Or would he have renounced it all in anger—debt, errand, and oath-father alike—and remained in fury beside the Sea?

Finrod filled his lungs and turned back to watch the preparations. There was an air of ritual to their motions, measured and precise, unhurried. Blankets had been rolled and provisions re-sorted. Additional weapons were drawn out from the packs and placed in readiness, hair twisted into tight braids. He could feel the intricate patterns of his own cascading down his shoulders. Sídhon had stopped him when he began to braid it, moving Finrod’s hands aside and taking the golden strands within his own, singing softly as he turned them through his fingers. Finrod had shivered when he recognized the deft motions and knew that it was the funerary form he wove—a lord of the Ñoldor laid out for burial. One more preparation for the road ahead.

Another melody drifted through the air now, Canneth humming as she went about her work. It was a dancing song, one of Maglor’s creations that had echoed in this same valley throughout the Feast of Reuniting, and Finrod’s heart stung at the recollection. They had danced here for days on end, scattered between the feasting and the song and the hours fallen in respite upon the grass. He had been half-intoxicated from the joy alone, from the measureless bounty of each brimming life. He remembered Edrahil laughing beside the water with Satya living yet and caught within his arms, Celiel deep in conversation with a healer of Círdan’s people, Canneth dancing with her brothers amid the spring flowers.

Now Canneth sat with two knives laid across her lap and her brothers had spat upon the ground when she followed Edrahil to the king’s side. 

How had he led them to this?

Edrahil’s voice joined now, weaving lyrics into the harmony, and Finrod let the music wrap through his senses, steadying him, staying him. Sídhon reappeared through the trees with water skins freshly filled and carried them across the clearing. His feet fell at once into time with the music and he danced a quick series of steps as he set the skins aside. Then without a pause he turned back toward the open glade and swung into the dance in earnest, a smile spilling out as his feet flew over the grass. He might have danced still amid the court of Nargothrond, whirling in nimble patterns with his every movement elegant and precise. Finrod laughed despite himself. 

Then, to his surprise, he found that his own feet were leaping forward onto the green alongside the other. He let the apple fly from his grip as he spun into the dance, spirit burning to loose himself in joy and rage, sorrow and abandon. To feel the burial braids pull tight against his scalp as he whirled beneath the boughs.

They were all dancing now, he realized as he came around again to the near side of the glade, Canneth and Celiel, Edrahil and the others—reeling silently through the twilight and laughing as the quiet melody passed between them. 

He had danced with Balan to this music as well, only then it echoed through the vaulted caverns amid the feasts of Yávië. Finrod had drawn him out abruptly when he found the melody matched an Atani dance meter and pulled him merrily into the fray. He knew the steps poorly then and Balan had laughed at the attempt. But his dark eyes were alight as he joined the king alongside the courtiers and took the other’s hand in his, the palm rough against Finrod’s own, and guided him through the steps. 

Beren stood yet at the edge of the clearing with his shoulder hitched against a gnarled beech. He wore the same smile as Balan had that night, an onlooker engrossed in the dance before him, and Finrod slowed. With hardly a thought his posture shifted, his legs sought their weight, arms fell loose at his side. The singers reached the chorus again and his right boot stamped the earth behind him, his palms met. He knew the steps by nature now and his feet beat out the rhythm on the grass while Beren watched in surprise to see the familiar motions bound in tandem with the Elvish melody.

“Laiksa!” Nóm called, holding out his hand, and Beren shook his head incredulously. 

Then the fey mood took him as well and he pushed away from the tree, grinning as his feet joined the pattern and danced toward the king. Finrod laughed and led him backward by degrees until they neared the center of the clearing. Then he shifted his motion once more, only now the Elven dance wove around and with the Atani pattern, meeting and circling, song and its beaten time, the king’s steps holding both in harmony.

It was Beren who laughed now as he found himself the center point in the whirling figures. The Atani dance was well suited to it, a varied sequence of steps all held within a box of eight points, and Finrod’s steps darted in and out of these, striking the first point as Beren shifted to the fourth, curving round to the fifth as Beren’s feet struck the second and seventh. Wheeling and darting, laughing an apology as his hair grazed the other’s cheek with the speed of his passage, leaping by instinct through the waving grass. Finrod could no longer tell their motions apart—his own, Beren’s, the other Elves’ about him. They danced as wild, careless things beneath the twilight; time doubled back upon itself and every step cast in abandon, every turn a farewell flung into the night.

He knew not how long they continued on thus, but darkness was full upon them when at last the song faded. One by one their steps began to slow, one by one they drifted from the clearing to don their darkened armor and drink from the hallowed waters, until only Sídhon remained, whirling alone at the center of the glade once more. 

At last even his steps fell still. 

And then, as though this was the final herald they awaited, the twelve lifted their burdens from the dim grass and without a word passed soundless into the trees.

---

Chapter End Notes

TRANSLATIONS
Q = Quenya, S = Sindarin T = Telerin
herunya: [Q] my lord
Annon Aearon: [Q] Gate of the Sea
nai amanya onnalya ter coivierya: [Q] may your (sg.) child be blessed throughout his/her life
cullingwincë: [Q] little goldfish
anorhín: [S] sun’s child
onya: [Q] my child

TALISKA INVENTIONS
For the most part, all faux-Taliska is loosely inspired by or modeled on Germanic-Gothic
- Haelis: hello, greetings
- Rotavva wrotenni: and onward, the Wandering People
- Navá Guënidan, ananiujan tagas eil: Water of Guënid, renew my days.
- hallus’n aurkeis: stone-in-pot
- Madjatta: great-aunt, specifically “aunt of father”
- Laiksa: dance (verb form)

MISC NOTES
- Re Curufin’s line (“for some usurper”): The Atani they were named by the Eldar, the Second People; but they called them also Hildor, the Followers, and many other names: Apanónar, the After-born, Engwar, the Sickly, and Firimar, the Mortals; and they named them the Usurpers, the Strangers, and the Inscrutable, the Self-cursed, the Heavy-handed, the Night-fearers, the Children of the Sun. The Silmarillion, Chapter 12: “Of Men"
- Belegor: the second son of Boron and the grandson of Baran.
- Yestarë is the first day of the year in Elven calendars, also the first day of spring. See chapter 14 In These Holy Waters for the reference.