Atandil by Eilinel's Ghost  

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23. In Wisdom's Arms Find Me

“I felt it within me, the terror and despair of the shackled; and twas as though it had been fitted to my soul—my own horror and not the recollection of another’s. I have never known such a fear. It choked me, some heavy, skulking thing bearing copper’s taste upon the tongue.”

Finrod, Balan, and the Guard encounter an escaped thrall while returning to Nargothrond, and foresight rears its head.

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312th YEAR OF THE SUN, SUMMER
Estolad

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There had been mulberry trees in the vales around Tirion, clustered in winding groves with branches arcing overhead, as though each reached for the others and twined their fingers in an inseparable grasp. He had grown lost among them during a childhood visit and wandered hours within their labyrinth before at last stumbling on his cousins sprawled in a glade, a mound of berries piled in the grass between them. Have a care, Cullinwingë, Curufin had muttered from behind the pages of a book, his voice garbled by the fruit, they are poison to Vanyarin blood. My father grew them. 

He had stayed far from the groves after that, till one afternoon he saw his father reach for a cluster of mulberries in the king’s garden and caught him by the wrist with a cry, jerking the hand away before any could be consumed. Arafinwë had knelt beside him with a laugh when the explanation was stammered out, his smile hovering between warmth for his son’s earnest concern and sorrow at the trickery. Nay, he had said, brushing a strand of hair behind Finrod’s ear, he had eaten of those trees all throughout his own childhood. They were the groves of the former queen, planted to cultivate her silkworms, and no more poisonous than the pear he ate that morning. Arafinwë had held out the berries then, shining like black opals upon his palm, and Finrod had taken one tentatively, forcing down the fear as he brought it to his lips.

That same flavor washed over him now, sweet and earthy with a passing tartness along the tongue, and he slipped a second handful into his mouth instead of adding them to the makeshift cloth basket slung over his arm. It had been long since he felt his father’s absence strike so keenly. That had become a dull bruise, tender if pressed but mostly benign; yet it throbbed through him now like a new wound. Naught but his just deserts, Finrod thought with a touch of bitterness—the wages for drawing another father from his son.

The gloaming hour had washed the Andram with gold, burnishing Sirion’s spray as it rose through the air; while here beneath the scattered mulberry trees the light danced in shades of rose and blue, each twig outlined in sharp silhouette against the clouds. Finrod lingered with one palm resting against the puckered bark and filled his lungs with the green scent. Mist drifted over him with the roar of the falls and, lulled, he let his mind wander within its song. 

It had been petty to return by this route—the ferries at Aelin-uial were nearer, the path across the Guarded Plain a far swifter road than the Long Wall’s meandering way—but Balan had seen nothing of the Andram beyond Narog’s gorge and the Falls of Sirion were a wonder, six furlongs of tumbling cliffs over which the Meres poured in a seemingly endless curtain. Sídhon had laughed when Finrod proposed the altered journey, but Edrahil was meticulously polite. It would add only an enquië to the journey, he had conceded, and certainly Bëor should see the passage of the Falls. The Dwarven road itself was a marvel.

Finrod grimaced. The mannered tone had left little doubt that Edrahil perceived the impetus of his lord’s suggestion, and little doubt too as to his opinion of that distaste for accepting Thingol’s hospitality at the crossings. It was petulant, of course; he knew that well enough. But he could not suffer the image of Balan’s pride humiliated once again for expediency. 

Youth’s blood ran hot—and on that point he granted his uncle’s veracity.

Balan, for his part, had merely watched him with mild amusement as they remounted, then turned Elmorë’s nose to the south in Sídhon’s wake. Even that simplest of gestures had sent the giddy relief pooling once more in the king’s heart, for he had not known his fear till they were well on their way, half a day out from Estolad and wending their path through the sea of tall grasses that ranged along the Celon. There had been a myriad of small signs—the way Balan’s fingers rested on each familiar item, the ease of his laugh when he fell into the old banter with Eimet and Hathus or, as the days went on, with Baran and Estreth, the longing in his eyes whenever he looked out over the encampment or followed the lines of his son’s carvings across the Hall’s timbers. Without his own notice, Finrod had grown convinced that Balan would not ride west when the time came; so that when talk did turn at last to their departure and the other’s heart flinched against his own, he had been surprised by his reluctance to answer that it must be soon, that he had sent word ere they set out from Tol Sirion that he would return to Nargothrond no later than the start of Iavas.

His eyes were following Balan’s shadow over the meadow when the wave of realization engulfed him at last, and he had nearly gasped aloud from the force of his relief. Balan was among them. Elmorë’s hooves echoed in time with Vaya’s footfalls. His heart still rode at his side. 

That joy had spilled out into song when they reached the open plains south of Aros and he loosed Váya into their expanse with a clear cry, laughing as the others galloped in his wake, as they passed him and fell behind again and all raced on together through the blossoming fields.

Again, that soaring joy caught him up within its embrace and he leaned back against the tree, slipping another berry into his mouth. The summer wind had risen along the ridge, warm and fragrant, and his eyes fell shut as it lifted his hair and brushed gently along his cheeks. In the boughs, the leaves sighed with the same voice as the falls in the gorge beyond. He was glad after all to have come this way. It was long since he heard this measure of the river’s music, and its rolling timpani pulsed through his veins like wine.

There was a tickle along the back of his hand and he opened his eyes with a start. A large silkworm was making its way across his knuckles, pausing now and then to lift its head and crane about, as though perplexed by the lack of foliage on this branch it had chosen. “Further on, little friend, further on,” he murmured, lifting his hand carefully toward a patch of leaves. “Naught wilt thou find here to thy liking.” He watched as the worm investigated, then caught hold of a stem and gradually inched its way back onto the branch, suspicious still of its shifting surroundings. 

They had waited till Arien crested the hills that morning before beginning their descent, so Balan might be sure of his footing on the Serpent’s Stair—the thin, coiling road that cut forwards and backwards down the sheer face of the Andram’s gorge—and even then he had shuffled forward with a dubious caution that reminded Finrod of the silkworm returning to its perch. They had progressed only one turn of the stair before he dismounted and shifted in against the cliff, one hand gripping Elmorë’s reins and the other palm pressed against the rock face. It’s high enough already without adding the horse. I’ll trust to my own feet. 

At the midpoint of the cliff, however, his apprehension had given way and he swore under his breath as the road opened out before them, wide archways springing up behind the falls where they poured over an outcropping in the rock. There were two great pillars on either side of the opening—stout, bearded cadhadrim with arms lifted easily above their heads, as though bearing the weight of the precipice was of little consequence to them. Balan had lingered at the entrance in fascination, studying the carvings as the others passed him by. He had seemed almost a graven image himself with his face upturned and shining in the lamplight, and Finrod had paused to watch him in awe. 

And there amidst the roaring passage, he found himself consumed by a desire to set Bëor’s visage too in stone, to make of him a monolith that would stand against the years—even as he was now, etched before him in the pale-blue of the Guard’s lanterns, lips parted and a boyish wonder spilling over his features. 

Then the illusion had broken. Balan turned through the haze of Sirion’s spray and swung once more onto Elmorë’s back. He had met the king’s eye, and he had smiled.

He was warmth and he was movement, flesh and no relic to be cut in granite. Fear was the craftsman who sought to imprison a single moment. Love’s work was in living memory.

A flutter disturbed the leaves above him and once again Finrod came back to the present with a start.  There was a crow perched an arm’s length away and it looked from the king to the silkworm, from the silkworm to the king. 

“Nay, my greedy one,” Finrod greeted the new arrival with a smile, but reached out quickly to cup his hand over the worm. “There are berries and seeds aplenty. Let him be.”

The bird blinked at him, then hopped forward and pecked lightly at his fingers with a protesting squawk.

Finrod laughed and reached into the knotted cloth, retrieving a mulberry and offering it on his palm. “Be appeased,” he said, running a finger along the sable back once the crow had retrieved the fruit. “In mercy thou wilt find the greater bounty.” The bird grumbled out a short series of squawks, then fixed him with one eye and tilted its head as though evaluating the merit of this assertion. But a moment later it leapt from the branch, soaring out over the gully with an alarmed cry as Balan emerged from the thicket, a bundle of branches tucked beneath one arm.

“It’s impossible to find anything dry,” he muttered as he approached, then grinned at the sight of the king gazing ruefully after the receding crow. “Beg pardon, Elenya, I’ve cost thee thy companion.”

“One of them.” Nóm turned back and lifted his hand from the branch to reveal the silkworm, which once more craned about in curiosity before returning to its meal. “Though a rather fraught brotherhood we made, I fear.” The quick smile flashed out as Balan joined him beside the tree and he glanced down with teasing in his eye. “No doubt thou wouldst have gleaned the greater friendship. He shared thine impatience for platitudes.”

“And yet I find my affinity tends rather toward the worm.” Balan lifted a brow at the king’s bemusement and gestured to the branch. “Clapped beneath thine hand at the first scent of danger.”

Finrod laughed again at this. Then uncertainty prickled along the back of his neck and he wondered whether the other was offended in truth; for while there was no doubt the words held the cadence of a jest, there was a fragrance too of candor in the brush of Balan’s thought that set him wavering. Infuriating creature, it was ever so—each jest half sincere, every sincerity woven through with self-deprecation. 

A chuckle pulled him abruptly from the circling thoughts and he saw that Balan was watching him in amusement, a smile playing at the edges of his lips and his eyes warm with mischief. Infuriating creature, Finrod thought again, fondly this time, and felt the other’s grin mirrored in his own. “Very well,” he retorted, “if thou wilt find offense in devotion, then I shall leave thee at the mercy of the crow in future.”

“Mm. And a merry hour we’ll pass at the expense of thy truisms.”

Finrod opened his mouth to retort, but alarm struck before a sound could leave his tongue, crashing from the woods like a breaking wave, and he swung back toward it with a hiss.

“Nóm?”

He held motionless for a moment longer, then they both heard the shout from the trees and the Elf leapt forward, his thought rushing ahead of him to brush each of them in tally—Gildor, Sídhon, Hilyo, Medlineth, Canneth, Gelmir…

“Hold back, my lord.” Bëor’s hand closed firmly about his arm and hauled him back, the abrupt formality of his address slowing the king more effectively than the grasp. “Let me go first.” He shouldered ahead before the other could protest this reminder of owed fealty and led them forward through the trees, one hand brandishing his knife at the ready, the other stretched behind him to keep the king from outpacing him.

There was a rustle to their left and both swung round to see one of Sídhon’s hounds fly through the brush, tossing a brief bay in alert as she passed them. Medlineth and Edrahil appeared swiftly in her wake. 

“Gwethrim.” Edrahil drew up beside them to flank the king, sword in hand, while Medlineth turned toward the clearing and called back to the Guard with a sparrow’s trill.

“As far as this?” Finrod fell into step with the captain and the tense set of his shoulders seemed to ease with the news. “Only once have I met any of their number south of the Teiglin—and even then we were no more than five leagues from the crossings. How many?”

“One at present. But the hounds will soon learn if others are hidden near.”

“You’ve set hounds on the wretches?” Balan could not disguise the rebuke in his tone and Medlineth glanced at him sharply.

“To seek and report, Hîr Bëor, not to give chase.” Insult warmed her own voice at his assumption and Finrod saw the line of Balan’s lips tighten in response.

“He has been tracking us since the plains,” Edrahil cut in before anything further could be said.  “There have been signs, but he was canny and swift and we thought we were mistaken till Gelmir and Lhúgnil came upon him by chance.”

They crossed into the clearing then, and Finrod drew a sharp breath at the scene before him. Gelmir was seated on a fallen trunk, blood trickling from a gash over one eye, while Sídhon knelt before him and set a bloodied cloth aside, crushing a handful of leaves between his palms before lining them carefully along the wound. A tattered form lay sprawled on the grass a stone’s throw from them, and over this Lhúgnil knelt with one knee pressed into the captive’s back and holding his left arm bent back in restraint. Two other guards stood at the ready beside him.

“What goes on here?” The king strode forward at once and his gaze darted between his guards before coming to rest on the prostrate form in the grass. The captive lay motionless, his breathing ragged and terrified beneath the weight of Lhúgnil’s knee and blood ran freely from his scalp, from the corner of his mouth. “Loose him!”

The guardsman looked up in surprise, then turned a questioning glance toward his captain. “He has not been searched, nor have we yet—“ He broke off as he felt the blaze of fury in the king’s eyes and his own fell in apology. “Forgive me, lord. As you will it.” He hesitated a moment longer, then withdrew, shifting cautiously to stand beside the flanking guards, sword in hand, but the captive did not move.

He was a pitiful sight stretched amidst the clover. The tunic that hung loose across his shoulders only barely merited the word, threadbare and stained and mended beyond recognition, and his spine stood out in knobs beneath its scant shroud. A handful of lingering strands claimed that his hair had once been dark, but now was dwindled to a pallid grey, falling thin and coarse about his shoulders.

There were thrall’s marks upon his arms.

Finrod pressed down the anger knotting in his chest and moved forward by slow degrees. “You may rise if you wish, friend,” he said, his motions and voice both carefully calm. “I apologize for the haste of our welcome. We purpose no harm toward you, if none is in your purpose toward us.”

“It is not.” The voice that drifted up from the clover was cracked and rasping, and Finrod shivered involuntarily at the sound. “I swear to you, it is not.”

“My Guard tells me you have followed us from the plains.”

“In hope, lord.” The thrall slid his hands forward and the fingers that dug into the grass were emaciated. With an effort he pushed himself upwards until he sat huddled in a crouch before the king. “In the North, I was given to understand you would be most like to show mercy to one such as myself.” There was a long hesitation; then, as though sensing the skepticism from the surrounding guards, he added, “It was said in disparagement, lord, when they turned me away.”

“Well do I believe it, if your path led you through Aglon as it seems.”

“Through Thargelion.” The correction was little more than a whisper and he seemed to withdraw further into himself at its speaking.

“Ah.”

“My king.” Edrahil was at his elbow once more, and the low murmur of his voice was insistent. “Trusted or no, he should be searched—if only for his own sake to dispel the suspicion amongst us.”

Finrod was quiet for a long moment, then gave a short nod and Lhúgnil returned to stand beside the captive with one hand extended. 

“By your leave.” His intonation was nearer a command than a request and the thrall too seemed to understand it as such, for he made no answer but to stretch his arms wide, palms turned open toward the king. He stiffened as Lhúgnil’s hands passed over him in swift inquiry, flinched when they paused below his breast and drew out the short-bladed dagger tucked within the rags.

“He carries a blade.”

“And used it not when you came upon me.” His arms began to tremble as the protest spilled from his lips. “I used it not!”

Lhúgnil made no reply, but turned instead to Edrahil and held out the weapon in accusation. “No blade of Angband lies here. This was taken from one of our own folk.”

“He is one of our own folk.” Finrod’s reprimand was quiet, but the thrall looked up in gratitude at the words.

“I did steal it, lord. I confess that. But it was while they slept, not as the spoils of a kill.”

The king lingered a long moment in silence, then moved back and lowered himself onto a boulder jutting out from the center of the clearing. A toppled tree had continued in stubborn growth about it and the branches it sent up curved and twisted behind him—like a serpent uncoiling, Balan thought, or the swans’ necks of the throne that awaited him beneath the hills. As if guided by this thought, Nóm laid his hands upon his knees and the Guard drew in to form a line on each side of the captive; and abruptly the little glade took on all the gravity of the Great Hall. The king’s court seated in judgment.

“There have been those who, in desperation, have opened their hearts to the mind of the Foe.” Finrod’s voice was quiet as he watched Lhúgnil continue to search the thrall’s garments, drawing out the scarce provisions and little oddments and exposing them in a naked line along the grass. “Those who reached the last exhaustion of pain, who were tormented beyond any foothold of hope. They come among us from time to time and their treachery has been a double-bladed grief: returned beyond hope, lost beyond recall.”

“He carries nothing besides the blade.” Lhúgnil rose and dipped his head in deference toward the king, then stepped back to take his place alongside the others. Finrod acknowledged this with a brief nod, but did not shift his gaze from the figure before him.

“How am I to trust, friend, that you are not of their number?”

The thrall was silent, his gaze fixed on the pitiful collection, and only by an effort of will did he seem able to restrain himself from scrambling forward to regather the items. He lifted his eyes and met the king’s. “I was once Tultamo, son of Tírthon the smith,” he began at last in a trembling whisper. “I was of the people of Nolofinwë—a soldier in the fourth company of my lord’s cavalry. I was taken, along with three others, in the fifty-second year of the new sun’s reckoning.” His voice broke and he shook his head, then clasped his hands in plea. “I know those of whom you speak, the broken who bowed before the black throne; and I will not hide from you that some were those I knew and loved. Nor will I hide that I too have known that temptation in the bleak solitude, battered as we were—mind and body—by the venom of his presence. But I swear to you, lord, I mean you no malice. Nor have I given over my soul to such a purpose.”

“Others have spoken so before now, vandatar,” Gildor murmured, his arms crossed as he stood at the king’s shoulder, “and a poisoned honey it was when their children lay dead by their hand.”

“Peace, Gildor, I too know the tales.” After a moment, Finrod rose and crossed to stand before the huddled figure once again, looking down at him in pity. “Your words ring true, son of Tírthon, and my heart finds no deception in your eye. But as king, I am entrusted not only with my own life, but with the lives of these around us and of every one of my people. You understand, my friend, that I must seek further.”

A shudder passed through Tultamo at this, but he did not look away. “I understand.”

Finrod nodded, then slowly he closed the remaining distance and knelt, till his own face drew level with the captive’s. Only then did Tultamo’s gaze falter, and a little choked sound escaped him as he clenched his eyes shut. 

“Must it be all?” he whispered, twisting handfuls of his tunic within his grasp.

The king made no reply, but reached out and set his palm to the side of the other’s head, and remorse was woven within the touch. “Look at me, Tultamo,” he said at last, his voice little more than the breeze around them; then carefully, gently he reached out for the other’s mind. “Do you mean to kill me?”

❈ ❈ ❈

Balan awoke with a start. 

Nóm. 

He pushed up from the bedroll and looked frantically about the glade, only to find the king slumbering still where he had left him, halfway across the clearing with his back against a boulder. Safe, and watched over by three guards who fanned out along the creek’s bank.

He settled back into the grass with relief and drew the blanket around his shoulders, his heart pounding. A nightmare, then. Nothing more. He shifted irritably as he sought to recover his former comfort and found instead that every sense was still racing in alarm. There had been such terror in that phantom cry. Balan could not shake the press of urgency, nor shift the lingering dread that clung to him like sweat. He could hear it still, the desperate gasp of one who feels the plummet seize him.

He rolled onto his back and looked up at the stars, his eyes drifting in their old pattern to seek out the curved sickle in the sky above him. It seemed a thin comfort now—all works of the Dark shall be for naught. What did that make of the thrall’s perseverance save to reduce it to meaningless pain? What hope was to be found in that? He shut his eyes against such a threat. He would sooner take the promise of Melishk’s soil than be wielded as such an instrument. That, at least, held the balm of oblivion. He shuddered and pushed aside the memories Nóm had once shared of the tortured, broken ground before Thangorodrim, of his horror at the roiling slag when they marched out of the West with the first sunrise. No, he pondered grimly, not even as soil could one escape this twisting darkness.

Balan jumped as something cold and wet butted against his cheek and he opened his eyes to find Greweg looking down at him. The hound whined in concern as their eyes met, then nosed at him again and turned in a circle.

“What is it, lad?” He followed the earnest eyes toward the boulder, then scrambled to his feet when his gaze fell on the king’s bedroll, now lying mussed and empty beside the stone. He stumbled forward, peering anxiously through the dark for any sign of Nóm’s passage.

“It takes him this way, ever and anon.” Sídhon had come up without a sound and Balan swore despite himself to find the other suddenly at his side. “Especially if there is any shade of doubt. But be at ease, he will return by the morn.”

Balan glanced toward where Tultamo lay huddled in the center of the clearing, wrapped in a borrowed pair of blankets and sleeping fitfully. “Is it safe for him to go off alone with all that’s passed?” He realized in an instant the accusation implied in the question and grimaced in apology. “Beg pardon.”

“None called for.” There was amusement in the other’s voice as he reached down to scratch behind Greweg’s ears. “And nay, he is in no danger. Hilyo knows his duty full well—as he knows too my lord’s proclivity to wander. It will not be unforseen, nor will Arto stray far.”

Balan nodded, but his eyes had already drifted back back to search between the trees, tall birches standing like bones in the moonlight. He shivered and chewed at his lip, disquieted. 

“The spring that summons this brook lies only a short walk from here,” Sídhon added after a long moment, his own eyes lifting to watch the branches dance in the breeze as the other glanced toward him in confusion.

“Does it?”

“Mm. A peaceable glade, it seemed to me.” A brief smile passed along his lips, then he dipped his head in parting and slipped back into the night’s shade, his departure nearly as unsettling as his appearance.

Balan looked after him for a time, contemplative, then turned back at last when he felt Greweg's expectant gaze looking up at him. He reached down to ruffle the fur behind the hound’s ears with a resigned snort. “Lead on then, lad, if you’re so keen about it. No doubt you’re in the right.”

Greweg’s tail thumped a few beats against his leg, then he trotted forward along the line of the running stream, while Balan followed at a more restrained pace, picking his steps carefully over the stony bank. He had forgotten how much he enjoyed wandering with a hound through the night. It had been years since he had last done so—not since Baran’s old bitch Mischief had died, and that was well before they tried the mountain passes. She was a good creature. Baran had dug her resting place within the red cedar grove by Andanahti-marei, an unusual rite to be granted an animal, and Balan swallowed back a lump in his throat at the memory of his son’s tireless labor. Mischief had been by his side since Esrid’s death and the loss of his companion had struck Baran keenly. 

It had been good to see him keeping company with a new hound during their stay in Estolad, a shaggy creature, thick and wolfish and far removed from Mischief’s rangy spirit. Fitted to the man, Balan reflected with a pang, and no longer the boy.

His own companion slowed at the edge of a clearing and looked back over his shoulder, dark eyes canny and tail wagging through the tall clover as he waited for Balan to join him, which he did a short moment later and reached down to rest a hand between the silky ears in acknowledgment. Then, after another brief hesitation, he shifted into the moonlight. 

It was bright after the forest’s shroud and Balan found himself blinking at the sudden clarity about him. Trees reared up like sentinels around the perimeter, arms raised in reverence toward the stars above them. Crocus blossoms nodded in the breeze, their furled heads soft in Isil’s glow, and the tall grasses bowed and danced between them like water. Mesmerized, he moved forward into the glade and filled his lungs with a rush of scent, crushed petals and clear water tumbling over the rocks; then slowly he let his eyes drift back along the brook to its source. 

The spring was small, little more than a trickle burbling out from the base of a rock fall. It spread sluggishly through the sedges before yielding its path to the slope and cutting a bed into the soil, cascading downward toward their camp and the falls beyond. And there, a stone’s throw from the boulders, sat the figure he sought, knees drawn up to his chest and hunched against an old oak tree fallen on its side. His hair was mussed from sleep and hovered in unkempt tufts above his shoulders, once again imbuing him with that boyish vulnerability Balan knew he kept under careful guard. Even so, the starlight caught within the tangled strands and lit his face with a fay radiance, so that it was a long moment ere Balan realized that tears too glistened on the other’s cheeks. 

His languor was broken in an instant and he strode swiftly to the fallen tree, kneeling at Nóm’s side in concern. A wordless exclamation slipped from him as he cupped the other’s cheek within his palm. “What’s all this, then?” Balan murmured gently, turning his face into the light.

“Naught.” The king’s voice was rough and he pulled away, passing a hand quickly over his eyes to dash away any signs of weeping. “I am well.”

“Liar,” Balan retorted, but there was no accusation in his tone, only warmth, and he took the other’s face once more in his hands, thumbing away the lingering tears. “I heard thee.” Finrod looked up at him in query and Balan shrugged. “Saw thee, felt thee…whatever sense that was. In thy dreaming.”

Surprise and shame vied for control of the other’s face. “That reached thee?”

“Aye, like a shout. I thought thou hadst cried out in earnest and woke certain that foes had come upon us in the night.”

“Nay. Nay, there was no danger.” He fell quiet and reached out to grip Balan’s shoulder, his arm, his hand, as though reassuring himself that the other was present in truth, then released him with an apologetic grimace. “I beg forgiveness. I’d no intention of waking thee.”

“Don’t be a fool.” Balan shifted to sit at his side and nudged his shoulder against the other’s. “This is of more worth to me than a few hours’ slumber—and well enough shouldst thou know it. Though I’ll leave thee in peace if solitude was thine aim.” 

The ghost of a smile passed over Finrod’s lips and he shook his head, turning to bury his face in Balan’s hair. “I am glad of the company.” 

They sat on in silence for a time, listening to the chattering of the brook and the tree frogs’ chorus passing from branch to branch. An owl’s query from the far side of the clearing. The distant rumble of the falls. Balan found himself lulled once more by the night’s music and his eyes grew heavy despite his resolve as the slow minutes stretched on with the moonlight fluttering through the leaves. 

“The hour is evil,” Nóm’s voice broke the silence at last, little more than a whisper brushing over his scalp, “and your road leads to sorrow that ye do not foresee.”

“Hm?” Balan blinked hard to clear the drowsiness and shifted his face so that he could see the other’s. “What’s that?”

“The words of the messenger in the dark of our madness. The curse of my people.”

Balan reached over to brush the hair back from Nóm’s face, setting his lips briefly to his forehead. “Surely the day’s not been so bad as all that.” There was only a noncommittal snort in reply and Finrod turned his face in against the other’s neck. Balan pressed down a smile as he laid his cheek against the mussed gold, drawing a finger over the half-hidden jawline, and felt the other’s head grow heavy upon his shoulder in response. It lit a fierce warmth in him to spend an hour as the one granting solace, when so often it was his own grief fleeing to Nóm’s arms in search of the same. He rested a hand on the other’s neck possessively.

“Canst thou recall the night I dragged thee from the ice?” Nóm asked after a long pause, his voice still muffled beneath the other’s chin.

“Aye, with clarity. Twas the only time I’d seen thee so till now.”

“I was careless with thee.” He shook his head and pressed forward when Balan’s mouth opened in protest. “I set thee within my own memory with little regard for what pain thou wouldst carry from it.”

“That was forgiven in the same moment it was done, Nóm. Do not carry it forward needlessly.”

Finrod was quiet again for a time, then shifted so that he could look out over the brook, avoiding the other’s eye. “But thou canst remember the lucidity of it? That inseparability of thine own sense from the one recalling it?”

“Aye?” Balan frowned. “But I’ve told thee already I do not hold it against thee, nor should—” The cause for this trail of questioning overtook him with a wave of nausea and he broke off, cupping his palm once more to the other’s cheek. “Oh, Elenya…”

“I should know to expect it by now. Tis far from the first time I have had need to search a captive’s mind.” A shudder passed through him and his hold on Balan’s arm tightened. “But it would be a greater ill, perhaps, to find oneself so well guarded as to be insensate to another’s pain.”

“Beloved.” Balan trailed his fingers through the other’s hair, smoothing the contrary strands that continued to drift over his eyes. How achingly young he seemed in the moonlight, the careful poise cast aside and fear writ plain upon his face. Balan felt a fierce protectiveness rise like hackles along the back of his thought. Nóm had knelt for nigh an hour with Tultamo in the clearing, silent and motionless while the sun dipped toward the horizon, until at last he broke free with a gasp. Edrahil had been at his side at once, catching his elbow to steady him—to keep him from collapse, Balan saw now, observing in hindsight how Nóm had swayed to the side when he pulled away, how he had leaned heavily against the captain’s grip before rising and offering Tultamo his hand outstretched in peace. Anger burned in his breast. How could they demand this of him to quell their own mistrust? Were they not meant to take his word and heed his judgment? What right did they have to require more from him?

“I am their king,” Finrod murmured, and a brief smile twitched his lips when Balan startled at the answered thought. “They may require all from me.”

“But thou art a man first. They should not forget it.” 

“And they do not. This I require of myself.” He reached up and turned Balan’s face to meet his eyes, a quiet laugh escaping him when the other’s scowl persisted. “Now which of us is playing the guard dog?”

“Sídhon’s runt,” Balan retorted. “The hound rooted me out of my bedroll and hauled me straight to thee.” He traced his fingers along the lines of the other’s face, outlining each feature with care, and gradually his expression softened. “Why is it so needful? From thine own lips I’ve learned even I can shut thee out with ease. What good does this accomplish? It cannot prove innocence.”

“No, it cannot.” Finrod stretched his neck with a grimace, then shifted to lean against the trunk once more. “But it anchors perception, and by such may counsel the heart’s discernment. It is knowledge, Balan, pure and simple, and I covet every grain of it when faced with such a choice. And besides,” he added after a brief pause, lifting a twig in his hand and worrying it absently, “long and weary were the years he bore this pain alone. What manner of lord should I be to refuse that burden now?”

“A fairly common one, I would say.”

“I am nothing of the kind.”

“No indeed, nor a humble one either.”

Finrod snorted. “Surely neither of us holds any lingering illusions on that point,” he quipped, managing a self-deprecating grin before turning his focus back to the twig. He chipped away at the bark, peeling it by degrees until it lay smooth and pale as a bone across his palm. This he regarded for a time, till at last he broke the silence in a flat voice. “I felt it within me, the terror and despair of the shackled; and twas as though it had been fitted to my soul—my own horror and not the recollection of another’s. I have never known such a fear. It choked me, some heavy, skulking thing bearing copper’s taste upon the tongue.”

A tickle of dread crept along Balan’s spine and he shook away the image of the yawning crevice on the fell. “I can imagine it.”

The other seemed to sense the bent of his thought and his knuckles whitened around the stick in his hand. “And I. No rest would I have known, Balan, no peace or forgiveness had they succeeded in—”

“They did not. Let it be, Nóm. Do not conjure further horrors than those already pressed upon thee.” Balan watched him thoughtfully, then at length reached out and brushed a strand of hair from his eyes. “This is what plagued thy dreams, then?”

“Yes.“ Finrod tipped his head back against the trunk, fixing his gaze on the tracery of branches above, then grimaced when he could not let the half-truth stand. “And no.”

Balan reclined beside him and turned his face to watch the king’s, letting the silence grow heavier between them until he could all but see the other squirm. “Well?” he asked at last with a trace of teasing. “Wilt thou tell me of it now or hold it till the dawn?”

“Incorrigible,” Finrod muttered to the sky, then lifted his head as Greweg meandered out from the underbrush and ran a hand over the hound’s ears. “Harken to him, old friend! With such a nose for inquisitiveness tis little wonder thou didst claim him as a brother.”

Balan chuckled and shifted so that he too looked up at the canopy overhead. “We both know thou wilt tell me ere the night is out. Why not escape the deliberation and have it out now?”

The king huffed, though amusement creased the corners of his eyes, and he pointedly turned his attention to scratching Greweg’s neck. The hound had curled at his side while they spoke and now lay with his muzzle draped affectionately across Finrod’s thigh. They made a pleasant image, Balan thought, restful and homely in the moonlight with the grasses sighing around them in the wind. He understood why the other had chosen this place for solace, and found himself uncertain now of drawing out the dream’s poison into this refuge. Perhaps it was better after all to let the water’s music comfort in his stead.

But Nóm’s voice drifted through the silence before he could retract the question. “I stood naked before a great abyss,” he said, his voice little more than a breath, “upon a moldering bluff it seemed, and each movement of my limbs cost an effort I could not sustain; yet I knew the edge would claim me should I cease even for a moment. I thought thee there beside me, but I could not reach thee.” He shuddered and an note of panic crept into his voice. “I was blind in the dark, Balan, blind in the dark…with the weight of my limbs growing ever greater till I could scarce draw breath.”

Balan said nothing, but reached out and gathered the other’s hand in his own, pressing it firmly between his palms to still its trembling.

“Each moment I felt certain I could bear it no longer, but each led to another and then another still, till there came a roaring wind and a vast darkness—darker even than my blindness—rushed like smoke from the abyss, overwhelming me, and I was falling.” He broke off and filled his lungs with a sharp hiss, his pulse pounding within their clasped hands. “I was falling endlessly. Only when the light of Aman failed have I known such a Night.”

“Aye, I felt the terror when it woke me.” Balan reached out with his free hand to brush the other’s hair back in comfort, but Finrod shook his head.

“No. Twas not yet that I called out for thee.” His eyes closed for a long moment and he buried his fingers in Greweg’s fur to steady his resolve. “Amidst the plummet, it seemed to me the darkness became a wave, cresting over the horizon and climbing, climbing, ever higher till there was nothing about me but its shadow. And my heart knew then that it had come for thee and I had failed. It would consume thee.” His grip on Balan’s hand tightened to the point of pain. “And all would be lost.”

“There now, I’m here,” Balan murmured, laying his hand atop the other’s once more and stroking his knuckles soothingly. “I’m here. Nothing is lost.”

He shook his head again, this time with greater vehemence. “I did not seek this knowledge. I have no wish to bear it.”

“Then bear it not, love. It was only a dream. All is well.” To this the other made no reply, but something in his silence sent a shiver of unease through Balan’s senses. “Is it not?”

For a time this question too hung unanswered in the air between them, till at last Finrod drew his knees up to his chest, resting his chin atop them and gazing out over the water. “I told thee once—when we burned the orqui, I believe, on the road from Thalos—I told thee then of órë, did I not?”

“Órë…”

“The heart’s knowledge.”

“Aye. Messages from your gods, I thought it was.”

“Say rather the influence of the One, or of his servants, upon our understanding.”

“Call it what thou wilt. But a nightmare is not a portent.”

“No. Not all of them.”

“Dear one.” He laid his hand along the other’s cheek once again, surprised to hear Esrid’s endearment slip out in his own voice. “Thou art overwrought with another’s pain. Do not let it draw thee to—“

“I am not a child in fear of a nightmare.” Finrod’s eyes flashed and his voice was sharp as he pulled free. “There have been others before this, and I have seen those visions grow to fruition—and reaped well enough of their bitter harvest. I know of what I speak.” Then, as abruptly as it had arisen, his anger seemed to falter and he rested his head wearily against his knees. “Forgive me. I know thine intent was kindness.” He raked his fingers back through his hair, gripping it in handfuls at the base of his scalp, till long minutes passed and he sighed, raising his eyes to the spring once more. “They were not all tidings of ill,” he conceded in a low voice. “Indeed, the first I recall was of the sun. On the Ice, in the bitterest cold, I would see Yavanna while I slept, reaching over the waters with her palms cupped and light spilling over to wake the works of her hands.” His voice faded to a whisper. “I dreamt too of clay figures that rose from the ground to greet the new light. The first I understood when Arien rose triumphant in the sky, and as we marched I sang aloud from the joy of knowing it elucidated before me. The second I have dreamed over and again through the years, and until meeting thy people I understood it not—and there too what gladness I knew in the recognition.”

Balan nudged his shoulder. “Sentimental pup,” he muttered with a grin, and Finrod managed a wan smile in return.

“It cannot be denied.” He reached down and began sorting pebbles through the moss, and Balan watched in fascination as the little groups took shape: smooth, small, rough, middling, grey, speckled. It was a languid process and he felt a blanket of peace settle over him with each movement of the other’s fingers.

“And the others?” he asked at last, pulling back with an effort from the growing reverie. “What of those?”

“What wouldst thou hear?” Finrod shuddered and his words were strained. “That my greatest certainty is doubt? That the haven I have delved is merely a buttress against some day of evil when all the Siege shall surely go down in ruin? Or wouldst thou hear that this retreat too shall fail, and I and all my kingdom be undone? How, I cannot tell thee; but it shall be so. It weighs with an unflinching conviction in my bones.”

“Nóm…”

“Wisdom!” he hissed, and his restraint seemed to break with the exclamation. “Wisdom? I see hints and shadows, or in these rare moments of clarity a certainty settles in my heart, but even these must be half-truths and muddied. ‘Sorrow that ye do not foresee,’ quoth the messenger. Why, then? Why burden us with foreknowledge when from their own tongues we know that naught will ready us? Is it meant to be a mercy? Some kindness bestowed overlate that we might not think ourselves cast off utterly from the One’s guidance?” He drew his hands over his face and shook his head. “I want it not, Balan.”

It was unnerving to hear him speak of his gods with such bitterness—stewards, Balan’s mind corrected in reflex, and he was momentarily amused by how thoroughly the other’s voice had lodged within him. But this outburst was more akin to his own acrid grievances, aching and lonely and angry at his own desperation, and he found himself torn between pity and a vague annoyance.  How did Nóm understand mortality if not as the certain foreknowledge of ruin’s shadow? Balan’s people needed no dreams to call forth such a spectre. That darkness loomed over every day’s horizon; and they too had never been offered any choice in the knowledge. 

The image of Sabil rose in his mind, seated in the clover beyond the hall with both hands extended, laughing as Estreth spread clay slip across her palms. He had not heard what Estreth foretold from the cracks and patterns when it dried, but the brief glimpse of them lit a question within him that burned till the day’s rites were done—till he caught Estreth amid the feasting and shamefacedly begged of her what it was she once divined for his wife. Nothing, she had answered him. She’d told the clay’s fortune on the day her sister was bound to Geberic, but when wedded to Balan in turn, Esrid had refused the tradition. Better to walk blind, she had said, than to shackle each day to the prediction of what would come. He had longed then to ask what it was she saw in the clay of that first marriage, but he saw the wariness in Estreth’s eye and dared not risk the question.

Was that how Nóm too understood this knowledge? Every hour fettered to the coming calamity, with never enough clarity to change its course…Balan shuddered and reached out despite himself, resting a hand upon the other’s back. He should understand this despair, he chided himself, not dismiss it. It was no less of a cruelty for Nóm to face this than it was for his own people. He rubbed slow circles along the other’s spine till gradually he felt the ragged breathing steady. 

“My mercy will be a cruelty,” Nóm whispered at last, his face still hidden within his fingers. “That was my waking certainty.”

A new wave of unease prickled at Balan’s gut, but he kept his motions steady. “What does it mean?”

Finrod shook his head helplessly. 

“The thrall?”

“I know not.” The king shivered, then turned to meet his eye and there were lines of desperation creased into his face. “Yes. So my heart tells me. But I cannot turn him away, Balan, not after…not when he has…” he trailed off, shaking his head and gripping his hair in handfuls once again till it pulled tight against his scalp. “How am I to judge my way?”

“As thou ever hast.” Balan reached out and drew the other’s hands free, clasping them gently within his own to still their worrying. “I am no stranger to a doom inescapable, Elenya—nor are any of my kind. But this I know: good and ill do not change for all the future’s looming shadow. Choose as thou ever hast. Do what is right from what thou canst discern before thee; then choose the next right thing and the next after that.” He brushed a strand of hair from Nóm’s face and tucked it behind his ear with a faint smile. “And so is a man’s path laid.”

“And if I pave a road into darkness?”

“We are doomed to such days regardless. Let us meet them from mercy, if meet them we must.” Balan could feel the other’s hands trembling within his palms, the pulse drumming against his fingers, and he tightened his grasp. “Beloved…”

Finrod clutched at him in return and his lips pressed into a thin line as he stared out over the clearing, his breath shaking and the clenched muscles standing out along his jaw. “I am afraid,” he whispered at last, his voice small as a child’s, and Balan gathered him at once in his arms.

“Aye, love,” he murmured into the other’s hair. “Aye, I know it.” He held him as he wept, cradling the king’s head against his shoulder and letting the bitter tears soak into his shirt; and he did not loose him even when the surge of grief was spent. In the moonlight the grasses waved and tossed, a grey sea stretching before them toward the dawn, and at length Balan drew the other down gently to rest upon his lap. He combed his fingers through the flaxen strands. He traced each contour of Nóm’s cheeks, jaw, nose, brow—just as his mother had done when he was a wakeful child. And with that familiar rite, her voice rose too within him and quietly he began to sing.

“When dawn through the old oak is breaking
And lilies and birdsong are waking
I rise with the wind in the branches
And measure my steps in time’s dances

“May peace ever lie down beside me
May you in wisdom’s arms find me
May valor not be denied me
And mercy’s temperance guide me

“May melodies of your song quiet me
May twilight’s shade calm and hide me
May joy through my sorrowing find me
And goodness lead and delight me

“When noon in the white sky is blazing
And the herds slow and drift into grazing
Still the path stretches unending
The toil and journey unbending

“May peace ever lie down beside me
May you in wisdom’s arms find me
May valor not be denied me
And mercy’s temperance guide me

“May melodies of your song quiet me
May twilight’s shade calm and hide me
May joy through my sorrowing find me
And goodness lead and delight me

“When dark falls the midnight around us
And shadows shift and confound us
Yours are the ears that I sing to
And yours the path that I cling to

“May peace ever lie down beside you
May I in wisdom’s arms find you
May valor not be denied you
And mercy’s temperance guide you

“May melodies of my song quiet you
May twilight’s shade calm and hide you
May joy through the sorrowing find you
And goodness lead and delight you.”

---

Chapter End Notes

TRANSLATIONS
Q = Quenya, S = Sindarin T = Telerin
enquië [Q] the Elven six-day week
cadhadrim: [S] Dwarves, from Khuzd
gwethrim: [S] people of the shadows: wherein gwath (shadow) is pluralized to gweth
Hîr: [S] lord, master

MISC NOTES
- Regarding Balan’s use of the term “man” (lowercase) to reference Finrod in the final section, this takes precedent from Chapter 9 of the Silmarillion where Tolkien describes Galadriel as a “woman of the Noldor,” setting up the use of man/woman as separate descriptors from Man (capitalized) or Elf.