Atandil by Eilinel's Ghost  

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25. We Shall Be Gathered

“I should have let it bide in memory as was thy counsel, static and finished. I might toy with a future I did not have, imagining it this way or that, but within it she remained the same, ever as she was and thus ever a clear fable.” He winced as he swallowed the mouthful of hrögemetheilit. “Now I have seen her face, and I can never be free of the truth of it: breathtaking as in her youth, changed in all those ways I should have known at her side. Never has the path I scorned seemed more tangible than in that sight.”

In the days following Finrod’s confession, Aegnor comes to his own decision and the brothers discuss their differing paths.


409th YEAR OF THE SUN, Summer
Barad Tirnen, the Fortress of Aegnor

The rain quickened as Aegnor swung down from the saddle and led his horse through the gate. It had begun halfway through his return and he welcomed it then, loosing the stallion into a gallop and relishing the water’s lash against his face. Its sting steadied him, drew his senses out from his heart and into his skin, held him firmly in the moment. But as he approached the stables, he found it oppressive; it grappled at his neck with cloying fingers and thickened the heaviness about his soul. 

Contrary to his usual custom, he left his horse to the groom’s care and trudged across the courtyard by the shortest path. Pain was a circle. The wound, the easing, the acceptance, the quiet throb. The gash reopened and widened by his own choosing, the cycle begun anew. Eternal. He passed inside the tower and shut the doors against the downpour. How long till all of this was rubble? He peeled the sodden cloak from his shoulders and cast it in a bundle beside the nearest bench, then reached out to run his palms across the timbers, the iron bars, the walls. It was transient, all of it; each stone echoing already with the sound of its ruin, every beam shuddering along veins that would split. Yet this was what he had chosen, again and again he cleaved to it in the face of any desire, till it had become his presiding compulsion, an iron will bending not even to his own. The rain’s laugh whispered through arrow loops high in the stair behind him and his fingers dug harder against the stone. How senseless it was to hold such a devotion to one’s own prison.

He pushed away from the wall with a stream of oaths hissed under his breath and crossed the passage to ascend the stair. Where else, he thought bitterly, should he seek solace but with the knife that knew the wound? 

The guest chamber was just off the first turning. It was eastward-facing, built to look out toward the promise of the dawn—its eyes cast too toward the vales of Ladros—and its lintel was embellished with that same vessel of Arien, wound about with trailing vines of those flowers which had blossomed at her first rising. His brother’s work. Nearly all the fortress’ adornments had been so wrought, he recalled with a fleeting touch of affection. Each visit brought with it a new flourish on this wall or that; a similar rope of vines embracing the arches of the hall, a line of hares racing across the stretchers of the back corridor, a thicket of trees burgeoning up the western stair. Ingoldo had laughed over his shoulder when Aegnor came across him chipping a mischievous fox beside the larder; even in wariness, he had said with a smile, there must always be made time for joy, for beauty. Else to what end was the toil of their Siege?

Aegnor pushed through the door without preamble, casting a brief glance toward the silhouette at the window while he latched it again, then discarded his waterlogged boots and crossed to stand before the hearth. He was not chilled, he thought, but his teeth had nonetheless begun an unwonted chattering and he pulled his shirt free from the hose, letting it hang loose from his shoulders as the fire’s warmth gradually began to dry him.

“I’ve been to Ladros,” he said at last when the shivering had subsided enough to speak in a steady voice.

“I know.” Finrod remained curled on the window seat, legs drawn up and chin resting atop his knees as he gazed out into the rain. “I saw thee ride out with the dawn.”

Aegnor nodded shortly, but did not reply. Of course his brother had been watching. In the three days since that inciting confession they had both carefully avoided the topic, but nevertheless its presence coursed a steady river beneath every exchange. As had Ingoldo’s concern, quiet and staid and ever-present, hovering in the air between them like a vigilant hound. It filled the room now despite his brother’s clear effort to hold it in check and Aegnor stared pointedly into the dancing flames until he felt his own will steady. Then he shuddered and turned back to the table where three chalices and a carafe of wine were gathered on a tray. He filled one of these and took a sip, then emptied it in a long draught. “I could not bring myself to pass the ridge.”

Finrod looked back at him in silence for a long moment, then rose and crossed to a chest opposite the bed, drawing from the depths of it a squat clay bottle and two plum-sized cups, the latter of which were chipped and scarred across their surface from long years’ use. He carried these to the table, all the while working the wax and cork loose with a knife.

“Miru-na-naur…” Aegnor snorted with a mirthless laugh. “I must make a wretched sight indeed.”

“Hrögemetheilit,” Finrod amended as he filled each cup, then sat. The ghost of a smile passed over his lips and he lifted the cup briefly toward his brother. “Sán gahail,” he added, then emptied it.

Aegnor echoed the motions, then watched impassively as his brother filled the cups again. “From how she spoke of herself to thee, I thought to find the change so marked I would not know her.” He turned the cup round and about on the table, not meeting his brother’s eye. “I did, of course—at once. Her hair was caught in the wind and she was laughing. She was chasing three children across the green.” 

“Emeldir and her brothers most likely. Adanel’s grandchildren.”

“Yes, there were two lads and a lass.” He retreated to the hearth with his cup, resting one arm heavily against the mantel. “I should have let it bide in memory as was thy counsel, static and finished. I might toy with a future I did not have, imagining it this way or that, but within it she remained the same, ever as she was and thus ever a clear fable.” He winced as he swallowed the mouthful of hrögemetheilit. “Now I have seen her face, and I can never be free of the truth of it: breathtaking as in her youth, changed in all those ways I should have known at her side. Never has the path I scorned seemed more tangible than in that sight—Oh Valar…” he broke off in a hoarse whisper and hid his face against his arm. 

“Wilt thou not return, then?” Finrod could not hide the surprise in his voice. “I thought…”

“I saw her joy.” He shook his head and shifted to grip the mantel with both hands. “I had forgotten—Manwë damn my folly—I had forgotten that it would be as present as her grief. I rode with every intention of falling at her feet and begging that I might be allowed the opposite choice yet, for she is younger still than Bëor when thine own way was chosen. There would be years wherein…” He trailed off and closed his eyes against the fury of tears that threatened. “‘Thou shalt live long in the order of thy kind,’ were not those thy words? ‘Thou shalt live long, and he will go forth before thee.’ And when is the dam to burst? A year from now? A decade? On the morrow? I saw her joy, Ingo,” he repeated in a hoarse voice. “How could I take that life from her?”

“A fair price, she would say.”

“Wouldst thou counsel me so?”

“I would not counsel thee at all—from such a branch did this bitter fruit blossom.”

“Then allow that I know my mind and have chosen through the pain, not because of it.” Finrod blenched at the words and Aegnor watched him silently for a long moment before crossing to the table and filling his brother’s cup in turn. “That was barbed, forgive me. But I do know my duty in this.”

“Náro—“

“Nay, hear me; I no longer have the cover of ignorance. I would be choosing this for her purposely were I to let my heart rule me now. Would Bëor have laid this path upon thee had he known it would end thus?”

“He knew.” Finrod emptied the cup in a quick motion, then turned it restlessly in his hands. “We both knew. He made certain it was my choice.”

Aegnor snorted and filled his own cup, carrying it back to set it on the mantel untouched. “The barb is on thine own tongue now, brother.”

“Only to defend him from the accusation.”

“Defend thyself rather, for well didst thou know I would have laid the choice before her when it was still mine to offer.”

“I cannot undo what was done.”

“No.” He sighed and leaned his head in against the stonework. “Nor I.” Thunder growled and rumbled in the distance, and the plink of rain grew ever sharper against the panes, filling the room till at last Aegnor spoke again. “Do not mistake me. I do not seek to exclude her from the choosing—I know her answer full well, as thou hast quoth to me already: that every hour is worth its cost. But as I am master only of my own will, so she too of hers. Both hearts are ventured in this, both must be free to decide.” He pushed back from the stones, but did not meet his brother’s eye. “I have not the courage thou didst credit to me.”

“Thou art grieved and weary—and poor is any measuring rod cut from that tree. Do not judge thyself by its appraisal.”

“My life is bounded within this Siege; thou hast seen it, I have seen it.” He took a small sip from the hrögemetheilit and shook his head. “Once joined we would not be parted—and I could not face what is before me were it to mean choosing for the twain. I would flee it were she at my side, I know this. I have not the fortitude to watch her meet such an end.”

“Fortitude cannot be plumbed until the hour is upon you.”

“I am not willing.” He downed the remaining liquor in a quick draught and gripped the mantel again. “I will not hazard that hour. That is my own heart’s choice: I will not wed her only to leave her.”

The resulting pause was sharp, and when he spoke again an edge had crept into Finrod’s voice. “As Bëor did, if I infer thy meaning aright?”

Aegnor remained silent, but made no effort to correct him.

“Thou deem’st his decision self-serving.”

“Canst thou deny it?”

“I can.” Finrod rose and crossed to the window, watching the grey sheets of rain drift outward across the highlands. “I do. I have told thee already this path was of my own choosing.”

“Which he should not have accepted—if he guessed, as thou sayest, what lay ahead.” 

“It was no more than he had borne already.” Finrod’s eyes still followed the downfall, drawn back in memory to a parapet amongst the Cened Beraid, to the breathless relief of Balan freed and at his side, holding him as the rain whispered against the stone. I will rest within thee yet, deathless in thine heart as my people have held all those who went before us. “He was well acquainted with such an end—to love, to lose, to grieve. To find joy again.”

“Then you were both deluded. I saw thine eyes when I came to thee for counsel, and there was only emptiness in thee, not joy. That glimpse persuaded me more than any of our speech.”

“Yes.” He reached out and unlatched the window, easing it open so that the scent of rain flowed in with the breeze. “That I will not deny. Belen had followed his father only a short time ere we spoke; the wound was…quite raw in those days.”

“In those days? I see thee now, Ingoldo. Or was it some other who told me not three nights gone that he would still have tried to spare me?”

“And who told thee too that he was wrong—that such impulse found its roots in his own cowardice.” 

Aegnor snorted dismissively and turned away.

“It is not posturing, Náro, I—” Finrod dragged his hands back through his hair, frowning into the distance as he sought for words. “How might I say it…On the Ice when Fánarusco lost an arm, he spoke of the lingering sensation, dost thou recall it? An ache in fingers that were no more, an itch along a missing wrist. I feared the presence of such a phantom and so I hid, drawing my pain like a shell about me and hardening my convictions that none might crack it and loose what lived on inside. It was an emptiness wrought and not entailed.”

“Yet it shackles thee nonetheless.”

“I concede it. But the bonds are otherwise than the bent of thy thought.”

“And I say to thee: of what consequence is the chain’s metal when iron and steel serve alike to hold thee fast?”

Finrod was silent, watching as the twilight deepened its shroud about the hills’ shoulders; then he rose and crossed to fill his cup. “Two years it took from the time my soul held the knowledge till my heart would allow it.” He drained it silently and placed it in the center of the board. “Two years of doing homage to fear and miscalling it discernment—if we are to speak of bonds, then let that not go unnamed! Those are the manacles thou wouldst point out, and they bed their anchors here and not in the years of loss.” His fingers began turning the cup by slow increments and his eyes never shifted, as though the restless movement held him engrossed. “I escaped them in his arms—for a time. He never pressed me, only held to his convictions till at last I understood they were mine as well. His heart beside me, his soul within mine…any cost was defanged in the light of it.” Finrod filled the cup again, but watched the amber liquid settle within its bowl rather than lifting it to his lips. “Like a fool I fled back to the same pattern the moment he was gone, for twas an easier thing by far to mire in self-blame than face that this was a wound in which no fault was held. It would have bled no matter which path was chosen.”

“Swift as a brook is thine ever-changing counsel.”

“So it is. Swift and cascading till I myself am nigh drowned in its current. All the world is changing, it seems,” he added in a murmur after he paused to sip from the liquor. “There is nothing now her words have not touched—oh the marvel of it!”

“No mood have I for riddling, Ingo. Speak thy mind, or do not.”

“Believe me an thou wilt, I am endeavoring to do so.” He felt the hrögemetheilit coursing through his veins and its familiar heat wrapped about his shoulders like an embrace. “I believed that I had happiness in these after-years despite the loss of him; that all the joy I have found amongst his people, his sons and his daughters, was wrung from the darkness with clenched teeth. Defiant and hard-won. But as Andreth spoke to me I felt light turned upon my folly once more, as it was when I gave way at the first, and lo! it was as he had asserted all along—the memory of him did not bind the shackles closer. It was his lingering presence that loosed me from them as he ever did in life. And all these years I have fled before it, Náro, like a hart before the wolf’s howl, when all the while it was the very thing which would have set me free. And so it should be! For truly the working out of these melodies, these choruses of First and Secondborn within the Song, can be none other than this: a release from bondage, each of each.” He fell quiet, watching the fire’s light play along the strands of his brother’s hair; and when he went on again, his voice had dwindled as though speaking to himself. “I begin to think now that even the grief itself is a kind of hope—what is our mourning but sorrow clasping hands with estel and calling out for that which must be restored? And so too in such a light the cleaving of souls across that boundary must be held not as a further rending of the divide, but an act of trust rather—nay a prefigurement of what healing must surely come to pass!”

Aegnor cast an evaluatory glance over his shoulder, then snorted. “Thou art well into thy cups.”

“No more or less than thee,” Finrod retorted in reflex, gesturing toward the other with the empty vessel in hand, then shook his head with a faint smile. “Nay, brother, I have pondered this soberly—take the word as thou wilt—every hour since I parted from her. And through each of those hours my understanding has shifted so thoroughly that I find I must learn all the world anew. How can I not, when beyond hope this voice has reached our ears?”

“The echo may reach us, I grant thee, but it tells thee naught save that the note was once sounded. Death, surely, has dampered it since.”

“I do not believe it.”

“No? Then I fear thou hast forgotten the words of Manwë on that statute which wrought our own begetting: you deal with Arda Marred—in Arda Marred Justice is not Healing.” 

“And upon the same parchment it is not also inscribed that in Justice there must be Pity, and in Healing ever the thought of Arda Unmarred?”

“A thought which was never brought into being.”

“Yet nevertheless is that Hope upon which the Elder King instructed us to order our ways. And if it is hope, then it must reside before us as well, not merely as a lost path held in memory.” Finrod’s fingers strayed again to the iron band about his finger. “I believe the One to be merciful—we were made by His will and hold such as virtue among us, our nature drawn from His own. And if He is merciful, he will not purpose grief upon His children.”

“And yet in grief do we find ourselves. I too have pondered her words in the days since thou saw fit to disclose them, and I confess my view is less propitious than thine.” Aegnor turned incredulously from the hearth to search his brother’s eye. “Truly, thou art convinced of this belief?”

Finrod held the other’s gaze in silence, then at last he nodded. “Yes. So I have chosen.” 

“Despite the evidence of thine own injury?”

“Nay, because of it. Hast thou heard nothing I have said? I will not give up all Arda as lost. I cannot. We are children of the One, Aikanáro; their purpose is not in vain.” His voice caught and he looked down, then slowly let his fingers begin to follow the grain of the table, tracing the swirling eyes that ran dark as ink within the rosewood. “I dream of it every night now,” he murmured into the quiet, his gaze moving with the wood’s winding path, “every time I set my mind to rest. It stretches out before me: Arda remade. Not the stasis of Aman or the tired nostalgia of Cuiviénen, but a living, changing, growing thing—the discord resolved into harmony. Not a haven preserved against the shadow, but creation unshadowed. Sometimes in the dream I see him there waiting, he the one to find me in my own wandering. Other times I see many persons all around me, a sea of reunions—thee in thy bliss—but nowhere is he to be found. It is my punishment, I think in those moments, I the first transgressor of these bounds. I who was meant to shepherd them and who instead desired what was placed in my care." He reached out for the clay bottle and refilled first his brother's cup and then his own. "Foolishness, of course, for Arda remade would not be whole were any of her children absent. Each speck of dust, we shall be gathered...if any are to be so. He shall be there."

Aegnor remained silent, watching the other impassively. The rain had lessened now and a last finger of sunset reached through the clouds to brush against his brother’s cheek, setting the sheen of his hair alight where it hung loose about his shoulders. It reminded him oddly of the beacons that had lined the coast between Alqualondë and the horn of Araman, their curved panes covered in hammered brass and shining with borrowed light to warn mariners of the looming coast. They had set their path by them after the blood of the Swan-haven, flickering and wan in the Darkness till Ossë’s wrath had pulled the greater number down into the sea they guarded, leaving the prodigals to wander aimlessly till the messenger came and spoke their doom.

Fitting, he thought bitterly, for so too was this Old Hope his brother touted: bright in its origins, but foundered within that very force which should have borne them to safety.

“What was it?” he whispered at last, his voice choked and bitter. “What did they do? What set it all awry?” 

His brother shook his head mutely and Aegnor’s fingers curled into helpless fists. 

“Did she not…” his voice broke and he pressed on with an effort. “Did she not say more to thee than was put to quill? I know you are close. I know she trusts thee with more of such knowledge than was ever granted me—and I know too thou wouldst have given her thy word of silence had she asked it of thee. Is that the genesis of thine hope, then? That thou hast some answer to this riddle, though thou canst share it not?”

“I do not.” Finrod looked up to meet his eye at last, the lines of grief mirroring across his own features. “And on this I give my word to thee: I would tell thee were I so bound.”

“Did not Bëor speak of it in the years at thy side?”

“No.” Then Finrod grimaced and passed a hand over his face. “Or perhaps he did and I heeded him not, thinking still that my wisdom was greater than their lore.” He rose slowly and returned to the window, resting one hand upon the casement. “There were many fables he told me in those days, many myths that were meant to account for it…I collected them like stones along the seaside, fascinated by their curiosity, but failing to heed their consequence.”

Silence came between them again, and for long there was no sound but the wind sighing through the pine boughs, the distant rumble of thunder over the far fells. 

“Ingoldo. What brought us to this?”

A patch of sky had opened as the storm moved off toward the eastern hills and Finrod watched as first one star and then another materialized from the void. “Memory, perhaps.” From the corner of his eye, Balan’s ring stood out against the pale granite; and without a second thought he found himself reaching over to draw it from where it had lain this half-century, sliding it to rest instead upon the index finger of his right. Let others assume what they would. He was done with the charade of discretion. “Might it not be that even as the Secondborn retain in their hearts an image of that vision, of Arda Complete through which they see all this darkened world, that we too carry in our beings a whisper of that same remembrance?” 

“So we might taste a double bitterness?”

“Nay, that our souls might sing with recognition when we come face to face, finding each other despite the Shadow!”

Aegnor sank onto the bench beside the table and he leaned heavily against its timbers, face hidden against his palms. “I would I had thine hope,” he said at last, his voice choked and bitter. “But, Nienna in her mercy, I cannot see my way to it.”

Chapter End Notes

TRANSLATIONS
Q = Quenya, S = Sindarin T = Telerin
Miru na naur: [S] wine of fire
<i>Cened Beraid</i>: [S] Looking/seeing towers

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