Keep You Like an Oath by StarSpray  

I can move mountains
I can work a miracle, work a miracle, ooh-oh-oh
I'll keep you like an oath
May nothing but death do us part
- “Uma Thurman” by Fall Out Boy

- - 

TA 1409
Eriador

From the end of a line of hills that stretched eastward from the southern reaches of the Ered Luin, the glimmer of the Baranduin was just visible in the distance across wide open lands, all rolling hills and green-gold grass and white heather. Small copses of trees and tiny forests dotted the landscape, but for the most part it was wide open country under an even wider sky, summer blue with white clouds drifting lazily across it. 

Maglor sat atop the last hill in the line, legs crossed, arms around his knees. At the bottom of the hill was a small cave, just big enough to make a comfortable shelter, with a sandy floor and smooth walls. He had left his harp there, and the flute and the set of pipes that he’d carved from wood gathered from the forests that covered the mountains behind him, and he was not singing. For some days he had been in no mood for music; the wind was out of the north, and there was a chill in it that he did not like—a chill that had no place in the height of summer. When he looked to the north the horizon seemed dark, as though with storm clouds, except that they had remained there for days, and showed no sign of moving or dispersing; when it came from the north, the wind carried a faint sour smell.

Something was happening—something dark and fell had come to the North Kingdom. Shadowy dreams had plagued him until he’d left the shores and struck inland. Usually when he came to this place it was for peace and quiet, for the pleasure of wildflowers and birdsong, of growing things and the freshwater spring that bubbled up on the other side of the hill from his little cave. No one else ever came here; he doubted anyone ever had. The things he left behind were always there when he returned, and he’d never so much as glimpsed a boat on the river in the distance. 

Now, though…he had seen many birds winging their way south; he did not need the omens on the horizon or the wind, or his dreams, to tell him something was amiss. These birds were many months too early for their yearly migrations. They were fleeing, and when they alighted in the grass around him or in the trees where he went in search of firewood, he could catch little bits of news from them, disjointed and frightened and quiet. They did not reply to his whistles and songs as they normally did. 

On this beautiful summer afternoon Maglor sat and watched the river in the distance, and wondered if he dared follow it upstream. He might find out more if he came at least to Sarn Ford. He wondered if he dared go even farther north, if there was anything he could do to help…

A nightingale came fluttering up the hill, erratic and clearly exhausted, startling Maglor out of his thoughts. He held out his hands and the bird landed clumsily on his palms; he could feel its little heart beating fast as it panted, beak open slightly, eyes closed. “Little one, what’s wrong?” he murmured, not really expecting an answer. He knew the tongues of many birds, including songbirds, but he was not one to whom nightingales usually came to sing. 

At last the nightingale caught its breath, and righted itself. Help! it cheeped at him. Help, please, help! And this it followed with a series of notes that was not a usual part of a nightingale’s song, but which took Maglor’s own breath away. He knew that melody. After a few moments he wet his lips and whistled the next few notes in the song, to which the nightingale replied with the ones following, and then repeated its plea for help. 

“Yes, of course,” Maglor said. “Of course I’ll help. Where? Show me where!” Heart in his throat, he scrambled to his feet and down the hill, sliding to the bottom over loose stones and earth. With one hand he held the nightingale, and with the other he grabbed his pack, and then his sword. He hadn’t used it in years beyond count, but he kept it sharp, and he still practiced with it sometimes—just in case. The nightingale, recovered enough to fly again, took off, flying east toward the Baranduin. Maglor followed as quickly as he could, though even as his fastest run he couldn’t keep up with a bird. The nightingale disappeared into the distance and then flew back to circle over his head, and then shot forward again. 

He reached the river and halted, having lost sight of the nightingale. As he caught his breath he looked around, wondering if he was meant to cross. The Baranduin was lazy and slow, but it was fairly deep here, and the riverbed was more mud than stone. Reeds and bulrushes grew thickly along the banks, full of frogs and cheeping insects. Ducks quacked at each other as they paddled near the opposite bank. 

The nightingale reappeared and fluttered around Maglor’s head before flying upstream. He followed, and came to a place where the nightingale disappeared again. “Hello?” Maglor called, but received no answer. He did hear, though, the sound of the water lapping against wood, as though a small boat or a raft was caught up in the reeds. He pushed his way through, and found that was precisely what it was—a half-sunken raft, if it could be called such a thing, for its only occupant barely fit. They lay unmoving and face down, hair and clothing soaked through. Maglor swore softly, and splashed into the water. Picking them up was easier than it should have been, but Maglor didn’t let himself think too much about it as he fumbled with his grip on their wet clothes, trying to be gentle even in his hurry. He stumbled against the reeds and in the mud, thick in the shallows and clinging, but at last he got them both onto the grassy bank. 

The person on the raft was exactly who Maglor had feared. Daeron’s head lolled on the grass as Maglor laid him down. His nose was broken and his eyes black and blue. He had numerous other scrapes and bruises, and underneath them he was thin and terribly pale. His shirt was stained with blood, but with the river water combining with it, Maglor couldn’t tell at first whether he was still bleeding. Maglor peeled away the sodden clothes, and found a single cut across Daeron’s chest, shallow but still bleeding sluggishly. When Maglor touched it, the skin around it was very cold—he was cold all over, but around that cut it was like ice—and he could tell at once that some terrible weapon had made that wound, worse than poison. Daeron’s heart was still beating, and he was breathing—but shallowly, and there was something almost translucent about his pale skin, something insubstantial about his whole being. 

“Daeron,” Maglor said, taking Daeron’s face in his hands. “Daeron, can you hear me? You must wake up!” Daeron’s eyelids fluttered, but he didn’t stir. Maglor cursed, and took his own cloak to wrap him up after peeling off the rest of his clothes, which were in such a state as to not be worth trying to salvage. “Who did this to you?” he asked as he pulled the cloak tight around Daeron. Of course he received no answer. He tried to see something of Daeron’s thoughts, reaching out carefully, but found nothing but a jumbled mess of terror and pain and confusion; he quickly withdrew, lest he unwittingly do more damage. “Oh, Daeron…”

There was no shelter nearby, not on the western bank of the river. The hills were too far to return to—too far from anything. Maglor was no healer, and Daeron needed far more help than he could give. There was only one who Maglor could think of who might be able to heal Daeron of the wound on his chest, but how was he to get Daeron alive all the way across Eriador, to the very feet of the Misty Mountains?

Maybe better to try to reach Lindon. But the only way Maglor could imagine Círdan might help was to put Daeron aboard a ship—and he could not say why, but he feared that Daeron would not survive such a voyage. It must be Rivendell, then. 

It was growing late, the shadows lengthening as the sun sank over the Ered Luin in the distance. Maglor rose to his feet to look around. He did not like how exposed they were, feared who might be coming down the river in pursuit of Daeron, who had only barely escaped whatever it was that had wounded him so terribly. 

On the other side of the Baranduin, some miles upstream, he saw a thick cluster of willow trees, and other trees beyond them—a little wood that would offer shelter and fuel for a fire. There was much Maglor couldn’t do for Daeron, but he could at least get him warm. Maglor gathered his things and lifted Daeron, who still did not stir. “Don’t you dare die,” Maglor said as he started walking. “Don’t you dare. Not out here. Not like this.”

The river was still deep and muddy when Maglor reached the place he wanted to cross, but there was nothing for it. He made two trips, trying to keep both Daeron and his supplies dry, and only partly succeeding. Once safely among the trees Maglor worked as quickly as he could to build a fire, and to wrap Daeron in blankets, and to clean and bandage the cut over his chest. As he worked he sang as many songs of concealment and safety, of warding and of hiding, as he could think of. Then he sang songs of healing, and found they had no effect at all upon the cut, and only limited effect on Daeron’s other bruises and cuts, and his broken nose, though at least Maglor could make sure that healed straight. 

He fetched water to heat, and then went foraging for something he could make into tea, or soup, or something hot that Daeron might drink when he woke. And it was when, Maglor thought, gritting his teeth, because Daeron would wake. 

In his search, he stumbled upon a patch of thickly growing dark plants, who gave off a fresh and clean smell when he brushed against them. Athelas. Maglor knew a little of its virtues, and he cut several stems to take back with him. He cast the leaves into the boiling water, and the smell grew stronger, bringing to mind clear mountain streams and springtime flowers. Maglor used the athelas water to clean again the cut on Daeron’s chest before he wrapped it up once mroe, and then drew Daeron into his arms, sitting so that Daeron lay in his lap, resting his head on Maglor’s chest, near enough to the steam to breathe it in. His color improved, and his breathing deepened. Maglor tried his songs of healing again, and found them a little more effective. Daeron began to shiver, on and off. Maglor hated to leave him, but he had to replace the water and figure out something for them to eat. 

The problem with having spent so many centuries almost entirely alone was that he had few supplies that would work for two. He had only one pot and one pan, neither of them large. He had several blankets but he wasn’t sure that was enough, and only one set of spare clothes. Those he would give to Daeron, which meant he would be uncomfortable and sticky until the ones he wore were dry. A small price to pay, but a reminder of how ill-equipped he was to save anyone’s life, let alone someone as badly wounded as Daeron was. 

Daeron finally stirred as night fell, and Maglor put his pan over the coals to cook some mushrooms he had found. He dumped them into the pan and went to kneel beside Daeron. “Can you hear me?” he asked, placing his hand over Daeron’s chest. “Daeron?” Daeron’s eyelids fluttered, and then slowly blinked open. The starlight in his eyes was dimmed, and he could not open his eyes fully because they were still swollen. “Daeron,” Maglor said again, and Daeron flinched away, a whimper escaping. “No, it’s all right. You’re safe. It’s me—do you know me?”

Finally, Daeron’s gaze focused on him, though Maglor wasn’t really sure that he could see very well. “…You,” Daeron breathed, hoarse and almost voiceless. “You…”

“Do you know me? Do you know my name?”

Daeron’s lip curled a little. “Kinslayer,” he whispered, before seeming to run out of strength, head sinking back against the blankets. 

“Close enough,” Maglor sighed. He smoothed Daeron’s hair back. It was still damp, and Daeron was still too cool to the touch. “I’ll be back soon.” He’d seen some gorse growing near the riverbank, and he went to pick some flowers before night fell. He did not think it was particularly medicinal, but it made a fragrant tea that if nothing else would be something hot for Daeron to drink. While the mushrooms cooked, he tossed the gorse flowers into the pot filled with fresh water to let them brew, and fished out some dried herbs from his pack that he could add to their dinner. As he worked he was aware of Daeron watching him, though his eyes were mostly closed, and he did not move. 

Finally, the mushrooms were cooked through and the tea was done. Maglor had more than one cup, at least—he carved them of wood, just for something to do with his hands. Most of the things he made he traded whenever he came upon other travelers—very rare—or made his way into a village or small town—only a little less rare. “Here,” he said, bringing the cup over to Daeron and helping him to sit. Daeron squinted at the golden liquid in the cup, apparently dubious. “It’s just tea, made from flowers.”

“Flowers can be poison,” Daeron rasped.

“For goodness’ sake,” Maglor sighed. “Here.” He took a sip, and then held it out again. “Gorse isn’t poison, and anyway why would I go to the trouble of pulling you out of the river just to kill you again?”

Daeron glared at him, but took the cup, holding it with both hands. They shook, and Maglor had to steady them as Daeron drank, small and slow sips. “Do you need me to prove the mushrooms aren’t poison either?”

“What are you—why—” Daeron swayed, and Maglor caught him before he fell over. The blankets slipped, and Daeron began to shiver again. 

“Hold on.” Maglor grabbed his spare shirt and helped ease it over Daeron’s head, careful of his broken nose. It was too big, and hung loosely on his thin frame. Once it was on Maglor drew up the blankets again. “What happened to you?” Daeron just shivered, and shook his head. “Your chest, the wound there—”

“Do not,” Daeron hissed, pressing a hand to his chest, turning his head away.

“Daeron.” Maglor took his face in his hands, so that Daeron had no choice but to meet his gaze. “Something is happening in the north, but I do not know what. Please, let me help you. Tell me what happened.” 

“I don’t know,” Daeron said. “I don’t…Angmar—they have—they have come south like a great storm, and the Dúnedain cannot…”

“I do not know that name,” Maglor said. He had been too far south, it seemed, too far from any news such as this. He did not like the sound of it—Angmar. “What of the blade that wounded you? It is not like anything I have seen before. I do not know how to treat it.”

“I don’t know,” Daeron repeated. “But it’s—I can feel—” He turned his head, and Maglor let him go. He did not speak again, and when Maglor tried to coax him to eat he only took a few mouthfuls before refusing anymore. 

Daeron fell into a fitful sleep not long afterward. Maglor stayed awake, with Daeron’s head on his lap, tending to their small fire and listening to the river and the wind in the trees. He combed out and braided Daeron’s hair, and then sang quiet songs, lullabies out of his own childhood, songs he had made over the course of his lonely exile. He did not sing the song that the nightingale had brought to him, though his thoughts drifted back to Ivrin again and again, in spite of his best efforts. 

The morning dawned clear and bright. Maglor heated more water and dropped athelas into it, left Daeron sleeping by the fire, and ventured out of the wood toward the river. He walked upstream a little ways, wondering what he would find if he went all the way to Sarn Ford. Maybe crossing the Baranduin had been a mistake. Maglor knew too little of what Daeron was suffering, and maybe he was wrong—maybe he would survive a voyage into the west…

Yet his heart kept telling him no. That the only hope for Daeron lay in the east, at the feet of the Misty Mountains. 

Back at the camp Daeron was just stirring when Maglor returned. He knelt to toss more wood onto the fire, and watched Daeron blink his eyes open. The swelling was going down, the effects of Maglor’s songs finally starting to show. “If I can get you to the Havens,” Maglor began, because surely Daeron would know better than he what was needed. 

“No.” Daeron did not look at him, gazing up at the boughs overhead. “There is no ship that can take me.”

“Then you do know what—”

“No. Not—I know I am…tethered. I can feel it.” He pressed a hand to his chest, over the bandages. 

“Then if not Mithlond,” Maglor said, “Imladris.” He didn’t know where it was, but he thought he could find it. It was somewhere east of the Bruinen, and surely Elrond’s folk would be out and about, making patrols, defending the valley from whatever Angmar was, whatever it was doing. “If I can get you to Elrond—”

“I will not last that long.” Daeron’s voice was very quiet. There was a certain resignation in it, a despair that Maglor did not like at all. 

“So, what, you intend to just give up?” he demanded. “Why call for me if you will not accept—”

Daeron turned his head, frowning slightly. “Call for you?”

“The nightingale—”

“What nightingale?”

Maglor whistled the notes that the nightingale had sung for him. In response the nightingale itself appeared, fluttering down to land on his outstretched fingers, singing the next few notes. Daeron stared, his expression stricken. “No one else knows that song—not unless you have been singing—”

“I have not,” Daeron snapped. Good, Maglor thought. If he was angry he was present, he was himself, not fading away into whatever it was this strange weapon of Angmar would make of him. “I barely even remember it!”

That was such a blatant lie that Maglor did not bother responding. “Whether you called for me or not, I am here now. I will take you to Elrond, and you will not fade before we get there!”

Daeron sat up. He moved stiffly, and his arms shook as he pushed himself off the ground, but his eyes flashed, and his cheeks almost looked pink, rather than the terrible pallor from only a few minutes before. “Who are you to decide my fate, son of Fëanor? I will not be indebted to a kinslayer!”

“Would you rather be enslaved by the sorceries of Angmar?”

“I would—” Daeron swayed, all the color draining from his face. Maglor caught him before he could fall, and he did not try to pull away. “I would be free of it all,” he whispered, eyes falling closed. A tear escaped, sliding down over the bruises under his eye until Maglor wiped it away with his thumb. 

“You will be, if you can only hold on until I get you to Imladris,” Maglor said. “Would you truly cede your rank as the mightiest singer of the Eldalië to me?”

Daeron made a small, pained noise, but did not answer. Maglor had been trying to goad him again, but his words seemed to have had the opposite effect. 

“We cannot linger,” Maglor said after a moment, “especially if we find the road held against us.”

“It will be,” Daeron sighed. “The Weather Hills are overrun. Cardolan burns…”

Maglor cursed softly, and then lay Daeron down. “I’ll be back soon. Gather your strength, Daeron. I will get you to the Ford of Bruinen.”

“Will you swear it, kinslayer?” Daeron asked, voice heavy with irony and with something else Maglor couldn’t quite identify. 

He paused for a moment. Then he said, “Yes.” Daeron opened his eyes as wide as they would go, staring in shock. Maglor met his gaze and did not hesitate. “I swear by the sun and stars, with the earth itself as my witness, I will see you safe and alive to the House of Elrond, or perish myself in the attempt.” Then he turned away. If he was going to keep this oath, he had preparations to make. 

He found the patch of athelas, and harvested more, tying it into a bundle and wrapping it up carefully, singing songs of freshness and potency over the leaves, and silently praying to whoever might be listening that it would be enough, combined with what songs he had, to keep Daeron holding on. He found a few other herbs and some early-ripened berries that he gathered. There was no time to hunt, and even if there was, there was no time to prepare the meat properly. He quickly packed his things away and retrieved his now-dry cloak, and then returned to Daeron, who watched his activity through half-closed eyes, his expression unreadable. “Come on, up,” Maglor said, adopting a brisk tone as he hauled Daeron to sitting and then to standing. “My clothes are too big for you, but we’ll make do. At least you didn’t lose your own boots.”

“This is folly,” Daeron said, even as he went along with it. 

“Perhaps. I like my folly better than yours.” Maglor rolled up his blankets and stowed them away, and then he doused the fire, kicking dirt over the ashes. He held out a handful of wild strawberries. Daeron regarded them warily, but didn’t try to argue about it this time. He took them, and then Maglor took his hand. “Come. We have many miles to go ere we reach the Mitheithel, let alone the Bruinen.”

“We must pass through Cardolan, and it is overrun,” Daeron said as they started walking. 

“I can hide us,” Maglor said. “I am very good by now at passing unseen when I wish. I swore I would get you to Imladris, and so I will, whatever it takes.”

“That was folly,” Daeron sighed, but said no more. He moved slowly and unsteadily, but once they emerged into the sunlight and open grasslands he revived a little. When Maglor began to sing—a simple walking song—he revived even more, though he did not have the strength to walk and sing at the same time. The nightingale followed them, flying in circles around them occasionally before disappearing into the heather. Maglor wondered at it a little, since Daeron seemed to have no memory of the bird, let alone sending it to seek for help. 

The nights were warm, but Daeron still felt a chill. Out in the open Maglor would not have dared to light a fire even if there was wood for it. Soon, he thought, they would need to travel by night and hide by day, but he hoped they would not have to do that until they crossed over the North-South Road. In the meantime, when they did stop at night, Maglor curled up around Daeron, covering them both with the blankets. Daeron didn’t try to protest; he spoke very little, and at least their shared warmth seemed to help. So did the quiet lullabies that Maglor sang until Daeron drifted off to sleep.

For a while it seemed as though Daeron was growing stronger. He did not need to rest as often, and it was easier to rouse him in the mornings. Maglor picked the occasional fight, when they stopped to rest, but though his body seemed to be recovering, Daeron’s mind wandered and it was at times hard to get him to focus, and nearly impossible to goad him into losing his temper again. 

Then one morning Maglor tried to wake him, and he would not stir. By then his nose had healed, and the bruises around his eyes were fading yellow. The cut across his chest had healed to a pale scar that remained cold to touch, and when Maglor touched it now it was icy, as it had been when he’d pulled Daeron out of the river. “Daeron? Daeron!” He shook him by the shoulders. “Daeron, wake up! Wake!” He put forth his power, and that worked, jolting Daeron out of his slumber with a gasp, eyes opening wide, wild and filled with fear. Relief made Maglor’s throat go tight, and he pulled Daeron up to embrace him, burying his face in his hair to hide his own fear. 

“Where—who—what…” Daeron gasped, fingers grasping at Maglor’s shirt, fumbling as though he wasn’t sure whether to hold him closer or push him away. “Where—”

“Safe,” Maglor whispered. “You’re safe. I promise.” He drew back, feeling his hair catch in the heather under which they’d made their tiny camp the night before. Daeron looked at him with terrifyingly blank eyes before he blinked and seemed to remember—where he was and why, and with whom. “Wait here a moment.”

“But—” 

“Do not go back to sleep!”

Maglor climbed a nearby hill and spotted what he needed almost immediately—a stream, small but swift-moving. A few trees grew along it; no true copses or anything that might provide more shelter than shade from the midsummer sun, but trees meant wood. Maglor slid back down the hill and pulled Daeron out of the heather. He was shaking all over, and almost fell against Maglor once he was on his feet. “I’ve got you,” Maglor murmured, as he gathered up the blankets to stuff them into his pack. “It’s not far. Come on.”

“I cannot—he is looking, Maglor, he is looking for me—” There was a note of panic in Daeron’s voice that Maglor had never heard before. “I can’t breathe—”

“Shh, it’s all right.” Maglor kept his arm around Daeron as they stumbled through the hills toward the stream. Once there he gathered just enough wood to get a fire started. It had not rained for some time, and so the wood was dry and gave off very little smoke. Daeron sat curled in on himself, head resting on his knees, arms hugging his stomach, shivering. Maglor put water on to heat, and then pulled out the blankets again. He draped them over Daeron’s shoulders, and stroked his hair, unsure what to say to offer comfort—if there was any real comfort to be had. The water seemed to take an age to boil, but once it did he brought the pan off the flames closer to Daeron, and cast in a handful of athelas leaves, only slightly wilted. “Breathe, Daeron,” he murmured, moving to sit behind him, bracketing him with both arms and legs so that he could share as much of his own body’s warmth as he could. “It will help.” Daeron took a few deep, shuddering breaths, inhaling the fragrant steam. “Good. Keep going. Just breathe.”

“Why are you doing this?” Daeron asked finally. His voice was firmer, and when Maglor gripped his wrist he could feel his pulse beating steadily, still strong. He stopped shivering. 

“I swore an oath,” Maglor said.

“But why?”

Maglor sighed. He rested his head on Daeron’s back, listening to his heartbeat and to the steady inhale and exhale of his lungs, and thought of the new-risen Sun sparkling upon the waters of Ivrin, long ago, and the taste of wine and summer berries upon soft lips and hands sliding over smooth warm skin, and a single song authored together, away from the feasting and the calls for ever-increasing challenges of skill and song to see which of them was really the greater, Maglor of the Noldor or Daeron of the Sindar. He usually shied away from such memories, for they were painful in their sweetness. 

It had been so long since he’d not been alone, since he had done more than exchange just enough words to make some sort of trade for supplies and maybe a scrap of news, since he had met anyone who knew even so much as his name. Daeron was there now, Maglor knew, because he had no other choice. He hadn’t forgotten their last meeting, either, after the Dagor Bragollach but before any word had come to Himring of the goings on in Doriath or Nargothrond concerning the Silmaril—but he turned his thoughts very deliberately from that, which was painful in different and worse ways. 

Finally, he lifted his head, and released Daeron to get to his feet and douse the fire. There was no time to linger, or to dwell upon the past. He did not answer Daeron’s question, and Daeron did not ask it again. 

Daeron’s sleep grew more troubled, and Maglor often had a difficult time waking him. The athelas helped, even when there was no water to provide steam to breathe in—just bruising the leaves and inhaling their scent seemed to help. Maglor sang every song he knew for strength, of both body and spirit, in Sindarin and in Quenya, though the first time he spoke the latter language Daeron fixed him with a glare. It was a tired look, though, without any real heat behind it. 

Soon, they came to the North-South Road, and hid for most of an afternoon on a wooded hillside, watching traffic going to and fro—all armed, all moving quickly, all in large groups—almost all of it going south. In the east beyond Maglor could see smoke as fields and villages burned in the distance. The road marked the border to Cardolan. It would be safest, he thought, to turn south and follow it to Tharbad, and then make their way north following the Gwathló until it branched into the Bruinen and Mitheithel. Maglor had never gone that far north or east, toward the Misty Mountains. He hadn’t wanted to risk being discovered so near Imladris. That had been, in retrospect, a mistake, for he did not know the lands well enough, and could only go by what he had heard from others, and so what knowledge he did have was terribly out of date, and would be even if there was not war raging. 

Regardless, Daeron did not have that kind of time. As they sat hidden in among the gorse and the heather, Daeron leaned against Maglor, awake but not aware, his gaze distant and distressingly vacant. He woke most days more often than not forgetting where he was. Sometimes he grew distressed and confused at the sound of his own name. It came back to him after a time, but that time was growing longer and longer, as he grew colder, and the color faded from him so he was only dark hair and pale skin, bringing to mind the naked forests of deep midwinter, when it was tempting to believe that spring would never come again. 

They had to cut across Cardolan, heading northeast. There was a bridge, Maglor thought, across the Mitheithel—and then, if he remembered right, it was not terribly far to the Bruinen. Hopefully.

Night fell, and the road grew quiet. “Come on,” Maglor said, drawing Daeron up. Summer was getting on and soon the nights would grow cold, but for now it remained warm. Were it not for the smell of woodsmoke on the air and the distant howling of wolves, Maglor would have thought it a wonderful night for walking. “We must move by night now, I think, and go quickly.”

“I can’t,” Daeron whispered, though he let Maglor take his hand and guide him down the hill. 

“You can and you will. Is this how you want to cede your place as the mightiest singer of the Eldalië?” Maglor was aiming to annoy, but something flickered through Daeron’s eyes that was darker and more despairing, and he did not answer. “Do you know any walking songs? Teach me some song you’ve learned or made since last we sang together.”

“I cannot,” Daeron repeated. “I have not…” He stumbled, and Maglor caught him. Daeron leaned heavily against him, face pressed into his shoulder. “Please do not ask of me what I cannot give,” he whispered.

“All right,” Maglor said, resting a hand for a moment on the back of Daeron’s head. “If you have no songs to teach me, I will teach you some of mine. You can tell me later how terrible they are, after you are recovered.”

They crossed the road into Cardolan. Fields and pastures were burned or destroyed, and the farmsteads and villages lay crumbling and abandoned, sometimes still smoking. It was slow going; even at night they had to stop often and hide themselves, for orcs as well as men roamed the countryside, hacking and burning. Maglor wrapped the two of them in as many enchantments and songs of concealment as he knew, and still he feared it would not be enough. Food grew scarce, until he got the idea to do a little raiding of his own. 

Instead of moving on as evening fell, he roused Daeron and told him of the plan. “I’ll be back as swiftly as I can,” he said, as Daeron struggled to focus his gaze on Maglor’s face. “Do not go back to sleep, Daeron. Stay awake.”

“Maglor, don’t—” Daeron reached for him as he started to get up. “If they catch you—”

“They won’t. And if I don’t do something we’ll get caught anyway, or starve before we reach the Mitheithel.”

“But—” A distant sound made them both go still. It was a shrill cry that sent a chill down Maglor’s spine and made Daeron cry out softly, curling in on himself like he wanted to hide, to make himself as small as possible. Maglor pulled him into his arms, holding on tightly long after the cry faded away, as Daeron shook and shivered and gasped for breath, like his chest pained him, or like his lungs wouldn’t work. 

“Shh, shh, it’s all right,” Maglor murmured. “I’m here.”

“Do not leave,” Daeron gasped. “Please—he’ll find me—”

“He will not.” Maglor stroked Daeron’s hair until the tremors eased, though they didn’t stop. “I have to go, Daeron, but I promise I’ll be quick, and then we’ll move on and be far away before anyone realizes a thief has been among them.” When he drew back Daeron made a small, desperate noise. “Stay right here. I promise, no one will find you before I return.”

“If you don’t return?” Daeron whispered.

“Look at me.” Maglor took his face in his hands, forcing Daeron to meet his gaze. “I swore an oath,” he said, very softly, “and not lightly. You know what that means. I will return.”

Soldiers was perhaps a generous word for the men Maglor found camped a mile or so away. They were rough and disorganized, and overconfident—they had only two on watch while the rest drank and laughed about their conquests. They spoke the Common Speech, and Maglor almost wished they didn’t; he did not want to hear most of what they were saying. He did learn a little of their movements, though—they and other bands of both Men and orcs, and even a complaint about the road being held against them in the east, with forces led by some mighty elven warrior. 

He moved through the shadows beyond their fires, keeping away from the sentries. They had no supply wagon, and only a single packhorse. That was disappointing; Maglor had been contemplating stealing a horse, sacrificing secrecy for speed, but it was not to be. Carefully, he crept closer, and then began to sing, very softly, putting forth all the power that he dared, so the whole camp was ensnared in his lullaby. Slowly the speech and laughter faltered and faded, and one by one the men drifted off to sleep, even the sentries, though one of them seemed to realize what was happening just before he fell to the ground in a dead faint. 

Then Maglor moved. His enchantments would hold for some time, unless another power interfered, but he and Daeron needed to be many miles away before then. He dug through packs and found a great store of dried meat and dried fruits, of waybreads wrapped up securely. He stuffed as much as would fit into one of their bags, and stole an extra cloak and some extra clothing. The rest of the food he dumped into the fire. He thought of freeing the packhorse, but there were wolves about, and it would be cruel to send the poor thing out into the night with no protection. Instead he just stroked its nose and murmured a few encouraging words to it.

After a moment’s thought, Maglor took a stick and drew an eight-pointed star in the dirt near the fire. Maybe it was a sign no one could read now, after so long—but maybe it would serve as a warning, should the Lord of Angmar come to hear of it, that he had more enemies abroad than perhaps he realized. 

When he returned to Daeron he found him exactly as he’d left him, curled up in a ball with his head bowed, arms wrapped around his legs. He seemed almost childlike, smaller than he really was. The word diminished entered Maglor’s thoughts, and he pushed it away. Daeron was not faded yet. Hope remained, however it had begun to dwindle. “Daeron,” he said, and Daeron’s head jerked up, eyes wide and dark in his pale face. In the thin moonlight he looked ghostly. “See? I told you I’d return.” Maglor forced himself to speak cheerfully. “And not only that, I return victorious! Come on. I have fresh food and we can eat it as we walk.” He drew Daeron to his feet, and then staggered when Daeron threw his arms around him, holding on like he wanted to burrow under Maglor’s very skin. “It’s all right. I’m here, as I promised.”

“Don’t do that again.” Daeron’s voice was muffled and tremulous.

“Hopefully I won’t have to. Come. We need to keep moving.”

The food seemed to revive Daeron, as well as Maglor’s return. Walking under the stars also seemed to help. The wind picked up again, though, blowing cold from the north and carrying the smell of smoke. They took shelter in a half-tumbled down barn the next morning. After changing into clean clothes that were still too loose, and eating a bit of dried meat and a piece of waybread, Daeron fell into a deep sleep, curled up against Maglor’s side. Maglor sat leaning against the wall and watched clouds drift over the hazy sky overhead. He hummed lullabies and other comforting songs until his voice grew hoarse, and then he dozed. 

As evening fell, the sound of heavy feet tramping over the fields roused Maglor suddenly. Carefully he got up and went to peer around the broken wall, and finding what he had dreaded. Orcs. He counted no more than a dozen, but they were making for the barn. Maglor drew back, reaching for his sword; there was no time to weave any enchantments of concealment. As he picked it up Daeron stirred. “Shh,” Maglor hissed, pressing a hand over Daeron’s mouth. Daeron’s eyes opened wide, but he held very still. “Orcs,” Maglor breathed. “Don’t move. They might pass by.” He released Daeron and remained in a crouch with his hand on his sword hilt. Daeron kept very still, both of them hardly daring to breathe. The orcs passed by on the other side of the wall, and Maglor thought for a moment they would keep going—but then one stepped around it, looking around as though wanting to make sure the abandoned barn really was empty. Maglor spared a thought to pray that it would not look toward them, but it did, and its yellow eyes glinted as they met Maglor’s. He didn’t wait for it to so much as take a breath before he moved, drawing his sword as he charged forward. 

With no armor and only his voice and sword for weapons, speed and surprise were his only real advantages, and he made good use of them. The orcs had not expected a fight, let alone one with an elf—however rusty his skills—and for a moment it all seemed to go his way. He cut down half the orcs before the rest knew what was happening. Then, as he opened his mouth to lend his voice to the fight, Daeron cried out, and Maglor turned to see more orcs having come up around the other side of the barn. They seized Daeron, who struggled against them but was too weak for any real resistance. Maglor threw himself forward, but his way was blocked by the largest orc, the band’s leader. Their swords met with a ringing crash, hard enough to jar both Maglor’s arms, and he gritted his teeth, kicking out and twisting away. As the orc stumbled forward Maglor slashed at him, opening his throat. Black blood sprayed out, but Maglor had already turned away. The orcs were carrying Daeron away, and he sped after them, calling up what power remained in him, and spoke words to trip them up, to ring in their ears and confuse them, so when he crashed into the first one it went down with hardly a fight at all. Everything was a blur after that, just movement and instinct and panic. 

Finally, Maglor blinked and found himself the last one standing. The orcs lay around him unmoving, and Daeron was a huddled shape on the ground some feet away, dropped or thrown when Maglor had caught up to them. “Daeron?” Maglor fell to his knees at his side, heart in his throat as he turned him over. Daeron cried out and flinched away. “It’s me, Daeron—it’s me, it’s Maglor.” Maglor pulled him up. Daeron fell against him, choking on a sob as he buried his face in Maglor’s chest. “Can you stand, did they hurt you?” Maglor got to his feet, drawing Daeron with him. He seemed none the worse for wear, only bruised. “Come on.” Together they staggered back to the barn, where the orcs had not touched their things. Daeron had been a greater prize than Maglor’s battered pack. 

“Maglor,” Daeron gasped once they were back behind the wall. “Maglor, your arm—”

“What?” Maglor looked down and found his sleeve soaked with blood. He cursed, and found the tear in the fabric that revealed the gash on his bicep. Daeron insisted on helping to get his shirt off and to wrap the last of Maglor’s bandages around his arm. Both of them were shaking by that point, but Maglor staggered to his feet, lifting their supplies and holding out his hand to Daeron. 

“If it’s poisoned,” Daeron began even as he grabbed Maglor’s hand.

“I don’t think it is.”

“But how can you—”

“Orc poisons begin their work fast. I’m fine, Daeron. I can still get you to Rivendell.”

Daeron practically snarled at him. “That isn’t what I’m worried about!”

“The sooner we get to the Bruinen, the sooner neither of us will have to worry about anything,” Maglor said, suddenly determined to make light of his injury, if it would keep Daeron angry at him—anger meant he was present, it meant he still cared what was happening around him. He examined his torn and bloody shirt, and discarded it in favor of one he’d stolen from the soldiers, now some days behind them. It was too short in the sleeves; when he made a face at that he was gratified to see Daeron roll his eyes and scowl. “Come on,” he said. “We need to be very far from here by morning.” He held out his hand again and Daeron did not hesitate to grasp it; his grip was firmer than it had been lately; he felt more solid. 

By the time they stopped to rest Maglor’s arm was throbbing and he was out of breath and dizzy, almost as bad as Daeron. They found a hollow between some hills where a stream flowed. It was clear and cold, and it was a relief to wash the dried blood off of his hands, and then to properly clean the wound on his arm. Daeron sank onto the ground, silent again, his gaze distant. It was with difficulty that Maglor was able to get him to eat something. “Daeron, look at me.” Daeron lifted his head. Maglor brushed strands of hair out of his face. “Stay with me,” he said.

“They’re looking for me,” Daeron whispered. “Those orcs, they knew…I can feel…” His hand went to his chest. “It—it hurts, every breath is like…” 

“They won’t find you,” Maglor said. He sat back against a stone and pulled Daeron against his side. Daeron curled up against him, face turned into his shoulder. The anger had ebbed away, and seemed to have taken even more of him with it.

“Why are you doing this?” Daeron asked after a while. “Do not say because you swore an oath.”

Maglor wrapped a blanket around both of them, for Daeron had started to shiver again. “Because I’m selfish,” he said finally. Daeron made a noise that was equal parts incredulous and derisive. 

“What is selfish about any of this? You did not have to—you would be safe and far away from all of this if you had—”

“I do not want to live in a world without you in it,” Maglor said, very softly. Daeron fell silent. “I certainly do not want to live in a world that would see you slain and enslaved by whatever or whoever it is that hunts you.”

“I have hated you,” Daeron whispered, “for a very long time. You knew that, and yet…”

“That is the selfish part,” Maglor said, “for you cannot stop hating me if you are dead.” He did not look at Daeron as he spoke, instead casting his gaze out past the stream, past the hollow where they were huddled. In the distance he could see the dark shape of a forest, woodlands heralding their approach to river lands. “It isn’t far now to the Mitheithel.”

“There is only one way to cross,” Daeron said after a few moments. He did not draw away, or lift his head from Maglor’s shoulder. “There is only the bridge. It will be held against us.”

“Maybe not. Rivendell has not been idle, I think.”

They sat in silence as the sun rose higher in the sky. The air was hazy. Cardolan still burned behind them, though they’d managed to skirt around the worst of the destruction and the fighting. Daeron exhaled, finally, and whispered, “I have not had the heart for music in many years. This fading, it is not…” He lifted one of his hands, his skin very pale, almost translucent. Maglor took it, disliking the contrast between them, his suntanned skin against Daeron’s pallor, the solidity of himself in contrast to Daeron’s fading and failing strength. “This wound only quickens what has been happening for a long time,” Daeron said. “You cannot stop it, Maglor. The kindest thing would be to slay me and to find some song to break the hold that the Witch-king—”

“No!”

“What difference would it make to you? You are already a—”

“Did you not hear what I said?” Maglor sat up, taking Daeron by the shoulders. “I will not. If they cannot fully heal you in Rivendell, they will find a way to get you to the Havens so you may seek it across the Sea.”

“That still leaves you in a world where I am not,” Daeron said, but he would not meet Maglor’s gaze. 

“It is a world in which you live,” Maglor said. 

“But I don’t under—”

“Do you not, truly?” Maglor threw caution to the wind and leaned forward, catching Daeron in a kiss. Daeron made a quiet, shocked sound, but his hands came up to tangle in Maglor’s hair, keeping him from pulling away. It was a far cry from the sweet and soft kisses they’d shared at the Mereth Aderthad, warm and tasting of wine. Daeron kissed now not unlike he’d kissed Maglor at their last meeting, before he had left Beleriand forever—he had been furious then, cursing Maglor and the Silmarils even as he had dragged him closer, all teeth and tears, his hands on them both so rough and quick so that there was almost more pain than pleasure in it. 

He had been out on patrol with what remained of his people who had survived the ruin of the Gap, and Daeron had stumbled into their camp, wild-eyed and lost. Some had wanted to take him back to Himring—for his own safety as much as anything else—but Maglor had taken one look at him and known that Himring’s walls that had withstood dragonfire and long siege would not hold him, if he did not wish to go there. So he had given Daeron supplies that he did not want, and a knife that was the only weapon they could spare, which Maglor's second in command had advised against. Maglor had just laughed at her, though there had been no mirth in it. “You think he needs a knife to kill me if he wishes?”

He’d followed him from their camp afterward, hoping that if they were alone Daeron would be more willing to explain what he was doing out there so far from Doriath and the safety of its Girdle, and where he was going. He hadn’t been, had just shoved Maglor up against a tree. “One last time,” he’d whispered against Maglor’s mouth before biting hard enough that Maglor had tasted blood, “before you bring ruin to us all.”

Maglor had not understood then. No word had yet come to Himring of the goings on in Nargothrond or Beren’s quest. But when they had learned that a Silmaril shone in the hands of Elu Thingol, in Doriath…? He had remembered the despairing hatred in Daeron’s eyes before he turned to walk away into the trees, never to be seen again west of the Ered Luin, and felt despair begin its slow creep into his own heart, as the Oath had stirred in him, pulling south, instead of north. 

So many years had passed since, and the sinking of Beleriand, and yet here they were with so little now changed between them, danger and despair still dogging their heels. When they parted at last he reached up to run his thumb over Daeron’s lip, relieved to see spots of color in his cheeks and a light returned to his eyes. “Not a day goes by that I do not regret the oath I swore in Tirion,” Maglor whispered, “but I do not and will not regret the one I have sworn to you, whatever happens. You are worth far more than any gem.”

“You are an even greater fool than I thought,” Daeron said, before he leaned forward for another kiss, this one much softer. “This can only end in disaster.”

“I swore an oath,” Maglor said. “I keep my oaths—whatever comes.”

“It is your own ruin to which this one will lead you.”

“So did the last one. What is left of me to ruin?” Maglor kissed Daeron again, feeling the skin under his hands begin to grow warm. He didn’t know if he loved Daeron, or if he had loved him before—but he knew there was a chance for it, for something to grow out of the seeds that had been sown at the Mereth Aderthad, even if later events had tried to burn and strangle the roots. Or there might have been a chance, if they had met again under different circumstances.

They heard the pounding of hooves beyond the hills where they hid sometime in the afternoon, but no one found or stumbled upon them. Daeron slept fitfully, and Maglor dared do no more than doze. His arm hurt, and his head ached, and he was so tired. The years had not felt so heavy in a long time; they had slipped by unnoticed in his solitude, the seasons blending into one another by the seashore, marked only by the storms of autumn and winter, and by the changing populations of birds in their yearly journeys into the north and away south. The last few weeks had passed, in contrast, with agonizing slowness—and yet so terribly swiftly. 

As evening fell, Maglor woke Daeron, who blinked his eyes open only slowly, and looked at Maglor again as though he did not know who he was, or where they were or why—he knew only that he was cold and frightened and weak. Yet this time he did not panic when Maglor spoke to him, did not seem afraid of him. He ate when Maglor gave him food, and drank when offered water, and then followed after when Maglor took his hand so they might begin the night’s walk. He stumbled, though, as though dizzy, and his gaze kept straying to the north with a look of dread behind his eyes. 

They did not make the trees that marked the river that night, and as morning dawned hazy and dim, Maglor decided there was no good place to stop, not out in the open. Daeron could not go another step, and so Maglor did some swift repacking, and left a few unnecessary things hidden under a clump of sage, and then hoisted Daeron onto his back, carrying him like he’d once carried his brothers as children, and then Elrond and Elros. Daeron looped his arms around Maglor’s neck and rested his head on his shoulder. “Maglor,” he murmured. 

“I’ve got you,” Maglor said.

“Do not let him take me. Please,” Daeron whispered. “When I—”

“He won’t have you,” Maglor said. “Don’t despair now, when we’re so close!” Daeron didn’t answer, just pressed his face into Maglor’s hair. He was too light a burden, even with Maglor’s own weariness and wounds, and they made good time, reaching the woodlands that lined the Mitheithel by noon, and then soon after coming to the steep banks of the river, which flowed by in a rushing torrent, shimmering silver-grey in the sunlight. 

It was quiet in the woods; few birds were there to sing, but as Maglor turned north he found perched on a low branch just ahead a nightingale. It sang that song again, and he knew it for the bird that had brought him to Daeron so far away now, at the Baranduin, and couldn’t help but smile, feeling like he’d come upon an old friend. “Hello, little one,” he said. It cheeped a greeting, and as he walked it kept pace, flitting from branch to branch, singing snatches of its own songs, and the one Daeron must have taught it, though he had no memory of doing so. 

“Will you sing?” Daeron asked after a little while. 

“What song?” Maglor asked.

“Ours.”

It was not a particularly special song in itself, not the best either one of them had written; it was a song of sunlight on clear water and of butterflies in the flowers—of summertime by the Pools of Ivrin and the banks of the River Narog. Yet it was the only one they had written together, just to see how it would work with their different styles of both singing and of writing, and neither of them accustomed to collaboration. It had gone better than Maglor had thought it would, and he sometimes sang it to himself even so many years afterward when he felt particularly heartsick and in the mood to dwell upon lost things. Nor was it a very long song, but he sang it over and over as he walked, keeping time with his steps, and on his back Daeron sighed, relaxing a little. 

When Maglor stopped to rest, he found Daeron had fallen asleep. But when it was time to move on again, Daeron would not wake. “No.” Maglor shook him by the shoulders, lightly slapped his face. “Daeron. Daeron, wake up! Do not give up now! Daeron wake!” Even a command with all the power he dared to put forth barely worked. Daeron’s eyes opened slowly, as though they were too heavy for it. He had not the strength to lift his head. “Stay with me, Daeron, please,” Maglor said, taking his face in his hands. “Do you know me?”

“It is so dark,” Daeron whispered, though it was still afternoon, with sunshine slanting golden through the trees. “It is dark and grey, and I am bound…”

“Not for much longer,” Maglor said. “Please, Daeron, please hold on.”

Daeron took a breath, but seemed to struggle to fill his lungs. “It’s so—so cold—Maglor—”

“I’ve got you. I’m here.” Maglor wrapped him up in both cloaks, his own and the one he’d stolen from the soldiers, and lifted him again onto his back. “It’s so close, Daeron. The bridge is so close—and then to the Ford. You can make it.” He kept talking as he walked, sometimes singing, songs of strength for the both of them as his legs burned and his arm throbbed and his own lungs ached. The hours passed and night fell, and still he kept going, not daring to stop, though ahead of them he heard wolves howling in the distance, and when the north wind blew sharply into their faces it brought autumn’s first chill, and the smell of blood. Daeron made a soft, pained sound, and Maglor began to chant the silliest song he knew from his youth in Tirion, translating it as he went and knowing he did a poor job of it. He hoped Daeron would say something, or at least notice, but he said nothing. 

Finally, the ground sloped up suddenly, and Maglor glimpsed an open space between the trees—and upriver, a bridge, stones arching elegantly across the water. “There it is,” he breathed. “Daeron, we’ve made it to the bridge.” Daeron did not reply. Maglor scrambled up the embankment to the road, which was bounded on the other side by steep hills. From the west he heard a noise like horses, or like tramping feet. Cursing softly he knelt in the tree-shadows and lowered Daeron off of his back. He did not move, or make a sound. “Daeron. Daeron! No, no, no…” Maglor pulled some athelas out, crushing it and holding it to Daeron’s face, pressing it under his shirt against his chest, but whatever virtues the leaves alone held wasn’t enough, and Maglor was no healer; he had no power to stop this fading. Already Daeron seemed partly gone. Maglor did not know if he really could see something of the tree roots through him or if fear only made it seem so. 

Then he heard the oddest sound. Bells. He stood and looked down the road, and saw a pale horse come trotting down, bells upon its harness, and a rider with his hood thrown back so his long golden hair seemed to glow in the last rays of the setting sun. Maglor wanted to laugh, suddenly and hysterically. He did not know how it was possible—Glorfindel had perished with Gondolin, and yet here he was on the road to Rivendell, appearing just in the nick of time! Behind him was a troop of soldiers, not Elven but Men, Dúnedain of either Cardolan or Arthedain by the emblems upon their arms. They were too few and clearly weary and wounded. 

“Hail, Glorfindel!” Maglor called out, stepping out of the bushes onto the road. Glorfindel pulled up short, raising his hand to halt the men behind him. In the distance a horrible call rose up, that shrill and frozen voice, chilling the blood and making the soldiers quail.

“Who goes there?” Glorfindel called back, moving forward only slowly, his hand going to the hilt of his sword. 

Maglor pushed his hair out of his face, straightening his shoulders as he lifted his head. “One in great need of your help.”

“Maglor…?” Glorfindel’s eyes widened, his jaw going slack, but only for a moment before he recovered himself. “What need have you? I cannot linger; we are fleeing to Rivendell with the Witch-king himself at our heels. You would do well to flee yourself.”

“I have Daeron with me, once of Doriath,” Maglor said. “He is sorely wounded by some evil weapon of Angmar, and I cannot heal him. He will die if he cannot reach Rivendell. Will you take him?”

“Wonders upon wonders,” he heard Glorfindel mutter. Then he turned to his men and waved them forward. “Keep going! Do not tarry!” They hurried past, some of them casting looks of wonder on Maglor, who kept still, his hands at his sides. Once the men were crossing the bridge Glorfindel rode up before Maglor, and did not dismount. “Where is he, then?” he asked. 

“Just here.” Maglor hurried back to the tree where he’d left Daeron, and lifted him in his arms. Maglor pressed his lips to his temple. “You will reach Rivendell,” he whispered. “I have kept my oath.” He reached into his pack and drew out the small wooden flute he’d carved, and tucked it into the pocket of his cloak for Daeron to find later. “Just hold on a little longer, Daeron.”

All doubt left Glorfindel when Maglor reemerged, and he leaned down to take Daeron into the saddle. “Go,” said Maglor. “Please hurry. He is running out of time.”

“What of you?” Glorfindel asked. “Elrond will—”

“I will hold the bridge. I can at least give you time to make the Ford.”

“You cannot hold it alone, not against the Witch-king. He is the greatest of Sauron’s captains, no longer living but not quite dead. Even a sword of Fëanor’s make will not be enough.”

“I will hold the bridge,” Maglor repeated.

Daeron stirred in Glorfindel’s arms. “Maglor…?” His eyes opened, bleary and confused. “What…”

“Go,” Maglor said, stepping back. “I am in your debt, Glorfindel.”

Daeron seemed to realize something of what was happening. “Wait. Wait, Maglor—”

Glorfindel adjusted his grip and took up the reins. The bells jingled. The sound of other horses reached them from farther down the road. “May Elbereth bless you, son of Fëanor,” he said. “Rivendell will not forget this.” And then he was gone, charging away into the growing evening. 

Maglor closed his eyes for a moment. He could feel the Witch-king approaching. Not living but not dead—not someone Maglor could destroy, but he was yet a mighty singer, however far he had fallen. Angmar would not cross the Mitheithel, not while he yet drew breath.

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There’s not a road I know that leads to anywhere
Without a light, I fear that I will stumble in the dark
Lay right down, decide not to go on
- “Sound the Bugle” by Bryan Adams

- - 

“Will you swear it, kinslayer?”

“Yes.”

- - -

It is very dark. Daeron kneels on hard stone, arms bound behind him with heavy chains. A presence looms unseen behind him, but cold—so cold that he can’t breathe. His hair falls in matted tangles around his face. He can’t hear past the harsh sound of his own gasps and the pounding of his heart in his ears. 

- - - 

Lightning pierces the night, and thunder crashes around him on the mountainside. He slides down the muddy slope as rain slants down, cold and hard on his face; he strayed from the path fleeing orcs, and now he does not know which way to go, which way is west—but he must go west, he must. He cannot remember why in this moment but he must reach the Sea— 

- - - 

Everything is freezing. 

- - - 

He sits upon a hillside under a young slender aspen tree as it quakes in the breeze, leaves shivering above his head. Before him stretches the upper vales of the great river, which flows steadily along, gleaming under the summer sun. Wildflowers grow upon its banks amid the green grass. A deer grazes at the bottom of the hill, unconcerned with Daeron at all, and butterflies flit from blossom to blossom, seeking sweet nectar. It is a beautiful sight, the river valley in high summer. He sees it, he knows it, and yet he feels nothing. 

- - - 

“I swear by the sun and stars—”

- - - 

“Daeron.” A hand on his forehead, soft and warm. A power surrounds him that is as familiar as the smell of niphredil, and as painful. He cries out and tries to pull away, but he cannot move. It presses on his mind and it hurts—it hurts and it hurts, and there is nothing left of him to take, and he is still bound, he can feel the pull of that freezing invisible chain lodged in his chest, north and west, can feel still the Witch-king’s mind as he also reaches out, gasping, so confident that he has already won. Daeron is caught between two powers, stretched taut, each trying to snare him for their own purposes and he just wants it to stop—

- - - 

“How could you, Daeron?” Lúthien’s face appears before him, her soft twilit eyes wide and wounded.

“Lúthien,” he tries to say, tries to reach for her, but she turns away and vanishes into the tree-shadows before his hand reaches hers—only to reappear on his other side with a knife like the one that sliced through his chest and spirit at once, dull silver on the blade, and he cries out as she thrusts it towards him, her eyes gone dark and empty as the space beneath the Witch-king’s crown. “Lúthien, mercy—!”

- - - 

Clawed fingers grasp his hair and yank his head back, so he stares up into an empty cowl, upon which sits a tarnished silver crown. There is the suggestion of a face there, ancient and ruinous, but a cold radiates from the not-dead-not-living creature that sinks into him like teeth. Daeron can’t stop himself from crying out, and tries to jerk back but the orc does not let go and all that happens is some of his hair is torn out by the roots. “What have we here?” hisses a thin and terrible voice as the creature before him reaches out its mind and will, seeking to look into Daeron’s, to take hold of it. “An elf wandering alone—an elf halfway gone from this world already?” 

“We found him wandering near the downs,” says someone else. A man, not one of the orcs. “We thought you would rather deal with this prisoner yourself, my lord.”

“So I would,” says the creature, and pain erupts behind Daeron’s eyes. “A mighty singer, this one was, once upon a time. A useful servant of the Dark Tower, he may yet prove.”

“No,” Daeron gasps. “No, I won’t—” An iron-shod boot slams into his stomach and he doubles over, choking. 

“You will,” says the terrible not-dead-not-living thing, as chains are brought, new-forged and sharp-edged. 

- - - 

“—with the earth itself as my witness—”

- - - 

The Witch-king’s power surrounds him, plunges into his chest, burrows under his skin, into his veins, and he screams as he burns and freezes and burns again, as though both his body and his spirit are coming apart at the seams, and when he dies at last there will be nothing left of him for Mandos to call. 

- - - 

He does not know where he is, he does not know how long he has been there. He cannot remember, sometimes, his own name. Other names spill from his lips as he calls out for help that he knows won’t come—all of them dead and gone and lost to him forever. He is alone and there is no one left in the world that cares whether Daeron of long-drowned Doriath still draws breath. 

It is not knives and whips that they bring but fell enchantments and ugly spells that seek to rip him to shreds from the inside out, and it is working, he can feel it working and he does not want to die, not like this, not in the dark. If he can just see the stars again, if he could draw his last breath under their soft light maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, maybe—

- - - 

“Daeron,” says that voice that is like Lúthien’s but isn’t. The power that is like Melian’s but isn’t wraps around him, burning hot, a punishment instead of a balm. A hand presses onto his chest over the frozen scar and he screams— 

- - - 

“Daeron, please. Do you know me?” A familiar face swims into focus, eyes bright beneath a fall of dark hair, hands cradling his face like it’s something fragile and precious. He knows the face but he cannot remember the name. It should be there but he does not know it. He hardly knows his own name, or where he is. There is flowing water nearby. There is a bird singing a familiar song that he wants to hear more of, because maybe if he hears it in full he will remember why it makes him want to weep. 

He cannot see beyond the face before him. It is all shadows and nothingness. “It is so dark,” he hears himself whisper. It is dark and the color is all gone; he cannot remember what colors are. There is only black and grey. There is something in his chest pulling on him, pulling him north, and in the far distance he hears a voice calling for him, fell and fearsome, and he no longer has the strength to fight it.

“Please, Daeron, please hold on.” The hands on his face are warm. 

He cannot breathe. “It’s so—so cold—” His lips form a name but he cannot hear it. He hears a response but the words turn into a meaningless jumble of sounds…

- - - 

Bells are ringing and the Witch-king is calling and there is a voice like thundering waves somewhere behind him and he cannot move and he is so scared— 

- - - 

Everything is burning. 

- - - 

“—I will see you safe and alive to the House of Elrond, or perish myself in the attempt.”

- - - 

He stands under the blazing silver stars beside the Esgalduin. Its music is silenced. Niphredil blooms around him but as he watches they wither, and the trees begin to topple, one by one, crashing soundlessly together as the world shakes itself apart. When he tries to call for someone—anyone—all he hears is the sound of the Witch-king’s laughter.

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Wearing our vintage misery
No, I think it looked a little better on me
I’m gonna change you like a remix
Then I’ll raise you like a phoenix
- “The Phoenix” by Fall Out Boy

- -

Daeron woke with a start. He lay on soft pillows under even softer blankets—in a bed, a real bed. When had he last slept in a bed? He could not remember. Above him were carven beams crossing the ceiling, all soft warm browns. It was very bright; the sunshine spilled through the open window, golden and warm, along with a breeze that carried the sound of flowing water and the scent of niphredil and late-blooming roses. It was only with difficulty that he could even turn his head. The bed was just beside the window, and he had a view of a river flowing cheerfully through a valley, still summer-green. The Misty Mountains towered overhead, but they seemed sheltering rather than imposing. 

For a while Daeron watched the river, thinking of nothing at all. He felt too weak for it, his mind sluggish and slow. The name of this valley was known to him, he was sure, but he could not bring it to mind. How he had come there—his mind shuddered away from that knowledge, too, and he couldn’t think of any clear memory from the last…months? Years? How long had it been since he had sat beside the Anduin in the east and realized that he was dying?

After a little while he tried to sit up, wanting to lean out of the window, to feel the sun on his face, but his arms shook horribly and he couldn’t manage it. As he gave up the door opened, and he turned his head to see a ghost entering the room—Lúthien with her long dark hair and sweet smile. When she turned that smile on him he felt suddenly like he couldn’t breathe. A pathetic noise escaped as his hands slipped over the blankets, arms at last giving out entirely. 

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Lúthien’s smile was replaced with a look of concern as she crossed the room, bending over him to straighten the pillows and the blankets. “I did not expect to find you awake.” She did not sound like Lúthien. The accent was wrong, and her voice was softer, somehow gentler. The songs all sang of Lúthien dancing under starlight, of her beauty and her grace, and they sang of the great power she wielded in her song, but so few of them told how even when she wasn’t singing towers down or enemies to submission she blazed, brighter than any star, brighter than the Sun. This ghost of her did not shine so brightly, but shimmered like the reflection of starlight at gloaming upon clear waters. 

She could not be Lúthien, for Lúthien was gone, lost to them all so long ago. Yet who else could she be, but Lúthien somehow returned, beyond any expectation or any hope…? “Lúthien,” he breathed, finding that he was shaking all over. “Lúthien, how—”

“Shh,” she said, drawing the blankets up over him. “I am sorry, truly. I knew it would shock you to see me, but we did not expect you to wake so soon. I am not Lúthien, but her granddaughter. Arwen is my name. Some call me Undómiel.” She brushed a few strands of hair from his face with gentle fingers, but withdrew when he flinched away. “My father is Elrond Halfelven. You are in Rivendell, Daeron. You are safe.” She turned away to take up a kettle of steaming water from a nearby brazier, and poured it into a basin by the bed. Daeron recognized the leaves she gently bruised and cast into it; the fresh, clean smell of the steam filled the room and eased the painful pounding of his heart. It smelled different, though, than when Maglor had used the leaves, in a way Daeron couldn’t quite identify. 

He blinked. Maglor? When had he…when had…

Bits of memory passed through his mind, and something in his chest hurt as fear clawed its way back up his throat. He didn’t know if it was memory, or just bits of dream, bits of nightmare. Floating down the river on the half-broken raft, waking to find Maglor bending over him. Days and nights of stumbling through heather and bracken, the smell of smoke thick in the air. Maglor trying to pick fights for no reason and then in the next minute gently admonishing Daeron to eat, or singing soft songs that chased away, for a little while, the worst of the darkness that had been creeping over, slowly strangling the life out of him. “Maglor,” he whispered. “Where is—where is Maglor?” 

Arwen did not answer his question. “Rest,” she said instead. “My father will come see you as soon as he can, but there are many who need tending, and he is weary. In the meantime, someone will come with food and perhaps some tea.” Before he could say anything else, she was gone, the door clicking shut quietly behind her. 

Daeron closed his eyes and turned his head away from the door, though he did not want to look out of the window either. If he had not merely imagined Maglor, his mind somehow conjuring the strangest source of comfort amid his torment, then Maglor was not in Rivendell. If he was, she would have said so. If he had been real, either he was dead or he had chosen not to enter the valley. Regardless, Daeron had lost him. Again. 

After a little while he fell asleep. The sound of the river was soothing, and the blankets were warm—he was warm as he had not been in so long. His dreams, though, were cold and dark, and he woke gasping and clutching at his chest. The scar there was thin and pale, as it had been for weeks now, but it was now only cool to the touch, rather than freezing—and even that might have just been Daeron’s imagination. 

As he lay staring at the ceiling in the fading evening light, a soft knock came at the door a moment before it opened. It was not Arwen this time, but another woman, followed by two more. One carried a tray and the other a bundle of cloth. The latter two deposited their burdens and left. The first woman remained. She was tall and silver-haired, with a heart-shaped face and freckles across her cheeks and nose under bright blue eyes. She was not as shockingly familiar as Arwen, but still Daeron felt that he should know her—yet he did not. 

“Good evening, Daeron,” she said, and with a gentle efficiency she helped him to sit up, supported by the pillows, ignoring the way he trembled under her touch, and poured a cup of tea from the tray her companion had brought, sweetening it with a small spoonful of honey. “You may still be feeling a chill. I’m afraid it will be some time yet before the Black Breath is wholly banished from you. Few we have seen here have been so badly afflicted.”

Daeron took the cup carefully in both hands. The heat was welcome, and he could not remember when he had last had real tea. Somehow it made him think of gorse flowers. Did one make tea out of those? Had he ever tried it? When he tried to think more of it his head started to ache; his thoughts were all jumbled and confused. “Do…I know you?” he managed to ask after he took a sip of the tea, which soothed his aching throat. 

“No,” said the woman with a smile, “but you knew my parents once upon a time—Celeborn and Galadriel. I am Celebrían.” Daeron stared at her. “Elrond is my husband; he will come soon to see you, but we have all been very busy. I know that you have seen our daughter already, and she is very distressed to have given you such a shock, so I thought I should warn you that Elrond, too, looks very like Lúthien.”

“I…thank you?” Daeron should have known what to say to all of that. Once, he would have. Once he had known the name of Elrond, he was sure, had known whose son he was and maybe he had even known that he had wed the daughter of Celeborn and Galadriel, but it all sounded now brand new to his ears, and he didn’t know what to say, or what to feel.

“Do not trouble yourself, and just try to rest,” Celebrían said. “We were all very afraid for you for a time, but my husband is the greatest healer in these lands, and he was not going to allow Angmar to take you. It would have gone faster and easier if we knew anything of the weapon that was used against you, but alas—we know so little of anything come down from Carn Dûm. I fear by the time this is all over we will know far more than we would wish.”

Celebrían had brought broth as well as tea, and insisted he drink all of it. It wasn’t very much, but it was as hot as the tea and tasted better than anything since…

Strawberries? He had had wild strawberries recently. He felt sure of it, but the memory vanished as soon as he tried to reach for it, and all he was left with was an impression of sweetness, and of a warm hand grasping his own. 

As Celebrían took the empty bowl the door opened again, and even forewarned Daeron flinched back upon seeing who entered. It was not Arwen, and so could only be Elrond, dark-haired and with Lúthien’s soft grey eyes. Like Arwen, the resemblance was not complete. He was tall, as Lúthien had been, but broader of shoulder, though the light in his eyes was the same—and he had dark circles under them. Though he smiled, he moved as though carrying a heavy weight, as though he was deeply weary. Celebrían rose from her seat by the bed and busied herself with the bundle of cloth—clothes, Daeron saw, as she shook out shirts and robes.

Elrond took her place, introducing himself in a voice that made Daeron want to flee. Yet there was no reason for it, no reason to fear him—he had been the one to save Daeron’s life, if what Celebrían had said was true. There was nothing frightening about the voice itself—it was a kind and pleasant voice, rough around the edges with weariness, that was all. “May I?” Elrond asked, holding out his hand. Daeron put his into it, but yanked it back a second later, fear slicing through him like a knife. He stared at Elrond, who did not look surprised. “It’s all right,” he said, and did not try to reach out again. “I thought that might happen. I had to fight very hard for you, and I’m afraid you suffered a great deal for it. I’m sorry.” 

The feeling of being pulled between two powers returned to Daeron, and he shivered. It had been bright and burning heat on one side and piercing cold on the other, and it seemed the heat had won. Elrond’s was the power that was like Melian’s, but also somehow very different. 

“Do you remember anything before you came here?” Elrond asked him.

“I…I don’t know.” His head ached again, and he felt suddenly so tired. “I don’t…Lúth…Elrond—her son?”

Elrond shook his head, smiling a little. “No. Dior was her son. I am Elwing’s son, Dior’s daughter.” He rose to his feet. “You are safe here, as safe as you once were behind Doriath’s Girdle. You need not think of or worry about anything now except eating and sleeping and regaining your strength.”

“Wait. Please.” Daeron could feel sleep coming to claim him, but he needed to know for sure. “Maglor. He was…where is he?”

Something in Elrond’s calm expression flickered. “He is not here. I do not know where he is.”

“But he was—he was with me, was he not…?”

“He was,” Elrond said, and Daeron’s eyes burned with sudden tears, relief rising up to choke him—he had not just dreamed it. “Do you not remember?” Daeron could only shake his head. “You’ve been sorely tried, Daeron, and need rest. We can speak of Maglor more when you are stronger.”

There wasn’t anything to speak of, Daeron thought, if Maglor had not come to Rivendell. Elrond left the room, and Celebrían finished sorting through the clothes and hanging them in a wardrobe across the room. Daeron turned his gaze back out of the window, where the shadows were growing and the stars were coming out. Someone out of sight began a song of praise to Elbereth and her stars. It was a song once sung in Doriath—a song he had sung in Doriath—and the sound of it made the tears stinging his eyes blur his vision, threatening to fall. 

“Daeron?” Celebrían came back to the bed with something in her hand. “We found this in the pocket of your cloak.” She held it out, and Daeron took it without thinking. It was a flute, carved of wood, smooth under his fingers. 

“This isn’t mine,” he said. He remembered so little, but he knew what his own work looked like. This was not it. 

“Keep it anyway,” Celebrían said, smiling at him, and after making sure he wanted for nothing else she too left the room.

Daeron turned the flute over in his shaking hands, and stopped when his fingers rubbed over a mark near the end of it. A small eight-pointed star had been carved into the wood, and under it a stylized M. Of course. It had not been his own cloak that he wore when he’d been brought here, had it? It had been Maglor’s cloak, and so this was Maglor’s flute. A horrible, yawning sense of loss opened up in his chest, and Daeron did not know why, or what to do with it other than to curl up under the blankets and cry until he had no tears left, and sleep finally claimed him.

He woke from shadowy dreams to bright morning sunlight, and the flute still clutched in his hand. For a moment he couldn’t remember why he had it, or where he was. Those memories returned swiftly as full wakefulness came, but everything from before he’d first woken in this bed in this strange and bright valley remained elusive. Daeron did not move, not even when he heard the door open behind him and someone moving quietly around the room. He lay facing the window, which was framed by vines of climbing ivy. He watched the leaves quiver in the breeze without really seeing them. His head still ached dully, but he felt as though that had been true for so long it was hardly worth noticing anymore. Behind him the door opened and closed again, and the room fell silent and still.

The thought came into his mind that he had wanted to go west. That he had been seeking the Havens—that he needed to seek them, lest…what? Daeron closed his eyes and rubbed his eyes before rolling onto his back. His body felt almost foreign, joints stiff, weakened muscles aching. He took as deep a breath as he could and found at least that he could breathe. The wound on his chest had felt like a fist around his lungs, icy and squeezing ever harder, harder…

Keep going, he heard Maglor’s voice whisper. Just breathe.

Memory or imagining? He didn’t know, but he wanted so badly it to be memory. Daeron closed his eyes again and breathed, in and out, slowly, deeply. 

Lady Celebrían returned with more tea, and breakfast—small portions of nuts and fruits and fresh bread slathered with butter and honey. Daeron could eat very little of it, and was afraid at first that it would tease like nothing but ashes, but the berries and honey were sweet, and the butter rich, the bread soft enough to melt on his tongue. It made him want to weep again, but he somehow managed not to at least while Celebrían was there. She spoke to him of light and inconsequential things, but as she prepared to clear away the breakfast tray a horn sounded in the valley. The suddenness of it was jarring, and made Daeron start violently, heart lurching in his chest.

“More soldiers are arriving—fleeing Cardolan. With the armies of Angmar in between us, those from Arthedain must fly west to Lindon.” Celebrían sighed as she finished returning the dishes to the tray. “I fear we may be besieged before long—but worry not. It will not be the first time, and we are far better prepared now. No enemy has ever found the path into this valley, and we can outlast any army, even one led by the Lord of the Nazgûl.”

Daeron knew he was meant to be reassured, but there mere mention of the Witch-king, even by another title, had that ice-cold fist squeezing his lungs again, until he couldn’t breathe at all, until he was gasping and choking on nothing. Celebrían sat on the edge of the bed, murmuring quiet encouragements, and he felt her power wash over him, gentle as spring rain—nothing at all like he would have expected from a daughter of Galadriel, who had, like Lúthien, always seemed to blaze so brightly, as though she carried the light of the Trees in her whole self and not only her eyes. After a few minutes Celebrían rose and fetched athelas, casting a few leaves into a basin of steaming water—there was always heated water, it seemed, for such a purpose. It helped immediately, and Daeron was soon able to take deeper breaths, gasping as his lungs filled. He drew his knees up to rest his head on them, feeling as though he’d done this before, except someone else had been there, sitting at his back, with rough and calloused fingers pressed against the pulse in his wrist. 

Celebrían’s much smaller and softer hand rested on his back for a moment. “I am sorry, Daeron,” she said softly. “I will not speak of him again.” He shuddered. “Rest, now. Someone will come check on you from time to time, but the more you can sleep the better.” She still held power in her voice, and almost before he even realized what she was doing, Daeron fell back against the pillows and into sleep.

So the days passed, bleeding into weeks. He woke, he ate a little, he slept again. It was Celebrían who cared for him more often than not. Sometimes others came. Elrond did not appear again, nor Arwen; Daeron knew why, and was pathetically grateful for it, to not have to look into an echo of Lúthien’s face. He did not try to track the time, drifting in and out of wakefulness. Sometimes horns sounded in the valley, heralding an arrival or a departure. In between there was often singing, sometimes laughter, always out of sight. He saw no one wandering the garden paths or walking by the river outside of his window. 

Autumn crept over the valley slowly, summer lingering and clinging as Daeron thought it did not in the rest of the world. Elrond’s power was so like Melian’s. The very seasons seemed his to command. As his strength slowly increased, Daeron was soon able to sit up and lean out of the window, resting his head on his arms, enjoying the sun on his face. A handful of stubborn anemones bloomed underneath the window, and late-blooming roses climbed the walls to one side. Creeping willow lined the path that passed nearby before vanishing around an enormous lilac bush, long out of bloom. The air smelled fresh, with just a hint of crispness that heralded the colder weather to come. Daeron spent many hours like that, just watching the clouds overhead, and the mists hovering high above in the mountains that loomed over the valley, and listening to a nightingale that had taken up residence in some tree or bush nearby, just out of sight. 

Sometimes it sang a few notes that were not a nightingale’s proper song. The first time it happened Daeron lifted his head as his heart began to pound. He knew that song. He had written it—or half of it. A memory came back to him suddenly, hazy, of a nightingale perched on Maglor’s scarred fingers singing the same song as the one hidden in Elrond’s garden, and Maglor speaking as though Daeron had sent it to him. He had no memory at all of that, though—no memory of teaching any bird any song not its own. 

And yet here it was…and a nightingale, of all the birds it could have been. The song was one Daeron had not even attempted to play in…he did not know how long. He frowned at the ivy. It had been years—centuries. He used to play it, or sing it, often—in the beginning of his wanderings when he had been heartsick and angry and in the mood to punish himself. He’d played it under the dark boughs of the ancient woods of Eriador while evading the kind but strange attentions of Eldest, who bounded over the downs and through the trees with such wild and cheerful abandon. 

He had played many other songs too, but somehow kept coming back to that one, the only song he and Maglor had written together. It had been at the Mereth Aderthad, one afternoon when they were tipsy on fine wine and good humor, having escaped for a little while the constant demands from everyone else to perform, to sing another song or challenge each other with tongue-twisters and complicated rhythms. In private they had issued each other very different challenges, and in between they’d decided to see what would happen if they worked together instead. The song itself wasn’t very special, just a blending of two very old melodies—one from Doriath and one from Tirion across the Sea—and simple lyrics of summertime pleasures, butterflies and sunshine and sweet-smelling flowers. Yet it felt like a secret, like something precious, even after the truth of Alqualondë had come out, after Daeron’s foolishness had spurred the events that tangled Doriath at last in the tendrils of Fëanor’s Oath and spelled its doom.

He’d lost his old flute long ago, dropped or broken and never replaced, as he had wandered aimlessly east of the Misty Mountains as the years began to wear away at him the way water wore down stones. Something—he could not remember what—had roused him lately, just enough to believe that he might find himself again if he could just make it to the Havens beyond the Ered Luin—that he might find it in his heart to take up music again, to find joy in the light of the sun on flowing water or in the sight of the stars on a clear moonless night.

Now he wished he had just stayed there, in the vales of the Anduin, and let himself fade away until Mandos called him west instead. No one would have known. No one would have mourned him. It would not have hurt.

Soon enough the nightingale no longer sang, departing from Imladris for warmer climes. The cold crept in, and Daeron found himself always shivering, even though he had more blankets than one person could possibly need, and Celebrían made sure all of his clothing was thick and warm. She also started to coax him more and more out of his room, showing him the ways of the house and introducing him to various members of the household and others who were staying there. It was crowded, filled with refugees and soldiers. It was impossible then to avoid news of the outside world. Angmar had been repelled, the new young king of Arthedain proving himself fierce on the battlefield as he avenged his father’s death at Amon Súl. Cardolan had rallied after the death of its prince, and for the moment Angmar was beaten back. 

It was a relief to hear, but Daeron found himself feeling a sharp pang of grief for Cardolan and Prince Amlach, who had been kind to him and offered food and guidance when his men had found Daeron wandering near the Road, lost and weary. They had been readying themselves for war, but Daeron did not think anyone had been prepared for the great storm of violence that Angmar had brought sweeping down from the north. Certainly he hadn’t—he had thought he could escape it if he just kept moving west, and…well. Clearly he had been wrong. 

The first evening Celebrían took him into the Hall of Fire, it was crowded and warm, and both Elrond and Arwen were there. They smiled at Daeron as Celebrían brought him to sit by them, near to the hearth. “We are all in need of cheering this evening,” Arwen told him. “There will be many songs sung and tales told, and you do not need to stay long if you do not wish to. I am very glad to see you up and about, though.” Now that he was properly awake and aware, it was easier to see Arwen as her own self and not merely a ghost of Lúthien, however great the resemblance. Daeron tried to put Lúthien out of his mind, but one of the first songs sung that evening was the tale of her meeting with Beren in the woods of Neldoreth. He stayed longer than he wished to, because to leave immediately would have just been to cause concern for his hosts, but he couldn’t make himself remain when someone began to play a song that he himself had written, so long ago, and he had to flee—back to the safety of his bedroom and the silence under the blankets, where no one could see him and wonder at how far the great singer Daeron of Doriath had fallen.

Some time around the first snowfall, he was taken to a large room that smelled of herbs and was filled with healers and their assistants, mixing medicines and rolling bandages. No patients were there, but Elrond stood at a table near the large windows, out of the way of everything else. With him was were two figures, one dark and slender, the other tall and golden-haired. The former seemed familiar, though Daeron couldn’t place him when he looked up. Elrond also looked up, and offered a small smile, though his expression was otherwise worried and grave. “Glorfindel has just brought this back from the battlefield,” he said, and unwrapped a small bundle on the table. It was the hilt of a knife, written over with strange and disturbing marks, and a terrible cold seemed to radiate from it. Daeron fell back, clasping a hand over his mouth to silence the cry that wanted to escape, as his chest burned with sudden pain. 

“I thought so,” Glorfindel murmured as Elrond covered the hilt again. “The blade dissolved in the light of day, but it was very thin and almost seemed too fragile to be of any use. It was not made for slashing, however, but for stabbing.”

“That was—he tried,” Daeron said when he could master his tongue, though his voice shook. “I turned aside and he only…”

“You were very lucky,” Glorfindel told him. Daeron shook his head. He did not feel lucky. “If Maglor had brought you to the Last Bridge even an hour later, you would have been beyond all aid.”

“I do not want that thing in my house, Elrond,” Celebrían said, frowning down at the table.

“Nor do I,” Elrond said. “When I have learned all I can from it, we will melt it down. I fear Daeron is not the last we will see with such a wound.”

“Did Maglor not—not make it across the bridge?” Daeron asked. He had been trying to tell himself that it didn’t matter, that he didn’t want Maglor there anyway, trying to remind himself of Doriath and Sirion and everything else, but it hadn’t been working. Instead all he had were memories slowly stitching themselves back together in order, of their desperate flight through burning Cardolan, Maglor’s hand always in his. 

It was Glorfindel who answered. “He insisted upon staying behind to hold it,” he said, “to give me time to get you across the Bruinen. I gave you into the care of Elladan and Elrohir at the ford before turning back with reinforcements, but by the time we arrived the battle was over, and Maglor was gone. We found no sign of him, though we had heard him only minutes before, and the Witch-king himself had fled before him.”

Elrond’s face was unreadable, but he seemed to be watching Daeron carefully. Daeron had no idea what he own face was doing. “I see,” he whispered. His first thought was that Maglor was dead—that he had fallen from the bridge somehow, taken by the swift waters of the Mitheithel. If not that, then…he had just fled, choosing not to follow after Daeron. 

Yet he had sworn an oath, sworn to come to…

But he hadn’t, had he? He had sworn to see Daeron to the care of Elrond, not to come there himself. By handing Daeron over to Glorfindel and holding the bridge against Angmar, he’d fulfilled his oath, and so there was nothing left to tie them together. Except for how Daeron owed Maglor his life. Except for the way his absence hurt, even now, as sharply as it had upon his first waking in Rivendell to find that Maglor was not there with him.

Later, Elrond came to his room where he sat curled up in a chair by the fire, watching the flames dance and trying not to think about much of anything. “May I join you?” he asked. Daeron nodded without looking at him. Elrond sat in the chair facing him. “Do you wish to speak of him?”

“Who?” Daeron blinked and looked up.

“Maglor,” Elrond said.

Daeron dropped his gaze back to the flames. “I—no. He is—I know what he—I would not—”

“He raised me. Did you know that?”

“He…what?”

“I had nearly given up hope that he still lived, before you came here,” Elrond said quietly. “I do not know now if it is reassuring that he knows where to find me, or if it only pains me that he knows and will not come.”

“He did not speak of you, except to insist that he would bring me here,” Daeron said after a moment. “At least—I do not think he spoke of you. There is much I still cannot remember.”

“He spoke sometimes of you, when I was young,” Elrond said. “He taught my brother and me songs that you had written, and taught us your cirth alongside the tengwar he used.”

A thought came into Daeron’s mind. “There was a song…we wrote it together at the feast. It was simple and…it was just about summertime by the River Narog. Did he ever…?”

“No.” Elrond shook his head. “I don’t remember any such songs.”

“The nightingales in your garden sing snatches of it.”

“Is that what that song is? I wondered at it, but it is not something they learned here. I thought perhaps they had come from the Withywindle valley—Iarwain Ben-adar lives there and sometimes birds that pass through his woods emerge singing strange songs.” Elrond peered into Daeron’s face with Lúthien’s eyes and Melian’s power—but with a certain kindness that seemed all his own, softening what in them would have been a terribly piercing gaze. “When I know more of the knife that wounded you, I will be better able to help you recover,” he said finally. “Your body is healing but I can see you still suffer in spirit.”

“I had been fading away even before I ran afoul of Angmar,” Daeron said, unable to stop himself from pressing a hand over his chest.

“You are not beyond healing, Daeron.”

“If I am beyond the wish for it?”

“Are you?” Elrond asked gently.

Daeron looked away and did not answer.

Elrond sighed and rose. He rested a hand on Daeron’s shoulder, and though he flinched, there was of course nothing to fear, no pain or even any hint of power. “You are not the only one here that cares for Maglor,” Elrond said softly.

“I don’t care,” Daeron said. “I owe him a debt. That’s all.” The lie tasted sour on his tongue, and he knew Elrond heard it for what it was. He was Melian’s child and a great power in his own right—there was no hiding anything from him. Elrond said nothing, just squeezed his shoulder and departed. Daeron rubbed his chest and stared at the fire until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer, and dark dreams took him. 

He sees his chance and takes it when the guards’ backs are turned, desperation giving him just enough wherewithal to tear free of the ropes binding his wrists. He stumbles through the darkness of the forest’s eaves and falls when he hits thick reeds. Behind him a cry goes up, and the voices of the Nazgûl overtake all. He keeps going. The river is ahead, and he can see something floating in the water, tethered to a post on the bank.

Something hits him and he stumbles, rolls onto his back. The wraith looms over him, a knife in hand, dull-grey and failing to reflect the dim starlight. Daeron scrambles backward. He can’t breathe through his nose; he can barely see through half-swollen eyes. The world narrows to that knife and that hand and the knowledge that he must not let it touch him. If he can just reach the water, reach the river, the raft, he’ll be safe. He doesn’t know where that knowledge has come from, only that it feels true. 

He rolls again just as the knife comes plunging down—it does not stab into him but the tip slices through his skin, leaving a line of pain so cold that it burns. He screams, the pain shocking him into a burst of strength he has not felt in years uncounted, and the wraith shrieks too, falling back as though the sound of his voice has struck it like a physical blow— 

He woke to Celebrían moving around the room, humming softly. As he uncurled himself, slowly, stiff and sore, she turned to set a tray on the table by his chair. “Some scouts have just returned,” she told him as she uncovered a bowl of soup and a few slices of bread, still fresh from the oven with butter melting into the crumb. “Someone has been harrying Angmar’s armies, sabotaging their stores and cutting free their horses—all sorts of mischief. Do you know what has been left behind each time, drawn into the dirt or carved into a tree or a post?” She held out a small piece of paper, on which had been sketched an eight-pointed star. 

“…Maglor?” Daeron said, feeling slow and stupid and still half-asleep. 

“He lives,” Celebrían said, “and it seems we can now guess why he has not come seeking you here.”

Daeron hated how much he wanted to believe that. He said nothing, and Celebrían soon departed. Daeron ate because he knew he should, rather than because he felt hungry, tasting nothing, head full of Maglor’s voice urging him to take just one more bite, the sound of it like the voice of someone afraid but trying very hard to hide it. Daeron hadn’t noticed then, but he could hear it now as he recalled more of that strange and dark journey, all the way from the Baranduin to the Mitheithel. Could hear it in the way Maglor kept picking fights, teasing him, trying to make him angry—as though he thought that would help, somehow. Could hear it in the way he’d spoken with increasing desperation of how close the river was, of how near they were to safety even though there were miles yet between the bridge and the ford.

After he ate all he could stomach Daeron went to the window. When he pushed it open the wind blew snowflakes in to swirl around him, catching in his eyelashes. The air was cold enough to burn, sharp in his nose, heavy in his lungs. It was a different chill to the one made by the wraiths and their Black Breath and their cursed knives. It was clean, a wholesome cold that seemed to make the stars shine brighter, their light reflected off of the smooth snowdrifts that blanketed the valley, rounding all the sharp corners and hard edges, making it all seem soft and dreamlike. 

He thought of Maglor out there, somewhere. His cloak had come to Rivendell with Daeron. What was he doing for warmth? For food? Daeron stared at the river, glittering as it flowed along, edged with ice, its song muted by the cold and the snowfall, until he realized how badly he was shivering, and regained enough sense to shut the window and go to bed. 

Winter slipped by, and spring came in a torrent of rain and snow melt. Crocuses and snowdrops burst out of the lingering drifts, and daffodils soon followed, like bright patches of sunshine in the shade under the fir trees. Daeron ventured outside after the mud dried, pacing through the gardens and finding paths that wound throughout the valley, through the woods and meadows. Birds flocked back there, including nightingales, though not the one that sang his and Maglor’s song. Daeron found himself listening for it and tried to tell himself not to, tried to tell himself to forget.

A foolish thing think. He’d never had any luck in forgetting before. Why should that change just because his spirit was in tatters and the memories themselves were only slowly untangling themselves? He sat by the river and watched the niphredil blooming on the bank and thought of the Esgalduin and Lúthien dancing through the flowers in the starlight, her laughter echoing off the trees. He watched the sunlight play on a fountain and thought of the way it had sparkled on the waters of Ivrin as Maglor had taken his hand for the first time, pulling him away from the gathering to find a quiet and secluded glade where they would not be disturbed. Daeron closed his eyes and turned his thoughts very deliberately away from that memory, only to run into another that reared its head, full of impotent rage and terrible grief, when he’d stumbled upon Maglor and his soldiers while fleeing east. Maglor had done all the things Daeron had not wanted him to do so that he could keep hating him—but he’d insisted on sharing supplies that Daeron even then had been sure couldn’t be spared, and giving him a weapon, and then following him, all worry and concern, the sharp edges of the soldier and commander softening into the friend and fleeting lover from the feast the minute they were alone. Because he hadn’t yet known—he hadn’t known what Daeron had, did not yet fully understand the consequences of that foolish and cursed Oath. 

And then he’d gone and sworn another—it hadn’t even been necessary, since clearly he’d been bent on getting Daeron to Rivendell one way or another anyway. Daeron hadn’t been serious when he’d asked if Maglor would swear it. He had…he didn’t know what he’d been thinking, really. Just that he was tired and in pain and unwilling to let anything Maglor did get his hopes up. 

Movement out of the corner of his eye made him start, and he turned to see Erestor ambling down a nearby path, papers in hand and apparently lost in their contents. There was still something familiar about him, but Daeron didn’t know what it was—until Erestor lifted his head and smiled a greeting, and then he knew where they had met before. “…You found me once, not long after the War of Wrath. Didn’t you?”

Erestor blinked, and came to sit by him. “I met many people in the wake of the war,” he said. “Where was it you and I met?”

“I don’t remember. In the forest—perhaps near the Ered Luin. You told me of the Kinslayings.”

“Oh. Oh! I remember now. Iarwain had warned me about you.” Erestor laughed a little. “Someone terribly melancholy, he said, was lurking in his woods—as though your it was catching.”

“Was it?”

“Oh, I wept when I heard the music that you played, but it did me no lasting harm. It was beautiful, and I have never forgotten it, though I did not know that it was Daeron that I had heard.” Erestor tilted his head slightly as he regarded Daeron. His eyes were dark as his hair, and he had a faint scar near his hairline that Daeron did not remember from long ago. “If I had known who you were I would have spoken with more care. I am sorry.”

Daeron shook his head. “There is no way to soften such news.”

“If I had known who you were, I would have also tried to convince you to return with me to Lindon,” Erestor said.

Daeron managed a small smile. “That is why I did not tell you my name.”

“Well, I am glad you are here now—though I wish you had come here at a happier time, under happier circumstances. Are you in need of anything?”

“No. Unless…” He hesitated a little, then said, “Would you tell me the history of this place?” This earned him a brighter smile, and Erestor gladly put his papers away to tell the tale, though he warned that it was a dark and sorrowful one, at least in the beginning. Daeron had expected nothing less. Even if that were not the case for all tales of Middle-earth, to begin or end in sorrow, he had gleaned enough from things Celebrían had told him to know that there were very few in this valley unfamiliar with war.

Erestor told that and many other tales of the Second Age, of Númenor and of Gondor and Arnor. Some Daeron knew, or had heard bits and pieces of over the years. Much was new to him. He recognized some strange kind of kinship in Prince Amlach—but he hadn’t known that it had been Elrond’s brother, Lúthien’s grandson, who had founded the island kingdom long ago, whose blood still ran through the veins of the kings returned to Middle-earth.

Spring also brought a renewal of Angmar’s efforts, and Elrond’s sons and Glorfindel led a large force out of the valley, both Men and Elves. Daeron watched them go and shivered as the wind shifted to blow from the north. He no longer felt the Witch-king’s grasp on his spirit, but were he to attempt to leave this place, he knew it was only a matter of time before he was caught again. The way to the Sea was closed to him—and he didn’t even know, now, if he still wanted to go.

Elrond came with new songs, healing songs for the spirit fueled by a kind of unquenchable hope that Daeron marveled at. Such hope was beyond him—the Shadow might have been defeated before, but time and time again it returned, stronger than before. How could anyone hope to last against such determined and focused hate? 

He did not voice that question to Elrond, but it slipped out when he spoke to Celebrían. She smiled at him. “It is true, ever the Shadow rises again—but ever has it been defeated,” she said. “Angmar is terrible, and has gathered more strength than we had thought—but the Witch-king is not invulnerable. He will meet his end, one way or another.”

“Yet how can one who is already dead be killed?”

“There is some way to destroy him,” Celebrían said, “though it is one we have not yet discovered. Often the doers of great deeds have been those from whom such things are least expected.”

“How can you be so sure?” Daeron asked. He wasn’t sure he had ever felt that kind of certainty. Even behind the Girdle there had still been fear, worry, news trickling in with refugees and the winds of the growing power in the North—growing and growing and growing, until one day surely even Melian would not be able to hold it at bay. Of course, other things had slipped through the Girdle instead, and by the time she might have been truly tested Melian was long gone. A spark of hope had ignited in his heart when the Noldor had come, when they had saved the Falas and beaten the enemy back—but that had been smothered by the truth of how they had come, and nothing had ever been enough to bring it back. 

“I do not always feel sure,” Celebrían said. They were seated outside on one of the many small porches of the house, and she had been working on some embroidery, while Daeron just sat and watched the birds flitting through the nearby shrubs. Now she set her work aside and took Daeron’s hand. “Hope is something we choose,” she said, “every day. Some days it is very easy, and some days—many days—it is the hardest thing in the world. Perhaps I sound more confident than I feel, for my sons are away battling the very enemy we speak of now, and I will not be able to set aside my fear for them until they return. Yet I still choose to have hope, with gritted teeth and my hands balled into fists, so that it is at least half-defiance against the encroaching dark.”

“You sound like your mother,” Daeron said. “Speaking of defiance. I don’t think I ever heard Galadriel talk of hope.”

“No? You might now, if you make your way sometime to Lothlórien. Maybe you will go there with me, when next I am able to make the journey.”

“Is it not too dangerous?”

“It is now—but here again we return to hope, don’t we? Someday the roads will be safe enough to travel, singing under the stars, down the southern ways to the Redhorn Pass, and then down the Silverlode into Amroth’s realm.”

“Maybe,” Daeron said. Celebrían squeezed his hand and released it to pick up her needle again. He turned his gaze back to the sparrows, and wondered if he really wanted to see Galadriel and Celeborn again. Celeborn had once been a friend. So had been Amdír, and Oropher—and they were dead, perished fighting the Witch-king’s master far away on the borders of Mordor. Daeron wasn’t sure where he had been then. He’d wandered so long in deep and nameless woods, losing count of the seasons and forgetting at times what it was to speak to another person. Even now after months in Rivendell he found it strange and at times overwhelming to be so surrounded by people, by Men and Elves, all willing and even eager to speak to him, to ask him how he was and whether he wanted or needed anything, when what he had already been given was far more than he knew what to do with. What would he even say to them, Galadriel and Celeborn, who had known him at the height of his power and ability—if they saw him now, diminished and still on the verge of fading away entirely? 

He did not think he could bear either their scorn or their pity. 

His dreams the next few nights were of Doriath, of its ruin and destruction, and he woke hardly able to convince himself to get out of bed. Clouds had gathered, not quite heavy enough for rain but promising it soon, and Daeron didn’t know if the world seemed drained of all color because of them, or if it was only his own eyes. When the rain did start he just lay in bed and watched it slide down the windowpanes, drops racing and merging with one another. Past the sound of it on the glass and on the roof he could hear someone singing a merry rain song. When had he last felt merry? He could not remember. 

Elrond came with hot tea and a bundle of athelas leaves in his hands. Daeron still couldn’t quite tell how the steam smelled different from when Maglor had used it. It reminded him now of heather-clad hills and wide open skies. It hadn’t, before. When he asked about it, Elrond said, “The scent does not materially change much, from patient to patient, but it will bring to mind different things for everyone, according to what you might find soothing or comforting. If it seems different to you now, perhaps it is something in you that has changed.”

Daeron did not think much of anything had changed, not in him. He inhaled deeply the steam from the basin set by the bed, and sipped the tea Elrond handed him. It was sweet and floral in a different way, and the heat against his palms and in his throat felt nice. He was curled up on top of the blankets, leaning against the windowsill. Maglor’s flute lay there, untouched since Daeron had set it down. Sometimes he thought about trying to play, but then he thought that he did not want to further indebt himself. And then he thought of how stupid that was—for when would he ever even see Maglor again?—and felt even more foolish for the way that thought made something in his chest tighten, painful in the same way it got when he thought of how he would never see Lúthien again, or Mablung or Beleg or Elu Thingol or anyone else he’d once loved.

“Is there anything more I can do for you?” Elrond asked him. 

“You have done too much already,” Daeron said without looking away from the window.

“I disagree.”

“After what I did—”

“What is it you think you’ve done that is so unforgivable?”

Daeron looked over at Elrond as he sat down beside the bed. “Lúthien’s child, you need to ask? My betrayal brought about the ruin of Doriath.”

Elrond’s eyebrow arched. “Did it?” he asked. “Did you know that Thingol would demand a Silmaril, or suggest such a thing to him?”

“Of course not. But if I had not gone to him—”

“Then he would have discovered Beren some other way.”

“And not necessarily with the same result. It was the secrecy that angered him, the way he slipped through the Girdle unnoticed even by Melian. Lúthien might have softened him, given time to go about it in her own way.”

“Maybe. Maybe not—we can’t know either way, can we? I do not blame you for Doriath’s fall.” Elrond’s mouth quirked in a small, wry smile. It made him look very young for a moment. “Had my mother not come down the river to the Havens of Sirion, she would have never met my father, and I would have never been born. I cannot be thankful that such terrible things happened—the fall of Gondolin, the fall of Doriath, and so many others—but I cannot regret my own existence, either. Out of great grief came great hope and victory, in the end.”

Daeron remembered first seeing the new star, the one they called Gil-Estel, shining on the western horizon. He had never seen a Silmaril, and had not known it for what it was until much later, after his chance meeting with Erestor in the forests of Eriador. He had never been able to look upon that star and feel anything like hope. “If I cannot take the blame for the events that led to Doriath’s fall, I at least betrayed one very dear to me. Maybe you do not blame me for it, but she did, and I do.”

“Why did you do it?”

The words stuck in his throat, and Daeron looked away again, swallowing hard. He spoke without turning his head. “I chanced upon her in the wood, when she went to Beren. I saw her place her hands in his, and…I don’t know how to explain it. I am very little given to foresight, not as others have it—are given visions or some clear knowledge of things to come. But sometimes I can hear…it was as though the song of—of the wood, of her life, of all our lives—as though it changed suddenly. It shifted key, it took on a new rhythm that I did not understand. I fled, and by the time I made it back to Menegroth—I just didn’t know what else to do.”

“And later?”

“She wanted to go after him, to go all the way into Angband if that was what it took. I’ve heard the tale since, I know that they did go there, and they came out again—but fear ruled me still.”

“You loved her and you feared for her,” Elrond said softly. “That is not so unforgivable.”

“Is there anything I could say of myself that you will not excuse?”

“No,” Elrond said, “not when you are in this kind of mood.” He held out his hand, and after a moment Daeron put his into it. Elrond’s power thrummed around him, like a quivering harp string, familiar-and-strange. Daeron didn’t pull back, but he remembered too clearly how it had hurt, that power, when Elrond had yanked him back from the brink of death. It made his heart beat too hard and his breath come short. “You are stronger than you think you are,” Elrond said finally, withdrawing that power, and then his hand. “I do not think you are in any danger of fading away, whatever you might have been suffering before Angmar found you.” Daeron shuddered at the memories—they remained disjointed and unclear. The only sure thing he could recall was the terrible cold and the worse pain. “You were once accounted a great musician. Why do you no longer make music?” Elrond asked. 

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps you might take it up again.” Elrond nodded toward the flute on the windowsill. “I do not think that was left with you by accident.”

“It was Maglor’s cloak,” Daeron said.

“He never kept his instruments in his pockets like that. I doubt that particular habit will have changed. He wanted you to have it.”

Just another little kindness to put on top of all the rest—and to set against his absence. There was nothing keeping Maglor out of Rivendell, no reason for him to stay away—not with Elrond so eager to welcome him. Daeron tried to tell himself he did not want Maglor there, did not want to be reminded of all the things Maglor had done—far worse than anything Daeron ever had—but of course that was a lie, and it got harder and harder to even think of it as time went on. 

Another year slipped by, then another, and on and on. It was impossible not to count them there, surrounded by people, with something new happening almost every day. A letter came to him from Lothlórien, as messengers were able to slip in and out of Rivendell, coming and going from the south, bringing news of the goings-on in Gondor and from Wilderland in the north. In his letter Celeborn rejoiced to learn that Daeron lived still, and entreated him to come south himself, to dwell a while with them in Lothlórien—or, if he still felt the need or desire, to make his way to Belfalas and the elven havens there. Daeron sat down several times to try to write a reply, but all he did was stare at the paper without even reaching for a pen, and eventually he gave up. Let Celebrían write to her parents and tell them what she would. It didn’t matter; he had no intention of crossing back over the Misty Mountains any time soon. 

Somehow, slowly, he got used to being around people. He could meet Arwen’s gaze almost steadily, and he stopped flinching whenever someone touched him, though not whenever he was startled by movement just at the edge of his vision. He still kept to himself for the most part, preferring the quiet parts of the woods where no one was likely to find and tease him, but after a handful of years he could venture into the Hall of Fire in the evenings and even enjoy some of the songs and stories told there. Elrond was greatly skilled on the harp—Daeron could see Maglor’s teaching in it—and had as lovely a voice as Lúthien had, though of course it was very different in sound. Daeron did not play or sing, and no one ever asked him, although he was often aware of eyes upon him, and could easily imagine how they all wondered at his silence. 

He came to dread summertime. Daeron did not remember the date of his final wounding by the Witch-king, but his body knew, and every year his chest pained him and his dreams were plagued by shadows and bone-shaking terror. It was the kind of wound, Elrond told him regretfully, that left far deeper scars than were visible in the body, and the only real cure for it was time. 

Once upon a time, Daeron remembered, eventually, he had been a master of shadows—to call or to banish them at his will, or to bring forth light and beauty through the power of his song, of his voice. On a morning after his dreams were plagued by nightmares that had him waking up choking, twisted around in the blankets and feeling like a hunted animal, he finally picked up the flute from the windowsill. The wood was smooth under his fingers. It had been made with care, this flute. Daeron moved his fingers over the holes, reminding himself how it felt, how to do it. The memory returned easier than he’d expected. His hands did not need to be told what to do. He took a breath and played a few notes, and then a few more. He needed practice, especially in holding breath in his lungs, but it was a start. The flute’s sound was sweet and light, and playing again made him feel—something. Not hopeful, but a little more like someone who could hope for things, given time.

He practiced every day, in the quiet privacy of his room with the doors and windows closed. It did not chase away the nightmares, nor the weight of years that still clung to him. But it was something that dragged him out of bed on days when he didn’t want to, even for just a little while until he gave up and retreated back under the blankets where it was warm and safe and quiet.

Thanks to the flute, Maglor remained ever at the edges of Daeron’s thoughts. Bits and pieces came back to Rivendell every few months of someone causing mischief, of a voice heard by soldiers and sometimes even by Glorfindel or one of Elrond’s sons—a voice of great power, issuing a challenge or a warning to Angmar. For a while such tidbits came to Rivendell regularly, though not so often that Daeron noticed immediately when they stopped. When Daeron finally realized how long it had been since he had last heard any rumor of Maglor’s doings, he went to Celebrían to ask if she had heard anything, thinking perhaps it had just not been shared yet with him. 

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “We’ve had no such news in some time. Maybe it is because Angmar has been beaten back for the moment beyond the North Downs toward the Ettenmoors.”

“Maybe,” Daeron said. But he dreamed that night, and the night after, of Maglor wounded after they had been attacked by orcs on their desperate flight across Cardolan. He remembered the fear that had welled up in him then, seeing blood dripping down Maglor’s arm, and how infuriatingly light Maglor had made of the injury, promising that it was not as bad as it clearly was, as though he’d forgotten how to care for himself. 

He owed Maglor his life. That knowledge burrowed under his skin and stayed there, itching where he couldn’t scratch it, as the desire—the need—to go in search of him grew and grew. It was like a song he could almost hear.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. Once he made his decision it was like the Music became clear to him again, and he suddenly knew where he needed to go. When Daeron went to speak to Elrond, he did not seem surprised, though he frowned. “You cannot be thinking of going north?” he said. “You are not—”

“No,” Daeron said. “No, I would be useless even if I hadn’t—it is west that I must go, but I would go south first, away from…everything. I cannot say why except I just—I need to find him.” 

“Must you go alone, or would you accept a companion?” Elrond asked. “There are few that I can spare—but Erestor knows Eriador well.”

Daeron hesitated. He had no wish for a companion. He didn’t now whether he wanted to punch Maglor or kiss him, and either way he didn’t want an an audience for it.

When he did not answer immediately, Elrond smiled a little wryly. “You can say no and I will not take offense. What will you do when you find him?”

When, he said, not if. That felt encouraging, almost hopeful. “I don’t know,” Daeron said. “But I owe him my life, and it makes me uneasy that he has disappeared so suddenly.”

“If I asked you to bring him here, would you do it?”

“Do you think he would come?”

“Maybe not. But if he stays away because of some kind of doubt as to his welcome, you can tell him that he’s wrong. I want nothing more than to see him here, safe in my valley. I would see both of you here and safe.” When Daeron blinked at him he smiled. “Is it so surprising to hear that you are liked, Daeron—that you are wanted?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s true.”

Daeron was provided with ample supplies, plus a bow that he wasn’t sure he remembered how to use, and a knife that he did know how to use but hoped he wouldn’t have to. Arwen gave him a cloak and, when he was ready to leave, embraced him. “I hope to see you again soon!” she said. “Be safe, Daeron.”

Celebrían embraced him likewise. Elrond did not, but he grasped his hand. “May the stars light your way, Daeron,” he said quietly. “Good luck.”

The least he could do, Daeron thought as he climbed the path out of the valley, a map in his pocket and a vague idea of needing to go southwest, was drag Maglor back to Rivendell. Maglor had dragged him halfway across Eriador when he didn’t have to, and if Daeron could do the same he would repay both him and Elrond at least some of the debt that he owed them both. Maglor had saved his life, and Elrond had done the same and then given him the chance to learn how to want to live again.

He followed the path marked out by white stones from Rivendell to the Bruinen, but did not cross. Instead he turned south, thinking to follow it to where it met the Mitheithel and flowed into the Gwathló. Far enough south would see him to Tharbad, and if he heard no rumors there that might turn him aside, he would continue on downriver to the coast. That was where Maglor was most likely to be found, if the old stories were true, though Daeron wondered if they really were. Maglor had been nowhere near the Sea when he’d pulled Daeron out of the Baranduin.

The journey to Tharbad was long and lonely. Daeron hadn’t realized before how used to other people he’d gotten until all of a sudden he was no longer surrounded by them. Yet it was also familiar, and after a while he fell back into the rhythms of solitary travel. He’d brought Maglor’s flute, but played seldom. Even as he went farther and farther south and away from the war, it felt too dangerous. He built no fires, and slept in the hollows of trees and underneath stands of heather, singing quiet songs of hiding and concealment each evening when he made his small camp. It was only halfway to Tharbad that he realized they were the same songs Maglor had sung.

Just as the city came into view in the distance, Daeron found himself confronted by a nightingale—and then another, both of them fluttering around his head and singing that song, the one neither he nor Maglor had taught them but that they somehow knew anyway. West, west! they cheeped at him in between snatches of verse. Go west, go west!

“Is that where I’ll find Maglor?” Daeron asked them, and they sang a chorus of yeses before flying away across the Gwathló and back. Well, then. “All right, all right. But I cannot cross here.” 

There were no rumors of any strange Elven wanderer or singer to be heard in Tharbad. Daeron exchanged a few bits of news of his own as he purchased some more supplies, and then made his way across the bridge. The birds met him again on the other side, and urged him to take the North-South Road. Daeron followed them, because he didn’t know what else to do and did not really want to go all the way to the coast and then wander along the beaches hoping to stumble upon what he sought, which had been his only plan before. 

“Why are you so insistent?” he asked the nightingales when they stopped flying about to perch on his shoulders. They didn’t answer. 

Soon the lands started to look familiar, and Daeron realized he had come to the place—or very near to it—that he and Maglor had crossed this road, heading east. He halted, hesitant to continue northward. That would bring him to Sarn Ford, the easiest place to cross the Baranduin, but that was far nearer to the East-West Road and what remained of Cardolan and Arthedain than he wanted to go. Too close to where he’d escaped the Witch-king, where there might still be enemies about, whatever the reports said that had come to Rivendell before his departure. That was weeks ago, now, and who knew what had changed?

How strange, he thought as he left the road to head directly west, to be retracing their steps. There was no hurry now, no one’s life hanging in the balance. There was only himself and the nightingales, who came and went, sometimes vanishing for days before they came back to urge him on. They seemed to feel some sort of urgency, which made Daeron quicken his steps and think of how very soon he would need to decide indeed whether he would be happy to see Maglor or just…angry. 

Because he was angry, he realized somewhere around the time the Baranduin came into view, brown and lazy as it flowed along. He was furious—not even for Doriath or Sirion or any of that, not anymore. He was angry that Maglor had done everything he’d done and then left him. That he had called himself selfish while doing the most selfless thing Daeron could imagine, and then just—just—

He stopped on the bank of the river and pressed his hands to his face. He listened to the sound of the water flowing through the reeds and remembered, faintly, drifting down the current on the broken raft. He did not remember how he had come to be on the raft, or how it was that the slow current of this river had borne him away to safety in spite of the power and armies at the Witch-king’s disposal. Daeron took a deep breath, aware that he was shaking, and took off his cloak to stuff it into his pack so that he might keep it dry. The river was slow but deep. He removed his shoes, too, and grimaced when his bare feet met the slick mud of the riverbed. On the opposite bank he quickly changed into clean clothes, and sat for a while to listen to the wind in the bulrushes and to the birds that flitted about the riverbank. The nightingales had disappeared, and he wasn’t sure now where to go. There was no sign of Maglor anywhere near the river, though Daeron had half-expected to find him there. After a while he stood up and looked around, and saw in the far distance the dark shapes of mountains, and closer at hand a hill rising up out of the plains. It was as good a landmark as any, and he began to walk again. Perhaps Maglor was haunting the shores on the other side of the mountains, or south of them.

As he approached the hill, one of the nightingales returned. Come, come! it cheeped at him, and flew away directly toward the hill. Daeron followed, and found it perched on a bush outside of a cave at the hill’s base. Inside was a small stack of firewood, the remnants of a fire—very old, it seemed—and a harp case, dusty and also clearly left there for some time. Daeron stared at the scene, and then turned back to look eastward. From the top of this hill the river would be visible, and this seemed to be a place that Maglor had visited at least once, or often enough that he felt that he could leave things behind. 

Daeron crouched by the harp case and brushed some of the dust off of it. Signs of protection and preservation had been carved into the wood, interspersed with eight-pointed stars, as though he needed more confirmation of its owner. 

Well, this was a place Maglor had been, but not a place he was. Daeron sighed and dropped his own pack to the floor beside the harp case. He thought about starting a fire, but the day was still warm and he was tired—tired, and alone, and more lonely than he had been in years. Solitude stopped feeling lonely if it went on long enough. Now he had grown used to living among others, to being part of something, even if he still kept to the edges of it, content to fade into the background. 

He found, as he sat by the cave’s entrance and played Maglor’s flute, that he wanted to go back to Rivendell, and not only to drag Maglor back with him for his and Elrond’s sakes. 

Over the next few days he explored the hill and the woods behind it, finding other hills leading back toward the mountains in the west. He found a cold spring on the other side of the hill from the little cave, and a bramble of blackberries just ripening. Daeron wasn’t sure why he lingered, except that when he ventured too far the nightingales came to flutter around his face and cheep at him until he turned back. “He isn’t here!” Daeron exclaimed the third time they did it. “What do you want me to stay in an empty cave for? Who sent you?” Of course they didn’t answer, just cheeped at him to stay! Stay! 

Then, when he ventured back out to the blackberries, he saw movement in the trees, someone coming up from the south. Daeron abandoned the berries and ducked behind a tree, heart in his throat. He reached for his belt but of course he’d left the knife behind in the cave, thinking he was entirely alone, forgetting that it was never that safe out in the wild. The quiet and the nightingales had lulled him into foolishness. 

The figure seemed to be unaware of him, and passed by his tree without pausing. They were cloaked, tall and dark-haired, and when Daeron caught a glimpse of their hand he realized—it was Maglor. Of course it was Maglor. His fear gave way, and he moved before he could think about it, crashing into Maglor and sending them both tumbling over each other down the short slope to the softer mossy ground near the cold spring. They landed with Daeron on to of Maglor, pinning his wrists over his head, straddling his stomach. Maglor stared at him with wide grey-green eyes, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath, beautiful and infuriating all at once. “What,” Daeron demanded when he caught his own breath, “is wrong with you?”

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Odyssey on odyssey, and land over land
Creeping and crawling like the sea over sand
Still, I follow heart lines on your hand
And this fantasy, this fallacy, this tumbling stone
Echoes of a city that’s long overgrown
Your heart is the only place that I call home
Can I be returned?
- “Heartlines" by Florence + the Machine

- - 

It happened so quickly that Maglor didn’t have time to react, or even realize what was happening until he was halfway down the hill with someone on top of him, the pair of them nothing more than a tangle of limbs and dark hair and new bruises on top of old ones. He was stiff and sore and tired, too tired for this, and all he could think was that it served him right for letting his guard down—for believing that because no one else had ever come to this hillside, no one ever would. 

Then they rolled to a stop, and Maglor finally saw who it was that had attacked him, the dark eyes that blazed with ancient starlight, the sunkissed cheeks and strands of shadowy hair fallen loose of their braids. “What,” Daeron demanded, luminous in his fury, “is wrong with you?”

“Daeron…?” Maglor whispered. He strained against the hands around his wrists but Daeron’s grip was strong, and he was a heavy weight on top of Maglor—so different from the last time he’d seen him, barely able to open his eyes, deathly pale and almost ghostly. Maglor had gotten him to safety—giving him to Glorfindel had been almost as good as handing him over to Elrond himself—but he’d hardly dared to hope that he would make such a recovery, that he would find such healing this side of the Sea. “What…what are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” Daeron snapped back. “You just—you—” Words seemed to fail him; his face flushed, blotchy and red, and it was the most beautiful thing Maglor had ever seen. “You disappeared!”

“I didn’t,” Maglor said. “You just weren’t—”

“What would you call it then, when you go years receiving regular bits of news of someone and then all of a sudden it stops?” 

“Bits of—I sent no messages—”

“No, you didn’t!” Daeron’s grip on Maglor’s wrists was hard enough to bruise. “You never intended to go Rivendell at all, did you? You were just going to—”

“Of course I wasn’t, if I could avoid it,” Maglor said. He would have thought it was obvious that he couldn’t. Revealing himself to Glorfindel on the road was one thing—for Daeron’s sake, because there was no more time and no other choice. Surrendering himself to the mercy of any Noldor remaining in Middle-earth? That was something else entirely. It would only be worse if he went to Rivendell. He could not do that to Elrond.

His answer just seemed to enrage Daeron further. “Why not?”

“Why—you know what I am!” Maglor strained against Daeron’s grip again, but he was too tired and Daeron too strong. “Let me up.”

“No. Do you really think that Elrond would—”

“Elrond is not the only one that lives in that valley. I can’t—”

“Where did you go then, when you disappeared? It’s been months since we had any word of you causing trouble or leaving that stupid star—”

“That was meant for Angmar,” Maglor said, “not for—”

“What happened?”

“Nothing! I just—”

“Do not lie to me!”

“I nearly ran up against the Witch-king again,” Maglor said. He stopped trying to get free and let his head fall back onto the moss, feeling the damp soak into his hair, cold against his scalp. “I held him back at the bridge, but only because he wasn’t prepared to find anyone there that dared offer resistance, and he does not make the same mistake twice. When I left Arnor I fled west to the coast, and then I came south.” He had spent a few seasons on Himling Isle, out of anyone’s reach, letting himself be haunted by more familiar ghosts—the ones only he could see, that broke only his own heart. “Daeron, why did you come here?”

“The nightingales led me here,” Daeron said. 

“But what—why did you leave Rivendell? It’s still—”

Daeron growled through clenched teeth. “Oh, I cannot believe I missed you.” He released Maglor suddenly, getting to his feet. “What do you think I left Rivendell for?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t need to ask,” Maglor said. He sat up, rubbing his wrists, and started when Daeron’s hand appeared in front of him. He looked up; Daeron was still scowling, but the angry flush was fading, and he seemed almost as tired as Maglor felt. “I don’t understand you at all,” Maglor said. He did not accept the hand up, not trusting himself to be able to let go afterward. Daeron had missed him, and Maglor was afraid to ask anything more, lest this strange scene reveal itself to be a dream, leaving him cold and alone back on Himling in the shadow of his brother’s crumbling walls.

“You saved my life,” Daeron said, letting his hand drop back to his side once they were both standing, facing one another.

“You don’t owe me anything for it,” Maglor said. 

“Yes, I do. And I owe Elrond, too. Bringing you back to Rivendell will pay both debts at once.”

Going to Rivendell—the idea hurt, clogging up his heart with fear and longing in equal measure. It was not a place for him—kinslayer, thief, murderer, Fëanor’s last son. It was a place of peace and shelter that Elrond had built out of the ashes of war, and Maglor could not go there just to ruin it.

“If you want to repay Elrond somehow, find another way. I’m not going to Rivendell.” Maglor turned away to pick up his pack, only to have half its meager contents spill out of a new rip in the bottom. He sighed. 

“We can argue about that later,” Daeron said after a moment. He knelt to help gather Maglor’s things, neither of them looking at the other. “Are you injured?”

“Only bruised.”

“I don’t mean—you said you encountered—him—again.”

“Oh. No—I nearly did, but I slipped away before anything happened.”

“He does not need to catch you to hurt you,” Daeron said quietly. “They call it the Black Breath in Rivendell.”

Maglor shook his head. He picked up the last of his things and rose to his feet again. “I’m fine, Daeron.” 

“Liar.”

Back at the cave, Maglor found a tidy little camp, with embers still glowing in the small fire pit. Daeron coaxed them back to full life as Maglor set his things down by the wall opposite of Daeron’s own things. His harp was still there, and he ran a hand over the case, relieved to have it back. It was cleaner than he would have expected. “I tuned it,” Daeron said, “but haven’t played.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you did.” Maglor didn’t open the case. He sat down and leaned against the wall, arms resting on his knees, and watched a nightingale flutter around a bush near the cave’s entrance. It settled on a branch and began to sing, a combination of its own song and theirs. “You still don’t remember teaching them that song?”

“I didn’t,” Daeron said. “I haven’t sung that song in years uncounted.”

“I have,” Maglor said softly, “but never to nightingales. They don’t usually come to the coast.”

“I asked Elrond about it. He did not recognize it.”

“No, I never sang it for him, or taught it to him.”

“Why not?”

“It’s—” Private. Precious. A knife between his ribs only only he got to twist. “I just didn’t.”

Once the fire was crackling cheerfully, Daeron disappeared. Maglor did not follow, just sat and watched the flames, feeling tired and bruised and unsure if he was glad that Daeron had come looking for him or not. He had missed him, and he’d worried, but the world had not grown any less dangerous. He said so, when Daeron returned with a pouch full of mushrooms, freshly washed. 

“It is less dangerous the farther south one goes,” Daeron said without looking at him as he dumped the mushrooms into a pan. What a strange reversal this was of the last time they’d been thrown together. “When I left Rivendell, Angmar had been beaten back as far as the Ettenmoors. Is there game in the hills here?”

“Yes.”

“Are you any good with a bow? I’m not—never have been.”

“I used to be,” Maglor said, “but I haven’t touched one since…I can’t remember when.” That was the case for so many things. “Do you make music again?”

“Some. Not where anyone else can hear.” Daeron set the pan over the flames and leaned back against the cave wall, facing Maglor. Neither of them looked directly at the other. The anger and shock had drained away, and now Maglor wasn’t sure what lay between them—something unnameable, uncertain. “Did you give me that flute on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Maglor sighed. “You know why.”

“Have the years robbed you of the ability to give a straight answer?” Daeron asked, annoyance sparking in his voice. “Answer me plainly. Why did you do any of it?”

“I already told you. Do you not remember?”

“Tell me again.”

“Maybe if you tell me plainly why you came looking for me. Do not say it is because you owe me a debt, because we both know that’s not true.”

Daeron did not answer for a long time. He stirred the mushrooms, and added water and other things from his supplies to turn them into some kind of stew. Finally he said, “When I woke in Rivendell, I did not know where I was, or how I had gotten there. I was alone, and I was afraid, and the clearest memory I had in my mind was of your face—and even that was hazy and strange, hard to tell if it was real or just a dream. When they told me you were not there, it was—” He fell suddenly silent. The silence stretched between them, broken only by the gentle simmer of the stew and the crackling of the flames. Outside the sun sank westward, the shadows lengthening. “It felt like I had had something precious within my grasp, only to have it ripped suddenly away just as I realized how important it was.” He looked up then, and his lips quirked in a very small smile at whatever he saw in Maglor’s face. “I thought you wanted me to stop hating you. Why do you look so surprised?”

“I want a lot of things I know I can never have,” Maglor said. 

Daeron moved, and the next thing Maglor knew he had his lap full and his arms around Daeron’s waist as Daeron’s fingers slid into his hair and Daeron’s lips crashed into his, all heat and something that almost tasted like desperation, like Daeron did not want to kiss him so much as devour him. Maglor wanted to let him. “One thing has always been true,” Daeron murmured against his mouth when they parted just enough to catch their breath. “Whether I have liked you or despised you, I have never been able to stop wanting you.” He drew back to meet Maglor’s gaze, eyes very dark, spots of color on his cheeks. “Now tell me plainly. Why did you swear that foolish oath?”

“You did not trust me,” Maglor said, arms tightening around Daeron of their own accord. “How was I to get you across the whole of Eriador if you did not believe that I wanted to help you?”

“You could have done it without binding yourself to—”

“What did I have to lose, besides you?”

Daeron’s fingers tightened in his hair, pulling his head back a little. Maglor was unable to suppress a small noise that probably should have been more embarrassing than it was. “Your life,” Daeron said, “your self. If the Witch-king had—”

“But he didn’t.”

“That only makes you lucky. Not less of a fool.” 

“I don’t think I’m lucky,” Maglor said quietly. “I think it is my fate to survive, whatever happens. Whether I want to or not.”

“Perhaps we are both so fated,” Daeron said. He kissed Maglor again, brief and hard, before releasing him and getting up to return to the fire. Maglor felt pathetically bereft without Daeron’s solid weight in his lap, and he drew his knees up to his chest again. “What is the real reason you do not want to go to Rivendell?” Daeron asked as he removed the pan of stew from the flames. It smelled earthy and rich, and Maglor became aware very suddenly of just how hungry he was. 

“I have no desire to be anyone’s prisoner,” he said, watching Daeron ladle the stew into two bowls—proper bowls, with proper spoons to go with them, “no matter how pretty the cage.” He didn’t think anyone else wanted that, either—it was better for everyone if he stayed away, if he chose his own sentence of lonely exile, and no one had to look at him or make any decisions about what should be done with him.

“Is that what you think Elrond will do? The boy you raised?”

“The boy I stole out of the home I set ablaze,” Maglor said. 

“Who plays the harp just like you, and wields the power of his voice in the same manner that you do,” Daeron said, and Maglor wondered if he knew what his words were doing, how much they hurt. “Who knows exactly what I left Rivendell for—who asked me to bring you back, or at least to tell you that if it is doubt of a welcome that keeps you away, you’re wrong.” 

Maglor’s eyes burned and he dropped his head into his arms.

“Why did you stay in the north?” Daeron asked, moving to sit beside Maglor again, setting the second bowl by Maglor’s feet.

Maglor did not raise his head. “Elrond had a brother, you know,” he said to his knees. “Elros. The first King of Númenor. The kings of Arnor and Gondor are of his line. Araphor—the king now in Fornost—he is so young. I couldn’t—I’d been wondering if I should go north even before I found you. Once I was there I couldn’t just do nothing.” The last time war had come to Eriador he had stayed far away—and his nephew had been slain, and Eregion razed. Maybe that would have happened anyway, but maybe he could have made some sort of difference, if he had just acted, even if no one ever knew. He had thought now that no one would know, no one but the Witch-king. The stars of his house had been meant as a taunt and a threat, a reminder that one member of Fëanor’s house lived yet. No one needed to know the fire of that house was reduced to embers.

Daeron leaned against him, head on Maglor’s shoulder. “You loved them, Elrond and Elros,” he said softly.

“Of course I did,” Maglor whispered.

“Why is it so hard to believe now that Elrond loves you still?”

Maglor didn’t answer. He just closed his eyes and and tried to count his breaths. “He sent you?” he asked finally.

“No. He did ask that I bring you back with me, if I could, when I told him what I was doing.” Daeron put his hand on Maglor’s arm. “You should eat. Come on—turnabout’s fair play. It’s my turn to bully you into eating and into coming with me back east.”

“Except I am not dying.”.

“Maybe not. But you are lonely and unhappy.”

“So too is water wet, and the sky blue.” That earned him a punch to the arm. Maglor flinched and lifted his head, surprised at the force of it. Daeron glared at him. “What was—”

“I am also lonely and unhappy, but I don’t want to be anymore. And—Elbereth help me—I want to learn how to be happy again with you.”

“But you know what—”

“Of course I know what you did. I know what I did, too.”

“You cannot compare your deeds to mine,” Maglor said. “You never—”

“I betrayed someone I loved,” Daeron said. “Twice. It is not the same in scale, but she still died. Maybe she would have met that same fate whatever happened—I don’t know—but it did not have to happen the way it did. Maybe I can find it in myself to let it go, now. Maybe you can find it in you to let it all go, too.”

“It isn’t that simple, Daeron,” Maglor said quietly.

“It is simple, even if it isn’t easy.” Daeron leaned against him again, turning his face into Maglor’s shoulder. Maglor leaned back without thinking, putting his arm around Daeron’s shoulders. “We have both of us been lonely wanderers for so long,” Daeron said. “I think perhaps we understand one another better than anyone else ever can.”

“Maybe,” Maglor said. It was true that he’d felt that kind of kinship from the moment they met, long ago at the Mereth Aderthad. It had been such a brief time, but he hadn’t needed any longer than that to feel seen and understood in a way he never had before. Having that ripped away had hurt just as badly as everything else that had happened afterward. But their paths had diverged long before he’d begun his own wanderings. Every step he took, especially after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, he had known was taking him farther and farther away from any hope of ever finding Daeron again, ever reconciling—just another stone atop the cairn of what might have been. 

“I know what you did long ago,” Daeron said, “but I also know what you have done since—what you have been doing.”

“I don’t think there’s anything I can do that will make up for all that I did, however many years might pass,” Maglor said. 

Daeron reached for his hand, the scarred one, and ran his fingers over them. “But this wound is healed, is it not? It is said the hands of the Enemy never did. And Elrond is counted among the Wise, and he would see you safe in his valley.”

“I don’t know—”

“We can keep arguing about it or you can eat.”

There was a joke to be made, probably, about Daeron trying to poison him, but Maglor couldn’t think of any words for it, and he didn’t even know if Daeron remembered how deep his distrust had run immediately after Maglor had pulled him out of the Baranduin. “Fine,” he sighed, and picked up the bowl. There was no hurry, he supposed. Rivendell wasn’t going anywhere, and it seemed that Daeron wasn’t either. Between the two of them they finished the stew, and Maglor took the pan and the bowls to wash them at the spring. He washed his face and drank a few deep draughts of the ice-cold water, too, before sitting back on his heels and looking up to watch the sky grow purple with the coming twilight in the shadow of the hill. 

Daeron sat just outside the cave when Maglor returned, flute in his hands. He began to play as Maglor put the dinner things away, the song quiet and lovely and haunting. Maglor couldn’t remember when he’d last been the audience rather than the one playing. He sat just inside the cave. The stars came out as Daeron played, twinkling gently as twilight faded into full night. Between the warmth of the fire and Daeron’s music and his own weariness, Maglor felt sleep pulling at him. At last, Daeron lowered the flute, and turned to look at him. The firelight danced over his face as he reached out to touch Maglor’s cheek. “Why are you crying?” he asked softly.

“Am I?” Maglor lifted a hand to his face, and found it wet with tears. “I don’t know. I’m just—so tired.”

“Then go to sleep.” Daeron moved over, and somehow Maglor found himself lying down with his head in Daeron’s lap, Daeron’s fingers moving over his scalp in a way that was soothing and just…nice. Gentle, in a way he was unaccustomed to. “You’ve fought hard, and traveled a very long way,” Daeron said. 

“I don’t want to wake up and find this was just a dream,” Maglor whispered.

“You won’t.”

“That’s what you’d say in a dream.” But Maglor let his eyes fall closed. After a little while Daeron’s fingers disappeared from his head, but he started to play the flute again, and when Maglor slept he dreamed of starlight upon a forest river, and of wandering through deep woods of ancient trees growing tall as towers, the summer air tinged green, where it was quiet and lonely in a very different sort of way than the wide and desolate strands that he knew so well. 

When he woke in the early morning he found himself curled around Daeron beneath several blankets. Daeron had his face tucked against Maglor’s chest, as though he had been trying to burrow into it in his sleep. He gripped Maglor’s shirt in his fists, like he too was afraid to wake up alone. Maglor moved only enough to wrap his arm more securely around Daeron, and closed his eyes again. Outside the birds began their dawn chorus, and the breeze drifted into the cave carrying the scent of gorse and heather. 

Eventually Daeron stirred, and sighed. “You’re still here,” he breathed.

“So are you,” Maglor replied. 

Daeron lifted his head, eyes still closed, and pressed kisses along Maglor’s jaw to his mouth, sleepy and slow and soft in a way they hadn’t been even on those starlit nights by the Pools of Ivrin. Maglor deepened the kiss, and Daeron wrapped an arm around his neck, pulling him in closer. “We could wake up like this every morning,” he murmured in between kisses, “if you come back to Rivendell with me. We could wake up like this in a bed.”

Maglor sighed, and drew back, running his fingers through Daeron’s hair to tease out a few tangles. Daeron opened his eyes, watching him solemnly. Maglor didn’t know what to say. He dropped his head to Daeron’s shoulder, hiding his face in his hair. Daeron sighed then, resting a hand on the back of Maglor’s head. He was warm and he was alive, and he had come back, but what he was asking…

“I told you before that I am selfish,” he said into the crook of Daeron’s neck. 

“I remember. It’s the most ridiculous thing you have ever said to me, considering where we were and what you were doing.”

“I am also a coward.”

“And now you’ve surpassed it. You are many things, Maglor Fëanorion, but I don’t think anyone would ever accuse you of cowardice.”

“I—”

“What do you call it then, to stand alone before the coming of the Witch-king and his armies without fleeing? Or to hunt and harry that same enemy for years afterward, alone, unsupported?”

“I don’t think it’s bravery when you’ve got nothing to lose,” Maglor said. 

Daeron made an exasperated noise and pushed Maglor away so he could sit up. “You have plenty of faults already—you do not need to go making up more! What are you so afraid of, then, that keeps you from Rivendell?”

“Everything.” Maglor rolled out of the blankets and got to his feet, needing suddenly to be away. Whatever soft peace they had woken with was gone, and he found he couldn’t bear the way that Daeron was glaring at him. He grabbed his harp case out of habit as he ducked out of the cave, and walked around the hill into the woods, where it was quiet and shadowy. A nightingale followed him, singing bits of that song until Maglor threw a pine cone at it. “Leave me be!”

He walked until he found a hollow between hills that felt deeper than it was, with towering pines and a carpet of needles that seemed to catch and swallow all sounds, so that even the birdsong in the wood was muted. Maglor dropped to the ground and fumbled with his harp case. When he strummed it he found that Daeron had, indeed, tuned it, the sound perfect and sweet and clear. His fingers were clumsy on the strings, since it had been so long since he’d played, but he kept them moving until muscle memory took over, and then he just played. There was no particular song; he just made up the melody as he went, wordless, meaningless. The only purpose was to prove to himself that he still could, that whatever else had happened, whatever he had done or would do, he remained a musician. When Daeron left, he would still have his music.

Perhaps he should have just stayed on Himling. No one else ever went there, and he had always been quietly, selfishly glad of it, even going so far as to encourage the tales among the nearest fishing villages that the island was haunted. It was the only thing that remained of his brother—and even those walls were crumbling, slowly succumbing to the sea winds and storms, to the passage of time. Birds nested in them, and trees and tough island plants had taken root in the cracks, slowly widening them. It would be a long time yet before they fell into complete ruin, but Maglor remembered them new-built and strong, able to withstand dragonfire and everything else the Enemy could throw at them, and it was always hard to see them worn down a little more each time he went back. It made him aware of how the years were wearing away at him, too. He didn’t know that he could claim to be fading just yet, but sometimes it felt as though, given enough time, he would be reduced to nothing but a voice on the wind, nothing but another ghost story for sailors to tell one another on stormy nights. If that was to be his fate, better that it found him on that isle. He didn’t know why he had come back to these hills, except that he’d left his harp there, and getting a new one meant venturing into a town or a city at least for strings.

There would be no shortage of harp strings in Rivendell, he thought, and his fingers slipped, the skin tender and wearing thin after so much playing following many years away from it. He stopped playing, and silence fell around him. When Maglor lifted his head he saw that it had been hours; the sun was high in the sky now, riding above the trees. He could see patches of clear summer blue in between the thick pine boughs. 

He had been alone for so long. He hadn’t even slipped into an inn or to the edges of a harbor to hear the sailors’ or travelers’ gossip or news in years and years. Going to Rivendell, a valley full of people who knew his name and knew his deeds—the idea made him almost sick with fear, but it also made something under his ribs ache with longing. Maglor rested his arms on top of his harp and buried his face in them. He couldn’t hold the tears at bay any longer, and at least out here there was no one to see or hear him weep like a lost child. 

When he returned to the cave it was almost noon. He’d cried himself dry and felt vaguely ill, and as exhausted as he’d been before going to sleep the night before. He did not expect to find Daeron there, and he didn’t—but he did find almost all of Daeron’s things, still laid out as though Daeron had made no move at all to prepare for departure. Maglor grabbed his blanket and retreated to the top of the hill where he could sprawl out in the warm sunshine and close his eyes and think about nothing except the smell of the grass around him and the breeze whispering through it, carrying the scent of heather.

After a while the breeze carried also the sound of a voice, singing softly and artlessly as though without any thought or expectation of an audience. Maglor didn’t move, just listened as Daeron returned to the cave below. The singing stopped, and after a few minutes the grass beside him rustled as Daeron sat down. “You did not run from arguments before,” he said. 

“Is that what that was?” Maglor sighed.

“Before, you often tried to make me angry. I’m sure I am not imagining that.”

Maglor opened his eyes. Daeron looked down at him, solemn and tired. “You were more yourself when you were angry,” Maglor said. “It seemed to help. I don’t know—I’m no healer. Maybe it just made it worse.”

“Your songs helped,” Daeron said softly. He ran his fingers through Maglor’s hair. “I have been so angry with you, but I’m tired of fighting.”

“I very much prefer it when you aren’t angry with me,” Maglor said, “but angry was so much better than empty.”

“I found athelas,” Daeron said, still with his fingers in Maglor’s hair. “I told you that he does not need to catch you to hurt you. It does not sit so heavily on you now as it did on me before, but it will only get worse if no one does something.”

“Daeron…”

“Yes?”

“About Rivendell…do not ask me again today. Please. I’m just—I’m tired.”

“I’ll ask you tomorrow, then. And the next day, and so on until you give me the answer I want.”

Maglor already knew that, in the end, his selfishness would win out over his cowardice. If Daeron kept pushing he would give in: he would go to Rivendell and submit to whatever judgments were passed, whatever it was the remaining Noldor or the Sindar or whoever was left decided to do with him, if it meant that Daeron would stay with him. “What happens if I don’t?” he asked anyway. 

Daeron surely also already knew that Maglor would surrender sooner or later. He just smiled and leaned down to kiss him. “I can be just as stubborn as you,” he murmured as he drew back, “and even more selfish.”

“But why?”

“We had a taste of something wonderful at Ivrin, long ago,” Daeron said. “Now we have a chance for something more. I have not really wanted anything for such a long time. Now that I find myself capable of it again, I intend to take what I want, and hold on with both hands.”

“What is it you want?”

“You. I feel as though I know you already—I want to know you in truth, all of you—laughter and anger and tears, music and silence, joy and sorrow. I want you to know me. Do you not also want that?”

“Of course I do,” Maglor said softly. He reached up to trace his fingers over Daeron’s face, over his eyebrows and down his temple. “I told you, I want a lot of things I can’t ever have.”

“Yet here I am. What else do you want that you think is beyond your reach?”

Maglor shook his head, unable to answer; his throat closed up and his tongue wouldn’t work. He wanted his brothers; he wanted his father, and his mother. He wanted new clothes and a hot meal and a bath with real soap. He wanted to see Elrond, to see Elros. He wanted to go home—only he didn’t know where that was anymore. 

“Come back down to the fire,” Daeron said. “I’m no more a healer than you are, but if you can make athelas work I think I can too.” He pulled Maglor up, and then did not let go of his hand as they descended the hill again. Daeron heated water and cast the athelas into it, and the steam smelled like the plains of Ard Galen at dawn, all fresh winds and dew on the grass, and it was like a veil was lifted from Maglor’s eyes that he hadn’t even realized had been laid over them. The colors around him all seemed more vivid, the sunshine brighter. “Better?” Daeron asked, and Maglor took a deep breath, and then another.

“Yes.” Maglor reached for him, and Daeron came, and for a long while there was no more talking, just a mess of hands and lips and teeth and skin. Daeron still wanted to devour, and Maglor was happy to be devoured. 

The next day they both went into the woods, looking for things to forage or to hunt. Maglor carried the bow, neither of them particularly confident in their ability to shoot anything. They found plenty to forage and Maglor lost three arrows trying to hit rabbits before giving up. Maglor felt far more like himself than he had in a long time—or maybe the influence of the Witch-king had just made it seem so. He did not feel so tired, and he could laugh more easily when Daeron made a joke or teased him.

And then Daeron said, as they returned to their camp, “Come to Rivendell with me.” At almost the same time a nightingale alighted in a bush nearby and started singing their song.

Maglor said, “I’ll want to run away as soon as we get there.”

“I won’t let you.”

“I don’t know what to say to Elrond.”

“I’m sure he has plenty to say—and you can begin with hello and I’m sorry.” Daeron slipped his arms around Maglor’s neck. “Come back with me,” he said softly. “It isn’t home, but it could be. For both of us.”

Maglor looked into his starlit eyes, and all his reasons for staying away died on his tongue. He swallowed hard. “All right,” he whispered. “All right, I’ll come.” Daeron smiled—a real smile, the first one Maglor had seen on his face since the Mereth Aderthad, that crinkled his eyes and dimpled his cheeks. “You really do want me to…?”

“Do you think I would have trekked across the whole of Eriador to find you again if I didn’t? Of course I want you.”

They left the cave and the hillside the next morning. It was a bright and sunny day, very like the day Maglor had found Daeron caught in the reeds in the river. There was no hurry, and they did not need to discuss it to agree not to retrace their steps from before. They would follow the river down to the sea and then follow the coast until they came to the mouths of the Gwathló. From there it would be easy enough to strike north, and so come to Rivendell by the same paths by which Daeron had left it. 

As they came to the banks of the Baranduin, though, they both paused. “I’ve heard that voice before,” Daeron said after a moment. It was a beautiful voice, a woman’s voice, young and old at once, with the cadence of water flowing over stones, and a deep joy running through it that was nearly enough to take Maglor’s breath away. 

“I think I have too, but not here,” he said. 

Then the woman began to sing their song of summertime by the Narog. Daeron gasped, and his grip on Maglor’s hand tightened. Maglor let out a breath, and almost wanted to laugh. “I think we’ve found who taught the nightingales that song,” he said.

“I don’t know whether I want to thank her or…” Daeron pulled Maglor along upstream. “Neither of us have ever sung that song before any audience. Or at least I haven’t.”

“I have, if you count seagulls,” said Maglor. 

“I don’t.”

They found the woman seated on the grass, combing out her long golden hair as she sang. She wore a dress of deep green shot with silver, like dew shining in the morning on summer grass. When she saw them coming she ended her singing and laughed before rising to her feet. “Well met, singers!” she said, holding out her hands in greeting. “I hoped my message would reach you, Maglor, and I am so glad that it did!”

“You sent the nightingale?” Maglor asked her. 

“I did.” The woman looked at Daeron; her eyes were blue as forget-me-nots and very kind. “Had you stumbled into the forest a little farther north, I could have done more for you, but my power wanes away from my own little river valley—and my Tom was busy elsewhere, and could not come with his own songs in time. So I sped you down the river on the raft and sent the nightingale to find the one who might best help you.”

Daeron bowed deeply. “Thank you,” he said, all other words seeming to fail him.

“Who are you, lady?” Maglor asked.

“I am the River Daughter,” she said, “sometimes I am called Goldberry. Perhaps you did not realize anyone was listening, in the beginning days of your wanderings, when you each sang and played that song and mourned and missed one another—but we heard, Tom and I, and we remembered.”

Maglor bowed alongside Daeron, but he couldn’t even make himself thank her properly, past the tight feeling in his throat. This was a kindness far beyond anything he had ever expected to find in the world, from strangers and strange beings, this River Daughter and her Tom, whoever he might be. 

Goldberry stepped forward and took both of their hands. Hers were smooth and soft. “The Shadow is growing again,” she said, her smile gone. It was strange to hear such a somber thing in her voice, which was as sweet to hear as spring rain upon the leaves. “I do not speak of Angmar. He is only a servant. It will soon be dangerous to wander, however far you might seek to take yourselves from danger. Already the Greenwood in the east is darkened, and orcs gather in the mountains even farther south than Carn Dûm. I have felt the rumblings in the earth, and heard fear on the wind and in the voices of the birds and beasts that come into my valley.”

“Our days of wandering are over,” Daeron said, his grip on Maglor’s hand tightening. “We go now back to Rivendell, and there we will stay.”

“Good!” Goldberry said, and her smile was like a flower opening in the sun. “Good, I am glad! And if you do find yourselves again on the road through the west, if you need aid or even just merry song—come seek the Withywindle! Pay the trees no mind, for they are old and dark-hearted, but will not trouble such mighty singers as you. Tom and I will welcome you under the hill and by the river, and we will sing together under the sun and under the stars.

“Thank you,” Daeron said again. Maglor bowed his head. “We will remember, Goldberry River-daughter.”

Goldberry kissed them each on the cheek before releasing their hands and turning away. “Farewell for now, singers!” she called over her shoulder as she walked away up the river. Her hair gleamed like gold under the sun, and as she walked away she began to sing—not their song, but one of her own, of all the things to be found on the banks of the river—sunshine and starlight, moonlight and clouds, reeds and in the shade and water lilies sweetly blooming in the spring.

“The Withywindle,” Daeron murmured after she disappeared from their sight. “Elrond spoke of that valley…he thought the nightingales had learned our song there.”

“It seems he was right.”

“Yes, but he did not speak of Goldberry, but of Iarwain Ben-adar.”

“I don’t know that name,” Maglor said.

“Iarwain, Eldest, was what I knew him as—when I had to.” Daeron turned away, and they began to follow the river in their own turn. “Perhaps he calls himself Tom, these days. He was always strange.”

For a while they walked in silence, the only sound the wind in the reeds and the water flowing beside them. Maglor kept thinking of what Goldberry had said and what Daeron had said in reply. “Daeron,” he said eventually. When Daeron glanced at him he said, “I don’t—I don’t think I can promise to stop wandering. Not forever.”

“If you’re trying to tell me you’ve changed your mind,” Daeron began.

“No—not that. I just—do you know why I was given the Gap, in Beleriand?”

“No, I confess I never gave it much thought at all.”

“I built no strongholds. My people did not settle in one place—well, some of them did, but for the most part we were always on the move, patrolling, or following the herds of our horses. My brother knew that I would have gone mad stuck behind walls like Himring or Barad Eithel. And—and there is a reason I have kept mostly to the seaside, when I could have ventured inland as you did, to the forests and the mountains. I do not dislike such places, but my heart has always turned toward wide open spaces. I’ve promised to go to Rivendell with you, and I will—and I won’t leave, not while the war with Angmar still rages and the Shadow grows, but…” He wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say. He didn’t know anything about Rivendell, really, except that it was Elrond’s stronghold and that it was said to be welcoming and homely, a place of rest and comfort. He did not know what to expect from Elrond himself, in spite of all Daeron’s reassurances, and knew even less what he could expect from anyone else who lived there. Glorfindel had trusted hid to hold the Last Bridge, but that did not mean he would welcome him into the valley with open arms.

There was also still Galadriel to consider. She was Maglor’s cousin, the two of them the last of Finwë’s grandchildren left in the world, but it had never been a secret that she held little love for Fëanor or his family. Daeron had not said she was in Rivendell, but that might change at any time. Maglor knew nothing of where she was or what she was doing.

Daeron was regarding him with dark, thoughtful eyes. The sunlight caught them just right, revealing the deep blue hidden in their depths. “If you promise not to leave just when it gets dangerous,” he said, “and to tell me, first—that’s all I ask. I don’t know how to describe what it felt like to wake up there alone, and to be told that you had not even made it across the bridge. Please do not disappear again. Not just for my sake—for Elrond’s, too.”

“And if I am sent away?” Maglor asked.

“You won’t be.”

“I don’t know if you can—”

“Did you think I lied when I told you that Elrond asked me to bring you back?”

“No, I just—”

“Then why do you not believe it?”

“Elrond has no reason to welcome me,” Maglor said. “After everything that I did—”

“I would ask if you had ever met Elrond,” Daeron said, rolling his eyes, “but for the fact that I know you raised him.”

“That’s a very kind way of putting it.”

“That is exactly how Elrond put it.”

Maglor looked away, out over the wide plains. A bird circling high overhead caught his eye and he watched it until it wheeled away out of sight. “I destroyed his home,” he said finally, “and later, I—”

“I know. He knows. The afternoon that he told me you had raised him, he said that he had almost given up hope that you lived. He said that he did not know whether it reassured him that you knew where he could be found, or if it only hurt that you knew and still didn’t come.”

“I told you,” Maglor said quietly, “I’m a coward.”

“That remains absurdly untrue.”

“It’s—”

“You think I’m not familiar with cowardice? I fled Beleriand entirely rather than face the consequences of my own actions. If I had stayed in Doriath—”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Maglor said, that truth escaping of its own volition—he didn’t want to think or speak of Doriath. “I’m glad you left, that you weren’t—if you had been there—” His voice failed. 

“We would have slain one another,” Daeron said after a little while. He let go of Maglor’s hand and folded his arms over his chest. His gaze was on the ground before them, his dark hair falling like a curtain around his face, hiding his expression. “Menegroth would have collapsed under the force of our voices.”

“Maybe,” Maglor said. He gripped the straps of his pack to stop himself rubbing at the scars on his palm. “More likely you would have been the victor.”

“No,” Daeron said softly. “There would have been no victory. It is said that I am the mightier and maybe that was true once, but I do not think the difference so great that we can say for certain that I would have taken or kept the upper hand. It doesn’t matter anyway, because that isn’t what happened. I used to regret it, bitterly, but I am glad now that we never had to face one another as enemies.”

“Do you no longer sing?” Maglor asked after another silence stretched between them, thinking of the quiet and almost half-hearted singing he’d overheard a few days before. 

“Only when there is no one else to hear,” Daeron said, still not raising his head. “Nothing like I ever did before. I am not powerless—but I am diminished. I had begun to fade long before I realized what was happening, long before I ever crossed paths with the—the enemy.”

“You aren’t now.”

“No, but I am not what I once was. I don’t even know if I want to be.”

“You still play beautifully,” Maglor offered after a moment.

“You’ll hear better in Rivendell.”

“If you won’t let me call myself a coward,” Maglor said quietly, “then I won’t let you speak ill of your music.”

“I’m not,” Daeron said. “I’m far better now than when I first picked it up again—but I cannot count the years between when I stopped and when I began in Rivendell. I don’t even remember where I lost my old flute, or when I stopped singing.” He paused, and then said, “I think you saved my life twice over, actually. All of Elrond’s skills could not have stopped me from fading away if you hadn’t put that flute in the pocket of your cloak. I do not know what I want or who I want to be, except that my spirit is half music and without it—” He shook his head, sharply. “I cannot be without it.”

“I’m glad that you took it up again,” Maglor said. He reached out his hand, and Daeron gripped it with white knuckles. “I would like for us to make music together again. It doesn’t matter to me who is the mightier singer, or how much or how little of your old skill you’ve regained so far.” Music had been his only solace since the world had fallen apart and taken the last shreds of his life, all that he had once cared about, with it. He didn’t know what he would do without it—if he would last even half as long as it seemed Daeron had. 

After a little while Daeron stopped walking. Maglor took another few steps before their arms stretched between them and he halted, turning to look back. “You have not yet promised not to disappear,” Daeron said. 

Maglor closed the distance between them and took Daeron’s face in his hands. “I won’t disappear,” he said, and kissed Daeron, as softly as he would allow. “I promise.”

Daeron pulled Maglor in closer, deepening the kiss. There was nothing gentle in it at all, just heat and want and something that still tasted a little like desperation. Maglor pulled back, softening it again, slowing down, trying to promise in another way that they had time. When they parted, he said, “I will get restless someday—I always have—but it won’t be for a long time.”

“Good,” Daeron said in a low voice. “I want to keep you as long as I can.”

“You won’t lose me,” Maglor whispered. “You’ve given me a reason to come back.”

They made their way slowly down the Baranduin to the Sea, and stepping back onto the sands felt a little like coming home. Maglor breathed deeply the fresh salt smell of the wind off the water. The Music of the world echoed in the waves that washed up over the shore, and where the river flowed into them and the fresh- and saltwater met and mingled. Birds flocked there; in the far distance a pod of dolphins could be seen jumping out of the water. 

They picked their way through the marshy river mouth, and wandered eastward. Daeron brought out his flute as they walked, and Maglor sang as he played, making up songs on the spot, or singing older ones they both knew. After a while Maglor took out his harp, and Daeron put his flute away to listen as Maglor sang songs he’d written in his long years of wandering, of the Sea and of the shores, of the birds and the sands, the stones and the waves. Daeron did not sing, and Maglor did not ask him to. Until Daeron felt able to lift his voice again in song, Maglor could sing enough for both of them.

They left the coast to skirt north of the Eryn Vorn rather than looping around the cape. The wood was dark, all pine and shadows, a remnant of the woods that had once covered all of Eriador, and the dwindling numbers of Men who lived there had grown distrustful of outsiders. Maglor had traded with them once or twice in recent years, but for the most part he left them alone. They came to the coast again and followed it south until the land curved around north again to the bay into which the Gwathló flowed. 

As far as such journeys went it was—pleasant. Almost fun? Maglor hadn’t had fun in years uncounted, but he enjoyed showing Daeron the secrets of the beaches and the shore, sharing with him the ways of the sea birds and the tide pools. Some days they did not do any traveling at all, and just sat by the water and listened. Daeron played his flute more and more, and soon they played most days together, improvising and at times laughing when they had ideas that clashed rather than harmonized.

Ships could be seen in the bay, heading north toward the river and up toward Tharbad, and away south and east to Gondor. “Have you been there, Gondor?” Daeron asked. He and Maglor sat atop a grassy dune near the river mouth, watching a ship drift out out into more open waters, sails billowing. They could hear the faint voices of the sailors singing as they worked. 

“Yes,” said Maglor. “I’ve visited Osgiliath and Minas Anor, and Pelargir, but there are Elf havens there too, on the Bay of Belfalas.”

“I think Galadriel and Celeborn lived there for a time,” Daeron murmured. 

“All the more reason for me to avoid them.”

“Mm.” Daeron frowned. “You know that Celebrían is their daughter.”

“Who?”

“Elrond’s wife. Did you not know he is married?”

“I did know that,” Maglor said. He’d happened to be lurking on the borders of Lindon when the wedding had taken place, and when he’d slipped into a small inn for a hot meal he’d found everyone inside drinking toasts to the Lord and Lady of Imladris. He could not recall if he had heard the name Celebrían then. He certainly had not known that she was Galadriel’s daughter. “Is she anything like her mother?”

“Yes and no. I was under her care for the most part after I first came to Rivendell.” Daeron didn’t look at Maglor, his gaze still trained on the ship. “It was very hard at first to look at Elrond. Or their daughter Arwen.”

“I did not know he had children,” Maglor said softly.

“Three. Twin sons, Elladan and Elrohir, and Arwen. Elladan and Elrohir have been very busy, riding out with Glorfindel and others. They will all be glad to welcome you, you know.”

Maglor dropped his gaze to the ground, digging his fingers into the sand, nails catching on grass roots just under the surface. “Is it not…you were alone for nearly as long as I have been—”

“Longer,” Daeron murmured. 

“—was it not…to go from that to being surrounded by so many…”

“I was able to get used to it a little at a time. For a long while I was confined to bed, and then I only rarely left my room. No one minded. I’m still not really used to it—it was something of a relief to get away and be by myself again, except that now I remember what it’s like to not be lonely, and…I would rather brave the discomfort than return to that. If you need to hide away for a while, they’ll understand. Just—don’t run away.”

“I just…don’t know how to talk to anyone anymore.”

“You talk to me.”

“You’re different. You understand.”

Daeron leaned against him, taking his hand to tangle their fingers together. “It won’t be as bad as you fear.”

They followed the Gwathló north, keeping out of sight of the ships moving up and down it, and those who lived and worked along the banks. They passed through tilled fields and pastures, and sooner than Maglor had expected they reached Tharbad. Daeron kept a firm grip on Maglor’s hand as they crossed the bridge, as though worried that Maglor might bolt at the sight of so many people. He wasn’t wholly wrong either, Maglor thought a little sourly as he kept his head down and tried not to flinch every time they were jostled as they passed through the crowded streets. Tharbad was overflowing with people, far more than when Maglor had last ventured into it. Many were from the north, having fled the ravages of Cardolan and Rhudaur. Daeron stopped a few times to ask for news; what they heard was not very good. Angmar was rallying, pushing back against Araphor and the armies out of Lindon. 

“The way to Rivendell will be kept clear, at least coming from the south as we are,” Daeron said as they left Tharbad, striking north on a less well-traveled road than the one that led northwest back toward the Baranduin and Sarn Ford. 

They passed through the marshes of the Swanfleet, and passed into the lands of what had once been Eregion. Maglor paused as they crossed over the Glanduin, looking eastward. “What is it?” Daeron asked. 

“Did you ever go there—Ost-in-Edhil?”

“No.”

“There’s nothing left of it now. It was…it was my nephew’s city. Eregion was his realm. I never came there when it stood. I didn’t…” Words failed him. They always did even when he did no more than try to think of Celebrimbor. Finally he choked out, “He died. Horribly. And I wasn’t there.”

“I’ve heard the tale,” Daeron said. “I’m not sure there is anything you could have done that would have made a difference.”

“I could have been there,” Maglor said.

“Come.” Daeron took his hand and pulled him northward. “There is nothing left here. Those who escaped Eregion dwell now in Rivendell, and there the memory and legacy of Celebrimbor lives on.” He said nothing, and did not let go of his hand as Maglor wept quietly, not for the first or last time, for his nephew and all the beautiful things he had made that had then been laid to waste and destroyed—for no reason except hatred.

It was a long journey on foot, following the Gwathló. Eventually they came to the convergence of the Mitheithel and the Bruinen, and Daeron led Maglor east along the latter. It was autumn now, and the wind from the north carried a bite. They wrapped themselves in their cloaks, and watched the leaves changing color as they drew farther north, passing through faded grasses and wildflowers all gone to seed. Birds flew south past them, following the river and their own instincts. At times in the evening they sat and watched enormous flocks of starlings fly in strange and ever-shifting formations, dark against the sunset, the only sound the flowing water before them and the murmuration of many thousands of wings all beating together. 

Finally, they came to the ford and turned east into a strange country of heather-clad hills, but also with sudden valleys and small canyons that might open before them without any warning at all. What path there was, was marked with small white stones that Daeron needed to move slowly and look hard to find—but both of them were nervous now, so close to the front lines of the war that still raged. Maglor kept glancing north and west, though there wasn’t any good reason for it. 

A company from Rivendell found them before they could find it, appearing suddenly as though out of the ground itself some distance ahead. Glorfindel rode at the head of it, gleaming in the sunlight. Daeron grabbed Maglor’s hand as the riders cantered toward them, but Maglor found himself unable to move at all until Daeron pulled him, let alone turn and run. He kept his hood up as he glanced at those following Glorfindel, though he did not recognize any of their faces. His heart beat painfully hard in his chest, and he kept the hand Daeron was not holding clasped firmly around the strap of his pack, visible and away from the sword on his belt. 

“Well met, Daeron!” Glorfindel called. He was smiling, and did not seem surprised to see that Daeron had not returned alone. “Your search has borne fruit, I see!”

“It has,” Daeron replied. “Where are you going?”

“North, past the Trollshaws to the Mitheithel. You would do well to hurry on to Rivendell before nightfall.” Glorfindel looked at Maglor then, and added, “Elrond is waiting for you.”

“Thank you, Glorfindel,” Daeron said, and Glorfindel nodded and urged his horse on past, bells jingling and glinting in the sunshine. Once all the riders had passed and disappeared away toward the ford, Daeron looked at Maglor. “Are you ready?”

“No,” Maglor said. “But let’s go.”

When they came to the place where Glorfindel had appeared so suddenly, Maglor gasped. A valley opened up below them, large but narrow. A river flowed through it, crossed by a slender bridge of grey stone. It was a place of small forests interspersed with glades and meadows. The sunshine gleamed on the river and glowed on the still-green grass. The house was enormous, rambling and many-chimneyed, but welcoming and lovely in spite of clearly having been built piecemeal over many years. Figures moved around it and through the gardens, up and down the paths, along the river. At their feet the path into the valley descended sharply, switch-backing down an almost sheer incline. “Here it is, the Last Homely House,” Daeron said. He tugged gently on Maglor’s hand, and they descended the path. As soon as they stepped onto it, it was like they had crossed some sort of border. The air felt different. As they descended Maglor could smell pine, and lower still he could hear merry voices below and ahead of them, singing in the trees. There was a power laid over the valley that he could sense was more than it seemed, yet it did not feel like a threat. It took him a long time to realize what it was that he felt. 

It was Elrond—the way he breathed his power into it the way that Melian had once laid hers over Doriath. The way the Valar had sunk theirs into Valinor, long ago across the Sea, the way Maglor had poured forth his own power into the preservation and protection of the Gap long ago, and Maedhros had chiseled his into the hard stone of Himring, all of them in their own way pouring all the love in their hearts into the lands given into their care.

With that power, of course, came an awareness, and Maglor thought that that awareness might even reach all the way to the Bruinen. However far it went, Elrond knew someone had entered the valley after Glorfindel left it, and he seemed to know who they were. A figure emerged from the house and all but flew over the bridge. Maglor stumbled to a halt and nearly tripped when Daeron pulled him forward. “Come on! I told you I wouldn’t let you run away.”

“But I can’t—” He had not seen Elrond since before the end of the War of Wrath and he’d had weeks to think of what to say when they met again and now that he was here his mind had gone entirely blank. Words failed him. “I don’t—” 

Daeron was somehow suddenly behind him and pushed him forward. Maglor tripped, and was caught up in shockingly strong arms as Elrond crashed into him, nearly sending them both tumbling back the other way into the grass, and suddenly all that love he’d felt laid over the valley was focused entirely on him, and he knew it should not have been so surprising, after all that Daeron had told him, but it still was. It was also overwhelming, like he was drowning in starlight.

“Maglor,” Elrond choked out, as though he were overwhelmed too. “You’re here.”

“I’m sorry,” Maglor said, as Elrond released him just long enough to pulled back so they could look one another face to face, for the first time on so long. Elrond had grown—he was no taller, but he was broader and more filled in, rather than the too-thin youth that hadn't yet grown into his height, fair of face and dark-haired. His voice had deepened. His eyes, though, were the same eyes Maglor remembered. Maglor had no idea what he looked like, except dirty and unkempt and tired. “Elrond, I—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Elrond said. He had tears on his face. “It doesn’t matter—you’re here now.”

It did matter. They would have to talk about it, and Maglor would apologize, over and over, for all the wrongs and all the years—but later, if Elrond wouldn’t let him do it now. Maybe that was for the best; Maglor was so tired, and so relieved that Elrond really was glad to see him that he felt dizzy with it. 

Elrond turned to embrace Daeron, who looked startled by the gesture, and then took them both by the hand to lead the way back to the house. They crossed the bridge over the river, its music bright and joyful, and into the house. It was full of people, though not as crowded as Tharbad had been, but everyone here turned to look at him, to greet him or to stare at him, and if Elrond had not had such a firm grip on his hand Maglor might have forgotten all his promises and fled. 

At last they came to a room into which Daeron disappeared; Elrond opened the door next to it, and led Maglor into a small but cozy bedroom. Braided rugs covered the wooden floor, and a fire crackled cheerfully on the hearth. Out of the window he could see the river and the gardens, still clinging to summer greens with late-blooming flowers. A wardrobe stood in the corner, and—and there was a harp, a full-sized harp by the window. Maglor went to it before he could even think about it, running a hand over the frame and then across the strings, the notes all clear and soft in the quiet of the room. 

“What happens now?” he asked Elrond, who lingered by the door. He couldn’t quite make himself turn to look at him.

“You take a bath, and change into clean clothes, and eat something,” Elrond said. 

“No, I mean—”

“Did you think I would lock you up somewhere?” Elrond asked. “I asked Daeron to bring you back here because I missed you, Maglor. I want you to stay because I love you—but I will not make you do anything.”

“And everyone else here will just…say nothing of the kinslayer in their midst?”

“If you stay long enough,” Elrond said softly, “you’ll find other kinslayers. Where did you think they all went, those followers of your brothers that survived?”

Maglor hadn’t really thought any of them had survived. “What of Círdan, or Galadriel, or—”

“I do not think either of them will react as badly as you expect—but even if they do, neither have any authority in this valley. I do, I and Celebrían, and we want you here.” Elrond crossed the room to take Maglor’s hand—his right hand, the one burned and scarred by the Silmaril. He searched Maglor’s face, worry creasing his brow. “You should not have gone after Angmar alone, Maglor,” he said softly. “It has hurt you worse than you realize.”

“Daeron called it the Black Breath.”

“It is the worst of the weapons of the Nazgûl—but it can be cured, if you’ll let me.”

“Of course I will.” Maglor dropped his gaze from Elrond’s face to their joined hands. “I missed you, Elrond. I'm—I’m sorry that I did not come find you sooner. I just…” He had reasons, good ones, but they would not sound so if he spoke them aloud now. He had gotten everything wrong, and he didn’t know how not to make the same mistakes again. “I’m sorry.”

“I forgave you a long time ago,” Elrond said. “Please stay. You’ve been punished enough, haven’t you?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

“I do.”

“I already promised Daeron I would stay,” Maglor said. “I’ll give you the same promise—I won’t disappear again.”

“Thank you.”

Maglor did as Elrond had said—he bathed, lingering until his skin wrinkled and the water went cold—and changed into clothes that were clean and softer than he remembered fabric could be. A meal waited for him on a tray by the hearth, but between the bath and everything else he felt almost too tired for it. Elrond had been called away, or had been kind enough to leave him alone for a while to convince himself that he’d made the right choice. Daeron did not appear again either—probably because he was busy with the same things Maglor had been doing, and more. Maglor ate the food slowly, because he couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten anything like it—a meal cooked in a real kitchen with real seasonings by someone who knew what they were doing, who made it to be enjoyed and not just eaten as a means to stay alive. 

Then he fell onto the bed, which was piled with pillows and blankets, all so soft that he felt like he was floating. He was more than half afraid he’d wake up somewhere far away to find that this had all been some strange dream, but it was as though all of the long years he’d spent wandering alone were making themselves known at once, and he couldn’t keep his eyes open, let alone sit or stand, under the weight of them. 

He didn’t know how long he dozed until the door opened, and a moment later the mattress dipped under Daeron’s weight. He rearranged the pillows and blankets around them both and then tucked himself under Maglor’s arm, against his chest. Maglor tried to say something, but wasn’t sure whatever noise he made had any real words in it. “Shh,” Daeron whispered. His lips brushed against Maglor’s in the softest of kisses. “Go back to sleep.” He was warm, and smelled of the same soap Maglor had used—fresh and clean and scented with apple blossoms. 

The next thing Maglor knew it was morning. The breeze was cool but the sun was bright and golden, falling across the bed and shining on Daeron’s hair where it fanned out over the pillows. He was awake already, and smiled a little when Maglor opened his eyes. “I told you it would be better to wake like this in a bed,” he said. 

“Mmm.” Maglor never wanted to leave that bed. It was warm and everything was soft, and he felt safer than he had in so many years. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Have all your fears proved unfounded?”

“Yes, but I’ve found new ones to take their place.”

“That still doesn’t make you a coward. It just makes you exasperating.” Daeron didn’t sound particularly irritated, though. “Just remember your promise.”

“Do you want me to swear an oath instead?”

Daeron reached up to pull on his hair, a sharp tug to punctuate his emphatic, “No. Don’t be foolish. I want you here because you want to be, not because you are bound to it.”

“I do want to be here. With you.”

“Good.”

It was very quiet in the bedroom. Daeron’s eyes were bright, and his face no longer hollow and colorless. The scar remained across his chest, a pale reminder of terrible suffering, but that was all it was now. And Maglor himself felt safer and less afraid than he had in many years—in spite of the still-looming threat of Angmar, in spite of Goldberry’s warnings of another darker Shadow growing in the east. With the sun shining so bright and Daeron looking at him with such soft warmth, Maglor caught himself feeling almost hopeful. Outside the window a nightingale burst into song.

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