The Mirror Crack'd by AdmirableMonster  

“You know nothing,” Maedhros says bleakly, “of what I was in Beleriand.”

…

“You know that isn’t true,” Annatar says. 

—Chthonion, The Harrowing, Ch. 50

Something howls in the distance. Dark earth closes in around him.  His companion’s luminous eyes stare at him from the depths.  Guilt and fear and anger knot tightly in his chest, though he does not know why.  “I will draw them off,” someone says.  The voice is far away, and something about it is terribly, terribly wrong.

“You can’t,” growls the eyes in the darkness, warns the eyes in the darkness, howls the eyes in the darkness.  “They will kill you.”

“Perhaps they will not kill us both.  I would deny them that, at least.”  Which is he—the monster hidden in the darkness, or the monster crouched at the round entrance to the burrow?

“Please—”

“You told me once you had sacrificed yourself for another.  Maybe it’s your turn to be saved.”  (One of them did tell the other that, didn’t he?  Everything is so cold.  Thinking does not quite seem to work.)

Something howls wordlessly behind him.  The burrow falls away, and as soon as the suffocating earth is gone, he regrets it.  Those earthen walls were tight but safe; they hid him like a fox in its den (but hounds can dig a fox out of its den.  Better one than both, surely.)

He runs.  The high white moon overhead is watching him, like an open eye.  The stars blink, fearful and relentless.  He needs to be hidden, but his face and head and back feel as if they are on fire.  Some terrible emotion behind him drives him onward—fear, perhaps, or shame, or misery.  Twigs crack beneath his bare feet—too tender.  Why does he only have two feet when he is running this way, through moon-silvered fields and rivers, with the thing behind him following?  Why is it so hard to see or to scent?  Where is he going?

It is not only a feeling behind him, is it?  It is not only his own clumsy footsteps on the earth that he hears.  There is something else, pacing him.  The fugitive knows what it is to be a hunter, and he knows now, with a sudden and shocking realization, that he is the prey.  He has lost his protection and his power, and now there is only fear, the blood pounding through injured veins, the final terrified flight that can end only one way.  The injured prey does not escape.

(This is what you deserve.)

A knee gives out.  He is on the ground.  Pain roars in his ears with his breath.  This is the end, and it is only his own failure that has made it so.

As his lungs seize up, burning, as he waits for the teeth that will inevitably sink into his throat, he hears, distantly, the sweet silver sound of a horn.

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The moon was hanging low at the horizon.  Maedhros paced again, back and forth, unable to keep himself still, unable to keep from looking up at it every few moments.  

I’ll be at Himring before moonset, the note from Fingon had read.  So where was he?  Maedhros was aware of the thousands of perfectly normal things that could have delayed him, and he told himself that his husband was more than capable of taking care of himself, but the increasing knot of panic at the base of his chest refused to listen to reason.  He wanted to ride out and search.

You cannot, he told himself sternly.  It is not even moonset yet.

Back he went across the wall, another two laps.  Taking a deep breath, he shut his eyes and focused on his other senses, trying to center himself.  He smelled wet leaves on the air, felt the strength of Himring’s walls beneath his feet.  And then, poised like that, trying to settle the restlessness boiling inside him, he heard the sound of Fingon’s horn, faint, on the wind.  Not a call for help: a declaration of arrival.

The fear dissipated like smoke, leaving faint embarrassment and frustration.  He opened his eyes—Tilion had barely brushed the horizon with the base of his curve.  Late, but not that late.  And Fingon was not exactly known for his punctuality at the best of times.  Maedhros ran his hand through his hair and started deliberately for the stairs leading down from the top of the wall.

By the time he heard the hoofbeats of Fingon and his company, Maedhros had commanded himself and hoped he no longer looked like a lovelorn child.  Fingon would probably know how he had been acting anyway, but at least he would not undercut the faith of those who depended on either of them.

He had the doors opened with a wave of his hand, and Fingon rode in, breathless and grinning as he always was after a hard ride.  To Maedhros’s surprise, he was not riding by himself; on the front of the horse, he had a limp, vaguely Elf-shaped bundle.  

“Were you waylaid, Finno?” he called, though Fingon himself looked uninjured.

“No, indeed,” Fingon returned, with a cheerful wave, pulling the horse gently to a stop.  “Say rather we did some waylaying ourselves!  This poor soul was running from one of Angband’s creatures, and if we hadn’t arrived when we did, I shudder to think what would have happened to him.  Can you take him so I can get down?”

“Of course.”  Maedhros held his arms out and Fingon swung his burden down.  

The Elf was wrapped in Fingon’s cloak.  He was unconscious, but the murmur of pain when he was transferred to Maedhros suggested he had wounds beside the most obvious one—one eye had been put out, and not cleanly.  Though he no longer had the connection to the Song he would have needed to perform a true healing, Maedhros had made it a point to be able to perform more mundane medicine.  He checked Fingon’s newest rescue victim over quickly, searching for further injuries and any clues to the stranger’s identity.

The wrists were red and swollen where he had been manacled, perhaps too tightly.  His throat was bruised and a little torn, but that injury was older, scabbing over.  There was something wrong with his back.  Maedhros peeled his shirt away, trying to get a better look, though he was not going to deposit the stranger on the ground just to see his back better.

He didn’t need to—although it was dim, the eerie blue-white radiance was obvious as soon as he pulled away the cloth.  There was something sunk into his spine—Maedhros would have to take a closer look later, but he recognized the handiwork.

“An escaped thrall,” he grunted.

Fingon’s eyebrows rose.  “He traveled far, then, on severe injuries.  Well, I am glad I was able to bring him to you.”

There were few places in Beleriand that would take in thralls; Himring was one of them.  It was the least Maedhros felt that he could do.

“Come in,” Maedhros told him.  “Himring is glad to host the High King.”

He got a cheeky grin in return.  “Please don’t stand on ceremony,” Fingon said.  “Everyone is tired.”

“Hemmoril will see to your horses.  You’re welcome to your usual chambers.”  He looked down at the still body slumped in his arms.  “I’ll get him to the healers.”

As Fingon passed him, he trailed his fingers subtly across Maedhros’s inner arm and leaned in to murmur, “I will most certainly be in my usual chambers, O Lord of Himring.  Try not to spend too long with the healers.  I am quite impatient to be attended to myself.”

* * *

The slave had not expected to wake again, yet here he was.  Nor was he houseless; there was far too much pain anchored in his back and face for him to have been left without a body.  It was important, he knew (though he did not know how he knew it), to ascertain where he was and with whom, so that he might understand his responsibilities, but his mind was clouded.  Thoughts slipped away before he could grasp them like leaves carried on the wind, leaving behind only the memory of gentle hands and a gravel-coarse voice.

He had been in a place of dark halls, where inchoate darkness met lines of rigid light.  Some part of him realized he was no longer there: whatever this place was, it was not so extreme.  The air was cold, but the slave was not—he was bundled into blankets, and something hot was poured into his mouth and down his throat.  Cold was a torment for him, and he was pathetically grateful for this strange kindness.

Then, one day, he awoke to striped sunlight and knew the world without knowing himself.  He sat up and looked around, as if he might be able to anchor himself that way and find an answer to a question he should not have had: who am I? 

He was in a small bed in a small room.  It was covered in a plain but well-made quilt.  The walls of the room were hidden by thick, unornamented green tapestries, and there was a square window through which sunlight was very determinedly streaming.  There was something wrong with his vision—he was almost certain he ought to have had a greater field of view than he did—and there was clearly something else wrong as well.  Who was he?  Where had all his memories gone?

Don’t panic, he told himself.  That would be inappropriate and might lead to punishment from—an authority figure.  Stay calm.  He clenched his fists and tried to catalogue what information he did still possess.  There was too much, and he didn’t know where to start.  Increasing the heat of the forge when tempering steel would lead to greater toughness, but the strength and the hardness would decrease.  The sound of Yavanna’s name in the great Song was like a waterfall of wren calls.  The appropriate punishment for stealing food was six to twelve lashes, depending on the strength of the culprit.

How could he even begin to find himself in this flood of disconnected knowledge?

The door began to open, and he felt instinctively for a weapon before realizing it was not necessarily safe to have one.  He sat back anxiously.  (Who am I supposed to be?)

“Ah.  You’re awake.”

An Elf.  Red-haired, craggy-faced, and one-handed, moving with a graceful strength.  The missing hand was an old injury, and the muscles in his wrist showed that he compensated well.  Something about him was faintly familiar, and the slave tried to grab at the memory, but it slipped away and was lost in the myriad of others, a single grain of sand muddied into the rest of a yellow shore.  

“It’s still going to be some time before you’re back on your feet.  I’m sorry.”  The Elf’s gravelly voice did not vary from its monotone.  “Your injuries were extensive.  Not everything could be healed.  But you’ll do better day by day.”

“What injuries?” asked the slave.  It seemed like the safest question, and he had intended to stop there, but there were still too many pieces of information floating around in no particular order, and he found himself asking before he could keep the words from his lips, “Where am I?”  He managed to bite down, Who am I? He knew he could not risk revealing his inadequacy, though he did not know how he knew.

The red-haired Elf did not look at him directly, which confused him.  There was a sense of predatory ease about this Elf, all the knowledge of power settled on his shoulders, but his body language was—not submissive, not exactly—non-threatening.  Maybe even deliberately non-threatening.  And the slave could not think of any reason for someone to treat him that way.  “You’re in Himring, a stronghold of the Noldor.  I am Maedhros Left-Handed.”

Although the name was meaningful in the abstract, the slave wondered at the physical reaction he had to it—his chest tightening, heat rising to his cheeks.  His body was preparing to fight, or to flee.

“No one here will hurt you,” Maedhros Left-Handed continued, which the slave knew was absurd.  “We have many ex-thralls among our ranks, myself included.”

Was he an ex-thrall, the slave wondered?  Had he been a thrall?  He could recall many disjointed facts about Angband, but none of them seemed to hold the immediacy that he assumed should be associated with the direct memory of an experience.  “You are no thrall,” he found himself saying in a low voice.  Knowing he should not have spoken, he shivered slightly, awaiting his punishment.

Maedhros Left-Handed made a low growling noise, but when he spoke it was in the same matter-of-fact monotone.  “I was.”  Slowly, he levered himself up from the wall, and the slave tensed, fists clenching again.  “I was coming in to take a look at your wounds.  Will you let me, now that you’re awake?”

So this was the punishment.  It would be worse, the slave knew, if he took the proffered choice as a real one.  He dipped his head submissively.  “Of course, my lord.”

“If you want to show me respect, I’d prefer ‘Lord of Himring.’”

“Of course, Lord of Himring.”

The slave was exquisitely aware of each motion—it took two steps to reach the side of the bed.  “Can you look at me?  I want to check your eye.”

Sternly, he quelled the instinctive desire to recoil and patiently turned his face upward.  It was only now that he realized he could feel the rough tightness of cloth tied about his head.  The Lord of Himring touched his head gently as he unwound it.  The slave understood now why there had been something wrong with his vision—something was covering his eye.

But the freeing of the eye from the confines of cloth did nothing to improve the field of his vision.  The Lord of Himring made a humming noise and clicked his tongue.  “It’s healing well.”

“What is?” the slave asked, then bit the inside of his cheek.  He was certain that he knew how to control himself better than this.

“That’s right, I didn’t describe the injuries.  Sorry.”  The Lord of Himring released him.  “You’ve lost an eye.”

The room narrowed, sudden and terrible.  “What?” someone said, in the slave’s ear.  “No—”

“It was a clean loss, but it will take getting used to.”

It fit the available evidence, but it couldn’t be, because if he had lost an eye, then he was—imperfect—useless.  It had to be a lie.  Why would the Lord of Himring keep alive a one-eyed, useless, half-dead—

“Hush.”  The Lord of Himring did not touch him, but the rough voice cut right through him. Once again, it seemed strangely familiar, but once again, the memory slid away into the vast hourglass of his mind.  “You will not be killed.  And this wound is almost healed.  That may not help, but I will not lie to you about this.”

Everyone lies!  There was an awful pain in his throat, and now a terrible pain in the one eye that he apparently still had.  He reached for it, wanting to make it stop, and he was halted, a heavy hand pinning his wrists down.

“I won’t let you hurt yourself more,” said the Lord of Himring.  “Although you may leave here if you wish when you can walk away.  That is my—promise—to any ex-thrall brought to me.”  That hand—crushingly strong—held the slave’s with enough strength to keep him from raising his, yet without causing pain.  The slave rifled desperately through the mess of useless, distant memories, trying to understand, trying to at least make a guess as to why, but he could find nothing.

“Your other major—wound—is that you have an artifact embedded in your spine.”

The slave did not know what he had been expecting, but it was not that.  He tried to sift through possibilities and came up with nothing.  Eventually, letting his hands drop, he said, blankly, “What kind of artifact?”

“I don’t know,” the Lord of Himring said grimly.  “I have seen such things before, but only in dead things, and you are not dead.”

Dead things.  Yes, the slave knew the kind of artifact he referred to: a rune-carved chain stitched into the flesh to bind the soul.  He could not come up with any use for such a chain in a living form, either.  Unless he had escaped prior to an execution—but what kind of prisoner would warrant such treatment?  It was not so hard to stitch up a soul after the body’s death.  And he had never heard of sinking the chain into the spine.  He was a little surprised that he was capable of moving—and in fear, he tried to move both legs.  To his relief, they responded willingly to his commands.

“No, you’re not paralyzed,” the Lord of Himring told him.  “It’s doing very little.  We had to turn you onto your side because you didn’t lie well on your back.  And it glows, at times, or grows cold.  But that’s all.”

Get it off, the slave wanted to say, but if it was embedded into the spine, there would be no way to remove it if he wanted to keep not being paralyzed. Something in the room whimpered softly.

“I wish I could tell you more.”  Maedhros Left-Handed, the Lord of Himring, sat gingerly on the side of the bed and just as gingerly set the slave’s hands back into his lap.  “Once I’ve finished examining you, I’ll leave you alone.  It’s good that you’re awake.”

Still confused, the slave permitted this.  There were many things he did not understand now, and they only seemed to be getting more curious, but the one that he found drew his attention the most strongly right now was this: how had such a great warrior learned so much about the art of medicine?

* * *

The next day, the Lord of Himring returned, but he did not come alone.  With him was another Elf, much shorter, with a musical voice and gold ribbons braided into his black hair.  The voice was familiar, but the slave did not know why.

“Will you introduce us?” this Elf asked, with twinkling eyes and a flashing smile.  It was hard not to like him—though he was clearly as accomplished a warrior as the other.  When he took a step forward and said, frankly, “I’m glad you’re doing better now,” the slave realized he actually did have a memory of his own of this Elf—face set and ferocious, wielding a great bow that sang as it loosed.  The arrow had sunk deeply into the back of the creature that had been a moment away from tearing the slave’s throat out.

“My lord,” the slave choked out, hurriedly trying to get out of the bed.  “I owe you my life.”

“Many do,” the Lord of Himring rumbled out wryly.

“I do not keep count,” said the Elf, waving a hand lightly.  “It is enough for the life to be saved.”

The slave sank back into the bed in some confusion.

“Yes, I find him infuriating as well,” said the Lord of Himring in the same tempered monotone, his grey eyes resting on the new Elf.  Then he paused, looking back to the slave.  “…I never asked your name.”

Sudden panic rose in the slave’s throat.  He must know the answer.  It was absurd not to know the answer.  It was a clear failure not to know the answer, and he could not fail—

But he hesitated too long, or the consternation was writ on his face, because the other Elf was speaking again, to the Lord of Himring.

“You didn’t ask his name?” he said, sounding scandalized.

The Lord of Himring shifted on his feet and cleared his throat.  “It slipped my mind.  I was focused on other things.”

The other Elf made a scoffing noise, then turned back to the slave.  “Please forgive Maedhros, he’s unaccountably rude sometimes.”

“Finno,” the Lord of Himring said softly.  He put his hand on the crook of the Elf’s elbow. “Finno, he’s—”

A quick glance that the slave could not read went back and forth.  “Well, it is no matter—do you object to me giving you a name we can use for you?” asked Finno.  “You need not share anything you do not want to, but I find it distasteful when I have no name to associate with a person.”

This was not a way out that the slave had foreseen.  Where had the offer come from?  He felt as if he stood at the very brink of a terrible precipice, and the only thing keeping him from falling was that cheerful, matter-of-fact voice.  

“I do not object, my lords,” he said, after a moment of struggle to assemble the words.  “Indeed, it would be most—most kind.”  How can you not know! screamed his mind, but no matter how he sifted through the information, he could still find none that referred to himself.

“Well, then, what about ‘Anniavas’?” suggested Finno.

The slave automatically broke the Sindarin word apart and put it back together in the language he was most familiar with.  Not a language he should use here.  He stared at his hands.  This name—this was not a reference, it was—

(A trap?  A recognition?  Why?  Why have you suggested this when I am—)

A queer kindness.

“If you don’t like it—”

“I like it very much,” Anniavas said, his words ringing with a sincerity he had not expected.  

Anniavas.  Gift of autumn.

Chapter End Notes

The name "Anniavas" is from the wonderful chestnut_pod's inimitable name list.

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After an initial few days spent aching and miserable in bed, Anniavas healed swiftly.  Apart from his eye, he had not been terribly injured.  The strange artifact in his back appeared quiescent.  Soon the Lord of Himring pronounced him well enough to get up and move about.  He reiterated that Anniavas could leave if he so desired.

“No, thank you,” Anniavas said, soft and polite.  He was still unsure if the offer was genuine, a test of loyalty, or some strange combination of both.  He had already tried to kneel, but the Lord of Himring said he would not have anyone kneeling to him.  “Is there no—work for me here?”

“There’s work.  Plenty of it.”

Menial labor, probably.  A shard of pride, hidden deep within Anniavas, reared its head rebelliously, but he quashed it ruthlessly.  He had come here with nothing, he had been succored, and he owed a life debt to both the Lord of Himring and the Elf named Finno.  No matter how skilled he had been before—if he had been skilled—he was nothing, here.  (No—not nothing.  Anniavas.)

“What would you have me do?”

“What are your skills?”

Anniavas swallowed, tensing, and hunched his shoulders forward.  “I—I do not know, my—Lord of Himring.”

A swift pause.  “You don’t remember,” the Lord of Himring said.  His voice never changed in tone, but it had grown slightly quieter.

He could not force the words past his lips, but he nodded.

“Ah.”  The Lord of Himring turned abruptly away from Anniavas, sitting unmoored and fearful on the edge of the bed, and crossed to the window.  “I see.”

“I’m certain I can still be useful!” Anniavas blurted before he had the chance to think about what he was saying.

The Lord of Himring stood for an instant, staring out.  “I’m sure you can be,” he agreed, in the same tone and at the same pace as always.  The rabbit-quick beat of Anniavas’s heart evened out slightly.  “I hadn’t realized that Finno’s name for you—would you prefer to name yourself?”

Sudden sharp pain stabbed directly through his chest.  Am I not a gift?  He tried to answer, but his throat closed on the words.  There was only the soft sound of his choked breathing.

After a moment, the Lord of Himring turned and looked at him.  “Ah,” he said again, easily.  “If you like it, you may keep it.  Finno is very good at names.  He calls me Russandol.”

“Please,” Anniavas(?) choked out.  “I will do anything you ask of me, Lord of Himring, if only I can keep this one thing.”

A heavy breath.  “I ask nothing of you, Anniavas.”

The terrible roaring began to fade slowly from his ears.  His lungs expanded with one breath and then another.

“Freedom is fearful, I know,” the Lord of Himring said.  “Moreso, perhaps, when your soul and not your mind remembers captivity.”

My soul remembers nothing.  What memories he had were nothing more than a disparate collection of truths, impersonal—worse, disordered.  Anniavas could not be sure if, grasping for a relevant piece of information, he would find it, or if the hand of his mind would come back empty.  He closed his lips together and nodded mutely.

He was not sure if the Lord of Himring took this sign of agreement as sufficient, or if he simply did not want to bother punishing someone for a small deviation, but either way, he moved the conversation onward.

“So you don’t know what your skills are, which means you will have to rediscover them,” he said, in that same impossibly-measured tone of voice.  “Are you aware of having any preferences?”

Not having to answer needless questions.  Anniavas froze in horror at the thought, ducking his head.  Surely the Lord of Himring could not overlook that.

And yet—he could, or unlike whatever Anniavas had known previously, he did not have the trick of seeing into another’s mind.  “No,” he whispered, after a moment.  “No preferences, Lord of Himring.”

Another pause.  The Lord of Himring was very still, and it occurred to Anniavas that this was not what he expected from a lord, but from a slave.  One remained still, so as to remain unnoticed.  Yet he could find no information suggesting that the Lord of Himring had ever been a thrall, as he claimed.  Still—his perceptions had been more trustworthy thus far than his memories, so perhaps he must simply take the lord at his word.  But then, why should any ex-thrall try to help another?  Either you chose to return, or you chose to run as far away as you could.

“I suggest the gardens,” the Lord of Himring said into the stillness, scattering Anniavas’s thoughts.

He was so startled that he responded automatically, “The gardens, my lord?”

“I believe the lower west tea-garden has need of another pair of hands.  And in my experience, being surrounded by growing things is a boon for an ex-thrall.  Also—Lord of Himring, if you please.”

“Lord of Himring,” Anniavas corrected himself hurriedly.  

Why?  Why will you not be my lord?  Perhaps he had not yet proven himself sufficiently.  But if that was the case, why was Maedhros not angrier when he failed to remember it?  He reminded himself that it was not his place to question his—to question the lord of the fortress in which he found himself.  His thoughts buzzed around, hard to control.  Had they ever been so?

Irrelevant.  He took a long, deep breath, and pushed away the doubt.  The Lord of Himring had given him a task.  “The gardens, Lord of Himring.  I will do as you say.”

“As I ask, Anniavas.” Maedhros turned away from the window.  His scarred face remained expressionless, his voice monotonous, but his shoulders stooped slightly, and Anniavas realized he was deliberately avoiding eye contact.  “As I ask.”

* * *

A chilly early-morning wind went down the back of Anniavas’s neck, and he slouched forward.  Himring’s quartermaster, a grim Elf who went by the name of Palandin, had given him a heavy wool cloak, old but well-made, and told him to start wearing it when the days grew colder.  He would have to start soon, but something inside him rebelled at using such fine material except at greatest need.  Besides, it was scratchy.

Perhaps he should have worn it this morning, though.  He hadn’t realized until he was already skirting around the inside of Himring’s western wall that a gentle rain was falling, quiet but icy-cold.  He could have avoided it by cutting through the stables, but the stables housed not only the large horses with their alarmingly sharp hooves and rolling eyes, but also the kennels where the hunting-hounds slept.  Anniavas did not know why, but the very thought of approaching the hounds made his breath stop and the hairs go up on the back of his neck.  No, it was much easier to leave a little earlier from the dormitory into which he had recently been moved and go right around the walls to reach the west tea garden.

This was his third day working there.  The gardens were housed in a small glass enclosure, warmed by sunlight when possible, but more often by a complex system of furnaces emitting heated steam.  It was not just tea, actually—there were rows upon rows of green and growing things—many of them not rooted in the earth but in tightly-packed shelves of rocks, with long strings running from the shelves into a nutrient-rich broth.  

Melweril, the head of the gardens, had called them wicks when showing Anniavas around the greenhouse for the first time.  In addition to the plants, there were bright jewels ringing the top of the enclosure, which shone with the light of the Sun whenever the day was cloudy.  Anniavas’s fingers itched to pick them apart and understand how they worked.  (Fëanorian lamps, the Lord of Himring had called them.  They were mostly reserved for the gardens—the rest of the fortress was lit with guttering torchlight.)

By the time he arrived at the greenhouse, he was wet and sneezing, which he felt was an unreasonable bodily reaction.  The sensation was deeply unpleasant.

“Anniavas, what are you doing?” The door to the greenhouse opened, and he stumbled inside, fighting against the continuing tickle in his throat and nose.  It didn’t work; he sneezed again, and then again.  The noise was irritating and even frantically putting his arm in front of his face, he was miserably aware that he was making a mess.  He could not understand how he had failed to foresee this outcome.

“Sneezing,” he replied in some confusion.

“No, I mean—” Echeleb, one of the other workers in the area to which he had been assigned, sighed.  “Do you not have any warm clothes?”

This was a particularly difficult question to answer, because Anniavas was still unsure what was expected of him.  After a moment, he settled on what seemed like the safest response, “I didn’t realize I was going to need them.”

“Well, you need to come in and warm up.”  Echeleb was a tall Elf, flesh and hair all the color of fading dust.  They had the characteristic blue-flecked black eyes that Anniavas’s extensive-but-unreliable font of information associated with the Nandor.  This was the first time Anniavas had had any significant interaction with them.

“I’m fine,” Anniavas said cautiously.  “Thank you.”  His treacherous body chose that moment to sneeze again.

“Evidently,” Echeleb agreed dryly.  “Come on, don’t argue.”

They didn’t touch him, but they stood blocking his path: a threat, or perhaps just a strong instruction.  Anniavas gave up and followed them over to a comfortable-looking basket-weaved chair that had been set up beside one of the furnaces.  There was a neatly-folded blanket on it, which Echeleb picked up and shook out.  “Here,” they said, holding it out.  “Put this around your shoulders.”

Gingerly, Anniavas obeyed. The blanket was heavy and stiff, not conforming well to the odd shape of his back, but between that and the heat of the wet steam, his body did not sneeze again.  It also had the courtesy to stop shivering, which he hadn’t noticed until the unpleasant vibration diminished.

“Have you had anything to eat yet?” Echeleb asked.  They were busying themself with something by the furnace.

“No,” Anniavas admitted.  He had gone to the mess hall, as he had been instructed by the Lord of Himring, but the noise of talk and laughter bouncing off the walls had been too much for him almost immediately, and he had beat a hasty retreat.

“You shouldn’t skip meals,” Echeleb said tartly.  “Eat this, I’ll get you some tea.  It’s just the leftovers, but it should wake you up.”

Had Echeleb been watching him?  Anniavas had thought he was being as unnoticeable as possible, but this was not the behavior one displayed towards a low-level maintenance worker.  He sat and worried uselessly until he remembered he had been instructed to eat.  Then he ate the jerky slowly and focused on that instead.  It tasted different, but different from what, he didn’t know.  After a little while, once he finished it, Echeleb returned again with a steaming mug and told him to drink.

Anniavas’s body flinched, probably at the heat.  He had to take a moment to school himself.

“I’ll put it here,” Echeleb said smoothly, setting it on the seat of the chair.  “Smell it before you taste it.  If you don’t like it, don’t finish it.  Once you’re ready, I’ll get you started—we’re harvesting today.”

Thus far, Anniavas had mostly been taught how to maintain the greenhouse, which, to his surprise, was rather complicated.  Possibly he did not have much experience with growing crops; certainly, his mind offered nothing other than bewilderment over the first few days.  Possibly it was just the rapid change in his situation instead—now, as he slowly risked lifting the warm mug and found it an acceptable temperature for the palm of his hand, he was beginning to catalogue ways to make the basic maintenance work more efficient.  They didn’t really need an extra pair of hands; what they needed was a more careful schedule of rotations, although in order to devise an efficient one he might still require a more thorough understanding of plants.

He didn’t seem to know much about plants.

Obedient to a direct order, Anniavas sniffed cautiously at the mug.  The experience was odd: wet, not unlike the sneezing, but warm, which confusingly made the sensation almost as pleasant as the other one had been unpleasant.  Frustratingly, the best other word he had to describe it was green, which was a color.  Anniavas did not feel that a color should describe a scent, but somehow his mind refused to find any other referent.  At least the green was no more unpleasant than the warm and the wet.  Wrinkling his nose, he tasted it.  Warm and green again, not very strong.  

Well—he didn’t dislike it.  He supposed he might as well finish it.

Task completed, he rose, set the cup on the floor, folded the blanket and replaced it neatly on the chair, and then picked up the cup and set it on top.  Echeleb was waiting for him near the bright green rows of plants, as was Dernodhos, the other person assigned to the lower west tea garden.  Dernodhos was thin, wiry, and stooped, too skinny and gnarled to have been anything other than a thrall subjected to some of the worst torments, but she kept her teeth sharpened in the fashion of many in Angband. She did not speak, and her bright eyes tracked Echeleb in a way that Anniavas did not understand.

“Today we’ll show you how to pluck the tea,” Echeleb was saying when he arrived.  “Once it’s plucked, we’ll take it to be steamed and dried.  Most of Himring’s tea comes from this garden.” Their voice was sharp with pride.

Dernodhos pulled one of the plants expertly toward them, spreading out the young lush leaves and indicating a plump bud with her thumb.

“You don’t want to pick any leaves that are too old,” Echeleb told him.  “Take the young ones and the buds, and do it carefully—you don’t want to tear them.  Understand?”

Simple enough.  Anniavas nodded.  “What is the purpose?” he asked after a moment.  “It cannot be that nutritious, surely?”

Then he wondered if he ought not to have asked a question at all.  Neither of the other two seemed perturbed, however.  Dernodhos chuckled in a cracked voice, and Echeleb grinned in a way that was almost but not quite a threat display.  “Well, it’s a stimulant,” they said.  “But it’s also a craft.  We experiment with steaming time and style, with additions that can change the taste.  It’s a labor of love, and love is how we say fuck you to Angband.”

The final obscenity was delivered in the harsh, familiar language of the Orcs.  Anniavas schooled himself not to react, though his hands began to tremble slightly.  He clutched them together.  The idea of experimentation was an interesting one—different parts of his mind lit up instantly with a thousand questions, which he didn’t quite feel ready to ask.

“I see,” he said, after a moment.

Dernodhos patted his shoulder.

“She says you’re welcome,” Echeleb said.  “Now come on, let’s get started.”

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“Did you leave your basket out to dry?” Echeleb asked Anniavas abruptly when he entered the greenhouse on the fourth day.

You weren’t there, a panicked voice exclaimed as tightness bubbled up from the inside of Anniavas’s chest.  He had been slow—too slow, much slower than the other two—and they had let him stay behind to keep picking while they went to get dinner.  Once he had finally finished, he had looked around to see where the final crop was stored.  Finding a few piles of dried leaves, he had put the basket with his tea leaves in them neatly beside the others, and now Echeleb was standing beside that looking puzzled.

In the harsh light of the setting Moon, confronted with the question, Anniavas began to realize that what he had taken for tea leaves the night before were shaped differently, older and more withered.  Different herbs, perhaps.  Stars, he had done something wrong—he had made a mistake—not even one full week, and he had already failed.  He clenched his fists, then went down on his knees, bowing his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.  “I—”

“You’re not in trouble,” Echeleb said hurriedly.  “It’s my fault, if anyone’s—I shouldn’t have left without telling you where the steam room was.”

It would be even worse if his failure rebounded on someone else.  A superior willing to take blame for their subordinate was precious.  “No, no,” Anniavas said.  “It’s my mistake.  It’s my fault.  I will tell, I will tell anyone—”

“Anniavas, calm down,” Echeleb said sharply.  

Anniavas sucked in a hurried breath and went quiet.  Frantically, he searched for some hint in his mind as to how to comply with such an order, but he found only holes.  Emotional control was something he had used to do, he was sure, but nothing remained other than that surety—not a single hint as to how.

“Damn it,” Echeleb said.  “Damn it.  All right, um…”

Soft footsteps.  Why was it becoming so hard to focus?  Focus, Anniavas ordered himself, but it was difficult for him to find sensory input beyond heat in his face and a loud wind in his ears and tightness tightness tightness in his chest—

A sharp scent, bright and fresh, with just a touch of ice.

“It’s all right,” Echeleb’s voice said.  “You’re not in trouble, Anniavas.  No one is in trouble.  Do you understand?”

You fool, command yourself.  The words spun away, but he held onto the scent.

“Breathe in.  Hold your breath.  Breathe out.”  Continuing to hold onto the scent allowed him to obey the instruction.  Again.  Again.  Again.  “Good.  Drink this.”

Something hot, yet still with that ice-fresh scent, was pressed to his lips.  He submitted himself to it, expecting it to burn raw down his throat, but it did not.  It was all heat and ice, none of the bite of a brew that would cling to his mind and drag him down and away from consciousness.

He was trembling.  There was a blanket around his shoulders, and someone was—touching him, on the upper part of his shoulder.  Away from the artifact embedded in his spine.  A slow, steady, round motion.  Like petting a dog.

“That’s right.  You’re doing fine.”  Echeleb’s voice, edged with controlled fear.  Anniavas blinked his eye slowly and found that Echeleb was the one holding a mug to his lips, that Dernodhos had a hand on his shoulder.  She clicked her tongue, then laughed her soft, cracked laugh.

“Yes, all right,” Echeleb said, as if answering something that Anniavas could not hear.  “I’m not used to having other people working with me like this.  Anniavas, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you panic.  I was surprised.”

Had he panicked?  It was an unpleasant sensation, like freefall without wings.  Worse than sneezing.

“Actually,” Echeleb continued, voice companionable, “Dernodhos remembers someone telling her that in Aman, they did let the tea leaves wilt, sometimes.  Wilted, maybe even crushed.  It changed the flavors.  We hadn’t thought of it.  We don’t know what that might taste like, what the differences might be.  Maybe you could test it for us?  Different conditions.”

Anniavas nodded.  “I—I like testing things,” he said hesitantly.

This seemed to be the right thing to say, to his surprise.  The frantic apology that he had given earlier—that had agitated Echeleb, for some reason, even though Anniavas was accepting responsibility for his own mistake.  Cautiously, he sorted through his mind, trying to compare all these reactions, but he found nothing.  He shook his head, blinked, and sorted a little more evidence into a growing pile of suspicion that he had no idea how to behave in Himring.

“I can devise tests,” he said.  “I am very good at devising tests?”

“Good,” Echeleb said.  “Good, that’s good.”

Dernodhos patted his shoulder, then poked Echeleb between the ribs.

“I know, I know,” they said, then laughed ruefully.  “A learning experience for everyone.”

* * *

Three weeks after beginning his work in the tea garden, Anniavas was carefully skirting around the outer wall and considering what other experiments he could set up, when he heard a soft noise that sounded like a creature crying.  His mind immediately presented him with a list of options for the source, in order from most to least threatening, but before he could actually grasp even the first entry, it vanished again, slipping away beneath the surface.

He cursed in frustration and tried to decide what to do.  He might go in search of one of the warriors or guards of Himring, but if it was a bad threat he did not really have enough information to forestall it.  The cry came again, soft and lonely, and Anniavas thought about Finno fighting off a dark creature for one lowly thrall, thought of the Lord of Himring himself coming to sit at that thrall’s bedside.  What if it was just someone too small and too sad, out here in the cold at the dying end of autumn?  What did his life debt to Finno and the Lord of Himring dictate that he should do?

He cursed again and made his way in the direction of the sound, which turned out to be coming from a gnarled bramble bush to which still clung a few tufts of browning leaves.  Underneath the bush, tangled up in the thorns, was a lanky but very small grey puppy with awkward tufts of fur growing in around its jowls.  It had probably tried to shelter itself from the rain earlier and gotten trapped.  It was young to be all the way out here by itself.

Anniavas immediately went to his knees in the mud in front of the bush and began to crawl toward it.  Most animals thus trapped would growl or try to flee or bite, but the puppy apparently had very little survival instinct, because it instantly stopped crying and started wagging a tail that seemed too long for its scrawny form.

“You are terribly stupid,” Anniavas informed it, delicately working to remove the spiny tendrils twisted around its neck and legs.  It repaid him for this insult by liberally kissing his hand.

After a few minutes of work, he was able to extricate it, and he was then faced with the question of what to do next.  The puppy was not injured, but it was very young—maybe not even weaned—and it should be returned to its mother.  But its mother was probably in the kennels with the rest of the hounds, and thinking about approaching there still made Anniavas tense up, heartbeat echoing madly in his ears.

The puppy contributed to his dilemma by moving from licking his hand to licking his face.  Anniavas sighed.  “All right,” he said, after a long moment.  After all, he could hardly let himself be controlled by a nonsensical physical reaction.  Already, he was beginning to learn that many of his reactions were both mysterious and useless in Himring.

Get over yourself, he instructed himself, which was a phrase that Echeleb employed often, although more usually when Anniavas was being overly particular about the conditions of one of his experiments.

It took surprisingly little time to walk over.  By the time he arrived, Anniavas had the oddest feeling that he was floating.  The puppy was wriggling happily in his arms.  Reaching the door, he heard the sound of dogs barking and almost turned right around, but he was saved by the simple fact that his legs continued walking forward.  Awkwardly, he pushed the door open one-handed and stood in the ambience of the stables, with the warmth and smell of animals all around him.

It twisted everything up inside him.  A hundred different memories tried to rise to his mind and evaporated instantly, rainbow soap bubbles that could not touch reality without destruction.  He heard himself make a little noise—the puppy must have heard it as well because it immediately starting wriggling and whining and yelping at the top of its little puppy lungs.

A moment later, another Elf came around the corner of one of the horse’s stalls. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had hair the color of frost-rimed wheat and grey eyes, and he was wearing a stained tunic and leggings, which were covered in dog hair.  He stopped when he saw Anniavas.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Reading the question within the question, Anniavas answered, “I just came to bring this back.”  He lifted the puppy, which immediately began to whine.

The Elf’s stern countenance melted a little.  “Thanks,” he said gruffly.  “Mama was starting to worry.  I thought she was around here somewhere, but I guess she got out?”

“She’s very adventurous, it seems,” Anniavas returned.  To his surprise, his voice was quite steady.

For some reason, this made the Elf scowl, but the next thing he said seemed unconnected to the expression. “Come on, let’s go give her back,” he said.

Anniavas had expected to be free of the responsibility as soon as he found someone else, particularly the kennel-master.  He didn’t want to, but his body obeyed the order, carrying him forward.  It wasn’t until they came in sight of the smaller wooden enclosures next to the horses’ stalls that he had to halt.  The sound of barking had intensified, the pat-pat-pat of paws padding on the ground as the dogs woke up and got ready for the day.

He had the terrible and disorienting sense that he was not standing, that he was not in control of himself, that something huge and terrifying was stalking him, waiting to sink its teeth into his throat.  He had half a shard of memory of—the unexpected pain, the sudden inability to move, the dizzy, awful feeling of being shaken by something stronger and more terrifying than he was.  Any moment now, that pain would return.  Any moment—

A tiny pinprick went through his hand instead, nothing like the all-encompassing agony he expected.  He looked down.  The puppy was chewing experimentally on his finger.  Anniavas sighed and let it explore for a little longer before removing the finger and scratching it behind the ears.

“Over here,” said the kennel-master, gesturing to one of the smaller stalls, from which emanated a series of little squeaks and tiny attempted barks.  “All her sisters and brothers are in here with her mother.”

All of a sudden, Anniavas was reluctant for a very different reason.  The puppy wriggled and then went still in his arms, nosing at his chest.  “All right, little one,” he said.  “Time to go home.”

“You’ve had dogs before,” said the kennel-master abruptly as he knelt in front of the open door of the pen.

“I don’t know,” Anniavas said without thinking.  “I don’t remember.”

“They know.”  The kennel-master jerked his head at the dogs.  All the puppies had looked up and were cheeping at Anniavas and his new friend.  She yawned when he set her on the straw-strewn floor, then sat down on his foot.

“Oh,” said Anniavas.  An unexpected lump had risen in his throat.  Maybe the kennel-master was right, as inexplicable as that seemed.

“I used to have a dog, too,” said the kennel-master, and Anniavas looked over to see that his face had gone as stony as the Lord of Himring’s sometimes did.  There was a resemblance, too, in the shape of the heavy brows, the set of the determined mouth.  “But he…” a pause.  “Well, I lost him.”

“I’m sorry,” said Anniavas, which didn’t really seem to be enough.  He stroked the puppy again.  “Go on,” he told her softly.  He looked back at the kennel-master.  “You might be right,” he said, doubtfully.  Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, all this did seem somewhat familiar.

“Haven’t seen you around here before.”

“No,” Anniavas agreed.

The kennel-master grunted.  At Anniavas’s feet, the puppy finally started waddling back towards her siblings.  As this was what he had been intending by forcing himself all the way into the kennels, he was frustrated to find that he wasn’t happier about it.

“You know, she’ll probably want to see you again,” said the kennel-master.

“I don’t like dogs,” Anniavas protested.  It hadn’t been raining outside, had it?  His face was cold and wet.

“Listen,” said the kennel-master.  “I don’t usually give advice, but if there’s a dog that wants you, don’t turn your back on her.  No matter what else has happened to you.”

He had to use both hands to wipe off his face.  “I work in the lower west tea garden.  It’s quite simple to come by the kennels on my way to or from the dormitories.”

“Good.  Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”  Pause.  “Thanks.”

“Thanks?”

“For bringing her back.”

Oh.  “You’re welcome.”

He hovered awkwardly until the kennel-master gave a grunt of acknowledgment, then realized that the kennel-master himself seemed awkward.  Perhaps this was a new situation for both of them.  After standing for another moment, he made himself turn and hurry away.  He was halfway back to the wall when he realized he could have kept going and reached the tea garden in less than half the time.  Now he would have to rush, or he’d be late.

Chapter End Notes

chapter title from Huan's description in (one of the versions of) The Lay of Leithian: "a wolfhound, tireless, grey and fierce"

Not sure if I remembered to mention it, but the names Melweril, Echeleb and Dernodhos are from chestnut_pod's wonderful Name List. "Melweril" means "dear rose," "Echeleb" means "silver thorn," and "Dernodhos" means "tough hawthorn."

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Living at Himring was strange at first, but it was hard for Anniavas to say why, when he had no specific memories to compare it to.  The most he could say was that his reactions did not always seem to align with the results, as if hidden somewhere beneath the blank surface of his mind, there was a set of wholly inappropriate patterns.  He never seemed to know when a new fragment of abstract knowledge might appear, or a reaction to something that wasn’t happening.  He didn’t tell anyone about it—it did not seem like the kind of thing he really had words for—but sometimes he thought that Echeleb and Dernodhos understood.

The kennel-master, too.  Anniavas began going through the stables every day, well before dawn.  The puppy, whom he named Limral, was growing quickly, and she greeted him excitedly every day.  He brought her scraps of meat to eat and leather to chew on, sat with her and held her, and took her out to let her explore around the stables, which she adored.  The kennel-master wasn’t there every day—very few people got up as early as Anniavas—but Anniavas saw him every now and then, leaning moodily over the side of the stalls.  He rarely said much, but he nodded when he saw Anniavas, and Anniavas nodded back.

By going through the stables so often, he also grew to know an Elf called Hemmoril.  She had not been a thrall; she was attached in some way to the household of one of the Lord of Himring’s brothers, who had come here after the great Battle of Sudden Flame, and she spent most of her time with the horses—riding or caring for them.  She was a warrior as well, and she sometimes rode out to hunt Orcs or dark beasts.  She was also fiercely interested in plants—she was no gardener herself, but she brought back bouquets and cuttings from many of her forays.  Anniavas, who had begun to experiment not only with the processing of the teas, but also with adding different herbs and spices, found her to be a very useful person to know.

On this particular day, he had woken well before dawn and trailed through the warm stables before anyone else was awake.  Limral was curled up on her mother’s stomach, kicking her feet and making tiny noises.  Anniavas watched her, but moved on without waking her, silent as a ghost.  He was awake—in a strange kind of way almost painfully so—but his body felt heavy, his limbs weighted down, as if he were wading through water.  He had dreamed, he thought, but he could not remember in detail what he had dreamed about.  He had an impression of tall, narrow spaces, freezing cold at their heights, burning hot in their depths, and he had woken covered in sweat.

Now in this heavy-sharp state, with the fortress sleeping all around him, he almost felt as if he was still asleep.  He tiptoed through the stables and out the other side into the cold air.  Autumn was over, and winter had come: the leaves had fallen from the trees, and snow was wafting gently down from the sky.  Anniavas halted for an instant outside the greenhouse, his breath puffing white in the air, and thought about how strange it was that he had no memory of ever seeing snowflakes before.  He knew the conditions under which they formed.  He understood the mechanism by which their tiny crystals grew.  He thought he might even understand the notes that made up the rhythms that made up the parts that made up the crystals.  But he had no memory of ever seeing those gem-like stars fall.

When his fingers were so cold he could no longer feel them—also not an experience he could remember having—he turned and entered the greenhouse.  He had expected it to be empty, and he was not looking where he was going, because his body had suddenly started to shake and tremble like an aspen leaf, so he nearly ran directly into the lord of Himring, who was standing quietly in the center of the earthen walkway.

“My—my lord,” Anniavas stammered, forgetting for a moment that this mode of address was not preferred.

“Anniavas.” The Lord of Himring dipped his head in greeting.

“What are you doing here?” Anniavas asked.  He might have been less impertinent if his hands had not felt suddenly both on fire and full of pins and needles.  His mind helpfully informed him that this was a common incarnate response to abrupt changes of temperature.

“I couldn’t sleep,” the Lord of Himring replied, in the same slow monotone he always used.  “I was already intending to pay you a visit.  I wasn’t expecting you to arrive so early, I admit.”

“Me?  I’m not hurt.”  Still shivering, Anniavas noticed a strange warm feeling melting outward from the center of his chest.

“I know.  I wanted to thank you.”

“My—lord of Himring?”

The Lord of Himring did not look at him, but laid his large hand over the back of his own neck.  “You make a very good tea.”

Anniavas scrambled for context; his mind produced nothing.  True, he was working in the tea garden.  True, he had been experimenting with different methods of preparing it.  But he could not understand how the Lord of Himring might have tasted any of it, or if he had, how he had known that Anniavas was responsible, or if he did, why he cared enough to appear in the tea garden several hours before dawn like a large, patient wraith.  “How—I mean—”

“I was having a bad day.  Maglor shared one of your blends.”

Maglor?  Who was Maglor?  (One of the brothers, his mind pointed out, the second one—horse-master and minstrel.) “How did he…?”

Shrug.  “He didn’t say.”

Puzzlement joined but did not dampen the warm feeling. If anything, it became slightly warmer and slightly larger, the kind of expansive damp pleasure he associated with Limral licking his face.  After a moment of trying to figure out what to say, the obvious question presented itself.  “Which blend?”

“Something that tasted like flowers,” said the Lord of Himring, which was laughably inexact and barely narrowed it down at all.

“Ah,” said the Lord of Himring, as if he had spoken.  “That’s not very helpful, then.”

“No,” agreed Anniavas.  “Especially if you wanted more.”

“I would like more.”  The lord of Himring actually raised one scarred red eyebrow at him.  “I am willing to taste multiple blends.  You don’t have to be able to just hand me something instantly.”

“I should be able to,” Anniavas said sourly, unsure why he was bristling so hard at the thought of a comparatively minor insufficiency.

“Hmmm,” said the Lord of Himring noncommittally.  “If I say I would like to taste several different blends, would you be willing to permit it?”

Anniavas eyed him, trying to decide if there was a faint dry sarcasm underlying his words, and, if so, whether it was likely to be dangerous.

“I do mean that,” the Lord of Himring said awkwardly.  “I don’t know if you intended them to be shared.”

Oh, stars.  For an instant, Anniavas thought he was going to cry.  At least this time he was aware of the sensation in his eye and his throat.  He took a hasty, deep breath.  “I suppose I can allow it,” he said loftily, half-expecting that this would be going too far.

“Thank you,” said the Lord of Himring, and did not strike him, so apparently it hadn’t been going too far.

After another moment of standing there with absolutely no idea what to do, Anniavas gestured to the Lord of Himring to follow him and headed towards the corner of the greenhouse Melweril had told him he could use as a makeshift workshop.

“I may not have the particular blend anymore,” he said, looking around for something better to offer the Lord of Himring than the cracked and stained mug he usually employed to taste what he had been working on.  There wasn’t anything.  He picked it up reluctantly and held it out questioningly.  “Hemmoril doesn’t always bring me enough of a supply to make much of any given attemptß.”

“Hemmoril supplies you?”  The Lord of Himring took the mug without judgement and let Anniavas wave him over to the seat by the little stove.

“Sometimes,” Anniavas said, almost certain that he was not going to get her in trouble by disclosing this interaction.

“Well, that will be how Maglor got hold of it.  She’s his best friend.”

“Oh.” It was strange to think Anniavas had made friends so easily with someone so important, and he distracted himself by choosing one of the floral blends almost at random, a mixture of rose petals, dried apple pieces, and the wilted, blackened tea that he had accidentally discovered by leaving his first crop out instead of taking it directly to the steam room.  He put the kettle on and knelt to light a fire in the stove.

The lord of Himring waited patiently for the fire to grow and the water to heat.  Although he was worrying about getting the temperature exactly right—some of Anniavas’s initial experiments had already illustrated that the water temperature had a significant impact on the taste—the presence of Maedhros was surprisingly comfortable.  He was tall and broad, and Anniavas knew that he was a very great warrior, but his body language was still and slumped and comfortable—confident but not intimidating, and he did not speak while Anniavas was trying to measure things out.

Once the first cup of tea had been brewed, Anniavas handed it to him.

“Thank you,” Maedhros said quietly.  He inhaled it, eyes widening slightly—an unusually strong reaction from the stone-faced Lord of Himring.  “That smells like—” he cut himself off.

“Is it the right one?” Anniavas asked.

“It’s not the same one,” Maedhros told him.  He took a careful sip.  “It may be the right one.”  He sipped again, and then his eyes moved from the tea up to a place over Anniavas’s shoulder.  “That is to say, I like it very much.”

Something tight and choking crawled up Anniavas’s throat.  He clenched his hands into fists.  A cup of tea was nothing to be proud of, he told himself.  This hardly repaid the life debt he owed.  He turned away before thinking about it, and then turned rapidly back around.  Maedhros didn’t seem to have even noticed.  All his attention was back on the mug, which looked small and dainty beside the fingers curled through its thin handle.

“Why don’t you want me to call you my lord?” Anniavas asked sharply.  He was instantly appalled at himself.  Surely he had more self-control than this.

Maedhros looked up again.  His eyes wandered off to somewhere high and probably still dark.  He took another sip of tea.  “I told you not to call me that because I need you to understand that you are not beholden to me,” he said.  

“Of course I am beholden to you,” Anniavas retorted.  “You saved my life.”

“Finno saved your life.  I gave you a place to stay, if you wished it.”

Why was he so infuriating?  Why was Anniavas so infuriated?  It wasn’t safe to be so angry, his mind was screaming at him, but his body was relaxed.  “I am beholden to both of you, then.”

“No.” Maedhros put the cup down.  “You are not.  What aid we have offered was freely given, and there were no expectations of receiving anything in return.”

“That’s not—” Anniavas cut himself off.  “It isn’t reasonable.”

“It is my choice, and I am the Lord of Himring.”  He sighed.  “Anniavas, I know what it is like to have come from a world where everything, including affection, is no more than a barter system.  I do not know how long you were there—you do not know how long you were there.  I will not have Himring be that way.”

“But surely you allow those who serve you to offer you fealty?”  The man was maddening.

“Yes,” agreed Maedhros, gently.  “I do not enjoy responsibility, but I accept it.”  A fleeting expression of some kind, maybe a grimace, passed across his face.  It rang in Anniavas’s soul like a bell striking another bell.  For an instant, he was certain they had had this conversation before.

  (Someone must be responsible, must they not, for the evil as well as the good?)

(It’s terrifying that I understand you.)

(Don’t sound as if you pity me!)

Maedhros was continuing to speak.  Anniavas managed not to stagger, trying to clutch at the impression that might be a memory.  It vanished, as always, before he could; maybe it had been nothing more than a dream from when he was still badly injured.

“—all right?” Maedhros’s voice appeared out of a grinding white noise.

“Fine,” Anniavas said tightly.  “I’m fine.”  His back was ice-cold and aching.  The heaviness in his limbs had returned, and he wanted to sit down, to lie down, to sleep.

“Sit down,” the Lord of Himring ordered, and Anniavas’s body obeyed immediately.  “Damn,” he heard, much quieter.  “May I look at your back?”

Why was he shivering again?  Wasn’t that a response to cold?  He heard someone whimper softly.  

“Breathe,” Maedhros said gently.  “You are in the greenhouse at Himring.  You are safe.  Breathe in—now breathe out.  Breathe in—now breathe out.”

The strange grey mist cleared away slowly.  The air was heavy with moisture—it was good for the plants, Dernodhos had told him, in wary hand signals (she never did speak aloud.  Anniavas thought she might have lost her tongue in Angband)—so they had a complicated system of heated water boiling away into steam.  He was in the greenhouse.  He was sitting in the chair, and the Lord of Himring was kneeling in front of him.  

“What happened?” he gritted out, a little afraid of the answer.

“A memory, perhaps,” Maedhros said.  “Or something else.  I wish we could do something about the artifact in your back, but…”

“But that would kill me,” Anniavas finished.

“Yes.”

It didn’t matter, surely.  Everything that the artifact sealed away—permanently, it seemed—followed a pattern that clearly did not apply to his life in Himring.

“Will you allow me to swear you fealty now?”

A pause.  “No.  Not right after something like this.”

Really? “If you are so unwilling to take aid when it is willingly proffered, I hope you wake up before this whole fortress falls before the might of Angband,” Anniavas snarled.

Something fearful kindled in those brown eyes, and Anniavas’s mouth flattened into a grin that was half a grimace.  Finally, he had pushed Maedhros to his limit.  The muscles in his abdomen tightened in anticipation. But Maedhros only levered himself to his feet.

“Thank you for the tea,” he said, in the same grey monotone as always, though anger tightened the line of his jaw, the line of his shoulders.  “If you wish to repeat your offer, I will hear it tomorrow, when you have had a good night’s sleep.”

He turned and walked away, leaving Anniavas staring after him, feeling far worse than he would have if Maedhros had struck him.

* * *

He was still feeling simultaneously guilty and furious by lunchtime, when Echeleb and Dernodhos forcibly extricated him from his teas.

“No, you have to be sociable today,” Echeleb told him cheerfully when he swore at them in Orcish.  It was still stunning to Anniavas how willing Echeleb and Dernodhos were to show and permit anger without retaliation.  He’d seen the folk of Himring wrestle amongst themselves, or occasionally get into a fistfight—Hemmoril and the kennel-master seemed to truly despise one another—but it was always over quickly and there was never any significant injury to any of the participants.  No one had offered Anniavas any violence.

“And why must I be sociable?” he asked.  “I am not feeling sociable.”

“Melweril has a new lover, and we promised we would introduce her to the artisan behind her favorite teas.”

“I made no such promise.”

“Too bad,” Dernodhos signed unsympathetically.  “Come on.”

Melweril, whom Anniavas had only spoken with two or three times, turned out to have a female lover named Eirien, who was one of the healers.  She was shy and pretty, unscarred, and spent the first part of the meal hiding behind her fluffy silver hair.  Anniavas, whose hair had had to be cut off when he was in the healers’ wing, and who could not hide anything of the terrible scar where his eye had been, sat and slowly simmered.

Halfway through the meal, the anger boiled up, and he interrupted Echeleb’s dull argument with Melweril about greenhouse maintenance to say, “Has everyone in Himring pledged their fealty to its lord?”  Everyone other than me, of course.

The conversation paused.  Everyone looked at him.

“No,” said Melweril, tipping her head at him with what he thought was a pensive expression.  “There are those who arrived with one of the other brothers, of course—Maglor’s retinue, Celegorm’s, and Curufin’s, and they owe their allegiance to their own lords.  And there are a few folk who are not comfortable any longer with the notion of such pledges.”

“And they are allowed to stay?” Anniavas demanded, aghast.

“Where else would they go?” She gave him a sad smile.  “It is better to have them here than back in Angband.”

This made little sense to Anniavas.  “They cannot betray him in Angband,” he pointed out.

“They can be hurt,” Eirien put in with her timid voice.  

“And they can certainly fight against him,” Melweril said with a shrug.

“Openly,” Anniavas said peevishly.  “And if anyone is foolish enough to return to Angband, let them be hurt.”

Dernodhos cackled at that, a wild spate of laughter.  “Everyone should be so happy to trade one master for another,” she crowed, hands flying, eyes lit with a fey gleam.  “Shut up, Anniavas, you’re only angry that he hasn’t accepted your suit.”

“My what?” Heat rushed to his cheeks.  How had she even known?  “I know how things work,” he ground out.  “It is no shame to serve someone who will protect you.”

“It’s no shame not to, either,” Eirien interrupted again.  “And it’s important to know that you cannot.  I mean, can not.  I remember when you—well, when Lord Fingon brought you to Himring.  I was helping High Healer Cordofel.”

A chilly twinge ran down Anniavas’s spine.  “What does that have to do with anything?” he snarled.

“I guess you don’t remember. You were so badly hurt,” Eirien said.  “And you were afraid—I think you thought someone was going to kill you.”

“What of it?” Anniavas asked, meaning to sound as if he did not care.  Even to him, the crack in his voice did not make it sound as if he did not care.  “I had run from Angband.  Of course I assumed someone was going to kill me.” 

“But most people, um, beg,” Eirien said.  She wasn’t looking at him; she was looking down at her hands, picking at her skirt with her fingers, an irritating habit.  “I mean, most people beg for their lives.”

Anniavas shrugged.  “That never works.”

“It works fine if no one wants to kill you,” Echeleb put in dryly.  Anniavas shut his mouth with a snap.  He could hardly argue with that.

“Not only did you not beg for you life, you begged Lord Maedhros to kill you,” Eirien put in firmly.  “Because you had failed, you said.”

There was that tight, awful pressure on the inside of his throat and at the back of his one remaining eye, the ever-present reminder of his brokenness.  “I don’t remember,” he got out.  “I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”

“Because I’m trying to explain why Lord Maedhros might not be ready to accept your pledge of fealty yet.”

“What.”

“Oh, for Valars’ sake,” sighed Echeleb.  “Lord Maedhros doesn’t want someone to pledge themself to him if he can’t know they know what it’s all about.”

“I—I am—” Anniavas fumbled, insulted.  “I assure you, I know what it’s ‘all about’!”  He did not need any specific memories for his mind to understand one of the primary concepts of the world.  (But this was a pattern in his mind from before Himring.  Did he not already know that he could not trust the patterns from before Himring to correctly predict the ways things worked in Himring?  And were Himring’s ways not, often, a surprising relief?)

“Do you,” grinned Dernodhos.  “Because I’ll tell you, boy, it isn’t about unquestioning obedience, and it isn’t about dying for your mistakes, and it isn’t about letting your lord do anything he pleases with you, either.  Unless you both want that, I guess.”

“Dernodhos,” Melweril said warningly.

“It’s fine,” Anniavas heard his own voice saying from a long distance away.  He was fine.  He was perfectly fine.  The fizzing in his fingers and tightness in his chest was odd, but it was fine.  Everything was fine.  Perfectly, unavoidably, inevitably fine.  “I think I need to check on the tea.”  He turned to Eirien.  “If you are interested in the process, I’d be happy to show you.  Later.”  Not now.  Things would not be ready now.

At some point in the midst of demonstrating that he was perfectly fine, Anniavas had stood up.  This was convenient, since it made it simple to turn around and start walking—not away, but toward the other side of the greenhouse.

“Anniavas—” Melweril’s voice said behind him.

“No, let him go,” Echeleb said, quieter, but still audible and firm.  Some strange tiny part of the tightness relaxed, the knowledge that Echeleb—

—was trustworthy, perhaps.

Anniavas thought he might not try to swear fealty to the Lord of Himring tomorrow, after all.

Chapter End Notes

The name "Limral," which means "Quick brilliance," comes from Chestnut_pod's incomparable name list, while "Hemmoril," which means "clother/dresser," is from RealElvish.net. She is one of my old OCs and has appeared in a number of my fics to date.

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