The Mirror Crack'd by AdmirableMonster  

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Of Changing and of Shifting Shape

LAST TIME on The Mirror Crack'd: A young girl found a strange wolf on the shores of Lake Helevorn.

THIS TIME on The Mirror Crack'd: Dragons and wolves and Dwarves, oh my! Or: Anniavas and Maedhros go to the aid of a beleaguered settlement near Lake Helevorn.

chapter rating T

no major chapter warnings other than Anni's usual Headspace Issues

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Six months later, Himring.

Anniavas rearranged the mug on the tray, staring down at it and the bread, cheese, and jam.  Perhaps it would be too bold of him to go in search of Maedhros.  The Lord of Himring was presumably busy.  On the other hand, Anniavas thought, looking up through the glowing glass of the greenhouse, Maedhros had said that they were friends.  And he had said that he enjoyed their teas together—no, even more clearly, he had said that he prized them.  It seemed unlikely that he would willingly be this late.  Yet Anniavas still held himself back.  His mind, despite all the evidence it had accumulated that Himring was not like Angband or whatever he had known before Angband, still told him with terrible firmness that an interruption of someone of higher standing by someone of lower standing was an invitation to pain and a blot upon the reputation of the one who interrupted.

Yet you are not of lower standing, he reminded himself.  He was not sworn to any in Himring—Maedhros had given his reasons for not accepting his oaths of fealty, and there was no one else whom Anniavas was willing to swear himself to, even if had been willing to go against Maedhros’s advice.  And even if you were, Maedhros would not be unkind.

The arguments did not fully convince his mind, but they were distracting enough to let his body do what it really wanted to do anyway.  He came out of his mental argument to find that he was already crossing the courtyard with the tray in both hands.  A queer sick lightness in his chest helped him continue despite the way fear was coiling icily around his spine.

Limral, ever his faithful shadow, padded along beside him.  Over the past months, she had grown tremendously, now coming up nearly to his waist.  She was much more independent, as well, and, while she did deign to go out with the rest of the dogs when they were hunting, she spent most of the rest of her time trailing Anniavas.  She seemed to have decided that his protection was her charge, and no one else’s.

The door of Maedhros’s study was ajar, and golden light streamed from the interior.  Anniavas knocked lightly and pushed the door open.  Inside, Maedhros was seated, looking very tired, across from a Dwarf warrior in battered, singed armor.

“Anniavas,” he said.  “I am sorry.  I did not realize it was so late.  Azaghâl, this is Anniavas, who saved my life. Anniavas, this is the Lord Azaghâl—”

“Whose life you saved,” Lord Azaghâl chuckled.  “Well met, Anniavas.  Maedhros, he looks ready to murder me with his eyes.  I am glad to see your servants are taking better care of your sustenance than you are used to.”

As always, Maedhros’s face was stone, unmoving.  Anniavas felt his cheeks go warm.  

“He is not a servant,” Maedhros said gently.  “Just a friend, whom I have cruelly left waiting far too long.  Lord Azaghâl, I promise you that we will send reinforcements to the Dwarves of Lake Helevorn.”

“Lake Helevorn?” Anniavas asked without thinking.  “Has something menaced the settlements there?”

“Aye,” Azaghâl said, short and gruff.  “A dragon.  A small one, but even a small dragon is a big problem.”  He laughed at that, a laugh that invited others in, Anniavas noted.  A commander, but one who led by camaraderie rather than orders.  Such a style might work well for Dwarves: Anniavas was ill-acquainted with their strengths and weaknesses.  Politely, he did his best to laugh as well, although thus far he had not had a great deal of success in the area of social niceties.  Azaghâl did not seem to mind, but unfortunately this was not really a useful piece of information one way or the other.  Maedhros laughed carefully as well—a similarly non-spontaneous gesture.

Putting aside the question of polite social interaction with Dwarves, Anniavas considered the question of dragons.  His mind did not seem to have anything for him, but it had not seemed to have anything on the subject of necromancy or dark spells interwoven with metal, either, not until he had been actually confronted with both things.

Cautiously, he asked, “Will Himring be sending aid to the Dwarves of Lake Helevorn, then?”

Maedhros, who had begun to rise from behind his desk, paused.  “Azaghâl did come to ask for aid,” he said.  “I will be leading a small group of Elves to the relief of Lake Helevorn.”

“You—my—lord of Himring?”

The minutest grimace.  Anniavas wasn’t quite sorry for causing it.  Maedhros’s shoulders slumped slightly.  “Maglor cannot be sent to fight a dragon again, nor any of his folk.  I will not rely on Celegorm and Curufin to handle something that may be diplomatically—complex.  The folk of Himring are far closer than my other brothers, though the lake is precious to Caranthir.”

“But why go yourself?” pressed Anniavas, then froze, suddenly conscious of the presence of the Dwarf Azaghâl.  He and Maedhros might be—friends—but he had never gainsaid the Lord of Himring in front of another before, certainly not in front of someone who was his equal.

There was no anger in Maedhros’s voice when he responded, “Because I have the power to help them.  And I will not turn away from that.”

In some frustration, Anniavas found himself wanting to object—after all, should something go wrong, Maedhros was the backbone of Himring itself.  It was not reasonable of him to put himself at risk.  On the other hand, it would make Anniavas’s half-formed offer far more appealing.  He swallowed the objection, nodded, and said, “I will accompany you.”

Azaghâl barked with laughter.  “He has you there, Maedhros—you can hardly gainsay him!”

Maedhros’s face did not change.  “That is true, and I have no doubt your aid will be valuable, Anniavas, thank you.”

“Now that that is settled,” said Anniavas, speaking without thinking in his relief.  “Your tea is growing cold, Maedhros.”

Azaghâl only laughed harder.

* * * 

Mount Rerir, snow-peaked, commanded the skyline.  The rising Sun sparkled at its summit, leaving most of the slope still in shadow.  The road the company followed had been in disrepair for most of their several-day journey, but now, on the final approach, the stones seemed laid more neatly, the tree branches cleared back farther.

“I had not realized so many folk remained near Lake Helevorn,” Maedhros said to Azaghâl.  Anniavas, riding beside them, decided they must be aware he would overhear any conversation and did not bother to remind them of his presence.  His thighs were aching badly.  He had not had occasion to ride so far before that he remembered, and it had turned out to be substantially more effort than he would have expected to sit on the back of another creature and let it carry him.  Not for the first time, he wondered how he had been so strangely sheltered in his previous life.

“Edain, mostly,” Azaghâl replied.  “They can live anywhere—I admire that about them.  And their stubbornness keeps others around, through trade or marriage or simply by showing that it can be done.  There is a smaller village of some of my folk, and a group of wood Elves.  They’re shy but they trade with both of us.”

Beneath the long shadow of Mount Rerir was the black smear of Lake Helevorn.  As the Sun rose further, the surface of the lake caught the sunlight and sparkled.  In places, that sparkle broke apart into shimmering iridescence.  It looked beautiful, but Anniavas knew that clear water would not look so: Helevorn had been polluted in the Dagor Bragollach, Maedhros had told him, and the waters were befouled.  A pretty surface over a hidden taint.

It was only a lake, Anniavas thought, but he knew Dernodhos and Echeleb would mourn the lake as if it were an incarnate.  Well, perhaps there was some way to solve the problem, to heal the lake as one might draw poison from a body.  But that was not why they were there.

They rode out from beneath the trees onto a bright, pebbled beach.  The strange black-rainbow water lapped lightly against the shore.  The vegetation had retreated, except for a few smears of moss and algae.  The horses’ hooves sounded loud and heavy on the line of rocks they followed up along the line of the lake.

A vast thundering noise of displaced air burst suddenly from the mountainside, and the horses shied—in Anniavas’s inexperienced case, severely enough that he lost his grip and found himself sliding off.  He hit the rocky ground awkwardly but on his feet, stumbled sideways, and stopped abruptly as he ran into the trunk of a tree.  He steadied himself in time to see the graceful, glittering body that shot up out of the shadowed mountainside and into the sunlight, claw-tipped wings spread in a muscled arch.

The dragon roared and plumed with fire, violet, red, and orange.  From the forest beneath rose a lone, defiant howl, and then another rider emerged from the tree-line.  It was a young Elf girl, barefoot, in a rough homespun dress, her long hair plaited and coiled practically atop her head.  There was nothing unusual about her at all except her mount, whose muscled legs stretched and contracted, devouring the ground before it in a fluid, bounding gait.

It was a great golden wolf.  It was larger than a normal grey wolf; its head, he suspected, would be almost shoulder-height on Maedhros himself.  The shape of the snout was more like a grey wolf than a dire one, but it had a ruff around its neck and along the back of its neck, almost a mane.  It was not of any type that he was familiar with, but he had the haunting feeling that he had seen the specimen in question before.

Above them, the dragon roared again, spitting more colored fire—a territorial display.  It was not hunting; it was angry at the presence of another predator.

The Elf girl stood up on the wolf’s back, waving frantically.  “This way!” she called.  “Ride swiftly, we must get to shelter before it attacks!”

Anniavas swore.  The next moment, Maedhros’s arm was around his waist, and he was being lifted up onto Maedhros’s horse.  “Sorry,” Maedhros said in a tired rasp.  “No time.”

They rode hard, with the dragon’s screeching cry ringing in their ears.  The wolf streaked in front of the horses, leading them beneath the close tops of the trees.  Twisting and turning on the mountain path, they went first up and then down into a cleft that bit deeply into the mountainside, a narrow passage strewn with uneven rubble and partially hidden from above by the waving green branches of the high fir trees.

As they forayed deeper into the mountainside, the cleft eventually became a cave whose entrance was partially blocked with the piled-up rubble.  They had to dismount to lead the horses through the narrow gap—they whinnied and tossed their heads, rolling their eyes and stamping in discomfort.  “I’m sorry,” said the Elf-girl.  “These are Dwarf-passages, and the Dwarves here don’t ride so often.  They cleared out part of them to the left to make a stable, but you’ll have to leave the horses there.  It’s a tight fit for the rest of us.” She gave Maedhros a rather doubtful look.

“I’ll manage,” he told her tersely, but this close, Anniavas could feel the tightness riding in his limbs.

Anniavas himself was not particularly claustrophobic—or at least, he was not aware of being particularly claustrophobic—but then, he had both hands.  It was much easier to free oneself with both of them: a clear case in which the loss of a hand was worse than the loss of an eye.

As they dismounted, the great wolf loped over.  “Malhof!” the girl called.  “Don’t bother them—oh—I’m sorry—she’s not scary, really, I’m sorry—”

The wolf was familiar, Anniavas was certain now, as it looked directly into his eyes.  They were a warm brown, uncharacteristic of a typically lighter-eyed species, but there was a queer flame in their depths, a flame that Anniavas had also seen in Maedhros’s eyes, and in Hemmoril’s and Maglor’s…

Maybe it’s your turn to be saved.

He still did not know for sure which of them had said that to the other, hidden in a dark burrow beneath the earth, but he rather thought it had been him.  Anniavas raised his hand and gently smoothed it through the thick fur, feeling the musculature beneath.  He half expected to find a collar or even a chain like the one sunk into his own flesh, but there was none.

“Maedhros,” he said softly.  “This is no wolf.”

“What do you mean?” Maedhros asked, low, calm, and steady.

“This is an incarnate given a wolf’s shape through black magic—I think an Elf, but I cannot be sure.  We—we have met before.” There was a long pause.  Anniavas had deliberately spoken quietly enough that only Maedhros would hear him, and the young Elf girl seemed puzzled at the halt.  “We should keep going,” she put in now.  “We’re camped deeper inside.”

“We will discuss it later,” Maedhros murmured to Anniavas.  “Now is not the time, not when a dragon dogs us from above.”

They moved on, leaving the horses behind.  The roof drew down and the walls became very close.  They walked single-file, Maedhros after Azaghâl and before Anniavas.  Behind Anniavas, the wolf Malhof took up the rear, huffing and whining in a way that made him think poignantly of Limral, who was still young and who was therefore waiting for him at Himring, with Celegorm caring for her.  What could be binding Malhof into the wolf’s shape, Anniavas wondered, since it was not an artifact?

Deeper they went.  It grew darker; the sunlight could not penetrate to these depths.  Lit torches gleamed along the walls, their naked flames burning hot and smoky.  Maedhros coughed; Anniavas thought of the too-narrow corridors of Angband, of Maedhros’s stooped shoulders before him, his hands chained behind.

Down, down into the darkness, the mountain thrumming beneath them.  There was Song threaded through these rough-hewn walls, the raw stuff of creation itself, hidden in the jumbled welter of Melkor’s disordered touch.  He longed to draw it out, to shape it and to wield it, until the metal spit and bubbled around a fëa, until out of the mountain’s deep womb came another songful creature, shrieking and flaming…

Something butted Anniavas from behind, and he blinked.  Malhof was looking at him reproachfully; he had stopped in the middle of the passage, blocking it.  He must have been dreaming.  With a quiet breath out, he began to move forward again.

After some time, the passage began to widen out again, the first sign of which for Anniavas was a relaxation of the tension riding in Maedhros’s shoulders.  Soon the ceiling rose, and then the ugly torches were replaced with glittering lamps, constructed with consummate artistry.  They turned a corner, and for an instant Anniavas forgot they were underground.

It was the Dwarf village—it must be.  The passage opened out into a large cavern, about twenty feet high, an irregular almond shape almost like an eye.  Tremendous stalagmites, so large Anniavas thought his arms might not fit around one, ringed a small settlement of square stone cottages with thatch roofs, forming a defensive wall.  Above it crowded a welter of glittering stalactites as well, from which were hung a series of delicately-constructed lanterns shaped like irregular stars, hewn from colored glass, that sprinkled their little colored lights all throughout the little network of smooth stone paths connecting the buildings.  A number of canvas tents had been pitched haphazardly across many of the paths, giving the village a tumbled, disordered look.

The Elf girl led the way in, taking them directly to the center, where a warm bonfire kept away the clammy cold of the outer caves.  A group of Dwarves, Men, and Elves were talking together around it.  Some seemed to be cooking over it; others were providing bowls to more people clustered nearby.

Azaghâl and Maedhros and his warriors followed; Anniavas hung back a little, awkward and suddenly unsure.  He was not a warrior.  He had come only because of the queer conviction that he did not want to let Maedhros out of his sight again, which was probably an unreasonable reaction to the last time that Maedhros had ridden out without him.  There was no reason to expect another knife in the dark, yet Anniavas shied away from the thought of Maedhros, alone.  

Greetings were occurring.  Another habit that Anniavas found odd and difficult.  His mind told him that it was an important social ritual, affording free incarnates the ability to establish their personalities and potential relationships, but without any customs of his own, he never knew how to relate.  He skulked outside the ring of firelight until Maedhros looked up, apparently searching.  “Anniavas?” he called.

Before Anniavas could respond, Malhof nosed at him again, fading out of the shadows beside him.  Automatically, he set a hand on the great golden wolf’s neck, and the two of them looked at each other.  Malhof whined and tilted his head.

“Come along,” Anniavas said.  They entered the ring of light together.

Everyone looked at them.  Logically, this was because Malhof was known, and also because he was impossible to miss, being taller than Anniavas.  Illogically, Anniavas felt shame curling in his belly, the feeling that every single person there was looking at him, judging his ugly scars, his odd, stooping stance, or the single eye he still could not quite hide beneath his too-short curling hair.

“This is Anniavas,” Maedhros introduced him, and Anniavas gave a nervous half-bow.  

“We were afraid you had gotten yourself lost, lad,” Azaghâl said, with one of those inviting laughs of his.

Anniavas decided that he did not like him, but there was no point in indicating it.

Perhaps sensing his discomfort, Maedhros turned away.  “We were simply discussing the problem,” he said, in his calm, level tone.  “A hostile dragon is not to be trifled with.”

“I doubt it is so hostile when it cannot see Malhof,” Anniavas pointed out dryly.  To his surprise, there was no response to this.  Rather, when he looked up—turning about as usual to make sure that there were no surprises waiting for him due to his limited field of vision—he saw that everyone was looking at them again, and this time, it was presumably no longer because of the wolf.  He clenched his fists and ducked his head.

“No one’s angry, lad,” said Azaghâl.  “Just—what do you mean by that?”

A sudden, useless fear rose in Anniavas’s throat and choked him.  Was this another piece of knowledge he wasn’t supposed to have?  Isn’t it obvious? snarled the icy voice of his mind.  Stars and bone, you are all such fools!  An ice-cold shiver went down his spine.

“Anniavas,” Maedhros’s quiet voice cut through the white noise.  “You are not in danger here.”

“I only meant,” Anniavas replied, gaze downcast, not looking at anyone, trying to shut off the snarling voice inside him that was yelling at him that he was better than all of them, that he should not allow them to question him when they clearly knew nothing, “that it is a young male dragon, and I imagine that it is territorial, so it is probably made more hostile by the presence of another large predator.”

This time there was a murmur.  Azaghâl turned to Maedhros and said, also quietly, but not so quietly that Anniavas did not hear him, “How does he know that it’s male?”

Was this not common knowledge? Upon seeing the dragon, Anniavas had simply—known.  If he sieved through the messy sand of his mind, he was able to come across a few pieces of information, though trying to focus too hard on them made a chill run down his spine, made him shiver.  “Males have a more pronounced ruff of fur at their throat and the coloration patterns tend towards bright gold, whereas females are usually more muted or silver.  Females are also often larger than males, although that is difficult to assess for a young dragon that may be undernourished.  Both can be territorial, though, so if I am mistaken in its sex, that does not mean I am mistaken in its behavior.”

The murmur grew louder, and Anniavas’s heart thudded loudly inside his chest.

“All right,” Maedhros said, his dull strong voice a series of stones pinning the rippling cloth of those awful whispers into place.  “Thank you, Anniavas, that’s useful information.  We’ll talk about it later, once we’ve had a rest and a good meal.”

Malhof whined softly, butting his head into Anniavas’s shoulder in a manner that was surely intended to be comforting.  He was so like Limral in that moment that Anniavas almost laughed, but he could not forget that this was not a dog, nor yet a wolf, but a creature bound to a shape that was not his, with muddled instincts, and probably in a great deal of pain and confusion.  Anniavas, laying a shaking hand on Malhof’s shoulder as the conversation thankfully moved on, found that he was extremely sympathetic.