The Mirror Crack'd by AdmirableMonster  

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The Dragon's Roost

LAST TIME on The Mirror Crack'd: Recruited by Azaghâl, Anniavas and Maedhros traveled to Lake Helevorn to relieve a beleaguered village.

THIS TIME on The Mirror Crack'd: Anniavas speaks with a dragon.

chapter rating is T, the only warnings are for mildly graphic descriptions of injury

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I think he learned from Sauron.  Celegorm’s words sounded very loud in Maedhros’s mind as he made his way to the village outskirts, where Anniavas and the other warriors from Himring had been quartered in the tents they had brought with them.  It had been a very long day of introductions—with the Dwarf elders, with the Elves who spoke for the Silvan village, with the elected leader of the humans—and of strategic discussions, which Maedhros had judiciously kept Anniavas out of, despite the curious looks that Azaghâl kept tossing his way.  Whoever Anniavas had been, he was not that now—but Maedhros had not thought of the reaction he might get to such knowledge in a place outside of Himring.  He was too used to operating as the sole leader; the complex diplomatic concerns he would have to juggle at Lake Helevorn had not sufficiently occupied his thoughts.

Foolish of him.  He knew what it was like to hold the position in which he found himself; he knew it very well indeed, first as Fëanor’s oldest son, and then—albeit briefly—as the High King of the Noldor.  For all his talk of refusing Anniavas’s fealty, he should have thought of the precarious position that might put Anniavas in here, now, when he could not claim anyone’s protection.

And then, weighed against all that, against the justified fear of the folk of Lake Helevorn, against the danger to Anniavas himself, there was the possibility that Anniavas’s knowledge might be truly invaluable in the situation.  The dragon had come out of nowhere, a screaming gale of horror and fire, about a month ago, killing a whole flock of sheep and nearly roasting their Mannish shepherd alive.  Malhof had driven the dragon off for long enough for the Elves and the human villagers to flee to the Dwarves inside the walls of the mountain, but the dragon had brought down part of the passage almost on their heads.  And the Dwarvish village could not support three times the number of inhabitants for long, so the dragon must be dealt with. And Malhof herself was yet another complication—she had been living with the Silvan Elves for about half a year now, since she rescued a lost child and was nursed back to health from her severe injuries, and now Anniavas thought she was no wolf at all but an Elf of another shape. So, if Anniavas knew, or could find information in the recesses of his muddled mind, they should use it, about the dragon or about the wolf.

The obvious solution that occurred to Maedhros would be dangerous, and he was unsure whether he could ask it of his friend.  If Anniavas knew of a way to drive the dragon off, or could discern one, if that way did not require a large group of warriors, then only the two of them need go, or at most, only them and the folk from Himring.  That would allow Anniavas to use whatever information he had at his disposal without fear of reprisal.  But it might be safer for Anniavas not to get involved at all, and Maedhros could not compel him, even if he had wanted to. (Though perhaps if he asked at all, Anniavas might respond to it as if it were an order…)

He walked in two tight loops about the little cluster of tents in his indecision.  Just as he was about to start the third, Anniavas himself slipped out of the nearest tent to intercept him, gaze cast down.

“Lord of Himring,” he murmured, which was not an auspicious beginning, but then his eye came up to look directly at Maedhros.  “I would like to help these people, even if my information is forbidden.  And—” he swallowed.  “The dragon is magnificent.  I would like to help him, too.  If I go by myself, while he’s sleeping, I may be able to…learn something.  Even if it’s dangerous knowledge, I—”

Instinctively, Maedhros lifted his hand, palm flat out, entreating Anniavas to halt.  He knew he shouldn’t have the next instant, when Anniavas went still and servile, dipping his head.  “I do not mean no,” Maedhros told him, as gently as he knew how.  “Only that I would ask you do not go entirely alone.  I will accompany you.”

That sharp, mangled gaze caught his, and an undeniable thrill went through Maedhros.  His breath caught, and he was forced to deliberately steady it.

“That almost sounds fun,” said Anniavas.

* * *

The world was still and quiet beneath Varda’s distant gleaming stars.  The dark pines rose about them, whispering in a chill night breeze.  At Maedhros’s side, Anniavas shivered unconsciously; an early spring night in the mountains was brisk to begin with, and Maedhros knew that he always seemed to feel the cold before anyone else did.  Their breath steamed in the air, and Maedhros’s heart beat quickly.  A perilous venture indeed, for the two of them to go up while the rest of their company slept, to a wild dragon’s nest, to hope that the proximity would draw more hidden memories from the deep well in Anniavas’s mind.  Maedhros knew that any of his brothers would have called him a hypocrite for doing such a thing, and certainly he would have spoken sternly to any of them for it, so perhaps he was a hypocrite.  But Fingon, he thought, would approve.  And something in him trusted Anniavas’s capabilities when Maedhros was there to back him up.

They had retraced their steps—there was only one narrow exit, and as uncomfortable as it was for Maedhros to squeeze, it made it easy enough to find their way back out of the mountain.  Now they were climbing, winding their way upwards, guessing at where the dragon’s temporary roost might be based on where they had first seen the flash of golden wings rising above the mountain in the morning.

It grew colder as they climbed higher, and Anniavas’s shivering grew stronger.  “Here,” Maedhros offered, raising one arm to open his cloak.

“Ah—thank you.” Awkwardly, Anniavas shifted into the clumsy embrace, pressing his smaller form against Maedhros’s.  Despite his intense shivering, his body was shedding heat; Maedhros himself was almost instantly warmed.  He would almost have been concerned that Anniavas was feverish, but he was evincing no difficulty with the physical activity, his face was pale, not fever-flushed, and there was no sign of fever other than the surprising warmth of him.

There was no real path for them to follow—only the red pine needles crunching beneath their feet and the occasional felled tree for them to clamber over.  “There,” Anniavas said sharply, gesturing to a scarred and darkened pucker in the mountainside, a sudden missing tooth in the tree-lined landscape, hard to see by only the faint light of the stars and the one small Fëanorian lantern that they had brought.  “Dragonfire did that.”

Drawing closer, what had seemed like a small pockmark revealed itself to be a broad swathe of devastation.  Anniavas broke away from Maedhros to pick through the charred and broken stumps of trees. 

“I think we’re close,” he said.  “Look.  Here is a footprint sunk into the soil, and here are the marks of his tail.  He landed here and began to walk away.”

Something about him seemed both near and very distant—his face shadowed, only the line of his shoulder easily visible.  Why should his shoulder seem familiar to Maedhros?  Maedhros shook aside the odd impression and followed him further up the slope, through the burned area.

They heard the dragon before they saw it, heard the long, slow, snorting breaths of a creature sleeping.  Quietly, they approached, climbing up to the cusp of the burn and tiptoeing along the side.  Closer, and they found the remains of a sheep, mostly gnawed bones, scattered across the ground.  The dragon itself was curled up in hollow of disturbed earth, nose to tail.

“Stars,” breathed Anniavas.  “Isn’t he beautiful.”

Like this, Maedhros had to admit, he was.  He was not so large as he had seemed, spreading his wings across the sky—only a little larger than a bear, really, maybe even lighter than Malhof, for even Maedhros’s untrained eye could see the sharply-protruding bones of the dragon’s spine and the curve of his ribs.  He must be very hungry.  The light of the Feanorian lantern played across the golden glitter of his scales, and he had a long ruff of fur that started on top of his beaky head and went all down his long, curving neck, giving way eventually to the naked scales of his back.

Anniavas crouched and crabwalked forward.  Maedhros felt his hand drop instinctively to his sword.  He looked so small and defenseless like that, his red-gold curls dripping into his eye, the savage ruin of his face on full display, before a beast that, even small, even shrunken, could easily take him apart.  Anniavas laid his hand gently on the dragon’s beak—and one golden eye opened immediately, swiveling forward.  Maedhros froze instantly, utterly still.

The dragon and Anniavas looked at one another.  Then the dragon whined and said, in a petulant, chiming voice, “Hungry.”

The ubiquitous blue glow of the artifact embedded in Anniavas’s spine intensified, and Maedhros saw his hand begin to shake and tremble, though he did not know if it was with cold or with fear.

“You must be injured, then,” Anniavas said, after a moment.

The dragon blinked, slow and lethargic.  Then it stretched out its neck and lifted a wing, under which there was an ugly contusion.  The scales had been cracked by the force of some great blow, and the flesh was swollen around the center, brown blood dried and crusted across it.

“They don’t need much flesh to sustain them,” Anniavas said after a moment to Maedhros, his voice cold and detached.  “They have a miniature star inside that provides most of their energy.  He’s been eating to try and repair it, but it may be infected.”

Maedhros did not fear much anymore, but there was something about the way this chilly knowledge had arrived in Anniavas’s face—one moment nothing, the next this shard of memory (that perhaps he had learned from Sauron himself?) drawing his brows together and rearranging his face into something beautiful but remote—how fragile was their allegiance, really?  (And what did Anniavas mean by a miniature star inside?) He set his jaw.  Anniavas had risked a great deal to help them; he would do neither of them any favors by allowing paranoia to rule him.  

Instead of voicing any of the fears, he said, “Can we convince him to stop terrorizing the people who live here?”

“I think so,” Anniavas said.  “If we bring Malhof back to Himring, then he will no longer feel threatened by a creature within the village.  He will need some more sheep to heal—perhaps some salve, if the wound is infected—but if the villagers can be convinced to give up a few sheep, they will win themselves a powerful defender.  He can be reasoned with.”

Maedhros thought sickly of his little brother’s gaunt, fire-ravaged face, voice reduced to a reedy shred, of the pain in Hemmoril’s eyes reflecting only ash and bone.  “Glaurung could not be reasoned with,” he said quietly.

Anniavas’s breath drew in, rough, sharp.  The dragon shifted, resettling its wing and raising its head.  It occurred to Maedhros that this was, perhaps, not the time or place for this argument.  Absently, Anniavas—with no appearance whatsoever of fear—ran his hand across the dragon’s head and down to the ruff before beginning to scratch it gently.  The dragon’s eyes lidded over, reminding Maedhros of nothing so much as Limral when Anniavas was paying the same sort of attention to her.

“From my admittedly limited knowledge, Glaurung was grown and an established soldier of Angband,” Anniavas replied.  He was shaking, hand clenched, but his voice was cool and steady.  “At least more grown than this youngling.  You would not compare an Orc child to a seasoned warrior, would you?”

“No,” Maedhros allowed.  “But others may.”

“Because we are not in Himring?” Anniavas asked.  Beside him, the dragon made a soft little crooning noise and coughed out a gentle puff of smoke.

“Because we are not in Himring.  Although they have accepted Malhof here, so there is some hope they may be willing to listen.  But it cannot be forced—and those who live along the shores of the lake were here first.”

A tremulous nod.  “Of course,” Anniavas whispered.  “I suppose we must await their judgement, then.”