The Mirror Crack'd by AdmirableMonster  

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Fealty

LAST TIME on The Mirror Crack'd: Anniavas adopted a puppy and met the mysterious kennel-master.

THIS TIME: Anniavas learns about loyalty and fealty at Himring. For someone who considers himself an expert in the matter, he has a lot to learn.

Chapter warnings: panic attacks and discussion of something next-door to suicidal ideation.

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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.

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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.