A Song Amidst His Torment by Elrond's Library  

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24

Maitimo hangs.

“Therefore Morgoth took Maedhros and hung him from the face of a precipice upon Thangorodrim, and he was caught to the rock by the wrist of his right hand in a band of steel.” (Of the Return of the Noldor)

The light changed again, though this time Maitimo was in far too much agony to really notice or pay attention.

He noticed the warmth, Laurelin’s last fruit sending rays of golden light and heat through the land, the silver light of Telperion’s flowers mingling in a dizzying array, the beauty of the Mingling a distant memory Maitimo was sure he never would see again. 

Nevertheless, memory and light and warmth could not cut through cold winds that encircled the peaks of Thangorodrim. He shivered and shook and grew numb, his right wrist captured in a band of iron, seamless and permanent. 

Melkor had Sang it into being around him, had hung him from the sheer cliff personally, knocking an anchoring pin longer than Maitimo’s arm into the mountainside. 

“Since I lack your father to torment, Ñoldóran,” Melkor had said, almost conversationally as he hauled Maitimo’s broken body up the cliff, “you’ll make a decent enough warning. Keep your people away from my home, will you?”

And so he hung there, swaying in the breeze, shivering. Broken and stretched. He had run out of tears long ago.

Time passed.

The sound of trumpets broke the silence, their sweet and familiar clarion call echoing through the mountains. And then, the tramping of a thousand thousand feet, and voices raised in song. A challenge to the Dread Vala issued from an army of weary travelers at the end of their journey. 

Maitimo screamed, desperate, until he was hoarse.

And Nolofinwë’s great host turned away, and Maitimo was alone again.

The lights chased each other across the sky, endlessly turning.

And Maitimo screamed. In anguish, yes, but to hear himself, too, to make sure he was alive.

And Maitimo cried, salt tracks drying on his cheeks, the wind whipping them away before they could fall. 

And Maitimo hardened his heart, the scenarios of lost futures playing behind his eyes. 

If only he had just been stronger. If only he had just refused. If only he had said no and accepted the pain. If only he had goaded someone into killing him. If only he had kept his manhood, fought off the leering orc that had taken it from him. If only he had not sold all that he was and all that he could be for petty and meaningless comforts. If only he had succeeded in slaying himself. If only he had faded as his true-blooded Haruni had. If only he had been more clever. If only he had escaped. 

If only he had not been so weak. 

If only.

In the darkness, eventually, came visitors. 

Thuringwethil’s pale skin gleamed under the light of the river of stars above, her purple eyes flashing as she searched the shadows for him. And there, at her side, Mairon in his wolf fana, which still made Maitimo flinch still. Their eyes met, and Mairon shifted, shivering into his customary fana with ease. 

“Nelyafinwë,” Mairon said, voice neutral. 

“Atya!” Thuringwethil cried, and with powerful thrusts of her wings she propelled herself into the sky, until she was clinging to the cliff face beside him like a bat, metal caps on the claws of her wings digging into the rock. “Atya,” she whispered, and reached out. Maitimo let her cling to the crooked and broken fingers of his free hand, knowing that something complex was playing over his face, a mix of scathing anger and pitying sympathy and perhaps even sorrow. 

“You shouldn’t have come,” Maitimo said, voice rough. “I distinctly remember telling you not to follow.”

“And you would have me just abandon you?”

Maitimo’s lip curled back, anger blooming in his heart, the memory of every resentment, every cruel thought and every wish she would just disappear or die or something welling up. They had not been often, those thoughts, the affection always stronger, but he had had his moments of weakness, of despair. He jerked his hand back, as if her touch was hot metal. “Yes! I am not returning, Thuringwethil,” he said harshly, her Sindarin name like a curse. “I cannot be your father, and play-acting like we were ever a family is a cruel joke to us both. Will you swear yourself to them and enact all the same violence, an endless refrain? Look around you, girl! When will you see? Grow the fuck up!”

Thuringwethil stared at him, eyes wide, turning pale and silver. “But …”

“No. I would rather die than go back.” He looked down, where Mairon stood, motionless as a statue, below his feet. “If you’ve come to kill me, just get it over with, Mairon.”

“I haven’t.” Mairon shrugged. “My Lord-husband would be wroth with me if I did, and I’ve invited enough of his anger for the next Age, hiding you from him.”

Maitimo growled.

“But if you play nice, Nelyafinwë, we did bring food. And water.”

That shut him up.

“Clean water,” Thuringwethil murmured, pulling a corked skin from her skirts. He noticed suddenly, as she held it out to him, her arm trembling, that her cuffs were embroidered with purple, interlocking keys, one half-finished. He took it, pulled the cork with his teeth, and drank deeply. 

And so they came, the pair of them, or Thuringwethil alone, whenever the silver disk went dark, letting the innumerable stars shine at their brightest. 

He watched the world.

Counted the stones.

Made stories out of the shapes of the clouds above him.

He watched the birds fly through the blue – blue! So many shades of blue! – sky. A pair of grey doves nested in a hollow of the cliff below him. He watched, day by day, as their eggs slowly hatched, and their babes struggled to lift their heads, their gentle peeping calling their parents for sustenance. 

And he watched, helpless, as their cries went unheeded, their parents ruthlessly picked off by eagles.

He lost himself in fantasy. In plans. In tactics and ruthless games of war and violence. In what he would do, given the chance, to make Mairon pay. 

Fulfilling Fëanáro’s Oath seemed like a small concern, compared to the possibility of revenge.

He would have to use all he had learned, in the darkness of the pits and in the darkness of Mairon’s apartments, to punish the Maia in return. He would have to transform himself, become like Mairon – nay, be Mairon – to beat Mairon in a what might become a continent-spanning game of arantyalmë, one with the highest stakes. Hundred of thousands of lives and the destiny of Beleriand, no, Arda Herself, depended on Angband’s collapse. And he must change himself, become more, more, more. 

Ruthless. Vicious. Hungry. 

Is this what the ghost, or memory, or drug-addled vision of Míriel had meant for him to become? 

“Tears and blood aplenty will you shed, but you must live. You must see yourself through until the last days of my House are utterly spent. This do I charge, child of my wrath: Live. Find your strength. Do whatever you need to do to survive.”

Had this warlord always been sleeping in his chest, waiting for circumstances to awaken him, waiting for Maitimo to let him loose upon the world to ravage and ravish and ruin it?

Who was he, this warrior, this tactician, this wrathful creature inhabiting this skin? 

Maitimo the dutiful son, the Copper Prince of ever-bright Tirion, was dead. Had died in the dark, screaming and thrashing, in a rush of red blood and clear amniotic fluid and unnumbered tears. 

Nelyafinwë the King was dying. Hung here from his wrist, he could feel his resolve wavering with each tendon stretching to its utmost limit. With his legs, broken and healing crookedly, aching in the cold. With his skin burning and his muscles wasting and his ill-won fat stores disappearing and his hair tangling into heavy mats, dirty and disgusting.

But he must survive.

Who would replace Maitimo the Prince, Nelyafinwë the King?

The warlord did not have a name yet. But he was there, lingering, watching, waiting. He would be there, when he was needed. 

And with each passing cycle of light and dark, he waited. He convinced himself that something about this state of affairs would change, must change. Eventually. 

Thuringwethil, clinging to the cliff, held out a bit of dried and spiced meat. Before he could take it, her ears twitched, swiveling to catch a sound he could not hear. She held it just out of reach, eyes half-closed in concentration. The night was quiet. Even the wind had stopped. 

Then, wordlessly, she launched herself off the cliff, wings flaring to catch her as she flew south and away. 

It was almost dawn by the time he heard what Thuringwethil must have.

The discordant notes of a harp out of tune from the cold and only idly played.

A familiar voice, raised in song. 

He dared not believe.

The chorus dropped away, and he took up the next verse, hoping against hope, despite, or perhaps in spite of, his parched throat and ruined voice and aching heart.

But there, clambering up the rough rocks into the crags he knew so well, Thuringwethil pulling him up the last stretch. There were the familiar, gold-threaded braids. There was that grim and gaunt face, seemingly etched permanently in a frown. 

But those eyes, so familiar, that stared up at him in the same place Mairon always stood. Those eyes that looked up at him with anger and pity and resentment and sorrow and loathing and love. 

Findekáno.

“Maedhros it was, that sang amid his torment.” (Of the Return of the Noldor)

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