The Lands of Weeping and of War by bunn  

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A Holiday, a Holiday, the First One of the Year

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The last ruddy light of day was glancing on the carved stone window-columns  when the door below opened, and two people came up the steps: one of them near as young as Elrond and Elros, and the other so very old that he could remember crossing the Ered Luin into Beleriand as one of the Third Host of the Eldar, following Elwë Thingol. 

Gil-galad came hurrying up first. “Elros!” he said laughing.  “Were you planning to tell me you were visiting Mithlond, or were you just going to blow in like a summer breeze and vanish again before I could catch you?”

Elros smiled, though you could see his heart was not in it. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I had a private matter to attend to here, so I took the first ship and did not wait to send a messenger.” 

Gil-galad gave Maglor a troubled sideways look, and the smile fell from his face. “I thought you at least would have more faith in me,” he said. “I told you from the start that I did not expect you to forget all other loyalties.”

“No!” Elros said at once. “I didn’t mean that at all.  I didn’t know that Maedhros had died until Elrond came to tell me. Maedhros was dear to me too, and so...”

“And so you wanted to speak with Maglor, of course,” Gil-galad said, rather stiffly.  “I am sorry to have interrupted you.” 

“You didn’t,” Elrond told him. “We’ve all resolved to try to stop feeling guilty, and had just got to the point where we were about to start thinking of dinner instead.  I’m glad you came.”

“And so am I,” Elros agreed. “And you too, Círdan.  Will you take a meal with us?” 

“I would be glad to,” Gil-galad said, although he did not look particularly glad.  Maglor wondered briefly if he should make an excuse and leave, so that Gil-galad and Círdan could avoid eating with him, but he could not think of one.  Anyway, they could dine elsewhere if it was so important to keep their hands clean. Let them make their own excuses. Kinslayers had to eat too.

“And the sooner the better,” Círdan said cheerfully. “I sailed all the way up from Forlond today, and then Gil-galad here dragged me off to see you before I could have the smallest bite when I landed.  I reckon I could eat orc, if there was nothing better, I’m that hungry.  And Maglor here looks as if he could do with feeding up.”

“I have had something of a lean time of it recently,” Maglor admitted warily. 

“So I heard,” Círdan said and looked at him with piercing blue eyes like sky over sea.  “I was sorry to hear of what came to your brothers, lad.  And to you, for that matter.”

“Yes, I imagine you were, since you had to bury the dead,” Maglor said, with an edge to his voice. Something about the way that Círdan was looking at him scraped at the raw edges of his nerves and reminded him his hand was aching. He held his head high, since that was all that was left to him. “You’ll dine beside an orc if you have to, is that it?  I don’t need your pity.”  He heard a sharp intake of breath from Elros.  Elrond was looking at him reproachfully. 

“Well, you have it anyway, whether you need it or not,” Círdan said, imperturbable. “I remember your grandfather speaking of how he was going to take all his people to the light and the wonders of Aman, where all of them would be safe forever.  A sad thing that hope failed him, and a terrible sad thing what happened to his grandchildren, but still, you came to our aid and you tried, and I’ll honour you for that, whether you want me to or not.  I had kin among the slaves of the Enemy too, you know.  I don’t count them as orcs, but yes, I pity them.  Who wouldn’t?”   

Maglor remembered Círdan long ago, telling them that those who came back from Angband could not be trusted, that they carried the fear of their master’s gaze with them wherever they went.  They had not believed him, then. Such things had seemed impossible.  

They still did,when it came to Maedhros. Maedhros had fallen to despair, but his will had been his own. Did that make it better, or worse? 

“Day shall come again,” Círdan said, conversationally, as if he had replied.  “I hadn’t thought it would be you and me to see it, of all that great host on the field before Thangorodrim in the year of tears, but there she is, the Sun, and she’ll be back again tomorrow, and that’s a finer thing than holding on to grief for things we all regret.  I’m not much good with words, as I’ve mentioned to you before, I think. But there’s something there, surely.”

“Day shall come again,” Maglor said, and met Círdan’s keen eyes, finding it easier than he had expected, even though they were kind. “There is something there.  You are right.  I am sorry, Círdan.  I spoke more sharply than I intended.” 

“Mmm, well, you’re Noldor after all. I daresay you can’t help it,” Círdan said tolerantly, but he so clearly meant well that Maglor could hardly take offense. “Now then, Elrond, what were you saying about dinner?” 

“I’ll have some food sent up,” Elrond said smiling and relieved. “I think we can manage something less tough than orc though, Círdan.  There’s something of a shortage of them locally.” 

******

“We’re going to make a journey for no reason at all,” Elros declared to Maglor with determination, over a breakfast of fresh white goat’s cheese, smoked mackerel and laverbread.  “I’ve told my people I will be away for a little while. We are going to go up into the hills beyond the Ered Luin, just the three of us, and go hunting in the wild, the way you said you used to do with Finrod.  And look at birds, and flowers and trees and... streams and things, and sing and play the harp a little. No orcs, no spiders, no dragons, no heavy shields to lug about, and most of all, no armour!”

“I am not permitted weapons,” Maglor pointed out. “That would make hunting a little difficult. And I am not too sure that there are no orcs, spiders and dragons left. They may have fled the fall of Beleriand, like the rest of us.” 

“Don’t be so gloomy!” Elros said encouragingly. “Even if there are a few orcs here and there, they are hardly going to be looking for trouble now.  I doubt we’ll see any at all.” 

Maglor looked at him dubiously.  “You want me to go wandering around Middle-earth, unarmed, hoping the orcs will stay out of the way?”

“Yes,” Elrond told him, and gave him a smile that had a definite hint of an edge to it. “Think yourself lucky.  At least you are not six years old. And you have a belt-knife.” 

That made any further protest impossible, of course.  “I did give you your belt-knives back eventually,” Maglor reminded him. “Very well.  I share your enthusiasm for a lack of dragons, spiders and orcs, and if we do meet any, I have every confidence in your ability to dispose of them without my help.” 

“Good,” Elrond said smiling.  “You can tell us what to do, and we’ll hunt; I have been hunting only twice since we were thirteen, I think.  Or we can hunt for nuts and mushrooms, like the Green-elves do. It doesn’t matter: we can take supplies with us.  That is, if you are well enough.  There’s no rush.  We could go in a few months, or next year...” 

“I am well,” Maglor said shortly.  “If you are going to hunt, you should have the right equipment. You won’t catch much with war-gear.  Not that I’m the most expert of huntsmen, but if you are going to do this, you might as well do it properly.”  

The expert huntsmen had been Celegorm, who had died killing their grandfather, and Amrod and Amras, who had died to bring the Havens to ruin. Perhaps Amrod, Amras and Celegorm were lost in everlasting darkness, and probably the Silmaril would have burned them too.  

But Elrond was looking at him, bright-eyed and hopeful, with fifty years of unearned war behind him and every right to expect someone to make up for everything that he and Elros had lost at the hands of the House of Fëanor.  And most of the people who could touch a Silmaril and not be burned were dead, or had vanished beyond the Sea.  

Which, come to think of it, was how they had ended up here.  

Perhaps the Valar or Finarfin or someone would be able to sort out whatever harm had been done to Elros by growing up among people who could not touch a Silmaril, once he got to the Land of Gift.  Though, that still left Elrond, who would not leave...

Elrond and Elros were of the blood of Lúthien. They were pretty tough. On reflection, Maglor felt there was nothing wrong with either of them. Elros could probably give the Valar lessons.

All you could do was go on.

“We had better find a couple of light bows, and some hounds,” he said. “ I don’t know if anyone is keeping hawks in Mithlond yet, but they used to hunt with hawks in Doriath. It may be that Celeborn could lend you some.”  

Finrod had brought the fashion back with him from Doriath to Nargothrond  and Dorthonion, to Hithlum and the March...  

Finrod was well enough, at least. He was returned from death already to walk with his father under the trees in Tirion, so the word that had come East over Sea with the Host of Valinor had it. Maglor had absolutely no right to be jealous of him. 

Elrond nodded. “There are hounds in Mithlond — at the stables, with our friend Varyar, mostly.  I don’t think we have hawks.  We can do without them. Make a list of what else you think we’ll need, and I’ll get together the supplies.”

“Very well,” Maglor agreed.  “I had best speak to Carnil, and anyone else she has managed to lead astray from Celebrimbor’s allegiance.  If I vanish again without a word, I am not sure she’ll forgive me before the breaking of the world.” 

******

It turned out that a number of the deerhounds in Mithlond were descended from the hounds that had followed Maedhros and Maglor from Amon Ereb to the Taur-im-Duinath, to the eastern mountains and the Northern front.  Nobody had been keeping hounds for hunting for quite some time during the war, but the hounds had followed the Elves to war, and sometimes even into battle. Somehow or other down the years, some of them had managed to raise pups.

They were, of course, many generations removed from the hounds that had known Amrod and Amras, and yet, looking at their waving plumed tails, their soft creamy muzzles and their thick brindle coats, Maglor could see the hounds of long ago, those that had come in the ships from lost Aman, and those that Amrod and Amras had traded for with the Sindar of the March.

In the woods and plains of East Beleriand, Ambarussa, with the assistance of Celegorm whenever he visited, had bred up a mingled race of hunters, swift as the wind, high-stepping and joyful in pursuit.  The last of them had been left behind to follow Maglor and Maedhros, when Ambarussa had fallen at the Havens, and here were their descendants. 

These hounds were perhaps a little shorter in the leg, not quite so tall and swift, yet they were still recognisably the same hounds, and Maglor found himself smiling as they thrust their long snouts towards him, wagging cheerfully. They too had survived the darkness, though it had not been easy for them.  It had not been easy for anyone. 

He chose three of the hounds according to the recommendation of Varyar, who had somehow ended up working in the stables when the rest of Maglor and Maedhros’s people had been assigned to building duty, and had apparently found time for hound-training along with his other duties.  Perhaps Celebrimbor had simply recognised that wherever Varyar was told to go, he would end up at the stables anyway.  Even Maedhros had ended up doing that.  

Maglor picked the last hound because he was leaning blissfully on Elrond staring up at him with dark adoring eyes, and Elrond was clearly enjoying rubbing his silky ears.

 

The horses that they had ridden through the end of the war were old now, swaybacked and grey-faced, but they recognised Maglor at once as he came up into the pasture where they were grazing, and came to greet him. 

A tiny remnant, these, of the thousands that had once been at his command, but then, nobody could know thousands of horses.  All of these he knew by name, their preferences and their peculiarities as well as he knew their riders. 

One horse in particular, Táli, who had been his own war-horse, came pushing forward through the crowd with confidence, ears up, to take a wisp of sweet hay. There beside her there was a tall grizzled bay stallion. Maedhros’s last horse.  He had been getting old even when Maedhros had last ridden him, and now he walked stiff-legged and his lips drooped with age.  Maglor scratched his neck for him, and the old horse held his head sideways to lean into it, quietly happy, while Táli lipped at his shoulder. 

They had not taken horses on that last journey to the camp beside the sea where the Silmarils lay.  The hosts of Valinor had little cavalry: the horses would have made them conspicuous. 

“He’s not looking bad for his age,” he told Varyar, once he had run his hands over the stallion. “He has earned his retirement.”

“He has.  And he has been getting the best that I have to offer.  But I have something new I wanted to show you,” Varyar told Maglor leading him past a long stone wall to open pasture, and whistling, a long shrill note. 

Hooves answered, and a small group of young horses came cantering towards him, strong-looking duns and bays of the kind that Maglor preferred: no flashy white to attract the enemy’s eyes, no feathers to get caught and tangled, only trim, unshowy horses with strong legs and necks that looked as though they could run all day.  There was one young stallion with the mob, taller than the rest, a bright red bay with a gentle inquisitive eye and a white star on his forehead.  It was clear to anyone  with half an eye who Varyar had had in mind as his rider.  Varyar had been born at Himring, and had served Maedhros all his life.  He had offered Maglor his allegiance with a strange puzzled look, as if he could not quite believe it was Maglor standing there and not his older brother.  An understandable reaction, really; Maglor felt much the same himself.   

“They look very good,” Maglor said, offering long strands of sweet goose-grass from the ungrazed side of the wall. “How old?” 

“Five or six years, most of them,” Varyar told him.  “These two fillies are three. There are a couple of mares with foals at foot too, but they are in the other field.  It would be a pity to lose the bloodlines entirely, I thought, and so...” 

“And so you have worked to make sure they were not lost?  That was well thought of.  I suppose it might not occur to Celebrimbor.” 

“I thought this roan mare would suit you, lord. I’d been training her up with you in mind.” Neither of them were looking at the tall red bay.  “Táli doesn’t really have the speed for hunting any more.”

“Elrond and Elros are going hunting,” Maglor said.  “I am not, and even if I were, I’d rather not take out a young untried horse, since we will be gone for several days. Táli is wise and we know each other, and she’s not so old as all that. She will serve well enough for now. But this mare looks very well-made. I shall look forward to riding her in the future, Varyar, thank you.”  He made himself look properly at the red stallion.  “This will be a very fine horse once he has filled out a little,” he said. 

“He is a little young for hunting yet,” Varyar said immediately. 

“Yes, he is,” Maglor agreed, and let the stallion snuff at his left hand, then rubbed at his tall crest.  “Perhaps he would suit Gil-galad, one day.  When he’s ready.  He looks a horse to suit a High King.” 

Varyar made a wordless reluctant noise. 

“Or will you keep him as your own mount?” Maglor asked. “Your old girl must be getting a little grey around the muzzle too.”

“I can’t keep them all for myself,” Varyar admitted. “And it would... it would be a fine thing if the King rode one of our horses.  They’re potbellied beasts, these Eregion ponies.  Good enough for carrying a sack of onions to market, but not what I’d like to see the High King of the Noldor riding.  Just... in a few years.  When he’s ready.” 

“When he’s older,” Maglor agreed.  “It’s a little too soon for him to be going hunting yet.”

******

“I’ve wanted to do this for years,” Elros told them, determinedly cheerful as they rode out between the tall green turf-walls of Mithlond, hounds running joyfully ahead of them. “Only there was never time for any of it, what with... one thing and another.  But now there’s time. Oh yes, two more things. No guilt and no arguments!”

“No guilt may be a little difficult,” Maglor said, and looked across at both of them, their fair faces so nearly the same and yet each already shaped by life and thought that was very different. He shook his head doubtfully. “But I will try!  No arguments though... I don’t know if I can live up to that one.  Two Noldor together is an argument, isn’t that what the Sindar say?” 

Elrond laughed. “In that case, you had best try to be of the House of Hador, through your connection with our cousin Arachon, and so will I. The Edain are a peaceable folk.”

“If only that were true!” Elros said, lifting his eyes to the blue sky.  “No, we shall just be Elros, Elrond and Maglor, and endeavour to avoid arguments that way.”  

They rode up into the Blue Mountains, out of the broken lands where the new Gulf of Lune shone in the sun behind them, up into the quiet birchwood uplands where the white trunks grew in scattered groups among the rabbit-grazed turf, and a flutter of green leaves shone overhead, then higher still, across heather hills purple with flowers and stitched with golden gorse, where they rested the horses for a while beside a small clear moorland pool, and then rode on down into a shallow valley among the tall grey trunks of beech trees, following the tiny stream down until it became a small joyful river with a quiet grassy glade beside it, and there they stopped for the night. 

******

Maglor woke early to find the sun already warm, streaming through the shadows of the trees to make golden pools of light and outline each blade of the dewy grass with shimmering light. 

The horses were grazing peacefully not far away under the shade of the beech-trees near the stream, and Elros and Elrond already awake, were sitting lazily by the water, tossing small pebbles into the shallow pool.  

“It’s a hot day, and it will be hotter later,” Maglor said, coming over to join them. “Are you two keen to ride on, or shall we linger here today and enjoy the shade and the voice of the stream singing to itself?”  

Elros smiled and began to run a comb through his dark hair in a leisurely manner. “Let’s stay, then,” he said.  “There’s no rush.” 

Clear water ran down from mossy stones, dark-shadowed and golden-edged where the light caught them and Maglor washed his hands and face, the coolness of the water kind on his aching hand.

“Is it any better?” Elros asked, leaning over to look at his palm.

“It hurts,” Maglor said, deliberately extravagant, “as if Ancalagon the Black himself had bathed it in his fiercest flames, and, which is worse, it itches too. I could write a verse about the different kind of agony in each and every fingertip. It could only be more painful if I had twice as many fingers, and if Fingon were only here to do it, I would certainly demand that he lop the whole thing off at the wrist...”  he stopped as Elros winced.  “Too much?”

“Better than saying it doesn’t hurt at all when it’s clear as the moon on a cloudless night that it does,” Elros told him. “Can I set the charm on it this morning?”

In fact the cold of the water had numbed the ache considerably, but Maglor held out his hand for Elros to say words over it anyway. 

Elrond went wandering along the grassy deer-nibbled path a little way, with one of the great shaggy deerhounds at his heel.  He looked down at something by his feet, and then jumped nimbly backwards, catching the great hound by the collar to pull it back.

“I’ve met a tiny dragon,” he announced. “Look at this! It’s like living copper. Do you think it bites?” 

Maglor came over to look. “That’s a slow-worm,” he said.  “A legless lizard, not a dragon. No legs, no flames, no poisonous gases, and definitely no malevolent intelligence.  I don’t think they even have teeth.”  

“And less than the length of my fore-arm,” Elrond pointed out with a bright flash of a smile catching sunlight through a leaf-gap in the dappled shade. “Though perhaps that’s less important than the rest.”

Maglor crouched to admire the minute shining head and long finely-scaled body glinting in the sun. “If I am to meet another army with a dragon-general, I hope the dragon is of this kind.  These aren’t very clever.  Amrod used to keep one, and watch it hunting slugs. Celegorm used to tease him about it... He thought the slugs unexciting game.”

“They’re friendly?” Elrond asked. 

“Friendly is probably putting it too strongly, I think.  They aren’t dangerous: only shy, but they can get used to you in time...  I wonder if it speaks the same language that Amrod’s did,” Maglor said, thinking back to a far-off garden in Tirion under the light of a tree of gold. He tapped gently on the ground in the rhythm he remembered, but the slow-worm only gave him a look of miniature outrage, and slithered off into the long grass.  Elrond laughed.

“Perhaps not,” Maglor said, and laughed too.  “Or perhaps my memory of what Celegorm said to slow-worms is faulty. I can’t say I gave my whole attention to it.” 

“Shall we see if it will be persuaded to come back for harpsong?” Elros suggested, pulling Maglor’s harp from the bag.  

Maglor looked at it and wrinkled his nose. “You play,” he said. “It’s not the same, playing with one hand, and my fingers aren’t ready for harp strings, not yet anyway. I’ll sing. I must say Amrod’s lizard was never very impressed with my music, but perhaps the creatures of Middle-earth will be more tolerant.”