Seeds of Lies by bunn  

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The Council of Elrond and Celebrían

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Three days later, the great festival was over at last, and white ships had begun to carry the revellers home, though there were still people wandering through the woods and along the cliffs of Tol Eressëa singing in small groups with friends new and old, and probably would be for some time. 

A fine bright morning, and Celebrían’s house in Avallónë welcomed a number of former kings, not to mention Lalwen, who nobody had ever called a queen, but who none the less seemed to carry at least as much of an air of authority with her as the others.  It was turning into a warm day, near midsummer, and so they sat out in Celebrían’s garden, in the shade of the apple trees. 

Elrond thanked them for coming.  “I wanted to speak with you of the House of Fëanor,” he said.  “You said that you had seen them in the Halls of Mandos, Fingon.  Gil-galad and I would like to appeal at least for Celebrimbor to be returned to life.   Maglor would dearly like to see his brothers and his father again. Do you think they would choose to return?”

“We have all spoken with them,” Fingon said.  “Celebrimbor was very badly hurt, as you know better than I, but so far as I know, he is now recovered.  Though I’m not sure that coming to the halls of Mandos and the company of Curufin, Celegorm and Fëanor was easy for him, either! Maglor, you can stop making that face.  I’m trying to help, remember?”   Maglor gave him an apologetic look.  If anyone had earned the right to make off-hand remarks about Maglor’s brothers and his father, it was Fingon.  

Finrod winced.  “Oh dear,” he said. “Poor Celebrimbor!  Not that I don’t think Curufin loves him dearly, but still, there are some things one could really do without, immediately after being slowly torn to bits by Sauron!  That wouldn’t be an easy reunion.”

“I never knew Celebrimbor very well,” Fingon said. “Gil-galad knows him much better than I.” 

“I have spoken with Gil-galad. He felt that Celebrimbor would wish to return,” Elrond said. “I thought he would too. But you have seen him far more recently.”

Fingon visibly shuddered. “Celebrimbor is a sensible person.  I doubt he’d want to stay in the Halls of Mandos if he can get permission to come back to life.”

“Not everyone found it as hard as you did,” Fingolfin said. “It suits Aegnor well enough, and your grandfather.”

“You hated it as much as I did, or very nearly,” Fingon said bluntly.   

Fingolfin shrugged in acknowledgement.  “We knew we must abide in regret for kinslaying and rebellion, and yearn for life. We were told.  I think, for what we achieved, it was worth it.  It didn’t make it easy.”

Fingon said, “I wanted to thank you for helping us come back into the world, Elrond.  We have had so much more than enough of doing nothing and longing for life! Well, I have, anyway.  I went to Mandos several times to beg him to let us out.  He wasn’t sympathetic.  He did say he wouldn’t be.”

“But you did say Maedhros was feeling better?” Maglor asked, concerned. 

“He has more patience for existence unbodied than I did,” Fingon admitted, “He is permitted much less freedom than I was, but he’s much better at putting up with it. I suppose he has known worse! But still, he would return. We discussed it at some length.  Well, he discussed it.  I and Caranthir complained about it loudly.”

“He’s well enough to come back to life, then?” Elrond asked.

“I’m no expert,” Fingon said, shrugging.  “But it seems to me that whatever the Halls of Mandos can do for Maedhros, they have had their chance to do it by now.  I’m clear in my mind that we are not supposed to be divided like that,  as bodiless spirits, unable to make or do any deed, but only watch.  That’s not what we were made for.  The yearning for life is a powerful thing. I know Maedhros feels it too, even though he chose to die by fire.”

Elrond said, “I feel we had earned a favour or two from the Valar, Frodo, Galadriel, Gil-galad, and I.  Frodo here was kind enough to support our plea to the Valar for your return.” 

“In that case, I must thank you too, Frodo!” Fingon said and got up to bow low to the hobbit.  His father and his aunt did the same.  Frodo scrambled down from his chair and bowed back politely. 

“I understand though, that there is some complication around Fëanor’s oath before he and his sons can return?” Frodo asked diffidently,  once thanks and polite acknowledgements had been exchanged.  This must all seem very odd to him, Maglor thought, since his spirit could flit through the world, swift and free as a sparrow, and go on, without the awkward Elvish to and fro that came from being bound to Arda.

“I’m rather afraid that may turn out not to be quite the only complication, even if everyone else can be persuaded to agree and Mandos could be convinced,” Finrod said. “But it’s certainly one of the more awkward points.  Though I, like Maglor,  hope it may no longer apply. ”

Fingolfin said gravely, “I have spoken of his oath with my brother Fëanor.”  That must have been a contentious meeting, Maglor thought, though at least Fingolfin did not look angry now.  He hoped that his father and his uncle had managed to hammer out some kind of truce.  

Fingolfin went on “Fëanor says the oath still binds him, and his sons, for he never unmade it, and it was sealed with the name of Eru.”

Maglor felt something twist at the words, at the back of his mind.  Something unpleasantly familiar and dark, that he had tried for a long time to forget, hoping it was gone.  He stood up abruptly.  “I’ll be back in a moment,” he said to Elrond. 

“I brought your harp,” Elrond said, understanding at once. “It’s in the bag, here.  Do you need to take miruvor?”

“I think not yet.” Maglor picked up the harp and set it on his knee, concentrating on it, and not looking at the faces.  There were probably expressions on them that he did not want to see.  “It’s not strong.  Not like it was.  But I can feel it again.  It answered, when you said that.” 

Elrond sighed.  “Well, that answers that question.  It was sleeping, not gone, as we had hoped.  Play the harp.” 

“I don’t remember any of the Sons of Fëanor taking miruvor against their own oath in Beleriand,” Finrod said, and from the note in his voice Maglor definitely did not want to look at him just now.  “I thought you were all entirely behind it.”

Maglor ran his hands across the harp,  calling quiet notes gently from it. The Oath, which had tightened across the back of his mind, relaxed, lulled back to sleep as it had, long long ago.  He had not forgotten how it felt.  Nobody could forget that. But it was disheartening to feel it was still there, when he had hoped it was gone for good.  

“That was later,” he told Finrod without looking at him. “After  Maedhros forswore it, after Doriath. It didn’t like losing, or being defied. But the worst was once the Host of Valinor had crossed the Sirion. It got stronger then.  And darker.” 

“Music helped,” Elrond told them.  “The harp, for Maglor, miruvor, and always having some quite different matter to think of.  We all got very used to trading rhymes, as the War of Wrath went on.”  

“With you, as children,” Lalwen said to Elrond, and Maglor bit his lip and changed the music to a more complicated melody, because that was something else to concentrate on, and it was a fair thing to say. 

“Not so much when we were children, no,” Elrond said, calmly.  “They had other people with them; they all knew how it went by then.  More when we were grown, and I was obstinately refusing to join Gil-galad, because I could see that there was something wrong, and thought with all the arrogance of youth, that I could easily find a way to repair it.  It seems we’re doomed to find old troubles return.  Still, it’s a second chance to solve an old puzzle.”

He turned back to Maglor. “I am still wondering if it would be best if you went to the gardens of Lórien.” Elrond at least sounded only mildly concerned. 

  “I would much prefer not to,” Maglor said watching his hands move on the harpstrings. “I am not ill.” 

“Are you sure about that?” 

Unexpectedly, Celebrían came to his support.  “I have been in Lórien.  I don’t believe it would help.”

“You said it helped you,” Elrond pointed out. 

Celebrían nodded. “Yes.  It was what I needed.  To feel safe from the evils of Middle-earth.  The gardens of Lórien are blessed, safe, and endlessly kind.   There is nothing like having the Sea, the entire force of all three peoples of the Elves and the Valar themselves between you and your fears, to help you feel safe!  But it seems to me that Maglor is a quite different case.  He carries what he fears within him.  I don’t think that they would know what to do with him, in Lórien.  I felt they rather lacked experience.”

“The healers of the gardens of Lórien lack experience?” Elrond said, sounding a little incredulous. 

Celebrían said, a little wryly,  “I was surprised, too.  But healers in Valinor usually treat only broken bones, and very few of those.   They have had people returned from Middle-earth to care for, of course. Some of the poor people who were Morgoth’s thralls are still there. But they don’t have people coming back with poisoned wounds or the Black Breath over them, as we so often did.  And there are no Edain here.  None of the common childhood illnesses, no bodies that begin to fight themselves,  none of the ailments of old age, and much less of the despair of youth, too...  They don’t have to treat the common evils of the world that we knew so well, all the things that sap the will and body and leave the spirit exhausted.  I had to show them our formulation of miruvor: it is much more effective than the one they were using.”

Maglor took a deep breath and ran his hands across the harp, looking hard at the strings and not at any of the faces.  “There is another reason I would prefer not to go to Lórien. I am so wrapped in darkness that I cannot touch... my father’s work without being burned.  I am of course, many time over, a kinslayer.  That is not an illness.”  He would have greatly preferred not to admit it, even to himself, but the time for ignoring the problem and hoping it would go away was surely over now. “The gardens of Lórien are hallowed. The stones, the trees, the water.  Everything.” 

“You think that Lórien would burn you?” Elrond said, and even though Maglor was carefully not looking at his face, the grief in his voice was painful to hear. 

“It seems likely,” he said, keeping his voice light and unconcerned and definitely not looking at Finrod. “Light burns against the Shadow. I am not Maedhros. I’d prefer to avoid it.” 

“I didn’t realise you were worried about that.” Elrond sounded horrified. 

Maglor shrugged and managed what he hoped was quite a convincingly lighthearted smile at nobody in particular.  “Oh well, perhaps it’s nothing. Tol Eressëa did not burn me, after all.  It seems Ulmo is more forgiving than Varda.  Well, he should be!  I did leave the... the gem in his care, after all. That was easy, after Morgoth was thrust out into the Void. It felt like a long-accustomed heavy chain had snapped.  But given what I hear of Mandos, and the dreams that I receive from his brother, I would still prefer not to test Lórien’s patience in person.” 

To Maglor’s surprise, Celebrían laid a hand gently on his shoulder. “I can give you something to soften the dreams,” she said, in that soft Sindarin-accented voice.

 He braced himself and looked at her gentle, distressed face.  She looked less horrified than he had feared, given how she had suffered at the hands of the orcs. “I assume that Lórien sends them for a good reason,” he said, and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “If I am required to make amends in dreams, then I shall do so.”

“It seems a somewhat impractical way of making amends, if you will forgive me for saying so,” Frodo said. “I won’t pretend that I understand how all this works, of course. ”

“I don’t know either,” Maglor said. “I don’t know what they want of me.  The dreams replay the past. They don’t offer choices.”  He could look at Frodo.  Frodo had never known him as anything other than what he was now.  Maglor had never let him down. 

Frodo’s hand went to the white stone he always wore around his neck. “I have had dreams like those,” he said quietly. “I don’t think they are sent by anyone with a good purpose, Maglor.”

“I agree,” Elrond said. “It sounds like an old shadow of the past to me. Unusual for Elves to have trouble in quite that form, but then, you are unusual.  Such things can be treated.  Let Celebrían help you with that, at least.  If Lórien lacks experience with treating such ailments, Celebrían and I certainly do not.”

“If you advise it, then I will,” Maglor said, feeling acutely conscious that Finrod, Amárië and his aunts and uncle were listening. Not to mention Fingon, but then, Fingon almost counted as an extra brother by now.  “Thank you Celebrían. That would be a relief.  It was only that I did not want to evade a penance, if that was what it was.”

“Would they not tell you?” Frodo asked, sounding confused. 

“I don’t know that, either! I have been a little reluctant to draw myself to the attention of the Powers by asking...  They gave Morgoth leave to go freely about the land, when he sued for pardon and was released from Mandos. I don’t know if they sent him dreams. That’s  the only precedent I can think of, that and my father’s exile, but that was brief.   Of course, both ended rather badly.”

Fingolfin said grimly “Many people felt they had benefited from Morgoth’s aid and counsel, and were duly grateful for it. Or so it seemed in those days.  Would that we had never seen him!”

“I doubt anyone would want my aid or counsel, even without Morgoth’s example,” Maglor said, and managed to laugh at the thought.   “I did ask Olwë if there was any aid I could offer.  He told me that he’d just prefer me to stay well away from Alqualondë.   I haven’t dared to ask Dior or Nimloth.  And asking Eärendil and Elwing seemed... likely to lead to misunderstanding.  Even if I could be sure that the Oath would not twist the offer.”

“Better not, I think,” Elrond agreed.  

“Maedhros warned me, when I wanted to surrender,” Maglor said, because this too could no longer be comfortably ignored. “The Oath will remain, but fulfilment be beyond all hope.  It would bring war to Aman, he said.” 

“I thought you were glad to come here,” Elrond said, unhappily. 

That could not be borne.  Maglor turned to face him.  “I was.  I am! I thought the Oath was gone.  And even now, I have to hope that Maedhros was wrong.  That the ending of the song can be changed, somehow.  But still, that is what he said then.”

“Rash to stake our peace on such a hope!” Amárië said.  

“A fool’s hope?” Elrond said, and smiled.  His eyes went to Frodo for a moment. For some reason, he was smiling too. “I’ll take it.” 

“I think, in fact, that I will, too,” Finrod said, thoughtfully. Amárië looked at him, clearly startled.  “Well, really Amárië, what other choice is there?  It’s that or present Mandos with the final item to complete the full set, and even if I had no other feelings on the subject, I would not want to do that to poor aunt Nerdanel.” 

“Thank you, Finrod, for your most carefully-qualified support,” Maglor said, almost catching the correct amused, unconcerned note.  

Finrod flashed him a wicked grin “You did sing that appallingly earnest song,” he said. “It may be some time before I can forgive that.  If you keep making allegations like that in verse, people might start taking me seriously, and then where will it all end?” 

Maglor ran his fingers across the harp, looking for light words to answer him, but could not find them.  He felt as if he was trapped at the bottom of some very deep dark chasm, and looking up, could see all of them standing unreachably high above him in the sun.  The Oath moved in his mind, pressing against his thoughts like some great serpent winding through long grass.  

Finrod looked at his face, and said, more gently, “Oh, look. We have lost enough to Morgoth’s lies and all that grew out of them, oath, kinslaying  and all.  I could not be more fed up of them and their consequences for all our family.  You’ve had thousands of years alone, that’s more than enough penance for anything.  And your brothers prisoners in Mandos all that time.  There really should be some sort of limit.  There was for Morgoth, and even though I admit, I am still annoyed with Curufin and Celegorm even now, they were never anything like Morgoth.  Or Sauron: I am sure Celebrimbor would back me on that.   I’ll happily say that to my father, or my grandfather Olwë, or to Mandos, for that matter.”

“Death should not be a prison,” Elrond said. “When I think of Maedhros...  my brother Elros died.  Our daughter will die and go beyond the world, and Aragorn too, as all his forefathers died. I loved them dearly, all of them. But Elros is not caught into regretful half-life in some gloomy distant hall, I have to believe that.  Arwen will pass through and she will go on, as Beren and Lúthien went on, into the light of something greater.  But Maedhros can’t do that. That door isn’t open for him.  So he must be given a door back into the sunlit world instead.  I am determined on it.” 

“And if that’s not how his song goes?” Fingolfin asked seriously.  

“If there’s one thing that life among the Edain has taught me,” Elrond said quietly but very firmly. “It’s that you can always tell the story a new way.  There’s  always a different way to sing the song, and ten thousand possible endings for it, each just as good as the next!  I don’t believe foretelling is an absolute art.  Even for the Valar.  I don’t believe it, and I won’t believe it.”  

“There is still the matter of the oath, though,” Amárië said. “And the risk of war in Aman. Is anyone worth that?”

Finrod looked at her.  “You don’t really think that,” he said. “Come on, Amárië. If there is some trouble with the oath, then we must find a way to mend it, not leave it wrapped around them like a chain and carry on pretending not to notice.”

Anairë said  “I have regretted, now and again, that I did not go to Middle-earth with my husband and my children.  I’ll not make that choice again, if there is a choice to be made.”  Fingolfin met her eyes and smiled. 

“That’s a good point,” Amárië said.  “I too have wondered, now and again, if I was overcautious, though on the whole, I still think I was right!  But I did say I was prepared to come along today and be told why I was wrong, and so I am.  What precisely is the plan being proposed?”

“I have a question, before that is decided,” Fingolfin said.  “You took two Silmarils from Eönwë, Maglor.  One was lost with Maedhros, and one by you.  I assume the oath does not require the return of those?”

“You are speaking to me as if I knew,” Maglor said, his voice very calm and level. “I don’t.  I thought I was swearing revenge against a thief and murderer, to support my father.  If I could have looked ahead and seen the Havens of Sirion burn, things might have been different.  I hope they would.  I hope none of us would have chosen that.  I can tell you that the Oath has been long asleep, and only woke when it heard my father’s words through you.”

Fingolfin nodded warily. “In any case, we can say the Silmaril that Elrond’s father carries is liable to cause trouble at some point.  We must be careful.” 

“Unless the oath can be broken, and the end of the story changed,” Elrond said.  

“Maedhros tried to forswear it,” Maglor said, because he had spent too long pretending it didn’t matter, and all he had left to give was honesty. “He couldn’t do it.  It wouldn’t let him.  But that was when Morgoth was in the world.  I was able to throw the thing into the sea. Surely that means something.”  His voice was calm, with no sign of desperation to it. Probably Elrond and Finrod at least could see through that, but desperation would convince nobody. 

“I think it does mean something,” Elrond said.  “The oath was made by one and seven, and by Fëanor first and foremost, and yet you were able to cast the Silmaril away. We have seen here today that the oath answers to Fëanor’s word, though clearly Morgoth used it in his time.  If it is to be unmade, it seems to me it must be unmade by all, but most of all, by Fëanor.  That can only be done if he returns to life, for the dead in the Halls of Mandos can neither make, nor unmake.  But if he returns to life, is it something he will do? ” 

Silence spread in golden sunlight through the orchard, save only for the humming of the bees.  

Maglor would dearly have liked to say ‘yes’.  To say, of course, his father was a reasonable person who would wish, like any reasonable person, to undo his Oath and live in peace. 

His father’s last words had been to demand his sons repeat their Oath.   He had not sounded, then, like a reasonable person who would choose peace.

He could not say that. It would be disloyal. 

He tried to think of his father living quietly on Tol Eressëa under the command of Gil-galad, or in Tirion under Finarfin.  It was hard to see. 

The Oath moved again at the back of his mind,  loathsome, irresistible.  It burned with a bitter, painful cold. 

He should not have thrown the Silmaril into the sea. He had let his father down, doing that. His father had relied on him.  Shame and self-loathing washed over him. 

He should laugh cheerfully, now, and tell them that of course Fëanor would break the Oath if he were allowed to come back to life, if Elrond could arrange it.  Elrond, whose father carried a stolen Silmaril,  had not known that he lied before, when they had gone to kill the guards and take the Silmarils.  He would not know it this time. 

Elrond, son of thieves, stood up, looking at him.  

No. The Oath did not say he could not bide his time.  There was no urgency. No urgency at all.  

He realised that he had stopped playing, and that the nails of his right hand were digging painfully  into the flesh of his left wrist.  With an effort, he let go, leaving red new-moon shapes punched across his wrist.

He ran his fingers back across the harp, making a faint fine shining web of music as strong as spider silk.  

“If none can release us, then the Everlasting Darkness shall be our lot, whether we keep the oath or break it,” he said, with an effort but steadily, as he played.  “But less evil shall we do in the breaking.”

He took the music as it spun from the harp, and wrapped it gently around the oath, folding it around again and again, until he could no longer see it in his mind, no oath at all, but only music shimmering around where it lay deep in sleep, webbed away and lost in song. 

“Well done,” Finrod said softly from somewhere high above in sunlight, that was also under the dappled shade of apple trees a few steps away. 

“I can hold it,” Maglor said, and met Elrond’s eyes. “I will hold it until the breaking of the world, until the Everlasting Darkness comes for us.”

“I know you will.  But still, I’d rather see you released from it,” Elrond said.  “You and Maedhros too.”

“I can’t unmake it,” Maglor said.   “I’m sorry.  We both tried. It only became angry.  I hoped if I pushed it deep enough into sleep it might die anyway.”   He looked at Amárië.  “That was a fool’s hope, if you like, but I don’t have a better one.” 

“Well, let us find a better one!” Finrod said.  “That absurdly earnest song you made, Return Beyond Hope. I know you made it for our house and not for yours, but all the same, it makes a better ending to the Noldolantë than the one it has at the moment. I don’t see why it should not stand for all the House of Finwë.”

“A generous offer, Finrod,” Fingolfin said smiling. 

“Well, I’ll take it very cheerfully,” Lalwen said frankly. “But will the House of Fëanor, that’s the real question?” 

“Maedhros would unmake his oath,” Fingon said, adamantly.   

Lalwen rolled her eyes.  “Fëanor’s sons will do as Fëanor tells them, I think.  Won’t they, Maglor?” 

Maglor looked at Elrond and Celebrían for a moment.   “No,” he said.  It still felt like betrayal, but if he had to betray Elrond or his father, then his father had other sons.  And more to the point, his father had been wrong at Alqualondë, and wrong again at Losgar, and  if they had had the strength to tell him so, then many things would have gone differently.  “I will not follow the oath again and bring war to Aman for a Silmaril, no matter who asks me to.  Not for Maedhros, not for my father either.”   The Oath half-woke at that, and Maglor turned to the harp and spun more threads of song around it. 

Fingon, surprised but trying not to show it, said “I think Caranthir might be with you.  I’m not so sure about Amrod and Amras,  and I haven’t seen so much of Celegorm, but I’d say he would do almost anything to leave the Halls of Mandos.  I don’t know about Curufin. Or Fëanor.” 

“I have talked a great deal with Fëanor,” Fingolfin said.  “Something that I urgently wished to do, after he abandoned us in Araman.”  

This was not news to Maglor, though he was very glad that the discussion had taken place safely in the Halls of Mandos where nobody was likely to get seriously hurt, and also that he had not had to listen to the shouting.  

Fingolfin had eventually forgiven Fëanor’s sons for following their father and abandoning more than half their people in the desolate wasteland of Araman to walk across the Grinding Ice,  but it seemed most unlikely that either he or aunt Lalwen had forgiven Fëanor himself. 

“We cannot make or do, in the Halls of Mandos,” Fingolfin said, thoughtfully. “But even there, it is possible to learn new things.  For both of us, in fact.  Elrond, Frodo, if you decide to speak for my brother Fëanor, and the Valar permit it,  I believe he will return to life, unmake his oath and choose peace.” 

“That is good news,” Elrond said.  “I have spoken to my father Eärendil of this, and to my mother too, since the Silmaril is an heirloom of her house.  They, too, would unmake the past, and choose peace.”

Fingolfin’s eyebrows went up.  “‘Though all whom ye have slain should entreat for you.’ indeed!” he said.  “If Elwing and Earendil speak for Fëanor and his sons, then I might begin to belief that even Mandos himself would listen.”