Island of Sorrow RPG

[Anguirel]

Even as Orëmir's lifeless remains fell back upon the stone, the chanting stopped. As Lómwë, tears in his eyes, remonstrated with Endamir, trying to recall some sense of the Elf's self, trying to convey what a terrible deed the former loremaster had wreaked in his madness, the Master-Smith appeared by the side of the cadaver, cradling the head with its vacant eyes in his hands; apparently enough activity to manifest his appearance.

"What is this," the craftsman murmured, "no, this cannot be. I intended nothing of this sort! Six pupils the voice promised me, and now...one falls by a mistaken hand. A hand stirred by my wine! O...hideous turpitude..."

The Smith's long, black, vital hair mingled with Orëmir's locks. It seemed for a moment as if he drew near to kiss him, but a shudder passed over the spirit's face and he retreated.

"I must have order," he moaned, and then more loudly, "order, order I say..."

In his disconcertingly muscled arms, the Master-Smith heaved the fallen body upwards.

"One of our workers has been hurt," he announced, as if to a wider audience than the two staring, repelled Elves and their ensorcelled companion, with kin's blood on his sword; closest kin. The gore from the flat now besmirched Lómwë's countenance as well.

"He has been hurt," the Smith continued, "and I am retiring into the room beyond, to look after him, and restore him to li...I mean...get him back on his feet again...the work will, and must, continue."

The activity of the chains became desperate and frenetic. Endamir was the first to be disarmed, despite-or perhaps because of-his zealous, deluded loyalty; the Master-Smith had no wish to lose further craftsmen. Lómwë's fine sword was also ripped from his hand as it clenched it, and a weaponsmith's hammer forced into his hold instead. Lindir, eclipsed by the terrible drama in the centre of the room, was ignored, though his legs were still grasped firmly.

The dolorous voice of the Master-Smith drifted at intervals back into the main room.

"Where is the mystic woman now? Or the Singer? Any advice on this accursed earth? Even the Powers I have long flouted, and thought of late I was obeying...alas...are we, the Houseless, to be forever without succour?

"When will the lord return?"

[Firefoot]

Six pupils the voice promised me… restore him to li... where is the mystic woman now… The smith’s words rattled in Lómwë’s ears. The Diviner! He was, or had been, in league with her! How had he not seen it before? His glance shot now to Lindir. Lómwë prayed that he would not have some kind of relapse now – it would be just what he needed…

But now the smith was in the back room; surely now if any would be the time to escape! He needed help. He needed to find Malris and Tasa. Disdainfully he tossed down the hammer that had forced its way into his grip. It landed on the stone floor with a clatter. He spotted his sword across the room and tried to take a heavy step towards it – and found that he had moved marginally, but in the opposite direction – towards the smith’s worktable. He tried again with the same result, and this time he found the hammer back in his hand.

How many more times will I curse this island and our coming here before we leave?

Noticing Lómwë’s struggles, Endamir said, “The Master’s will will not be undermined. There is work to be done!” As he spoke, Lómwë’s hand automatically lifted to the place between his jawbone where Endamir’s sword had touched. When his hand came away it was wet with blood: not his own, but Orëmir’s. He clenched his fist tightly, suddenly feeling a deep, shuddering loss – both for Orëmir and for Endamir.

“I do not know you anymore,” he muttered, his voice sounding dead. No longer did he try to persuade Endamir, only convince himself. “His blood is on your hands; you have committed a baser evil than those you came seeking reconciliation for.” And Endamir did not even care. Could he not see?

There was no hope. No hope.

Now in despair, not disdain, he lifted the hammer high over his head and slammed it down on the wooden table as hard as he could. The sound of the blow resounded in the room as he automatically dropped the hammer in pain as the force of the strike reverberated up his hand and arm. The following silence seemed to throb with his mantra: No hope. No hope.

[Child of the 7th Age]

It was then that Lindir stepped in front of the Smith. For, though his legs were shackled by fetters, he could still limp forward a few inches. His eyes stared vacantly into the distance, seemingly unable to focus. In his hand was an empty wine cup. His fingers uncurled from its stem, and the cup rolled harmlessly onto the ground, making a loud clatter that cut through the silence.

Reaching out towards the Smith with his arm extended to the full extent that the chains would allow, Lindir earnestly intoned, "Master, it is you who succored the Diviner and gave her what peace she had on this windswept isle? I am greatly in your debt. I beg pardon for the words I spoke before. You were always the great teacher, and I naught but a humble pupil who had much to learn. So shall it be again!"

"Free me from these chains, and I will aid you. None of these other Elves is gifted in the crafting of objects. But I have forgotten no lesson you have taught. Indeed, within the walls of Eregion, I have learned many new things that I wish to share with you. For Celimbrimbor and Gorthaur taught me how to shape amazing objects, and every lesson that I received from them is engraved upon my heart. Let me share those secrets with you, for only a smith of your talents could do them justice."

"Please, Master," Lindir implored. "Take away my chains that I may do your bidding."

Lindir made an awkward attempt to fall to his knees in supplication, but was held in check by the chains. His awkward thrashing thrust him to the ground. Lindir's face was still turned directly towards the Smith, his eyes blank and staring, yet his face filled with anticipation.

[Anguirel]

"Malris...it calls... Cirlach... Cirlach calls to... iron... Malris, the chains... I can hear the chains... they threaten to bind me... Malris, make it stop, please make it stop..."

Tasareni grasped Malris's leg in utter supplication. For his part, he did not know what to do. He had sheathed his prized sword, but still it seemed to be having ever more explicit effects of Tasa's mind. Malris even considered trying to knock out his friend, but he had no way of knowing whether she found peace in unconsciousness, and besides, his every remaining particle of strength was required to continually plough the drear lake with his ashen pole...

"Malris... please..."

"I have to keep on," he muttered. "You see what is behind us...I am sorry..."

But Tasa's face was almost unrecognisable in the clutch of the voice calling to her, whether it was madness or something far worse. She would not now be gainsaid, and seized hold of him in a grip whose tightness was bred of a sharp need for reassurance. Now it was Malris who had to plead.

"It is almost upon us...you must let me go on...please, Tasa..."

Her weight collapsed in its full force upon him and he fell back, the pole slipping from his hand, though fortuitously remaining on the bank. There was a colossal sound like a pair of lips, swelled by perversion, licking themselves. The frightful many-bodied ruler of the depths was upon them, and did not intend to let its prey escape. Tasa seemed to be out cold again following this second fall, and Malris felt all the sullied weariness of defeat crush what remained of his will to act also...

Curufin's forge in the Prince's quarters at Himring's keep.

Malris stood alone, puzzled. Why had his lord and friend, the trouble-making but charming son of Feanor, and in qualities the most like his father...why had he not arrived? They had been to meet here, and Curufin was always punctual.

“Utulie’n aurë!” Curufin sprung from beneath the covering he had used to conceal himself as his friend approached. Uncertain of his sportive mood, Malris half-smiled as he placed hand on hilt.

"Ah, Malris, you never were quick to take a jest," Curufin remarked. "Stop playing with that old needle of yours and have a look at what I just threatened you with."

"It is a fine creation," Malris conceded with mock-gravity as he surveyed the weapon. "A doughty companion in battle, this will be."

"You have the right of it, Malris...for you. 'Tis a gift long-deserved. It is named Cirlach. Take it up."

The lake. The raft. The Thing. The door to Mandos seems to hover beyond the horror that will be physical death. The cynical, witty, voice now oddly serious.

"It is named Cirlach. Cast it away."

Malris leapt up at once to his full height. He had never been tall among the Noldor, but the purpose in his eyes now lent him stature.

“Utulie’n aurë!”

He cast away the sword, and felt run through his heart two simultaneous, contradictory emotions-loss, tangled with frustration, and certainty, at last, that he had done the right thing. The vile enemy was now all about them, resembling a foetid morass, yet a dreadfully resilient one.

Cirlach sank into it up to the hilt, and then, with a cacophony of splintering, smash, scattering steel, it was no more. The Foe-Thing recoiled, lines of white and red flame burning up and down it, and it retreated; attempting to sink below to hind relief and its grotto home, but unable to escape the wrath of the fire. Malris and Tasa, who awoke with bemusement but definite relief on her features, watched the beacon of victory burn as they punted the raft to the lake's hither shore.

[piosenniel]

Endamir stood dutifully at the worktable, a hammer in his hand now, and not his sword. It did not matter. The smith had set them a task. His hands were unskilled in this work, but he threw himself into it without hesitation. The words of the Smith and the work before him filled his whole consciousness. There was nothing else but his to be done.

In a tiny corner of his thoughts, something curled in upon itself and wept. But Endamir pushed the unwelcome image of one who bore his own face away, drowning out his thoughts with the loud ring of his hammer . . .

[Anguirel]

No sooner had Lindir spoken his fateful, entrapped words than the Master-Smith's broad frame hulked all too visibly at his side, clutching a hammer and striking both the chains around the Elf's legs with blows that looked mighty but felt light. The fetters fell directly aside, pointing as they glinted to the table where the elaborate mail lay, making the task ahead clear.

"I am glad," the Smith replied in a voice that strained to be anything of the kind, "that you remembered the way of duty...and of friendship, Lindir. Though indeed, I know of no Diviner, save the Lord's soothsayer, and he was male...but in any case, Lindir, I entrust a most important errand to you."

The spirit paused. His voice had begun to tail off. He almost sounded exhausted.

"You are very skilful, Lindir, always were, one of my best, had you marked out for great things, boy. Look after the others; teach them how the plate must be set over the hauberk and the Armour made ready for the Lord's Coming. I...have other things to attend to..."

Lomwe's mind was now the only even partly sane one in the armoury, and he was thus the only Elf who could deduce the increasing desolation and self-horror behind the Smith's words.

"Take care of Endamir especially, Lindir my boy. Keep the wine flowing, pass it round, keep Endamir in a...sound, sedate mood. I need to attend to his brother. He has been hurt slightly. Only a little. He will get better..."

And the Smith swept from sight, headed to the chamber beyond where he had taken Oremir's body.

[Child of the 7th Age]

Lindir said nothing as his fetters were removed. Staring straight ahead into the mirky shadows, the Elf remained silent when the Smith urged him to teach the others how to work with the plate. Even after his teacher told him to care for Endamir and and to ply the stricken Elf with wine, Lindir stood motionless, seemingly uncaring; not a sound escaped from his lips.

It was only when the Smith left the chamber that the now freed Elf came alive and sprinted over to Lómwë. Grabbing one of the hammers, Lindir knelt down and frantically hacked at the chain. Though lacking the grace or skill of the Smith, the fetters that had bound his friend came undone. Then he replaced the hammer in the same position that he had found it.

"This place is accursed. No one in this room is responsible for what happened here tonight. No one....not Endamir or any other, only that madman." Lindir spoke emphatically, his voice filled with disgust, as he gestured towards the other chamber where the Smith had disappeared. "He has locked us in. Otherwise, I would take the chance and try to escape now. Would that I could run my sword through his heart, I would do so without hesitation. But how does one attack a ghost?"

"Still, Lómwë, we must not lose hope, nor our wits. Drape the chains about your legs as if they were still fastened. But I will move your sword over just a bit that you may reach down to retrieve it if we have the chance to go against him, and I will do the same with mine. Do not let the Smith know you are free. I will begin work on the mail that he has left for us and give no hint of how I feel."

Approaching the table where Endamir still worked, Lindir leaned close and draped his hand over his friend's shoulder whispering, "Work on now Endamir, if you find that comforting. But do not despair. Your brother's heart was filled with good so he will surely speed through Mandos and soon walk on the Blessed Shores. His doom then is easier than ours. I swear your brother shall find honorable burial, for I will not leave his body in the clutches of the Smith. I know part of you can not hear or understand me, but surely there is another part deep insides that knows and trusts what I say."

With that, Lindir drew out the great hammer and began to work diligently on the plates of mail.

[Anguirel]

At the edge of the lake, lying, calm now, in the muted obsidian of its waters, the dark ashen raft struck the grey shingle, and Malris and Tasa climbed onto land once more.

"It looks smaller, now that we have crossed it," Malris observed. He was not mistaken. As if the creature that had dwelt within it had been a manifestation of the lake itself, it seemed to have crawled back in on itself, like that vile monstrosity's wounded limbs. When the Elves regarded its surface, they saw not the obscurity of resisting filth, but the serene blackness of deep mystery.

"The lake is cleansed," Tasa seconded. "Now...I still recall that voice...Malris, you will struggle to believe me...but I think I know in what direction we should continue."

"You...you thought the voice was from within...Cirlach, Tasa?" Malris' voice had something of regret in it still. The sword's valiant destruction had saved their physical bodies from destruction and their souls from searing torture. Nevertheless, the blade had been a very old friend; and all that had been left of another very old friend.

"Yes, Malris, but not Cirlach alone. There was a voice...on this side of the lake, adding to the sword's excitement. I...it was difficult to tell them apart, but I think the other voice might have sounded first...might have...stirred your sword, somehow. I...an image of...chains. There are chains up ahead, Malris. Linked in...some manner...to your lost sword. And intending us no goodwill."

"I too felt strange things on that lake, struggling with that Thing...though where you heard, I...saw," Malris admitted. "Curufin. Memories of him. He told me what to do, told me to cast away the sword. And I now suspect his shade in Mandos tries to repair his troublesome handiwork. Cirlach was Curufin's creation. Perhaps these...chains...are, also."

"To avoid them, and get back to the land, we need to travel to the right," Tasa half-whispered. "But..."

"Indeed. But. But chains are made to be broken. We must face our apprehension," Malris, set in determination, concluded, "and walk down the left-hand passage."

And so they did, turning corners as Tasa guided Malris in the direction whence she had heard the grinding of the chains. Soon, though they did not know it, they walked on the same passages Endamir, Lindir, Lomwe, and fallen Oremir had trod. They heard, with the same surprise, the tapping of the craftsman's hammer...

***

"Valar, Valar, did you ever speak to me?" the Smith pleaded hoarsely. "Nay, ye did not. I was mistaken. Mercy is beyond you when it comes to exiles. You are as petty as Feanor thought you, on your lovely Western thrones! What did you ever care for us? Who then spoke to me? When will the lord return?"

A knock at the locked door into the armoury, echoing about the forge, interrupted him. The spirit left his doomed vigil over Oremir, travelling in a whipcrack of shrieking air to the threshold.

"He comes! He comes! Maedhros comes! All ills are ended! Make ready the armour!"

Lindir had not in truth continued the welding of the plate, but he hastily arranged it so that it would deceive the Smith momentarily. The prepared plate-armour was of truesilver, shining like Tilion's craft, seeming to exude a strange light. The design of Feanor's star was engraved upon the breastplate. At the Master-Smith's gesture Lindir half rose it up, a glorious but terrible assemblage of arms, apparently ready for dire war. As for the Smith, now bodily present again, he turned a key in the lock and opened the door.

The fetters pulsed excitement, and a great quantity of them fraved the doorway, sheets of beatifying light spreading out from their treacherously beauteous forms. And two Elves, one male, one female, entered the room. They were dressed in argent, intangible cloaks of-if such a thing can exist-light shadow. In that hour it seemed to all of the company, gripped by majestic madness, that they were of impossibly great height; that their long hair shone with power, the man's crimson with the royalty of dying flame, the woman's with the mixed enchantment of liquid gold and silver.

"Maedhros," the Smith said in wonderment, stepping back, "in the company of the Lady Artanis, called by the Sindar Galadriel!"

"Nay," replied a more prosaic, and deeply familiar, voice, "Maedhros is dead, Smith. I am Malris of Forlindon."

"And I Tasareni of Lothlorien," the woman added. Now the pair stepped beyond the doorway, and all of that last, repentant, faerie-glamour of Curufin, which he had bestowed through the fetters in whose creation he had been invoked, fell away. The Elves were scarcely even things of beauty; their hair tangled, their clothes grey with dust and blotched with filth.

At this moment too, Endamir recovered himself, and looked about in bemusement, a dread filling his heart as he missed his brother.

"Where is Maedhros?" the Smith queried, with uncertain rage and obvious anxiety.

"Maedhros is held in Mandos, old Elf," Malris answered, "as the song tells. I sought him long and found his corporeal bones at the bottom of a cooled fissure."

"You lie," the Master-Smith shouted, "you deceive, you lie! Chains, against him!" But all the fetters lay now, sedate, upon the ground.

"My hopes are broken," the ancient craftsman moaned, "and all that I encompassed has curdled to...blackest evil..."

[piosenniel]

The fog that obscured his thinking had begun to clear away. Through the haze that still remained Endamir sent out a questing thought. There was no answer . . . no trace, even, of a presence.

Ghosts of words rumbled at the back of his memory. His brow furrowed as he tried to recall them . . .

Take care of Endamir especially, Lindir my boy. Keep the wine flowing, pass it round, keep Endamir in a...sound, sedate mood. I need to attend to his brother. He has been hurt slightly. Only a little. He will get better...

Hurt? Hurt . . . Then he would be here, somewhere. Endamir’s legs felt weak; his knees nearly buckled as he struggled forward from the workroom. The need to find his brother propelled him on; just as the fear of what he would find made his muscles turn to jelly.

It was in one of the rooms that led off from the workroom that Endamir found Orëmir’s body. His brother’s face was in repose, peaceful. Endamir recalled that look, one which would grace Orëmir’s features at a task done to his satisfaction.

Bits and pieces of what had happened surfaced in Endamir’s thoughts. He saw his brother, blade in hand, fighting . . . but who opposed him he could not say. Thin silvered fetters had crept about his brother’s legs. He saw them inch up Orëmir’s legs, tightening about them, hampering his movements.

A painful look passed over his brother’s face as he parried his opponent’s blows. There was a moment of hesitation, and then one of acceptance as a resolution was decided on. A hand plunged forward, the blade it gripped pushing deep and then deeper into his brother’s chest. There on the killing blade all but faded from the crosspiece were faint traceries of words in a fine and fading script . . .

* Ever may you defend one another *

Their mother's words, put there when she’d designed the twin swords, etching them on her sons’ hearts as much as upon the metal.

Endamir moaned low, his heart breaking at the knowledge of what his hands had done. He dropped down to his knees, leaning over to cradle his brother’s head and shoulders in his arms. Tears crowded at the corners of his eyes. And such great sorrow there was that o’er came him that there was naught that could comfort him.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

With the destruction of the sword, Tasa had fallen into a state of deepest calm. Her words came slowly still but not now because of of the effort that they took. Rather was she lost in thoughts and very little could shake her from them.

Why had the voice of the sword felt so fatally cruel? The chains that called to her... they were silent now that she stood before them. At the lake and before, she had felt within her mind the touch of a will cold and uncaring, angry and destructive. Malris had identified the sword and chains as those of Curufin, yet why would they attack her while leaving him alone? Why had the sword given Malris the ability to save them even while seeming to drive its point deep within her heart with a frigid disinterest?

Was it a weakness of her mind, brought on by her battle with Giledhel, that left Tasa so open to the baser whims of any others? Could she no longer strain any one thought from another? Could she no longer protect herself from assault?

She stood now beside Malris, before the others, and she was suddenly conscious of those rips in her garb where scraped flesh shone through in the deceptive light, seeing spots of blood, noting one black feather that had escaped Malris's prior notice.

She felt a growing horror from Endamir, a stubborn defiance from Lindir... from Lómwë a sense of deception directed toward someone not her.

Could they read her as easily? Why now, and never before, was her fëa so open to such things... she pondered as she stood tall. She never saw nor heard the Smith and it was only later that she learned of him. Rather did she stand now alone amongst companions, unable to concentrate upon one thing only; lost, trying to sift through the vast amounts of information pelting her senses.

[Anguirel]

The Smith was at once no more to be seen, and Malris saw Lomwe standing awkwardly in frond of him, as if held by force. In a moment he had taken in the glint of the silver rings that seemed to bind the Elf's legs fast.

"What..." Malris began, unsteadily. The impressive glamour upon he and Tasareni as they entered the forge had not entirely left him, and his movements were still slow, solemn, and dreamlike, his mind struggling to keep up with the pace of events around it. It was another sight that dragged him into reality-the look of stark shock and incomprehension in Endamir's eyes, reliable Endamir, Endamir who had risked even his brother's ire to follow Malris.

And his brother himself. "Where...where is Oremir?" Malris uttered, regaining the more of the faculty of realisation. "Smith! I care not for any old bond; ye do not imprison and abduct my friends at will, not with any cause at heart..."

The impulsive former elven-captain felt for his blade, but found nothing, remembering past events with a disturbing sting. Keeping his head, he sidestepped to a rack and took a spear from the wall.

"Smith! In the name of your late lord, release Lomwe and show me where Oremir is to be found..."

Endamir had rushed out of the main armoury, like a lioness searching for a missing cub, and Malris found himself gripped in his friend's anxiety. Only there was something yet worse to be uncovered. Looking aside, he beheld Lindir, apparently at liberty, but with a countenance of leaden sorrow.

"Lindir, Lindir, my friend," Malris gasped out, "in the name of all pity, what has happened here?"

Before Lindir could reply, Malris's spear-haft snapped as if struck by a great forge-hammer, and he threw away the stave of matchwood, readying his arms to resist without weaponry, if need be. But the Smith-if the blow had indeed been his-did not seek further confrontation. The anvil was knocked to the ground, overturning an array of bright, star-embossed shields.

The falsely prepared armour in Lindir's hands itself shattered. The sound of the destruction seemed gradually to alternate with the frenzied grief-howls of an old, old being, a being that has seen and done too much. Lomwe was forced to step from his carefully positioned fetter to avoid a collapsing halberd's path. The armoury was being utterly ruined by its aged, loyal keeper. Tasareni watched in a manner terrifyingly akin both to the serene and the desperate, to the side of the spectral vandalism's way.

"It was I who slew him, I and whoever I saw in the dream vision," the Master-Smith's voice resonated, ricocheting off the piles of shattered iron and wood. "I slew your friend by his brother's hand! O, Mandos..."

A silence fell. Malris seemed dumb, even blind, in that moment, but not deaf, nor innured to pain; his slender frame shook, slightly, but thoroughly. The Smith seemed bent on considering his folly, and even the wanton hammer-strikes now ceased.

"It is true?" Malris asked Lindir quietly, almost entirely as a statement, not a question.

[Firefoot]

It all had happened so quickly. Lindir’s assurance that he had not, in fact, turned to the side of the smith, Malris and Tasa’s arrival, the smith’s rampage… Lómwë barely had time to collect his thoughts and react. He was not entirely sure he wanted to react. He felt numb, numb and shamed. Yes, there was hope, there was always hope, but he had despaired. He had assumed that he was the only one who still cared and remembered and that they would never find Malris and Tasa… or that they would find them, as it turned out. He had assumed there was no good left on the island and despaired.

He had given into many things in his life before: passion, grief, pain, apathy, even fear, but never despair. Always before, he had had hope, whether of something specific or vague, it mattered not. Always before, there had been hope shining at the end of the journey like a star however dim. Not then. At that moment, he had given into despair, and he reproached himself bitterly for it. To despair was the part of one weaker than he had ever thought himself. So noble you are, holding onto what was right and good, yet lacking faith in those very things!

Even in light of their current victory over the smith, such as it was, Lómwë only felt defeated.

[Child of the 7th Age]

"'Aye, Malris. Sadly true." Lindir's voice was laced with regret as he turned a cold face towards the Smith who sat huddled and quaking by the side of the room. "For the first time, in his frenzied madness, the Smith has spoken words of truth. The hand that slew Oremir was that of his brother, but the mind and will had surely been removed. He trapped us within this prison, demanding we work to accomplish his ghastly purpose in crafting mail for his master Maedhros, who was certain to return."

Lindir pointed an accusing finger at the flagon of wine that still sat upon the table. "Nor did he stop at this trickery. When his words did not persuade us, he turned to poison. Endamir drank the wine in friendship, too trusting to comprehend the treachery of one like this." Glaring at the Smith, the Elf continued, "Those who still would not agree were bound in chains or, like myself, had to pretend to comply while secretly plotting."

Lindir's voice waivered as he spoke, "My lord Malris, your return has rescued us, but for Oremir and even for Endamir it may be too late. Oremir angered the Smith, since he refused to bend his knee to his monstrous plan. Rather than raise an honest sword against his opponent, the Smith treacherously manipulated his brother's mind. Oremir slew his brother, not even understanding what he was doing."

"But for every minute we waste talking, Endamir slips further from us. Let us do something. I have had enough twisted words from the Smith to last a lifetime. Endamir rushed out of the armoury through this doorway. Perhaps we can still find him and prevent one tragedy from becoming two."

With that, Lindir shoved open the door and began racing down the hall, not even bothering to glance behind to see if anyone was following.

[Anguirel]

Malris bowed his head as Lindir quickly explained the day's terrible culmination, praying that the grace of Valar would speedily come upon Oremir-and Endamir still more.

"Let it be so. I am with you," he agreed, and ran after Lindir, pausing only, with his practical soldier's mind, to retrieve a long knife, its handle set with opals, from the debris of the armoury. Following the other's lead, he passed through the forgery and its warm hearth-which the Elves now knew to be such a false refuge-and hurried on into the room where Endamir had fled, bewildered despair in his eyes...

Such a cold wind. Well, it was the Isle of Chill. The Hill of Ice. But the forgery had been so benevolent in its temperature before...and as the wind passed the fire, apparently sucked of its power, retreated to its embers. Himring was cold. But the company now, to their great disadvantage, knew that that coldness could signal the passing of a spirit...

And the Smith's voice was heard again. "I am coming with you, to remedy what I can, though I know not how. You despise me as a traitor, yet your loathing cannot equal the hatred I feel for myself. I seek peace now, the great surrender. You may find my tomb...it is in the Keep...I ask that you lay my bones to rest then. For now, I shall serve you as far as lies in my...ability..."

[piosenniel]

Endamir brushed his lips against his brother’s cool brow. Orëmir’s head was cradled in the bend of his arm as he knelt beside him, the bulk of his torso balanced against Endamir’s thighs.

I remember this look. Endamir thought, looking at his brother’s peaceful face. As he slept…so deep in the arms of Lórien was he that none could wake him. He brushed the stray hairs back from Orëmir’s forehead.

‘Let me follow you this time, Orry. Into your dreams,’ he whispered, rocking back and forth slowly on the cold stone floor. ‘’Don’t leave me behind; I couldn’t bear it,’ he murmured, turning his reddened eyes upward, as if a way might be found to make it so.

There were sounds of footsteps nearing the room where he and his brother were. Endamir’s head snapped up, his eyes narrowing as he fixed on the approaching intruders. He laid Orëmir down gently on the ground and stepped carefully over his brother’s body, drawing his sword as he did so.

A certain madness crept in about Endamir’s eyes as he stood guarding his brother from those he was certain would take him away. ‘Go away! Leave us be!’ he shouted in a voice husky with sadness.

He stepped forward, raising his blade to fend them off . . .

[Child of the 7th Age]

In his wild rush down the corridor, Lindir was the first to burst inside the outer chamber. Oblivious to the danger that lay within, he rushed forward just at the moment when Endamir leapt to his feet with blade outstretched, jealously guarding his brother's body.

Lindir twisted to one side to avoid the slashing blade that threatened to descend upon his head, hastily pivotting while retreating to the far side of the room. Lindir's sword slipped from his hand and clattered useless to the ground. Whether this act was intentional or not, it is impossible to say. Whatever the cause, Lindir now uttered soft, even words in a soothing voice that a mother might use with her crying babe. "Nay, Endamir. No more blood. Lay down your blade, as I have done. Stay with your brother as long as you wish. Then, when you are ready, tell us how we may honor him together."

Lindir took one step towards the grieving elf and then halted, waiting to see what he would do.

[Anguirel]

Though Lindir in his eagerness to rescue Endamir from his own sorrow had scarcely heard the Smith's words, Malris paused, poised on the threshold between the main forgery and the storeroom, now a morgue. He put his head slightly to one side, staring at where he supposed the Smith might be.

"We are not passing through the Keep," he answered curtly. "Once my friend is restored to a stable state of mind, we will retrace our steps and leave this place. Your fate is pitiable, Smith, and I hope it may be redressed in time. But my companions have been forced before now to be your agents, and are hardly likely to be so again willingly. Let others lay your bones to rest, old Elf."

He turned, gripping the hilt of the knife he had salvaged tightly, and followed Lindir at his own pace. He could not deny a certain sympathy for the plight of the Master-Smith, but he thought of the sundered twins, and shut his mind fast against it. No, he thought, they would not risk more danger by venturing into the Keep.

Yet later events would cause Malris to be mistaken on this point.

Thinking no longer of the matter, Malris called out to his old friend, who had been so mild and reasonable at the start of this journey, and was now a thing almost, in the grip of bedlam. Judging Lindir wise, he let his weapon fall on the stone.

"Endamir," he called out, "it is only I, Malris. You are among friends now, who bear you no ill-will. Let us help each other to treat Orëmir with the dignity his valour and keen judgement have ever deserved."

[Firefoot]

Lómwë had started to take off after the others, his steps heavy. Why did he still try? Would it do any good? Not for him… he was beyond all help that could be found in this place, but perhaps it would help Endamir Then he realized that Tasarënì was still standing by, looking somewhat lost and disinclined to go anywhere. He hesitated; the rest were disappearing down the hallway; he ought to follow them. Maybe there was some way that he could help make things right, to at least partly compensate for his lack of faith. But perhaps Tasa needed help as much as Endamir, if only in a different way. At any rate, he could not leave her here; none of them could be certain of the place’s safety.

He walked quickly back to her and urged her gently, “Come, Tasa; we should follow them. Endamir needs help, and it may not be safe to remain out here.” Somehow telling it to Tasa made him believe it more.

She nodded slowly. “Very well.” Without further discussion, Lómwë led the way down the hallway where he had seen them go. As they drew near, Lindir’s and Malris' words drifted out to them.

“It is true, Endamir,” Lómwë added as he crowded the doorway. “We are on your side.” Sides should never have been needed to be drawn in the first place… why the blood? Why the division? Yet so it had been, even before they had crossed the sea to Beleriand. For that was where the despair and the defeat came from – from choosing sides and fighting amongst themselves.

[piosenniel]

In the end, Endamir sheathed his blade. It was not the words, meant to be consoling or reassuring, which swayed him. It was the cavern itself in which he found his brother and he imprisoned. It pressed in on him, on what little hope was left to his spirit. He could abide its cloying evil no longer.

Hoisting Orëmir over his shoulder, Endamir turned toward the door, intent on leaving this foul place far behind. Then came the song, the hateful music of this shadow-spawned wreckage, and he was prisoned once again…

[Anguirel]

But a short time after Endamir had taken up his brother's mortal relict and determined to step into the harsh wilderness of reality once more, a new sound made all five Elves-even, perhaps, the new, baleful sixth of their band, the Master-Smith-stop. For it demanded all attention; promised all bounties; pacified all thoughts.

It was the sound of a playful but supremely skilful hand dancing down the length of a harp. The chords were like ripples in the very hearts and emotions of their listeners, yet each of the company felt slightly differently towards them, a vague, intangible attitude mixed with their admiration. Malris, for example, felt as if some primal devotion and loyalty within him, to serve unswervingly and gladly, was evoked.

And then the Song itself began.

O friends and fellowmen of the Old Country,
Strange Country, Old Country, full well hath you strived.
But toil leads to iron and tears and regret
And the troubles that gnaw at the night.

A harbour we're seeking, wherever we wander
And all but the harpers, they'll find it one day.
You all have your haven which speeds you to home
For there's little relief found in the depths of the fray.

Relief you are seeking, for harbour you're yearning
For happiness, or at least stilling of grief
Relief shall I grant you, while this fell night lasts
And you'll come to me in the morn...

Long before any of the five Elves had time to wonder what the words signified now, they slept where they stood, their eyes open and staring deep into vague images, dim provinces of memory, and deeper truths, incomprehensible but comforting for that very reason.

No one can tell whether the Smith slept similarly. But the Minstrel's voice and somnolent gift had contained a power few beings could have resisted, and so possibly, probably, that ancient, stubborn spirit succumbed and was granted a short respite.

[Anguirel]

Malris awoke first, and his first thoughts were filled with a kind of tranquil awe. Here, in this silent, timeless underland, he and his friends seemed to be standing as if statues portraying long-forgotten legends, or wars. He swung his arm and stepped a pace back in surprise when it moved, waving both arms now, reaccustoming himself to consciousness, and to duty.

The Song hung not so far back in the dusty finery of his mind. Maglor had given them Sleep; had it been a benevolent gift? And what...what had he meant by them coming...to him...in the morn? This morning?

Lindir and Endamir, Orëmir slung over Endamir's shoulder, stood slightly ahead of him. Orëmir, Malris realised with trepidation, seemed about as alive as the others appeared dead. Dead and living visages had congealed and met, reunited in the equality of sleep. He turned about-Lómwë was a pace behind him, looking to Tasa as a shepherd regards a lamb he guides. Malris felt worry for Tasa's sake-the tumultuous and terrible happenings had driven her from his thoughts.

So it was she he chose to awake first, tapping her shoulder firmly, but gently. Her eyes-like those of all the others-were open as they dreamed; he watched as the shimmering irises returned to contemplation of a more earthly existence, looking on fondly.

"Malris," she said hazily. "We...there was music, and we..."

"We have all slept, though I know not for how long. Now we must arise, all of us, and depart from the isle at last. The Smith desired us to go by the Keep, but I have no wish to prolong this fool's journey."

"The Smith?" Tasa questioned. Malris raised an eyebrow; perhaps she was still confused by sleep; but as they talked it became clear she had not taken in the spirit's presence in the night before, nor indeed much else; it had all been an unravelling knot of bewildering, unsortable emotions. Now Malris tried his best to illumine it by the lamp of reason, and made the awful sundering of the twins as clear as he could.

They turned back to the other three Elves. Lómwë was now being affected by the tides of wakefulness, and Lindir too stirred. The light and warmth of the forgery had long since been snuffed out, but the keen Elven eyes adjusted to the gloom. At last all four were fully awake, and Endamir too was half-conscious; Lindir stepped towards him, taking his hand with an almost brotherly touch...though not enough, certainly, to replace what had been lost.

It was the quietest of their wakings on this Island of Sorrow; yet perhaps the one most filled with meaning.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Tasa breathed deeply and looked at her companions. What had passed and how had she missed its happening? She felt Endamir's plight deeply now; he had killed his brother. She had killed her troops. He had done it without knowledge, she had lost innocent lives without forethought. They were different, but they were the same; Tasa and Endamir shared guilt. She let her tears flow, and they fell silently down her white cheeks, cold against the heat of her silver scars.

"It is time, my friends, to leave here." Her voice was soft, silver bells on the wind, chimes in the early morning. "We have travelled together to this place that holds so many memories, and we have faced many of them. I know that I have." Tasa looked at the floor between companions, sometimes looking up to almost meet their eyes. "The shadows of our deeds will haunt us forever, but never so much as they will in this place."

She left them for a moment, finding herself strong and able, feeling a heat in her veins that had long since lain dormant. She stood tall and proud, and walked with a confidence she had not felt since the Nirnaeth. She could not help but wonder at the sleep of last night.

Tasa walked a path that she did not remember, but that her body knew for her. The entrance, she knew, was this way, and so would be their exit. It was not. She tried every door she found, uncertain now. The final door, she knew in her heart, was the correct one. It would not move. She shivered, feeling crows in her hair, probing coldness in her mind. Silently she returned to the group and met each pair of eyes with sadness.

"Malris... our way is shut. Again."

[piosenniel]

Relief you are seeking, for harbour you're yearning
For happiness, or at least stilling of grief
Relief shall I grant you, while this fell night lasts
And you'll come to me in the morn...

The last of the songs words echoed in Endamir’s mind as he woke in the now cold forge chamber. He struggled to push the false promises from him. The words and music were woven thick, like honey. And like honey one could be trapped within them.

He flexed his shoulders, wondering at the fact he still held his brother’s body balanced over his shoulder. Lindir’s grey eyes met his, and Endamir felt a light pressure as the man gave his hand a reassuring touch.

‘He’s a sorcerer, you know,’ Endamir spoke aloud as Lindir drew back his hand. ‘The singer . . . cruel, really. He’s set the game and pulled us further in and further in. And now he offers some surcease of grief, is it, of loss; a recoup of hope, perhaps…of happiness.’ Endamir laughed, a hollow sound, one sharply at odds with the melody that had so recently filled the room. ‘Look at us! Enthralled by the song…enthralled . . . made thralls; slaves. He stops us as he wishes and now he moves us on, pieces on his game board. And we must move . . . though one not by his own power.’ He laughed again. ‘He’s dead, you know. Quite dead…my brother. Yet still the music and this light-forsaken place pull him onward.’

Tasa, by this time, had finished her round of the forge-room’s main entrances, and found them all locked against the companions’ exit. ‘See, even now we are herded on down ways not of our own choosing.’

Endamir rebalanced his burden and turned toward the rear of the forge chamber. ‘Smith!’ he called out, restraining the urge to add a searing epithet that would mark the man for the foul being he was in Endamir’s mind. ‘Smith! In all your long years here, you must have found a number of ways out of this dreary tomb and into the Keep. Step up and show us the way.’

[Anguirel]

Malris met Tasa's eyes with instant comprehension, remembering the occasion to which she referred-when the door out of Giledhel's quarters had closed against them, forcing them, by the counsel of the Singer, no less, to make trial of the Dwarven Corridors. Leading to where they were now...another barred escape; another choice removed; only a single path.

And you'll come to me in the morn. As Endamir spoke bitterly against the Singer, calling him a sorceror, a master of thralls, Malris found with sorrow that all the evidence seemed to point to the twin being right. The Voice was heard all over the isle of Himring; where else, then, could it come from if not from the isle's central point, the Keep? The Singer seemed to be forcibly gathering them to him now, like a larger, more terrible vision of the Smith gathering his pupils.

Set against this was only Malris' certainty that the beauty, the might of the Song was Maglor's...and his memories of that Ages-lost friend and lord. How could he have been twisted into a thing of manipulation, a chess-player who moved his former companions like chess-pieces? But what other answer could there be?

"Smith! In all your long years here, you must have found a number of ways out of this dreary tomb and into the Keep. Step up and show us the way."

The command was, remarkably, Endamir's. Certainly the old Noldo's valour and foresight was back within him if he now put grief and grievance aside to hail the only being, false as he had proved, who could guide them further.

Silence, like an arrow-shaft quivering in ash-wood, hung for moments that seemed days. Then the Smith's voice replied.

"Endamir, lad, I shall serve you truly. I have maimed your existence, and so I am bound to ye. Aye, I know the way..."

The Smith's tall, broad, now somewhat hunched figure hulked ahead in one of the storerooms.

"If you can trust a benighted spirit who has done you wrong, then follow me."

"We have little enough choice about that," Malris answered bitterly, taking up his long knife and striding in the footsteps of the Master-Smith's strangely solid phantom.

[Firefoot]

Halted at every turn they tried to take on this cursed journey. Lómwë was sick of it and frustrated. It caused them all this grief, and now it offered healing and relief. Not likely – not here. Perhaps if they were lucky, this would be the last time, and no more dangers would be met. Lómwë doubted it. “Even if it was not the Smith who shut the door behind us,” he commented to no one in particular, “someone must have. Someone wants us to go this way.” Whether this was true or not did not ultimately matter, however, as they had no choice but to follow the Smith out through the back passage ways.

They passed through room after room, the most of their purposes seeming to have been forgotten long ago. So subtle was the change in the sorts of rooms and the feel of the air that Lómwë did not at first notice when they left the armory and were heading on into the ancient Keep. At least that seemed right…

Except that Lómwë slowly began to notice that these parts were feeling, well, more occupied, increasing his mistrust of the smith once more. He seemed honest enough now, but which of them really knew where he was leading them?

The feeling rose to its height as they were passing what seemed to once have been the audience chamber, and Lómwë refused to remain silent over it any longer. “Do the rest of you not feel it?” he asked. “Smith, where are you leading us through these twisting passages? Or rather, to whom? What are you not telling us?”

“I am only leading you out, as you asked,” said the Smith, sounding rather hurt.

“You would do better not to sound so wounded,” retorted Lómwë. But the Smith had no chance to respond because it now became very clear that they were not, in fact, alone…

[Anguirel]

Even though he had ultimately been led into the Keep against his will, Malris still felt a part of himself shuddering with excitement at the prospect of once again looking upon the heart of Himring. He noted with a heady pride barely suppressed in his mind the sigils and marks of Maedhros and of Maglor carved together when they passed them; the great chambers, empty but all the more magnificent for it, flaunting their magnitude and purity; the torches, unlit but still apparently well-kept...here and there slabs of granite, marking where the soldiers of Himring's final garrison had fallen.

The Master-Smith ahead of them had reached a mighty pair of double-doors, bolted with a great...mast...of iron. "Beyond here lies..."

"The audience chamber, aye, of course I remember," Malris cut him off, sharply perhaps, but more due to impatience than malice. He walked forward and heaved one end of the bar; the Smith tugged at the other end. Dust, unmoved for Ages, showered about and haloed above the heads of the Elves, tinging their hair with argent. And the doors swung open.

“Do the rest of you not feel it?” Lómwë asked, breaking the miasma of silence that had fallen upon them throughout the journey. “Smith, where are you leading us through these twisting passages? Or rather, to whom? What are you not telling us?”

When the Smith protested that he was leading them as he had been bade, Malris found himself believing the spirit, but there was little time to argue.

The audience chamber of Himring was, unlike many of the rooms they had passed, still furnished; because its contents were carved out of the very stuff of the mountain. Against the walls rows of stone chairs jutted from the floor, the enduring seats of the Court and Council; an aisle separated the two groups of them; and at the end of that aisle stood two great rock thrones, one about a third smaller than the other. Finally, some yards away from the thrones but level with them, another small chair was positioned.

It was this chair that now moved, shaking and jerking, a voice coming haphazardly from its creaking.

"The Master of His Lordship's Smiths," it announced. "Malris, Standard Bearer to His Lordship. Lómwë, warrior of the outer Marches. Endamir, warrior of the Fortress; he carries his brother, and it appears there has been some...mishap. Lindir, Smith to His Lordship. Tasarënì, lately a warrior in His Lordship's Service, now a follower of Artanis."

"We know who we are...Chamberlain," Malris answered, "and indeed, we can keep you better up to date. I have not borne a Standard in Ages, and Lindir has long laid down his tools. Oremir was not hurt in a mishap, but murdered through the plots of the Diviner. We seek free passage out of the Fortress, nothing more."

"I apologise profoundly for any...lapse...in protocol," the Chamberlain's voice returned from the chair in an irritated tone. "Perhaps you would be interested to know that His Lordship Kanafinwe Makalaure Feanorion, called Maglor, wishes to meet with you. He finds the...official atmosphere...of the throne-room oppressive, though believe me, I have often tried to persuade him otherwise, and so awaits you in the Observatory Tower."

[piosenniel]

The Master of His Lordship's Smiths,’ an officious voice announced. ‘Malris, Standard Bearer to His Lordship. Lómwë, warrior of the outer Marches. Endamir, warrior of the Fortress; he carries his brother, and it appears there has been some...mishap. Lindir, Smith to His Lordship. Tasarënì, lately a warrior in His Lordship's Service, now a follower of Artanis.’

My brother’s death has been dismissed as a mishap! Endamir felt the urge to laugh welling up from some place deep within where reason blurred into madness. That shadowed place where thought and feeling jarred against one another; their sharp edges now gleaming in the unrelenting light, now sinking into unremitting darkness. And razor-edged they cut at him, so that the blood flowed ever and anew…and there was no healing.

A sudden weariness assailed Endamir, one of body and of spirit. The laughter died within. He was tired of this game. His head swung towards Malris as he spoke.

‘We seek free passage out of the Fortress, nothing more.’

And then to where the Chamberlain sat, his manner irritated by the lapse in protocol.

‘Maglor…awaits you in the Observatory Tower.’

Endamir stepped forward, grey eyes sharply cold as he spoke toward that empty chair. ‘We seek nothing from you. There is no need to ask your leave or leave of any who linger in this place of horrors.’ He bowed slightly, a grim smile on his face. ‘You can make our apologies to your lord, as you wish Chamberlain. My brother and I regret we have other business to attend to.’

Bearing Orëmir still upon his shoulder, Endamir turned and made his way from the chamber, heading toward the edge of the island where the ship was docked.

[Anguirel]

Malris nodded at Endamir's answer, addressing the Chamberlain...or the chair...gravely.

"My friend has suffered quite enough, without bearing such an insult, sir Chamberlain, as your apparent indifference to his brother's fall. If you have anything of honour within you, you will respect his request to depart unmolested."

No reply came from the chair but a slow grinding sound, but Malris shrugged, taking it as reluctant assent, and turned to Endamir.

"We part here once again, for I cannot rest if there may be a chance I can speak with Maglor. I shall go to the Tower. I wish you an end to the torments you have endured...often for my sake."

Endamir barely seemed to notice the valediction, bearing his brother's corpse, and himself, from the chamber by its eastern door. Malris sighed, a bitter gasp of loss and remorse, and watched till the other had left the room; then he turned to the three other Elves he had set out with, Lindir, Lómwë, and Tasa. He was smiling, but his eyes were shining. Malris wept very rarely, and was not about to do so now, but he barely resisted the urge.

"In days gone by, I would undoubtedly have urged you on with some fiery speech, a lesser flame of the Spirit of Fire's inspiration. I would have appealed to you not to lurk as craven beasts of the field, to keep on going, breaking boundaries, in pursuit of virtue, aye, and of knowledge too. Yet that time has passed, friends, and if you have tired of this barren venture, have no more of it."

[Firefoot]

“I too must beg my leave,” said Lómwë. “I only want to leave this place behind, not to embroil myself deeper in its past. I neither want nor require any more aid of this island.” At any rate, his loyalty, so long ago, had been to Maedhros rather than Maglor. He had no desire to meet with the spirit that had once been Maglor – especially not after he had led them on so far with his enthralling songs, as Endamir had so aptly put it.

“Very well,” replied Malris sadly.

“I have found what I sought,” said Lómwë. “May you do so as well.” As he turned to follow Endamir, he realized that it was true. He had come here to seek reconciliation with, or at least understanding of, his past, and he had found it, if in a more painful and less desirable way than he had hoped. Now he only needed reconciliation with what his past had made him, and he would not find that healing here.

Was he sorry he had come? No. And yet, if he had the choice to do it all over again, would he have come? Perhaps not; at the very least, he would have made different choices and come with different hopes. But the past was done; he could only live with it - live with it, understand it, and move on.

And move on he would. Now, truly, Ellothiel, I am coming.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Tasa met Malris's eyes and looked down humbly.

"I followed you into battle, once, twice, a hundred times, following your lead with great confidence in our combined ability. I followed you in friendship through adventures untold. When I received your summons, friend of my heart, I rode to meet you again, and have toiled by your side since. I will not leave you yet. I will walk beside you into the Tower, and to what awaits us there."

Tasa bade her friends farewell, hoping that they would not be sundered for long, and made ready her body and heart to meet her next challenge.

"One path closed did not defeat us; another door shut and a new path cannot possibly do more harm to me than what was done before. I say again, Malris, I am with you."

[Child of the 7th Age]

"Sire, I must speak, though I am loathe to do so." Lindir was the last of the group left in the chamber yet now felt like an intruder. It would have been better if Tasa's words of love and loyalty had been spoken elsewhere than in this public place.

Masking any discomfort that he felt, the Elf acknowledged Malris with a courteous nod and then bowed to take his leave. "Honor demands that I not accompany you, although part of me desires to see what or who awaits within the Tower, Still, I have a duty that cannot be laid aside. The Smith was not always as you see him today. In earlier times, he shared with me the secrets of his craft, generously offering wisdom and advice. I can not turn my back on him even now, despite his vile deed. It is not my place to judge what will happen once he steps within the halls of Mandos. I will leave that to those whose understanding exceeds my own."

"Sire, I ask permission to go and find the Smith's bones within this keep. I promise to find a safe resting place for them. For truthfully we do not know what fate awaits you and Tasa within that Tower, and whether you will come back this way again. I wish you the best but it would be a dishonorable thing for me to turn my back on the request that the Smith made."

His eyes and face full of sadness, Malris said that Lindir might take his leave, and the Smith told them where his bones could be found.

"My best to you, Tasa and Malris," Lindir added with a sigh. "This journey did not go quite as we had hoped, but I pray you may both find peace wherever your path takes you."

Then Lindir went out and did as he had promised, burying the bones on a high hill overlooking the stony harbor. He walked back to the ship, still grieving in his heart for all that had been lost, though acknowledging that he would return to Middle-earth to try and do what little he could.

[Anguirel]

When each Elf had decided whether to go on or to take the long-awaited chance of departure, Malris turned to the Chamberlain's chair.

"The Lady Tasarënì and I mean to accept...Lord Maglor's...offer," he said carefully.

"Do you desire a guide?" the Chamberlain's voice murmured, almost wheedling.

"Nay, I remember the way to that Tower now as clearly as I remember the forecourt of my own house in Forlindon."

"Very well, very good," the voice concluded. "Then it is time, once more."

Ignoring this enigmatic parting shot, Malris and Tasa turned their faces towards each other, nodded in unison, and with their heads held high left the throneroom for the chambers beyond and the way to the Observatory Tower.

***

It was a long way to the loftiest point of lofty Himring, but the two Elves passed it in silence. Neither were given to unnecessary talk, and little now needed to be said. Malris thanked Tasa for this act of friendship and unconditional love, in accompanying him to an uncertain end, in every movement he made, every glance he directed, every breath he took. And she thought in answer that her deed was nothing, only love's due, and meant it.

Both now knew that theirs had always been a union forbidden by the very movements of the stars; and even Tasa's regret was slight now. If they left the Observatory still themselves, they would be free to part separately once more. What they had achieved was nobler than passion. It was the love of courage, fellowship and charity.

***

"Here we are," Malris said quietly at last, as they traversed the last winding staircase, passed a window that gazed over the whole isle, and saw a door ahead.

"Before we enter," Tasa whispered, for the awe of the tower seemed to exact a lowering of the voice, "I would look upon the path we took."

"And I also."

They went up to the ledge of the window and, feeling like very children, climbed upon it. The walls of the Keep spread out below them, grey and stern, conquered at the last by gulls, not Orcs. Beyond the concentric walls, punctuated with bastions, ran; in one of these stout edifices they had encountered Giledhel's shade and perforce descended to the Dwarven Corridors. The fortress' main gate brought back memories of the struggle with the Orcish spirits for the Dragon-Helm. And the jagged slopes of rock where Tasa had stumbled lay out of sight; the Sea too, though they heard it, and its appeal, its song in its way as compelling as the Singer of Himring; seeming to derive its power from the same source, almost.

Malris picked himself up, Tasa too, and they approached the door. They knocked, but no answer came back. At last, remembering the doors that had shut against their passage with unease, they tried its handle. It opened easily.

***

The Observatory Tower's highest chamber had been where both Maedhros and Maglor had slept in the years after the Bragollach, and the division between the minds of the two brothers could still be seen. In one half of the room stood a desk on which a map of drowned Beleriand rested, a rough pallet of straw lay in the corner, and alcoves for arms stood about.

In the other half of the chamber was a softer bed and a harp.

It was no simple instrument of light wood; but though it was of metal, little more could be said precisely of its construction, for its colour changed every time it was looked at; now red-gold, now moon-silver, now greenish like aged copper. It was fashioned like a ship cast upwards by a wave, splaying foam modelled at its front.

Runes read about its base; as Malris and Tasa walked about it, they made out two simple sentences;

HE NEVER CAME BACK AMONG THE PEOPLE OF THE ELVES

and

PLAY ME, JOIN HIM.

As they stood gripped by wonder and foreboding, Malris and Tasa suddenly stepped back in alarm; for the strings of the harp were moving, and sound was ringing mellifluously out. Before long it was joined by a Voice-the Voice, apparently Maglor's, that they knew so well.

Don't be disappointed, though Maglor I'm not
He poured Feanorion skill in my craft.
Even after he left me our bond was unbroken
And I know every Song that the Singer has Sung.

You look on me, weary, and broken, and harried,
Consider the Gift that I can bestow.
And think on the Minstrels who faded so well
Evading the Valar, history, and song.

Their names I can tell you: Daeron, Maglor, Salgant
Of Forest and Fortress; with others who sang.
Now Forest and Fortress to ruin are wracked
But they're witness still to the wandering world.

Renounce the West's shrill call, and defy the Gulls
And watch Seven Ages and feel not a day.
Caress these strings once, and that number you'll join
Of the Vanishing Harpers who shrug and play on...

The harp and the Voice-which, it was now apparent, the Harp itself possessed-died away now, and Malris frowned in silence at the beauteous instrument.

"A kind of freedom, perhaps, what it offers," Malris muttered, "a chance to last with Arda, despite everything. Can it be trusted? I wonder..."

His arms strayed towards the instrument, only to be absently drawn back. He looked to Tasa.

"Does this choice attract you now, in this hour?"

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Tasa opened her mind to Malris even as she took his hand in hers, marvelling over the light reflected off of the harp.

I have lived long, Malris; nearly as long as you. I have seen the light of the trees and I have danced in the gardens of the West to the music of nightengales. I have heard the stirring speech of the son of Finwë as it kindled hearts and minds in the spring of our days. I have ridden the waves and the hills alike, and wept for the marring of the lands in battle; stood silent in the rising tide as it's crimson stained waters crept across beaches.

I have seen the gore of close combat; watched the shine of life flee from the eyes of men and elves and orcs alike. We are alike in death, Malris, as we are not in life; empty shells, bereft of spirit. And those spirits have fled beneath my blades, from before my bow, from the cold silver of my knives. I have seen much, Malris; heard the music of metal on metal; the screams of the dying, trumpets crying defiance by the light of the early dawn; I have heard the pleading of a child cut down by marauding orcs, heard the the gurgle of quick death when slitting the throat of an enemy in passing.

I have smelled the trampled grass of a battlefield, its green smell released to an uncaring world, nearly over-powered by the smell of old blood on bitter steel. I have tasted smoke upon the wind; I have tasted bitter regret.

But I have also tasted wine and lembas, heard song and felt golden light shine upon me from far above my beloved Laurelindorinan. I have smelled flowers in spring, untouched by battles or blood. I have seen deaths, Malris, but I have also seen life.

I have seen young love blossom and grow, unfading as the presence of the Valar that we shunned. I have seen a rose cheeked mother carefully tend her babes. I have heard the laughter of the children of all races, Malris, and I have watched them grow into people in whom to take pride.

I have seen horrors and I have been part of them, and I cannot escape from the shadows that they cast upon me. But I still hear the song of birds, even the shrill call of a crow at wing, and I am reminded of lighter days, and a weight is lifted from me.

Would I stay? I am unsure. What of you, dearest friend? Could you live on? Could you forsake your Giledhel to live on with your friend and master, your Maglor?

[Anguirel]

Would I stay? I am unsure. What of you, dearest friend? Could you live on? Could you forsake your Giledhel to live on with your friend and master, your Maglor?

Malris inwardly confessed himself surprised that Tasa seemed to be as undecided as he. Some part of him, he realised, had wanted to be pleaded with and remonstrated with, begged to either accept of reject the harp's offer, wooed with speeches and argument. But Tasa was at once too subtle and too true for that. She was, herself, unsure, and she said so. Unsure, like the dancing hue of the harp or of Tasa's own eyes, like the predicament that faced them.

"Aye, there's the rub," he said, speaking aloud though there was no need. "Could I bring myself to do this thing? Yet once I have done it, the Harp claims I shall care no more, that seven Ages shall pass without a day's effects falling upon me.

"We could walk to the Harp, Tasa, and touch those strings to play some trifling tune, and be consoled by the certainty that we had become utterly separate from past, future, remained as eternal recorders and guardians of the present. Aye, then, Tasa, if the Harp did not lie, I could forget my wife. And in any case, were I to go West, I have begun to despair of rebuilding the love that once gripped us so sharply. Not now, I fear, after so long..."

He stepped closer to the Harp again, marvelling at the storm-tossed ship that formed its shape. He took long breath and laid his hand at the top of the foam, feeling the contours of the metal wave. The strings hummed faintly, as if yearning to be taken in hand once more...

"All reason seems to tell me that accepting this offer would be wise. And it runs deeply in accordance with much of my desire. I have submitted to the Sea-longing and turned to the Lords of the West grudgingly...though sincerely. And now a chance to foil them all...to prove to my father that he was wrong to demand on my return after the War of Wrath...to march East to the side of the last Son of Feanor, not sail West to the laps of the Godlings..."

He paused, moving his touch now to the hull of the ship, solid and reassuring in its convex, shell-like appearance...

"And furthermore, Tasa, I do not believe that this Harp lies. It is no idle boaster, this instrument; it sung of the Noldolante nights ago, though Maglor composed that chanson after he abandoned Himring. Nay, I do believe it can do all it claims to do."

He took his palm from the hull and stretched it towards the strings. With his other hand he took Tasa's, his thoughts clear. Away from glance of hostile Elf or spirit, Malris and Tasa could there partake of another kind of love; dive into the frenzied ocean, the sweet well of delights dust and circumstance now denied them. At last he closed his eyes and whispered.

"Harp, harp, beautiful harp of my lost lord, you spun me a beautiful song. It is not, though, enough to make plain Malris one of your Vanishing Harpers. There is more honour to be found in the fulfilment of a humble promise on a castle wall one cold morning than in an eternity of loyal, but remote, service. I believe your creator, harp, who blessed my marriage, understands what I do now. If your mind, instrument, is his, then through you he will know that I love him as a dullard loves a star that shines his way. But I am of the people of the Elves, and I have cleft to Giledhel of the Noldor, whose pardon I will sail to beg."

Finished, he staggered like a drunkard back from the ship in its turbulent sea, surmounted by strings.

"Tasa, you need not be guided by me in this matter. Our hearts are as one and so I know you do not now seek the West. Here is a way to never fade, and to wander in the Lorien you love, and in Middle-earth, until it lasts. I shall often think of you, and I am arrogant enough," he smiled weakly, "to rather assume that you will think of me also."

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Tasa's mind remained open now, and she felt strong with her ability to feel it, to place barriers within it, and to block what she did not wish to enter. Her mind was her own; no voice, no sounds, spoke within it save those laced with loyalty and care.

I think of you, mellon, as a servant thinks her master, as a child her father, a mother her son, a wife her husband. I see the choices that you have made and I have wondered why those same choices were not given to me. I watch with a mother's pride the goodness in your heart, the myriad ways in which you have struggled against and overcome obstacles. I have watched in adoration as you have won through where others have failed.

But mostly, Malris, I think of you as a friend, as have I always done, and as will I until the last. I could not have borne it, song or no song, that you should forsake the one you loved most. That you should come to a decision, my friend, that would lose you the most cherished memories of ages.

Should you have chosen, think what you would have lost, mellon. Malris, in choosing to remain in Arda in such a way, would you have kept in your being memory of the Valar that love you?

We have scorned them, Malris, but they love us nonetheless; ever harder would it be for me to return, knowing their forgiveness and being unable to forgive myself.

Will I dance my fingers across the strings, or shall I sail?

I say neither, friend of friends.

Her eyes met his and her heart broke, and never had she truly understood the greatest sacrifices of legend until now, and she knew deeply, even through her sorrow, that she was right in choosing.

I would follow you until the utmost end, but the choice you make is no end, but a new beginning. I had a beginning, Malris; I do not ask for another. I cannot return.

Nor can I forsake memory. She looked wistfully at the strings and wished, just once, that she had the will to forget. I will stay in Arda, Malris, and I will fade.

[Anguirel]

Malris beheld Tasa, and grinned slowly in gradual realisation.

You were never tempted by the Harp's offer, dearling, nor could you ever have been. But you allowed me time to overcome the power of the instrument alone...Tasa, you have acted as my guardian soul.

He stood before the Harp, now shining pearl-white, and took the long knife from his belt.

"It is a shame to silence such beauty, but you tantalise the Eldar with an unlawful offer, Harp. I take my blade to you not to slight my lord, Maglor the Mighty, but to serve him. One day, perchance, there will be hope for him too, of reunion with his family and friends, and of long rest."

With a determined stroke of the knife, Malris severed the fine, taut harp-strings. And in that moment the harp lost its uncertain appearance, and was revealed as a light thing of carved, pale wood.

"It is without power now, Tasa, and it would take he who is lost to restring it fully. I shall take it, for I have a long voyage ahead, and I believe there will be need of music."

He threw down the knife and lifted the Harp up in one hand, laying his right hand on Tasa's shoulder.

Let us return to the others now, mellon-nir. You too have made the decision that contents your heart most. And one day, you will come to Mandos, and you shall meet me, with, I pray, Giledhel beside me. Thus all things may be healed.

Then he put down the harp again and embraced Tasa for a moment of relief and clarity. Malris retrieved the wooden instrument, and in such a manner they left the Tower, left the Keep, left the very fortress, and paid no heed to spirit, whether of stone or torch-bracket.

[piosenniel]

A small sailboat lay abandoned on the island shore. Left there he supposed by the men who fished these waters. Lindir had come soon after, asking only that he might be left on the mainland shore. Endamir had nodded, agreeing mutely that Lindir's needs would be seen to.

The two companions placed a folded canvas in the bottom of the boat and laid Orëmir’s body upon it. His hands, lying one upon the other, lay on his breast; his blade hung by his side. At his head Endamir placed the small chest his brother always carried with him, the one that held the herbs and unguents and such that were the tools for his healer’s skill. At his feet sat Endamir, his right hand set firm on the tiller; his left holding the line that moved the little sail.

~*~

‘A fair wind and a following sea……’ spoke Lindir as he waved the little craft off from the rocky strand to which it had come to let him off.

No words came back to him.

Endamir sat silent, his grey eyes darkly clouded as he gazed west. He set the course. And like a small bird the boat flew over the waves, leaping up to catch the wind.

The stars shown brightly as the day turned and through the dark night and the following days the little craft sailed far from the rocky shores of Mithlond, until at last the seas of the Bent World fell beneath it, and the winds of the round sky troubled it no more, and borne into the Ancient West, an end was come for the brothers at long last though what it might have been is not told in story or in song.....

[piosenniel]

The Return Voyage

The boat that had been a little crowded with half-a-dozen felt almost empty with three. Malris and Tasa had found Lómwë waiting alone by the Ghostbearer.

"The others left by way of one of the fishermen's crafts," he explained to them. "Lindir has decided to return to Middle-earth, while Endamir would rather take the straight road alone, I think, than amid the bustle of the passage Cirdan has arranged for us."

"May the Valar give him an easy wind," Malris answered, biting his lip. "It is a small boat and Endamir is little versed in sailing."

"I do not think he will be troubled by storms this time," Tasa said quietly, looking up into the sky. It was indeed blue and cloudless, though there was a healthy pitch in the water and a chilly enough breeze.

"Let us to Mithlond, then. There we shall part our various ways," said Malris, feeling the wooden ship of the harp in his hand. "And I rename this vessel; not Ghostbearer, but Ghostlayer shall she be. I have," he smiled wryly, "a spare, white, sail..."

***

It was a swift, yet untroubled journey; indeed as if the ocean had taken pity on this battered group of travellers in their stained, torn, grey garb.

"Why, the Anduin can be more trouble than this," Lómwë remarked.

"On certain days. At certain periods. With certain passengers," Malris contemplated from the tiller. "This wind is a Western wind wafting us south-east, and I say it comes in the way of a reprieve."

And so it fell out. Mariners at Mithlond loitered at the harbour, waiting for the return of the ship with Star of Feanor on her black sail, scheduled to arrive on that day, waiting so that they could curse her.

But they saw no sign of the ship's dark sail. "She must have perished; good riddance," one Telerin sailor said to another. She had perished, in a way, or the spirit in which she had been launched; it had died within Malris when he decided to resist the Harp.

And none noticed the landing of a grey boat with a plain sail, with three wild-looking Elves swathed in tattered grey aboard.

None except the Shipwright, and he stood and wondered.

***

Malris, Tasa, and Lómwë found themselves disembarked amid a scene of splendour. Before a tall, three-masted ship the Shipwright spoke with the three Elven Ringbearers; Galadriel, mistress of Tasa, glorious but humble in the fresh cleansing of the air, her hair blown about; grave Elrond, foster-son of Maglor, bearing a silver harp, perhaps in secret remembrance; and hoary old Mithrandir, whose sardonic laugh brought something earthier to that very unearthly meeting.

"Tasarënì, my dear!" Galadriel cried in some astonishment. "You are as punctual as ever. Do you mean to come with my company after all?"

"Nay, my lady, mine is the way of Celeborn," Tasa replied with regret. In more ways than even Artanis knows, Malris thought. For Tasa too was watching her love sail while she waited on the shore. Only it was another sort of love, with less drama and more artistry.

The three last fighters of Maedhros' host went aside during the commotion the arrival of the Periannath caused, and Malris knelt before Tasa, kissing her hand once. Then they exchanged one look, a deep look of minds as well as eyes, and parted amid the throng. Malris and Lómwë filed wordlessly into the ranks of the Elven retinues of the Three Elven Ringbearers, walking uneasily over the birch ramp and onto the deck.

"You will find your wife, and Aradol too, Lómwë," Malris said softly as they walked alone on the deck. "Aradol was an innocent, and will have been freed from Mandos. He'll be a fine young Elf now...a sturdy son for your old age, eh?" he said, unable to resist a gentle jibe.

Lómwë looked back, and silence fell for a little. "You will enter Namo's Halls to find Giledhel?"

"Aye."

"Then may you be rewarded as you deserve," Lómwë said, his eyes wide. Malris almost thought that in that moment he had the aspect of a prophet.

"That is all I can hope for." Would he be forgiven by his time-estranged wife? Malris did not know; but this he was now sure of, that had he denied himself this path to possible reconciliation, he would never have forgiven himself.

The breakers shifted and crawled and pounced, but the ship went on just the same. It was a smooth road, a quiet road, a simple road.

A straight road.


--- Anguirel

[piosenniel]

~*~ Finis ~*~

[piosenniel]

~*~ To Elvenhome ~*~