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Twenty-eight times the Moon crossed the sky while Maedhros lay like one dead in the healers’ tents of the Fëanorian camp. The astronomers had named that length of time a month according to some newly derived principle Fingon had not caught. He had laughed, thinking it too short a span to need its own name.
Twenty-eight days. He had slept three days in the same tent as Maedhros, full of a deep exhaustion, and had barely opened his eyes when one of his proud cousins after another crept in to stare a while at the ruin of their brother. Only Maglor had tried to speak to Fingon. Only Curufin had been able to meet his eyes.
On the third day Fingon had woken unable to lie still a moment longer. He wished now he had not left Maedhros’s side, though his father had been heartily relieved to have him back on the right side of the lake. No one prevented him from visiting. The ice that lay between the two camps had thawed somewhat since Fingon’s return from Thangorodrim. There was now a steady trickle of visitors going cautiously back and forth, in fact, so in that much at least Fingon had succeeded. But he could not sleep in the healers' tents any longer, and what if he was not there when Maedhros woke?
He asked himself that, and feared the other question in his heart: what if he does not wake?
A month turned out to be a much longer time than he could ever have imagined possible.
Then on the twenty-ninth day Maedhros woke. Fingon was not there. He only knew a day later, when a runner came from the other side of the lake to say that Maedhros had asked for him.
His heart was in his mouth as he ducked into the tent. He did not know what he expected: only that the skeletal figure dangling from the rock had been as utterly changed from the cousin he knew as the Darkness had changed the eternal day of Valinor. What was it, in the end, that he had rescued? Would Maedhros truly be grateful for it? On the cliff he had cursed at Fingon and begged for an ending in the same breath. Fingon had seen his eyes. Even when the Eagle came, even with Fingon’s blade at his wrist, Maedhros had neither hoped nor desired to live.
So he held his breath: and then Maedhros cried, “There you are!”
Fingon stared at him. He was sitting up in bed, propped up on half a dozen pillows: rake-thin against them but smiling, plainly unconcerned by the sling that held his right arm or dark gaps that were his missing teeth. He wore only a loose jacket over an undyed nightshirt, but there was gold bound across his brow, gleaming bright against the clean red of his cropped hair. His brother Celegorm sat by his side: when Maedhros gestured in absent command he stood at once to make room for Fingon. Maglor was on the other side of the bed, sprawled in a chair with his eyes closed, brow uncreased, looking more like himself than Fingon had seen him in decades.
“I threw the others out,” Maedhros said, grinning at Fingon, “because the healers looked upset. They keep telling me not to overstretch myself. But it doesn’t feel real without a brother or two around. Sit down, sit down! Do you want something to eat? Celegorm will fetch something.”
“Will I,” muttered Celegorm, but he shook his head and smiled a little as he went out. A great shadow-shape Fingon had not noticed when he came in was the hound Huan, lying in a corner. He looked up when Celegorm left, huffed, and laid his head back down on his paws. His eyes were open and fixed on the entrance to the tent. He was standing guard.
“Sit, Fingon, sit,” said Maedhros, and Fingon found himself sitting on the edge of the bed. Maedhros took in the direction of his gaze and laughed. “Are you admiring my new hat?” The circlet he wore was far simpler than any worn by his father or grandfather. “New-forged,” said Maedhros, “using the first gold we dug out of the hills here, I’m told. I find I prefer it to the old one. For one thing it’s nowhere near as heavy.”
“What happened to the old one?” Fingon said before he could think.
“I was wearing it when they captured me, so Morgoth probably has it in a trophy room somewhere. I wish him joy of it.”
Fingon said nothing. Maglor cracked an eye open. Until then Fingon really had thought him asleep. “You’re unnerving him, brother,” he said, but his mouth was tilted up at the corner. “For that matter, you’re unnerving me.”
“You both need stronger nerves, then,” said Maedhros cheerfully. “Am I allowed more wine yet?”
“You know you’re not.”
“More food?”
“You’ll make yourself sick.”
“I am tormented,” Maedhros said confidingly to Fingon. “The Enemy’s table was atrocious and now they won’t give me anything but soup. You owe me for many years of sweets slipped under the table, cousin - will you be my rescuer again? I will trade you half the kingdom I don’t have for a loaf of bread and a bowl of stew.”
“Don’t let him wheedle you into it,” said Maglor. “He will be sick. It’s a waste of stew.”
“I have starved, and now I would feast,” Maedhros said. “Will you deny your king?” He grinned. “Or is this just a decorative hat after all? In that case I would prefer one that keeps the rain off. Tell Curufin.”
“Maedhros,” said Maglor reprovingly, a tone that sat as uneasily on him as rulership had. No wonder he looked so relieved, if Maedhros was crowned again already. Fingon thought it low of him to pass off the responsibility to an invalid.
“Feast when you have your strength back,” he said.
Maedhros rolled his eyes. “You’re all as bad as each other. Very well, very well! Get you gone, Maglor. Take the hound with you. I shall be well enough guarded with Fingon here.” Maglor lifted an eyebrow. Maedhros sighed exaggeratedly. “If Caranthir tries to imply anything tell him to come here and say it to our faces,” he said. “Even he can’t deny that Fingon’s had plenty of chances to assassinate me already if he wished to. Indeed I begged him for the favour and he was most ungracious in his refusal.”
At that Maglor snorted, nodded, stood and bowed. Maedhros dismissed him with a lordly gesture and Fingon heard him laughing as he went away. Huan padded out after him. Fingon looked at Maedhros, who gave him another gap-toothed smile. It should have looked terrible, but Fingon found his heart turned over at it. “Was I so ungracious?” he said.
“Your manners were thoroughly bad. You should not cry when rescuing people: it makes it very hard to understand what you are saying. Nor was I able to remind you to thank the Eagle.”
Fingon glanced to the side as if struck by a sudden alarming thought.
“O Fingon! Please say you thanked the Eagle!” said Maedhros, starting to laugh.
“I did,” Fingon assured him, unable to pretend for long. “On your behalf as well as mine.”
“Well, that is a relief,” Maedhros said. “I was wondering how to get a thank-you note to him. The best I could think of was to put it on a pigeon, but there is always the worry that the Eagle will eat the pigeon, and then the note might give him indigestion.”
“That would be a poor thanks,” Fingon agreed solemnly.
Maedhros laughed. “I am so very glad to see you,” he said. “I missed you more than you can know.”
“I have some idea,” said Fingon. He had not thought of it as missing Maedhros at the time. On the Ice he had planned a thousand recriminations, accusations, cruel stinging speeches. He saw now that he had missed his friend terribly. “You were often in my thoughts,” he said.
Maedhros snorted. “I’m sure I was,” he said. He put his hand over Fingon’s. “Thank you for what you did,” he said. “Thank you.”
Fingon did not know what to say.
Maedhros took pity on him and gave him a gay smile, as if to say that there was no need to speak of that matter any longer. “I am so bored,” he confessed. “Of course I am used to that. Here is something no one tells you about being a prisoner: it is deathly dull. But being a patient is almost as bad. Will you stay a while? You can play a game with me.”
“What game?” said Fingon, trying to rally to Maedhros’s bright mood.
“Any game. No, a word game. Go call for pen and paper: someone will be hovering.”
“But -”
“But I cannot write? I know that. It’s my hand that’s missing. I think it is time I started learning.”
“You have been awake less than two days!” Fingon protested.
“No time to waste,” said Maedhros. “If you will not play with me, I will send you away, and then I will have someone bring me a sword, and you will have only yourself to blame when I collapse trying to lift it.”
“Don’t you dare,” said Fingon.
Maedhros flashed that uneven smile up at him. “So call for a pen,” he said.
Fingon called for a pen. Maedhros insisted on playing a child’s guessing game with him. Fingon took the pen first and Maedhros looked at the lines he had drawn for the letters and then guessed, immediately, ‘eagle’.
“Unfair!” said Fingon, writing it in. “I forgot you were good at this.”
“You’re very predictable,” said Maedhros, sounding smug. He took the pen left handed, gripped it with awkward determination, and drew the lines for his word. The pen slipped in his grasp and the lines were wandering and spidery. Maedhros narrowed his eyes at them. “It will do,” he said. He looked up at Fingon and smiled at once, as if Fingon being there was compensation enough for every indignity and frustration of his injury. “Guess,” he commanded.
Fingon guessed metal and spirit and heart. Maedhros frowned at him. “Don’t just pick the ones that are easy to write,” he said. “Are you even trying?” But Fingon saw him bite his lip as he scrawled them carefully off to one side, drew a line through each, and drew three lines of the stick figure that was Fingon’s forfeit. The figure was even more of a messy scrawl than the letters. It did not look much like the usual doodle of an Elf stuck in a tree. In Fingon’s rooms in his old home there was still a pile of sketches in a drawer, begged from his cousin when he was a child. Fingon could not help but compare the swift fluid lines of those pictures he had admired and the ugliness of the awkward shapes produced by Maedhros’s newly unskilled hand.
“Father always told us to practice with both hands,” Maedhros said with amusement, as if in answer to his thoughts. “Curufin was the only one who bothered. I cannot tell him he’s been vindicated: I will never hear the end of it. Guess another letter, go on.”
Fingon kept guessing. He had forgotten he was terrible at this game. He had no eye for the way the shapes of letters on a page turned into sounds. Maedhros crossed off letter after letter down the side of the page and kept drawing the forfeit. It looked nothing like it was supposed to. Fingon could not bring himself to point it out. It was only when Maedhros said, “Ha! You lose,” that he realised it was not meant to be an Elf in a tree at all.
“Maedhros,” he said, distressed.
Maedhros snickered. “I think it’s an improvement,” he said, tapping his finger over the doodle of a stick figure hanging from a triangle shape that was meant to be a mountain. “The game has more at stake this way. Look at the poor fellow.”
“Maedhros!”
Maedhros looked at his face and then all at once twitched the paper to one side so Fingon could not see it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I thought it was funny.” His mouth quirked. “I would rather laugh, you see. I would much rather laugh than weep.”
Fingon took a deep breath. He reached out and pulled the paper back towards him. “I only meant,” he said, “that you cheated. I haven't lost yet. Look, he doesn't have any hair. I guess lamp.”
Maedhros paused, looking at his face, and then said cheerfully, “Alas!” and crossed another letter out. He gave the dangling Elf figure a little scribble of tangled hair.
“I still haven't lost,” Fingon said.
He proceeded to cheat outrageously, making Maedhros draw two more mountains, a stick-vampire standing guard, and an Eagle in the distance before he finally guessed 'filigree'. Maedhros was snickering helplessly by the end. His lines were steadier, his letters clearer, but Fingon saw that his hand shook. “Enough,” he said, plucking the pen from Maedhros’s fingers. “I won.”
“There wasn't really a vampire,” said Maedhros, “was there?”
“There were four. I had to wrestle them, one by one, and to each one I said only: stand aside! I am here for my friend!”
“Ah, of course. Truly I only swooned because I was so impressed by your heroics,” Maedhros said. “It had nothing to do with the blood loss.”
"I am very impressive," Fingon agreed.
"You are," Maedhros said, and his smile had gone smaller and more private, and it did not sound like a joke. He put his hand over Fingon's again. They had leaned together over the paper while they were playing the game, and the soft goosefeather bed had tipped them further together still, and now Fingon's shoulder was pressed against Maedhros's bony side. After a quiet moment Maedhros let Fingon's hand go and instead curled his arm about Fingon's shoulders. "You will forgive me," he said as he tugged Fingon closer, though it sounded more like an order than an apology. "Every sense can starve. I nearly wept yesterday over having Huan in petting distance. He considers it beneath his dignity to play the lapdog, but was generous. I spent half an hour scratching his ears." His fingers were tangling in Fingon's braids as he spoke, stroking gently and then tugging a little.
"Do as you please," Fingon said. "I am at your service." It was no ill thing to be embraced. Maedhros laughed softly close to his ear and his finger and thumb went to the back of Fingon's neck and dug into the muscle there. "Do not scratch my ears," Fingon managed to say.
"You look less put-upon than Huan did," Maedhros said.
Fingon was not sure how he looked. A long-ago hunger he had thought squashed to almost nothing when he was barely out of childhood and then frozen to death at last upon the Grinding Ice was stirring as Maedhros held him close and toyed with his hair. He had looked upon his kinsman with desire when he had been fair and strong and merry, and known it for foolishness even then. He had set it aside. How was it possible that the longing should rekindle itself now, when Maedhros was a ruin of himself, all his beauty shorn and starved? Yet Fingon was tremendously aware of the leaping flame of the spirit beside him, fiercer and brighter than it had ever been before and full of flickering strangeness, and it moved him. So too did the cool press of Maedhros's fingers to the side of his jaw beneath his ear.
It took him a moment to realise that Maedhros was encouraging him to turn his head. He did it and found that they were nearly nose to nose. Maedhros was smiling that private smile down at him. "Still?" he said.
"You knew," said Fingon.
He could feel Maedhros's breath warm on his face when he chuckled. "It seemed kinder at the time to pretend I did not. You plainly did not wish me to know."
Fingon felt a brief flash of embarrassment on behalf of his younger self, but he let it go. He shrugged and smiled. "Well, then. Yes, still. Do not think of it: I recovered once before. You are my friend before all else."
Maedhros lifted his eyebrows. "Why should you seek to recover?" he said. "Am I so unlovely now?"
"No!" said Fingon at once, and felt it to be the truth, though Maedhros was by no means fair to look upon.
"Flattery," Maedhros murmured, smiling at him again. Their faces were still very close together. Fingon felt his pulse quickening. "Come now," Maedhros said, and despite all else it still took Fingon a second or two to understand that it was an invitation.
As a youth he had thought now and then of how this kiss might come to pass. None of his thoughts had included the way he had to lean away from Maedhros so as not to jog the maimed arm in its sling, or Maedhros's missing teeth and cropped hair, or the bony thinness of the arm that went around Fingon. Fingon's heart was pounding as if he were leading warriors into battle, but Maedhros seemed entirely pleased with their situation. He made soft approving sounds against Fingon's mouth, and was grinning when Fingon pulled away.
"Do that again," he said.
When Fingon hesitated he put his hand back into Fingon’s hair and tugged. Fingon fell upon him.
Two selves he seemed to have after that. One knew only delight and thought of nothing but the sweetness of the moment: sweeter because Maedhros made his hunger so plain, when Fingon had thought the stifled desire his alone. His other self thought instant by instant of doubts and troubles that he would have laughed at once: politics, all of it, but for all Fingon had no head for those games himself he had learned to take them seriously. It had ever been Maedhros between them who had been the cautious, the thoughtful, the subtle. Where was his caution now? Where was his thought? Two days he had been awake, and thirty years a prisoner of the Enemy: and those two thoughts circled one another in Fingon’s head even as his younger, freer, gladder self laughed and consented to be pulled more or less into Maedhros’s lap. The thin arm had not the strength to force him anywhere, but the intent was clear enough, and Maedhros grinned up at him when Fingon settled his knees either side of his hips. Ah, the ruin of that smile!
“Amras has gone hunting,” Maedhros said, answering the thought unspoken, “seeking ivory to carve me new teeth, and they all think I don’t know.”
Fingon leaned down over him and pressed their foreheads together. The gold of the new-forged royal circlet was cool against his skin: Maedhros was warm. “We have ivory aplenty,” he said. There had been great tusked seals on the ice, good eating with waterproof hides. They were not easy to kill, and many had kept the tusks as trophies. “We could trade.”
Maedhros angled his head to the side. Fingon understood the invitation now, and kissed him at once. When they broke apart for air Maedhros murmured, “It’s certainly a possibility,” sounding perfectly unconcerned. “Come, again.”
Fingon did as he was bid and kissed him again, and again. He tried as best he could to be careful where Maedhros was careless, to keep from jogging the injured arm and to hold onto him gently. Maedhros complained in irritated sounds whenever he tried to pull away altogether. “You are too bony to sit upon,” Fingon said at last. He knew better than to add, and I do not think you can bear my weight for long. The nightshirt and loose jacket Maedhros wore concealed his wasted body from the eye but not from Fingon’s hands upon him. Be patient, Fingon tried to tell himself, be wise: but the voices that had always told him that were his father’s and Maedhros’s, and his father was not here, and Maedhros had forgotten all patience. Fingon curled himself against his side and closed his eyes as Maedhros kissed him hungrily. It was sweet, sweet beyond measure, and if his cousin had been well in body no self-admonishment or thought of caution could have held Fingon back. Be careful, he thought, but only succeeded in forcing his hands to loosen their tight grip on Maedhros's shoulders. “Your brothers will not let me back in if I bruise you,” he murmured to Maedhros’s sound of protest.
“I don’t see why not,” Maedhros said, between kisses. “They let you in after you chopped me in two.”
“Don’t complain,” Fingon said. “Should I have bidden the Eagle wait while I fetched a crowbar?”
Maedhros snorted. “You will hear some say so,” he said. Fingon did not say that he had heard it already, here and there in the Fëanorian camp. “Tell them they are fools, from me.”
They went back to kissing. Fingon kept trying to keep his kisses gentle. Maedhros looked amused every time he forgot himself and had to pull away. “Truly I am well cared for,” he said once, drawing Fingon back to him again. The stopping and starting roused Fingon’s desire rather than quieting it: the more he had to restrain himself, the less he was able to think of anything else. Maedhros seemed amused by that as well. But he was well pleased by Fingon’s kisses and Fingon’s hands on him. He wanted Fingon; he rejoiced in him. Fingon had thought to find him shadowed beyond recall by his sufferings. The bright defiance of Maedhros’s hunger – for life, for laughter, for him – moved him more than the fair prince in Tirion ever had: though the prince had been very fair.
So it was that when there was a cough of laughter behind him and someone said, “I shall leave this over here, then,” Fingon barely heard it. It was Maedhros who broke their kiss to snicker, and only then did Fingon turn his head in time to see Celegorm disappear from the tent with a bounce in his step. There was a plate and a bowl on the table by the entrance. Fingon had half forgotten Maedhros sending him for food.
“Will he gossip?” he said.
“Oh no,” said Maedhros. “He’ll only tell all my brothers. And your sister, of course.”
“It will be all over both camps by sundown, in other words.”
“I cannot bring myself to care,” said Maedhros, smiling at him again. “Can you?”
Fingon found he could not. He stole another kiss before Maedhros sent him to fetch the food over. “Soup!” he said in disgusted tones when he saw what was in the bowl, but took it from Fingon’s hands.
“Is that not for me?"
“You can have some,” Maedhros said, “but I daresay I am hungrier than you are.”
“Do you want some of these?” The plate was heaped with honey cakes.
“With all my heart, but the healers are right: they will make me sick. You eat them, and I will enjoy them through you.”
Maedhros turned out to mean that more literally than Fingon had expected: he insisted on kissing the honey from Fingon’s lips and licking the last of the stickiness from his fingers when he was done. There was a soft look in his grey eyes when he looked up at Fingon’s expression after that. Fingon looked back at him wordlessly. Maedhros touched the fingers of his left hand to Fingon’s lower lip, and said, “I cannot think why I waited so long to do this.”
“I did not know you wished to,” Fingon said.
“How could I not? But mine is a subtle and deceitful character.” Fingon snorted at the idea. “You know not how I denied myself. I would much rather have eaten those sweets I used to slip to you.”
“The more do I appreciate your friendship and sacrifice,” Fingon said.
Maedhros smirked. “Do not expect it to happen again. I envy you those honey cakes even now.”
The Moon was reflected in the still waters of the lake as Fingon crossed back to his father’s camp. His father was waiting for him, standing alone by the trail. It was looking more like a real path now: the passage of feet had started to tread down the grass beyond its ability to spring back. Fingolfin fell into step at Fingon’s side.
“How is he?” he asked.
“Well,” said Fingon. “Better than I could have hoped.”
“I am glad of it,” Fingolfin said. He listened solemnly to Fingon’s account of Maedhros’s health, his mood, the circlet on his brow. Fingon omitted only a few details: Maedhros's kisses, the honey cakes. If gossip spread it would reach Fingon’s father in any case, but he would not grudge Fingon some privacy in this matter.
He did express his thoughts on Maglor’s swift yielding of responsibility. “From what I know of my nephews, I very much doubt that Maglor forced Maedhros to wear the crown in bed,” Fingolfin remarked in gentle rebuke. Fingon thought about Maedhros’s smiles, his demands, his easy dismissal of his brothers when he wished them gone, and admitted that it was so.
“If they will heed him,” Fingolfin said, “then he will be a better king than many others could be.”
“A better king than his father, you mean,” said Fingon.
Fingolfin said nothing. Fingon did not try to press him. Once he had been in the habit of challenging his father on this subject: his half-uncle's unfitness had always seemed as undeniable as his genius, and his ill-treatment of Fingolfin as unbearable as his pride. But since they had first heard of Fëanor's death Fingolfin was no longer willing to hear any ill word spoken of him. Fingon did not altogether understand his grief, but he tried to honour it.
"Maedhros Fëanorion, High King of the Noldor," Fingolfin said at length. "The third of Finwë's line! It may serve. If his temper is as you say, it may well serve: and perhaps it is what my father would have wanted. I am glad of it, most glad. I told you that you did well to rescue your friend, Fingon." He gave Fingon a brief grave smile. "Now I can say also: you did well to rescue your king."
Fingon hesitated. His father was his king.
"We will not avenge our dead if we do not unite," said Fingolfin. "You knew that when you chose your quest against my counsel."
"It was not against your counsel –"
"It would have been if you had stopped to ask me," Fingolfin said, and there was another of the grave smiles. "Give my greetings to your friend. I would gladly speak with him, once he feels fit to receive me."
It was Fingolfin who had received Maglor, the one seated in majesty, the other pale and grim and upright with armed guards at his back. For him to go to Maedhros might be merely a courtesy to an invalid. It might be: but it was not. "You are my king," Fingon protested.
"I am content merely to be your father," said Fingolfin. "Unless you think he will be a poor king. Do you think so?"
It was an honest question, asking an honest judgement. Fingon thought of Maedhros skeletal against the pillows with the unforced smile on his ravaged face and the gold at his brow. "No," he said. "No, he will rule well. If it were not for Losgar –"
"Maedhros stood aside at Losgar," said Fingolfin, and smiled at Fingon's expression. "Did you not know? It is little enough, but if I back him, it will be enough for those who followed us."
“You stood aside at Losgar?” Fingon demanded.
“Hmm?” said Maedhros. He was at work with pen and ink. Fingon could see he had been sketching, though the lines wavered and the page was blotched. “Come and sit for me; you make a better subject than the flowerpot.”
“You need rest,” said Fingon, but he came and sat where Maedhros directed him, perched on the edge of the bed. The rejected flowerpot had a nosegay of sweet-scented summer flowers in it. The scent was near overpowering, but not unpleasing. Every sense can starve, Fingon remembered.
“On the contrary: I am dull, and need to be busy. I know more of the healer’s art than you, or did once. I have not the strength to lift a sword yet – see, I do know! – but I can teach my foolish fingers nimbleness. Can you turn your head a little?” Maedhros did not wait for him to do it but reached out and caught Fingon’s chin. He was still holding the pen; it brushed against Fingon’s ear. Fingon went obediently where he was moved and was rewarded with Maedhros smiling and pressing the back of his hand against his cheek in a quick caress. “Hold there,” he said. “Losgar! It seems a thousand years ago. Yes, I stood aside. My father was furious with me.”
“You did not often defy him,” Fingon said.
“How often do you defy yours? No, do not say it: the difference is not small. I know. Yet I loved him as much as you love your father – be sure of that! I stood aside, and it seemed to matter: and my father was furious with me, and died still furious with me.” Maedhros still seemed to be smiling, and his tone was light, yet Fingon began to turn towards him. “No, do not move! I am sketching. It made no difference at all; none of them listened to me, and here we are.”
Fingon swallowed. “Do you regret it, then?”
Maedhros was quiet a while. Fingon heard the sound of the pen moving. Eventually he said, “No.”
Fingon had many things he should have been doing, but he sat and let Maedhros sketch him for the rest of the afternoon. He caught sight of some of the pictures – poor unskilled caricatures, by Maedhros’s standards, but already improving from the spidery lines of the elf hung on the mountain that Maedhros had drawn last time. After a while Maedhros coaxed him into removing some clothing, prattling of musculature and anatomy, and then smirked to himself as he sketched. “You could have just asked,” Fingon said, smiling in turn when he realised the stratagem.
“Do not move! I am feasting my eyes.”
“Let me see.” Fingon snatched for the picture. Maedhros neatly crumpled it in his fist and tossed it away. Instead Fingon was simply leaning over him, and Maedhros still smirked. It seemed quite natural to kiss him.
That might have continued for some time, but Maglor came in with food. Fingon hastily pulled his discarded tunic back on. Maedhros declared himself starved. He gulped down a bowl of soup, demanded another, and under Fingon’s and Maglor’s watchful eyes ate a small morsel of bread besides. “What, no music?” he said to their solemn stares.
Maglor rolled his eyes. “We are grateful to you for distracting him,” he said to Fingon. “He has had the whole camp running about to serve his pleasure all morning. He must have flowers, and he must have a different blanket, and he must have tea, and music, and jewels to wear, and someone to make pleasant conversation, and someone else to trim his nails -”
“I can hardly do it myself,” said Maedhros. His tone was mild but his eyes danced.
“Your coming granted us all some respite from the insatiable appetites of the king,” Maglor said, while Fingon laughed. But he took up a harp that had been laid by the foot of the bed and tested the strings, and then he started to play.
It had been a long time since Fingon had heard Maglor perform; not indeed since Fëanor's exile to Formenos. He was himself no mean musician, but not for nothing was Maglor accounted the greatest bard among the Noldor. After a while he began to sing a melody that wove in and out of the rippling tune of the harpstrings. Of Middle-earth he sang, of Cuiviénen beneath the stars: the words were ancient ones, but Maglor had found new meanings in them, and the harp sang of possibility and adventure, of wildness and strangeness and unexplored horizons. Fingon listened with his heart in his mouth, and after a time Maglor glanced at him and smiled. He changed his song, inviting a harmony, and Fingon caught the idea of the tune and took it up softly.
“Beautiful,” said Maedhros simply when they fell at last into silence. His eyes gleamed as if lit by a flame.
It was that leaping flame Fingon thought of as he made his way back to his proper side of the lake. My king, he tried in his mind: my king. It did not ring true yet, but Fingon thought it might – oh, it might. Such a king, for such a war! The Enemy owed bloodprice to all the Noldor, many times over, and to all the world besides. Even Fingon’s cool-headed father spoke of vengeance and victory. Fingon had a brother to avenge as well as a grandfather, and many friends and followers too.
It could not be, until Maedhros was well again. But he was improving at a pace beyond Fingon's wildest hopes. Fingon resolved to speak to him about Fingolfin's wish to meet at the next opportunity. The thin circlet forged from the gold of the hills of Beleriand might do very well as the crown of the High King of Middle-earth.
Maedhros was on his feet when Fingon saw him next. There was a sword in his hand but he seemed to have forgotten he was holding it. He was standing in the dust of the practice yards the Fëanorion party had made for themselves by the lakeshore, and deep in discussion with Curufin. Nor did he break the conversation off when Fingon joined them. "You build it, and we will see," he said to his brother. "Are we not Noldor? Are you not crafty among us? Make me something that will serve for now, at least."
Curufin seemed about to speak, but he caught sight of Fingon and schooled his face into polite alertness instead. "As my king commands," he said, and bowed.
"As your brother requests," Maedhros corrected him, but smiled. Curufin's expression remained polite as he greeted Fingon and bade him farewell in the same breath. Then Fingon was left with Maedhros alone.
"You look well," he said.
"I look like a walking scarecrow," said Maedhros, "but I am walking, so I hardly mind it. People have been coming to pretend not to stare at me all morning. I think half of them did not believe in your deed when they heard of it – but they cannot be blamed for that! I was there, and sometimes I still only half-believe it myself. Look, though, I have teeth." He bared them to demonstrate, and then the expression collapsed into an impish grin. Fingon could not help but grin back. It was amazing what a difference the carved replacements for Maedhros's lost teeth made. He looked almost like himself again. "Half a dozen of Celegorm's horses for your sister's entire collection of walrus ivory," he said. "Did she really kill all those herself?"
"All those and more," said Fingon. "She only kept as many tusks as she could carry."
"She has my heartfelt respect. I bade Celegorm be generous, but I hardly needed to: it distressed him to think of Aredhel unhorsed. And so trade is restored. You may expect Caranthir to descend upon you at any moment – he tells me he has a list. Now! Did you come to spar with me?"
"No," said Fingon. "I came to deliver a message from my father."
"I will hear it later. Spar with me now. I must learn to be left-handed: I cannot expect the Enemy to behave himself until Curufin has built a replacement for the right. And there is no one I would rather practise with. I believe you must be the finest swordsman of all the Noldor."
"Flattery!" said Fingon. "That is Maglor – or Aunt Lalwen."
"But Maglor is a terrible practice partner, and Aunt Lalwen is most probably still not speaking to the House of Fëanor, so you are the best choice left to me. Help me!" Maedhros's smile dimmed for a moment as he said, "I must be able to fight."
After that Fingon could not refuse him. They worked all morning. Maedhros should not have had the strength for it yet, but there was no restraining the pale fire in him. The hours he had spent doggedly writing and sketching had served him well: he was not nearly as ungainly with his left hand as he might have been. His balance was off and his speed was much reduced, but both were already improving by the end of the morning, and he was more aggressive than Fingon remembered and more cunning. Fingon soon began to see the warrior who would emerge from the invalid: pale and deadly, with his fearsome reach made more dangerous by his reversed stance, and his cleverness given a cold sharp edge forged in the implacable flame of his spirit.
"Almost I pity your enemies," he said at last, when they cast the swords down and retreated into the shade under the trees at the lakeshore.
"My enemies will have you to blame," Maedhros said. He stretched himself out in the long summer grass. "Thank you! I am weary, and I am most grateful. Shall we call for food?"
That seemed to mean that Fingon should go and call for food: Maedhros plainly had not the slightest intention of moving. Servants brought them bread and meat, and for drink they had the sweet waters of the lake. Maedhros proposed a riddle game while they ate, but three lines into Fingon's first riddle he stopped him and asked, "Are you talking about your sword or yourself?" While Fingon chuckled at that Maedhros launched straight-faced into a riddle so filthy that Fingon could not stop laughing long enough to spit out the answer.
"What?" Maedhros said. "It's an onion."
They passed the meal cheerfully in that fashion, and after they had eaten Maedhros reached easily for Fingon and they lay down together in the long grass. "I thought you were weary," Fingon said.
"No longer," Maedhros said, and Fingon kissed the smile from his lips.
He almost forgot to bring up Fingolfin's message. The Sun was low in the western sky and painting brilliant red-gold reflections on the lake by the time it came to him. Maedhros listened to what Fingon said with no expression on his face. "Yes, I suppose I must meet with him," he said at last. "Tell your father to come tomorrow – no, not tomorrow: I will be tired. The day after. Bid my uncle come. He will be very welcome."
"I will tell him," Fingon said. My king, my king, he tried again in his thoughts, and it sounded truer than before.
Fingolfin returned from his visit to the Fëanorion camp pensive, but Fingon did not know why until another month had passed. By that time the two camps were barely separate at all. The track around the lake had been widened and laid with flat stones, and the grasslands beside fenced for pasture. Many people went back and forth every day, and a brisk trade had sprung up in the wake of the grand agreements in ores and grain and horses that Aunt Lalwen had struck with Caranthir. There were meeting-places and dancing-places in both camps, and a festival had been celebrated at the start of the month in honour of the Moon and Sun. Things were going well.
It was in the paddock by the lake track that Maedhros arranged his pageant of surrender. They met as two semicircles, the divided halves of the House of Finwë: Fingon at his father's right hand, Maedhros flanked by his brothers, crowds of their people all around them and packed in tight all the way down to the lakeshore. No one knew what was to be said. Afterwards Fingon remembered the few tight expressions around the ring – Turgon's narrowed eyes, Maglor's stillness – and thought that those were the ones who had been told.
No one had told Fingon. Not his father, not his friend. Until the moment Maedhros smiled and removed the golden circlet he wore with his own hand, Fingon had been sure he was there to witness his father's oath to the third of Finwë's line.
Instead Maedhros swore loyalty on behalf of his house – much to their displeasure, by their expressions – and delivered a calculated compliment to Fingolfin before the crowd. Glad cheers rang out for the new High King, and not just from those who had crossed the Ice. All the Noldor were tired of being at odds with each other. After that it would have been churlish in the extreme for Maedhros's younger brothers to raise objections. The whole thing had plainly been planned to circumvent them.
And no one had told Fingon. He looked at Maedhros – uncrowned and merry as the party began in earnest – and the vision he had seemed to have of a king like a pale flame to lead them all against the Enemy seemed to recede before him. He had thought he knew Maedhros better than anyone in the world. But the Maedhros he thought he knew would not surrender the crown any more than he would surrender his Oath: for both were a matter of his father's honour. For the first time in a month Fingon remembered wondering what, exactly, he had saved from Thangorodrim.
"I felt sure Curufin would seize me first," Maedhros said when Fingon caught at his sleeve. "Ah, no, I see Maglor has waylaid him. He will not soon forgive my surrendering that circlet: he made it for me when the others all believed me dead. Come, then, we will go aside, and you can tell me what you think of me. I did warn you that mine was a subtle and deceitful character."
Fingon swallowed several times. At last he said, "Why?"
"Why did we not tell you? Because you cannot manage a convincing lie even for a joke's sake, of course – let alone for serious matters. It was very necessary to take my younger brothers by surprise: they have no right to complain in any case, but that has never stopped them yet. Now the thing is done they can complain as much as they like."
"Not that," said Fingon. "Why would you – why will you not –"
Maedhros looked at him a while.
"I told your father I was weary," he said. "That I was sick from suffering, and feared my own weakness. That the Noldor for the most part loved and honoured him. That I had ever thought him wise; that even my own father did not deny his merits." Fingon snorted. "Which was true," Maedhros said, though he wore a rueful smile, "when I was younger. All of it was true, at least in part."
"But none of that is why."
"No." Maedhros glanced about. He had led them to the edge of the party, up on the hill above the lake, and they were partly shielded from view by a low stand of trees close by. No one would disturb them here. "Are you sure you wish to know?"
"If I did not wish it," Fingon said, "I would not ask."
"We will lose," Maedhros said.
A hot denial sprang to Fingon's lips. Maedhros held up his hand to still it. "But –" Fingon said.
"I tell you we will lose," said Maedhros. "Awful in splendour we thought the Valar in the West: but we never understood more than the barest fraction of what they were. The least of the Maiar is as far beyond our comprehension as the distant hearts of the stars. The least of his Balrogs is –"
He cut himself off. Fingon stared at him.
"And he is beyond them all," Maedhros said softly at last. "As much greater than Manwë or Varda as they are greater than those who come after them. All fourteen of them it took to imprison him once – only to imprison him: not to destroy him. They will not destroy him. I do not think they can. That is the Enemy we have chosen, and the war may be long or short, but its ending is certain. We cannot defeat him. We will lose."
Never would the cousin Fingon loved have spoken so. "He has broken you," Fingon said. "He has made you craven."
Maedhros turned on him with blazing eyes. "Never say that to me!" he cried. "You have not seen a spirit broken, or you would not say that to me. I defied him in the dungeons; I defied him on the cliffside; though a thousand thousand years passed I would defy him. You call me craven? You lie more deeply than you know. I tell you there is nothing I would not dare for my Oath, and there is nothing I would not sacrifice for our victory. But I will not do it in vain!" He had Fingon backed against a tree. "Not for nothing will I send my people to death and worse than death: not for nothing will I bid my brothers spend their lives and their honour. We cannot defeat him."
"If you believed it, you would be king, and hold them back," Fingon challenged him.
Maedhros laughed wildly. "Hold them back? There is no holding madness. I learned that at Losgar. But at least I will not lead them to it. Not by my command will the Noldor perish for the sake of a hope unfounded."
Fingon was silent. After a moment Maedhros subsided a little, and stepped back, so that Fingon was no longer boxed against the tree. His hand made a graceful gesture of apology, though he did not speak the words.
"Is the world truly so dark in your eyes?" Fingon said.
"Dark? No, not dark. The Sun shines, the Moon shines: why should I call it dark?" Maedhros smiled a little. "And besides the grass grows green, the woods grow tall, the mountains are full of gemstones, and the sky is full of stars. Shall I throw myself down and weep for the sake of evils yet to come? They have not come yet. My Enemy delights in suffering, so I will feast, and be glad, and count myself fortunate to have good friends about me. It is all the vengeance that can be hoped for."
"It is not so," Fingon said.
But Maedhros only smiled.
"Come now," he said, and he took Fingon's hand in his to lead him down the hill, "or Caranthir may decide you are assassinating me after all. Do not think I will abandon your father to conduct a hopeless war alone. The House of Fëanor is to hold the East: for while the Morgoth's victory may be assured, I see no reason to make it easy for him."
"You are leaving?" Fingon said.
"Well," said Maedhros, and he smiled. "I rather hoped you would come with me. There will be wide lands for the taking, and great works to be done: and Orcs aplenty to slay, if that is any temptation for you. It would not be for me, but we are of different characters. And you are my dearest friend, you know that. I would be very glad to have you by me."
Fingon drew his hand out of Maedhros's grasp.
"Fingon?" Maedhros said.
"I am not your lapdog," Fingon said.
"Did you think I meant to make you one?" said Maedhros after a moment.
"I will be your friend," Fingon said, "and your kinsman, and your ally in war whenever you choose to call upon me. But I came to this Middle-earth seeking more than pleasure. Find your courage and you may find me also: for I will be on the battlefield, and not merely to hold the Enemy at his gates. When he is cast down and his crown is unmade and all our dead avenged in glory, then perhaps I will laugh and make merry with you. But you will not persuade me to abandon the battle unfought. I say there is hope, and I will not be gainsaid."
"If I believed it," Maedhros said, "nothing would hold me back. But I cannot believe it. Do not punish me for that."
"I do not seek to punish you," Fingon said, though he was angry. He waited a moment to calm himself before he spoke again. "Maedhros, a day will come when you will see that all our hopes are well founded: and when that day comes, seek me out. I will be waiting for you. But until then I am at the service of my king."
"I see," said Maedhros eventually, and he turned his face away. Fingon thought for a moment that he wept. But his footsteps were light and his words cheerful as they walked together back to the rest of the party, and he cast Fingon a rueful grin as his brother Curufin descended on him and dragged him away. Perhaps Fingon had only imagined the tears. Maedhros was very little given to weeping.
Fingon did not see him again that night. He saw him only once or twice more before the sons of Fëanor went East.
"Your hope will come," he said to Maedhros when he bade him farewell on the last day. The camp on the far side of the lake was near desolate: most of the followers of Fëanor's house had already gone.
For once Maedhros did not smile. "I do not look for it," he said. "I am not even certain that I desire it."
"It will come," Fingon said.
In Maedhros's eyes a pale glitter shone. "Perhaps," he said. He smiled oddly then, and reached out. Fingon expected the touch on his cheek, and the kiss on his brow. He did not expect Maedhros to pause and then dig his fingernails in behind Fingon's ear. He yelped.
Maedhros laughed belly-deep and said, "I could not help it."
"I told you not to scratch my ears!" Fingon said belatedly.
"I will apologise when I see you next," Maedhros said, still grinning, and then he mounted his horse and touched his hand to her mane and was gone.