Blood and Fire

1. It was all so beautiful

Dior could not believe such a thing – not even of Fëanor’s sons, who burned Olwë’s ships at Losgar! Of the Naugrim, certainly, but not of Elves...

 “They are our allies,” Dior had said. “They will not attack us.”

He sat enthroned in Thingol’s hall, a king beneath a forest of stone and gilded leaves. The branches were strung with the same gold lanterns that had been set there when Menegroth was first carved out of the caves beneath the stars. The light limned sculpted pillars, tracing the shapes of bark and tangling vines. Here a filigree butterfly alighted upon a pink flower; there crept a lizard into a bird’s silver nest, the eggs blue chunks of turquoise beneath fountaining water that glittered like tumbling stars. The colours of the tapestries glowed as if woven in recent weeks, not centuries before by Queen Melian’s hands.

The carvings had almost been restored. Sometimes people still spotted scratches and hollow sockets where precious stones had been gouged from their settings. The craftsmen would smooth over the damage and replace the lost gems with chips of coloured glass.

“They think me a child to be bullied. They are mistaken.”

His words fell like raindrops on dust, soft in the stillness.

There had been golden fountains in that hall once, and silver nightingales climbing over marble basins from which cool water spilled. The metal was gone now and the basins had been smashed by the plunderers after loot. Dior, coming later after the battle at Sarn Athrad, had seen the mess of shattered stone littering his forefather’s abandoned hall and had decided in his calm way that the ornaments would not be replaced. Doriath’s golden days were gone: murdered with Thingol, drowned with Thingol’s wealth beneath the Ascar. Dior’s silver era would still be glorious, but it might perhaps be less ornate.

Now mossy pools collected clear water beneath the pillars carved like beech trees. Minnows from the Esgalduin flitted under lily leaves and among the tiny gemlike frogs, not all of which were stone. Near the water and among the marble vines hovered bronze dragonflies set with blue glass. There were still silver nightingales here and there, clustered in the higher reaches of the stone forest and safe from thieving hands, but down below the stolen riches had been replaced by stone thrushes and squirrels flirting with their bushy tails. Once a treasure chest of a stone dream-forest laced with gold and silver in dazzling array, Menegroth these days had more in common with some sleepy green glen deep in the woods.

The Sindar still dressed like jewelled butterflies, though.

Elves were scattered throughout the length of the hall, standing in shadows or perching on seats disguised as broad branches and the trunks of felled trees. Oropher had come now and then to girdled Doriath during the long years of Thingol’s dominion and knew that in those days there would have been no space to move for bodies, Sindar sprawling over the marble floor and crammed into every available inch of space. Children would have been giggling together in the corners and playing noisy games until their parents hushed them so that the King might speak. There was no need for such measures now.

Oropher liked it better quieter. Thingol’s magnificence had become a hollow thing in recent times. On his rare visits, Oropher had delivered whatever news he brought to the King and Queen, renewed old friendships and departed those enchanted halls without regret. Girdled Doriath had been a glittering dream; Oropher prized the dangerous freedom of the rivers and green ungirdled woods.

Dior’s voice was remorseless, implacable.

“Let them claim Bauglir’s crown, if they must have a Silmaril. My parents did not brave Tol-in-Gaurhoth and Angband for their sake.”

It was hard to tell what his audience thought of this. The listening Sindar might have been statues draped in rainbow silks and satins in that stone forest, pale beneath the golden lanterns and the sculpted boughs. Oropher saw neither delight nor despair. Perhaps they felt none. Dior Aranel had come to them in the aftermath of the sack: their beloved Lúthien’s son, who sang like a nightingale and smiled with his mother’s starlit eyes. Around him Doriath would rise again, renewed and newly beautiful in the quiet way of woods and rivers. Dior was not a king in Elu Thingol’s mold, but he was their king now.

Under a spray of glass-green leaves, a shimmer of gold caught Oropher’s eye. The lady Galadriel had shaken her head, just once. Beside her stood Celeborn, his hand on her shoulder, watching Dior gravely.

There were others like them here and there, beside the mossy pools and under the bright tapestries. Thingol had been advised by Melian; Dior had a wider circle of counsellors, some from among the wisest Sindar and others, like Oropher, from elsewhere. Sometimes, like Thingol, Dior listened. The arguments over the stone had already taken place. Most were as expressionless as Galadriel or as solemn as Celeborn. Not far from Celeborn and his Noldorin bride sprawled the messengers who had first brought news of Thingol’s murder to Tol Galen. They were true Dark Elves, not even Sindar but hunters from high in Ered Luin who had once come wandering down from the mountains many ages ago and had roamed the world ever since. Oropher remembered their reaction to the news that an army of Naugrim had come swarming down onto Doriath. The woman had wept in a scatter of brief, angry tears; and then they had pledged themselves to Beren’s vengeance and gone with the Nandor to fight at Sarn Athrad. Afterwards, returning with Dior to Doriath, they had forsworn their wandering ways until such time as Dior should release them from his service. They did not look now as though they expected Dior’s service to endure much longer.

Dior arose. In the clear, unwavering light, he could have been stone himself.

“I shall not give up the jewel.”

... and so Dior perished.

Blood and Fire

2. It was her choice and she chose it

Of course Galadriel knew her kinsmen well enough to know they would come.

For Lúthien and Beren’s sake, Oropher had come to Doriath.

The news had spread swiftly when the King’s daughter and her mortal husband had first settled on Tol Galen. Oropher, who had no little influence in the region, had taken it upon himself to pay them a visit. He had known Lúthien before, of course, but Beren Camlost was a stranger and a puzzle. What Man was this who could persuade the fair Lúthien to partake in love and death?

So many others had wondered the same thing that Dor Firn-i-Guinar, the Land of the Dead that Live, had swiftly become a singularly inappropriate name for the area. It could not be said that Lúthien had established a court of her own, but it would have been hard to say what other reason so many Nandor had for settling in that part of Ossiriand. Perhaps they told themselves, as Oropher did, that the couple and their family deserved protection, being Thingol’s kin. Or perhaps they were more honest and could admit that Lúthien’s fabled beauty had drawn them there and Lúthien herself, in all her grace and infinite charm, kept them at her fair side. And if there was a touch of weariness in Lúthien’s starlit eyes, seeing her courtiers gather, at least it vanished in the warmth of Beren’s smile.

In any case, there Oropher had remained. Later, after the messengers had brought news of Thingol’s murder, he had lent a hand in raising the Green-elves of Ossiriand against the Naugrim; and later still, after the battle was done and Beren had given up the Nauglamír to Lúthien, he had yielded to their unspoken wish and taken all who would follow to Doriath with Dior. If Dior’s kingdom was to endure now that Melian and her nightingales had gone out of Middle-earth, it would require a girdle of swords. So Oropher had left his quiet green woods and come to this stone forest beneath the beech and elm, where those who still endured in the plundered caves had crept out, a mess of nerves and terror, to greet Thingol’s heir.

Which was not to say that no one had attempted to introduce order into chaos. The princely Celeborn, kinsman to Thingol and Dior’s wife Nimloth, had already begun to set up some rudimentary form of organisation before the arrival of Dior and the Green-elves. He had been assisted in this by the golden-haired Galadriel, his Noldorin wife.

Galadriel was speaking now, low and musical.

“– not because I bear a grudge against my kin do I say this. It is the truth. Now is not the time to rehearse old evils and so I shall not cry forgiveness nor defend myself for watching Elvish blood be spilt at Alqualondë. Still: my kin did this. My hands, perhaps, had I been born a man. And that for white ships alone, since Olwë would not give up his heart’s work that Fëanor might cross the Sundering Sea against the Valar’s will. This were painful enough and the greater evil, yet still must I tell that Fëanor and his sons abandoned me and mine at Araman, and took those stolen ships across the sundering sea and burned them at Losgar. So then, since Fëanor’s sons would kill Elves for ships and abandon closest kin, I do not think that they will hold their hands from an attack, now that they know the Queen has gone and that a Silmaril of Fëanor burns again in the woods of Doriath.”

She fell silent, frowning.

“I thank you, lady,” said Dior and bent his head. He spoke with his usual courtesy and his expression gave no hint as to his thoughts. The star-bright stone suspended from the jewelled collar around his neck glowed steadily with a cool, silver-gold light. “Who else will speak?”

Celeborn stirred in his chair. “I must concur with my wife. Her kin will not give up the Silmaril. They are no allies of ours.”

“They will not give up their claim,” said Nimloth, who stood by Dior’s chair and had so far listened in silence. She rarely spoke when Dior called his counsellors together; Oropher suspected that her advice to her husband was delivered in private and carried more weight as a result. Now she lifted her chin and looked directly at her kinsman Celeborn. “Their kingdoms have fallen and their hosts are scattered. Will they not hesitate to attack us over a jewel? We are no enemies of theirs. We do not threaten them. Why need they take this further than idle threats?”

“They need not,” replied Celeborn, somewhat dryly. He seemed weary and his fingers were tapping a sharp, cross rhythm on the arm of his chair. “Yet I fear they will. As you say, their kingdoms have fallen. They cannot hope to claim Bauglir’s crown by force of arms and they dare not attempt to steal into Angband as Lúthien and Beren did. Now they hunt Ossiriand like wolves – and like wolves they will attack the weaker prey.”

“Why, though? It is only a jewel.”

Galadriel’s sigh was like a passing breeze. “Nonetheless, they will come.”

“Perhaps,” said Dior, his gaze remote. “What then would you have me do? Should I give up the prize for which my father gave his hand? Over which my forefather Thingol lost his life? Must Fëanor’s sons reap the reward of my parents’ labours?”

Galadriel winced. “I did hear the Queen say –”

Dior shook his head. “They have no more claim to the jewel. As they once claimed their kingdoms by right of liberation, so did my parents claim this Silmaril. Lady, your kin have no further claim to it.”

At about this point, Oropher lost interest in the discussion.

It seemed more likely than not that the sons of Fëanor would attempt to seize the jewel. This was not a happy prospect. Celeborn had described them as wolves and this fitted what Oropher knew of them; nonetheless, remembering the white flame of Lúthien’s beauty as she took up the Nauglamír, he could not have happily heard Dior agree to turn the stone in its gaudy gem-encrusted setting over to the lady Galadriel’s Noldor kin. No one who had known and adored Lúthien could have submitted to such a thing. Lúthien and Beren together had claimed the jewel from Bauglir; to give it up to Fëanor’s arrogant sons would have been a belittlement of that beloved couple and their quest, now that they had gone out of the world leaving only the pledge of their love to those who had loved them.

So Oropher would not add his voice to the dispute. Dior was already aware of his opinion and it would not change now. He slouched in his corner and let the words wash over his head, already planning how to rearrange the patrols and where to set watchers in the woods to best effect. Later he would talk to Celeborn and one or two others about the best way to fortify Menegroth in a hurry, should the need arise. At least he had done what he could to girdle Dior’s ungirdled Doriath. There were patrols and border guards. Anyone who could lift a sword or draw a bow had been given the appropriate training. Even the women carried knives these days and knew how to use them.

Close by sat Melian’s dark messengers, who seemed to consider the whole thing as pointless as Oropher did. The man was thoughtfully scratching patterns onto a piece of wood with a needle while the woman twisted her fingers crossly into her dark hair, her mouth askew as she listened to the various speakers. Oropher leaned towards them. “Long-winded, these Sindar,” he whispered, not quite under his breath. “I knew there was a reason I went back to Ossiriand after Amon Ereb.”

The man flashed him a wry smile. “Oh, indeed.”

“I suppose you think the Noldor –”

“Of course they’ll come,” said the woman impatiently. Her attention appeared to be focused on Dior, resplendent with the Silmaril at his throat. “You know that!”

She sounded very certain. Oropher could not blame her.

“And will you leave?” he asked curiously.

Now she did glance at him, her eyes dark. “No. Will you?”

The look on her face stayed with him after the discussion had ended and Dior had swept them into Thingol’s stone forest of a hall to tell the Sindar that he would not yield to the demands of Fëanor’s sons. He recognised something hard and bitter behind her clear resolve and could not quite put a name to it. At any rate, Erestor and Melinna were committed. They would not leave despite their clear belief that Doriath was doomed to be destroyed. Oropher had returned the same answer to her, although he suspected his reasons for staying in Doriath were different. He did not love that stone forest or the long-winded Sindar, as sweet as their songs might be. Nonetheless, he would not leave Doriath, even anticipating a Noldor attack.

For the sake of Lúthien’s son, Oropher would remain.

Of course we knew they would come.

Blood and Fire

3. In the spring, perhaps!

They came in the winter, when we did not expect them, because one does not expect to be set upon by one’s allies in the snow...

The clatter of weapons and armour made Oropher’s head ache.

Certain traits had become ingrained in him over the years and silence was one of them. In the greenwoods of Ossiriand, too much noise risked bringing Bauglir’s beasts down on one’s head. This jarring clangour of metal and stone as the armoury was emptied made him jumpy. Deep in the halls and lamplit passageways of the Thousand Caves seethed anxious Sindar, who were not panicking only because Dior was delivering orders with his customary calmness, and threading through them came the silent Nandor arranging the defence to Oropher’s liking.

Not that he liked much about this. He and his followers had fought no pitched battle since the Nandor had been butchered and Denethor their king had died on Amon Ereb. They were accustomed to skirmishes and swift, unseen attacks; they were also accustomed to disappearing into the woods at will when things took a turn for the worse. None of them had much experience in fighting within close, confined spaces from which there could be no escape. Menegroth was a fortress: now it was also a trap.

Almost a third of his men were still out in the woods somewhere. Only two of the lookouts and one of the patrols had returned to Menegroth in time to raise the alarm against a Noldor attack.

The constant arrhythmic pounding at the gates in front of him was not helping.

“We should have taken down the bridge,” remarked one of those lookouts, the man who had brought news to Tol Galen of Thingol’s death. “Like Nargothrond, before Túrin went there.”

His wife rolled her eyes. “Too late for that.”

“It was suggested,” said Oropher, watching the wood buckle. The gates were new since Dior had come to Doriath and had been built for strength. The pounding had been going on for over an hour now and they would not hold out much longer. The iron bands had almost parted company with the wood. “Some people thought it might be inconvenient. After all, the Noldor would never attack us.”

The ground was shaken by a particularly thunderous crash. “I think I’d have coped,” he added, seeing splinters of daylight began to appear. “Are the archers in place?”

“Yes,” said Erestor. “Time to join Dior and Celeborn?”

“I think so.”

The avenue of stone trees sloping gently down into the heart of the Thousand Caves was as broad as the Naugrim road across the mountains. Overhead arched a crazy lacework mesh of shadows and far above the gleam of watching eyes. Most of the lanterns had already been taken down and only Oropher’s familiarity with the path kept his feet straight. He saw that Erestor and Melinna moved swiftly and without hesitation through the hazy dark. From behind came the sounds of splintering wood and distant shouts.

At the end of the avenue a huge square lay open before them, where three arched mouths opened onto the great highways of Menegroth. Four monstrous pillars towered overhead, disappearing into the shadows that hid the ceiling far above, and a fountain still splashed at the centre of the patterned floor. Here too the lanterns had been removed from around the square and strung up above the fountain, so that around a blaze of light the darkness and flickering shadows pooled, deep and velvety, almost thick enough to touch. The sound of running water blended curiously with the soft chinks and other noises of armoured Elves waiting quietly deep in the dark beyond the vine-tangled archways.

Dior’s fair face appeared in the shadows. “Now?”

“A couple more blows.”

“Very well.”

He melted back into the darkness. Oropher jerked his head at Melian’s messengers and followed suit, taking up position with the Green-elves waiting in the archway directly opposite the avenue leading up to the gates. Dior had the right flank and Celeborn held the left. Bowstrings twanged softly behind them. All around, people were breathing quietly in unison. The air was dark and tense with anticipation. Oropher’s pulse was quickening now. The wolves were at the gates. Soon they would break into the fortress.

The trap. The Noldor might force their way inside. They would pay for it.

He would make them pay.

... since you wish to know, it was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

Blood and Fire

4. Some things are not meant to be put into words

There was a breathless moment as the gates shattered and the dawn poured in.

Then the wolves came.

They had cut branches from the snow-laden trees, stripping the dead beech leaves away and wrapping strips of cloth around the ends to create makeshift torches. Underground there was no guarantee of light and certainly no light had leaked out through the disintegrating gates. No sound came from within. The Thousand Caves might have been deserted. This surprised no one. The Sindar and their child-king would hide, Celegorm had said, his brothers agreeing with varying degrees of weariness. They would smash their way inside, take the Silmaril and leave. There would be little damage done, except to the fair Dior’s pride. The vows Celegorm and Curufin had sworn before Nirnaeth Arnoediad had been made in a fit of temper and Elu Thingol was dead now in any case. There was no need for a bloodbath such as there had been at Alqualondë.

Alqualondë. The name stirred too many echoes. Even Celegorm seemed afterwards to regret waking that particular ghost.

The way lay open. The first wave entered.

Torches.

The Noldor had torches. Oropher, waiting far below, saw pinpricks of firelight approaching through the distant dark. They would regret that. There was no sound now but the splashing fountain and far-off jangling metal and boots on stone.

Then –

– counting under his breath, watching the torches: not now, not now –

Far above, Nimloth gave the signal to the women in the galleries overlooking the avenue of stone trees.

Now.

Out of nowhere, arrows. Suddenly men were yelling in surprise and pain, others flailing on the ground, scrabbling against the stone. Several of the torchbearers had been hit and fire sparked and sputtered as the torches plummeted, crashing to the floor. Where cloth caught light on the way down, more cries resulted. In the dark, the spread of blood could hardly be seen. Suddenly the way down into the caves seemed tight and small, the rock wrapping round them. Above it all and through the pitiless arrows, someone was shouting orders.

“Forwards! Forwards!”

Ahead in the deep darkness could be seen a beacon of white light reflecting the glitter of tumbling water. Most of them were still half-blind underground and dazed by the sudden attack. They pressed forwards, shields and torches raised, while the arrows hummed around them like hailstones and shattered on the stone.

Then a sudden sense of space and openness, coming out into the square –

“Now!” cried Dior, clear as nightingale song.

And more arrows from all angles, punching through mail and flesh. Those who fell cluttered the ground and entangled the feet of those who came behind. The blaze of light that split the darkness where the lanterns were strung above the fountain made it hard to see anything other than the tumbling water. They cast themselves into the dark, leaping over the fallen and around the massive pillars, yelling their battle-cry.

“Auta i lómë! The night is passing! For the Noldor!”

The darkness was suddenly full of swords. “For Doriath! Doriath and Dior!”

The space was too close for Oropher’s liking, crammed in ranks with the archers behind him. There was no time to fight elegantly and no space to dodge or parry properly. Their light-filled faces came out of the dark, screaming that bizarre war-cry, and he punched and thrust and hacked and so far was still alive. In a brawl like this, survival was mostly about luck. Something had caught fire and the air was thickening with smoke and the stench of burning meat. There was blood in the fountain, red tendrils unfurling as the water splashed merrily and catching the light when the flames flared up.

A Noldo swung out of the smoky dark. His teeth were pearl-white as he roared.

Oropher had wondered sometimes in recent weeks whether it might be different, harder, to fight other Elves. Now it turned out that Elves coming screaming towards him with swords were as easy to kill as any Orc or frothing wolf. The Noldo’s guard was poor. Oropher despatched him with a thrust and kicked the body away from his sword. There was a bubble of blood on the Noldo’s lips and he sprawled askew on the ground as he died. Oropher had an unpleasant feeling that he might see the dead man’s odd look of glazed surprise again in his dreams.

There was a lull, of sorts. Oropher caught his breath and took stock. His hand stung from the scrapes where a sword had caught his guard and his head was still ringing from a glancing blow not long before. No serious wounds, yet. Their ranks still held, mostly intact. He could hear Dior moving among the Sindar beneath the archway to the right, speaking quietly and with his customary composure about courage and the importance of discipline and other such matters. Celeborn on the other flank sounded a little hoarser, though the words were similar. It seemed the Sindar needed encouragement to keep their spirits up.

“Is that a second wave?” asked Erestor beside him, only a little breathless.

More torches could be seen wavering far in the distance. Apparently the Noldor had not learned their lesson. Nimloth’s archers would be glad of the targets they presented. Oropher nodded. “Looks like it.”

“Pity. We were doing so well.”

The square was littered with the dead and dying. Here and there, the patterned ground was slick with blood. A handful of archers had crept out to collect discarded arrows; they moved swiftly through the darkness and the drifting smoke, weaving among the bodies and between the massive pillars. As shouts and cries rang out further up the avenue of stone trees, Nimloth’s archers having loosed a fresh volley at the second Noldor wave, the arrow-collectors came hastily back to the refuge of the shadows. “You were doing well,” said Melinna, brushing between them. “Can you keep it up?”

The glow of firelight on mail coats and heavy footsteps approached. “Here they come,” said Oropher and raised his sword. “Archers, ready –”

The second wave hit like a hammer. He was plunged again into a world of hacking and shoving and blades and gasping death that tore apart the dark. There was no time for thought. Their faces would be waiting for him, white and raging and full of gore, in the frenzied quiet behind his eyelids. Since there was no time to worry about that either, he yelled and slashed and ducked and stabbed and gave himself up to the struggle without concern for guilt or regret. There was a good chance his eyes would next close in death. Just now, only survival mattered.

The heat was intense. Smoke and blood everywhere. Time had vanished somewhere amid the fighting. He was hurting from a hundred cuts and bruises and his throat was raw from yelling things he never heard. He hardly noticed when the man at his shoulder fell, a Nando he had known all his life. The gap was filled at once. Death happened. Others were falling around them. Mourning was for later, for an Elf from the airy greenwoods slain by an Elf’s hand among stone trees in the bloody dark.

Lunge, parry, kick, thrust –

– smashed the edge of his shield into one of those white faces, filling up with blood and tears –

– beside him the Dark Elf staggering, he saw a gap and chopped down; a mail coat turned the edge of his blade but Erestor had regained his footing now –

– the Noldo’s blood-laced gasp of death –

And a moment to breathe.

He caught a lungful of smoke and choked, racked with sudden coughing. The tears that filled his eyes made the flames flicker and the red-running fountain blur. His feet were encumbered by dead men and there was nothing that he could do about it.

“More coming,” he heard Erestor say hoarsely. “Ready?”

Oropher rubbed his eyes with a bloody hand. “Ready.”

And –

– the smash of impact, shields slamming into shields and arrows flying, men roaring and slithering on the blood-slick stone –

– again.

More gaps were opening up in their line. The archers had taken up their swords and daggers now. Oropher found that Erestor’s wife was fighting at his side. Most of the women archers had gone with Nimloth to the upper gallery. He had seen Melinna’s handiwork at Sarn Athrad and knew better than to fear for his back. There was no time to be concerned about such matters now. The line was beginning to break.

This could not go on. It hammered through his head as he swung and struggled. Enough – enough – this cannot – can not, it can not – go on –

And Dior’s voice, singing out over the clash and clamour of the battle.

“Fall back! Fall back!”

At last. Oropher took up the cry, hearing Celeborn shouting the same thing on the other side of the square.

“Fall back!”

Blood and Fire

5. A kindness

Their retreat was surprisingly easy. The Noldor must have decided against a headlong rush into Menegroth’s uncharted passageways. Oropher could not blame them. He would have done the same in their place. As it was, the muffled sounds of shouted orders that came echoing after them concerned him despite his relief. Death had been postponed for the time being, but now that Fëanor’s sons had secured the only entrance to Menegroth, any attempt to break out would be immeasurably more dangerous. The trap was sealed.

The upwards-sloping avenue opened into another domed crossroads of a cavern, smaller than the last but similarly arranged. There had been no time to take down the lanterns here and it was well-lit, the leafy ceiling so clearly illuminated that even the stone squirrels clinging to the pillars cast unwavering shadows in the tranquil pool. It was all so peaceful and tidy and bizarrely normal that the bloodstained Elves spreading out among the benches and beneath the bright tapestries might have fallen out of a nightmare.

Shouts echoed up from below. They had minutes, maybe.

Who still lived? More than Oropher had expected. The archers were mostly out of arrows. There were enough benches and tables around the square to delay the Noldor for a few minutes at least. They were heaping up a hasty barricade when the sound of footsteps came ringing up from the avenues on either side. A moment later, before Oropher could react to give orders, cries of “Friend!” could be heard. Then the lookouts came running to tell him what he already knew, that Dior and Celeborn had arrived with those Sindar that still survived.

Now the square was crowded and noisy, no longer peaceful. Celeborn was limping slightly and Dior, although as bloody as anyone, appeared unwounded. The barricade was already head-high, a rickety structure barring the wide mouth of the passage down to the main square. “Nimloth –” Dior was saying urgently as he strode through the chaos to join Oropher and Celeborn at the barricade. “Has she –?”

“Dior!” came Nimloth’s voice from behind them. “Where are y– oh Dior –”

The women archers had arrived silently and unnoticed, some still with a few arrows in their quivers, having descended from the overhead galleries and come swiftly through secret passageways to join the men at the agreed location. They clustered in the wide archway opposite the barricade, dusty and sweat-sheened, but oddly pristine among the battered, bloody men.

Nimloth came pushing through the chaos. She was very pale and she seized on Dior with fierce relief. “You’re alive!” she exclaimed. Her hands on his stained and clotted mail were white and clean. “Dior, oh Dior –”

He enfolded her in his mail-clad arms and pressed his face against her hair.

“Yes,” he replied. The word was strangely quiet amid the clamour of the barricade-building and the martial sounds drifting up from the lower square. “Love. I’m alive.”

“Did I get it right?” she said anxiously. “The gate – there were so many –”

“Perfectly. It was perfect.”

“But they kept coming, Dior –”

“Your timing was perfect,” said Dior. He released her, smiling a little in a way that would have been familiar to anyone who had known Lúthien, not unkindly but with a distinct suggestion of distance. “Thank you. You’ve done what you can. Take the women to the treasury and stay there till it’s all over.”

Nimloth stared at him. There was blood on her clothes now, and smeared in rusty drying streaks over her fair skin. “Dior, I don’t –”

“Take the women and go.”

“No! We’re staying! This is our home! And I am staying right here, with you!”

It seemed for a moment as though Dior might tell her again to leave. Certainly Oropher would have done and judging by Celeborn’s frown he was not alone. Dior, however, nodded and said, “Very well. Then you and the women hold the back line. You should not fight unless things go very badly wrong. This is a battle, not a drill. If I tell you to leave, you will go to the treasury. At once. Do you understand?”

She nodded, wordless. The gleam in her eyes hinted at unshed tears.

“Good,” he said. “I love you. Now go to the back.”

Somewhat to Oropher’s relief, Nimloth left. The sounds filtering up the broad passage suggested that the Noldor were taking their time about mustering for a fresh assault. He peered through a gap between a bench leg and a skewed seat, trying to make out something other than torchlight moving dimly in the smoky darkness. Behind him, Dior and Celeborn were organising the mingled Nandor and Sindar in preparation for another attack. The air was full of blood and sweat.

They might survive. Or they might die here beneath the stone and earth, already entombed, far from the greenwoods of Ossiriand.

So be it. Oropher was a Green-elf. He was used to death.

The gash to the thigh, just above the knee, had bled badly. It might not have been fatal if not for the arrow in his eye. He had fallen in the first charge and lain in his own fluids while the fighting raged above him, dying in the dark.

His lips were white. There was a bluish mottling around his mouth.

Caranthir had seen dead Elves before. He had not expected to find his brother lying dead on the filthy ground.

“Curse them,” said Celegorm beside him, very quietly.

Around them the men were still sorting the dead and the dying from the merely wounded. If not for the need to find the missing man, they might have pursued the fleeing Sindar into the tunnels. Now he had been found. Curufin. Not the first of Finwë’s house to die, but the first death among the sons of Fëanor.

The blood from the arrow-wound was drying into a sticky, blackish mess around the black-feathered shaft. Their brother’s long fingers were still curled around a missing hilt. His sword had fallen a little way off by the fountain and lay half in the cloudy water.

“Valar curse them!” said Celegorm again.

He swung around and slammed the pommel of his sword violently into a pillar. The blow dislodged a squirrel from where it clung among the leaves of a stone vine. It smashed into several pieces as it hit the floor. The head stared sightlessly up with glassy eyes. A kick sent it skidding into the crimson fountain.

“Brother –”

Celegorm was already halfway across the square. He did not look back.

A shout rang up the passage. “Dior Eluchíl!”

“Parley?” suggested Celeborn, as he and Dior joined Oropher at the barricade. He did not seem particularly hopeful. A twist of hair had escaped his jewelled helm and lay sticky and matted against his neck. “Which son is it?”

Down below, a lone figure stood in the smoky archway. Oropher shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. Ask him.”

“I shall,” said Dior in his quiet way. He raised his voice. “Who calls me?”

The response was immediate. “Celegorm Fëanor’s son! Still alive, Dark Elf?”

“So it would seem! Will you parley, Fëanor’s son?”

“With my sword, Eluchíl! Come out and fight!”

Oropher snorted, unamused. Celeborn’s eyebrows had disappeared under the rim of his helm and he shook his head. Dior gave them both a faint smile and leaned forwards, resting his elbows on a table leg. “Your offer is appealing, Fëanor’s son, but I think not. Was there anything else?”

The figure below them came two steps closer. “If you will not come out, coward, face me before your men! Let them see how a lord of the Noldor deals with a child-king born of a Dark Elf and a mortal. And when my foot is on your neck, I shall take my father’s Silmaril back from your unworthy hands!”

“It’s bound to be a trick,” said Oropher, not troubling to keep his voice down. “Don’t.”

Celeborn nodded. “I must agree.”

“Only Dark Elves could doubt the word of one who has seen the Blessed Realm,” cried the figure contemptuously. “Fight me, Eluchíl! Prove yourself a king!”

Dior’s expression remained unaltered. “I must beg leave to doubt your word, son of Fëanor,” he called back. “It seems to me unwise to trust an exile who would slay Elves for jewels. Nor need I prove my kingship. I am not Morgoth Bauglir. What would I gain from your brothers, should I win?”

“Your life, Dark Elf! Defeat me and my brothers will withdraw from Doriath.”

“Now that,” said Celeborn beneath his breath, “is most certainly a lie.”

It was Oropher’s turn to nod. “Agreed.”

Between them, Dior sighed. “No doubt it is,” he said as quietly and lifted his voice again. “Then come here, son of Fëanor, and face me before my men! And we shall see how a lord of kinslayers deals with a king born of threefold race and Maiarin blood!”

Blood and Fire

6. Hero

The darkness of Menegroth unlit was a thing of depth and silence.

Some noises came down to them from the square above, where Dior the King was fighting the son of Fëanor. Some few noises, trickling through the velvet dark. They could hear as well the more distant sounds from the site of that first battle, the vast cavern now occupied by the Noldor forces. The echoes blurred and faded into uncertain whispers. A twist of smoke crept through the stifling air.

“... mother’s eyes, child...”

Dior’s voice, distorted: “And... father’s hand...”

The clash of sword against sword rang through the stone passages. Down below, deep in the dark beyond archways honeycombing a stone glade of sculpted trees, it resonated like a distant bell.

A hint of torchlight appeared in the distance.

“How nearly I killed your father, child-king,” said the Noldo, circling on predatory feet. His shield glittered with a dazzling array of white crystals in the lantern light. A spray of blood had cut a dark path across the gleaming central star. “How nearly I stopped your mother’s whoring after thieving mortals –”

Around the square, a hiss of outrage stirred. The Noldo’s smile was wolfish.

“Kinslayer,” said Dior softly. “Even your hound would not obey you then. How nearly my father killed your brother Curufin!”

That wolfish smile vanished. The Noldo lunged.

Stone leaves trembled in the flickering torchlight. Here and there gleamed jewels that caught the flame like watching eyes.

“The faster this ends, the better,” the Lord Celegorm had said curtly. “We may have to fight our way out through the woods, if Maedhros and my brothers can’t deal with the Sindar out there. Canyator, take twenty men and go that way; Voraman, take twenty men and the other tunnel. Secure the area and find another way up through this labyrinth to that cave. And be quiet about it. Caranthir holds the command in my absence.”

Lord Caranthir himself had come hurrying across the cave. “Brother, where –”

Lord Celegorm had adjusted his battered helm. “I’m going to deal with that Dark Elf,” he had replied and strode away to the archway beyond which lay light and movement and that calm, clear voice that claimed to be Dior Eluchíl, the Sindarin child-king.

Twenty men. They knew better now than to rush fearlessly into the dark.

The path was broad and straight. They advanced cautiously, almost in silence. Amid the flame-edged shadows, the tree-carved walls of this underground forest seemed real enough to rustle in an imagined breeze. Other than the odd splash of blood on the ground, there was no sign of the Elves who had fled from the fight in the main square. Odd echoes of the duel reached them, distorted, through the stone.

“... fighting Dragons... before you were born...”

A glade of shadows and half-hidden furnishings awaited them. Pillars rose up like stone beeches, a latticework of boughs arching overhead. The scant torchlight hinted at benches and a clear pool and countless yawning tunnel-mouths, the blackness beyond almost total, delving into the labyrinth of Menegroth.

They emerged –

“And you have nothing to show for it,” said Dior, parrying effortlessly, “other than lost kingdoms and bloody hands.”

– into arrows and a flurry of action, Elves arising from the silent shadows.

Surprised, the Noldor struggled, momentarily. One of the torchbearers fell in a cascade of sparks and then a hiss of smoke, the fire doused in the churning water. Now only two torches remained alight and in the confusion of the sudden ambush it was impossible to tell how many Sindar they faced. They fought there in the spreading dark, a chaos of limbs and blood and promised death.

The brawl was brief. Soon the Sindar began to give way, falling back a step at a time towards one end of the stone glade, until they were fighting beneath an archway twined with wild roses. A white hint of lamplight could be seen in the far distance. As the Noldor pressed forwards, the Sindar line broke and they fled up the tunnel. Flushed with triumph, the Noldor gave chase.

Behind them, a handful of shadowy figures crept out into the stone glade.

The Noldo was breathing hard now, from exertion or anger. “How nearly your sluttish mother was my bride, child! I shall tell you how well I knew her in Nargothrond –”

Dior leapt nimbly aside and slid a glancing blow beneath the Noldo’s guard that made him stagger. “Have you learned nothing?” His voice was a little weary. “You waste your breath on lies. I am not so easily riled.”

The tunnel was shorter than it had seemed, perspective skewed by shadows and smoke and violence. A single lantern swung in a tapestry-hung chamber. Five exits opened into dim passageways. The Sindar had vanished.

One of the men spotted a flicker of distant movement. “Down there! Look –”

“Hold!” roared Canyator, too late.

Into the dark.

“Will you not defend your mother’s honour?” demanded the Noldo, sounding slightly incredulous. He hefted his sword.

Canyator was cursing as he loped down the twisting passage. The darkness wrapped around him, strangely pressing in this frozen forest hacked out of stone. Already more than half of his men had disappeared into the labyrinth ahead.

“Keep together!” he threw over his shoulder. “We’re looking for –”

His feet tangled with something that sent him hurtling towards the ground. Only fast reactions turned his fall into a tumble. Someone cried out behind him. The ground was wet beneath his hands. When he came to his feet again, he found that his fingers were red with blood. Nearby lay one of the makeshift torches, smouldering on the verge of extinction.

Canyator snatched it up and whirled around in search of the enemy. Green eyes glittered in the dark. Instinct took him by the throat; he launched himself into the shadows, overcome by unthinking fury, and hacked wildly until the jarring impact of hammering his sword into the wall shook him out of his madness. Amid the shards of marble leaves, a stone thrush lay slain.

An ornament. No more than an ornament.

For a moment he stood there gasping, recovering himself. The torchbearer’s still-warm body lay slumped across the passageway, a trickle of blood creeping down the nightingales inlaid in the patterned floor.

“Keep together,” he repeated when at last he could speak again, his voice cracking. The torch was beginning to gutter dangerously, giving off more smoke than light. “We need to find a way out of here.”

“From you, kinslayer?” said Dior. “Your own hound did that.”

Now they moved slowly, rediscovering caution.

Darkness lay heavy underground, between the sculpted pillars and the odd stone glade in which a lantern swung, still lit, suspended from a golden chain. Eyes glared out among unmoving leaves, watching them pass.

They had found no more of their companions alive. Their attempt to retrace their steps had somehow taken them deeper into the caves. Only luck or guidance from some captured Sinda would get them out of this labyrinth. And there were fewer of them now than there had been before. Keep together. Easier said than done. This had become a hunt through Menegroth’s stone forests.

Strange echoes still came down to them from above:

“... faithless beast...”

“... wiser than you...”

Ahead a sliver of light split the gloom just where the tunnel took a leftwards turn into darkness. A floor-length tapestry of a sunlit meadow hung askew, revealing a wooden door standing slightly ajar behind it. Canyator raised the smoking torch to command silence. His sense of danger was suddenly acute. He crept up the passage, the other Noldor a few steps behind, and kicked the door open so violently that it bounced on its hinges.

A well-lit cave lay beyond. The brief impression reached him of a cosy sitting room, elegantly furnished and apparently deserted. Then a blow from behind sent him staggering. Before Canyator could steady himself, another shove knocked him to the ground. He landed on his elbows, the carpet inches from his nose and the heat from the flaming torch searing against his face, hearing the door slam shut. Indistinct sounds of fighting could be heard from the passage outside.

The sword was kicked out of his hand. Canyator thrust the torch away and reached for his dagger, trapped beneath his body. There was no time for thought now, only for reaction. A knee between his shoulders pressed him inexorably towards the carpet. He struggled desperately, arching his back and flailing until the pressure slackened. As he broke free and scrambled to his feet, a blade flashed past his eyes and stuck quivering in a blue flower blooming against the scarlet carpet.

Smoke was drifting through the clear light. Canyator had time to see that a tablecloth had caught fire, and that the flames were reaching for the tassles of a nearby cushion. Then a flicker of movement caught his eye and he swung sideways, so that the chair brought smashing down only caught his shoulder a glancing blow. The Sinda was coming at him again, soundless, a long knife shining in each hand.

Canyator’s sword lay a little way off. He risked a lunge for it –

Light flashed on blood and steel. The Noldo fell.

That single, perfect thrust recalled Beren Camlost, laughing among the trees on Tol Galen and teaching a child to fight with willow stems. For all that Dior Aranel had inherited his mother’s starlit eyes and nightingale voice, his swiftness and elegant precision with a sword had come from his mortal father. Oropher had sparred with the one-handed Beren often enough to recognise his son’s killing blow.

The sound as the Noldo hit the ground could have levelled cities.

“I may now be held to have proven myself a king,” said Dior calmly and sheathed his sword. At his feet the lifeless face of Fëanor’s son stared up, surprised, all light and colour draining slowly from the unmarred skin. “Someone kindly remove the body to somewhere a little more appropriate. Celeborn, Oropher – what news?”

Oropher shrugged. “As expected. They wanted to outflank us on both sides.”

“And this has been prevented?”

“For now,” said Celeborn. He was a little out of breath, having taken longer and returned more hastily from inspecting his guard post, and he had removed his helm so that his hair lay fair and slick against his head. A fresh gash glistened across his cheek. “They are overconfident, as they have always been. They were easily lured into the deeper caves.”

“And are being dealt with?”

“And are being dealt with.”

Dior nodded. “Good. We must then expect a direct attack – yes, what is it?”

A Sinda stood there. Oropher could not remember his name. “The Noldo’s arms, lord – should they be placed with the body?”

“Of course,” said Dior. “We are not Bauglir’s beasts or Naugrim. We are Elves. We do not rob the dead.”

A rabbit’s glassy stare brought him back to himself.

They had fallen together into a basket of toys. The wickerwork creaked beneath the weight of two bodies, only one of which was dead. All around on the wet carpet lay the china fragments of a smashed doll’s head, spattered with blood.

He came slowly to his feet.

The dead Elf’s mouth gaped open. The helm had come away and what remained of the Elf’s face was meat and bloody bone, mutilated beyond recognition. He had struck repeatedly even after the Elf’s death, maddened by rage and animal instinct. The killing blow had almost severed the neck.

It had been so easy.

That might be the worst part, if there was ever time for regrets. So easy to lure them into the familiar tangled passageways of Menegroth. To confuse them with feigned flight and switched lanterns. To pick them off as they ran lost and heedless through the caves. It had been nothing like the earlier fighting. They had died swiftly and without warning in the dark. And that had been easy too. Nothing had held his hand from murdering other Elves.

So easy. They had died so easily. He had killed like a wolf, without qualms.

There was smoke everywhere now. The tapestries were burning.

The door swung open. “Erestor?”

“Yes.” The word came out as a whisper. “Still alive. Are they –?”

“Dead, yes. So is Ivaeron. Gwingalad may lose a hand.” Her voice was abnormally steady. She seemed oddly insubstantial in the hazy smoke. “Come on. We need to get back to Dior.”

Blood and Fire

7. We will not speak

Afterwards Oropher retained only a few memories of the battle for the upper square, fragments full of blood and fire. The roar as the Noldor came raging up the avenue and broke through the barricade. Scarlet ribbons tangling in the fountains. A lantern smashing with a blinding flash that set the tapestries alight. Chaos confusing friend and foe, so that only their war-cries set them apart. And the whole world narrowed to the edge of his sword, the sharpest of lines between his life and someone else’s death.

It took longer than he had expected for the battle to be lost. Sometimes in snatched moments he did wonder, fractured and feverish through the fighting, why the Noldor did not attack at full strength. There was never time to reach an answer. Oropher remembered that afterwards, and his own hellish exhaustion, increasing with every swing of his sword.

The bloodbath when the Sindar broke. He remembered that.

They were not used to death, the Sindar. They had lived too long in the shelter of Melian’s Girdle, while Beleriand beyond became a murder-ground for Bauglir’s monstrous hordes. Oropher had done what he could, for Dior’s sake. It had not been enough.

How he came to be fighting at Celeborn’s side, he did not afterwards recall. An overwhelming impetus towards defence of his King wiped out all else. Possibly he was back at Amon Ereb, struggling to hack a way past Orcs in battered metal plate surrounding the blood-soaked hill on which Denethor and his household had made their final stand. The red mist rising in his head left no space for thought. When his eyes cleared enough for him to see that they had broken through the chaos of that terrible rout into a moment’s respite somewhere deep in the caverns, a knot of Nandor and some few Sindar still clustered around Dior with his bloodied sword, the only image that remained was the crumpled muzzle of the Orc beneath whose heavy corpse he had come groggily awake after the battle at Amon Ereb. He remembered staring into the Orc’s open eyes, strangely peaceful in death, and realising that his whole body hurt more than he had ever thought possible.

“Oropher,” said Celeborn again, urgently. “Can you hear –?”

The roar of battle filled his ears. “I hear you.”

The Sinda seemed relieved; he nodded once and turned away. “Lord –”

“The day is lost,” said Dior, and his voice was as clear and calm as any nightingale singing beneath the starlit boughs in the long ages of Melian and Elu Thingol. Behind him in a tapestry his forebears smiled, entranced and entrancing one another amid the woven woods of Nan Elmoth. Nimloth had somehow come through the rout with them and sat huddled on the ground nearby, looking very pale and not a little sickened. A few of her archers stood protectively around her, clutching their daggers. “So too is Menegroth, I fear. Our hopes lie now with your lady, Celeborn.”

“She will not fail you,” said Celeborn. “That I swear on my own life!”

“I never doubted her or you,” said Dior gently. He laid one hand on Celeborn’s shoulder, as grave as Lúthien when he and Beren set out to avenge her father at Sarn Athrad. Lúthien’s charm shone in his dusk-grey eyes. “Come now, kinsman. You delved these paths an age ago and more. Which way will take us most swiftly to the treasury?”

By the look on Celeborn’s face, he was seeing Lúthien in her son as well. He blinked twice, inhaled deeply and and swung around. “Here, I believe –”

As he spoke, a handful of Elves appeared from that direction through the silent dark. Oropher snapped into a fighting stance before he recognised Melian’s dark messengers beneath the blood. Others of the Sindar who had gone with them to lure the Noldor into the depths of Menegroth came behind. Erestor was already shaking his head. “Not this way. There’s a pack of them at the other end.”

Dior lifted his head sharply. “Do they follow –?”

“No. I think not.” He was breathing hard and his words came curtly. “One of the sons is wounded. Maybe the dark one, Caranthir. Whichever led the charge on the upper square. They were – distracted. No trouble, for us.”

“Good. Then which way?”

“The main levels are swarming. Downwards, through the cellars.”

“Very well,” said Dior, adjusting his grip on his sword and lifting Nimloth to her unsteady feet. “Guide us.”

The cellars were a gloomy string of caverns layered with thick cobwebs and occasionally illuminated by dim lanterns that leaked light from shadowy alcoves. The intricate stonework of the upper levels gave way here to unadorned storerooms and narrow corridors through which they passed like bloody ghosts. Their footsteps hissed and whispered in the dusty air. Oropher’s head was still clouded by the aftermath of battle, or he might have found that passage through the cellars more unsettling; he could almost believe himself in Ossiriand’s greenwoods in the stone forests of Menegroth, but down below in Menegroth’s deep cellars not even a semblance of sculpted trees remained. Even Celeborn seemed uncertain of their way at times. They were passing very far underground and the weight of stone and earth pressed heavy above them.

They exchanged accounts as they went. The hunters of the Noldor had come late to the battle for the upper square, arriving when the fighting was already in full swing. When the rout came, they had been swept away, but not so far that they could not follow from a distance as Dior and his few remaining forces took refuge in the lower caves. “We passed Celegorm on the way,” Melinna remarked offhandedly. “With any luck, his brothers will find him soon and be distracted further.” Perhaps fortune favoured them; certainly no Noldor were encountered in the dusty cellars, nor any signs of life other than the distant skittering of nervous rats.

At length they reached a stairwell full of yellow light. “This comes out near the hall above the treasury,” said Erestor, already going up the shallow steps with Melinna close behind. “We need to move fast.”

“Moving,” said Oropher wearily and followed them into the light.

He emerged into an empty passageway. There was no sign of the Noldor. Melinna waited impatiently for everyone to ascend from the cellars while Erestor vanished ahead to see whether the path was clear. They were almost at the avenue leading up to the doors of the hall when he reappeared, shaking his head urgently. “Back – they’re coming –”

“It is too late to go back,” said Dior and stepped out between the stone trees. “Remain where you are. I shall parley with them.”

He took up position in the middle of the avenue, laying his sword at his feet.

“Lord –!” burst out of several throats, Oropher’s among them.

Dior raised a hand to silence them. “The hall was to have been barred from within. Before we pass inside, the Noldor will be upon us. If I can parley with them, there is yet hope. Remain where you are. Or am I not King?”

There was a touch of irony in the lift of his brow. He might have been wearing Thingol’s crown. That had been sunk into the river with the rest of Thingol’s treasure after the battle at Sarn Athrad, of course.

Elves were beginning to appear at the other end of the avenue. The torches they carried burned almost without smoke.

“Noldor!” called Dior, holding up his hands to show that he held no weapon. Oropher remembered Elu Thingol striding the scarlet field at Amon Ereb, that mighty lord whose rule had endured in unchanging glory for so many ages of the world. Such a king might Dior Eluchíl have been, had he so chosen, yet he had always taken his graceful mother’s path and ruled by charm and charismatic quietness. He stood like Thingol now, a king clothed in majesty and clotted gore. His voice rang clear through the shadows. “I am Dior Eluchíl and I wish to parley! Who commands you?”

They ran him down in a blaze of light.

Of all the memories that Oropher afterwards retained from that day, Dior’s death was the one that he would most readily have forgotten. The Noldor yelling as they came howling up the avenue. Swords rising and falling as the torches flared. Blood spattered everywhere and Dior falling in silence, without so much as a grunt of pain, his face a fair mask of perfect surprise. And Nimloth’s paleness drenched in crimson, hacked down as she ran through the stone trees to her butchered husband’s side. The ruin of her dismembered limbs. Oropher would have paid with Elu Thingol’s treasure from that gold-filled river to forget the way she screamed.

Fighting followed. He remembered none of it. Only the death of Dior Eluchíl, Lúthien’s son, and Doriath cast down forever by Elven blades.

Blood and Fire

8. Little Elwing

If the Noldor had forgotten Galadriel’s face...

She had been almost in tears.

“Do you not trust me?” she had demanded. “I can use a bow as well as any man. I led my people across the Helcaraxë! Why send me to hide with the children when I might go instead with your lady and defend my home?”

All around, the Thousand Caves had seethed with activity. Celeborn had gone to oversee the emptying of the armoury and Elves with weapons hurried everywhere, their swords gleaming as the lanterns came down around the square. Nimloth and the women with their bows had already gone up to the gallery. Every minute, more Elves came frantically into the square, seeking instructions and reassurance from Dior the King. The hollow thunder at the gate above had echoed through Menegroth’s deep halls as though some Vala beat an arrhythmic pattern on a monstrous drum.

“One moment,” said Dior to his children’s nurse. “Lady –”

For a moment, anger and frustration had threatened to overwhelm her. “Do you not trust me?” she repeated fiercely. “The command was yours, my lord said. Do you think I would betray my home to those whom I no longer call my kin?”

“Lady, I trust you,” said Dior, a little wearily. The light glinting on his helmet had matched his shining eyes. “Please –”

“Then why may I not give my bow to our cause?”

Instead of answering, he had taken his daughter from the nurse’s arms. “Lady,” he said and held the child towards her, bundled up in blankets and trailing shawls so that only the plump pink face blinked sleepily out, uncomprehending. The boys standing hand-in-hand beside their nurse stared solemnly up at her with their father’s clear grey eyes. “Galadriel,” their father went on. “You have my trust and my children. Others have given their bows. Go with the children and those who cannot fight to the treasury. If the city is lost, you alone may save Doriath.”

The child had been heavier than Galadriel expected. She had never had much to do with children before.

“Go,” Dior had said again, gently. “This is no time for pride.”

Later his words came back to Galadriel as she sat on an empty brass-bound chest with Dior’s daughter in her lap, surrounded by the only treasures that remained in the Thousand Caves. The words and the way Dior had spoken, as calmly as Lúthien before she went out of Doriath to rescue Dior’s mortal father.

A child whimpered somewhere, wanting its doll. The mother had gone with Nimloth’s archers. Someone else moved to soothe the child. They had only two lanterns and the shadows were very deep, shifting as the woman passed through the light. Some Elves had brought their blankets and lay huddled on the stone floor, sleeping or attempting to sleep. Most sat in silence around the cavern, staring with frightened eyes at Galadriel or at each other or at the massive treasury doors that had been replaced after the Naugrim sack. Far off in the distance, the sounds of fighting could be heard.

Celeborn.

He was out there. Somewhere.

She took a breath. It was hard not to remember the slaughter she had seen at Alqualondë. And Celeborn, in the midst of it. Too easy to imagine him split open and bleeding on the stone. It would be better not to think at all.

The child Elwing in her arms was sleeping. She tried to think of nothing, and failed.

It was impossible to tell how much time passed in that dim cave. After a while, the noises from the caves above began to become louder and more distinctively unpleasant. Inside the treasury, no one made a sound. Galadriel could almost taste the choking terror in the dark air. The battle was coming closer to them. These were Elves who had survived the Naugrim sack. They knew what bloodshed looked like. This would be worse.

She heard a distant crash like axes hacking into wood.

They were breaking into the hall above the treasury. Someone was breaking into the hall above the treasury. Now she had to remind herself to breathe. Little Elwing still slumbered peacefully in her arms. No one else was asleep. It might be Celeborn, fleeing the battle with Dior and Oropher and their forces to seek what sanctuary she could provide. Or it might be – the enemy.

They could be dead, all of them. Celeborn could have bled his life away already, alone in the dark.

“Are they coming?” whispered one of Dior’s sons. His eyes were wide and fearful. “Is that –”

“Hush now,” said Galadriel and was amazed by the steadiness of her own voice. She could hear shouting. They had broken into the hall above. In a moment, they would be at the treasury doors.

Celeborn would have called to give her warning. It was not Celeborn.

The battle was lost, then. Menegroth was lost and her wolfish cousins had found them. And Celeborn –

There was no time for that. Dior trusted her. Lúthien’s son.

“Hush,” she said steadily again and arose. The child was heavy in her arms. “Remain where you are. I shall speak with them.”

A moment passed in breathless fear.

The suddenness of the hammering at the great doors shocked even Galadriel. She heard a woman’s stifled scream. Deep in the shadows some infant began to wail and little Elwing’s eyes fluttered open, although she made no sound. It was amazing that the child was willing to stay bundled up in her wrappings like a baby. Maybe she sensed their danger. Every crash at the doors struck Galadriel like a blow. The stifling air caught in her throat. She resettled Dior’s daughter at her hip, as she had seen mothers carrying their children in the past, and readied herself.

The enemy. Her wolfish cousins. Her ruthless, bloody-handed kin.

Blades gleamed through the splintering wood. Here they came.

Galadriel could see gauntlets and the moving flash of swinging swords. Beyond the ruins of the door stood barely Elvish figures, all edges and dripping gore, the swords in their raised hands dark with blood. A mass of blurry shapes pressed ominous behind, more sensed than seen. Their faces were mostly shadowed; as the breach opened up, she recognised the device on a shield.

“You,” she said and moved forwards. “Were you not with my forefather Finwë’s household at Formenos?”

She had led her people across the Helcaraxë. Now they would listen.

Closer she could see the bloodlust in their faces. It had been there at Alqualondë. She raised her voice. “I am the Lady Artanis Nerwen, Finarfin’s daughter. There is no treasure here, only women and children. We will not fight you. Bring down no further curse upon your heads! Where are my cousins? Where is Maedhros? Who commands you?”

A gap had been hacked open wide enough for a single Elf-lord to step through. The shield on his arm was battered and the dove that marked him as one of Finwë’s men could barely be made out. His helm dripped blood. “Those who commanded here have fallen. Where is the stone of Fëanor, lady?”

Galadriel was shocked and almost faltered. She recovered herself swiftly. “Then who commands you?”

He raised his sword threateningly. “Where is the stone of Fëanor?”

“You will not harm me,” said Galadriel with a perfect certainty that she did not feel. Little Elwing was a silent weight at her side. “I am Finarfin’s daughter. And that cursed Silmaril is not here, nor do I know where it may be found. Dior the King has hidden it deep in the caves, and if he told anyone its hiding place, I know not whom.”

Another bloodied Elf came shouldering through the ruined doors. She did not recognise this man. Others followed him and moved menacingly into what scant lantern light shone thinly within the cavernous treasury. His voice was rough. “If not the stone, the Dark Elf’s children – where are they? The lord Celegorm left orders –”

“You shall disregard them!” said Galadriel, remembering her cousin Celegorm. “Who commands now?”

“The lord Maedhros commands,” said the Elf-lord who had served her father’s father Finwë. She saw the sideways glance he gave the other Elf, Celegorm’s man. “But he fights in the woods above –”

“Then you shall send to him and tell him that the women and children of Doriath are no enemy of his, and that his cousin Artanis would speak with him on their behalf. And you shall do no harm to those who shelter here. They are under my protection.”

She spoke with as much authority as she could assume. The Elf-lord seemed almost convinced, but Galadriel was alarmed to see Celegorm’s men spreading out through the treasury. “Where are the Dark Elf’s children?” growled the second Elf, looming towards her. His face was flushed from fighting and a haze of heat and sweat hung over him, the smell of danger. He must be drunk on battle. A flicker of fear broke through Galadriel’s shell. “Lady, you can protect no one. Where are the children?”

Behind her, a woman screamed. “No!” said Galadriel sharply, swinging around.

The nurse was on her knees, clinging to the clothes of Dior’s sons. One of Celegorm’s men had hold of them and was dragging them away. No sound came from either boy, although Galadriel could see their fear. They clutched at their nurse’s hands desperately. The rest of Celegorm’s men were heading in that direction. Two of them caught the nurse by the shoulders and tore her away from the boys, hurling her to the ground. She scrabbled at the ground, trying to catch hold of her twin charges. A solid backhand blow from one of the men snapped her head back with a crunch and sent her reeling; his fist in the metal gauntlet had split her face open, blood dripping down her chin. Her screams as she saw the boys being carried off filled the treasury.

“Stop that!” Galadriel commanded, moving furiously to intercept the men. Little Elwing still settled at her hip was beginning to make unhappy noises; she held the child tighter, suddenly afraid that attention might be drawn to Dior’s daughter. “Leave those children –”

“Are they not the Dark Elf’s sons?”

Dior’s expression came back to her: his knowing eyes, his nightingale calmness, entrusting his children to her care. You alone may save them. One of the boys’ anguished faces caught her eye.

“Leave them here!” she said again. “My cousin Maedhros –”

The second Elf, Celegorm’s man, crouched down in front of the captive twins. He placed the edge of his bloodstained sword against the throat of the nearer boy and grinned up at her, wolfish. “Protect them, lady,” he said with soft menace. “Where is the stone of Fëanor, the Silmaril?”

Galadriel found herself helpless; seeing the boy’s terror, she would have surrendered the Silmaril on the spot, had she possessed it. “I don’t know!” she exclaimed and heard the frantic edge to her own voice. “In the safest place in Doriath, the King said. I don’t know what he meant, he must have a hiding place somewhere, maybe in his own chambers. It isn’t here! Let the boys go!”

She saw that he believed her. He straightened, sheathing his sword. “Oh, we shall let them go,” he said and grinned again. “Where is the Dark Elf’s daughter? What babe is that you hold –”

“You will not take my child!”

“Yours, lady?” said the Elf-lord who had served her father’s father Finwë.

“Mine!” said Galadriel fiercely. Elwing’s pink face was beginning to crumple; in a minute the child would start to wail. She resettled the child more securely against her hip, distantly aware that her arms were starting to ache. It occurred to her in a sudden flash of relief and fear that as long as Elwing was bundled up in so many layers of blankets and shawls, it could not be seen that the child’s hair was as dark as Galadriel’s was not.

Celegorm’s man was looking wolfish again. “My daughter,” she said and clutched Elwing in instinctive reaction as he loomed closer. She glared at him. “You will not take her! Now release those boys!”

“Protect those you may, lady,” he said and swaggered towards the ruined doors. A stink of smoke and death caught in her throat as he passed. His men followed, carrying Dior’s terrified sons with them into the dark.

Anger and helplessness left Galadriel silent. There was nothing she could do. Behind the nurse was rocking on her heels and clutching her bloody face; her screams had broken into rough sobbing. Other women were in tears. And from Elwing’s mouth a narrow wail began to unfurl towards the echoing reaches of the cavern.

“Hush,” Galadriel said distractedly. “Hush.”

She needed to keep her thoughts on something, anything, other than Celeborn’s fate. Her husband. Her Sindarin love. So many things might have happened to him. He was probably dead. If Galadriel allowed herself to think about that now, she would never be able to face down Maedhros and her cousins. Later she could scream blasphemies and tear her hair and maybe even weep like those whom she and her kin had left bereaved at Alqualondë. Right now, she was responsible for the lives of all these women and their children. The remnants of Doriath lay in Galadriel’s hands. And that mattered more than any private loss.

Dior had trusted her to save them. All of them.

She fixed the bloodied Elf-lord with her most imperious glare. “You will send to my cousin Maedhros,” she commanded, drawing the tattered remnants of her authority around herself once more. “You will tell him that his cousin Galadriel demands safe passage out of Menegroth for herself and these women and children. And you will tell him that Dior’s innocent sons are to be returned to my care! Go now!”

“Lady,” he said with apparent respect and bent his head. “I shall.”

...their daughter would never have come out of that furnace alive.

Blood and Fire

9. Death and the dead

She chose her doom.

Erestor was binding up his wife’s broken wrist by candlelight. He had found something approximating a splint and enough cloth somewhere to do the job properly, and his face was intent as he worked. A gash on the back of his hand stretched open when his fingers flexed; he seemed unaware of this. Melinna’s expression suggested that her attention was elsewhere altogether. She had a long knife in her other hand and she was rubbing her thumb absently over the bone handle like some superstitious mortal with a lucky talisman. It was impossible to tell whether the blood drying on her face was hers.

It hardly mattered. They all had enough cuts of their own.

“We need to get out of here,” said Celeborn in a restless undertone. He turned away from the door, which was slightly ajar so that they might have some advance warning if any Noldor found traces of their escape and followed them back down into the cellars. His limp was more pronounced now that they were no longer running for their lives. “My wife –”

“Is on her own,” said Oropher shortly. “Though I agree. Menegroth is lost. We need to get out. With any luck, we’ll meet up with my men in the woods. Maybe your wife can talk her way past her cousins and join us there. She has the best chance of any of us.”

He glanced once around the cellar. A pitiful few of the handful who had come with Dior out of the earlier rout had survived that fight above the treasury. They sat bloodstained and weary on sacks or dusty chests in the deep gloom. He guessed they were all still seeing Dior and Nimloth sprawled out like so much hacked-up meat on the slick stone. There was no hope in any of their faces.

Celeborn’s nod was curt. “They will be guarding the bridge.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“That is even if we can get to the bridge –”

“That too.”

“You have a plan?”

“Not much of one,” said Oropher. The darkness stank of death. It was becoming hard to think clearly about anything other than his almost physical need for light and freedom and Ossiriand’s airy greenwoods, far away beneath the untroubled peaks of Ered Luin. “You said it before. They’re overconfident. We go quietly as far as we can, then run for the gates. They’ll have guards at the other end of the bridge. I say we take to the river. Can you swim?”

Celeborn was staring at him in apparent disbelief. “Jump? Into the river?”

“It’s deep enough, isn’t it?”

“In places – but there are rocks, and the current is swift –”

“Would you rather deal with the rest of your wife’s relatives?”

By the way Celeborn’s mouth tightened, the remark did not please him. Oropher was in no mind to be tactful and did not care. He went on flatly, “We’re caught in a trap. The only way to get out is to move fast and hit from behind. If we drown, we drown. I’ve never drowned before, so I don’t know whether it’s a better death than a sword to the gut, but I’ll be cursed if I give that pack of wolves the pleasure!”

That appeared to strike a more welcome chord. Celeborn nodded slowly. “We shall be able to carry nothing away with us. Not even food. And it is winter now.”

“True,” said Oropher. “I did say it wasn’t much of a plan. Got anything better?”

Celeborn shook his head. He was frowning now, but in a way that suggested thoughtfulness. “I do not.”

“Well then –”

A thud across the cave interrupted him. Melinna had set the bone-handled knife down hard on a nearby chest. “We can get you almost to Fountain Hall. The square below the gates.” Erestor was still occupied with bandages; he hissed under his breath as the candle flickered. She paid him no attention. “There’s a way – Celeborn might know –”

“I know no ways from here,” said Celeborn. His eyebrows arched. “It would seem that I have spent too little time investigating Menegroth’s dark corners.”

“And we too much, no doubt,” said Erestor dryly, not looking up. “Melinna, if you would stop moving – thank you. There.” He secured the end of a bandage with his teeth and tied off a knot. “Yes. A way to Fountain Hall. It can be done. With care.”

“Good,” said Oropher, satisfied. “Are we agreed?”

A mumble of something approaching a consensus arose around the cave. He thought that several of those who answered him were simply too exhausted to disagree, or to think of doing anything other than following his lead. It was not at all unlikely that they would not survive a tumble into the wintry river. He might not himself. Only a primal urge to break free of Menegroth’s blood-soaked stone forests currently outweighed his leaden weariness. Celeborn was nodding, though, so it seemed that he at least had been convinced. He was already stripping off his clotted gauntlets, evidently having decided that such items would only be an unwanted burden. Others around the cave began more slowly to follow suit and Oropher started to do the same himself.

Daylight. It seemed an age since he had walked beneath the trees.

Melinna slid off her perch, examining her immobilised wrist critically. “Thank you,” she said to her husband. “It was careless of me.”

“It was, rather.” Erestor had set aside his sword and seemed to be checking that his knives were safely sheathed. “To start with, swimming will be tricky.”

“So it will.”

“Stick close to me. We’ll manage.”

Her smile was edged with something odd; she nodded and said no more.

The paths by which they made their way from the cellars to Fountain Hall were narrow, unlit cracks between caves filled with spiderwebs and dust. Occasionally they passed out into the usual corridors through discreet doors still hidden beneath thick tapestries. This required caution, since the Noldor were everywhere and no one was in any condition to fight. Increasingly as they moved towards the upper parts of Menegroth, smoke and bloody tracks and the marks of conflict were visible. Once they passed a door hanging off its hinges; a pillaged chamber lay beyond, all upturned chairs and ornaments lying in ruins. The pieces of a flute lay strewn across the floor, as though someone hoping to find a treasure hidden inside the instrument had found it empty and broken it in a fit of rage. It had been adorned with silver nightingales and the twisted remnants gleamed amid the ruins. Even now, the sight impressed itself upon Oropher. He hurried onwards into the darkness behind another heavy tapestry, this one hanging in tatters before a shattered door.

Melinna was waiting there, a shadow almost without shape. Her voice came softly. “After the next door, you’re out in the open. Go left and you’ll come to Fountain Hall in twenty paces or so. You’ll recognise the way. Erestor can lead you if you don’t.”

“‘You’?”

Behind them, the ruined tapestry fluttered. “What is this?” came Celeborn’s voice.

“I can’t swim anyway.” She spoke uncompromisingly. “I’m staying.”

Oropher had heard that tone of voice before from other people. He was more than half inclined to let the woman remain without argument; there was little enough time for discussion and less to convince Melinna against a course of action on which she was clearly determined. The city was lost. He had led Elves from Ossiriand to fall in the dark beneath Elven blades. Lúthien’s son had been butchered above his own treasury. Beneath the stone trees Nimloth’s white fingers still lay outstretched in her own pooling blood. Another death could add little to the horror of Menegroth’s ruin.

“Then you will die,” said Celeborn, for all as though Melinna could not see that herself. “This is foolish. You can do nothing more –”

“I don’t care!” Her voice was louder now and made Oropher wince. She went on more quietly, “What does it matter, anyway? Doriath is gone! And maybe it was gone when the King died and Queen Melian left Middle-earth, but anyway – now it’s gone. Gone to the wolves and the Orcs, with the rest of Beleriand! There’s nothing left to us. You go. I won’t.”

Oropher recognised that bitterness as well. Some losses bled more than any wound.

The passageway was becoming crowded as the others came under the sword-slashed tapestry that concealed the entrance. Celeborn apparently believed that Melinna could be turned away from her foolishness through sheer application of reason; Oropher, remembering his own despair in the aftermath of Amon Ereb, considered this unlikely. His own longing to be free of all this stone and bloody dark was deepening with every dangerous second the matter delayed them. When Erestor, coming last, joined them and paused in apparent surprise, finding them standing around quarrelling in increasingly fierce whispers, Oropher said merely, “Erestor, your wife’s decided she’s not coming with us. Talk her out of it or not, it’s up to you. We don’t have time for this.”

Erestor nodded curtly and pushed through the crowded passage to where Melinna and Celeborn were arguing. “One minute,” he said to Celeborn. He took his wife by her uninjured arm and led her a little way off.

“Right,” said Oropher and glanced around those who remained. “Nearly there. No fighting unless it can’t be avoided. All we want is to get to the bridge. Once you’re in the river, head downstream till the bank’s low enough to climb out. Understood?”

Another round of nods and mumbles. He glanced at Celeborn. “Ready?”

“I am,” said Celeborn. “Erestor –”

“We’re ready,” came Erestor’s grim voice from further up the passage, one hand still resting firmly on Melinna’s shoulder. Beside him, she stood in shadow; her expression could not be seen. Oropher gained an impression of tension and was not surprised.

“Good,” he said. “Let’s go.”

For such an unwise plan, it went surprisingly well.

There were fewer Noldor in Fountain Hall than Oropher had expected. Later he realised that most of them must have been deep in Menegroth and tearing apart the caves in search of Dior’s Silmaril, or any other treasure that might have gone untouched through the Naugrim sack. Most of those remaining near the gates seemed to be wounded or those who tended to them. At any rate, their passage through the site of that first battle was troubled by little more than startled cries. The square had been mostly cleared of the debris left by the fighting; Oropher passing through was fleetingly aware of bodies laid out on charred tapestries and the blood-smeared floor. The tower of lanterns had been taken down from above the scarlet fountain and what little smoke-hazed light there was came mostly from the distant broken gates.

They pounded up the avenue of sculpted trees. The smoke rasped in Oropher’s throat. Everything was taking on an eerie vividness as his exhaustion heightened. The impact of his feet hitting stone jarred his whole body.

And out into the icy air.

There was a moment when Oropher ran blind into snow, breathless because the cold had snatched away his breath and dazzled by sudden daylight after so long in the smoky dark. He found himself skidding and was grateful at once to Celeborn, who caught his arm before he fell. Ahead the bridge stretched out across the wintry depths, a slippery length of ice and snow. The snow was already wiping out the trampled tracks of blood and filth. Dark shapes could just be made out on the other bank.

The river gulf seemed much deeper than Oropher had remembered it, back in the cellars. Momentarily he teetered on the brink. Behind them, the sounds of pursuit were beginning to emerge.

“Come on,” said Celeborn beside him. “Now.”

Over the edge. Oropher hit the water like a stone.

For a moment, the sensation of having broken every bone in his body outweighed everything else. Then he discovered that he was submerged in freezing water and gasping for air. The current was as swift as Celeborn had warned; he struggled to keep his head above the surface and tangled with other bodies swirling in the river. Everything was a nightmarish chaos of limbs and bloody foam. A white face gaped at him and bobbed away. One of the men who had fallen in that first battle. Others floated all around beneath the tumbling snow. The gory neatness of the square below the gates came back to him in a vivid flash of memory. The Noldor had thrown the Sindarin dead into the Esgalduin. He had barely a moment to realise this before the current tossed him dangerously near an outcrop of jagged rocks and all his attention was diverted to the struggle against the river.

The rest was merely ice and obstinacy. He lacked the strength to fight the current, but somehow managed to keep on coming up for air until the river deposited him in a quiet eddy already choked with bloating corpses. Celeborn had reached it before him and was already clambering up onto the bank. The bridge over the river to Menegroth was far behind them. Snowflakes blurred in Oropher’s eyes. Here the riverbed was low enough to stand and he did so, shouldering leadenly through the remains of men who had fought at his side. Fine tremors were beginning to shiver uncontrollably through his limbs and his throat burned with smoke and fatigue. By the splashing behind him, not all of the others had drowned or broken their necks falling from the bridge. Just then it was impossible to care. He was increasingly too numb to think of anything other than rest and warmth.

Celeborn was kneeling above him on the bank, reaching down. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

The water had been cold enough, but the air as Oropher emerged from the river was breathtakingly glacial. Ice was already forming in Celeborn’s pale hair. As Oropher got a knee up on the frosty bank, he glanced over Celeborn’s shoulder and uttered a stifled exclamation. A number of Elves with swords and bows had appeared silently among the snow-clad trees.

For a moment, even his stubbornness almost gave way to despair. Then his mind caught up with his eyes and he recognised Edhur and the second patrol, one of those that had been caught out in the woods when the Noldor came.

So they were safe after all. For now.

“Lord Oropher, thank Elbereth!” said Edhur, coming forwards. The rest of the patrol were already moving to help all those who had survived the fall from the bridge and the trip downriver out of the water. Oropher caught sight of the dark heads of Melian’s messengers through the drifting snow. Edhur clasped his shoulder briefly and turned to Celeborn, who stood there dazed. “And Lord Celeborn! The lady Galadriel will be glad.”

It was hers to choose.

Blood and Fire

10. A dozen people

Everyone gets things wrong.

The camp was pitifully small. Beneath the skeletal branches loaded with snow, those who had come alive from Menegroth clustered around a few small fires. Oropher sat propped against a tree in a borrowed cloak, watching the flames dance and flinching from time to time as shards of bloody memory broke through his exhausted haze. A face, a burning tapestry, a shriek of pain. The crimson fountains. Dior’s death. Too tired to sleep, the icy world seemed almost dreamlike, an aching place retreating bit by bit from his weary grasp. The ground had frozen stone-hard and far overhead the stars glittered in the black night.

At some slight remove, his companions were talking.

“We should go back.” That was Melinna, not for the first time. “Someone should go back. I’ll go back. The boys –”

On the edge of Oropher’s attention, Celeborn shook his head. “We can do nothing for them now.”

“He’s right,” said Erestor and tapped her splinted wrist. “You certainly can’t.”

The glance she gave him was angry. “But what if –”

“There’s nothing we can do. Galadriel’s cousin swore to see them safe.”

“If you believe that.”

“We don’t have any choice, hm?”

“We do not,” said Celeborn soberly and stirred the fire with a twig. His lame leg was stretched out before the flames. “Those who stand victor there forbid it. We lack the strength or numbers to renew the fight. All we can do now is safeguard Dior’s daughter.”

Dior’s daughter. Oropher in his sleepless haze found his thoughts drifting down a different path. They had stumbled through the twilit trees into the lady Galadriel’s camp, a gaggle of women and children guarded by those who still remained of the woodland Sindar and Oropher’s patrols after the fighting by the bridge. Others were there who had fought with Dior in the caves and somehow broken free of Menegroth’s fall. More than Oropher had expected. He had been too battered and exhausted to be surprised. There Celeborn’s golden wife had arisen and come through the snow to meet them, holding the child tightly in her arms.

“The safest place,” she had burst out incomprehensibly. “He hid it in the safest place –”

Later they learned that Dior had clasped the Nauglamír around his daughter’s neck before entrusting the child to Galadriel’s safekeeping. It had gone unnoticed beneath Elwing’s cocoon of blankets and shawls. Galadriel had only found out herself long after her cousins had sent her and her followers out into the icy woods of fallen Doriath. The Noldor could spend as long as they pleased hunting for the Silmaril in the ruins of Menegroth’s shattered beauty. The more time they wasted on searching the caves, the more likely it was that those who fled the battle would get safely away.

Where they were going was less clear. Away from here. The city had fallen. Dior was dead. It was time to leave the woods of beech and elm where Thingol and Melian had held their court and Lúthien had danced beside the enchanted Esgalduin. There would be no return to Menegroth’s stone forests, blood-smeared and battle-scarred, Dior Eluchíl’s tomb where Nimloth’s screams still echoed through the sculpted boughs. No more descent into the ruined and smoke-filled caves hacked from the stone beneath the stars. Nor would Oropher and his weary followers journey eastwards into Ossiriand and their old familiar haunts. One day, perhaps. For now they were needed by this remnant of Elu Thingol’s people, cast into the wilderness to wander like wolves. And Dior’s daughter, the child who bore the jewel for which her home and family had fallen. Little Elwing asleep beneath a veil of shimmering golden hair. The half-remembered image held Oropher’s fraying attention momentarily. It had seemed as though Galadriel would never let the child go.

“We ought to safeguard Dior’s sons,” he heard Melinna say bitterly. She rose abruptly and took a couple of steps into the shadows. The bone-handled knife gleamed in her unsplinted hand. “Someone has to.”

Erestor was staring into the fire. “Even the Noldor won’t kill children.”

“But what if –”

“Sit down,” he said. “It’s going to be a long walk.”

You learn to live with it.