Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Someone’s been here!”

“What?”

“Someone’s been here. The sword, Dior’s sword, it’s missing.”

“So? Why should we care?”

“Because that means there’s still someone alive in here.”

Goodbyes, by LadySternchen. Chapter 33: Again-Maglor I

Menegroth, the year 506 of the First Age 

Evranin edged open the door to the slimmest crack. She blinked against the hallway’s half-light after the long dark, and slid out of the linen closet. While hiding inside she had torn up a bedsheet and tied the strips into a makeshift wrap. Now her hands were free and Elwing lay cradled against her chest. 

Swaddled in layers of velvet and a wholly unremarkable leather pouch, the Nauglamir sat tied securely inside the little girl’s shift. The jewel lay against her skin, the holy light of the Silmaril safely contained. 

The child slept still, after Evranin Sang her into unconsciousness. It was dangerous to push a mind into sleep against the will, but Elwing was only three years old, and she must not cry. If she did, they would both die. 

Evranin stood in the twilit hallway, listening, still as a doe tasting the air. The clamour of battle died down some time ago. An eerie silence gripped Menegroth, broken only by the strange howling of the wind through the hallways. A gust of icy air grabbed at her dress, and she shivered - up on the surface the great gates must be broken, for the cold to enter the city. 

Slowly, silent as a stalking vixen, she took a few steps and peered around the corner into a main thoroughfare, straining her eyes against the gloom. 

Lanterns smashed into dented gold and scatters of fractured crystal; the blood-red flicker of a smouldering tapestry, the woven likeness of the Two Trees slowly consumed amidst a bitter stink of charred cloth; two royal guardsmen hacked to pieces in a pool of cooling blood, their empty eyes staring sightlessly at the beech-leaf carvings of the ceiling. 

No kinslayers in sight.

Evranin shuddered, and her fist closed around the dragonfly-shaped silver candlestick she lifted from Elwing’s bedroom. She thought for a moment, then silently set down the candlestick and bent over one of the dead guardsmen - Orondil. His name was Orondil! -  to take his sword. 

The blade lay heavy and alien in Evranin’s hand, and she swallowed hard. Weaponry would not avail her if the Fëanorians would happen upon her. She was a nursemaid and a weaver, not a warrior. She never wielded a sword. Hers was a charmed life, spent in the weaving hall and the nursery and the wide, green woods, her heart filled with the fruitful joys of art and song. She knew the rearing of new life, not the dealing of death. 

If she somehow evaded the kinslayers … What would she do, once she escaped the sacked city? Doriath lay deep under snow. Winter gales rushed howling from Morgoth’s frozen wastes, and they would bite straight through Evranin’s silken dress. Her house-shoes were linden-green velvet, bound to soak through at the first snow-logged step. Little Elwing was wearing her favourite nightshift of fine cambric embroidered with a riot of many-coloured butterflies, and nothing else. 

Evranin stood for a moment, hesitating. The dead guardsmen’s uniforms had been hacked to bloodsoaked shreds along with their bodies. She could not turn back in search of winter clothes:  the royal apartments crawled with mailclad kinslayers, tearing the rooms apart in their frenzied hunt for the jewel. Evranin could hear their voices in the distance, echoing through the empty halls, unnaturally bright in their alien tongue, so long forbidden inside these walls. 

Ai, where was now Beleg Strongbow? Where was Mablung of the Heavy Hand and Doriath’s fearsome Marchwardens? The kinslaying cowards had bided their time. They waited until the people of Doriath were spent, her wards fallen and her fortress weakened before closing in, like a pack of wild dogs will tear up a lamed deer. 

Hot tears sprang to her eyes; whether from sorrow, terror or sheer red-hot rage, she could not tell. She swallowed them down, and moved on. 

She crept through the broken halls, the little princess cradled against her chest, hoping against hope to meet a living friend in this slaughterhouse that her home had become. 

She met naught but corpses and devastation. 

The high double doors to the throne room had been torn from their hinges, and the blood-stench of the carnage within turned her stomach. Against her chest, the sleeping toddler winced and writhed in her cocoon of linen. Evranin sent more sleep her way, despite the risk of pushing her too far into the dark. A single cry would doom them both. 

Beyond the door, she looked into the dulled, wide-open eyes of the child’s father. Dior and Nimloth lay back to back, the way they stood defending each other when Evranin fled to Elwing’s nursery. 

Was it mere moments ago, or had hours gone by? She could no longer tell. The pool of blood around the fallen King and Queen of Doriath had congealed. 

Three Fëanorians sprawled dead among the corpses that littered the room, most of them the king’s war council. She bent over Prince Galathil’s corpse, shocked at the way his silver hair was matted with blood.

She startled, could barely hold in a scream. 

Galathil blinked.

The prince opened his eyes, his face a mask of pain. Evranin could not tear her eyes from his wound - his chest had been hacked open down to the splintered ribs. 

Galathil did not look at the destruction of his body. Instead he noted Elwing’s mop of silver hair sticking from the bundle against Evranin’s chest, and smiled. His teeth were red with the blood that trickled from his mouth. 

Have you the jewel? He thought at Evranin, his mind as sharp as his body was broken. 

She nodded, splaying her hand over Elwing’s sleeping form. 

He smiled once more, a terrible bloodshot grimace. His eyes flicked to Dior.

Take Aranrúth. For her son. 

Evranin was no healer, but she had no doubt that these were Galathil’s dying words. His spirit was about to flee, his body mangled beyond healing. Foresight tended to fall upon an Elf in the moment of death.

Maybe there was hope, even after this. Maybe Elwing would survive, and maybe she would someday bear a son. 

Evranin silently set down the dead guardsman’s sword. For a heartbeat, she hesitated at the edge of the pool of blood. Then she stepped forward, and felt it soak through the cloth of her slippers, cool and viscous against her skin. Now she could reach the sword still clutched in Dior’s dead hands, fold open his fingers - he had not gone stiff yet, thank the Valar - and take it. 

Dior had fallen entangled with a pale-haired Kinslayer clad in princely garb. On the Noldo’s cuirass, Valinórean gems and mithril inlays repeated those dreaded eight-pointed stars in endless geometries of horror. Celegorm, then. The fool who thought he could wed Lady Lúthien against her will.

The alien light of Celegorm’s eyes had dulled, but still they stared at Lúthien’s son, dead by his hand. Evranin reached out a blood-stained hand, and pressed them closed. 

When she looked up, another tree-lit gaze bored into her own. 

A tall Elf had emerged from the southern archway. Mail-clad, a red-plumed helm, a surcote with the eight-pointed star. 

A bright sword in his hand, dripping red. 

Evranin’s heart stopped as cold terror strangled the breath from her lungs. 

This is our end. 

She could not breathe, but she wrapped her free arm around Elwing’s sleeping form as if mere flesh and bone might ward off Fëanorian steel. 

The warrior looked at her, and for a moment they stood frozen, gazes locked. 

Killer and prey. 

The next, he burst into tears. 

“Ai Manwë and Varda…” he gasped in his forbidden tongue. “No more!” Tears streamed down his face. 

Against her chest, Elwing made a small, sighing sound. The man’s eyes flew to the packed bundle.  

“A woman and a child…” he whispered frantically. “Not another child, oh please, please …” 

Evranin stood frozen, the king’s sword hanging from her hand. She knew not with whom this Golodh was pleading. He looked more than a little mad. 

Slowly she walked backwards, towards the door. She was a fast runner, and she knew these halls. Even burdened by Elwing she might outpace him in the labyrinth that was the Thousand Caves.

The man straightened, calmed himself a little, and to her dismay, stepped forward to follow her. “Wait, lady!” he whispered. “I will not harm you!”

With a sudden, frantic motion he yanked at his own surcote. 

“Rather an oathbreaker than a child-slayer,” he muttered, wild-eyed, ripping off an eight-pointed star brooch and throwing it down into the mire of blood on the floor. “I have been loyal, but this, I will not do.”

He knelt, and she almost cried out in surprise. 

“My name is Gereth,” he said, kneeling before her as if she were Queen Nimloth and he some penitent come to beg clemency, “formerly of Maedhros’ retinue, and I am yours to command as weregild for the children of your house. “

The blood drained from Evranin’s face. Her fear proved true. She had found the twins’ room empty, but had hoped against hope that some other from among the household had led the boys to safety. 

It was not so. Eluréd and Elurín were dead, perhaps on this very man’s sword.

Her hand clenched around Aranrúth’s hilt. The King’s Ire. Would it not be just, to deliver justice to this child-killer? 

She looked into Gereth’s eyes, and found no lie in his remorse. His mind was in turmoil, but he held himself open to her gaze, without falsehood.

No matter how badly she wanted to slay him where he stood, she still had a living child to think of. 

“Lead us out of here,” she commanded, “away from the kinslayers.” She thought for a moment, then recalled her kin by the sea. “To Sirion.” 

“Come, lady,” said Gereth. A gauntleted hand grabbed her sleeve, pulling her towards a side door. 

Evranin looked back at Galathil, but his eyes had fallen closed and his mind gone still. 

Gereth led her out into the eastern hallway, this one wide and tiled with many colours. A silver fountain once sung before the king’s doors, pouring its sweet waters from a marble basin into a murmuring rill that ran the length of the hallway, home to many-coloured fish that darted back and forth to delight young and old alike. Now the channel ran with blood, choking the rainbow-scaled carps. 

The walls were lined with tapestries, the peak of Doriath’s weaving arts that blossomed under Melian’s peerless tutoring. On their woven expanses, Elbereth Sang the stars to life; Two Trees sprouted at Ivon’s feet; a mighty beech grew to the sky with a city beneath its roots. 

Evranin recalled the making of each one, her breathless wonder at the magic of Song and thread, master craftswomen lavishing their utmost upon these works of art. She could not save even a single one, and she could have wept for the thought.

“Quick, lady! Hide” Gereth roughly shoved her into an alcove behind a tapestry. 

She staggered for a moment, there in the dark, unbalanced by Elwing’s weight, but when she straightened herself, she heard the footsteps, and an icy fist of terror closed over her heart.

She found a small gap between the hangings, and peered out. 

A company of red-clad kinslayers marched up the hallway towards the throne room. 

She knew the names of these men, had heard them spoken, first with contempt, then growing concern, and, finally, after the final, threatening messages had arrived, terror. 

Maedhros the One-handed - tall, scarred, his red war-braids caked with Iathrim blood.

Maglor the Singer, who splintered the Dwarf-made gates of Menegroth with the might of his voice.

Erestor their chief counsellor, the Black Crow whose coming portended death.

Gereth stood aside to let them pass, his back at ramrod-straight attention as he saluted his lords the Golodhrim way.

Maedhros held his pace. 

Evranin closed her arms around Elwing’s little body, and her mind around the child’s fëa. The smallest sound or movement now spelled death. The kinslayers may have fallen to evil, but they were mighty Lords of the Eldar still, and the gaze of those bright eyes was sharp as their swords. 

“My lord…” Gereth muttered, and gave Maedhros a questioning look.

Evranin’s heart thundered in her throat. Would Gereth betray her after all?

Maedhros stopped, and cool blue eyes came to rest on Gereth where he stood in front of the tapestry that hid Evranin, Elwing, and the Silmaril. 

They would see her. Evranin knew. The light of their Fëanorian lanterns fell through the gap between the hanging tapestries and lit up the alcove, dust-motes dancing in the slice of brightness. They would note her shadow, the light’s reflection in her eyes, the glow of her fëa as she shook with terror beneath their gazes. 

And there was the Fëanorian Jewel. Would it still call to its fallen masters?   

“Gereth?” Maedhros had a friendly gaze, when it was turned upon one of his own.

Around Evranin, the alcove darkened. Shadow like wreathing smoke poured from the woven threads that sheltered her. Her eye fell on the back of the tapestry the kinslayers now faced - Lúthien dancing under the moonless stars of Middle-earth, her dark hair a shimmer about her, silver-stitched hemlock umbels swaying to the rhythm of her feet. Queen Melian wove her daughter’s image with her own hands. Melian was gone, but her blessing remained.

“Did you find them, lord?” asked Gereth, while behind his back the primal darkness of a starlit forest covered Evranin.

Maedhros’ face fell. “Not yet. Though not from lack of effort.”

“Permission to head outside and aid the search?” 

Evranin could not see Gereth’s face, but his posture revealed nothing. 

“Granted.” Maedhros sighed. “Good man! I wish I could join you. But I must search for the Jewel now, or all else was in vain.”

“I will find those boys for you, my lord,” Gereth lied without flinching.

Evranin dared not breathe - surely Erestor, that sharp-eyed spymaster, would challenge the turncoat? But a sweet shadow of twilight breathed from the woven threads at Gereth’s back, and drew a veil over their keen treelit eyes. 

None in that fearsome company spoke up when Maedhros clasped Gereth’s arm in a warriors’ salute. “Thank you, Gereth, old and true friend!”

And with that Maedhros turned and led his red-plumed butchers into the throne room. 

Gereth waited until the last of them had turned the corner. He, too, seemed a little dazed. Awed, perhaps. Aware that some fairness and power beyond Elvish ken had risen one last time, only to be forever lost. Suddenly the enormity of Doriath’s destruction seemed to fall upon him, and tears sprung to his bright eyes, but he swallowed them. 

“Come, lady,” he whispered, and took Evranin’s arm once more, but not before laying a hand on Elwing’s sleeping form. “This child will live. I will see to it.” 

Keen, heart-piercing was her song as the song of the lark that rises from the gates of night and pours its voice among the dying stars ... 

The Silmarillion, Quenta Silmarillion, XIX Of Beren and Lúthien