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Celebrimbor was prepared to see his uncle again. He had a plan. He had a speech. He had five back-up speeches in case the first was situationally inappropriate.
He was not prepared for his meeting with an emissary from the Valar to be interrupted by an urgent message from Narvi asking if any of his people were missing a small child named Makalaure.
“Excuse me,” he said blankly before abandoning Annatar to Galadriel’s dubious mercies. He managed to constrain himself to a brisk walk until he had exited the audience room; the moment the door swung shut, he broke into a run like he hadn’t since peace was declared.
He had never been more grateful for winning the argument that they didn’t need guards outside every room a descendant of Finwe happened to inhabit. The last thing the city needed was a panic, and the last thing he needed was attention on what, exactly, was sending him sprinting down the hallways like a child.
Galadriel would demand an explanation, he knew, but Annatar’s arrival should provide distracting enough bait for him to at least attempt the plan before his fellow city leader could intervene -
Assuming, of course, the plan was even relevant. Narvi wouldn’t joke, not about something like this, but the message must be a code, or someone else’s trap, or -
He stuttered to a halt after slamming open the door to his smallest workshop. Narvi, brow pinched in worry, was there.
And she was showing a politely interested elvish child around the more exciting parts of the workshop.
A politely interested elvish child with familiar eyes and a familiar smile and just exactly the expression Celebrimbor’s grandmother had forever immortalized in a statue made far before even Celebrimbor’s father was yet born.
“Hello!” his terrifyingly young uncle chirped in perfectly accented Feanorian Quenya. “Is this your workshop? It’s very nice; I think my father would like it. I saw his star on some of your tools; were you one of his apprentices?”
Celebrimbor, with hands that felt curiously numb, very carefully and very quietly closed the door.
“We found him on the road between our cities,” Narvi explained quietly, perched on the stool by the workbench that Celebrimbor kept for her. The quietness was perhaps not necessary; Makaluaure was currently far too concerned with the noises he could coax from a small experimental instrument Celebrimbor had supplied to be worried about much else, and the noises he had thus far brought forth should distract anyone a bit too inclined to linger near the door. It should be safe enough to look away from him for a few moments; the workshop didn’t have anything too dangerous in it at the moment, unlike his forge.
It was still almost impossible to look away.
“We didn’t see any signs of who he was with, and he didn’t act like a child whose traveling group had been attacked; he seemed perfectly happy wandering down the road by himself when we found him, and he was perfectly happy to switch directions and come with us when we suggested it.” She looked up at Celebrimbor worriedly. “We did check,” she assured him. “We looked up and down the road and off to the sides for any sign . . .” She tugged at one of the silver beads that decorated the braids that hung to the side of her face. “But we may not have understood what he told us. He did not seem to understand your Sindarin at all, and I have not had enough chances of late to trade you for a lesson in your secret tongue.”
Celebrimbor had given up convincing Narvi that Quenya was not precisely a secret. He was glad she knew as much as she did; he doubted Makalaure would have been frightened of the dwarves either way, but he might not have decided to follow them either, and he didn’t want to think of what sort of trouble could find a child of bright Aman, where everything was ready in abundance and a lost child could trust any passing Maia or elf to show the way. “I doubt you missed aught,” he assured her. “I would - I would be very surprised if he was not traveling alone.” Eonwe had told them of Maedhros after - after, and who else would he have been with?
“A lad of his age?” Narvi straightened sharply. “Should we be keeping a sharp eye for more of your bairns to come wandering down our road unattended then?”
“No, of course not - well.” He paused. “For the next little bit, that might not be a bad idea until we know how this happened.” He stole another look at where Makalaure was carefully trying another finger placement on the instrument. This time, the noise that blew out of it howled like the wind through the caverns of Nargothrond, and he had to fight back a shiver. “That’s my uncle.”
“Your uncle,” she repeated, blinking. She looked between them. “So then . . . your grandparents have crossed the sea, and they - ”
That was a terrifying thought from either side of the family tree, though for very different reasons. “No, no. This is - I mean - this is Maglor. That Maglor.”
Very slowly, she looked between them again. “It seems there are some things I still do not understand about how elves age,” she said at last.
“This isn’t normal,” Celebrimbor clarified.
Makalaure’s next experiment with the instrument managed to summon a small spout of fire.
Narvi grabbed for the bucket of sand they kept on hand to deal with such things. “Seems like a normal enough elf to me.”
The last memory Celebrimbor had of his uncle prior to this was standing frozen in the trembling ruins of Beleriand as Eonwe instructed the enclosing circle of all the armies of Aman to let him and Maedhros run away.
The last memory prior to that - not the last rumor, not the last letter, the last proper memory - was just before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. He had been avoiding his uncles as best he could - avoiding the whole family as best he could - and though any number of them could have forced the issue, most of them had let him.
Maglor had snuck into his tent to sing extra virtue into Celebrimbor’s armor.
(He had always wondered if it had been at his father’s request. He could never decide if he hoped it was or not.)
(Celebrimbor knew Maglor had done it because he had heard the familiar voice singing quietly right before he entered the tent. He had wanted to go in. He had wanted to flee.)
(He had fled. He had spent the next few decades wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t. If he would have at least gained the answers to his innumerable questions if he hadn’t been too afraid to ask them.)
(And now here they were again, and he still couldn’t ask, at least not with the slightest prayer of an answer.)
Makalaure had moved to the window seat and currently had his face pressed up against the Gwaith-i-Mirdain’s latest attempt at perfecting glass. “You can see the sun from here,” he told Celebrimbor gleefully, pointing. “I learned yesterday it was called the sun; did you know it was called that?”
The word “sun” was, of course, in Sindarin. There was a Quenya word for it, but it had gotten painfully little use.
“I did know that,” Celebrimbor said. He hovered uncertainly for a moment before sitting down next to him. “What do you think of it?”
Maglor had asked him that when the sun first rose. It hadn’t been an idle question; they had just finished a council meeting on what, exactly, to make of this new phenomenon, and his uncle had turned to him and asked for his thoughts just as seriously as he had asked everyone else’s.
“It bounces off the glass very nicely,” Maglor said, pointing to a place where it did just that. “Only it’s a little too bright; it hurts to look at directly. The Trees are better about that, only Aule’s daughter said we can’t see those from here.” The word daughter was stressed with a faint sense of accusation.
“She did tell you her name was Narvi, didn’t she?” Celebrimbor belatedly checked.
Makalaure’s cheeks went red. “Yes,” he confessed. “But nobody told me he and Yavanna had children before! Why didn’t anyone tell me?"
It was deeply tempting to take the opportunity to dive into dwarvish lore and ignore everything else.
But.
“What’s the last thing you remember before meeting her?” he asked.
“I was walking down the road,” Makalaure said, sounding faintly aggrieved that his question hadn’t been answered. “I was just starting to get thirsty when I found them.”
“And before that?”
Makalaure considered this. “I was playing song-tag with my brother and some others,” he decided. “My brother’s name is Maitimo; he can run a lot faster than me, but I can fling my songs further. Do you know where he is? He’ll know the way back home. He knows everything.”
Celebrimbor’s throat felt very tight.
“I don’t know, I’m afraid,” he said. “But I’ll do everything I can to help you in his stead.”
His voice did not, perhaps, come out perfectly steadily because Makalaure’s brow furrowed in concern for the first time, and he leaned forward and patted Celebrimbor’s hand reassuringly. “I’m sure you’ll do a good job,” he said. “And don’t worry! If we can’t find them, I’m sure my family will come and find us instead. I don’t think it’ll take them long; they’re all brilliant, you know.”
“Yes,” Celebrimbor managed. “I know.”
“Except maybe Tyelkormo,” Makalaure added in a confidential whisper. “Although Amil says he’s very advanced for his age.” This was said very doubtfully. “He’s just a baby.”
In his memory, Uncle Celegorm loomed like an oak tree. Always taller, always broader, always quick to dart to the front of the fight.
It was hard to imagine him smaller than Makalaure.
“He can’t even sing yet,” Makalaure added pityingly.
In Aman, when Celebrimbor was still Tyelpe, whenever Uncle Tyelkormo had been the one to watch him, his uncle had sung him rousing songs he had insisted were lullabies.
In Beleriand, he had sung all through the long retreat from Himlad to the very edge of the border of Doriath to keep their people’s spirits strong and rallied to the right place through the choking smoke. It had drawn the enemy to him too, of course, but it hadn’t stopped his furious song.
He hadn’t sounded like Maglor, naturally. But no one sounded like Maglor. And when he walked in memory in his dreams and his thoughts turned to battle, it was always Celegorm’s voice that drew him away from the worst of the shadow.
“He’ll learn soon enough,” he managed. “I promise.”
Narvi had hung back by the workbench and was valiantly pretending not to have heard any of this. Celebrimbor appreciated the favor and ventured to ask another. “Can you ask one of your people to watch him? I have to go to dinner; Galadriel will be suspicious enough after the way I fled the audience earlier.”
“I will not,” Narvi said indignantly. “I’ll watch him myself. He owes me a rematch at five stones.”
Celebrimbor hesitated. On the one hand, this was ideal; he trusted Narvi more than just about anyone to watch Makalaure. He certainly couldn’t have asked any of his own people. Some of them would want vengeance, and some . . . well, he didn’t think any of the ones not kept under Elrond's presumably strict superivsion were fanatical enough to be too excited by Maglor’s return, but he didn’t quite trust that enough to try the experiment.
On the other hand, Narvi was an honored guest and certainly deserved to be treated as such and not as an impromptu babysitter.
“Thank you,” he yielded at last. “Don’t let him go out anywhere; there might be someone who’ll recognize him, and even if they don’t, they’ll realize he’s not one of the city’s children, and there’ll be questions.”
“Of course,” Narvi assured him. “I’ll get one of my people to bring us supper if you’re worried about it. Surely there’s not that great a risk of people not realizing he doesn’t belong if he doesn’t talk, though? Or sing,” she added, much more doubtfully; apparently she had already realized how unlikely that was over even a moderate amount of time.
“They might just think he’s come from Lindon,” Celebrimbor said reluctantly, looking down at his clothes in a quick once over, just in case the words Maglor is here might have gotten emblazoned on them accidentally. “There would still be questions though.”
“Celebrimbor,” Narvi said flatly. “Are you trying to suggest to me that your people know all the elvish children in the city on sight?”
Narvi said this as if he was being paranoid. “There’s eleven of them,” he said defensively. He really wasn’t being unreasonable here.
Narvi’s new expression was worse. “You mean you lot haven’t just been hiding them from outsiders, you genuinely - “
Oh, maybe this was why Galadriel had told him he shouldn’t share that number with non-elves; Narvi looked like she was about to start crying.
“We’re very proud,” he said, in the hopes that would help, and it was true, regardless; it was wonderful to know that so many families already felt so safe.
“That can’t possibly be normal,” she protested, and he paused.
He remembered, growing up, how his mother had lamented that fewer families were having children with the political tensions so high, but he had still romped with packs of children through the streets and the forest; he certainly hadn’t known every child his age in the city.
He remembered, in Nargothrond, how he had never heard a babe cry at all.
“Normal is relative,” he said and tugged at his clothes helplessly one last time. “I have to go; Galadriel will be suspicious enough already - “
“Yes, yes, just - “ She waved her arms helplessly at him and he darted out the door.
In Ost-in-Edhil’s craft filled streets, there were many guild halls, but only one was ever referred to as the Guild Hall without any further descriptor. It was the very first building for the city that had been constructed, and it didn’t support any one of the guilds; instead, it supported the concept of mastery in craftsmanship, whatever that craft might be. The hall was where disputes between various guilds could be settled, and master craftsmen of all types could mingle, hopefully helping to avoid some of those disputes in the first place.
Somehow this had evolved into it becoming an official government building, which was why they had met Annatar there earlier in the day and why he had made sure to stake himself out a workroom he could sneak away to when no one seemed likely to notice.
The crown jewel of the Guild Hall was the dining hall. It was based off of Celebrimbor’s memories of the smith’s guild hall in Tirion (though modified, of course, both from the necessity of not having access to infinite diamonds here, and because privately he’d always had a few thoughts as to how it could be better.) The key piece was the enormous round table at which members from any guild could come and sit and be fed. Originally, the table had been big enough for everyone who had followed him, but as the city had grown, that had become impossible, no matter how cleverly he redesigned the table, so Galadriel had stepped in with some complicated system for sorting out who came when.
They were both expected to be there tonight, and Galadriel had made it very clear that the only acceptable seat was beside her - partially by the look on her face, and partially by somehow managing to contrive that the seats on her right and left were the only ones available.
Wonderful.
The key to dinner was to say as little as possible and to avoid looking his cousin in the eyes at all costs. She could pry secrets from souls far more skilled at prevarication than his with terrifyingly little effort. He must avoid giving her the opportunity.
It would be better if he could have managed to sit somewhere - anywhere - else. Dauthin had clearly been willing to yield his seat; Celebrimbor should have taken him up on it. Then he could have spoken to one of the other Gwaith-i-Mirdain about their latest projects . . . but with an emissary of the Valar present - although apparently late, as he didn’t see Annatar yet - he hadn’t thought he could get away with it. It would arguably have been better if Celeborn was present; as nervous as it would have made Celebrimbor to have him in the same city as Maglor, and as rude as he was likely to be about Narvi and her people visiting if he caught wind of it, at least he would have been a distraction at dinner.
Instead, it was just him and Galadriel and the waiting chair on her other side as he attempted to be distracted by everything in the dining hall that was not his cousin’s face.
The chair on his other side had been vacated suspiciously quickly. He wondered if it would look too terribly childish if he scooted over to claim it.
Unfortunately, he decided it would.
Also, Galadriel might just decide to abandon her own dignity and follow him.
“I trust whatever called you from the audience earlier has been resolved?”
“Hmm,” he said noncommittedly, very determinedly examining the best possible piece of chicken to select from the platter.
“And of course you know that I would be happy to help with anything of such importance.”
“Mm-hm.” He should have brought a project to fiddle with. Why hadn’t he brought a project to fiddle with?
Galadriel’s silence lingered pointedly. It was a relief when she gave it up: “Celeborn has sent a letter saying he’s been delayed in his hopes for him and Celebrian to return home by another three years.”
“Ah.” Could he forget his manners enough to take an improbably large bite and pretend to choke on it? That should get him out of dinner.
“Oh, and I decided to kick Annatar out of the city.”
That very nearly got him to look at her - it was overstepping the bounds of the power Galadriel had amassed in the city, it was a waste of a golden opportunity in terms of both invention and the military matters that increasingly concerned Galadriel, and frankly it seemed an unlikely way to get the Valar to stop thinking of them as leaders of the rebellion - but he caught himself in time and buried the words in a mouthful of chicken instead. “Hmm.”
“Also, Elrond has shown up at the gates with a small army.”
The chicken was spat unceremoniously from his mouth. ”Elrond’s here?”
Galadriel arched an eyebrow at him before turning pointedly to look at where the chicken had landed between them on the table. “Celebrimbor.”
“Apologies,” he said hastily, snatching at it with his napkin. But - Elrond.
He could sit and lie to Galadriel’s face about Maglor. If it came to it, he thought he could plead successfully to her that Makalaure the child could not be punished for the actions of Maglor the man.
He did not think he could sit under the star of his family’s banner and lie to Elrond about anything, much less this.
And he did not think he could sit under that star and suggest to Elrond - Elrond, of all people - that a child of his house deserved any particular mercy just on the basis of being a child.
The rest of Galadriel’s message slowly hit. “An army?” he repeated.
She had caught his gaze now, and he didn’t want to guess what she might be seeing in it. “An army,” she repeated slowly. “It is, I confess, an exaggeration; he sent a herald ahead to announce that he will be at our gates tomorrow at some point after noon and with a slightly larger than usual party.” She paused. “Also, my husband and daughter are only three weeks delayed, and I have not yet attempted to formally oust Annatar from the city.” Her gaze felt perilously sharp. “It is not just a new project that is distracting you, I think. What ails you, cousin?”
“Nothing?” he attempted.
Galadriel’s gaze sharpened further. He grasped frantically in his mind for any trouble he could remember or invent about any of his current projects, but every last one of those appeared to have vanished from his mind.
“Narvi’s visiting with some other of her people’s smiths,” he blurted in desperation. “They ran into trouble on the road; it worries me.”
“Several master craftsmen of Khazad-dum are visiting,” she repeated slowly. “And your courtesy has so deserted you that you did not invite even your closest friend among them to dine with us?”
“They didn’t want to come,” he tried. “They were exhausted by the trouble they ran into and begged to be excused.”
This was accepted, if narrowly. “What trouble was this? Has the shadow taken some form at last?”
“You should ask Narvi about it tomorrow,” he said desperately. “Eyewitness accounts are always better.” This had grown too dangerous. “I should check on her again; excuse me. Please make my excuses to Annatar when he arrives.”
“Celebrimbor - ”
He pushed back from the table. “Excuse me,” he repeated and fled.
He ran into Annatar in the hallway which was just - fine. It was fine. If his grandfather could slam the door on Morgoth, Celebrimbor could lie to a maia. It wasn’t even really lying. Just - omitting. Omitting what felt like a war drum constantly beating through his chest.
He’s alive. He’s alive. My uncle is alive.
I’m not alone.
It was not the sort of thought he felt safe to have while face to face with an emissary of the Valar.
“Lord Celebrimbor! I am glad to have met you again; I have just finished a most . . . pleasingly original . . . tour of some of the points of interest in your great city given by one of your lady cousin’s retainers, and I was most impressed by your accomplishments here, but I hoped you might be able to explain a few points my guide was not knowledgeable of. I hoped too to speak to you more privately of a few matters regarding my visit here, if it is convenient to you.”
Even in his current state of distraction, Celebrimbor couldn’t help wondering exactly what instructions his cousin had given the assigned guide for ‘pleasingly original’ to be the diplomatic phrasing of the result of it.
“I would be delighted to,” he assured Annatar, “ . . . at a later time. For the moment . . . ” His mind went blank of distractions.
Fortunately, he was saved by the sight of what he presumed was Annatar’s guide hurrying down the same side corridor Annatar had emerged from.
“At the moment, I don’t think the tour is quite finished. I’m sure the rest of it will be delightful.” If it wasn’t the guide, he could at least pretend to think it was so long as he hurried away quickly enough.
Annatar caught at his sleeve as he hurried by, but he pretended not to notice.
He just had to avoid looking anyone in the eyes. That was the key.
“Narvi, may your name endure longer than mountains,” he said fervently when he was at last safely back in his workshop. Two cleared plates were stacked neatly on one of the long tables, and Narvi had procured a pile of cushions and blankets from somewhere that Makalaure had nested among in one of the pools of moonlight from the windows.
She waved him off. “I will come check on you in the morning,” she promised. “You can pay me back when my treasonous relatives come visiting.”
He paused. “Wait - “
Narvi cackled and disappeared out the door.
Makalaure stirred at the noise. “Atar?” he asked hopefully.
In the dark, Celebrimbor’s own father certainly could have passed for him. Himself - only for a moment. Makalaure’s lip trembled a bit as he realized.
“I’m sorry,” Celebrimbor said hopelessly, hurrying to kneel next to the pile of pillows.
Makalaure instantly abandoned the pillows to crawl into his lip. He was a bit too big to fit comfortably, but Celebrimbor’s arms fit around him perfectly.
“I’m fine,” Makalaure said unconvincingly after a few moments of unsteady breathing. “I was just worried about Maitimo. He gets scared sometimes when he can’t find me.”
Celebrimbor closed his eyes.
He remembered the look in Uncle Maitimo’s eyes when Tyelpe had hidden a bit too well during a game when Maitimo was watching him.
And he remembered the look in Maedhros’s eyes when he and his retreating forces had briefly collided with Celebrimbor’s after the Nirnaeth.
“I know,” he said. He hesitated before reaching up to very carefully stroke Makalaure’s hair. “Would you like to hear a song?”
Makalaure leaned his head back against Celebrimbor’s shoulder. “Did you write it?”
“No,” Celebrimbor said. “Someone wrote it for me. A very good bard. The best one ever.”
“That’s going to be me one day,” Makalaure informed him sleepily.
Confidence had never been in short supply in their family; Grandfather had made sure of that.
Rarely unjustified confidence, though.
“I know,” he told Makalaure, and he sang the lullabies he had long ago heard from his family until Makalaure fell asleep.
Even then, he couldn’t quite bring himself to stop.
Hiding in his workshop held well enough through the night. It even held through both breakfast and lunch, which Narvi was kind enough to bring.
It did not hold when Galadriel sent someone to very pointedly remind him that they were to meet with Annatar again that afternoon, and that Elrond would be arriving shortly thereafter.
“I can’t lie to her,” he hissed to Narvi as the messenger waited impatiently outside the door. “I’ve not the skill for it, even by proxy!”
“I’ll handle it,” Narvi soothed and slipped out the door promptly. A moment later, she returned, the messenger’s presence beyond the door vanished, and Celebrimbor was able to focus back on the problem of keeping Makalaure entertained while his mind churned through impossible long term solutions.
This worked well until the unmistakable sense of Galadriel when her power was up began to lay siege to the door.
“Celebrimbor?” she called sharply. The locked door rattled.
“What did you say?” he breathed to Narvi, not daring to be any louder.
“I said you were too exhausted by your work to come!”
It was an excuse that might well have Galadriel coming to demand he do his duty, but he would not have expected to hear her all but tearing off the door over it.
“Who’s that?” Makalaure asked, frowning at the shaking door.
He said it, of course, in Quenya.
A horrifying thought dawned on him. They had, after all, all been speaking the same tongue in here together. If Narvi hadn’t thought to switch -
“Did you say it in Quenya?”
Narvi frowned. “Ye-es. Oh. Um. Quick, who do you want me to blame for teaching it to me?”
“I’m not worried about that! Did you say ‘tired’ or ‘exhausted?’”
Surely not, surely not -
“The second one,” she said. “You said it was stronger - “
“She thinks I’m dying,” he said. The wood was beginning to splinter around the lock. He was immensely grateful he had made it himself; anything else would have yielded by now. Exhausted, she had said; exhausted like his great-grandmother had been exhausted, exhausted like all those who had died of grief in Beleriand had been exhausted, exhausted as Maedhros must have in those last days been exhausted -
“Back up, I’m coming out!” he called. Maybe he could still pass this off. He wasn’t exhausted, obviously; he was fine, and if she could see that, he could blame this on Narvi’s still developing grasp of the language and his own laziness and it would all be fine.
The door ceased its convulsions. He slipped out of it, keeping it as closed as he could.
“Sorry to worry you,” he said, trying to smile. “I think there’s been a miscommunication -”
Her eyes flickered over him, categorying every feature. “You’ve been strange since the audience yesterday,” she interrupted. “Did Annatar do something to you?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Why in Arda would you think that?”
“You’ve been avoiding him.”
He supposed it could be construed that way, but -
“And there is something very strange in your eyes.” Her own went to the still closed door. “You are being very secretive of late, Celebrimbor.”
“It’s nothing -”
“Just as your grandfather once was.”
He stiffened. There was only one grandfather of his that people ever concerned themselves with, though truthfully his mother’s father had been the more private of the pair. Feanor hadn’t been secretive, save for - well, save for those last few years, and one day of oddness was hardly enough to throw that in his face -
“I still remember how he looked when he showed up to court, right before he revealed the Silmarils. He looked half dead, Tyelpe. Don’t make the same mistake. There is nothing you can create that is worth more than your living presence here.” Her hand went to the knob again.
“Don’t,” he said, and the word held all the grief he had tried not to allow himself to feel.
She hesitated, the door opened only the faintest crack.
Through the crack, they could both hear Makalaure singing.
For a brief moment, he still had hope. Makalaure the child’s voice was exquisite, but it was in a higher register than it had been as an adult; perhaps -
“Maglor is here,” Galadriel said after a frozen moment. “Maglor.”
For a moment, the light in her eyes looked less like the gentle glow of the Trees and more like the all consuming fires that had devoured her mother’s kin at Alqualonde.
“Just wait a moment,” he begged, but she had already flung the door open, and the air was starting to crackle with her pent up, furious power.
Narvi jumped to her feet with a shout, but Galadriel had already frozen again, eyes locked on the little boy composing a nonsense song about sunlight as he hopscotched from square to square of it on the floor.
He finished the verse before he looked up at her. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Makalaure. Who are you? Do you know where my family is?”
Galadriel let out a strange ragged breath and then quite deliberately took a step back into the hallway and closed the door behind her.
For a long moment, she stayed very still.
“Did you do this?” she said at last.
“No,” he said immediately, horrified by the thought.
She nodded, once, then reverted to stillness.
Stillness wasn’t helpful, but he couldn’t bear to break it. Movement would mean an end to this temporary truce, and there were so many ways that could go horribly wrong.
He wasn’t sure how long they would have stood there if Elrond hadn’t come bursting around the corner.
“Celebrimbor! Galadriel sent word that you were ill - ”
“I’m not ill,” he protested automatically, though he felt ill now; ill and exhausted and wanting nothing more than to disappear back into his workshop and bar the door to the rest of the world while he collapsed on Makalaure’s pile of blankets.
“You look ill,” Elrond said, face creased with worry.
“Maglor’s here,” Galadriel said, still staring at the closed door.
Celebrimbor stared very hard at the engraving on the opposing wall so that he would not have to look at Elrond’s face as he heard this.
“And he’s ill?” Elrond said after a moment.
“No one’s ill!” he snapped at the same time Galadriel said, “In a manner of speaking.”
Celebrimbor took in a ragged breath and took a moment to appreciate the smoking wreckage of his frantic plans.
“My apologies,” he said at last. “Why don’t you both - why don’t you both come in,” that way they could at least avoid anyone else getting dragged into this just yet, “and we can discuss it.”
After many assurances and suspicious glances at the newcomers, Narvi at last agreed to leave to go deal with the actual business she had come to the city for. She promised to return quickly; it sounded vaguely like a threat.
With that at last negotiated, Celebrimbor turned around to see Elrond - talking with Makalaure? Examining him? Makalaure seemed happy at least, which quenched the first spark of terror in his chest. Elrond appeared to have given him something; a toy, he presumed, though why Elrond would have one of those on him -
Then Makalaure scampered over to the window to hold his new treasure to the light and a new horror blossomed.
“Elrond,” he choked out. “Did you just give the child a knife?”
There had been a comparatively brief period in Celebrimbor’s life when he had felt compelled to be the sensible one, mainly because at that point Atar everyone else around him appeared to have gone horrifically insane. Before then, there had never been any need; as the doted on only grandchild, he had always been surrounded by more than enough people delighted to step in at the first hint of trouble, and after - well, he had discovered he didn’t particularly enjoy being the sensible one, and no one had seemed to really expect it of him. The rest of the family, what little remained of it, seemed to have that part well covered.
Elrond, for example, was the definition of sensible.
Which was why he really had not expected Elrond, of all people, to give Makalaure a knife.
Unless, of course, that was Elrond being sensible, which was a terrifying possibility. It had occurred to him that Elrond might demand justice; he hadn’t thought Elrond would go so far as engineer an accidental kinslaying -
“He didn’t have one,” Elrond said in what he appeared to think was an explanation.
His tone was so very reasonable that Celebrimbor felt obliged to steal a quick glance at Galadriel just to make sure that he was, in fact, in the right here.
Her face was the very particular kind of serene that meant he was on his own.
“You don’t have any - safety concerns?” Celebrimbor tried, carefully non-accusatory, as he tried to edge closer to Makalaure without making any sudden movements.
He hadn’t tried to take anything from a child since he was a child himself; he frantically tried to remember how his family had coaxed things from him without him just gripping tighter and for the moment was coming up blank on any time they had tried.
“Of course I did,” Elrond said, face creased in confusion. “That’s why I gave him the knife.”
It was an impressive knife. Celebrimbor thought it had almost certainly been Maglor’s back before Beleriand drowned because he was almost certain it had been made by his father. It had been designed to pierce troll skulls if the occasion demanded it, and every inch of the blade looked the part. Exactly how Elrond had managed to - liberate it - before being ransomed back to Gil-Galad was one of the questions Celebrimbor had spent several decades determinedly not asking.
“You don’t think he’s too young for it?” He was beside Makalaure now; Makalaure finally noticed him and -
And offered it up to him to show it off. He let out a sigh of relief as he very gingerly took it.
Now how to distract him before he asked for it back?
Elrond’s face discovered new frontiers of bewilderment. “His hand fit the hilt well enough, but I have a few smaller ones if you think he’ll handle those better.”
Galadriel continued to be as impassive as one of his grandmother’s statues. More so, even; at least those always looked as if they might at any moment relent and take action.
. . . this was her revenge for not immediately agreeing with her about the Annatar issue, wasn’t it. Or for the existence of Maglor in Eregion in general.
Or perhaps she was just lost in memory because in the next moment, the marble cracked, and she was saying thoughtfully, “I remember Findarato teasing . . . Maglor . . . for never taking part in any of the court’s hunts. Maglor showed up at the next one side by side with Tyelkormo and took down a stag, but Findarato swore he saw Tyelkormo whispering instructions to him on how to skin the thing with his knife after; I don’t think he’d ever had any training on how to use a knife as anything approaching a weapon before then.”
Makalaure tugged at Celebrimbor’s tunic. Celebrimbor hastily tilted the knife away as if he was still examining the familiar hilt, but Makalaure didn’t ask for it back; instead, he whispered indignantly, “Tyelkormo can’t hunt. He can’t even walk yet.”
“She meant someone else,” Celebrimbor whispered hurriedly before turning his attention back to Elrond, who was looking at Galadriel as if she had announced Maglor had once declared music an unnecessary frivolity.
“He could take down two orcs with a knife before he had sung two words,” Elrond said. “While carrying Elros after Elros fell from a tree and broke his ankle. What - how old was he?”
Galadriel shrugged carelessly, gaze lost somewhere far beyond any of them. For a moment, the light of the Trees was particularly bright in her eyes. “I would have to go back and calculate the years, but I was a girl then, not quite old enough for the hunt myself; he must have been of age for a few decades by then, but the hunt had never interested him before Findarato made a point of it, so he had never bothered to be skilled at it. And of course, back then, none of us needed to be.”
Back then. As opposed to now, when it probably was for the best that even here in the city every adolescent elf eventually learned, and as opposed to the First Age, when -
“Elrond,” he said slowly. “Are you saying you knew how to fight with a knife when you were six years old?” That had been when they were taken, and surely it must have been before then if Elrond was looking at a child Makalaure’s age and expecting him to know; surely Maedhros hadn’t already been so actively death driven that he had decided to arm two hostages and teach them what to do with the weapons -
“Oh, no,” Elrond said, blinking. “No, I suppose they thought we would be safe in Sirion. Maedhros made Maglor teach us once we had to abandon Amon Ereb. We were seven by then. I suppose I can return the favor now. Unless you wanted to, of course,” he added hastily. “I’m sure your skills are more practiced than mine.”
Celebrimbor was still not quite sure what to make of Elrond’s determination to arm Makalaure.
Makalaure who, thankfully, was starting to blink and yawn in a way that made it quite clear last night’s interrupted sleep hadn’t been anywhere near enough, so that was as good an excuse as any to dodge any awkward questions from him or Elrond.
It was probably for the best that Makalaure slept through this next part anyway.
“So,” Celebrimbor said. “What are you going to do about this?”
He said it quietly because their council of war, such as it was, was centered around the nest of pillows and blankets where Makalaure had finally consented to burrow down for a nap.
Galadriel had claimed the window seat and held it with the dignity of a throne, an image slightly ruined by the pile of dwarvish toys Makalaure had left there; Elrond was busily turning one of the workshop tables into a proper writing space and to all appearances was settling in to take notes.
Celebrimbor was standing, and his hands were quite deliberately filled with small pieces of his latest project so he wouldn’t be tempted to reach for anything more dramatic.
Elrond blinked. “Shouldn’t it be ‘what are we going to do about this?”
If Elrond was going to cede the ground that Celebrimbor’s opinion bore weight here, Celebrimbor was going to take it: “I don’t want him executed.” Legally, the precedent was - messy. Eol had been executed for less; Eonwe had declared for mercy. He thought, however, that Galadriel would not let a Feanorian scion resort to arguing in favor of the Valar’s edicts now, so he sought for other ground.
He came from a family of some of the most famous wielders of rhetoric to walk the earth. And yet all he could grasp for now was -
“He kept writing to me. All of them wrote to me after Nargothrond at least once, trying to figure out what had happened, but I burned those almost immediately. Maglor was the only one that never gave up writing, even though I didn’t answer; letter after letter that just pretended nothing had ever happened, that he still - ” He swallowed and tried again. He still wasn’t sure how most of these letters had been delivered; a Feanorian messenger would not have been welcomed in Nargothrond then. But time after time, the letters had still arrived. “Even after Nargothrond fell and we fled to Balar, right up until -” He stopped and knew this had been a mistake.
“Until Doriath,” Galadriel finished for him, and her voice sounded like earth falling over a grave. She had long left Doriath by then, he knew, left it as soon as Melian abandoned it, but it didn’t change the wound.
“Until Doriath,” he said, and knew it was a concession.
“And after,” Elrond of all people interjected. “He sent one with Elros and I, remember?” He frowned. “You did read it, didn’t you?”
They had indeed presented him with a letter. Not during their official welcome by the king, when they had presented Gil-Galad with a letter, but later, sneaking into his tent to present it to him privately. Celebrimbor had been fairly certain that it was a test and had turned it over to Gil-Galad promptly.
But he had read it first.
“The other letters were lost in Nargothrond,” he said, avoiding this. “Everything else was lost.”
“But you kept those,” Elrond said, nodding. “Maedhros helped with them, you know, or at least the one we were there for; he told Maglor that it was a pointless gesture and that he shouldn’t bother, but he kept looking over his shoulder and making suggestions anyway.”
Celebrimbor’s throat went unaccountably tight.
He could not defend it. He would not try. He had kept the letters, the one after Doriath and the one Gil-Galad had promptly returned, both.
It was only that it had been all he had left of his family, and he had not been able to bear to give them up.
He’d had so much from his uncles, once. From his father. From his mother. From his grandparents. Gifts upon gifts.
The confident assurance that their time was his for the asking.
And now he had the memories of what they’d taught him and two letters from Maglor that Maedhros had reluctantly contributed to - and Makalaure himself, lying there snoring, helpless, with only Celebrimbor to defend him.
They had taught him rhetoric. They had taught him songs of power.
And now, all he could fumblingly produce was, “He won’t hurt anyone. Not like this. We can’t - it wouldn’t be right, to execute him.”
There should be more he could say. They had done wrong, great wrong, but it was not all they had done, nor had their kindness been confined solely to him: Maedhros had given all he had to the fight against the Enemy and been praised by even the most begrudging of the Nolofinweans for his valor, and his other uncles had not been far behind in their deeds. Maglor, for one, had taken the least defended position against the Enemy without complaint and fought furiously to uphold his charge.
Even his father and Uncle Celegorm - even they - when Himlad had fallen and they’d been forced to retreat to the edge of Doriath, kept by Melian’s magics from retreating further, when they had heard of how hard-pressed Orodreth was, how unlikely that he should survive a retreat, they had taken one look at each other and ridden out from their own extremity to aid him. It had been an all but suicidal charge, but there had been no hesitation: ride out to save him and his followers they had.
They had been welcomed into Nargothrond for it. Later, Orodreth would say that was why they had done it, and Celebrimbor had bitten his tongue because perhaps it had been. Perhaps he had known his kin so little that he had misinterpreted that look between them; perhaps it had been a cold calculation after all. He had felt then that he could believe anything of his father.
But it hadn’t looked like cold calculation.
It had looked like them deciding that riding out to save a cousin was a better way than many to die.
He could say that now, even though Maglor’d had no part of any of that particular act of valor. He could say it, but there was so much else that could be said in opposition to it that he could not bear to begin.
Elrond turned, very pointedly, to look at Galadriel.
“He did much harm,” she said, not looking at any of them, the fond remembrance from earlier vanished from her voice.
Celebrimbor would have spoken until he noticed that her eyes kept darting to Elrond and away again as if it was him she expected to speak against it.
Elrond kept looking at her in expectant interest.
“His Oath explains it but does not excuse it,” she insisted heatedly after a silence that scraped at Celebrimbor’s soul. “It was his choice to swear it, and it was a foolish one.”
“Alas for foolish words said,” Elrond said. His tone suggested this was in agreement.
Galadriel apparently did not take it as one because her cheeks flushed red, and she said with even greater heat, “My words to Eonwe were not - ” She cut herself off. “Will you say nothing!” she at last cried, and Celebrimbor was not sure to which of them it was directed.
“You’ll wake him,” Elrond said, and indeed, Makalaure had stirred at the sharp sound of her cry.
A hummed note from Elrond soon sent him off to sleep again.
Galadriel’s eyes were locked on the child the whole time.
“You speak,” she hissed to Elrond. “I know your vote, we’ve heard Celebrimbor’s, what does mine matter - ”
Celebrimbor startled. Her vote would break the tie, surely, yet -
Yet perhaps not, he realized, as the evidence slowly settled into a new picture in his mind. An obvious one, when his thoughts were not quite so clouded by the certainty that he already knew the answer.
“I have been told my opinion on this is unreliable,” Elrond said cheerfully, and Galadriel flinched back as if struck. “I wait for the wisdom of my elders.”
She almost spat something back at him, and Celebrimbor was terrifyingly sure he knew what it would be in that moment of wrath, but she bit it back and looked at the child again.
“Oh, of course I don’t want him dead!” she hissed in a much quieter whisper this time. “If you must hear me say it! I wish to strike him, I wish to shout at him, though he has denied me even that satisfaction now, but even were he here in his fullness, I would not have him dead. There is not enough left of our house to waste it in vengeance.” She looked around the room bitterly. “I remember when we could not have fit a family council in this room, and now look at us. Even if my husband and daughter were here and Gil-Galad with them, we would have room enough and to spare.”
“We could fill it still,” Elrond protested. “Elros’s line - ”
Galadriel slashed her hand dismissively. “Elros’s memory is all but vanished from that line and you know it. When will you concede it?”
“I beg your pardon,” Elrond said with enough frost in his voice to shame the Helcaraxe. “But I will not concede it even should Arda Remade come upon us and my brother himself should return to argue it.”
Makalaure shifted uneasily in his nest.
Galadriel was the first to look away.
Elrond was the first to break the silence, and when he did, he had taken a more conciliatory tone. “I will concede,” he said, “that you are quite correct: far too much has been lost already. It stands to us to save what we can.”
“Little as that may be,” Celebrimbor said, trying to be conciliatory himself, but Elrond shook his head.
“It is more than I once dreamed!” he said. “Look about us! Look how far we’ve come from the quarrels that once divided our people! Look how far we’ve come from the wreck of Beleriand!”
To a child of Aman, Ost-in-Edhil was a pale shadow of what once was. Celebrimbor knew it and knew with grim determination just how far he had to go to fulfill his lofty visions of the place.
To a child of Sirion - to a child of that poisoned, blood soaked world where children needed knives and the knowledge how to use them if they were to have the slightest prayer to live - to a child that had known more relatives as names on long destroyed graves or lists of enemies than as beloved relatives from which to coax one more story, one more song -
It was not a happy thought.
And yet it did make him look around his workshop in new wonder.
“How far we’ve come,” he agreed quietly.
“How far indeed,” Galadriel concurred, the bitterness seeping from her voice at last. “And we can go further yet if we still look to salvage what we can. So: we save one cousin from Mandos. And what do we tell our cousin the king?”
Celebrimbor’s first instinct was to tell him nothing. “What if Gil-Galad wants to put him on trial?”
Elrond looked at where Makalaure was currently curled around a wooden replica of a dwarvish war pig. “He might,” he said, extremely doubtfully. “But only if he thought it would settle things, and I doubt it even then. The optics would be terrible.”
“But if he did,” Celebrimbor protested. “And someone argued for execution - “
“Under these circumstances?” Galadriel said with an incredulity that struck him as a little rich, considering.
“And he doesn’t really favor the Turgon approach to justice,” Elrond added. “He said it sets a dangerous precedent.” He scratched more notes on his parchment before adding, “Still. It would be divisive if his presence became widely known. The king might prefer not to know until he has to.”
“You’re writing to him as we speak,” Galadriel said flatly.
“Oh, no,” Elrond said. “I’m writing to my cousin Gil-Galad. I’ve got the plain sealing wax out and everything. Writing to the king is an entirely different matter.”
Galadriel looked at Elrond even more flatly for a moment before giving up on this and turning back to Celebrimbor. “We could send him across the sea to his mother. I’m sure he would agree to go in his current condition.”
Elrond paused as he reached for the wax. For a moment, the set of his mouth looked distinctly unhappy. “Do you think the Valar would agree?”
Celebrimbor . . . didn’t know. “We could ask Annatar, I suppose,” he said reluctantly. “He should know.”
Neither Galadriel nor Elrond looked pleased with this suggestion.
“All of this presumes that we can’t get him back to his normal condition,” Elrond pointed out. “We don’t know that yet.”
“If we can, someone will definitely argue we execute him.”
“We could lock him up in a tower instead,” Galadriel suggested, presumably facetiously. “He’d be out of trouble in both senses, and we could visit on holidays.”
“That sounds like an excellent way to provoke my lot of Feanorians into raiding your lot of them,” Elrond put forth. “Of course, it might not matter what we plan. He might just sneak off again.”
The problem with all of these solutions, Celebrimbor reflected, was that no one suggesting them was actually in favor of any of them; it was just one type of unpalatability set against another.
In the interest of kicking that problem down the road, he raised another point worth discussing. “How do you think it happened in the first place?”
The question sat uncomfortably between them for a moment.
“He could have done it to himself,” Galadriel said at long last, voice carefully neutral. “It has let him avoid several natural consequences of returning to elvish society.”
Celebrimbor shook his head. “But Narvi and her people found him so far from the city. Anything could have happened. Surely he would have planned it better?”
The silence this time was skeptical.
“He has been alone for a long time,” Galadriel said delicately, a point that was both inarguable and inconducive to further discussion.
“The Valar could have done it,” Elrond suggested as an alternative.
“They could have,” Celebrimbor conceded. “But why?”
Elrond shrugged. “They turned my mother into a bird,” he reminded them.
“Yes, but - ” He turned helplessly to Galadriel in the hopes that while she was saying diplomatically delicate things, she could think up a way to delicately mention that Elwing had been throwing herself out of a window at the time.
She did. “If he was - falling - I don’t think they would have thought turning him into a child was a solution. A crow, perhaps.”
Elrond’s face suggested what he thought of diplomatic delicacy in this instance. “If he was considering falling, one of them might consider it a solution.”
Ah. That.
Put a different spin on things.
They hadn’t done it for Maedhros.
But the Valar had regretted past inaction before.
He wanted, very badly, to pick Makalaure up as if holding onto him now would possibly help anything. He restrained himself, barely, and was grateful when Galadriel offered up another suggestion, even though that suggestion was -
“A shadow has been stirring. He could have come in conflict with it.”
“We’ve no proof of that,” he said, grateful for the familiar argument.
“I have Seen it - ”
“There would probably still be signs of the fight if he did,” Elrond said thoughtfully. “It could tell us something.”
Which was sensible enough to draw the argument up short.
“It would,” Galadriel agreed.
“Narvi didn’t find anything,” Celebrimbor said slowly, “but she was looking for a camp near the road, the kind a family or a caravan would have made. Maglor probably wouldn’t have camped so close, and she might not have realized how far he could have made it once he was Makalaure.”
Which was a sensible and useful thought, right up until he realized that while Makalaure was very much still curled up in his nest of blankets, his eyes were very much not still closed.
Galadriel, the coward, had suggested she could go search for traces of the possible fight and any dangerous enemies that might still be lingering near the city with Narvi as a guide, which would have left Celebrimbor and Elrond to explain things to Makalaure.
Or not to explain them, which Celebrimbor was still eagerly interested in exploring the possibilities of.
Elrond had cheerfully pointed out that Makalaure was likely to be useful in finding their way to back to whichever section of the forest he had traveled before reaching the road, even if he didn’t remember the camp itself, and so somehow this had turned into all of them slipping out of the city as the twilight faded.
Traveling at night was not, of course, ideal, but the moon was bright enough for elvish eyes to handle, and it would help their absence go undiscovered, an important point unless they wanted to explain it to yet more people.
“You were talking about me,” Makalaure said stubbornly. He had obediently - if mulishly - kept silent from under his cloak while they were slipping through the streets of the city, but now that they were on the wide sandy road beside the quietly flowing waters of the Sirannon, he was determined to get his answers. “You thought I was someone else.”
Surely they could still deny it. He had been half asleep. They could just -
“Yes,” Elrond said calmly. “Here, walk with me, and I’ll tell you all about it.” He offered his hand.
Makalaure was just old enough to hesitate to take it in front of everyone, but he didn’t hesitate long; he latched on quickly.
“You can’t just tell him!” Celebrimbor hissed.
Elrond blinked at him. “We can’t lie to him,” he said, as if the idea of lying to children was obviously ridiculous. “And he deserves to know.” He turned back to Makalaure and said, as if he was explaining the plans for this little trip, “When I met you, you were quite a bit older, and you had decided to be called Maglor. A few days ago, you ran into a spell that made you young again; we’re trying to figure out what happened and fix it.”
. . . as explanations went, it did at least have the virtue of jumping over the more awkward bits.
Makalaure accepted this as truth which - well, fair enough; their family hadn’t been in the habit of lying to their children, so if an adult said it, he supposed Makalaure would believe it.
That did not mean he was not entirely unupset by it; his shoulders had hunched in as he looked around. “Then where’s Amil and Atar and Maitimo and Tyelkormo? Why aren’t they helping?”
Elrond paused for just the slightest moment. “When you were older, you decided to cross the great ocean into the east,” he explained. “Right now, none of those people are on this side of the sea.”
”None of my family came with me?”
“Oh, no! That’s not true at all! Celebrimbor’s here, and he’s your nephew, and Galadriel over there is your cousin, and she has a daughter, and in Lindon there’s Gil-Galad, who is . . . also your kin.”
“And you,” Galadriel pointed out.
“And me,” Elrond agreed with a bright smile. “And all my brother’s descendants, so really, you have quite a lot of family here!”
Celebrimbor was somewhat concerned that Makalaure would want the details of just how Elrond was related to him - or worse, how they had met - but as they followed the road into the eaves of the forest, Makalaure instead twisted around to consider Celebrimbor himself.
“Are you Maitimo’s or Tyelkormo’s?” he asked doubtfully.
For a moment, he considered lying, just to keep things simple; he had already disclaimed his father once, after all, far more dramatically; this would hardly signify.
But in front of Elrond’s brightly expectant gaze and his insistence on honesty - in front, for that matter, of Narvi, to whom he had confided things he had not trusted to elvish ears -
In front of Makalaure himself, wholly trusting, he found he could not.
“Neither,” he said. “You ended up with four more brothers; I’m the son of the one named Curufinwe. They named him after your atar because they looked so similar.”
Makalaure considered this. Celebrimbor wasn’t sure which question about his father he dreaded most - where he was, why he wasn’t present, why Celebrimbor’s voice sounded so strange when he talked about him -
“Am I taller than him?” Makalaure asked.
Galadriel, helpfully, burst into peals of laughter.
“Um.” It was a close run thing, but - “No.”
Makalaure’s shoulders collapsed into a sulk.
Narvi patted his arm consolingly. “Cheer up,” she said. “You’ll always be taller than me.”
They were a surprisingly short distance into the forest when Elrond stopped and peered at some faint sign in the undergrowth beside the road. His eyes, Celebrimbor realized belatedly, would have a bit more trouble seeing details in the night than his own did; Elrond crouched beside what was of interest before finally making a sound of satisfaction.
Admittedly, being able to see the details wasn’t helping Celebrimbor identify the use of them much. As far as tracking went, he had always been a disappointment to the more hunt-inclined of his uncles.
“Is this where you found the road, Makalaure?” Elrond checked.
Narvi startled. “But it’s so far from where he crossed paths with us!”
Makalaure looked faintly embarrassed. “I couldn’t hear anyone when I called,” he said. “I might have run most of the way. I didn’t realize the city was so close if I went the other way.”
Celebrimbor took a moment to imagine Makalaure showing up alone at the gates of the city. “It was probably for the best,” he said hastily. “So it was here?”
Makalaure looked around. “I think so,” he said uncertainly.
Elrond, meanwhile, was moving carefully off the path. “Yes, see? You were running, weren’t you?”
Makalaure nodded, following after Elrond. “Yes. I hadn’t tried calling for anyone yet; I thought they were still chasing me for the song-tag. I wasn’t it anymore, so I didn’t want them to catch up.” His lip wobbled a little as he was reminded just how far he had managed to remove himself from his brother and whatever other long lost playmates he’d had.
They followed the trail from there, Elrond in the lead. It probably shouldn’t have surprised Celebrimbor that he could follow the tracks so well. While Celebrimbor had spent the last days of Beleriand relatively safe on Balar, Elrond had been in the wilds; there would have been ever scarcer prey to hunt and ever more numerous monsters to avoid.
The trees were old here, and relatively easy to move between. Celebrimbor’s greatest concern was how they blocked out some of the light. Narvi was used to dim light, but there was a limit, and Elrond - but there was more light up ahead; there must be a clearing of some sort, or -
It was, he supposed, a kind of clearing.
Mostly, he thought of it as a crater, but it had certainly been cleared of trees. Several appeared to be half mulched at the bottom of said crater.
“What happened?” Narvi breathed.
Even now, faint echoes of songs of power resounded in the air.
“He fought part of the shadow,” Galadriel said, with just a hint of smug triumph.
“Yes,” Celebrimbor said faintly. “I do believe you were right.”
At which point, it became obvious that having Makalaure in the forest with them was madness; wherever that remnant of the Enemy had gone after this battle, it was almost certainly still somewhere under its eaves, which meant this was no place for a child.
“You and the others could take him back; I could stay and hunt the enemy until you can send reinforcements,” Galadriel offered.
For just a moment, absurdly, he felt as if it was not Galadriel he was staring down but Finrod.
Elrond - who for some reason was edging down the sides of the crater - paused precariously. “Absolutely not.”
“I’m the one with the most responsibility for this,” Celebrimbor said. “I could stay - ”
“We have enough songs about relatives going off to heroic last stands, thank you,” Elrond called up as descended into the crater. “None of us are going alone anywhere until we sort this out. We’ll all go back together.”
Since Celebrimbor admittedly didn’t think he could actually productively track the enemy in the forest, he found himself short on arguments. Instead, he walked up to the edge to see what exactly Elrond thought he was doing.
“I think your foe must have stood here,” Elrond called up to Makalaure from a patch of ground by the edge of the crater that looked particularly disturbed. The side of the crater there seemed to have caved in. “And then you . . . ” He darted over the mulched remains of several trees. “Ah-ha!” He pulled a square of worn leather from the rubble.
A satchel, Celebrimbor realized quickly. It was a crude thing. If it had been Maglor’s, it certainly had been acquired only after everything had fallen apart.
Elrond opened the flap just enough to peer inside. A quick rummage was enough to satisfy him because he closed it again with a snap. “That’s your cloak inside,” he informed Maglor. “The nights have been warm lately; you must not have felt the need for it.” The strap of the satchel was torn, Celebrimbor saw; it must have been damaged in the fight.
“Can you see any tracks from here?” he asked.
Elrond leaped lightly back to the top of the slope. “Makalaure’s, of course, we’ve already found. The other is . . . trickier. I could attempt it, but I would prefer more reinforcements when we did.”
“The city it is then,” Narvi said cheerily, and this time none argued it.
The sun was well on its way to rising by the time they neared the city again, and Makalaure had been drooping so much that Elrond had scooped him up in his arms.
Galadriel’s thoughts were still on this definitive evidence of the shadow she had long glimpsed in small signs. “What exactly happened before you found Narvi, Makalaure?”
He yawned and curled deeper into Elrond’s shoulder. “I was playing song-tag with Maitimo and the others,” he said sleepily. “I already told you that.”
“Didn’t it startle you when you were suddenly in the woods?”
He looked confused. “We were already in the woods. I was chasing Maitimo, and then I tripped a little, and I thought it was just a little dip in the hill, but it must have been bigger than I thought, because then I was in that deep spot we were just in.”
That was the moment then; the moment his memory of his childhood ceased and segued into the far more dangerous present.
But Makalaure had kept going. “And then I saw the maia, and I realized he wanted to play too because he started singing a song to throw at me.”
The chill of the dawn suddenly felt very, very cold.
Celebrimbor had been assuming that by the time Makalaure had regained his senses, his foe was gone; fled, if he was wounded himself, or departed in assumed triumph.
Elrond’s face was very pale as he asked, “What song did he try to throw?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Makalaure said carelessly. “It wasn’t his turn anyway, I was it, so I threw one at him first. It was the mud song,” he added after a moment. “It made him fall and then the mud started falling on top of him too, and I didn’t mean for it too, and I wouldn’t have thrown such a strong song at any of the others, but he was so tall and I didn’t realize he’d fall so hard - ”
Celebrimbor pictured a maia, thrown to the edge of the slope by some previous song, sliding down it in a cascade of mud only for more mud to come avalanching after, even as he tried to sing murder at a child.
He wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry.
“So then he was it since I’d hit him with my song, so I ran,” Makalaure concluded.
“Good work,” Narvi said into the silence, reaching up to pat him firmly on the back. “Good instincts.”
Over the top of her head, Elrond mouthed at Celebrimbor, I told you he needed a knife.
Celebrimbor was going to pretend he hadn't seen that.
“A maia,” Galadriel said thoughtfully as they drew near the gates of the city. The guards startled a little to see them but hastily waved them in. “Now how many maia do we know that are in the area?”
Celebrimbor instantly grasped where she was going with this. “Oh, surely now,” he protested. “Annatar is an emissary of the Valar, he’s hardly going to - ”
“There he is,” Makalaure said, pointing sleepily.
Sure enough, there was Annatar hurrying toward the gate. Probably he’d been looking for one of them - or all of them, if anyone had realized the city’s entire leadership had vanished overnight.
“ - there’s the maia I was playing with.”
Before he quite ordered it to, he found his hand had drawn his father’s knife.
Annatar paused before their little group. He was smiling anxiously.
Right up until his eyes locked on little Makalaure.
“Ah, you’ve found him! I had been hoping to ask for your help with that.”
“Explain yourself,” Galadriel said in a voice like ice.
Annatar hesitated for just a moment. “It’s an awkward matter,” he confessed. “I do not like to say it in public . . . but very well. The Valar, you see, have changed their minds; one of the tasks they gave me was sending him back across the sea to face justice."
Which settled, Celebrimbor supposed with a sinking heart, their earlier question of if the Valar would permit Makalaure to sail.
It did not answer the question of if in his present state they would allow him to return to his mother.
Annatar continued. "When I found him skulking outside of your fair city, I leapt on the opportunity. Unfortunately, I underestimated his cunning. I’m sure all of you understand better than most the dangers of doing that.” He smiled winningly.
“Justice?” Makalaure asked with a frown. His eyes were still blinking tiredly, but he was lifting his head up now.
“For all the murders,” Annatar said helpfully. “And the kidnappings. Possibly treason; that one’s still under debate.”
Celebrimbor swallowed. “Eonwe said to let them go.”
“He did,” Annatar agreed with a wince. “Unfortunately, he really only had provisional authority; once he reported back to Manwe there were a few things . . . well, let’s just say there’s a reason they decided to send someone else the next time they needed an emissary.”
“So you turned him into a child,” Elrond said, his voice for once just as cold as Galadriel’s.
“Unintentionally!” Annatar assured them. “Unintended entirely; when our songs collided, I found myself blown off my feet, and him, well, quite vanished. I hadn’t been sure what had become of him until now. I had been trying to get a private audience with you to discuss it,” he added reproachfully to Celebrimbor. “I thought you ought to be involved in any effort to investigate it lest anyone think the Valar doubted your . . . loyalty.”
His eyes lingered on where Celebrimbor was still holding his drawn knife.
Makalaure, meanwhile, was looking back and forth between everyone in the standoff, eyes wide with hurt and confusion.
“If you’ll just give him to me, I can get him off your hands and off to justice before returning - ” Annatar reached for the child as he spoke.
Elrond stepped firmly back. Makalaure was clinging to him now with what must be painful tightness, but Elrond gave no appearance of noticing. “You say the Valar asked for him to be sent back,” he said. “Surely when they said this, they intended for you to bring them the man, not the child.”
“Well, yes,” Annatar said, smile faltering once more. “It was an accident, as I said; I’m sure Manwe will be able to do something about all this before the trial begins . . . ”
“But you cannot now? You cannot undo the work of your own power?”
Annatar at last dropped his hands. “Not . . . without undue risk. I think it very likely harm might come of it. Still, if all of you are agreed that it is for the best, I suppose - ”
“No,” Celebrimbor said at once. He looked to the others for support.
Galadriel was still watching with narrowed eyes. Narvi was . . . Narvi had vanished, he realized with a start. He wasn’t sure when she had slipped away.
“No,” Galadriel repeated slowly.
“An unnecessary risk,” Elrond agreed. “But if he is to remain as he is, then surely the situation has changed. The Valar have a precedent for preferring methods of preventing further harm over punishment; since he currently poses no threat, their wishes may have changed.”
“If the Valar choose not to prosecute him upon his arrival, that will of course - ”
“But the Valar have never forced any to sail,” Galadriel said. “They have forbidden it; they have encouraged it. They have not required it. And for those who sail there is no returning. If it is not certain that they still wish to restrain Maglor, then it is certain that he should not sail until you have determined their new wishes.”
Annatar appeared aghast. “You are not serious,” he said, turning between them. “Lady Galadriel, after what your brother suffered from his family’s treachery after all his generosity, I had thought you wiser than to be drawn in by such pretenses of weakness.”
"I have grown wise enough to see many things," she agreed, eyes sharp. "The need to overlook protections for children is not one of them."
He shook his head. “Lord Elrond, I know I failed to find favor with you in Lindon, but surely you of all people have lost too much to his crimes to risk a delay in seeking justice for them.”
Makalaure was shaking, Celebrimbor realized. Elrond had braced a hand on his back as if to shield him.
“I have lost too much,” Elrond said as if agreeing. “Far too much to surrender more without a fight.”
Annatar turned at last in appeal to Celebrimbor. “Surely you can see that so long as he remains here, dissent and division will be stirred up among your people. It will bring ruin on all you have sought to build.”
He had built much. A beautiful city, full of once disparate elves who had at last stopped quarreling.
Or at least, stopped quarreling as much as the Nolder ever did.
But he had built it as a haven for all, and he did not intend to yield that principle now, of all times.
“It will bring old wounds to the surface,” he agreed. “Perhaps we can draw the poison from them that way. Go back to Aman, Lord Annatar. Come back and tell us what new tidings the Valar send.”
Annatar shook his head once more in disbelief. “If I am not wanted, I shall go,” he agreed mournfully. “Perhaps you will be more inclined to see reason when I return.”
He vanished through the gates of the city.
Galadriel watched him go with narrow eyes. “I do not trust him.”
“No,” Elrond agreed, in a harder voice than Celebrimbor had yet heard from him. Then, louder: “At ease!”
In the shadows of the alleyways that branched from the great road that led through the gate, a faint clatter indicated a reluctant stowing of weaponry. Elrond’s escort filtered into the open road almost sheepishly.
Most of them, Celebrimbor noted, were wearing a subtle Feanorian star.
Or not so subtle, as the case might be.
There was also a substantial contingent of dwarves.
“Seemed things might turn ugly,” Narvi explained, jogging over. “Went to grab the lads, then bumped into his lot going half frantic looking for everyone and thought they might as well come too.”
“We weren’t going to fight him,” Celebrimbor said in exasperation.
Narvi looked pointedly at his still drawn knife. “Of course not,” she said. “Never crossed your mind.”
Celebrimbor ended up being the one to carry Makalaure back to the workshop. He probably could have taken him somewhere else now; rumors must be halfway around the city. But this was where Makalaure knew, and he was upset enough without further changes.
Celebrimbor had hoped Makalaure was exhausted enough to fall asleep without further questions.
Unfortunately, it appeared the Doom of the Noldor was still in effect, and luck was in short supply for Feanor’s house.
“Is that why Amil and Atar aren’t here to help?” Makalaure asked when he was tucked back into his pile of blankets and pillows. “I hurt people?”
Celebrimbor wished, very badly and very unfairly, that Elrond was here. He appeared to have a gift for soothing understatement when it came to summarizing the First Age.
“No,” he settled on because it was true; grandmother had left long before Alqualonde, and grandfather had been leading the charge there.
Makalaure set his jaw stubbornly. “But I did hurt people.”
He had debated the relative virtues and vices of his uncle to Galadriel and Elrond and succeeded purely on the basis of grace he had never expected; he had not prepared to repeat the argument with Makalaure himself.
“You made an oath,” he settled on saying. “Things had gone very wrong - in a way that was not in the slightest your fault - and you made an oath to your atar to try to help him set part of it right. You just . . . you didn’t think the promise through enough, and it pushed you to do bad things.”
“He said I killed people,” Makalaure said in a very small voice.
And in gentle Aman, that was unthinkable; not just wrong, but unimaginably wrong.
It was so, so tempting to lie to him.
But if he really was stuck like this for now, then others wouldn’t. Better he hear the truth now from someone who loved him anyway.
“You did,” he admitted. “You did, and you had reasons, but it was still wrong, and the harm was still done.” But he couldn’t leave it there. “You also fought for more years than you can currently imagine against a greater evil than you can currently dream of imagining. You betrayed our kin beside the sea, and you killed a traitor that would have sent us all into the darkness in a battle of unnumbered tears. You divided our people with your need to fulfill your oath, and you held our people together when many would have sunk into despair. There are those that now curse your name, and there are those that today would have died for you. You were not just one thing, Makalaure.”
Makalaure considered this.
It wasn’t fair to put all this on him, not when he had no context for it, but Celebrimbor didn’t know what else to do.
“What am I to you?” Makalaure asked at last, and he asked as if his whole heart depended on it.
Celebrimbor drew in a shuddering breath. “You are my uncle,” he said quietly. “And you never, not once, gave up on me.” Even now. Even now, Maglor had lurked, not deep in the wilderness, but just outside of his city. “So I’m not going to give up on you.”
Makalaure nodded, at least a little comforted, and at last allowed himself to drift off to sleep.
Once he was, Celebrimbor let out a long breath.
It was - not over. Not even close.
But they were past a hurdle.
Elrond had handed over Maglor’s satchel at the same time as Makalaure; he drew it close now. There was the cloak, just as Elrond had said, worn threadbare at the edges. It took up much of the satchel; once it was removed, there was just -
Light.
Gleaming, perfect light.
He stared at it, frozen, for a long moment.
Had Elrond seen - ?
Very gently, almost fearfully, he reached for the gem.
It looked very strange in the light of the sun.
He held it for just a moment before nestling it in Makalaure’s hand. The child wouldn’t recognize it, of course, but when he woke, he would recognize the light. One small piece of home.
The moment the gem touched him, the light flared.
Glorious.
Burning.
He reached for it, cursing - Why had he not thought - ?
It was not a child’s hand he touched when he reached for it.
Maglor was there staring back at him.
The silmaril fell to the floor as Celebrimbor knelt, staring.
The light, he supposed, had burned away all illusion until only the truth remained, and the truth, of course, was that Makalaure was long gone, grown in ways kind and cruel, courageous and cowardly, into Maglor.
Into his uncle, who was far too thin and far too scarred and far too tall for Makalaure’s pile of pillows.
“Celebrimbor,” Maglor said, blinking in shock, before he jolted into movement, reaching for his weapon, pushing to his feet. “Go, you have to run - ”
“All’s well,” he protested, but to his feet he went, propelled by long instinct. “All’s well, we’re safe, we’re in Ost-in-Edhil. Do you - Do you remember the last few days?”
Maglor paused, swaying, before shaking his head. Celebrimbor wasn’t quite sure if it was a denial or just a refusal to address it. “You have to warn the city,” he said. “He’s here, he’s almost to your gates - ”
“Who?” he asked in bewilderment.
“The maia I failed to stop.” Maglor paused for just a moment in his frantic motion. “Sauron.”
Celebrimbor froze.
Then -
Then Annatar -
Sauron.
He was gone, he tried to tell himself, he was out of the gates -
But he certainly wouldn’t be returning to the Valar for instructions.
“I have to warn the others,” he said, turning for the door, and Maglor didn’t stop him.
He ran, hurtling down the corridor, wishing for once that he had lost that argument and there really were guards outside of every door he happened to be in so that he could send them hurtling in separate directions before it finally hit him what he was doing, and he stumbled to a halt.
Turned.
Ran back.
Maglor was still in the workshop. Bent over the same desk Elrond had used the day before.
Like Elrond had been, he was writing a letter.
He stopped as Celebrimbor burst back into the room.
“I am not letting you vanish behind my turned back,” Celebrimbor said between gasps of breath.
“It’s better that way,” Maglor said without looking at him. “And it will be more useful to you; I’ll go after him and weaken him as much as I can.”
“You’ll stay here and help us fight him properly,” Celebrimbor countered. “We’re stronger together.”
Maglor wavered.
Celebrimbor drew closer and placed a hand on his shoulder: at first a tentative touch then a leverage point to pull him into a desperate embrace.
“Please, uncle,” he whispered, and he didn’t know what he’d do if Maglor refused him again. “I told you I hadn’t given up on you, and I meant it. Don’t give up on me now.”
At last, hesitantly, Maglor returned the embrace. “Never,” he said, and it had all the force of an oath.
"Then you'll stay?" he checked because he had learned his lesson about assuming.
Still, Maglor hesitated, but at last he yielded. "I'll stay," he agreed. "Until you're safe."
It was a dangerous limit to set out on a promise outside of Aman.
Celebrimbor decided not to remind him of that.