High in the Clean Blue Air - Chapter Twenty Three

[starspray]

Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: T
Characters: Maglor, Elrond, Maedhros, various others
Warnings: References to torture and trauma
Summary: Maglor keeps a promise, and comes to Valinor, only to find the ghosts he thought he'd left behind are alive and waiting for him.
Note: This fic is a sequel to Clear Pebbles of the Rain, which is itself a sequel to Unhappy Into Woe.

Prologue / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

 

It was very dark, and very cold. Iron bit into his ankles and his wrists, and the heavy chains were a weight on his chest that he was not strong enough to shift. His mouth hurt, and he tasted blood. When he turned his head he glimpsed his brothers and his father, all ghostly, with dark eyes that held no light at all. When he tried to speak he couldn’t open his lips, and his throat would make no sound. 

Panic rose, and he tried to get up, tried to move, but the chains were too heavy. Then heat bloomed, and a pair of yellow eyes wreathed in flame opened in the dark above him, and a hand like hot iron gripped his throat. The brand on his chest erupted in burning pain. The voice, when it came, was like like a raging forest fire, all heat and rage, and also like the scream of metal grinding over stone. Laid over it, speaking at almost the same time, was his father’s voice—not as he had been long ago in the dark of Tirion, loud and strong and fey, but as he was now, quiet and sad and almost soft, jarring against the horrible discord of the voice of the Necromancer.

The great singer of the Noldor—

Canafinwë—

The last and least of the Sons of Fëanor— 

—the crack of a whip sliced over his back, and he screamed—knives cut into his arms, orcs laughing and jeering all around him—

Cáno, I never wanted—

Do you think you have suffered here? You have not—not yet—

His chest burned, and he couldn’t fill his lungs, couldn’t breathe through the heat and the thick smell of blood in the air—

—what was it, Cáno, the worst thing that I did?

Fëanor’s body erupted in flame before their eyes as his spirit fled, and when the fire died away there was nothing, only ashes already scattering in the frigid north wind.

—last and least—

The world was breaking around him, falling apart, falling into the sea, and he was alone. There was no one left, no one to hear him screaming at the red and roiling sky, no one to care if he screamed his spirit out of his body and into the Void. 

—will sing no more.

Maglor jerked awake, tried to sit up, and found something on his chest keeping him from moving or even breathing. He tried to push it off but he couldn’t even make his arms work, and he couldn’t make a sound—his voice was gone—he couldn’t—

“Huan! Get off him, Huan!” Daeron’s voice sliced through the blind panic like a knife, and the weight on Maglor’s chest abruptly lifted. He jerked up, but his lungs still wouldn’t work and he thought he heard the jangling of chains, and it was so cold—

He felt hands on shoulders, on his face, heard Daeron’s voice again, which was wrong and strange, and he couldn’t understand the words. He was still dreaming, surely. Daeron could not be there, not under Dol Guldur—he was made for starlight and green woodlands, not darkness under stones. But the hands pulling him up felt real enough, and then he heard a steady heartbeat as his head was pressed against a chest, and—and—

The air he’d been struggling to inhale left him in a sob, and he sucked in another breath, somehow able to breathe enclosed by arms and someone else’s hair and…

He breathed, and smelled pine and fern. He felt the prick of small claws as his cat climbed onto his lap, burrowing in against his stomach to curl up and purr at him, soft under his hands. 

This wasn’t Dol Guldur. He was with Daeron, in the little glade they’d decided was a good place to camp for the night. They were in Aman, where Sauron’s power could not reach him even if he had not been destroyed. It had only been a dream. 

He was still so cold, though, in spite of the warm summer air. 

“Maglor, can you hear me?” Daeron asked, drawing back so he could lift Maglor’s face up; the darkness receded, replaced by the soft silver light of stars. Maglor nodded, and Daeron caught his gaze and held it, his eyes as keen as Galadriel’s—they would be, Maglor thought distantly, for they were both students of Melian. “I see,” Daeron murmured at last. “Some memories have teeth. I’ll sing the dreams away.” His gaze shifted over Maglor’s shoulder and sharpened. “This is half your fault, you know. You’d better keep away,” he said, and Maglor turned to see Huan lying nearby, head on his paws, looking at him mournfully. 

Oh. The weight on his chest. Maglor shook his head and held out his arm, and Huan came to lie at his side, very careful not to put either head or paws on top of any part of him. Daeron muttered something about dogs as he got up. He was back a moment later with his own blankets, piling them on top of Maglor and settling down on his other side. Maglor looked at him in surprise. “Go back to sleep,” Daeron said, tugging him down; Maglor went, falling into the circle of his arms, unable to stop another sob escaping. The ferns beneath them were soft and springy; high above the stars shone like silver and diamonds, peering through the gaps between the tree branches. “Fear no more shadows.” He began to sing, but Maglor couldn’t make himself close his eyes, afraid of what he would see when he did. He couldn’t stop shivering, even with Pídhres curled up by his shoulder and Huan tucked up against him, even with Daeron’s hand on his back as he sang, very softly, almost drowned by the leaves rustling in the breeze over their heads. Maglor did not know if the song was meant to be a lullaby but it wrapped itself around him like another blanket and before he could even think to resist sleep rose up again to claim him. 

When he woke again the sun was high, and Huan was still pressed against him. For a few moments Maglor lay and let himself drift, not quite ready to wake fully. He heard movement around the glade, and the soft sound of Daeron’s laughter. The memory of the previous night, jumbled and cold and terrible, returned then, and Maglor opened his eyes, staring up at the trees. Huan sensed that he’d woken, and turned his head to lick up the side of Maglor’s face. Maglor cringed away. “Huan,” he croaked, and then pressed a hand over his mouth, eyes stinging, realizing the fear even as it was chased away. His voice was hoarse and weak but it was there. He wanted to sob with the relief of it, but Daeron called to him then. 

He sat up, feeling tired and strangely sore. Daeron had Pídhres in his arms; it was she that he’d been laughing at. “All well?” he asked. 

“Better,” Maglor whispered. “Daeron, I—” 

“You need not speak of it,” Daeron said. “I wasn’t going to ask. Here.” He tossed a package of way bread to Maglor, who fumbled in catching it. “Are you still cold?” Maglor shook his head; he was a little, but Huan beside him was warm, and the sun would be warmer yet once they set out again. He ate the way bread because he knew he should rather than because he had any appetite, and then got up to help pack their things back into the saddle bags. Pídhres immediately abandoned Daeron in favor of Maglor’s shoulder, and Huan remained close too, even when they set off again, trotting beside Maglor’s horse rather than ranging ahead or falling behind. 

They passed out of that wood into open grassland again, but by mid-afternoon had come to another forest, this one very old with trees like towers, the canopies somewhere very high above, so that the birdsong that drifted down from it sounded strange and distant. There was very little undergrowth, and the air had a greenish tinge, but for the bright golden sunbeams that pierced through sometimes into a glade filled with a shocking rainbow of wildflowers, or onto a sudden rocky outcropping jutting up out of the moss. 

“I have been to Fangorn,” Daeron said after a while, voice low, “but even that wood is not so old as this one.”

“The trees are friendlier, here,” Maglor murmured. He himself had not visited Fangorn, but he had heard the tales, and he had seen what the huorns had done at Isengard—and he had been to the Old Forest once, where the trees were even more ill-disposed to those that walked on two legs, not fond even of Elves. 

“If they have opinions of us at all,” Daeron agreed. 

All through the day Maglor felt jittery and strange; it was an effort to keep himself from looking over his shoulder when they were in between the woods; and then when they entered the forest again he felt worse. He kept seeing movement in the shadows, but when he turned his head nothing was there. When Daeron sang he did not join in, or take out his harp. 

Huan eventually did range ahead, and returned to beckon them off the path as the shadows began to deepen with the waning afternoon. After exchanging a glance they followed, and found themselves riding beside a stream the flowed along quite cheerfully in its stony bed. It was fed by cold springs bubbling up out of the moss and by tiny rills flowing down from elsewhere in the wood. As they followed it the ground began to rise, and the stream fell down many series of miniature waterfalls with a sound like laughter, until they came at last to a wide open space beneath a sudden steep hillside looming up before them. The stream that plunged over its edge was much larger than the one they had been following, which was what escaped out of the deep and wide pool at the hill’s base. 

Daeron laughed aloud. “This is wonderful! It is a good thing indeed that Huan is with us.” 

Wildflowers and green grass grew around the pool, and after they released the horses to wander and graze where they would, Daeron skirted around the edge of the water to climb the cliff face. Maglor went looking for firewood, accompanied by Huan. Pídhres had, unsurprisingly, disappeared. He only hoped she did not find a tree to try to climb; there would be no rescuing her from one of the towering giants around them. 

By the time he returned with enough dead wood to last the afternoon and evening, Daeron had reached the top of the cliff, and sat near the fall with his legs dangling over. Maglor busied himself with the fire pit and then the fire, glad of something to occupy his attention and his hands, though it took several tries to start the tinder burning. Huan lay beside him, ever watchful. “I’m fine, Huan,” he murmured, pausing to scratch him behind the ears. “I’m not angry with you, either. I know you didn’t mean any harm.” Huan whined softly, and licked Maglor’s hand—very gently, not the exuberant and sloppy sort of licking he normally indulged in. 

After the fire was finally lit and crackling merrily, Maglor lay with his head pillowed on Huan’s side and closed his eyes, letting himself doze, listening to the sound of the water and the crackling of the fire, and of Daeron singing some bright and cheerful song from atop the fall. The sun was warm and the air was fragrant with grass and flowers and pine. The chill that lingered was only Maglor’s imagination, he knew, but he couldn’t seem to shake it. 

He woke when Huan shifted, and as he sat up Huan got up and trotted off, having heard or smelled something in the wood that was more interesting than being Maglor’s pillow. Maglor lay back down onto the grass and stared up at the sky, pure summer blue. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He is gone, and I am here,” he whispered to the sky. 

“Who is gone?” Daeron’s voice was sudden and startling in its closeness. Maglor sat up to find that Daeron had returned from the cliff top, and was in the middle of pulling off his shoes. 

“…Sauron,” Maglor said after a moment, hating to bring that name into this place, but unable to think of a way to brush the question off. He was still too rattled, and even before the nightmare he hadn’t been up to pretending he was in better spirits than he really was. “I did warn you I would be terrible company,” he added. 

“You aren’t,” Daeron said. “Would you tell me if I asked what you dreamed of—would it help, do you think?”

Maglor looked away. “I don’t know. I haven’t…I have not dreamed like that in a long time.”

“I’m glad of it.” Daeron picked up a stick and tossed it onto the fire. “And I am glad that I was there—I dislike thinking of you waking up like that alone. Huan,” he added when Maglor opened his mouth, “doesn’t count—especially since it seems he caused the trouble in the first place.”

Maglor tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. “The singing helped,” he said softly. “Thank you.”

“You have been very quiet today,” Daeron said. “I don’t mean to press you, but—when we first met you sang as often as you breathed. To hear you go a full day without making music is strange, as strange as it was aboard the ship.”

“Estel said something like that once,” Maglor murmured. He picked a few flowers to start weaving together, needing something to do with his hands. “It was after he asked me if it was true that you were the mightier singer, as all the histories and songs say.”

“The histories and songs care much more about that than I ever did,” Daeron said. “I hope you told him that.”

“I told him they were true,” Maglor said, “and that I never cared about it.” It had been such a relief, he remembered, to meet Daeron beside the Pools of Ivrin and find him a friend rather than a rival, who thought all the speculation and gossip about it as amusing as he did. They had understood one another almost without having to speak, and he had never found such joy in performing with another before or since—not even with Elemmírë. “I had not made music for a very long time, when Estel and I spoke of you. It had been…” He still did not know exactly how long he had been locked away. “More than sixty years, at least.”

“That is a long time indeed,” Daeron murmured, “to go without breathing.”

“Elves sing as easy as breathing, Estel told me, and pointed out that I was still breathing.”

“Estel sounds wise,” Daeron said. 

“He was eleven years old, and we met when I fished him out of the river after he fell off of the bridge. Do not give him too much credit.” That got Daeron to laugh, at least, and Maglor breathed a little easier. “It was…it was difficult to come back to it after Dol Guldur, though.”

“Dol Guldur?” Daeron repeated, aghast. “How came you there?”

Maglor looked up. “You didn’t know? I thought you would have asked…”

“Asked who? Celeborn? No, of course I didn’t.”

“Oh.” Maglor had been certain that Daeron would have asked others for the tale after he’d refused to speak of it on the ship. “You could have,” he said. “It isn’t secret. You could have asked anyone, really.”

“It is your tale to tell,” Daeron said. “And you do not have to tell me now.”

“There isn’t much of a tale,” said Maglor. And then, because it would be easier if Daeron knew—especially if Maglor was going to be having nightmares—he went on, “I was…I was caught near the Anduin and taken to Dol Guldur. I did not know until I got there who the Necromancer truly was, but he knew me immediately. He…his Nazgûl were there.”

“How did you get out?” 

“I didn’t. The White Council drove the Necromancer out, and Elladan and Elrohir found me when they entered the tower afterward. They took me to Lórien, and then the next spring to Imladris. Where I met Estel when he fell into the river.”

“When did you start to play music again?” Daeron asked quietly. He moved around the fire to sit beside Maglor, pressing their shoulders together. “Why did it trouble you, after you were away from that place?”

The flowers did not hold together, and fell to the ground in a small heap. “He stole my voice,” he whispered. “Before he was driven out he—even when they took the cords out of my lips I couldn’t—and after—after Elrond lifted that curse I couldn’t—I just couldn’t. It was years before I could so much as hum in front of another person again.” 

“You did eventually,” Daeron said. “I am glad of it—more glad than words can say—that you came out of that place, and are here now.” 

Maglor turned to look at him, and found their faces quite close together. Daeron’s eyes were dark, but in the sunlight the blue in them shone, the deep color of sapphires. “I’m glad, too,” he said. “And I am glad that you are here with me.” 

Daeron smiled, and was about to say something else when Huan returned, carrying something small very carefully in his mouth. He came to drop it into Maglor’s waiting hands, and both he and Daeron found themselves peering down at a small young hedgehog, curled up into a prickly ball. “Huan, what in the world…?”

Slowly the hedgehog unrolled, and sniffed at Maglor’s fingers. “Oh, the poor thing,” Daeron said, reaching for it. “Look at its leg; I think it’s broken.”

“Do you know how to fix a hedgehog’s broken leg?” Maglor asked. “I certainly don’t.”

“I know a song for broken bones,” Daeron said. “It can’t be that much different than a bigger creature’s—easier, I would think. Less bone to knit back together. Ouch!” The hedgehog tried to roll up again, spikes poking now at Daeron’s fingers. 

“Here, let me hold it.” Maglor took it, cradling it gently, humming a gentle song until it unrolled again. “There we go.” He looked up at Daeron, who was smiling at him strangely. “What?”

“Nothing.” Daeron turned his attention back to the hedgehog, who did not curl up again when he reached out to stroke it with his fingertips. He began to sing, a short song of healing and strength, and when he finished and Maglor set the hedgehog down it took a few steps with no apparent trouble. Then it made its way back over to Huan, who had flopped down nearby, and nestled in between his great paws and, to all appearances, went to sleep. Daeron laughed. 

“How,” Maglor said, lifting his gaze to the sky, “do I keep acquiring animals?” For he had no illusions about the fate of the hedgehog, or about the songs Lindir would make up about it when he got back to Imloth Ningloron.

“So long as it gets along with Pídhres, I don’t see reason for worry,” Daeron said. “Come on, let the little thing sleep, and let us go swimming!” He drew Maglor to his feet. “That’s what I meant to do when I came back down.”

Maglor hesitated, and Daeron looked back at him, still with a hold of his hand and their arms now stretched between the two of them. “I’ve got—from Dol Guldur, I have—”

“Scars?” Daeron’s smile softened. “I’ve seen others who have been marked by the Enemy, Maglor. It isn’t the scars that will horrify me, but the knowledge of how they came there—and I already feel that. Showing me will make no difference.”

“They are bad, some of them,” Maglor said. “I don’t…” He didn’t want Daeron’s pity or his horror—but Daeron had already seen him the night before, rendered helpless and stiff with cold and terror. “All right.” He closed the distance between them, and followed Daeron to the water’s edge. 

“The scars only mean that you survived,” Daeron said as he stripped his own shirt off, revealing a handful of scars on his arms, such as one might acquire over many years of wandering and of living on the edges of war. “And at least no one will be angry with you over them! Mablung was furious when he saw this.” He pointed to a scar on his chest, uncomfortably close to his heart. “I was in Rhûn, with those who resisted the Enemy and his warlords, and we were ambushed. I had armor, but it was leather and was already old—but enough to slow the arrow and save my life.” 

Maglor found himself staring in exactly the way that he did not want others to stare at him, and lifted his gaze to Daeron’s face. “It still almost killed you,” he said. He’d seen enough such wounds to be able to tell that at the time it had been very bad. It was suddenly far too easy to imagine Daeron in the immediate aftermath of the ambush, weak and bleeding and inching closer and closer to death—

“It might have, if Alatar had not been there,” said Daeron, strong and bold and so very alive. “But it didn’t, as you see! Now show me yours; let us get it over with so we can go wash the road out of our hair.”

Maglor lifted his his shirt, removing it in the same quick motion that Daeron had used so that he couldn’t stop himself halfway through. Daeron took one sharp breath a the sight of the livid brand on his chest, among the others, and then stepped forward to pull Maglor into a tight embrace. “I would not have survived such an ordeal,” he whispered into Maglor’s ear. “You are far stronger than I.”

“I wasn’t,” Maglor said. “I was just—dying wouldn’t have let me leave that place.”

“No, don’t try to argue! You’re a terrible judge of your own strength.” Daeron drew back, but only far enough to look Maglor in the eye. For a moment Maglor had the wild, delirious thought that Daeron intended to kiss him. It was a thought he’d had before, long ago and far away by the shores of Ivrin, when they had slipped away from the constant demands to perform to laugh and talk together, splashing their feet in the shallow waters and debating whose style of musical notation was better, and also when they had found themselves caught up in the same dance by the bonfires late at night when the stars blazed overhead, and Daeron had been luminous, breathless and pink-cheeked from dancing and with his hair disheveled, the pearls in his braids all out of place. 

Daeron hadn’t kissed him then, and Maglor had known better than to do anything himself—secrets and dooms and oaths had stood between them; he had not needed Maedhros to remind him. “Be careful, Cáno,” he’d said one night, late, in the dark privacy of their tent. “Your promises are not your own.” Maglor had laughed and said something reassuring—something about only seeking friendship, something about music, something about Doriath and Thingol’s good opinion. Maedhros had been satisfied. It had been so much easier to laugh in those days, to pretend that he didn’t know what heartache was, and then to bury it all down deep so he didn’t have to think about it. Of course he had made no promises, not even in the privacy of his own heart. It had still hurt, though, when the truth of Alqualondë came out and Thingol raged, to know that even the chance of friendship with Daeron had ended forever. 

Except here they were, by another clear pool shining in the sunlight, with neither secrets nor oaths nor dooms between them. They were a long way from Ivrin, and both of them were changed—and still this friendship had been so easy to rekindle. 

He still knew better, though the reasons were different, and Daeron, of course, did not kiss him; likely the thought had never crossed his mind, had only ever lived in Maglor’s imagination. Instead he gave him one of those sun-bright grins and pulled the tie out of Maglor’s braid before stepping back to loosen his own hair and finish undressing before diving into the pool. Maglor stood still with his hair unraveling, catching his breath and trying not to stare for reasons entirely unrelated to scars, and then followed him into the water.