A Hundred Miles Through the Desert - Chapter Twenty Eight

[starspray]

Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: T
Characters: Sons of Feanor, Elrond, Feanor, Daeron, various others
Warnings: n/a
Summary: After years in Lórien, Maglor and Maedhros are ready to return to their family and to make something new with their lives--but to move forward, all of Fëanor's sons must decide how, or if, they can ever reconcile with their father.
Note: This fic is a direct sequel to High in the Clean Blue Air. 

Prologue / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

 

It was a quiet and misty morning when Elrond and Maglor left Tirion, heading north. Pídhres had refused to be left behind, and curled up around Maglor’s shoulders. Neither of them spoke much, and Elrond was content to let silence reign for a while. Formenos was isolated, but the distance was less now than it had been during Fëanor’s exile—distances were often strange in Valinor, though Elrond had not personally found it so, keeping as he did to the well-traveled and populated lands in the east. It came of dwelling so close to the Valar themselves. They had wished for Fëanor to be far from Tirion, and so he had been, though before and afterward the journey was the matter of only a handful of days.

They left the road leading to Valmar, taking a branch that led northeast. Elrond had traveled it before, going to visit Celebrían’s uncles in Ithilheledh. Maglor kept glancing around, brow furrowed slightly. “This used to be all fields,” he said finally. “Farmland and pastures.” Instead now it was all forest, mostly firs towering overhead, thick-trunked and ancient. 

“Did you visit Formenos often, before the exile?” Elrond asked.

“There was no Formenos before the exile, but yes—we went fairly often to the lake, the Wilwarinen. Finwë would take us when he wished to leave the city for a while. Do you remember when I taught you to make spears from wood and stone?”

“Yes.”

“Finwë taught us that at the lake. He said his grandfather taught him, long ago by Cuiviénen. It was just for fun, then—and just in case we needed something to catch fish or small game when we were out traveling on our own.” 

It had been very different when Elrond had learned—it had been a matter of survival, as it had been for almost everything Maglor had taught them. But he’d had a knack for making even the most unpleasant lessons both memorable and almost enjoyable, by teaching them songs at the same time, or telling stories that were at least half made up—like the one he’d told his nieces, turning the marks of his suffering into something silly instead. Elrond wondered if that too was something he had learned from Finwë, who seemed to have been equally circumspect about the details he shared of his own past.

They came to a turning in the road that was easy to miss at first glance, the branching path covered in pine needles and obviously very rarely traveled. It was quiet in the woods, the birdsong distant, and the air still. There was little undergrowth, and the trees seemed to loom, though their thoughts were not at all dark or unfriendly, as they might have been in such an ancient forest far away in Middle-earth. They made camp underneath one of them, not bothering with a fire, for it was warm—there was little in the way of dead wood anyway. Maglor had brought his harp, but when he did not bring it out Elrond reached for it instead. As he played a quiet and simple melody to fill the silence he asked, “How did it really go—seeing your father?”

Maglor shrugged. He leaned back against the tree, Pídhres curled up on his lap, purring as he stroked her. “There is too much between us to be solved in one conversation. But I’m…hopeful, I think.”

“I’m glad,” Elrond said. It had always been a rare thing for Maglor to give voice to any kind of hope. “Did you speak of anything besides Finwë?”

“Only very briefly. And as I told Amras—I don’t think I have it in me to speak to him again of anything else, not until this song is done.”

“Is that why you’re pushing yourself?”

“Maybe in part.” Maglor sighed. “It’s all so terribly complicated.”

“It has ever been thus, for the House of Finwë.”

“It didn’t feel that way, once upon a time. Once, my father just loved us, and we loved him, and there were no—conditions, no obstacles, no shadows. My father never liked his brothers before, but he could tolerate them. They were not friends, and there was far less love than Finwë wished for, but there was peace, and he was fond of all our cousins. Everyone forgets that. Findis is right when she says the root of all our ruin was Morgoth. But he had to have something to sink his barbs into, and…”

Elrond thought of the day Fëanor had first come to Imloth Ningloron, and how easily Fingon’s sharp tongue had been provoked. “None of the House of Finwë is without a temper,” he said. 

“Except your father,” Maglor said.

“I feel certain that he must, though it is true that I’ve never seen him angry,” Elrond said. “My mother sends her greetings, by the way; she will be visiting us on Eressëa, but isn’t sure whether my father will return by the time we arrive.”

“I haven’t decided if I’m going to Eressëa,” said Maglor. “I might part with you in Alqualondë. I don’t think there’s anyone in Avallónë I need to speak to.”

“You really aren’t going to give yourself any break from this?”

“Well, it really depends on how things go when Daeron meets with his parents.”

As they continued on over the next couple of days Elrond steered the conversation to more cheerful subjects, until they glimpsed a break in the forest ahead one afternoon, and Maglor fell silent. The trees thinned and then ended, growing almost to the very walls of Formenos, a once-large and oddly-fortified building of dark grey stone, unlike almost all others Elrond had seen in Valinor. Fëanor had built it at the height of his paranoia, but to hear of it was, of course, different than seeing it. It was crumbling now, the roof long caved in or rotted away, the walls falling down, covered in wild roses and lichen. They dismounted before the doorway, and Maglor stood very still as he looked into it. His gaze was far away, his face very pale. 

“Maglor,” Elrond said softly, reaching for his hand. Maglor grasped his very tightly. 

“It was just in there that we found him,” he whispered. “You can…you can still see his footsteps. Morgoth’s.” Elrond followed his gaze and found he could pick out places in the stone floor under a scattering of leaves and pine needles where clusters of cracks and breaks did indeed resemble footsteps—enormous, heavy footsteps. The sight sent a chill down his spine. “Everything was so dark,” Maglor went on, “but all the lamps inside were lit. Finwë, he…he’d chased back the dark, and even Morgoth couldn’t fully…” His voice broke and he turned away, covering his face. After a moment he took a deep breath, and then another.

“Even Morgoth could not defile this place forever,” Elrond said. “See the flowers, the trees?” Near the steps leading up to the door he saw rue in bloom, soft yellow, amid stonecrop and thick green moss. The wild roses gave off a sweet scent, and bees buzzed lazily through the blooms alongside many gem-bright butterflies for which the lake had been named.

“I do see.” Maglor lowered his hand. “That’s what I came here for.” He took another breath. “And—this way, we should come to the lake…” He did not let go of Elrond’s hand as they left the horses to graze where they would, and walked around the walls until the land opened up to reveal the gently sloping hill down to the water. A large yew tree grew near the reedy shoreline. Birds flitted through the reeds, and swans glided across the water. There was no mist, it being the middle of the day, but Elrond could easily imagine what it looked like in the early morning, silver-gold hovering over the surface of the water. 

Some distance from the yew and the water was a mound, familiar to anyone who had seen or made such graves. The grass on and around it was very green, though it was nearly hidden under the carpet of flowers—soft pink sword lilies, and red poppies, mingling with snowy Evermind. 

Maglor squeezed Elrond’s hand and let go when they came to the mound. “Thank you for coming with me,” he said softly.

“Do you want to be alone for a while?” Elrond asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“I won’t be far.”

Elrond retreated back to the building. He could not deny a great curiosity to see it, having never known Finwë, having never known Valinor before the Darkening. Though Finwë had been spoken of a great deal lately, and Elrond felt that he knew more about him now than he ever had before, he remained out of reach, a figure in a story the same way all the rest of Elrond’s kinsmen had been until he came west and met them in person at last. He could climb the steps to the doorway, and feel only another shiver of discomfort as he stepped across the threshold, knowing but not able to quite imagine how Morgoth himself had once done the same. He stood where Finwë had made his last stand, and thought of Gil-galad on the slopes of Mount Doom, Aeglos in hand as he and Elendil clashed with Sauron himself. 

Gil-galad had returned, though. He was not so far away really, safe in his parents’ home. “Surely it is time to allow Finwë to come home too?” Elrond murmured aloud as he left the entryway to walk through the other corridors, dodging fallen-in walls and unstable bits of floor. The trail to the treasury was horribly easy to follow. He passed it by and peered into other rooms, seeing remnants of long-ago life here. Plates, cups, bowls, inkwells, pieces of furniture—some surprisingly intact, others broken into shards or rotted away. Little else remained. Birds nested amid the broken rafters, and he found evidence of other animals having made their dens in nooks and crannies, too. Dirt had been tracked and blown in; leaves were scattered about, and twigs and other various bits of wild detritus. It was not so different from other ruinous places Elrond had explored in Middle-earth, really. 

Once upon a time this had not been a terrible place. It had been isolated, it had been a fortress in a land where such a thing should not have been, but it had been comfortable. The countryside had been and remained lovely. Elrond returned to the entryway, and pressed a hand to the stones near the door. He stood for a while listening to all they had to tell him, until he opened his eyes without having noticed that he shut them, and found his vision blurred with tears. 

Back by the cairn Maglor sat in the grass, head bowed. Elrond joined him and leaned on his shoulder. Maglor rested his head against Elrond’s. “The stones have much to tell of Finwë’s last stand,” Elrond murmured after a little while. 

Maglor breathed a sigh. “I’ll come listen.” He sounded as though he’d been weeping, but when Elrond looked at him he seemed, under tear tracks and reddened eyes, more at peace than he had been when they’d left Tirion. The tears had been those of relief and release, more than anything else. “Fingolfin was right,” he said. “This is a beautiful place.”

“It is very lonely,” Elrond said.

“I like lonely places.” Maglor put his arm around Elrond and kissed his temple. “To visit,” he added, “not to stay.”

Elrond had known what he meant, but he said nothing. He himself could appreciate the beauty of it, but he would not want to come to any such place alone. He remained by the cairn when Maglor got up to return to the building, looking at the flowers and imagining Ingwë and Olwë performing the ancient rites, building the cairn over Finwë’s ruined body in a land they had all come to hoping never to have to do such things again, and he thought of all the graves he himself had dug and all the rites he had performed or participated in, all the tears he had shed. He thought of all the deaths and other terrible things that had had to happen in order for him to even be born—the destruction of Doriath, the fall of Gondolin, the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. It wasn’t often that Elrond felt the weight of all of it, but here was the place where it had all started. Once a place of joy, it had turned into a place of exile, and then into a place of death, and now…memory lingered, but it wasn’t really the same as the graves they’d made for the hobbits at home. The grief was different. It felt wrong—it was a grief that should have an end, but didn’t.

Maglor had said that Finwë would love Elrond—and Celebrían, and their sons—if he were there to know them. Elrond could believe it. Everything he had heard of Finwë spoke of someone with an open heart, eager to love anyone who would accept it. In that way he sounded a great deal like Maglor himself. But of course Elrond would never know for sure what Finwë would think of him—or what he did think of him, if he’d been paying attention to whatever Vairë wove in Mandos—unless the Valar relented. Maglor did not think they would, but Elrond could feel something, whenever they spoke of this song, of the weight of it. Whatever happened, it was important, and Elrond knew better than to say so in plain words, but he did think that it would move the Valar—he did hope that it would work, and that he would someday—maybe soon, maybe not—get to meet his forefather face to face at last. It was the sort of feeling he knew better than to ignore—not quite foresight, but not quite mere hope or desire either.

After some time, Elrond got up to look for Maglor, and found him sitting with his back against the wall near the entryway, watching a few bees crawling around the wild roses growing up beside him. He had fresh tears on his face. “I knew it was terrible,” he said, voice hoarse, as Elrond sat beside him. “I didn’t…I didn’t realize he’d stood as long as he did.”

“It seems it is Finwë from whom your own great power of Song comes,” said Elrond.

“Míriel said that too.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“I do. I know what I’m capable of.” Maglor gazed out toward the lake. “I keep catching myself thinking that if I can just…complete this song, and sing it before them, before this great feast, then…” He shook his head. “I keep thinking of it as something that will work, even though I know better.”

“You keep catching yourself hoping,” Elrond said. “It’s never wrong to hope, Maglor.”

“It doesn’t feel like hope. It feels like foolishness.”

“You know what else was a fool’s hope,” Elrond said. Maglor just shook his head. “Has it helped, coming here, as you thought?”

“I think so. I can write this part of the song, anyway…to write what happened, and to describe what it is now. And I feel better, in spite of—everything.” He took a deep breath, and got to his feet. “I don’t want to linger, though. Do you mind turning back and camping in the woods again?”

“Of course not.” Elrond accepted Maglor’s hand up, and embraced him. There wasn’t much else he could do, nothing that would help. He and Maglor both paused to look back toward the flower-covered cairn before it passed out of sight behind the walls. A lonely, almost mournful bird’s call was carried up to them from the lake on the wind, which brought also the smell of poppies and grass, and the faintest hint of rain from the clouds hovering in the north. Maglor sighed, and turned away first. 

The journey back to Tirion was quieter than the one to Formenos. They spoke little, both lost in their thoughts and content just to be in each other’s company. Neither brought out the harp. As Tirion came into view Elrond was thinking that he would be glad to leave it again for Avallónë and his wife, but his thoughts were interrupted by a hail from a rider coming north from the city. “Elrond, is that you?” they called, spurring their horse on up the road toward Elrond and Maglor.

“Círdan!” Elrond trotted forward, smiling as they grasped hands. “What brings you out here?”

“A summons from Lady Gilheneth,” said Círdan. “I looked for you in Tirion, but was told you’d gone north somewhere. I hoped I would meet you on the road!”

“Oh!” Elrond’s heart leaped to his throat, and he turned to Maglor, who was just catching up, Pídhres perched on the saddle in front of him. 

Maglor smiled at him. “Go on, then—and give my greetings to Fingon and Gilheneth and Gil-galad. Hello, Círdan.”

“It is good to see you, Maglor,” said Círdan. “And you, Mistress Pídhres.” Pídhres meowed.

“Are you sure?” Elrond asked Maglor. “If you—”

“Oh, stop. You’re as bad as Tyelko.” Maglor grabbed him around the back of the head and kissed his cheek. “The city’s right there, I’m hardly going to get lost! Go!”

“Can you tell Celebrían—”

“Of course!”

They parted there, Maglor waving over his shoulder as he rode on toward Tirion. He did seem lighter, as though something had been left behind at Formenos, and Elrond was glad of it. Círdan asked, as they fell in beside one another, “Where were you coming from?”

“Formenos,” Elrond said. 

Círdan raised his eyebrows. “What did you go there for?”

“Maglor is writing a song for Finwë, and wanted to see what it looks like now. It isn’t nearly as terrible as you might imagine.”

“I hope not,” said Círdan. “But he seems none the worse for it. How are you?”

Elrond smiled at him. “It was a sad and lonely place, and full of memories, but I’m far enough removed from it all that it didn’t trouble me too much.”

Fingon and Gilheneth’s estate was not very large, but it was lovely, with woods full of beech and oak, and open spaces good for riding or walking; the road that led to it wound through the trees until they fell away to reveal the house, stately and elegant, made of pale grey stone in places covered with ivy, and adorned with columns and wide windows, surrounded by lawns and flowerbeds. It was not quite identical to Gilheneth’s beloved home in Lindon, but it was very close. All that was really missing was the faint smell of the sea on the breeze. 

As Círdan and Elrond dismounted the front door opened and Gil-galad himself came out, already laughing as he ran down the steps, to throw his arms around both of them at once. 

Usually Elrond could think of Gil-galad and remember him as himself, either smiling or serious but always burning with that bright fire of life that was so prominent in Finwë’s line; he had been able to do so just a few days before while wandering the empty halls of Formenos. It had not always been so. In the aftermath of the War of the Last Alliance the grief had been heavy and sharp, always there to slice into him whenever Elrond let his guard down. He had been worn down and so wearied after those long years of war that it had been all he could do to make it back home to Imladris, feeling fragile and lost, and to think of Gil-galad had been to remember that last stand against Sauron upon the slopes of Mount Doom, and the ruin of his body burned away to ash afterward. 

Seeing Gil-galad now should not have brought all of that back—he was hardly the first lost loved one that Elrond had reunited with since his coming west—yet Elrond found himself hardly able to speak past the tears that lodged in his throat and threatened to choke him, the memory of Gil-galad’s last moments laying itself over this new-made Gil-galad with bright eyes and a head free from the heavy burden of a crown. It was strange and wonderful—which he had expected—and at the same time it hurt terribly, which he had not. Maybe he should have—he’d burst into tears upon seeing Celebrían again, too, unable even to say her name until the storm of them past.

It wasn’t quite that bad now, and he thought that he did a fair job of hiding it through the exuberant greetings and then Fingon and Gilheneth’s meeting them in the entryway. But later, when he was able to retreat to the guest room he usually used when visiting, ostensibly to wash the road off and change out of his traveling clothes, Elrond didn’t have a chance to do more than take a deep, shaking breath before Gil-galad followed. “All right,” he said, offering a smile when Elrond turned to him, “go on—you did not want to yell at me in front of everyone else, but you can now.”

Elrond tried to laugh, but it broke into a very different sound, and he had to press a hand over his mouth to silence it. “I don’t want to yell at you, my lo—” He didn’t even know what to call Gil-galad anymore. They were not herald and general anymore, king or vassal. Gil-galad had immediately taken both Elrond and Elros under his wing when they’d arrived, bedraggled and exhausted, at his camp halfway up the River Sirion as the armies of the West made their way north toward Angband. He had been their king, yes, and that distance had never quite disappeared, but he had also been their teacher and their friend, their cousin—not a father-figure in the same way that Maglor had been, but more like an elder brother. Elrond had loved him from the start—had been proud and glad to pledge himself to Gil-galad’s service and to keep serving after the war was over and they could look forward to rebuilding the world without the Shadow hanging over them. 

Then the Shadow had returned—again, and again—and Gil-galad had died, and Elrond had kept going because it was what he had always done, and now here they were. It was as though the last three thousand years hadn't happened at all, as though Elrond had left the slopes of Mount Doom only yesterday with nothing left of his king and dear friend except the smell of blood and smoke in his nose and the taste of ashes on his tongue that he hadn’t thought then that he would ever be able to get rid of. He could taste it again, now, in that clean and bright bedroom in the house Gilheneth had built, in Valinor where Sauron had never come. 

“I married Celebrían,” he said when his tongue would work again. “And you were not there.”

“I know,” Gil-galad said, voice quiet.

“I have children, and you—you never met them. You never will meet Arwen, because she—” His voice broke again, because one grief brought with it the other, a knife-sharp reminder that while Gil-galad walked again under the sun, Arwen never would. Nor would Aragorn, nor Elros, nor Elendil nor—

“I know,” Gil-galad repeated. 

Elrond remembered what he had spoken at the Council, that fateful autumn day in Rivendell. Not wholly fruitless, he had called the Last Alliance, though in his heart it felt entirely so. Gil-galad had died, and Elendil and Anárion, and so soon afterward Isildur—and for what? Sauron had come back, just as he had every other time, because they had not known enough—not about the Ring or what it would do to anyone who picked it up—and because Elrond had not pushed Isildur when he should have, had not had the will or the understanding that seemed so horrifically obvious in hindsight to insist that he take the Ring and cast it into the fire before it could take hold of him, before it spelled ruin for them all. 

He had just come from Formenos, where a grave stood beside a beautiful and lonely lake, covering the bones of Finwë Noldóran. Ereinion Gil-galad, High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth, had had no cairn, no monument. The flames of Sauron had burned him entirely away and they were left with nothing but memory and song. Now Gil-galad was here, and Elrond had met all of their forefathers and kin—and seen the paintings and woven depictions of Finwë himself—and could see now the ways in which Gil-galad looked so like Finwë—more than anyone else, in face and stature and almost all of his most striking features. He was darker than they were, taking after Gilheneth, and his eyes were her soft brown instead of Fingon’s grey, but at first glance Elrond wondered how many in Tirion would mistake Gil-galad for Finwë returned.

“I’m sorry,” Elrond said. “We didn’t—I didn’t—you died and it was all for—”

Gil-galad stepped forward. He was just as strong as he had always been, his embrace almost crushing, and he was tall enough that Elrond’s face was pressed into his shoulder. In spite of his best efforts, tears began to escape. “Do not say it was in vain,” Gil-galad said. “I do not see it that way. I did what I had to do, and I do not regret it. But I am sorry that I was not there for your wedding, or the births of your children, or for anything that came afterward.”

“Círdan gave us the apple trees from you,” Elrond said into his shirt. “Celebrían brought—brought cuttings with her when she came west, and they have thrived—in Rivendell and here.”

“I’ve heard of Celebrían’s famous apples,” Gil-galad said. He did not sound like anyone else in the House of Finwë. His voice was deep and resonant and wholly his own, and laced with fondness that just made Elrond cry harder. “I’m sorry, Elrond.”

“I’m not—I’m not angry at you,” Elrond managed to choke out. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’m sorry,” Gil-galad repeated. “And don’t call me my lord. I’m not your king any longer—I’m only a lesser prince, and your cousin, and I think I like that much better.” He drew back, and used his thumbs to wipe the tears from Elrond’s face. “I think you might outrank me now.”

“You are the High King’s grandson,” said Elrond, startled into laughter through his tears by the sheer absurdity of outranking Gil-galad. “Fingon is his heir, and you are Fingon’s heir—”

“And what does that matter, in this land where no one will die again?” Gil-galad laughed a little, quiet and clearly also amused at how silly it all was. “You are also Fingolfin’s grandson—and Elu Thingol’s, remember—and a lord in your own right. But I don’t mind. I was so young—too young—when I had to take up the mantle of kingship in practice even if not in name. I don’t remember who I am without such a burden, and I am very much looking forward to finding out.”

Gil-galad left Elrond to scrub his face and change his clothes. When he went downstairs again he was told that Círdan and Gil-galad had walked out into the garden together, and likely would not return until dinnertime. “Are you all right, Elrond?” Fingon asked as Elrond sat down with him on the veranda overlooking the gardens behind the house. “Did I hear right that you’d been to Formenos before coming here?”

“Yes, Maglor wanted to see it. I’m all right.” 

Fingon gave him a doubtful look, and Elrond somehow only in that moment realized that expression was identical to Gil-galad’s. “You don’t seem all right,” Fingon said. “How terrible was Formenos?”

“It wasn’t,” Elrond said. “And Maglor’s all right too, before you start worrying about him. I just—I suppose sometimes you forget how much you’ve missed someone until you see them again. How are you?” he asked then, thankful to be on such terms with Fingon that he could turn the tables. 

Fingon’s smile was a little rueful. “My son is an adult and a stranger,” he said, “but I knew that he would be—and that Círdan has far more of a father’s claim on his heart than I do. I’m just happy to have the chance to get to know him now. But what did Maglor want to go to Formenos for?”

“I think Fingolfin spoke of it, and he wants to include a description in his song. I’m glad that I went. It’s…beautiful, really. In spite of everything.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“How is Gil-galad?” Elrond asked. Gil-galad seemed to him bright and happy, light and unburdened, as though he had come from Mandos wholly rested and eager to embrace life again, but Elrond had very little experience with anyone so new-come from the Halls and wasn’t sure what might be lurking beneath the surface.

“Gil-galad,” Fingon said, “is the last person you need to worry about. We’ve been hiding away here for a chance to get to know one another without all of Tirion gathering around to watch, not because he’s in any way fragile or unprepared to face the world. Save all your worries for my cousins. Have they spoken to Fëanor yet?”

“Maglor has, and Ambarussa intend to take him away to their home in the mountains.”

“Do they really?” Fingon laughed, shaking his head, as Gilheneth came outside to sit with them, followed soon afterward by a tray of tea and bowls of summer berries and cream. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. Either he’ll go mad or it will be very good for him, or both. What else is going on in Tirion, then?”

By the time Gil-galad and Círdan returned to join them, Elrond was steadier, and could meet Gil-galad’s gaze without either bursting into tears or being thrown back into dark memories. It was strange and marvelous instead, to sit with Gil-galad and Fingon and Gilheneth and Círdan, laughing about gossip from Tirion and describing all of the cousins and various relations that Gil-galad would soon be meeting or reuniting with. Gil-galad laughed so easily, and Elrond soon found himself laughing too—feeling lighter and more carefree as the conversation went on. The dark memories were only that—memory—and if they hurt when recalled, at least the pain was short-lived, especially in the face of such present joy, and the promise of a future that only promised to grow brighter and brighter with each passing year.