Chapter 1: Water of Quickening
I am Eöl Dubh, son of none. Of kin, forsaken. Those I held in esteem are fled – to Arda's ends or Mandos' halls. So what need have I to bear name? To hear it given voice?
There is such a weight in words, which fashion our troth, one to another. Better never to utter them than speak, and find promise or pledge returned as falsehood. To be forsworn, or to forswear another – it is better to end than live thus.
Nay, I would not hear my name in another's mouth now, and indeed it has been long since I have heard another voice. Nor am I fain to speak long of my days. Weary am I of mine own life: unwilling to give breath to bear recollection.
Still less am I inclined to open unto you. You press upon me with demand – master unto bondsman, demanding that I render faithful accounting of my stewardship, even of mine own life. You threaten that if I will not give answer in my pride, or if my truth does appal you, that I will be extinguished, and come to naught. By what right?!
I am a free being, and no man's thrall! I will not suffer binding or chains. I am wont to hold my tongue, to husband it behind my teeth like a bright blade behind a shield of hewn linden wood. Do with me as you will – if you find might as right, and you possess the strength – and find that still I defy you. Seek to crush my head, and I will rise and bite you at the heel!
You can never own me.
Indeed, it seems to me – am I wrong? – that Eru Illúvatar made me thus. That I entered the shield of this Middle-Earth, Endor, a creature fully realised. Blithely I came in, my spirit a bared blade, that fëa sheathed only in a green kirtle of simple dignity. Strip sword from scabbard then – and see how she bites!
For I am Eöl the Dark, and I repay, kind for kind. Love for love, and blow for blow. Friendship with amity, treachery with death.
Upon this burden you lay your charge. You say I bear a son's duty – to Eru Illúvatar above all, the unmoved mover, the Power recessed behind the world and the far firmament, He that made me – and to Manwë Súlimo, Regent of Arda in His name, chief and king of the Vala, those mighty beings who indwell its realm and have wrought their will upon it, whose illimitable spirits are housed within and constrained by its natural laws.
And in this you speak fairly. For I, too, have raised a son, Maeglin of the Discerning Eye, and loved him – even as I failed him and he, me. My anger against him is a heated brand but newly quenched in brine – a seax cold but sharp and keen for hard use, even now. Yet I deem my fault to be the greater. For was I not to guide him, and lead him and set his path before him?
I failed him, my twilight child, to my despite and his. Yet I tried. I gave of what I had in full measure – little enough though that proved to be, for all that I know the working of wood and wrought iron. What of Eru? What did he for me, save sire me upon the shoreline? I know not His face – nor had I earthly Father nor Mother to serve in His stead.
He made of me a bastard – as he has with all the first-kindled of our Quenya race. Most of us have learned to live with that shame in the interminable years that followed hard after. It is well that He gave us surpassingly long lives. We, who are Firstborn, have taught ourselves to cloak it well before those other races who followed after – the unlovely Naugrim, and brief-fleeting Edain.
They cannot know how our pride burns behind our haughty bearing, our heritage and heirlooms. Pride that comes from shame – the worst kind, I know right well. We are a distaff line from that Seed which sowed the stars, and in our secret hearts, we resent it yet. Thus, we Firstborn are thralls to honour – word-wounds returned in stern blows!
Most cling to Eru in worship, and in his lieu, to the godlings he sends out amongst us as apostles to shape and guide us, both Vala and Maia. Most, but not all. And I do not number amongst these – lack-wits and cravens, I deem them: one or the other!
Still my heart accuses me.
So be it! I will render a son's accounting and own my shame in full measure. I will speak, and have done. I will not spare myself in the telling – the truth as I know it – nor will I seek to set aside my hurts to spare the seeming-keen feelings of that One who has never spared mine!
I expect no answer from on high – neither from my absent Father, nor from His emissaries. I care not. Doom in full measure I shall surely find – I have sought by flame and fire and striving in secret places to cauterize my heart against my sin, but some tender part yet remains, and that seared flesh still demands some savage justice to be meted unto me for my appalling crimes.
This is my truth.
Cold was new-wrought Candíl, north-yearning star, when first I awakened. Candíl and Luiníl, Nénar and Lumbar, amber Alcarinquë and red-threatening Elemmíre – by fair Tintallë kindled, even as I drew my first breath and rose from the salt-mere of Cuiviérnen. Heedless to aught else about me but that first, candid flame – a fair white hand reaching out to me across gulf unknowable.
Cuiviérnen, Water of Quickening. Cuiviérnen, where lofty Illuín tumbled down into the bay of Helcar, was where my eyes first sought the sky in frankness. For I knew no shame then – only awe, and I thought I knew what love might be, with the white salt sharp-keen upon my lips like the tracks of tears, where beyond the ocean broke and roared:
To see beauty from afar and seek it out. To know its form and dimensions, and own them pleasing to the eye, and balm to the heart. Yet it seemed to me even then that love is yearning. Restless. Its object forever from reach. A thing lost in the finding of it – lucent reflection caught in some limpid tarn, a figment fragmented by your questing fingers into a surrusus. Dark and light in plainsong, causing the beholding eye to well with its unseemly glare.
Love can never be owned – not even when love's object is clasped acurve in your arms, her slumber light as a drowsing cat, drawn in upon herself. You are heat and warmth – little more to her than the pallet she lies upon. That is her fascination – and you will ache for it.
This knowledge, nascent as I bent my gaze upon Varda's crown, and I felt the first-pang of a long grief awakened then, looking upon light.
For Light, ever-young, knows not time's passing. All made things bend to her glory, even the Void's vastness, his hungering wastes defined by the want of that Imperishable Flame. Time and space itself curling under that finessing first-flame like a fall leaf, cast upon the forge-fire. So Annatar, Maiar of Aulë, taught me of his kenning. Annatar, Giver of Gifts, that after was hight Gorthaur, the Cruel, and Sauron, by which is be best known in the songs of Men. I had instruction – before such time as I learned there are things better not to know.
The Lover is void. Enthralled. He has nothing in his gift but an empty ache. Time lays heavy upon his slumpen shoulders. It darkens first his eyes, then his mind – entering into the soul by those argent gates, once-fair, that tarnish and are cast down by that most rampant of foes – a man once befriended. And the light he covets can never reach his eye: which is Despair. His gaze at last turns from the rent heavens, forgoing sight in his anguish, as if he would rather rake out his own eyes.
I have lived long, even as we Quendi reckon such things. I came in with the First Twilight, my promise as bright even as those Firstcomers who leavened the sky, falling to earth from the illimitable realms. The Ainur – Valar and Maiar – those smiling faces who never die. Who came to grow, heal and tend – and remained to raze and rule in cruel dominion.
The long years armoured me – a brynie of steel rings, intricate as a smith's puzzle-piece, each link so cunningly worked none can tell where two become one. The whole, a hooded hauberk so tight-knit none can enter in, neither spear nor sword, even that axe well-wielded that is the despite of many a strong man. Proof against all men, and all weapons – save one:
A son, forged on mine own hearth, and the woman that bore him. A youth, tempered keen and fell – a bright, bitter blade to go through harnesses – and his mother, a seasonless flower, like uilos, the Evermind, whose white blossoms quicken once and for all.