My brother and I were visiting the Last Fortress, when we first saw the star.
In those days, we spent most of our time across the river, in the land of the Green-elves. We were safe enough there. The Enemy might have taken all the ancient lands our ancestors once ruled, but he never bothered to cross Gelion and ravage the Seven Rivers country. Thus, the Green-elves were able to keep a watchful peace. Our guardian had always been their friend, so even after all that he and his brothers had done, he was still suffered to live in that land. He kept a house, up in the first foothills of the mountains, and that is where we lived for eleven years.
Still, every summer Maglor crossed Gelion to visit his brother, at the castle upon Amon Ereb. There Maedhros and the last of his following still held a sliver of Beleriand, in the Enemy's despite. Every summer my brother and I went there too.
Whether we wished to or not. We hated the castle at first.
We had never spent much time within stone walls and high towers. Maglor's hall was roomy and well-built, but it was mostly of wood rather than stone, and it had little of the fortress about it. It stood in a little woodland valley, where we could walk in the forest, or go fishing in the stream, or learn to hunt with the Green-elves. It was a warm place, full of music and even occasional laughter.
Not so the castle of Maedhros, built of solid stone, standing at the brow of the great hill, where winds from the North blew ever cold. One could never forget that the Enemy held all the land to the north and west, and might at any time decide to come down and destroy that last foothold of the Noldor in Beleriand. The castle's ruler was quiet and grim of mood, and his followers were like their master.
Of course, we also never forgot what Maedhros had done.
Perhaps we were unjust, to hate him even after we had come to forgive Maglor. Although Maglor, at least, had tried to make amends. Yet there was a great deal of blood on the hands of all Fëanor's sons, and Maedhros had been their leader ever since his father died. Every evil thing they had done could be laid to his charge.
He might have chosen otherwise. He might have chosen not to destroy the last kingdom of Doriath, slaying our grandfather and grandmother, and abandoning our young uncles in the forest to starve. He might have chosen not to slaughter the last remnants of Gondolin, murdering almost everyone we had ever known, driving our mother to her death in the sea. He might have chosen not to ruin every hope that yet remained, against the Enemy that he had fought for centuries. All for nothing, since the Silmaril he demanded had escaped his grasp at every turn.
He had chosen to do what he had done, no matter the cost to his own kinsmen, no matter the cost to anyone. Certainly, no matter the cost to our family, of which my brother and I were the last, so far as we knew. Thanks to him.
We were too young to give serious thought to vengeance. We contented ourselves with despising him, and would have as little to do with him as we could.
I think it was the star that began to change our minds.
"Elrond? Elros?" Maglor's voice came from the hallway outside the room we had been given.
I caught my brother's eye. Elrond was eleven years old at the time, a tall and sturdy youth, big for his age according to the reckoning of the Eldar. He wore his hair long, falling over his shoulders like a sable cloak, and his eyes were silver-grey. He was sober by nature, studious, a thinking spirit that looked out upon the world from behind a calm, pale face. I suppose I was much the same, his twin, only a few moments younger than he. Perhaps I thought less and smiled more.
Now he cocked an eyebrow at me, wondering what had brought our guardian in sudden search of us.
"We are here," he called, and the door opened.
"Put on your cloaks and come with me," said Maglor, tall in the doorway, wearing dark clothing and a traveler's cloak. "There is something you both should see."
Once again, I caught Elrond's eye, and shrugged. "As you say," I agreed. "What is it?"
Maglor turned away, as we sprang up to get our cloaks and follow him. "I would rather you see it without any prior notions," he told us. "Maedhros and I have some thoughts about it, but it will bear a different meaning for you."
"Very mysterious," Elrond murmured, and then he said no more as we walked.
Maglor led us up a spiral stair, inside one of the towers. We emerged out into a fine summer evening, not a cloud in the sky, the air cool and pleasant. The sun had gone down just a little while before, and all the western sky was still full of a clear light. Above our heads and to the east, the vault of heaven faded through indigo to black, and all the stars were coming out.
Elrond saw it first. "Aiya!" he cried, startled out of his usual calm. "What is that?"
I turned and looked the same way, and there it was. A star, but such a star as I had never seen before, brighter by far than Helluin or even than Alcarinquë, blazing gloriously in the sunset. It did not flicker, as most stars seemed to do, but shone with a constant white light.
Then I remembered where I had seen such a light before.
"It appeared three nights ago," came another voice, one that put stiffness in my back and dashed the expression of wonder from Elrond's face. Maedhros leaned against the parapet not far away, even taller than Maglor, looking up into the sky rather than at us. His russet hair was pulled back into a braid, and I could see the scars on his grim face even in the twilight. "Always in the western sky, following the sun. It seems a little higher in the sky each evening."
"It is a sign," said my brother, searching as always for the cause of things. "Sent by the Valar?"
"It is a Silmaril," I said, searching as always for the facts. "The last time I saw a light like that, it rested at our mother's breast."
Maedhros nodded slowly, still looking up into the sky rather than at us. "So Maglor and I believe."
"We think Ulmo, the Lord of Waters, must have borne the great jewel up out of the deeps," said Maglor, his voice gentler than his brother's. "Now the Valar have set it as a sign in the heavens, beyond the Enemy's reach once and for all."
"Beyond yours as well," I said, not at all kindly.
"Yes," said Maedhros, and now he did turn to look at us. "Thus do the Valar redeem the worst of our sins, and amend in some small degree the marring of the world."
"I care nothing for the Silmaril," I told him. "Do you know what I most wish?"
He only watched me, his eyes grave in the twilight. He already knew.
"I would have my mother with me once again," I said, my voice rising. "I would have my father, returned safely from the deeps of the sea. I would have the Elves and Men, the craftsmen and poets, the farmers and fishermen, the women and the children that you slaughtered, my lord, all of them alive again. I would have all of us safe and sound and very far away from these accursed lands."
Maedhros nodded gravely in silence.
"If I could have all those things, I would gladly give you every one of Fëanor's jewels. Even if I had to imitate my ancestors and take them from the Iron Crown with my own bare hands. Although I doubt that you would have any joy of them, my lord. You have exacted too high a price for Morgoth's crimes, and too little of it was from Morgoth himself."
I saw Elrond's eyes, very wide, although there was nothing of disagreement in them. Only a little surprise, perhaps, that I had dared to say what we both had long thought.
"Elros . . ." Maglor began to intervene.
Maedhros raised his one hand, to forestall his brother. "No, Maglor. Elros speaks only the truth. Can you dispute it? You, who would have dissuaded me from our attack upon the Havens? You who saved these two, even after the Silmaril escaped us yet again, and some of our people would have slain them in revenge?"
Maglor took a deep breath. "I suppose not."
"There is nothing I can do to make amends," said Maedhros to me. "All my brother and I can do is protect you as best we can, and teach you, and raise you up to make a place of your own among Elves and Men . . . whatever place that may be. Yet it seems to us that you may have more hope than that."
"What do you mean?" asked Elrond.
"Think you that the Lord of Waters would save the Silmaril, and not save your mother who bore it?"
That thought pierced through my cloak of anger. "Who can say?"
"Here is another thought. Where was your father, at that time?"
"At sea," said Elrond, and now his voice carried just a trace of bitterness. I knew he had always missed our father deeply, and wondered what had driven him to journey away from us for so long. "Always at sea, seeking who knows what."
"Seeking his own father, most likely, and the Lady of Gondolin," said Maglor. "Hoping to find them, even if he must sail to the Blessed Realm to do it."
I caught something in Maglor's tone. "Do you suppose Ulmo might have brought our mother to him, and helped them to find Valinor at last?"
"We don't know," said Maedhros, turning back to the sky to stare up at the star once more. "The Valar are not willing to do everything for us, and thus rob us of free will and that share of glory which belongs to us. Yet if your father had your mother by his side, and the power of that holy jewel in his hand, I have no doubt that he could do what no one else has been able. Present himself to the Powers, to plead the case of Elves and Men, some mercy for our sins and pity for our sorrows."
"That is a great deal to guess," said Elrond, "from one star in the sky."
Despite myself, I realized that I wanted to believe it. "I don't know, brother. It is a beautiful star."
"Even if it means that we will never see Father and Mother again? You know that if they have found their way to Valinor, the Valar will never permit them to return to Middle-earth."
I reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. "Then perhaps one day we will follow them!"
Maglor chuckled, and I could see the ghost of a smile even on his brother's lips.
"Do you know what some of the people are calling that star?" Maedhros asked. "Gil-Estel, the Star of High Hope. Not simply a sign that the Valar will preserve some things unstained, but a sign that they are preparing to take some more decisive action. Perhaps our Enemy should begin counting his days after all."
So we stood out on the wall, wrapping ourselves in our cloaks against the growing cold of the night, and watched that star slowly pass into the West. For the first time, I felt something for Maedhros other than hate. He had not tried to excuse himself, he had renewed his promise to care for my brother and me, and he had given us a reason to hope. It was not enough to make everything right again, nothing could do that, but it was a beginning.
Elrond, as usual, saw more deeply than I. Once the star had set, and we had gone back down into the castle and to our beds, I heard his voice whispering in the darkness of our room.
"Elros? If the Valar do come, what do you suppose Maedhros and Maglor will do?"
Silence followed, for a long moment, and then . . .
"What do you suppose we should do?"
