Chapter 12: A Working of Iron

The Kingshold of Finwë, son of none, was the loftiest dwelling under Illuín. Of course it was. Noldo pride demanded the Gonhirrim vaunt above all others. And I smiled wry when first I saw it, for was it not my knǫrr, sea-faring vessel of twenty oars, builded big? Just as Nîn and I had wintered in it, upside-down, snow-capped, homely.

Then I recalled her absence and that grief struck thoughts of craft from mind awhile.

Yet it was a seemly fastness, all the same, whose curved keel, frost-rimed, ridged a roof clad in a brynie of copper scales, like an elf's storied gear of war. The Kingshold was framed out with buttressing-joists coming to an acute angle above. It ran south to north, prow cleaving the black draughts that came raking down over the Orocarni, in talons of snow and hail. Say what you will of the Noldor – and I have – they face their foes.

And it was a martial building. Of that have no doubt. Her vaunting walls, below the clinkered copper that rooved her, were a skjaldborg – a shield-wall, locked together, fashioned of those kite-shields the warrior sons of Finwë so love to bear into battle – four-pointed, rimed argent like the North Star. Her strakes, spears grimly glinting. As for the wonders within – you will have to look to another scop than I for their telling. For Eöl Dubh was never welcome under that roof, in foul times nor fair.

Curufinwë made her. And for the first time, I envied another his craft. Yet my heart misgave me – for where were the foes that Fëanor the Fell, son of Finwë, sought to guard against?

I give you the truth. He made most of them with his own two hands. Those clever, jealous hands – so apt to craft, so swift to violence. For did he not draw upon his own brother, Fingolfin the Valiant, even in his father's hold in Aman? Yet that came after.

Yet that grim hall stirred within me fame-yearning of mine own. To be known amongst my Teleri people for more than the works of my hands. Nor did the coiling carvings – cold-drakes striving with mailèd Elves, their shields prepared before them, Quendi ensnared in wrought bands of cunning-craft, even one, a Noldor of grim stature, hung from a precipice, caught up by a thong stern about his thewy wrist – leave my heart unmoved. For here was revelation in craft, making my fingers itch for my wood-working tools, to fashion their like.


He came to my forge, as I knew he would, Finwë's warlike son. I was building a kiln, a tall skep of mortared limestone, for the smelting of iron. I will give him this – he at least had the courtesy to allow me a fortnight's grace after I buried Nîn to set my house in order, before he arrived at my hearth, a long straight arming-sword buckled and belted by his side, his brow crowned round with a conical helm with a nose-piece and a plume of black horse-hair.

I did not look up from my work. "Speak your piece, Noldo, and then be gone" Terse words, set to purpose. Yea, an Elf is master in his own house! But my eye fell musing upon my bronze ax, where she leaned, close to hand.

The Gonhirrim smouldered, like a dull dark coal. "You struck my sons, Curufin and Caranthir, svartálfar. Now your sword will give me answer! And you shall find it sterner work than shaming beardless boys!"

I looked up. "Challenge accepted, Curufinwë. A month hence to the day, between the branches. Now leave my house." For I had a sword to forge, and the iron was hot within my heart.