Peace
Disclaimers: Maglor etc belong to J.R.R. Tolkien and his estate. I intend no infringement of copyright and am making no money from this.
Rating: PG.
Summary: With so few words, so many are condemned to death. With such little care, the future is shattered. Written as a result of the Maglor-through-history discussions on the Silmfics list. Maglor contemplates the signing of the peace treaties of 1919-20.
A/N: Through the humiliations and injustices which they inflicted on the defeated powers, these peace treaties virtually guaranteed another war. Some at the time recognised this.
Feedback: Yes please.
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The curtains are velvet, green, soft and dank, redolent of the damp which pervades the building. The light which filters through them into the room is as cool and stale as the floor of an ancient forest. A casual observer could almost imagine insects scuttling among the empty brandy bottles which litter the floor, their venerable labels torn to shreds by anger-fuelled hands.
A top hat is tossed casually onto the bed, crumpled under an open book.
Papers in a dozen languages, in a hundred different bureaucrats' scrawls, carpet the desk and hang precariously from its edge, about to fall into the glass sea below.
He sits in the middle of all this carnage of wasted effort, his immaculate shirt open at the neck, his cuff-links abandoned and his sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Although it is only five in the afternoon, his grey eyes are clouded with drink. He abandoned the crystal goblet hours ago and now swigs the potent liqueur straight from the bottle, admiring the deep amber colour, so like fire…
Jewel bright, jewel fire … burning, burning brightly in the darkest night … burning, burning … charred skin and bone … flayed soul…
With a shaky hand, he pushes his hair behind his ears, not bothering to be careful any more.
What is careful anyway? Why should it matter if they know what I am?
I am the doomed; I am the death-bearer; I am the harbinger of bad tidings. I am darkness. I am the last, the only, and ever shall be.
He traces the spear-sharp outline with one finger, surprisingly steady for all his inebriation.
"I have no right to judge them as I do." The words echo oddly in the dilapidated room, the lilting voice sweet and sad. "For all they killed with guns, once I killed with words."
He falls silent, thinking of what has passed this day before continuing, "What right do we have to judge them, we who saw the light of Valinor in the morning of its glory and gave it up?"
Fire on the waves … fire in the skies … fire … fire until the world was but one great shout of pain and flaming dust … burning away at the soul until there was nothing left but vengeance…
Swallowing the last dregs, he reaches automatically for another bottle, breaking its seal with a practised flick, and sends the lid spinning off into the furthest corner of the room.
"But what have they done, what, O Elbereth, have they done? War and blood and madness. Blindness, I say, blindness. The mud of the front has entered their minds, clouded their senses."
A bird … a woman, tall and slender, standing on a cliff top, falling, rising, wind-borne … children screaming, wrathful and defiant, their midnight hair whipped by the sea-wind … two pairs of solemn grey eyes refusing to love…
It is over. All the high hopes have come to naught. The victors have wreaked their vengeance on the victims. The blood-bought peace is worthless, a frippery thing casually discarded, a bauble to be toyed with. Such is the price of a life: less than a grain of sand caught by the sea, less than a leaf in the wind.
Europe has been sold and bartered, divided and broken up for prizes. Those who died in the filthy mud of poppy fields died in vain. No sacrifice was this but a massacre, bloody and cruel. Those yet to be born will rue this day and curse the names of those who made this peace. Only a few now know this, see this. He tried to reason with them, his dark hair flying and his long, graceful hands gesticulating desperately. He knows that they respect him, see something in his eyes, a window onto a older world. Perhaps they saw something else there, the bodies of the dead, for they did not listen. They chose madness as he once did.
Maedhros, his face whiter than death, cursing in the clean, cool air of winter … the high, keen voices of wolves in the joy of their hunting, far off among the deep woods … Maedhros, bedraggled by days of searching, clutching a scrap of bloodied fabric between his trembling hands … turning away, unable to look upon this sight, unwilling as of yet to relinquish the quest.
The youth of Europe bled out their life, and their elders choose war once more, chose triumph over justice.
"I failed, I failed." He is wailing now, caught up in new and old grief, never able to escape the phantoms of the past, for they will follow him to the end of the world. One day, knee-deep in stinking filth and the twisted limbs of the murdered, he saw a face and called out in joy. But the soldier smiled at him blankly, his grey eyes politely confused. And he reminded himself that there were no more of the half-elven in the marred world.
Starlight… starlight found and lost so many times, forever beyond this reach … starlight watching, starlight waiting for hundreds of generations, then slowly, sadly, turning away, to the sea.
He fumbles for something to throw in his frustration, scrabbling under the piles of papers which so inexorably record the descent of nations into a new madness, and his fingers brush against a knife. Drawing it out he focuses his blurry eyes on the bright blade which was a gift once, long ago, when the world was beautiful and new. Millennia have passed into the darkness, yet still it remains bright and true, glowing under the dim gas lighting. He holds it up, and then, with a drunken movement, holds it to his wrist, pressing it into his fine, pale skin until a single drop of blood appears. He stares at this intently.
I can do them no good. I cannot guide them; perhaps I should not try to do that for which I am ill-qualified. Perhaps I should have taken Maitimo's path to repentance.
The fierce ruby brilliance captivates him, singing to him in the voices of old, telling him something he cannot quite hear. But then he remembers … remembers the young journalist whose calm face was marred with such desolation at the news … the elderly man who sat next to him, tears leaking openly down his face, and murmured that they had just signed a mandate for deaths beyond count. With a jerk, the blade spins from his hand and embeds itself in the flaking plasterwork.
Nay, Makalaure. That is not your fate. You must wander yet and atone.
Jewel-bright, star-bright … beginning and ending, all is one…
And he begins to sing … a lament, a waltz, a lay, a dirge, a tune that none who hear can ever forget. In soaring notes, he tells the tale of the world, its tragedies and its triumphs, its beauty and its ugliness, until all becomes one, a seamless tapestry, a whisper of hope in the darkness.
FINIS
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