The Fountainhead
A tale of Arda Marred, as derived from the Annals of Beleriand, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien
Part II: Reach
"Seven towers," Turgon said with a smile.
Finrod raised to him amazed eyes; frowning he looked back to the plan of the city, laid before the two of them on the wooden desk. The son of Fingolfin carved the smooth surface himself, as he had the many caves of Vinyamar. Ever since they arrived in Middle Earth, it seemed his hands never rested from labor. Stone, wood, metal, all Turgon shaped to his will, in every hour of the day and night.
Aredhel had complained of it. She told Finrod to knock some sense into her brother, for all the stars' sakes, before they had a second Faenor in their midst.
"It's… ambitious," he at last said, clasping his hands behind his back.
"Ambitious?" Turgon laughed, rolling up the paper with the gentleness Finrod had only seen in him when he handled Idril. His long fingers stroked the white surface, perhaps unconsciously. "After the journey to hither shores, nothing seems ambitious any longer." One moment he only gazed, grinning, upon Finrod, till the golden Elf raised a skeptic eyebrow. "But it will be a great work, aye."
"Have you named it?" Such a question! It was, Finrod observed with a bittersweet mental chuckle, all too Noldorin of him.
Turgon eyed him, still with that same smile. "Should you not first be asking wherever do I plan to build her?"
He was joking – it could be that they simply knew and loved each other too well. Those were years of peace in fair Beleriand, after all, and Finrod had already began his own secret work making a lovely city. There was room for laughter even when discussing matters such as these. It could be that Aredhel was only being paranoid after all.
Finrod snickered, spreading his arms in mock-indignation. "Leave be! You are the practical one, do not expect so much of your friend the poet."
"Ah," Turgon said; and his smile changed somehow as he lay the rolled sketch in a drawer in the desk, which he locked at once. "But I am also a poet, a poet writing in stone."
"Ai! My place is usurped!" The golden Elda wailed in reply, clutching a hand to his heart, and the two shared a light laugh between them for some time.
"But in truth, cousin," Finrod started, and seriously, as they left the cave-house for the free air and lively smell of the shore, "do you plan to build it? Think you not that you labor enough?"
It was a strange glance that Turgon gave him, hearing that, and he folded his arms and turned from his cousin to look to the sea. Gulls were gathering, and waves rushing, blue and white foam, roaring in a monotonous cycle from the western horizon. Wind swept, unfriendly, at the two Elves' hair, and Finrod found himself wondering why Turgon chose to live by the sea. Why would he need the bitter reminder? The Exiles were punished enough without subjecting themselves to that most terrible of longing.
Few things thrived on desperate desire; Finrod, as he realized with a pang of fear, knew only one that suited the Noldor.
"Labor enough?" Turgon said of a sudden, but did not look back to Finrod, only to the endless sea. "Findarato, we are no longer eternal. Would this whole wide land not remember the hands of the Noldor once the Curse has taken us one and all?"
Another would have been shocked; but poet Finrod understood drama and irony – pain and beauty, desire and beauty, and all the woes of the Noldor. "Have hope, Turko."
Turgon's gaze snapped back at that, his eyes blazing. "I do not want hope, I want immortality."
Silence, and the roaring of the sea.
"Thou blasphemer," Finrod murmured, and not in anger.
Turgon did not answer. Rather he bent, lifted a pebble and cast it into the sea. It sunk without so much as rising a wave or a sound.
"I will build her," he said, and he straightened, his eyes stealing, seeking westward. "As fair as my Tirion – nay, fairer, and too fair to be touched by the Curse."
~*~
First window; she encircled the room in a measured stride, pausing to look into the emptiness every short while, and from the first window she glimpsed the towers. The morning sun seemed impaled upon one white spike of shining marble, adorning it with a halo of sorts, holiness of light, refraction and reflection, the pale towers of Gondolin their home. Beyond Anar upon the tower there were the high walls, Anar beyond the walls, and the tower cast its long shadows down, perfectly upon the roofs, leaving light in the streets in this blessed hour, in the most beautiful city of hither shores.
"Father."
And he did not answer.
To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well…
Second window; the angles from lights playing off different surfaces came in between her steps in ray after ray, blazing into the silent room to slam into the opposite wall. Out the second window, stepping along its length with the view guiding her, she could see the fountain there below the walls, amidst the court almost as an eye. It stared upwards without so much as shame with the leaping water at its center a penetrating acknowledgement of vision, moving and shifting, an unstable surface that birthed stability in the essence that was all its own – it blurred all reflection and she saw naught but the water themselves.
He spoke no words, and she looked his way and away from the city in a moment that crystallized, the shifting in sight from marble within and without. He saw her not at all.
"The healers… say the Mortal would be well, that but weariness ails him – yet a lengthy journey it must have been, and it may be that his words are not to blame…"
His silence hung in the air with a presence of its own.
Longest of all the realms of the Eldalie shall Gondolin stand…
Third window; her footsteps formed a slow and steadying rhythm measured enough to keep the view solid, and glancing the walls were ever there, moving as if to follow her. In her mind she knew it was she that moved and not the old stones, the solid stones, that wanted nothing but to stand and be as they were around the city, holding it within. And she thought herself silly for giving the stones a will of their own, as if they cared for the city also when they stood, to shield it from prying eyes, from harsh winds and from the cold at night. In her circle she drew their pattern into herself – to shield and hold.
She thought he would raise his eyes to her and see, knew she would be content even in him seeing past her.
"There is a stirring among the lords. I will speak with them if you wish… they know me for what I think on the matter, and would trust my words. Though perhaps, if they are willing to believe… perhaps it would be best should you speak?"
And beyond Aman ye shall dwell in Death's shadow…
What was she hoping he would say?
Forth window; from here, only buildings, but marble all, and white all, and clear all with their smooth surfaces that ill fit the teeming life in their midst, life on all its shapes. The buildings were here before life; life came later to give them a quality of its own, something tender and surreal where little footsteps rang across reaches of white, and voices echoed as the beaming light off those walls that were there before singing voices. Music came from there, swept low upon the wind, resting in the corners and curves of the city – corners, curves and small spaces shaped to trap the music, to ring forever in their depths.
Her hand rested upon the windowsill, skin against stone. To look to him she knew would be useless.
But love not too well the work of thy hands and the devices of thy heart…
"The common people, also, they feel that there is something amiss… Father, they are afraid, and I know not how we may ease their fear. They love this city also… we love it one and all, our city that will stand, yet the fear is there, that if it will not… if it will not…"
Fifth window; birds flew overhead in the square of blue framed by surfaces and angles completing each other in a shape that was not angular, nor liquid, but a merging of both, as was all in the city. In her pacing constant and unbroken she traced her hand on the wall between windows, annow on the empty space where the wall gave way to air, but her fingers did not stray into the opening. Silent, she contemplated pushing through. Outside the broken piece of trapped sky the clouds shifted lazily, less white than the city below.
Tears unnumbered shall ye shed…
"Must we not even fear it? Can we fear it, Father?"
Sixth window; shut, a patch of wood closing the view outside and she dared not push it open, for fear that it would make any sort of sound at all, and then the sunlight would burst through to surprise her. Now it threw in long rays through the gap between wooden surfaces and cast itself down to kiss the floor, landing just at the edges of her father's throne. In the light from the other windows, she could not see the course of those darts very clearly, though she knew it was there – a straight line from outside to inside, invading despite every effort to shut it out. A straight line that no glass and no jewel and no bright marble stone in the city had broken.
"Father?"
And remember that the true hope of the Noldor…
Seventh window; she did not stop to look. She turned around, sharply, to look at him, her father, the king, the architect. She looked at him.
But he did not answer; she should have looked to the city, she knew.
~*~
And the world burned around him.
It was too late, Turgon thought; too late to polish swords that had gone rusty, too late to blow the dust off shields and helms, and too late, so very late, to shut the gates. And the fire, the fire had come from the inside.
It seemed to him as if he had never heard anything but the clamor of war from the streets, ten thousand blades locked, ten thousand mouths screaming, battle cries of men and the roar of steam and stones collapsing. There was smoke, and there was blood, and there was quite a lot of fire, everywhere. Red – the walls, white, but now red, and the dawn's red, and the flames' red.
He ran up the spiraling staircase to the top of his highest tower.
There was a blade in his hand, and there was black blood on it, long silver of a light beam made solid, and from it night dripping to stain the marble that he had hewn with his own hands, once long ago. Obviously the city was lost, he knew it from the first moment when the first shouts sounded and the first flickers of fire and shadows came, Gondolin that was built to last, it fought without semblance of hope.
He could heard the good men of his household below, the great sounds of war waged down at his very gates, at the base of the spire. Orcs and great fire-drakes, one had to wonder at the arts of their making, and them against the city of stone – or was he caught in the middle here, between the struggle of these two great works, did he even have a place here. Small, very small, a speck of nothing in a crumbling window, watching over the battle.
Halted, breathe heavy, blade heavy also in his cold hand. A glance told him nothing new of the outside. It seemed the streets had turned to rivers of blood, the flows from every door coming together as a great ocean, where the King's Fountain was all steam and smoke, a sight like he had never even imagined he would see. The warriors there moved as if in a sea, also, blackness, gold, there were banners in the midst and more. He saw the emblem of the Wing and had a fleeting thought of his daughter who lived and her husband who lived and their son who lived and his House and such mortal concerns, or did it matter? He felt a pain in his breast, as if his heart was being torn apart very slowly.
There was some truth to it.
Or was it not the fairest city east of the Great Sea? The west was not in his mind as he ran up the spiral, the walls, closed, such few windows, he never thought to have more windows, and those were still and frozen moments. The ground shook beneath his feet, he had a thought that they were about to topple the spire, they were banging on the walls… there was battle there, and cutting into the land as the buildings fell one by one. He swayed, nearly going to his knees, at the pounding on his bones.
The – blade?
No, there was no need to, he had to get to the top.
Or was it not the fairest city – ? There were battles inside houses now, if to die, at least not to let them pillage. Fires within and smoke from windows… tapestries caught fire, burning paper filled the air with a sickening stench. He panted and wiped the sweat from his brow with a trembling and bloody hand. Not since that time on the Ice had he felt this burning within. He wished that they would stop, please, they had to stop, or he had to get to the top of the tower.
He ran and –
Why?
The music of flutes – the men of the Fountain, so many jewels, looking out the window to see, they had come now bright and proud, for a moment the pain was lessened as the hosts of the enemy shrieked in their fear. He watched, holding his breath, would they avail?
Such light, between their banners and their blades…
Loyal to the end, to their City and their King, and he had to get to the top of the tower.
He turned from the window, hearing inside his skull the roar of the battle and of the wounded and of the dead and of their foes, the demons of flame – slain, many slain, such valor, to do battle with fire incarnate. He had seen them in the Nirnaeth… no small feat, and so many dead today. He had a moment's thought of his brother, avenged at last, but did that matter, and no, but their fires were crawling up walls and his skin burned.
The – top – of – the – tower –
Ran up the spiral.
He saw, with his own eyes, the battle of the Mortal and the Traitor upon the walls, and the dawn there at the background… the sun… what a dance, what a dance, beyond the walls there was only the sun, and – the surface of the air? Scenes blurred in his mind, but he saw the coup de grace. Glory to that fragile, ending one…
Ending – not any longer, ending, not after such deeds –
With his own eyes, but he had to get to the top of the tower. The top of the tower.
To see.
And there it was.
Gondolin burned around him, a symphony of blood and flame and battle, he stood watching over it in silence and unarmed. He had never seen such a sight in his life, he had never imagined such a sight could exist. He tried to bring back to mind the image of his city as it had been before, white and serene and clear and stable and lasting, and there was this. After gold there is silver, and after silver there is white, and after white, there shall be…
But that not, that after white there shall be flames.
And if that did not last, if that did not last –
And for a moment he was lost in a despair so profound that he had thought he would fade there and then, that he had thought he would die before the flames claimed him, that he had thought that he had wasted so much of his life building the city, so much of his love on the city, so much of his soul on those stones –
But that the deeds that we shall do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda…
And the fires in his city spoke to him of eternity at last.
And he raised his hands –
Flesh? Flesh fades, the spirit consumes it…
And he saw the unfurled banners –
Does love last?
And he saw the valor, the blood, the sacrifice, the nobility, the hope –
The Undying Lands…
And he could almost hear the songs already –
"Great is the victory of the Noldor!"
And the tower fell, crumbling, dragged down, hewn and destroyed, toppled and never to be rebuilt again while Arda lasts. At the top of the tower he felt the ground beneath his feet give way, saw the abyss gaping beneath him and within it the symphony, saw the stones of his city rise to greet him, and loved them, one and all, at that moment. He never remembered how it was, when and why he had hit the ground, nor how the sky had darkened soon thereafter. His body upon the stones was as one of them, they were as cold as he, and flesh gave itself to stone and stone gave itself to song –
Empty eyes gazed upon the Fall; his lips parted in a smile.
"Behold – my masterpiece," he whispered, and was gone.
~~End~~
It should indeed be "Faenor" in the proper Sindarin spelling.
The italicizedquotes in the second segment are taken from the Curse of Mandos and from Ulmo's words to Turgon concerning Gondolin, both taken directly from the Silmarillion.
"Great is the victory of the Noldor" are Turgon's last words from the "extended version" of the Fall of Gondolin, which may be found in the second Book of Lost Tales.
"Behold – my masterpiece" – Dekko, "Zot!" issue #18.