Chapter 2. Into Darkness Bound
'Last of all is set the name of Melkor, 'He who arises in Might'. But that name he has forfeited; and the Noldor who among the Elves suffered most from his malice will not utter it, and they name him Morgoth, the Dark Enemy of the World. Great might was given to him by Iluvatar, and he was coeval with Manwë. In the power and knowledge of all the other Valar he had a part, but he turned them to evil purposes, and squandered his strength in violence and tyranny.'
From: Valaquenta; of the Enemies.
'Now Melkor began the delving and building of a vast fortress, deep under the Earth beneath the dark mountains where the beams of Iluin were cold and dim. That stronghold was named Utumno.'
From: Quenta Silmarillion.
There were fens: rank and poisonous, breeding place of flies, where green things fell sick and rotted; and rivers choked with weeds and slime; forests dark and perilous, where beasts were monsters of horn and ivory and the earth was dyed red with blood.
Among the least of these were the Gorcrows, an evil breed of carrionbird, who lived alongside cannibal spirits: the Mewlips, the remains of whose prey they devoured.
Gigantic spiders wove their webs from dead to dying tree like hanging growths or tentacles, spreading a foul reek as if a filth unnameable were piled and hoarded in the dark. Their many-facetted eyes glittered with a pale and deadly fire kindled in the deepest pits of Melkor's evil thoughts: monstrous and abominable, bestial, yet filled with purpose and hideous delight. Great horns they had, and bodies like vast bloated bags swaying and sagging between their legs that were bent with great knobbed joints high above their back, covered with hair that stuck out like steel pikes, and at each leg there was a claw.
She had slain one already; slashing open the pale luminous underbelly with her flint knife had brought forth a stream of poison frothing and bubbling from the wound. She had withdrawn quickly and fled, leaving the wounded spider to be sucked dry and eaten by her own sisters. These were cowardly creatures, despite their malice: their eyes were their vulnerable spot, and she swiftly learned that if she sent her sharp arrows flying at them, they would run, and trouble her not.
Far more worrisome were the bloodsucking bats that fell upon her at unawares and were too fast and too agile for her arrows; all she could do was lash out with her knife, maiming their wings, so that they could fly no longer and fell impotent into the foul water, and the Mewlips fed.
There was another creature dwelling there that filled her with dread: a huge, many tentacled being, luminous and green and spreading a vile stench. She had only seen it from afar, as it grappled with a giant spider, yet that was enough to know that she would not be able to escape, let alone vanquish it, should it ever come upon her.
She is afraid, but she will not let fear be her master: if she does, she knows it will overcome her and all will be lost.
Iluvé will be lost.
She touches the pipes she wears ever on her breast: Iluvé's pipes.
And remembers how they were made.
They had been sitting by the lake, where the yellow flowers bloomed and the wind blew in the long reeds and rushes.
"I wish I could make a sound as of the wind" she had sighed, " So soft and gently soothing."
"Perhaps you can." he had answered, and had broken off a reed. "Maybe if you blew on it?"
But all the sound he had produced was the sputtering of his own breath, and she had laughed.
He had turned the reed over and over in his hands, thoughtfully.
"What if you blew in it?"
"Is it hollow then?"
"I could make it so."
And with deft fingers and endless patience he had hollowed the reed. Putting it full to his mouth had not produced the desired effect either, but when he had held it upright, and pursed his lips, and blown gently downwards, there came a sound of such loveliness neither of them had heard before.
It had drawn the attention of other Elves, and they had listened spellbound, and too had broken off reeds, hollowing them. Wonderful tones they had made then, blowing their reeds in turn, and thus Iluvé had discovered that the sound changed in reeds of different length and size. He had bound some together, in a row, going from long to short, and so had made his first pipes.
"Now you shall hear the music of the reeds."
And he had played, and though many were there to listen and marvel at his tunes, he had played for her alone.
She smiled at the memory.
"You shall play again, my brother."
And she went on, heedless of the dangers lurking in the slimy depths and the rotting trees.
Sometimes in the stillness of her heart she longed for the green-gray banks of Cuiviénen, under the eternal twilight of the Stars. Here, the only green was the scum of lurid weed on the dark greasy surface of the sullen water. Yet there came and end to it: the low marshes ran to higher ground, and thence to mountains.
Tall and dark they were, sharp like teeth, rows upon rows of broken peaks and barren ridges, grey as ash.
A bitter wind blew through them.
Long did she search for a way through: a pass, a cleft, a single path up and over, yet there was none: like a sheer wall of stark forbidding rock they stood, defying her strength and stamina.
She began to climb.
Up and up and up she went, sometimes crawling on all fours, bend against the wind, like an animal, or groping for hand and footholds hanging on to sheer upward cliffs, until her nails broke and her fingers bled; still she went on, though she often had to retrace her steps to find another passage. At times, boulders came galloping down the slopes, or there was a load of shingle that shifted underfoot or was let loose by the elements, harrying her from all sides. There were thunderstorms, with lightning splintering on the peaks, and shivering rock, and great crashes splitting the air to go rolling and tumbling onto every cave and hollow, and the darkness was filled with overwhelming noise and sudden light. There came an icy wind and a rain, and the wind whipped the rain into hail and into every direction, so that it became nigh on impossible to continue, yet there was no shelter save in caves and chasms, and these were even more terrifying than the storms, for out of their deep dark recesses came a tap-tom-tom-tap-tap-tap-tom clanging noise, that echoed and died, echoed and died and came back again, almost as if it were calling her.
And in a sense it was: the Enemy dwelt deep down inside and under these mountains, she knew: the one who had taken her brother and many others besides. The sound was as much as a call, or a challenge.
She decided not to ignore it.
"Iluvé, my brother, hear my soul cry out to thine: it is I, Ilwë, thy sister: I come. Have no fear, Iluvé: we shall be together again."
She took a step into the darkness. And another, and then another.
"Iluvé, can'st thou hear me? I am coming, my brother, I am coming!"
Down she went, deep down and further still, and her own glow alone illuminated her way, yet there was no way, rather a succession of high vaulted clammy caverns, with sharp stalagmites and stalactites like teeth growing to meet each other, and a drip-drop-drip of water; and wide chasms she for all her elven agility found hard to cross; and narrow passages she had to slither through on her belly, like a worm.
Through nooks and crannies at times poisonous fumes would burst, filling what little space there was, and she all but suffocated. It also became most unbearably hot. From the depths lights could now be seen, as of great fires, and indeed out of the fissures left and right at intervals a red glare would come, now leaping up, now dying down into darkness, as of flames; and all the while far below there was a rumour and a trouble, a throbbing, labouring sound.
At the last she came to the very bottom, where crawling along one of the clefts she found herself on a narrow ledge, and there before her was a vast cavern, were clouds of smoke swirled among buttresses and battlements, tall as hills, towering above immeasurable pits of boiling fire and rock, great courts and gaping gates of steel and adamant that led to further fortresses of black stone; and there in-between hideous creatures flew or walked or crawled. There were great forges; though she had no knowledge of such things, she recognised the making of fell weapons: large doublehanded swords, serrated blades, twin-headed axes and black, snake-like knives; helmets with visors that were masks of terror, coats of mail and breastplates, all of which she had no words for, yet she realised that such would be wielded and worn, and wondered by what kind of being.
Then she saw them: hideously stunted forms: bent, bowlegged and squat. Their arms were long and strong, their skin black as wood that had been charred by flame. The jagged fangs in their wide mouths were yellow, their tongues red and thick and lolling, their nostrils wide and their faces broad and flat and their eyes were crimson gashes like hot burning coals. One by one they spawned forth from the pits, driven on by even more fearsome creatures still: huge and hulking with streaming manes of fire, and nostrils that breathed flame.
They seemed to move with clouds of black shadows, and their limbs coiled rather than moved; in their clawlike hands they held many thonged whips of fire that snapped and cracked and beat the backs of the creatures from the pits.
She saw all of this; but more than that she felt, as palpable as the heat and the smoke and the fumes, the hate, the pain and the fear. The foul creatures hated each other and hated and feared those that drove them, and all hated and feared the Master of them all; the one the Vala had named: Melkor.
She could sense his presence everywhere: the blackened soil, the sullen water, even the very rock cried out his Evil.
A great anger rose within her.
"And this the Valar allow? They who claim to have made Earth, Water, Sky and the Stars Above were incapable of preventing this? Yet they are aware of it, that Oromë knew of the existence of this place, he named it even: Utumno… and they did nothing?"
In this she was mistaken. For though Oromë had tarried awhile among the Quendi, he had swiftly ridden back over land and sea to Valinor to bring the tidings of the Awakening; and he spoke of the shadows that troubled Cuiviénen. Then the Valar rejoiced; and yet they were in doubt amid their joy; and they debated long what counsel it were best to take for the guarding of the Quendi from the shadow of Melkor.
Manwë sought the counsel of Iluvatar, then summoned the Valar to the Ring of Doom, and thither came even Ulmo from the Outer Sea.
Then Manwë said to the Valar: "This is the counsel of Iluvatar in my heart: that we should take up again the mastery of Arda, at whatsoever cost, and deliver the Quendi."
And the Valar made ready and came forth from Aman in strength of war to assault the fortresses of Melkor, and make an end.
Ilwë the she-elf did not know it, but the creatures she saw coming forth from the spawning pits were part of Melkor's great army, speed-bred to meet the forces of the Valar. For already there had been a great battle in the Northwest of Middle-Earth, and all that region was much broken. But the first victory of the Lords of the West was swift, and the servants of Melkor fled before them to Utumno. And at the very moment that Ilwë had entered the caverns of that vast fortress the Valar laid siege to it.
Great was his wrath when this was made known to Melkor, and greater still when he heard of the losses he had suffered: and he called for greater numbers of fell creatures to be formed, and fresh blood to be brought into the breed. So from the dungeons and eyeless prisons of Utumno lamentable beings were brought forth: shapes twisted by pain and made into ruined and terrible forms of life; slow acts of cruelty having enslaved and corrupted them. And yet they were still recognisable, despite their mutilated bodies: they were Elves - or had been, once, when they were still free under the Stars over Cuiviénen.
Chains were at their hands and feet, and they were held together by iron rods that were linked to steel bands round their necks. One by one was loosened and thrown screaming into a pit that bubbled and belched with a sickening stench. Then out of the pit crawled creatures such as she had seen before, yet these wore chains.
And so she witnessed the vilest deed of Melkor: the changing of the fairest of the Children of Iluvatar into a foul, darkhearted race of beings, that loathed the Master whom they served in fear; the maker of their misery.
And at the end of the line that was being driven to the pit, the very last to be thrown in wore a face she knew well: and his dear voice rang in her mind and ears as he fell, screaming her name.
She cried out to him with all her being, and their souls touched briefly, oh so briefly, but when his body hit the slick surface of the pit's abominable contents, she felt no more.
Author's notes:
Parts of this chapter come out of LOTR and The Hobbit, as well as the Silmarillion and the Encyclopaedia