The march of the armies resumed under Gothmog, and Sauron, too, prepared to leave. He was troubled that he could not speak to Melkor of the things that lay whispering in his secret heart. Melkor was essence, essence sitting on the throne, essence shrouded in the glare of his dark crown- he was an extreme of choice, and Sauron could choose as long as he was free.
Melkor could not see a thing in any other way the he could see. Sauron's guts twisted at the thought.
"Milord Vala," He said, seething with the unsaid.
Melkor met the dark eyes steadily with his own where even the light dwindled into nothingness.
"Milord Maia," Answered he, and nodded, "My blessings are upon you for this venture outside our keep. Prison they named Angband: for us, this is the reol's efuge of our desires. What we wish we shall have with Angband as our medium.
Sauron looked up, gaze confused, and the mouth that parted was from a form he took while he labored in forges of the bright Aule. His power lay in his voice and his eyes, and infinite reasons colored his lies, but Melkor knew Thauron well before Thauron knew himself.
"What do you wish to say?
"Many things," Sauron replied, and was hesitant. He forced the door of his thoughts to swing shut.
"Perhaps of Gothmog.
"Nay.
"Of this campaign.
"Nay.
"Of our purpose here then.
Thrice Sauron denied Melkor's advances and thrice felt himself twist beneath the weight of the effort. He could not breath when curiosity weighed so heavily upon him. Deeply, fervently, he wished to hear what Melkor named Morgoth would say of Gothmog, of Angband, of an attack on Fingolfin's camp near Mithrim. Nevertheless, he would not bear admission because he knew the answer would not be right and yet be powerless to think it so.
"Name a thing of many things." Melkor said, the dark sheen on his vambrace eerie and unsettling; polished like a mirror, with his head bowed, Sauron could see his own visage and was angry- he appeared too like Annatar then. "If you would not speak, then the matter is rest and was no matter at all but part of a false art born from a false heart.
Bended knee unfolding, Sauron stood up slowly. The genuflection broke open.
"False?" He echoed, voice growing louder, "To whom am I false?
"Do you not have a master other than yourself," Asked Melkor, the shadows of his cape rustling like the sound of faint wails, "Do you not address me as your lord and yet presumes to keep things you wish to say hidden from my ears? The heart changing course can only be said as false and none else. And to say that you wish to say many things and would not any, does that not reek of a manipulative art. What do you wish me to do?
"If I said, I do not have a master other than myself. If I said, I address you as lord only because you were made first. If I said, I am to do with my speech and my affairs as I please, and art comes naturally, what then?" The glimmer of a Silmaril was caught in a corner of Sauron's eyes.
Drumming his fingers on the rest of the throne, whirling with the arcane designs of his making, Melkor remembered the day upon the sheer windy cliff.
"What else other than that we are allies of the first, for we gave birth to the word. We are allies, Sauron, because we needed it. It is need that binds us, neither empty desire nor consuming lust." The apprentice of the House of Aule had lingered upon its threshold and would not pass, and so fey and so fine were his words and beauty Melkor craved it for his own. So he had cajoled and persuaded, drawing upon all the power he had been gifted he tore the ainu away from the warm bower of his first youth with a vision, bright flash of infinite fulfillment of the infinite temptations.
"Do you think I lie to you?" Sauron asked, his face impossibly young. Succumbed, and yet victorious in his own right; there was helplessness and power entangled. A whisper pounded against his ears, that he had imprisoned himself if this was a prison as he had came to see it.
"I think I trust you," Melkor mused, "Indeed, I do," knowing he must. From the throne upon the dais, he leaned forward and reached out his hand, "Child, minion, and equal.
Sauron did not believe him, and did not take the hand. In a sudden movement, Melkor leaned further forward, grasped Sauron's impassive hand, and held it almost tenderly.
"The question remains, for I see clearer now, it is not what you want to say, but what you wish me to do," Said Melkor.
There was something perverse of evil, of nothingness speaking the truth, of nothingness being so powerful. Sauron knew all those things nevertheless he could not deny the intoxication of being made commander of them.
"Be not yourself to me, for you are traitor that way." Sauron answered, the black flesh burning as Melkor slipped the golden glove off.
"Better phrased: to let you be." Melkor said. Sauron was silent. Secrets leaked out of him from the permanent wounds rendered by the sharp edges of light sparkling upon the crown, "I will, Sauron, I will, Annatar." Melkor said, lying the other hand on top of such bright and rallying locks.
Beneath the fringe of his lashes, Sauron stared at the gambeson, an amorphous floating relief upon it. When the heavy, slender, hand left and seemed to leave its imprint, he stepped up the stages toward the throne and looked up into Melkor's eyes.
"As we are allies, so my wish stands." Unbowed before the abyss, he made his choice with their hands clasped against the center of Morgoth's chest. The winds changed in his world but he no longer felt its caresses.
Melkor's iron fingers untangled themselves from his. Released, he fled.
Sauron did not look back.
--
After Black Hand left, Melkor saw the familiar shadow passing and beckoned to it.
Thuringwethil stood before Melkor, her face haughty and her back straight.
"You push him too far milord," She said, "He may leave us." Her mouth was very dry. Sauron had swept past her, nodded, a hair of his golden head stark on her dark dark cloak for just a moment.
"Only for a little while perhaps, but he would not break, there's no such thing as too far for him," said Melkor, toying with the image of Sauron's face in his mind. He stood from his throne and puts his hand over his crown, only briefly, dark and slender fingers threading with the lines of light from the Silmarils. The room was full of shadows for a while.
"The siege continues." Thuringwethil said, wetting her dry lips with her tongue.
"And I shall not break it, not for a while." Melkor replied. The Silmarils no longer cried, they whimper and sob occasionally but their luster was not dulled.
"Thangorodrim ring with his cries, I had expected that someone would come for him." She followed him up a twisting stairway ending in a platform only a little above the battlements. Twilight and gloomy air hid them from dimming eyes of the Noldor.
"His children are forsaken by the Valar. Do you think it not fitting that Eru's betrayed by those at Valinor as well?" Melkor asked, a faint feeling of satisfaction creeping up bones.
"Yes, you are very accomplished milord." She murmured. "And what of the other him?" She tilted her head toward the tall tower of the Quarter. "Would he stay?
"For a while. Everything has its time." Melkor answered without looking, instead, surveying the Noldorin encampment with a certain pride. "Haste should not be my weakness as it had been for others." Thuringwethil stood straighter, and gathered her cloak close against the blustery winds. Her master looked sidelong and marked her expression, wane beneath the sheet paleness. "Are you well fed today," continued he, "Look how they build their fires large outside their tents and a smaller one inside. Look how nimble they consider their feet to be, walking across bough and snow as if they thought I have seen neither before and they should ambush me. Better that they clad themselves with their armors of steel than dreaming that lightness of eyes should surprise me." He laughed suddenly, glancing toward the mountains at the gates, and for a moment, the stones of Angband shook and rang with the hideous sound.
"Not all things are a ruse, milord." Not all things is like you. Nothing can utterly be. Thuringwethil's face was ice, and her eyes colder. She followed him as he started on the walkway into the bowels of the earth, thinking that perhaps he enjoyed her discomfort.
"The cycle repeats itself yet I know I shall never tire of it.
"The new one has scarcely begun.
The sky was an indecent gray and the winds had grown louder and more violent, rending and cracking the air with a thousand whips.
"Strange how I feel so young and shall always for all eternity. Have you fed?" He laid a hand on her shoulder, then another, a firmer one. He put his mouth by her ear. A shifty yellow-eyed orc gaze met her eyes as she turned away from the cold breath against her face. "Answer my question, have you fed?" Lifting her hair out of the way, Melkor brushed his smooth white teeth over the soft skin of her neck before playfully nipping it. Thuringwethil sighed.
"You know I have not, milord.
Melkor's monster lips remained on her neck, cold and clammy like the clinging grasses of a swamp.
"A messenger cannot afford to be ravenous in her journeys." The cold imprint of his mouth remained as Melkor stood back and demanded her to follow.
The shadow firelight of the tunnel blurred earth and blood and refuse into murk. A foul stench rose from the ground and the walls shook in small, almost imperceptible movements. So dark, eyes were incandescent pearls within and could only widen and narrow, or close. Thuringwethil could feel the passage thinning until her fingernails scratched at the uneven surface of the walls. The ceilings pressed down, and with every step the vibrations becomes more detectable. She stopped.
"I will not.
"You shall.
The light of the Silmarils stunned her. Turning swiftly, she began to walk in the opposite direction. Golden hair spread around an elven face full of fair grace, the eyes starlit in sleep, starlit in awakening- they stared, into hers before her sorrow, into the hazy shroud of her memories. She turned and started running- the imagery hovering before her. Melkor loomed into view, and he was laughing.
"I wondered when." He said, and the Silmarils were very bright indeed.
The image became stronger, firmer in flesh and substance. He stood before her and smiled, the curl of the corners of his mouth as fine as she remembered those nights beside Cuivennen. Thuringwethil reached out a hand to touch him before snatching it back quickly. Oh, but he was still here, standing before her, a living and breathing memory.
"Eat Orcspit!" She cried to the one that stood beside the apparition. Lunging forward and only a hair's breadth away she found herself caught again. Not by his hands, never by his hands, but by the two dark eyes spirits holding her with their vice-like grip. And she knew the grip well too, and that SHE could have been faster and stronger, closer to tearing that smug face off that damnation. She felt herself collapsing and shrinking in the darkness as Melkor's hands covered the Silmarils.
Small, anguishing, lonely voices whispered fiercely, ruefully in her mind for the golden memory had disappeared as she had wanted it to. Nay, she just did not wish to see him hereÉsee herÉainu in a perverse form. The path widened before her tired feet. So weary, so weary, yet the firelight danced upon the naked dirty sprawled flesh beyond the iron bars. A strange moribund thing slid into her stomach and she flinched at the gnawing sensation that simply would not cease.
"Feed," Melkor told her, arms crossed, leaning against a pillar as the dark shadows slinked past him, "Before you leave. I will not have my messages from my lieutenant stalled because you need to satisfy your hunger along the way or captured because the messenger is too weak to evade scrambling Quendi.
The elves inside the cell looked out at her with blind fearful eyes, their limbs set at awkward angles. One opened his mouth and a strangled sound melted into the air.
"Your lieutenant could use the time from the delay to think of what he is doing and whether he should continue it," She said without tearing her eyes off from the sight, "He could repent as I could not.
"You say these things when you are hungry. It's an evil habit." Melkor said. The iron doors slid open with a loud clang, and the elves groaned. Not yet emaciated, their flesh was already wasting. Loose skin hung upon vanishing muscles and brief spots of cleanliness around the wrists and ankles showed pale pink skin.
"I find my mind is clear when I suffer so unnaturally. It reminds me that I once did not suffer." Thuringwethil answered, feeling her hunger aggravating. She stepped over the threshold of the prison and her shadow filled it. When she found her mouth close to the skin of a broken wrist she asked, "Why do you insist milord, every damned time
"As much as you wish to leave you cannot except into the Void...and that is still horror for you," Melkor's voice drifted back as she sank her fangs into the delicate pulsating veins, "As long as you are here and mine, you shall live, and live better if I command it." The hand twitched and tried to clench, and then fell still. Melkor cooed. "You still live, though you wished it not so. In the end, you would still find your prey and hunt him down. Is this not better? When he is broken and welcoming the release of his fea from his hroa?
The flesh beneath her lips hissed gently, the sound of salt being poured upon a deep wound. Thuringwethil looked up, eyes bright and guilt. Shadows draped the limp forms even as she left.
"Hurry," Melkor said, "He is waiting.
--
The clouds sallied forth before the armies did: bright helms and star-kissed steel wielded by immortal fear and Noldor will. Before the breaking of the day, Finwe's son led a charge against the left, immerging out of the trees from behind the camp. Dark clouds rolled, climbing atop the other until the sky was black. The fire of the balrogs shone fierce as Sauron lifted his Black Hand to the heavens and agitated the wind and the rain to burst wild from the grasp of Manwe. Upon the ground, sharp spires of grass impeded the elves' movements as the orcs readied themselves. The day was night, and eyes flashed upon faces lit excited by fire.
It happens in sudden, sporadic violent clashes. Upon his high seat upon the hill, Sauron could see the armies moving forwards and backwards, neither gaining ground. He was counting. The sons of Feanor were conspicuously missing. He knew them to have been ordered to come. Whether they would heed the words of Nolofinwe, newly Fingolfin, would be doubtful if he was not so sure of their mutual hatred of him, and of the abominations that now faced their unblemished kin.
The ragged files seemed strange against the ordered ranks of the elves. Black armor stood against the polished silver. They fight at night, and Tilion's obscured, yet dawn was thickening blood.
A little in the distance, Gothmog and the First Guard formed a picket line and moved in a diagonally, distracting and thinning the main brunt of the Noldor force. Balrogs took longer to fight than death-wished orcs after all. The smell reached Sauron as he inhaled deeply, conscious of every movement of air within and without him. Acrid flesh and blood mingled with the scent of smoke as new waves surged from beyond the bluffs. Hordes of monsters upon the fields, Sauron continued to search for the Feanorioni. They weren't there, though their banners were. Sauron looked slightly to note that the cloth was newly mended, and upon its position atop a tree, away from the carnage below. The seven pointed stars were cold and accusing upon the horizon, the banner-bearer having been planted in the highest point an elf could find.
They could never disguise the armor of their make from his eyes, and they would never wear another while they lived. Feanorions were different, and they were gone. Everyone of Fingolfin's effort was desperate. There were no such things as bluffs to him, and so, his enemies were always hoodwinked into believing something perhaps they should not. Desperate, yet not reckless, every grimace and every tear measured, Nolofinwe and his followers fought with all their lives behind them. He had never seen such a momentous elf.
Sauron was puzzled now. Did he fought so desperately because the Sons of Feanor abandoned himÉdid accidents immobilized them all..or perhaps, a new kinslayingÉImperceptibly, the battle drew on, and seemed as it would be longer still.
Sauron turned to Thuringwethil, laid a missive in her hands and said in curious afterthought. "Look to him," He paused, "For me." She glanced at him warily and nodded.
Something stirred in his blood as the dark shape sailed away, dark wings into dark sky. To think the beyond was still unmitigated darkness almost made his thoughts falter, and the melee pause as a shaft of sunlight broke onto the ground. For one, sudden, brilliant moment, the entire orcish mass cowered and scattered the ranks.
But the Silmarils were there, and that should be enough.
Hard pressed in the fervor of the war, Sauron bade the coming of a gray mist. The sky closed again, and he saw that it was good. The elves were driven back, almost enervated while the orcs recovered their strength. Constancy made the bloodshed shed dull. He saw hardened veterans aging before his eyes, having lost the excitement of what they wished for most, the liberation from Eru's ultimate decree as a head rolled or a neck spouted blood. Orcs die of old age.
None could come close to him, sequestered and invisible, nary a distortion in the air where he stood. A gentle breeze flew carelessly across the bloodied sward and each stir and keep of the commotion reminded him of the sky and consequently, Eol. He too, hidden.
And of all the years Sauron led while Melkor slumbered, imprisoned in the hold of the Valar, he had never been so strangely distracted in a waging battle. There was a danger hidden somewhere, close to him, as he always would know, as when fairest of the Maia strode into Aule's halls and smiled
A long cry echoed in the distance, faintly familiar. But Fingolfin had regrouped, and then they were gone, retreated with a terrible swiftness over the river. Sauron knew why the Feanoriaons were missing.
He let out a roar of outrage. It was over far too quickly yet Melkor had insisted he came.
--
Naril looked down at Turufin's hands, still gently twined in Telereth's dark hair. He stared at it a long time, and then at Turufin's face, and then back at Telereth's, pale and still.
"Another." Turufin had expected a scolding, perhaps; a reprimand at the least- but he heard neither in Naril's voice. "It will not help, you know. She cannot come back." There were grief in the words, and a new bitterness.
"I know.
"Yes, you would, as we all would. We are not blind after all." Naril glanced away. "We should put her on the pyre with the rest." He said, looking warily around.
"We were suppose to be together until the end of Arda. She did not even know how to wield a blade. I did not. We were artisans." He bit the inside of his cheek until it bled but his fingers let go. Then, "Our hroa should have lasted longer. I should have convinced her to stay.
"Most of us are." Naril said. "And we should. Come, let us not delay. The camp is only a little further on and night if falling.
Rumors travel discreetly in army camps, but even Turufin in his grief could name those who had disappeared into the darkness without a trace, with neither honor nor strength trailing words of their death for the ones left behind. Instead, whispers and frightened voices followed.
The Noldor knew strangeness and horror in Feanor's grief, but they followed him. They loved him so much that when he put a sword to his brother's neck, they listened, when he slew his kin, they followed, and when he challenged the rule of the dark land, they thought him righteous beyond all reproof.
By fire and smoke and ice they were gathered together beneath the same dark sky.
Our perhaps it was just mutual guilt, haunting as the coiling veins in the dark forests that housed bright poison mushrooms instead of bright fruits, thorns instead of supple smooth stems. And Feanor was the guiltiest of them all.
So Turufin thought, for he had desired a child with Telereth and now pulse had stopped and body cooled while Nolofinwe Finwion sat in his camp deliberating with his captains. Nolofinwe who loved Feanor enough that he left his wife behind.
He looked at Naril, and remembered Nololinde, the loremaster of the library in the palace in Tirion upon Tuna. Nololinde was Naril's brother, and husband to Naril's sister, the one who drew the passage to the Hither Shores for Feanor. Nololinde had been the first to disappear.
The ache inside him would not stop, he felt it twisting him when he no longer had strength in his heart. Courage for the unknown could not stand up against the tide that whispered so many futilities in his heart.
There would be no realms. Naril watched silently as Turufin grabbed handfuls of the leaves on the ground and wept bitterly. Burrs misted on their clothes, and a ghost of a wind took the scent of the campfires to their noses.
There would be no kingdoms. There would be no children when they march, when they only forge weapons and shields.
Secured, they said. Safety, they chanted. Our own, they claimed. Worse, they are us.
Telereth was dead. Turufin grieved to no avail. What would he give to escape the tears and the mournful fates. Far too many, far too manyÉFor a brief moment, Naril glanced something strange in his mind, an end, but he had not yet loved, and hope nestled warmly in his thoughts.
They should move. Helluin was red, and it glimmered like a blood drop visible by the first torchlight. So much grief, Naril found Turufin and Telereth's figure slipping away from him as the night descended. He glanced toward the road, straining his hearing.
The scouts should be out soon.
Something with a figure in a dark cloak approached.
The Lady of the Dark Sorrow wondered upon the deserted path in the woods under the gibbous moon. The heavy fall of her sleeves concealed a bloodied dagger held against her bosom. A caul shadowed her face into delicate angles.
"The name is Elanna," She said softly to Naril, "I was to look for you for milord.
There was one among them whose hair was gold, and his bearing proud. She saw him from afar and remembered the soft skin against hers beside the twilit waters.
From a distance, she saw him. As fair as his hair was, and as his face was noble, she found within herself wondering whether he had finally came back, or whether it was the other one who she never saw past blood dimmed vision.
Naril narrowed his eyes.
"I've never seen you.
"I've never seen you." She countered, and within her eyes, Naril found something that he should've known and loved.
Turufin took Telereth and followed Naril and Elanna down the well traveled road toward their encampment. The somber journey did not lack for speed and it was not long before she saw.
She stopped on the gray road paved with mud and clay.
Finrod was tall among his brethren, and he was fitting with the scouts. His face shone clear under the moonlight.
Her child was not here. Turning to look at her companions, Thringwethil thought of the blood of Telereth in her veins. The light in Turufin's eyes were newly quenched. Something welled within her then. It was almost alien, but she remembered the bittersweet taste of it.
"There is a message for you from milord." Elanna told Turufin. Naril walked ahead, dazed, while the other elf stayed just for a little while. And when Naril looked back, neither were there. He shook his head when Finrod intercepted him.
Telereth and Turufin, and the child in her womb, Thuringwethil carried them in her veins as she sped toward Angband.
--