Chapter Thirty-three: At the Gates
After that, I was willing to absolve my misgivings and suspicion against Nolofinwë for a time, to attend to the more immediate troubles of the Valar. Indeed, it seemed that all this had been entirely the doing of the Powers, and the fact that Nolofinwë now ruled in Tirion did not ease the already fierce hate that rose in me. It was enough to make Melkor's words seem to come true. My sullen grudge grew to open anger, and I spurned and rebuked any who invoked the name of the Valar or indicated that they had a hand in events. I promised myself ardently and often that I would never respect their wishes again.
Now that I had my own city, it seemed that I had taken fate and authority into my own hands. For the building of the city was all but complete, and, where once there had been only a green valley surrounded by hills, there was now a sudden, teeming gathering of life.
Upon the rolling hills, walls of solemn gray stone and modest outposts had been built, and men kept a daily vigilance over the surrounding land, for I would not tolerate the slightest interference of Valar or other Eldar without out my knowledge. In the furthest corners of the valley stretched vast orchards and fields for fruit and crops, freshly plowed and awaiting the first growth and harvest. Within the encircling arms of these plantations the first houses stood, small and modest beside the walled inner city. The wall that surrounded the central city on the hill was made of the same simple gray stone as the gates upon the hills, but from its enclosed reach soaring towers and bright mansions rose to proudly rival those of Valmar.
At the city's heart was the home I had made for Finwë, my unmarried sons, and myself, complete with an enormous forge and glass furnace, as well as a secret underground treasury for my most precious gems, weapons, and, of course, the Silmarils. This treasury was kept under tight guard and locked at all times unless a time came when I desired entry, which was often, late in the night, when I sought solace in the light I had wrought of my own hands. The time was rare when I took the Silmarils out by day for others to see, and then I would only let my father or one of my sons look upon their radiance. Whenever others were about, I would hide them at once, lest they saw and coveted their beauty.
When the day of the city's completion came, I decided to name it Formenos, for it was indeed a mighty northern citadel, a safe refuge for those whose eyes had been unveiled and thus seen the tyranny of the Valar. The government I set up was harsh but just, with swift retribution for opposition or misdeeds. My sons were held as princes and delegates, who went about Formenos to see that all was well, and I set myself up as ruler and founder of the city, while Finwë agreed to be my foremost mentor in all matters. Citizens who had disputes or quarrels came to me for judgment, and in seeking justice I put all the skills of negotiation and diplomacy I had learned as my father's heir in Tirion to good use. But there were few such disagreements, and with each passing day my satisfaction with myself grew at having made such a lovely, peaceful city.
Despite the evident serenity and content of Formenos, however, I did not lose or attempt to lose the alert deliberation I had retained during the unrest of the Noldor. I kept myself well practiced with blade, bow, and javelin, and encouraged my sons to do so as well. When I had the time, I worked in my forge making more weapons, and in the spring of the second year since Formenos' completion, I presented Finwë with a magnificent hauberk of mail, a shield bearing the sigil of his house, and a lethally elegant longsword. He took them with awed reluctance, and used them little, preferring to watch my sons and I at practice than to take part, but I knew he must have been pleased with my gift.
The first year after Formenos' completion was all the blissful magnificence I imagined it to be. The autumnal yield of the orchards was profuse enough to have us feasting on fruits alone for months, and the harvest of the fields only added to the rich bounty we had reaped from the trees. My sons seemed happy with their lives, and Finwë also appeared content. In the spring of the second year, Tyelpinquar, at last of the age to safely do so, began to show an aptitude for blacksmithing that was, while not entirely unexpected of my family, a truly bright discovery for a tremendously proud Curufinwë and for me. In personally teaching my grandson the art of metalwork, I felt the best I had ever felt since Nerdanel's perfidious departure, and allowed myself to laugh and live again.
In that time, I myself returned the forge and made seven seeing-stones, the Palantíri, out of the smooth dark stone found in the quarries and embers from a dying fire. I considered them my greatest work since the Silmarils, for I had wrought in them a strange magic, which allowed one who gazed within them, concentrating deeply, to see things, sharp and clear as if in an eagle's eye, from afar. Six of these I allotted among my sons, giving each one of the stones, save for the twins, who were never far from each other and only received one to share between themselves, which they did. The last I kept for myself, so I could watch over the doings of my sons, wherever they went, and they me. I felt safe and content knowing I could keep a constant eye upon my children, and the vigilance of the Palantíri held us even closer together.
But in the winter of the second year, as the intervals in which Laurelin shone grew ever shorter and briefer, the outside world finally caught up to me.
One gray winter's night, when all others were asleep and ignorant of the devices of the lands beyond Formenos, I was returning from the Silmarils' underground treasury when I heard a sharp knock at the door. Hastily locking the door that led to the stairwell to the Silmarils' secure coffer, I went to the front doors, glancing about to see if any in the home had been awakened by the noise before I pulled them open.
For a brief moment I was blind in the darkness outside, shivering and bereft of my sight in the cold. After gazing at the Silmarils and subsequently walking about in the candlelit rooms of my citadel, the silver of Telperion and the innate blackness of night was a shadowy hand that snatched away my sight for a time.
When my eyes adjusted, I saw a tall man, girt in black, upon the threshold. He bore himself so proudly, so forcefully, that I almost did not recognize the man that was no longer the Melkor I had known and hated. The humbleness, the weak, cowering essence I had once thought the core of his being, was gone, replaced by a lethal, arrogant pride that was not entirely pretense. To me, Melkor looked like a man about to be made a lord, after long last; he was utterly confident and smugly potent, endowed by the power that was all but cradled in his hands. For once, he looked every inch the commanding Vala he should have been. The thought of this Melkor groveling and flattering as he once had was laughable. This time, it was his own imposing presence that seemed to command submission, not that which he pretended his prey possessed. The influential, obsequious impression he had always produced was now redoubled tenfold, and it took all my willpower to resist bending to his wishes even in the empty silence before he spoke.
"Prince Fëanáro," Melkor began, and I almost overlooked his use of my right title in my struggle to withstand him, "Since we last exchanged words, much has changed. Yes, much indeed. You have been sent to live the shameful life of an exile, as commanded by the vainglorious Valar, who once proudly boasted their proud love of parity. In the time of your trial upon the Ezellohar, that devotion to justice seemed to go unheard. Why do you still dwell in this realm of tyrants, when you could rule your own lands far from here, just as efficiently and successfully as I see you rule this city?"
That seemed true enough; I had proved myself capable of presiding over Formenos. With Finwë's counsel, ruling a kingdom of my own did not seem so distant and fanciful a dream after all.
"Say on," I muttered reluctantly, and Melkor nodded in passionate agreement.
"See now the truth of all that I have said," he continued fervently, "and how you are banished unjustly. I warned you frequently against the threat of Nolofinwë and his contemptible kin, and sought your friendship so that I might aid you, but these words and advances went unheeded. But if the heart of Prince Fëanáro is yet free and bold as were his words in Tirion, then I will aid him, and bring him far from this narrow land."
He came to me, offering his aid? I smiled inwardly in satisfaction; at last, Melkor was coming to his senses.
"For am I not Vala also?" Melkor pressed on, and I found myself listening eagerly to every word as he spoke. "Yes, and indeed more than those weak-willed cravens who sit in pride in Valmar; and ever have I been a friend to the Noldor, most skilled and most valiant of the people of Arda. Will you let me now, in this hour in which we both have need of it, be friend to you as well, Prince Fëanáro?"
I wavered, slightly awakened from the joyful, gratifying unreality Melkor's words had meshed me in, but was reluctant to awaken further. He was offering me service and aid; why should I feel I must refuse? The Valar had humiliated me, dishonored the name of my house and family with the bribes of Nolofinwë's friendship, and had frightened Nerdanel into leaving me.
What remained in Aman for me to cling to? Surely not family; they would come with me if I commanded it. With the force of Melkor's persuasive power combined with my own, I could make anyone I wished come with me in an exodus from the Undying Lands. I could tell Nerdanel to come back to me.
And I would not be confined to using that power only to coerce people into departure and rebellion; I could convince Nolofinwë and his hateful kinsfolk to leave my father forever. That thought delighted me in the glimpses of the future it presented--a blissful, contented life, with no one to steal my father's love or spread cruel lies behind my back. Finwë would love me again.
I would be his only son, and dearest to his heart, as I had been that last day on the slopes of Taniquetil, before Indis had dimmed my light with her own, unrivalled goldenness. I could forget my childhood, those dark days filled with frustration and pain, and always, always the yearning wish to be loved--not just loved best, but to be loved singularly and alone, and set above the rest of the world in the light of that tender affection. That special eminence could not be bought with or bribed by the prospect of a fiery spirit, or bright jewels, or even the most skilled hands in all of Arda. However, I knew I would fight as hard as I needed to get it, and at the moment Melkor seemed as if he were shortening the distance between that bright, unattainable objective and myself.
All these thoughts tugged frantically at my sleeve, urging me to consent to Melkor's tempting offer. A life without Nolofinwë and his lies, the return of Nerdanel and her unwavering love, a kingdom of my own, and, above all, the undivided, exclusive love of a father that I had so long thought lost to me--they all begged me to accept and explore this new, hopeful possibility. I opened my mouth, ready to agree, ready to ally myself with the exiled Vala. This was a small price to pay. I would accept.
But before I could speak, Melkor spoke once again, his voice thick with smug pleasure. "Here is a strong place, and well guarded; but, Curufinwë, think not that the Silmarils will ever lie safe and inviolate in any treasury within the realm of the Valar!"
Those words stopped me in the tracks, and the dreams Melkor had filled my mind with dissolved like smoke in the wake of a strong wind. I truly opened my eyes, and saw, with burning clarity, the greedy lust for the Silmarils that had driven each word of his enticing arguments. All of it had been a falsehood to lure me into his hands, so that I would, at some later hour, give him the Silmarils in the dazed stupor that his blindfold of lies had set me in.
For a moment, like one waking but still caught in the mesh of sleep, I longed to return to the dream, but then my bemused wonder and admiration disappeared with a hard jolt, and self-righteous rage filled the gap it had left. How dare that cowardly, sycophantic husk of a being attempt to lie to me, the most powerful prince of the Noldor!
I cursed him fiercely enough to make the most toughened and boisterous of men blanch with shock, and then snarled, "Get you gone from my gates, vile jail-crow of Mandos!"
Then, with a vicious movement that made even the smithy-hardened muscles in my arms strain, I slammed both the heavy doors of my house shut in Melkor's face, as if he were a beggar I was refusing shelter. For a moment, I only stood there, listening to the echo of the doors' crash fade in the empty halls and the angry pounding of the blood in my ears as I breathed fast and hard, mired in the grasp of a fury so deep I could not even think straight. I could feel Melkor's incensed, vengeful wrath seeping like poison through the broad wooden doors, which seemed suddenly thin and fragile in the wake of such violent emotion, but his anger only added fuel to the fire of my rage.
That whining, unctuous worm dared to desire the Silmarils. My Silmarils. The entire world would blacken and burn in the greatest fire ever known before I would even willingly contemplate the mere thought of letting him lay so much as a finger on my prized gems. Never. I myself would run him through with my sword first, even though the perils of an Elda facing a Vala were numerous and lethal. An Elda, even armed, with an immense host of warriors at his back, would seem pitifully weak in compare to the lowest of the Ainur, who could summon up a storm with a thought, reduce a powerful rebel to ashes at a glance, and destroy a great army at a gesture. But still, I considered the potential choice with a frightening and fierce somberness.
Aimlessly, I went into the darkened kitchen and tried to get some wine to calm myself down. However, I broke the first goblet I reached for, clenching it so tightly in my rage that it shattered in my fingers. At first I ignored the broken glass digging fiercely into my palm and fingers, until rivulets of blood ran down my hand and I suppressed a cry of shock and pain, absently mopping the blood up with a napkin until the white silk was stained a furious red.
After the bleeding stopped, I used my sharp eyes to see if there was any glass slivers embedded in my hand, and, finding none, tried again with the unwavering, blind resolve only one in an extremely temper can have. But the next two times my hands were trembling so badly with the fury of my anger that I ended up spilling the wine, missing the goblets all together.
Sick with fear and frustrated by the anger that blocked practical thought as badly as any drunken stupor that wine would give me, I threw the goblets aside, listening to the crashes of delicate glass with no small satisfaction. Suddenly exhausted, I collapsed in a chair, running a hand through my hair in frustration and dismay. What ruin had I come to?
"Fëanáro? I heard a noise, and came to investigate. Why are you still awake at this hour?"
I reeled about in my seat, ready to stand, to lash out with my stifled fury at the interruption, but saw it was only Finwë, his eyes dark and concernedly questioning in the flickering candlelight. Quickly, I smoothed my face of rage and regarded him as calmly as I could.
"I--" I held up my hands in bemused, helpless confusion, forgetting the jagged, bleeding wounds in my left hand.
"My son, what have you done to yourself?" Finwë's face paled with horror and worry when he saw my injury, and went quickly to the kitchen drawers to find a bandage for my hand.
"Melkor came," I explained when I could speak again, shortly after my father had bandaged my hand, watching him go about the kitchen, industriously sweeping up the glass with a broom. He stopped in his tracks, his face only a dim silhouette in the half-light of the room.
"Melkor?" My father echoed, voice shaking once before he steadied it, his hand clenching about the broom handle until his knuckles went white.
"Yes. He offered to aid me--"
"Did you accept?" Finwë interrupted sharply. His voice was steady and calm now, but there was a faint rime of ice about his words that warned me of his anger if I told him I had agreed to Melkor's suggestion.
"No," I answered simply. There was no need to tell him about my moment of indecision, and of the thoughts I had had then. Finwë's tense shadow relaxed, and he let out a great sigh of weariness, as if he had been holding his breath.
"But--Father," I persisted worriedly, "Melkor implied in his last few words--before I shut the doors in his face--" even that triumphant moment brought me little pride now, only a cold fear and a frustration at myself for being so rash, "that my Silmarils were not safe here. He must covet them. I know it; I saw it in him, though he tried to hide it from me. Can we not protect my jewels?"
Finwë turned about to face me, a gentle, reassuring smile on his face, though his eyes were sad. "I would think the Silmarils should be the least of the things you fear for, but yes, they will be kept safe, my son. Formenos is a strong fortress, and few dangers can penetrate it, I deem. Fear not."
"We can increase the guards' numbers twofold, no, threefold--"
"In the morning," Finwë urged, helping me rise to my feet, for I had little strength left in me, "It is too late now. Go get some rest. Tyelpo is looking forward to his blacksmithing lesson tomorrow, and it would not do if his grandfather was unable to attend for lack of sleep."
I went to my chamber, and spent the night alternating between tossing fitfully in bed and going to the window to look out upon my sleeping city. Though I did not want to admit it to myself, when I went to the window I was looking for the first signs of the wrath of Melkor, for indeed infuriated he must have been when I had shut my doors to him. Despite my father's soothing words, the cold, pallid limbs of fear had rooted themselves irrevocably about my heart, wringing out all courage, and I did not get a moment of sleep that night.