Chapter Thirty-seven: Nerdanel
Within two hours, the Noldor were assembled to march. Moringotto's rumors must have rooted themselves deep in the hearts of the people, for more men bore weapons and mail, and with more experience, than I expected.
Nolofinwë, Arafinwë, and their kin had finally for the most part surrendered themselves to the fate I had commanded. They too stood with those ready to leave. Arafinwë, standing with Artaresto and Findaráto, was staring at the earth defeatedly, his expression reluctant. Artaresto and Findaráto did not look at their father, but stared in awed amazement at the swords they had been given, regarding the cold blades with the same mixture of wonder and fear I had seen in most of my sons when I had presented them with the weapons.
Nolofinwë stood nearby, speaking quietly to his family. His wife Anairë was shaking her head at each word, wringing her hands in despair, looking into the faces of each of her four children with tear-filled eyes. Unlike his mother, Findekáno looked eager to leave, and his hand strayed often to his sword, but Turukáno glared balefully at any who disturbed him from his sullen thoughts, save at his wife and young daughter, who stood nearby. Arakáno leaned against a wall pensively, his arms folded, eyes protectively straying between his father and his younger sister, Írissë, who stood nearby, looking as though she wished she too had a sword sheathed at her white belt.
It was not unusual for Nolofinwë's youngest child to wish such things, if what Tyelkormo and Curufinwë said was true. They had joined the maid in many hunts with Oromë in the woods, and they claimed Írissë was just as able a hunter and tracker as any man they knew.
"King Fëanáro?" Someone queried, and I looked up from Nolofinwë's family sharply. It was a man from Formenos, his expression incomprehensible in the half-light of the torches.
"There is--someone here to see you, milord," he told me, bowing his head, "I told her to wait at the foot of the hill."
"Thank you," I said gratefully, making my way down the slopes of the Mindon's hill, "I will go there at once. Make sure the Noldor are ready to leave." The man nodded briskly, and disappeared in the fogs.
In the mist, the path down the hill was precarious, and I took some time getting to the foot, wondering whom it was who had asked to see me. Perhaps the Noldor were growing uneasy, and shaking off the spell of words I had cast over them. I could little afford that now, I realized with a bit of annoyance. If the Noldor thought too carefully and too close upon what they were doing, they might turn against me and return to their fetters at the feet of the Valar. I would have to thwart this detractor as soon as possible, before word spread and my people lapsed back into the fortifications of enslavement which had sheltered them for too long.
I at last came to the base of the hill, a thousand words of soothing and coaxing rising easily to my tongue. A rider, cloaked and hooded, sat a dapple-gray horse in the fog. Instead of aiding me in recognizing the stranger, the dimming firelight only cast deeper shadows in the cowl hiding the rider's face. When I came, the stranger did not acknowledge my status as King, let alone nobleman, with any reverence.
"Who are you?" I asked, chagrined at the rider's insolence.
The stranger laughed, a strange, muffled sound in the fog. "You of all people should recognize me, Fëanáro Curufinwë."
I went rigid and still, recognizing the mocking yet gentle voice that came from the depths of the rider's hood, and wishing desperately I had not been able to recognize it.
"Oh Powers, no. Nerdanel," I murmured, heart thudding painfully in my throat. For a moment, I felt weak and raw once more in the biting cold of the night.
Nerdanel pushed back her hood, her coppery locks curling in wisps about her pale, beautiful face. "Fëanáro," she acknowledged me, all mockery gone from her voice, "It has been a long time."
My heart, which had been thrown to the ground before her feet only moments before, hardened as memories of the years long past returned to me. "Do not feign sorrow, Nerdanel. You do not regret leaving me," I snapped, biting back the tender words of welcome that the part of me that still loved her longed to give.
"I do not regret it, that is true, and I have told you why long ago," Nerdanel conceded, "But that does not mean I do not feel sorrow."
"Where have you been living all these years? I--" I shut my mouth the instant the words, fraught with concern, left my mouth. How could I show sympathy to her? I was letting my heart rule my decisions, not my mind.
A loving but distant smile curled the corners of her mouth. She saw my inner frustration just as easily as I myself did. Perhaps we were not so far sundered as we thought.
Nerdanel replied gently, "I stayed for a time with my parents, living as I had before you came into my life. A fortnight before the festival of the Valar, I left the Pelóri Mountains for Tirion, to try to reconcile things that were lost long ago. I stayed in the house of Finwë and Indis, but when I came, only your stepmother was there to welcome me. She told me your father had left to live with you in--Formenos, the city you had built."
"You stayed with Indis?" I hissed furiously, feeling sullen and betrayed.
"You forget, Fëanáro," Nerdanel coolly responded, "That you no longer govern my life as you once did. I will stay where I please. Indis was happy enough to welcome me."
"You draw me away from your purpose," I growled, irritated, trying to set my jealousy aside and failing miserably, "What do you want?"
"The Noldor who passed by Indis' house told me you had rallied them to leave Valinor. Are you taking our sons with you?" She dismounted, and took a few tentative steps toward me, like a doe emerging from a thicket, still uncertain of her surroundings.
"All of them wish to come," I replied shortly, "They had no hesitation to agree to accompany me."
There was a pause. Nerdanel's face fell, and her nonchalant manner left her. "Please, Fëanáro," she implored suddenly, voice grieved with a poignant loss that had not even come, "Please, let me have Ambarussa. I love them so much. You cannot take the twins away from me."
"I can," I snapped coldly, looking away, trying not to see her pleading gaze.
"Just one of them then," Nerdanel bargained, desperate and anguished by my refusal, "Please. Just little Ambarussa. He is so young, he is not ready for such a journey--"
"Both the twins seemed eager enough, last I saw them," I responded, turning back to look at her with a gaze fierce enough to make her hesitate. "The earnestness of their youthful spirits will drive them both to the Eastern shore. And as for you, why do you insist so staunchly on remaining here?" I asked her in displeasure, "To the East lies fallow land waiting for the Noldor's rule. It may be far from Valinor indeed, but Arda's beauty is not confined to the West. In Middle-earth, all the Eldar would dwell free of the Valar's meddling gaze and prying hands. Our people would be as untroubled and blithe as we once were, as we were born to be. We would be lords of the earth and air, and the lands would flourish beneath our hands. Our children will live free of strife and evil, and raise fair kingdoms of their own. There would be no war, no hardship, and our people shall return to as we were of old. Will you deny yourself the chance to see the old homeland of your people, Nerdanel?"
She wavered when I said her name in that cajoling way, I could see it in her stunned eyes as she shocked even herself in her treachery against her own will. She remembered, as I did. She felt the same emptiness where our souls had once been bound by marriage, the same longings for my company and comfort that I felt for her. I was grimly triumphant, even as I felt that selfsame tugging bleakness.
"Come with us," I urged her again, "Our house will find its dignity and pride as it had long ago in this new life. We will reconcile old bitternesses, and make our lives anew." Nerdanel knew I did not speak only of the grudge between Nolofinwë's house and my own, but the rift that also sundered us.
I grew more and more confident as I spoke. I had woven my compelling mesh of words about the Noldor; could I not persuade my own wife? "Nerdanel, will you not see that starlit land? Do you not covet that freedom, as is the wont of all who have never beheld the Eastern lands? Would you have me raise our sons alone, have only me see them in the prime of their adulthood? What will they think, knowing their mother chose to remain an ocean away from them? Come with us, and you shall not grieve." There was no more I could say, lest the spell I had cast be broken.
Nerdanel's features had grown slack with pensive longing, and her eyes saw past me into the land I spoke of. She saw the future I had implied, and wavered for moment at the beck of that beseeching hope. But then her gaze brimmed with unshed tears, and she clutched at her dress with absent but defiant hands. She no longer wore the ring I had exchanged with her at the wedding, I noticed. Slowly but confidently, she shook her head.
"I will not go," Nerdanel told me softly, "Perhaps once I would have, Fëanáro, and even now I feel inclined to the offer. Your skill for choosing your words has not failed over the years." Her smile was as bitter as the guttering flame of a candle, and then it faded entirely in the cold gusts of indifference. "But if you will go today, you will go alone."
Resentful of her refusal, I did not bother to consider my next words. "Were you a true wife," I snapped harshly, "As you had been until cozened by the Valar, you would keep all of your sons, for you would come with us. If you desert me, Nerdanel--" Despite myself, the beginnings of a sob rose in my throat at the words, but I fought it down as best I could. "If you desert me, you desert all of our children as well. For they are determined to go with their father."
Nerdanel bowed her head, her frail shoulders shaking, and when she raised her face again, it was streaked with tears. "You would not, Fëanáro. Even you are not so cruel to keep children from their mother."
I said nothing, watching her weep with bitter, dispassionate eyes.
"No!" Nerdanel suddenly cried, for seemingly no reason but to scream, her white hands clenched into fists as the raw cry of grief and bereft longing rose in her throat. She ran to me, eyes wildly seeking my own, her face a mask of anger and grief.
"You will not keep all of them, Fëanáro! All but one of them will die on the Eastern shores! Aulë told me! Oh, Powers, all of them, save one! I did not want to tell you, but you leave me no choice! Our children, Fëanáro! My dear, dear sons! Which one will live, eternally burdened by the grief that all of his brothers are dead? How can you do this to them? How can you do this to yourself?"
I was inwardly shaken by her words. All but one of our sons--my sons, I corrected myself coldly--would die in Middle-earth? I thought of all of their proud, handsome faces as I had seen them while we swore our oath to find the Silmarils, and Curufinwë came especially to mind. Could I lead my sons to an alien land, knowing that six of their number would suffer the same fate as their grandfather--plucked from immortality like unripe fruits by the careless hand of fate?
Just as quickly as I felt that dismayed realization, I chastised myself for falling prey to the portent.
"The Valar lie to us with every breath they take," I retorted, glaring down at her. Ironically, I noticed how close we were, how her hands clasped my shoulders, how our gaze met as firmly and steadily as it had that faraway night when I had asked her to marry me. Now we stood thus for an entirely different reason, as we severed the last bonds that held us to each other.
"Do you treasure this warning above others because it will keep your beloved children idly bound to this land forever? They swore to follow me, Nerdanel, and asked Ilúvatar himself to hear their oath. None of my true kin, nor that of my sons, will remain in this accursed realm after tonight."
She flinched at my unspoken accusation, hands falling limply to her sides, seemingly beaten. But her eyes remained mulishly stolid. "I will not follow you." Her words were unsteady, stained by weeping, but had a staunch note of finality to them.
"Then take your evil omens to the Valar, woman," I snarled furiously, pushing her roughly away from me and turning away. I could not trust myself to spare so much as a glance back to where she stood, lest I gave into the wishes of my heart. "They at least will delight in your words of death and despair. I defy them."
With that, I turned on my heel and stalked back up the hill, without even a farewell. Later, I would wish I could have reconciled with my estranged wife, before the end. Now, though, my spirit was as hard as cooled steel, and every footstep placed one more brick upon the wall that sundered me from Nerdanel. Still, the sound of Nerdanel's shuddering sobs followed me long after I had left her; even after the daughter of Mahtan herself had faded long into the distance.