And to think I was certain the first mountain range was as bad as it could get.

Findekáno was huddled against a cliff-face, his cloak drawn up about him, shivering in the cold. It was raining, a dreary, icy rain that seemed to strip the warmth and vigor from his bones and left him exhausted in its wake. Beyond the ledge he sat on, just inches from his battered boots, was a sheer drop through slick black emptiness that was sure to end on jagged spears of stone some countless fathoms below. He did not know how long he had been climbing - he had lost count of the days long before he reached these peaks - and he did not truly know where he meant to go. It had been a struggle to reach this height, where a thin and treacherous series of ledges formed a semblance of a path high above the bare earth, and now that he was here he knew he had no choice but to go forward to whatever end awaited him.

The mountains that had bordered Misrim were not Thangorodrim, and he had known that, but it had still been disheartening to scale them, get lost, and find his way through what he had hoped was the pass his father's host had used only to emerge in the midst of a strange woodland. He had realized in dismay that there were two passes rather than only one, and cursed himself for not examining the crude maps that Aikanáro had made of the countryside, but there was no point in going back merely for a glance at a sketch on hastily crafted parchment. He had decided to risk the woodland, as he could see another smudge of mountains beyond it. These had been taller, grimmer, and more desolate, and he knew as he looked upon them that they were his mark.

Unlike the forests he had spent far too much time in, the woodland between Misrim and the hells of iron did not lend itself easily to getting lost. In all the endless days he spent there, Findekáno did not sleep for more than a handful of hours, never daring to rest for long or even to take his pack from his shoulders. While there was game to be found, it was wary and watchful and not worth the effort to catch. The trees were silent, though when he woke from what slumber he allowed himself he was often ensconced by dead leaves and branches as if they meant to shield him from prying eyes. What they feared would find him, though, was a mystery. He saw no orcs, heard no sign of any enemy, and yet could not shake the suspicion that he was watched.

At the very least, he had not starved - his fishing-line had come in handy again, and he had managed to catch several strange limbless creatures who resembled eels more than the perch and pike he was accustomed to. They had frightened him at first, as they had no true mouths, only gaping maws of hooked teeth, but when he ate one and was not made sick, he caught several in succession and cooked them over furtive fires, and the meat sustained him and allowed him to preserve the precious haws he had gathered.

The days had wound on, and the air had grown colder, and colder still, until he was forced to drape himself in every layer of clothing he had brought to stay warm. The leaves fell from the trees, leaving him with fewer and fewer places to hide, and the ground froze and coated every branch and blade of dead grass with pale frost that crunched under his boots, and the streams iced over and the game vanished entirely save for the occasional bird that flew high overhead. Still unwilling to eat more of his foraged provisions than absolutely necessary, he dug up roots and tubers from the cold and crumbling earth and chewed pine sap to stave off pangs of hunger. And always, always, he made his way north, guided by the stars he glimpsed through bare and silent trees and by his own dumb luck.

It was only when he had emerged from these strange and silent woods and reached the grim grey peaks that he knew lined Moringotto's stronghold that he realized how fortunate he had been. Had he emerged where he had meant to, he would have been forced to cross the Anfauglith and approach the front gates with nothing to hide him from the enemy, and he would have almost certainly been caught unawares or simply overpowered and dragged beyond the gates. His utter lack of skill as a woodsman had allowed him to climb up into the mountains themselves, and so come at Angamando from the side, and from above.

That had been his goal, for however long he had wandered - upward, and eastward, or as near to eastward as he could get. It had not been an easy journey. Many times he was forced to spend hours clinging to cracks in the cliffs and peaks as if he were a spider, crawling sideways and bracing freezing fingers and toes against the unforgiving rock. Often he had to leap from one jagged outcropping of stone to another, and once he slipped and barely managed to catch himself and keep from falling. His hands were bloodied and raw, each day slicing open on some new unseen hazard, and as they healed they did not scar, leaving new skin vulnerable to yet more pain. He had bound his palms up in scraps of his tunic, but this did not help much save to keep dirt and dust and grime from the wounds.

All that had led to where he sat now, waiting out the night and the storm, clutching his pack to his chest while he tried not to weep. It was bitterly cold, though not the bone-freezing agony of the Ice; he supposed that either he had lost the ability to feel anything save mild discomfort or else that even Moringotto could not stand such temperatures. He hoped it was the latter. The idea that he had been permanently damaged in some way by his journey in the dark chilled him more or less to the bone.

Eventually, the night passed, though the storm did not. When the Sun rose, Findekáno was greeted with wave upon wave of rain, falling over the mountains and washing snow and ash and grime down from the peaks to the crevices and winding paths. He drew his cloak over his head, braced himself between two boulders, and tried to ignore the water and slime that soaked through the cloth and streamed down the back of his neck.

I think I might hate this, he thought to himself, and then flinched when half-frozen mud and snow dripped under the cowl of his cloak and down his chest. No, he amended, I do in fact hate this. I hate it quite a lot.

Thinking of his family in Misrim was no better - by now, the cold that the trees had spoken of had surely come, and they would be left to survive by frigid shores once again. He tried to do what he had done on the Ice, letting his thoughts drift back to Valannor and the warmth of the Trees, but even his memories seemed grim and miserable, dwelling on the endless strife between his family's houses rather than the bright days spent in Russandol's arms. After the sixth attempt to lose himself in a waking dream of the day he had confessed his love, Findekáno realized it was worse than hopeless.

If I manage to forget where I am, he thought, it will probably be because I am trapped in some sort of nightmare or fell illusion. No sooner had he come to that conclusion than he shuddered and did his best to force it from his mind - I do not want to set myself up for that hell. I faced enough of that on the Ice.

In the absence of anything save the weight of reality, he did the only thing he could do, which was walk, and endure. The haws he had gathered had been exhausted long ago - he did not know how long he had wandered in these mountains, but it had been long enough for him to eat every scrap of food he had scavenged or stolen. He knew he would grow even thinner than before, and grimaced at the thought of what he would look like if he ever made it back to the lake. None of them had fat to spare after their decades of half-frozen trudging, but his recently-tailored tunics were already loose and hanging off of him. Itarillë and Artaresto had done the work as practice, but he did not think he could blame poor seamwork for the awkward fit. He tightened his belt, and tied his tunic into knots, and cut strips of bandage from his harp's awkward holdings to fasten his leggings into place above his boots, and as the days wore on he wished he had brought a needle and thread and could have re-tailored his clothes in the early hours when it was light enough to stitch by but too dark to follow the winding paths.

It was after a particularly fitful few hours of near-sleep that Findekáno woke to the sudden thought that while he didn't have a needle, he did have a hook and a coil of line. He fished both out of his pack, and then drew out the knife from his satchel; the inferior metal of the hook gave easily to the blade, and he was able to trim off the barbed ending before straightening the curved tool out into something resembling a serviceable needle. The line was hardier than thread, but he supposed that was well enough, as he was in hardy and harsh lands. Not for the first time, he was at once annoyed and glad that in the long-ago haste of his coupling with Russandol, he had been left with his husband's breeches; it was easy to wear them over all else. Out of habit, he asked Vairë for her blessing, slipped the line through the small hole pierced in the end of the hook, and did his best to begin.

His tailoring was slapdash and hasty and counter to all his lessons, not least because it was far too cold and risky to strip out of every layer he had piled on. In the end, he decided to re-seam each leg on the outside rather than within, which led to him pulling every bit of spare leather into awkward handfuls on the outer edges of his legs and laying down rows of too-large straight stitches to tack them in place. My cousin Carnistir would murder me, he thought, remembering the other nér and his embroidery hoops and nearly-invisible stitches on court robes and cloaks and shirts, but I cannot afford to take days to do this, and I only have so much line.

He lost a day to his efforts, but when they were done, he was grateful, for he no longer felt as if his breeches would fall off at the slightest provocation. The waistband was the hardest, drawn tight by means of an unwieldy half-formed knot that was tied with spare bowstring and stitched through with the very last of the line until it was more or less immovable; it sat on the edge of his hip so it would not press into his back when he rested.

Good, Findekáno thought when it was finished and he rose to his feet and took a few experimental steps. It is not ideal, but I can move freely, and I will not lose a layer to a jump or a lunge.

After that, he lost himself in endless days again, drifting in and out of himself until it became clear he could scarcely tell dream from waking perception. He trudged onward, unthinking, automatic, and did not let the fog that had claimed his mind stop him. More than once he nearly wandered right off a precipice, or slipped and almost fell from a sheer cliff; he was not shaken, or frightened, or alarmed. Fear was beyond him, awareness was beyond him, love was beyond him. Yet more days slid over him, light and dark and light and dark again, and he realized eventually that he had quite forgotten why he had come here, or indeed, if he had ever been anywhere else.

I ought to stop walking, he thought one day, and it seemed like a fine idea. Stop, and sit down, and rest, and -

"Findekáno?" a thin voice called, echoing over the rocks and empty spaces.

He paused, and blinked, and blinked a second time. The mist before him rolled, and curled in on itself, and then drew back to reveal someone standing on the path before him. It was a wendë , a young nís , not yet at her majority. She had pale golden hair, and wore a tattered blue gown, and something in him knew her.

"Findekáno!" she called again, and he frowned, and swallowed, and opened his mouth. I know you, he thought, clear certainty slicing through the grey fog in his mind, and he tried to speak.

I - Itarillë? he thought, and as he said her name, pieces of the past began to slide into place behind it. Itarillë, my brother's daughter - I have a brother - I had two - my name is -

"You left us!" she cried, and suddenly she was glaring at him. "You left us to the cold!"

Guilt pierced him through like a burning dart, and he staggered back from her.

I - I didn't - I had to , he answered, but she shook her head, and there were tears in her eyes as he recovered himself and began to walk toward her.

"Atya is dead!" she said. "And Alatya, and atarnésa Írissë, and all of them!"

His blood turned to ice in his veins, and he froze, shivering.

"They froze," Itarillë said darkly, eyes burning. "They would have lived if you'd been there."

I - I couldn't , he thought, and suddenly he remembered what it was he had left them for, and the shame of it threatened to drive him to his knees. Findekáno. My name is Findekáno. His is Russandol. Is he worth the lives of my family?

"You could have," she said scornfully as if in response to him, and turned on her heel and began to walk back into the mists. "I came to find you, but you couldn't save them. You can't save anyone. "

Wait! he thought, and began to follow her. She shook her head, and did not turn around.

He tried and failed to cry aloud, and staggered after her. Only silence answered him, and the sound of her bare feet on the rock path. She walked slowly, but somehow was always just out of his reach as he came down the path.

Itarillë , Findekáno thought, please - please, I am sorry, I am - !

His niece ignored him, if she had heard him at all, and when the path forked, she turned to the right and did not look back. He dashed after her, reaching for her, and then the edge of his other sleeve caught on something and yanked him back. The air cleared; his heart pounded. He was staring into empty space.

Ausa? he realized, and flinched back from the edge. She was never there at all. Ercamando. Muk . He had reached out to catch hold of her wrist, to plead with her to stay as she turned right -

- only she had vanished into the air, and when he lunged for her he nearly plunged headlong over the side of the path he trod along; looking down at his feet, he saw that there was no rightward fork.

I almost died, he thought, and shivered. My sleeve - he glanced over his shoulder and saw that it was pinned between two protruding rocks, caught in a deep cleft - it caught, and I - I would have fallen - oh, Eru, Manwë, á ercat…

He yanked his arm free of the rocks, staggered backward, and then leaned over the edge of the cliff and vomited bile.

I am going mad, Findekáno thought, and the realization was sobering. I am going mad - I saw her, clear as day - I heard her, she was right in front of me!

No, he told himself. You know of ausar , you know Artaresto saw one on the Ice, you heard them calling to you there in the darkness and the howling wind. It was only one of them.

Unless it wasn't.

Unless someone knows I am here, and is weaving illusion around me that I might die.

A chill crept up over him, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

I forgot who I was. I forgot for - for Eru knows how long. I only remembered when I saw her. If - if it is not an ausa, then - then someone is -

- someone wants me dead.

He swallowed hard, shivering, and drew back from the cliff's edge. Don't be foolish, he told himself. You have no proof that anyone knows you're here. None at all. He folded his arms across his chest to ward off the chill, wondering how it was that he could be wearing every piece of clothing he'd brought and still be cold when there was no snow and no bite to the air. It was only an ausa, it was not real. He looked out around where he stood, at the bare mountains and the desolate emptiness, and shivered again. Only an ausa.

Findekáno sighed. I am in no condition to continue on today. I need to sit, and to clear my head. He looked down at the bend in the path, at the sharp curve and short walkway. I do not want to sit here, not when I nearly died where I stand. Glancing around yielded something better - to the right was a dizzying drop, but directly ahead of him, a short leap away, was a wide flat ledge with several boulders scattered across it. On its other edge was a sloping jumble of sharp-edged rocks, and then another ledge, this one flush against a high peak. It would be plenty of room, not merely to sit but even to lie down, shielded from any prying eyes by the rocks, and far enough from the heights and the air that he might truly rest. All he needed to do was make the leap from where he stood to the other side.

I have made greater leaps, both here and back home, he thought, and almost laughed at himself for calling Valannor home even now. He backed up - there were a few ells' worth of nearly-straight path behind him, smooth and safe enough that he might take them at a run - and steeled himself, and took a deep breath, and darted forward. The distance to the edge shrank by the second, each step carrying him further, and then, in a blur, he leapt -

- his feet slammed into the flat stone of the wide ledge, and he let out the breath he'd taken all at once, and he staggered forward a few steps and crashed to his hands and knees. It was the fastest he had moved in perhaps months, and as his heart pounded he slipped his pack from his shoulders and he let himself collapse onto the stone. He lay there, insensate, until the world had ceased to spin around him and the cold reminded him that he was still in the mountains, far from his family.

My family, Findekáno thought, and nearly retched again. No. No. They are alive. They are safe. Ausar lie, and cloud the mind. They are alive. They must be alive.

His hands were shaking, and he sighed again and got back up, moving to sit on one of the many boulders. He pulled his pack close to his boots, and looked around at the ledge, and wondered what in Arda he would be able to do to calm himself. I need to sleep, he thought, and laughed nervously. How am I going to sleep? I nearly died, I saw my niece as an ausa, what can I possibly do to calm myself? The wind picked up, tugging at hair and cloak and the flap of his pack, and he glanced down at all he had carried with him. His eyes fell on his harp - almost forgotten, preserved through cold and rain and muck and misery - and then flicked back down to his shaking hands, and again, he knew what to do.

The harp came free of its bindings easily - shockingly easily, when they had held against so much - and soon it was in Findekáno's lap, and his fingers were roaming over the polished wood, examining it for cracks and chips. Miraculously, it had held as one piece and had not even warped, though when he tested its strings he found it horribly out of tune. That won't do, he thought, and when he tested the tuning pegs he found them holding in place, and almost smiled in spite of himself. He was no bard, as Macalaurë was, though he had a fair ear for the proper tones, and so it was not long until the awkward, ugly twangs turned to light, open-stringed arpeggiated chords beneath his fingers.

It felt good, to do something that was not wandering or climbing, to set his hands to making music rather than clinging to rock and stripping fingernail from flesh. For a moment, he feared discovery - surely the sound of a song would not be ignored by orcs as gasps and grunts might be - but the relief and simple pleasure of the instrument in his lap overruled his anxiety, and he picked up the harp and set it against his shoulder and began to play.

The tune was simple, and came to him unbidden - a light, easy ballad that told of the mingling of the Treelight, long ago in the bliss of Aman. Macalaurë had written it, in happier days, and it had been greatly beloved both by his family and by his people at large; he had not known he remembered it. He ran over the verses in his mind, joined by memory of all they described - flowers, trees, finches, the stars of the Elentári - and suddenly he realized that he was doing more than silently recounting. A sound, plaintive and hopeful and lilting, was curling about him, filling the air, drifting over the rocks and chasms. He gasped, and flinched, and stopped playing; the sound stopped with him. For a moment, he frowned and puzzled over this - it was surely some sort of trick, or yet another ausa , and yet it did not sound like an ausa did. Suddenly, he chuckled aloud, and shook his head - it had been his own voice, surely, echoing back at him, He had been singing. It had been so long since he had spoken aloud, and longer still since he had sung, that he had forgotten what it sounded like.

A brief test confirmed that the noise had indeed come from him, that it was him matching the harp in note and tone, and when he was satisfied that orcs would not come pouring out of some secret hideaway, he resumed his song. His voice was quavering, and harsh, and made all manner of dreadful sounds in its attempts to return to form, and yet he could not stop. Even the dim fear of capture or death vanished in the warm joy of the melody. He sang the first verse, and then the second, and then the third -

- there was another sound, intruding on the harp and on his voice. It was hoarse, and hard-edged, and resembled the cry of a bird more than anything else. It struggled, and faded, and gave out more than once, as if it was trying and failing to follow the melody.

Findekáno flinched violently, almost dropping his harp. The song was forgotten; terror flooded him, and left him gasping and breathless. I am caught, he thought frantically, one hand delving into his satchel to seek for his knife. That was surely an orc's voice. I am caught, and I will die, and I cannot die -

- wait. Was - was that orc singing with me?

He thought back over the last few seconds, recalling how yes, the squawking, grating sound had paused when he paused and continued when he continued. As if it were, in truth, trying to sing with him. As if it knew the melody.

No orc would know that melody.

Findekáno's heart was pounding again, though now he was not afraid. Something had seized him, some wild and frenetic energy; the harp slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground and he had already forgotten it. He ran to the inner side of the ledge, stopping short of the knife-edged rocks that would have torn him to shreds, frantically scanning the empty space. Every second that passed drove him to look higher, higher; nothing, and no one.

Maybe I have gone mad, he thought, and laughed, and it was high and shrill. Maybe there is nothing there.

"Russandol!" he cried, half-hysterical, brimming with doubt. His eyes drifted up, up, up -

- no, he thought, and his stomach dropped out from under him.

High above his head was a pale blot. A bone-white figure.

A figure that called out to him, in a frightful voice, answering him.

" Findekáno!"

He had thought, during the endless days and days of wandering, that he was prepared to face whatever awaited him when he found his husband. He had seen deprivation and desperate agony after desperate agony on the Ice, and he had reassured himself that surely, surely, Russandol could not be worse off than those who suffocated because the linings of their lungs froze and left them choking on air.

Findekáno knew, as he stood on that ledge, that he had been wrong.

At least those poor souls who perished in the darkness had died.

What he saw hanging on the cliff before him was misery, plain and simple. If he had not been sharp-eyed and somehow in possession of his wits, he would have thought it was a mutilated corpse or a half-butchered carcass that dangled from the mountain by one pitiful limb; the fact that it was not filled him with a sick horror that left him retching on bile and his own saliva. Russandol was painfully thin, every bone standing out from him like some kind of grotesque anatomical model. He was naked, and filthy, skin covered with scars and fresh cuts; what was miraculously not bleeding was bruised or chafed or peeling away in the aftermath of burns. His arm stretched out above him, pinning him to the cliff-face thanks to a single shackle of cruel iron, and the shoulder that it emerged from was a web of mottled black. His hair hung about him in a cloud of tangles and dirt and yet more blood, and his face -

- Findekáno caught his breath at last, swallowing a plaintive cry before it could escape his lips. He was not sure what had happened to Russandol's face, only that it, too, was covered in blood and torn open, and though he saw what he hoped were eyes and nose and mouth he could not be sure. He - he sang with me, he told himself, trying to force some sort of reassurance. He sang with me, he must be capable of singing, unless -

- unless it was mind-to-mind, and I only thought I heard it aloud.

That thought was too horrible to bear, and so he forced himself to ignore it. No, no, he spoke, somehow, somehow…

He could see ribs expanding and contracting in bone-jarring, irregular patterns. Yet more bruises and lacerations dotted the skin that covered them, and Findekáno wondered if he had traveled all this time only to see Russandol suffocate thanks to a punctured lung, and that new terror made him retch a second time. I have to speak to him, he resolved, in case he dies, I have to, I have to!

Caution, care, fear of discovery, fear of thralldom - all were forgotten, in his mad dash toward his husband. There were sharp-edged and jagged rocks that lay piled against the sheer rock, and he scrambled up over them, slicing his palms open and cutting deep into one shin, to come to yet another ledge. This one was wider, and lay flush against the base of the cliff, and Findekáno realized as he ran that there were no cracks or crevices that he could hope to cling to in his climb. It did not stop him from trying. He threw himself at the unforgiving rock, bloody fingers searching for something, anything. It was utterly useless, and his leap ended with him sliding back to earth. He did not care. Panic had seized him, had borne him forward; he was light-headed and giddy with terror and with fury and with keening, all-consuming agony. He tried again, again, again, leaping up only to be pulled down by inexorable gravity, and as he sought fruitlessly for a hold his nails splintered and cracked and tore from his fingertips to leave bright trails of red down the rock.

" Russandol! " he cried, hot tears filling his eyes, but when his own voice echoed back at him from peak and valley he was suddenly aware of where he was and how much noise he had made. I shall be found, he thought suddenly, and as quickly as it had come, his frantic desperation was gone, replaced with freezing dread. I shall be found, I shall be caught, I shall be dragged to my doom and now I know what that looks like…

Any energy he had left evaporated, and he found himself standing with one hand resting on sheer rock, scarlet blood beneath leaving evidence of his presence.

"Russo…" he murmured, hope evaporating as he realized the enormous weight of what he had to do, and he stared up at the pathetic figure hanging above him.

I have failed, he thought bitterly, I have failed and what's more I have failed while he yet lives, I am the worst husband and the worst nér who ever lived!

No, a thought - a voice - answered him. You are not real.

He froze. I am caught, he thought, and then realized that the reply had not come from anywhere but his own mind. I have truly gone mad, he decided, I have imagined answers where there are none, the only one I permit to speak to me thusly is -

- is my husband?

No more fear, suddenly, as he was pierced through with a spike of fierce joy. Russo? No, no, it cannot be him - I must try, I must…

Slowly, carefully, tentatively, hardly daring to breathe, he delved within himself and sought out his marriage-bond. What he found stunned him. Gone was the slick, smooth, insurmountable barrier that lay dark as obsidian at the core of his fëa. In its place was - was nothing, was emptiness once more, as if he had not been wedded at all.

No, he thought, dismayed, no, no, I cannot - he cannot be, not after all this time! The quiet in his heart hung heavy over him, and grief welled up in his chest. I cannot be mad, he thought, though he could hardly deny the reality of this absence. I cannot be.

He stood motionless at the base of the cliff, eyes closed, scouring himself for something he had missed. But all that he found was yet more stillness, and he plunged into it thoughtlessly. As he sank into it, drowning in himself, he realized that the very silence itself was teeming with something. It was warm, and wary, almost, and half-formed emotions and sensations brushed against him. He felt as if he were drifting in the flooded ruins of his soul, and on all sides were broken pieces of what once had been.

Findekáno seized one such piece as it passed, catching it and clinging to it as if it were a thread of copper fire that hung in the air rather than a faint impulse. He drew it nearer to himself, feeling its warmth and wrapping it about his heart, and then it shifted and writhed and roused and -

- above him, Russandol gasped audibly, the sound ragged and horrifying. There was a frightful, lurching moment where something surged and shifted between them, and then -

Warmth, and shock, and something tangible sparking between them.

Contact, at long last.

Findekáno fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. For a long while, all he could do was sob, gasping and breathless, the world heaving beneath him with every heartbeat. Alive. He - you - alive, alive, oh thank Eru, thank all the Valar…

A long silence from above, and then at last the same thin and distant voice as before. You aren't real.

Another sob broke through from his throat, and he bowed his head and found it pressed against the hand that clung to the cliff-face even now.

No, he said, forcing himself to look back up at the horror he had found, no, I - I am, I am, I am no phantom, no shade, I -

It is a good illusion, came the reply, and it… unexpected, but - no. There was no despair in the words, no fear, no sadness. It was as if Findekáno was being told that the Treelight made the sky blue by his tutor. Deep beneath the empty words, he could sense turmoil, sense confusion, sense raw burning agony, and yet all that Russandol gave him freely was blank acceptance.

"How?" he asked aloud, pushing himself to his feet. "How - how can I prove this is real? What can I do?" Vainly he sought a final time for something to cling to and climb, and once more his eyes told him that there was nothing between him and the other nér but smooth, unbroken stone.

Nothing, Russandol told him. There is nothing.

" Please! " he cried, and again the word echoed back at him over the desolate peaks. "There - there must be something ! I cannot leave you here!" And I cannot stay indefinitely, with no food and no water and only a little while, surely, before I am spotted…

High overhead, the figure on the mountain shifted, and groaned, and he felt as if he had been pierced through with a dart of ice and wondered if Russandol had met his eyes.

If… if you… real, his husband said, kill me.

Findekáno's stomach dropped out from under him, and he retched a third time and nearly spat up bile. No, he thought, no, I cannot - I will not, I -

Real? Russandol asked. Kill me. Kill me. Get out. Nothing… no other help.

The worst part, Findekáno thought as he stumbled backward in a daze of grief, was that he was right. There was no way to reach him, no ledges nearby. There was a rough outcropping some fifteen ells above him, where the rock at last grew jagged again near the top of the cliff, but beyond that…

I… I cannot free him, he realized, and felt the horror of it sink into his bones. I cannot. If I am to help him at all, I - I must slay him.

"I cannot… I do not have a way," he answered, but even as he spoke he remembered that he did. It sat with his abandoned pack and forgotten harp, on the lower ledge, held in place by bandages and pins. The bow, unused since he ventured into the mountains, still in its place on the outside of his pack.

Tyelkormo's bow.

His own brother's weapon.

If I must do this, Findekáno thought, I will do it with beloved tools.

He turned around numbly, and when he descended to the lower ledge and his gear he tripped and slid down the rocks and sliced the backs of his thighs open. He did not care. He barely felt it.

His hands were shaking, and his heart felt as though it would burst.

I am already a murderer, why in Arda is it worse this second time?

Because you love him, you fool. It is not the same.

Even as he stumbled toward the pack, he tried to tell himself that there was another way. His hands fumbled for the bow, and then when that lay on the ground he sought out the small leather pouch with the string, and even as his fingers closed around it he told himself that surely, surely , there had to be something he had missed. I - I will find a way out of this, he thought, and he was frantic and methodical at once. I will, I will, I must.

Once the bow was strung, he knew he had no other choice.

He was grim, and implacable, as he turned back to face the cliff, bow in one hand and arrow in the other. Now that he knew he could not escape this horrendous act, he was suddenly calm; every drop of sick horror had burned out of him. There was no way out, no path he might take to avoid this. I have to kill him. I must.

The arrow was on the string, nocked and ready; he straightened up and prepared to draw it back. If I have to do this, he thought, and I have to, I will do my best not to miss. I am only a fair shot, and I am wrecked - there is a chance I might - I mustn't, I cannot, if I strike him and injure him and do not kill him, he will be in greater agony than ever - I cannot miss, oh, Valar -

- Valar.

He flinched, and sucked in air, and blinked back sudden tears. I - I might - I am an apostate, a kinslayer, they will not heed me, no one will heed me - but I have to try, I have no other choice, if I do not strike true with this arrow I might as well slay myself for the pain I have caused him…

Another breath, and he raised up the bow, and drew the arrow back and anchored it across the bridge of his nose.

"O King to whom all birds are dear," he murmured breathlessly, barely conscious of what he was saying, "speed now this feathered shaft and recall some pity for the Noldor in their need!" Beneath it was a wordless plea - mercy, mercy, let me do this, let me make things right, please! It was a feverish, desperate, hopeless request, and he knew, in his heart of hearts, that it would not be granted. There is no mercy, he thought, and his hands were shaking, and he had to set his teeth and lock every joint in his arms and hope it would be enough. They will not let me slay him, they will not give me this kindness, I am doomed, I am doomed and I will fail - !

The silence that had deafened him and swallowed him was broken by a piercing cry, and something fast and brown and gold and immense was before him, and he loosed the arrow and it went wild. There was a sound like thunder, and the ground shook beneath his feet, and he looked up to the second ledge with wide eyes.

Before him, unblinking and silent and enormous, was one of Manwë's Eagles.

Against all odds, his prayer had been heard, and its answer was more than he could have dreamed of.