The strain of the coming wedding gets to Finrod and he seeks out some quiet time but gets in a tight spot. Will Finrod be able to attend the wedding on time?

18. Trapped

Mornel had not been present when Finrod was formally presented to the Tirion court shortly after his return from Alqualonde. There he pledged his allegiance to the Noldoran as was required of all noble neri on their coming of age or upon their return from Mandos. The effort had taken a lot out of him and he had taken to his bed for two days afterwards. Mornel could understand. Many councillors and nobles in Tirion could be tiresome. It must be difficult for her cousin who had been a king in his previous life, to bow to another, even if he it was to his own father. However, Finrod seemed content enough to set aside his titles and rank in favour of a quiet life.

Finrod had already made several appearances at the Noldor court in the past two years, though they were often brief. He would sit on his father's right, a sign of his status as the crown prince. His return alone was a sign of the Valar's favour, but not all the Noldor looked on him favourably. Some questioned why Prince Nolofinwe and his children had not been allowed to return. Others were discomfited by the change in the once-cheerful Findarato. Dancing and mingling at balls now tired him. Instead, he preferred walking with his father under the trees in the royal gardens or working on a Quenya-Sindarin dictionary with Master Rumil.

As the big day approached, the palace was a hive of endless activity. The strain of the preparations began to gnaw at Finrod's patience and spirits. He took to finding out-of-the-way nooks in the sprawling palace to work on his dictionary without being interrupted by his parents, aunts, or grandmother.

"Let the boy have some breathing space, my Lady…" King Olwe urged Indis. The king and Prince Earlindo had travelled to Tirion to attend the wedding, leaving Queen Falmiril to attend to the daily court matters of Alqualonde. It soon fell to Mornel to seek out her cousin when his presence was required by his parents for she knew almost every corner of the palace due to her explorations as a child. She once found Finrod in a nest of books he had crafted for himself in a corner of the archives. Then there was the roof just outside his sister's former bedchamber. There was also the storeroom where Miriel's loom and a dozen items of old furniture were stored. Finrod had set up a small table there to read his books on.

At first he was annoyed by his cousin's intrusions but he soon learnt that Mornel had no intent of forcing him to leave his hard-earned peace and quiet. She would convey whatever message she had been tasked with but leave him to decide if he would obey the summons. Sometimes she would be tasked with bringing a meal tray to him. More often than not, her intrusions were by chance, and she would continue about her task – be it retrieving some scroll from the archives or speaking with the city's sparrows. Sometimes he was glad for the company and conversation she provided. Never once did she betray any of his hidey-holes to the others.

In his bid to escape the smothering attentions of his elders, Finrod stumbled by chance across a small room hidden behind one of Miriel's tapestries. It must have been abandoned for centuries. A small glass window set high up one wall allowed in both air and light. There was even a writing desk strewn with the remains of forgotten scrolls long crumbled to dust.

It was the eve of the wedding and Finrod was frankly quite overwhelmed by the activities. Feeling a headache coming on, he went to his room for a bit of a lie-down, so he informed his parents. Instead, he retreated to the room behind the tapestry, knowing Mornel had not stumbled onto it yet.

It had not been Mornel's intent to seek out her cousin. When he failed to appear at dinner, the family put it down to pre-wedding jitters, and Earwen had the kitchen send up a light repast to her son's room, to be left outside the door lest they disturb his reverie. Indis and her son then took a stroll in the garden while Earwen showed her father and brother the aviary of Valmarin jewel-birds from which Mornel's modest collection had grown into. The birds were a joy to behold, and docile enough to be handled. There were plans to train the birds to accompany the wedding entourage during the ceremony. The plans were shelved when the city's ravens took up stations outside the wedding hall in eager anticipation of a jewel-bright snack. Thus Mornel was left to her own devices.

Mornel had just emerged from the baths when she found that she had made a wrong turn. Annoyed with herself, she trotted back along the corridors. She did not notice the broom a careless servant had left lying across the darkened hallway and tripped over it. She held out her arm to steady herself, pressing against a tapestry as she did so. There was a dull click before both gravity and momentum won out, causing Mornel to fall flat on her face. Lying there on the floor, she felt a breeze on her face and spied a sliver of light where there shouldn't be. The light was coming from behind the tapestry. There must be a hidden chamber or passage there.

Getting back on her feet, Mornel scrambled over to the tapestry and lifted a corner up. There was a sliding panel behind it, painted to look like the stone walls. The panel was ajar and light enough to shift easily. Moreover, it had recently been oiled so as not to creak. Emboldened, Mornel pushed it open and saw that it hid a room. There was a heavy desk against the wall on which a candle was guttering, burnt down to a mere stump. Finrod was there, just stirring from his reverie. He stretched his arms and yawned languidly.

"Mornel, so you have found me," he smiled with bemusement.

"What is this place?" Mornel wondered at the high ceiling and the stone walls around them. The room was narrow but tall enough not to be claustrophobic. It would still be dim enough to warrant a candle if one wished to work on letters as her cousin had been doing.

"I found it by chance…" Finrod replied. "Is it dinnertime already?"

"Aye, the dinner-hour has passed but Aunt Earwen had a tray sent to your room…" Mornel replied. She leaned back and noticed strange etchings cut into the walls.

"I wonder what these say…" Kneeling, she brushed her fingertips over the grooves. It looked like the cirith runes which predated her father's Tengwar. She sensed a dull anger emanating from the runes. They were cut at a level as if they were done by an elfling. The runes covered the lower portions of the walls end to end.

"Let me see…" Finrod stooped down, his eyes glowing with interest. He had not noticed the runes until his cousin had pointed them out. "It looks like cirith... and some form of early Tengwar…"

"My atto was here…" Mornel knew it deep in her marrow. She could picture the angry elfling her atto was, hidden in this room, crying his angry tears over his stepmother. She did not quite understand but the images came fast and furious. Young Feanaro being sternly rebuked by his father for putting broken glass into his stepmother's slippers. Her father resolutely dragging one of mother's tapestries out of the attic and hanging it such that it hid a small room once used to store grain. He had to rig some pulleys to hang it up alone. Feanaro roundly cursing his stepmother and later stepsiblings using an Avarin spell he had picked up from the library's restricted section, cutting their names and the spell into the wall over and over…

The panel was a later addition, crafted when he had started his apprenticeship under Mahtan. The lock mechanism… Mornel froze as various half-remembered diagrams swirled in her mind's eye. She turned around. Finrod had made one full circuit of the room and was at the entrance. To better view the runes, he had pushed the door panel shut. If she recalled the plans correctly…

"There seems to be something here…" Finrod pressed on a raised symbol. There was a whirling noise followed by a series of clicks. With a cry Mornel ran over and tugged at the handle of the panel. It did not yield. Something had definitely caught and they were both shut in. "Strange, that never happened before," Finrod tried the door to no avail.

"We are locked in," Mornel cried. She had a vivid vision of her father as a young ner, locking the door in the same manner as frantic servants searched the palace for him outside so that he need not sit for family portrait with his stepmother and her children. Once the lock was activated, there was no way the door could be opened from the outside.

"Mornel…" Horror dawned on Finrod as he realized what had happened. "There must be a way to get out…" he pressed on the symbol again.

"No, we need another key to unlock it. Look for anything unusual in the floor or walls… Search every inch carefully!" Mornel knew she had seen similar designs of such a locking mechanism before in Mahtan's workshop. As an elfling, she had once been given a puzzle box. It had taken her a week to figure out the complex process to unlock it. Now they were stuck in an inside-out version of a puzzle box, or was it outside-in? Hours passed as they searched for a way to unlock the panel.

It was slow going. The candle soon burned down and went out. They were forced to continue the search by the pale pool of moonlight from the high window and their fingertips. Finrod bade an exhausted Mornel to rest when she started yawning. When she awoke from her slumber, she found her cousin dozing against the desk. She could see the grey light of dawn through the window high above them. She shook her cousin awake. It was the morning of the wedding, and they were still trapped. Finrod fretted. If he was not there for the ritual, what would his family and beloved think?

An idea occurred to Mornel in a flash of inspiration.

"Osanwe… Use osanwe, cousin. Reach out to Uncle Ara and Aunt Earwen, or even Amarie…" she suggested. If they could get help to break down the panel door, they could make it to the wedding.

"But I have not used it since when my brothers died… I am not sure I can," Finrod protested. "Why don't you try?"

"You have to try at least… Uncle Ara told me your osanwe was strongest among his children, nay, among all the grandchildren of Finwe," Mornel coaxed. "My amme is in Alqualonde and I don't think having Fearocco galloping about the palace hallways is a good idea," she reasoned. Her osanwe was never strong to start with. She could reach out to her amme only with great difficulty, even if they were under the same roof. The servants assigned to wake Finrod would raise the alarm once they find the groom was not in his bedchamber. Uncle Ara would be looking for his son, and thus more open to hearing him.

Finrod made a half-hearted protest but he sat down cross-legged on the cold stone floor. Closing his eyes, he tried to re-awaken the long-neglected parts of his mind, and reach out to his parents. He had discussed it in private with his uncle back on Tol Eressea, how he felt he had lost that gift for good. There was no physical or mental reason why he would have lost the skill, his uncle reasoned. "Never let the fear control you," Earlindo had urged. Fear. Finrod feared encountering the same pain he had experienced that fateful day when his little brothers burned.

He hesitated. But he was reaching out to his father, not his brothers in the midst of battle. His atto was safe here in Aman. Mornel was still trying to press on each stone on the floor in the vain hope of activating the lock. Perhaps the years had corroded the mechanism and it no longer worked properly. He had tried to climb up to the window the night before but the wall was too smooth to find a handhold on. Moreover the window was too small to allow either of them through. How long would it take them to die from thirst? He had to get them both out. With a deep breath, Finrod closed his eyes and cried out mentally. Atto… We need help…

"What do you mean his bed is not slept in?" the Noldoran demanded when the servant who had been dispatched to rouse the prince returned with his report. The others at the breakfast table froze. They had all been expecting the groom-to-be to join them for the morning meal. Mornel's absence was noted but it was not unusual for her to go on an early morning ride on her horse before returning smelling of the meadows, and sitting down for breakfast.

"The bed is still made and his meal tray from last night is untouched," the servant elf reported.

"But the ceremony is this evening!" Indis cried out. "He can't just disappear…"

Arafinwe was about to issue an order but froze with his mouth half-open. Atto… Had he been mistaken?

"Findarato?"

No, it was definitely his eldest son's voice calling out to him in his mind. We are trapped… In a room behind the tapestry… Using osanwe, his son described the location of the room. Without a word of explanation to his wife or mother, the Noldoran rose and strode out of the dining hall.

Author's Notes:

Yes, Feanor's issues continue to haunt his siblings. There is an unlocking mechanism which can be operated from inside but it has fallen to ruin over time.