Chapter Text
The elf sitting on the other side of Fëanáro’s father was not his brother. This was hardly news, and Fëanáro had said it often enough.
The much more pressing thing, as it happened, was that the elf on the other side of his father was not Nolofinwë either.
--
What Fëanor knew was this:
- Nolofinwë had gone to visit some of his school friends, who lived in the North of Valinor. He had been gone for nearly a year; it was uncommon for him to part from Anairë so long, but not utterly unheard of. Fëanor and Nerdanel had done the same thing, occasionally, when one or the other felt particularly called by their craft.
- Nolofinwë had never actually arrived to visit those same friends. He had, when questioned about this, told everyone that he had felt a particularly strong urge to ride, and had passed nearly around the Blessed Lands satisfying that urge.
- When Nolofinwë had returned, from that unusually long and solitary journey, he had been different.
--
“Something is wrong with Nolofinwë,” he told Nerdanel.
“Not tonight,” she said, and rolled over and went to sleep.
--
“Do you think Nolofinwë is acting oddly?” He asked Maitimo.
“Do you think he is?” His eldest son responded, unwilling to commit to any answer.
--
“Always,” said Tyelkormo, to the same question. “Why?”
--
“Nolofinwë’s different lately.”
“We all must learn to change with time,” Master Rúmil said, and the words felt rather pointed.
--
“Father,” Fëanáro said. He had waited to speak to his father until he could put the change into words. “Nolofinwë speaks harsher to me, I have found, in the time since his return from the North.”
“How so?”
“Last week, he said I had no decorum and no care for your wishes, coming under-dressed to our meeting.”
It seemed to him that his father was repressing the urge to sigh. “He has said the same before, Fëanáro. And perhaps, in this one matter, you might consider listening to him?”
“I was just out of the- I had had an idea about-” It was not relevant to the topic at hand. “I know he has said these words before, but they sounded different, this time.”
“Perhaps,” his father suggested, gently, “it is not Nolvo who is different, but you?”
--
Indis, if this matter had been brought to her attention, might have told the cautionary tale from her childhood of the boy who cried wolf. But Fëanáro, of course, did not speak to her.
--
At last, Fëanáro went to the one person he knew, without question, was aware of the truth of Nolofinwë’s fate.
“You are different,” he said, to the thing wearing Nolofinwë’s face.
“So are you,” it said. “Are you even trying anymore?” Fëanáro watched closely, noting every fractional movement of its disguise. “Fëanáro, I’m serious. You haven’t been attending any of the festival planning meetings; Maitimo’s doing it all. Our father is worried.”
The change wasn’t as obvious, when it was trying to be nice. “I have more important work to do. Perhaps, if you were his trueborn son, my father would give you some.”
“My parents are married,” Nolofinwë said. “Who is the bastard here?”
And there it was. That was wrong. It wasn’t the first time they’d fought along those lines, but it was the first time Nolofinwë’s words had sounded so wholly believed, as if they came not from his heart but from a truth of the universe.
Their eyes met, and though Fëanáro kept his mind closed to Nolofinwë all the time – even when it really was Nolofinwë – he let, for a moment, a trickle of sharp hurt slip through, old grief bleeding anew. White hair, what little he remembered of Míriel’s voice.
The thing that was not Nolofinwë smirked. It lasted barely a moment, but if there had been any doubt left in Fëanáro’s mind, it fled.
--
“Two sons at least-”
Fëanáro didn’t bother letting him finish. He could see the flash of cruelty before it happened now. “Where is Nolofinwë?” The court was staring at them, like this was all a particularly interesting drama.
“What is wrong with you, Serindion?” not-Nolofinwë snapped, and Fëanáro’s patience did too. It was not allowed to speak his mother’s name, not even in that garbled way. The blade came easily to hand, and easily to the trickster’s throat, and if he just slid it home, everyone would know-
The creature didn’t even flinch away, just looked shocked and terrified as, at the very last moment, Findekáno leapt forward and punched Fëanáro hard in the face.
There was a lot of yelling after that.
--
He managed to convince the Valar it had not been a murder attempt. That was easy. All he had to do was show him the pure truth of his mind. I did not try to kill Nolofinwë. They believed him. They were gullible. After all, they believed in the false Nolofinwë too. The harder part – much, much harder – was coming up with a new plan that would work now that half of Tirion was convinced Fëanáro had gone mad, and the other half – arguably more concerningly – thought he was perfectly sane and still had tried to kill Nolofinwë. He thought them rather likely to send him off to Estë and Lórien, if not directly to Námo’s care.
The exile was, quite honestly, a relief. Now all he had to do was think of some new, better plan, and ensure nobody noticed he wasn’t precisely where he was supposed to be while he executed it.
His father offered to come with him, and he refused. Finwë would not be willing to be pulled into Fënáro’s schemes unless he could come up with real evidence. Maitimo, with worry in his expression that made him look very much like his mother, offered to come. Fëanáro said yes immediately, and bundled all of his children off to relative safety far from Tirion. They, at least, were reasonably obedient even if they thought him mad.
Nerdanel did not offer to come, but she looked at him with concern, verging on pity, that was quite nearly the worst of it.
--
Here were the essential facts:
- Nolofinwë was not dead – Indis would have noticed.
- Nolofinwë was not here.
- None of the Valar had noticed Nolofinwë, wherever he was.
Ergo:
- Nolofinwë was no longer in Valinor.
--
“I am going to study Varda’s workings in the darkness of the far north,” he told Maitimo. “It does not violate the terms of my exile, but I do not like being watched so closely. If anyone asks, please tell them I am here, and I do not want to speak with them.”
He was still wearing that terrible concerned face, but he did not argue. Fëanáro thought of one more thing.
“Keep in touch with Findekáno, would you? And tell Tyelkormo to do the same with Írissë.”
Now Maitimo looked very concerned.
--
Stealing the fleet of the Teleri of Alqualondë would be hard. Stealing one boat from a lonely fishing village was much easier.
--
It was a strange thing, Fëanáro discovered, to be utterly without the light of the trees. The Silmarils he kept in their case, close to his chest, lest they attract attention. He was alone under the stars, the sea still as a mirror around him. There were so many more of them than he ever could have imagined. The scope of this work was great indeed, the interweaving of every pinprick-light into a tapestry nearly beyond comprehension. It was the sort of work that challenged him, which was rare indeed. He did not understand entirely the patterns of its movement – for surely there were patterns – and wanted to desperately.
It was the sort of thing that might have driven a person to prayer, to invoke the Valar and the One, if they were not otherwise attempting to avoid drawing the eye.
Instead, Fëanáro lay in the bottom of the boat, and stared at the stars until he fell asleep, one hand clasped over the Silmarils on his chest.
When he woke next it was impossible to see how much time had passed, though the stars had moved – if only he knew the pattern, why had he never learned this? – and in front of him land rose, dark and forbidding against the horizon.
--
Vaguely, he had intended to seek out his father’s friend Elwë for help in this matter, for he was said to be king of these lands, powerful and wise, and Finwë often spoke fondly of him, but there was no need. Forbidding though the shores might have appeared, their master was not, and he spoke freely to Fëanáro in the classical mode, as suited them both.
“It is no surprise a son of Finwë has come,” he said, after they finished their introductions. “A lack of courage has never been one of your father’s faults. But you come upon us in strange and uncertain times. There is a darkness as I have not seen in long years cooking in the North.”
Nowë, who called himself Círdan in his fascinating new tongue, was quite sure that one of Melkor’s servants of old had set a horrible plan in motion.
“We have little word from within the walls,” Círdan said, “but the way the orcs move has changed; they are more cautious now, their games defensive.”
“Games?”
They settled on the word ‘strategy’ eventually.
“Have you any idea what they defend?”
His expression grew bleak, and he shook his head. “Not ‘what’, but ‘who’. There are always prisoners in those walls, of course – many of our kin fall this way – but one seems to have caught particular attention. They say he has been chained on an open cliff-face of Thangorodrim, a braggart's position. The enemy’s servant might as well say ‘look what I have, come and get it’. But of course, it would be death to try.”
He parsed the proper noun’s meaning quickly enough. Mountains of thralldom. They did not, it must be said, sound particularly pleasant.
“Hypothetically,” Fëanáro said, necessitating another brief diversion while they found a synonym that suited them both, “would you describe this servant of the enemy as a cunning trickster fond of deceptions?”
“Yes,” Círdan said, “I would.”
Fëanáro told him, with some degree of precision, who had been imprisoned, for how long, what the Valar intended to do about it (nothing), and what Fëanáro intended to do about it (show them he was right).
At this point, with some degree of consternation, Círdan directed him to his forges, and said, “if I let you do this stupid thing without proper equipment, your father and Elwë will not best be pleased.”
“An army might also be appreciated,” said Fëanáro. “With Melkor and his servant both in Valinor, you might cast the whole place down in one blow.”
Círdan, who had been rather driven past the point of tact he normally would have offered an elf whose brother had been captured by the enemy, said, “If you think Melkor has only one servant, you’re a fool.”
And that was that.
--
To do:
- Climbing gear
- Speak to visiting ‘green-elf’ about climbing gear
- Ask visiting green-elf what language they speak and determine relationship to ‘Sindarin’
- Lockpicks(?)
- Bolt cutters
- New sword
- Rope(?)
--
He made all of it by his own hands, even the rope. Fëanáro had many gifts, but the greatest of them was in the intent and care and fragments of his blazing spirit that he put into every one of his works – his Silmarils the most of all, of course. Oh, he could call up a storm, compel a crowd if he truly forced them, but that was work, and this was almost a pleasure. Every stitch of his clothing thrummed with power, his spikes could support the weight of a dozen horses, and his pulse beat with a strange need for his host’s approval.
“I think,” Círdan said, “that you still do not truly understand what you face.”
He met Fëanáro’s eyes, then, and showed him violence, such as a child of Valinor had never seen, blood and screaming and the dark miasma of fear that fell over all those in the power of the enemy.
Fëanáro thought about this for some time, looking out across the sea to the home that was entirely beyond his sight. His father was there with the fell Þauron, and his children too. There was still a chance he might persuade them only on Círdan’s word, if he turned back now.
“A lack of courage has never been one of your father’s faults,” Círdan had said. Fëanáro would not make it one of his. He would not leave any shred of doubt, in the mind of any in Valinor, that he was the most courageous, sane. and clever of all of them put together.
--
Círdan’s warnings could not – and indeed, had not – prepared him for the things he saw, passing into those dark realms, but despite his own wishes, he walked silently, cloaked himself in shadow, and whispered of his own invisibility until not even Míriel his mother, watching from death, could have seen him. The fight was not here, after all. The fight was what would happen when he threw the real Nolofinwë at the imposter’s feet and stepped over him to slit its throat. This time, Findekáno would provide no interruptions.
--
It was Nolofinwë, chained there. Or at the very least, it was Nolofinwë’s body. He was hanging utterly still as a pennant on a breezeless day. Fëanáro dropped his cloak of illusion, and got out his climbing gear.
He knew very well what it was to lose a parent, as no other child of Valinor had. Nolofinwë’s children would deserve– well, they would deserve something. More answers than Fëanáro had ever received to the question ‘why?’
--
But Nolofinwë was not dead. As Fëanáro pulled himself up on that narrow ledge which was just below Nolofinwë’s dangling feet, a sheen of sweat and dirt visible on his fair brow, he found himself staring into eyes like his own, which widened in terrible recognition.
It was so clear, even in that moment, as shock turned to hope turned to doubt, that this, not the fell thing in Tirion, was his brother.
“It’s me,” he said, grateful for Quenya on his tongue again, and braced himself for a reply in the same language in Nolofinwë’s grating voice, but there was no response. “Well, a ‘thank you’ would be nice. I am here – against a leaguer of enemies, without one ally on my side, and at last you find the will to be silent?”
Nolofinwë glared at him, fierce and terrible, and then, discordant in Song like rusty hinges, the surface of his mind swung open to Fëanáro.
There was fire, shock, horror, pain like nothing Fëanáro’s body nor spirit had ever experienced, and just as soon it was gone, Nolofinwë shutting it away within himself like forcing the lid of a too-stuffed trunk. He made a sign with his free hand, which might have been half an apology, though it was hard to tell without the other completing the gesture.
Some unconscious urge had brought Fëanáro’s hand up to his mouth as the torrent of memory washed over him, and a terrible thought cut through his mind. “Nolvo, why aren’t you saying anything?”
He darted his gaze between Fëanáro’s bag of tools, hanging from his belt, and his chained wrist, the gesture clear enough. Carefully, Fëánaro let enough of his rope out that he had room to move, and slid across the ledge, past Nolofinwë, so he could work better.
In the moment at which they were closest, their minds met again, and he saw-
A beautiful Ainu, one of the fairest he had ever seen, with a cape of glowing golden hair and brilliant eyes, standing in a field of poppies.
That same Ainu in a place of shadow, teeth halfway to fangs and a smile bright and joyous on his face as he reached into Nolofinwë’s chest – into his spirit as much as his flesh – and shattered it.
Fëanáro would have fallen from the cliff, then, if Nolofinwë had not brought up an arm to catch him, pulling Fëanáro against that same chest.
They held that position a moment, breathing ragged and minds still half-open and pressed together as if they were siblings in truth, like Ambarussa always living half-in, half-out of his brother’s head.
“Stay,” Fëanáro ordered him, before Nolofinwë could close his mind again. Talk to me.
There were ways of calming the surface of another person’s thoughts, of helping them speak in this way. Usually, they were used when teaching children, but that was how Fëanáro’s mother had spoken at the end, the only way left to her as she fell out of life, or life fell out of her. He reached out and pressed down the torrent of memory, of pain, to let Nolofinwë’s more intentional thought rise to the surface instead.
I can’t.
Evidently you can, Fëanáro pointed out, and extricated himself from the awkward embrace to begin his work.
Fëanáro, he thought, with great frustration attached to the name, look at my mouth.
When he opened it, there was nothing there. Oh, there were teeth, though fewer of those than there should have been, but-
With the promise of great violence in his tone, Fëanáro said, “I see. He cut out your tongue, and I am going to cut off his head.”
With a burning shame, Nolofinwë thought, I told him everything he needed to know. Everything he needed to be me. There was nothing else he needed me to be able to say. I can’t even think properly.
Fëanáro had seen exactly what it took to extract those words, and that only a fraction of it. “Well, evidently you didn’t tell him everything he needed to be you. I’m here, aren’t I?”
There was no lock, which was a shame, if only because the picks were very well made, and with a manacle nailed directly into the rock face, there was nowhere good for the bolt cutters to get purchase either. Resigned, Fëanor got out his hammer and chisel, craved himself a smaller perch higher up so he could reach, and withdrew his file. The metal of the cuff was strong, imbued with dark magic, but Fëanáro’s will was stronger. He worked slowly, careful to avoid drawing it against Nolvo’s skin, but it was clear even from the first draw that he was gaining ground against his foe.
What gave him away? I tried to lay clues, to make him get things wrong with Atar, to convince him to leave Anairë alone, but I didn’t plan any of them for you.
“We were fighting.”
It was a relief to see that look of frustrated incredulity again. The imposter hadn’t quite mastered it. We’re always fighting.
“We were fighting differently. You would never say- well, you would say the same things, but they sound different when you say them.”
Nolvo did not look like he was driven to confidence by any of this.
Drawing the file with rather more force than was desirable and producing a truly horrible shriek, Fëanáro, who was entirely sick of mistrust in his abilities and senses, snapped, “I know the difference between insults on the tongue of a brother and a foe.” His mind followed his words shortly thereafter. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
There was, for a moment, only the shrill grinding of metal, the roiling darkness of the ash and clouds overhead, the smell of a body in pain, and the small reassurance of the way their minds still fit together, awkward and tenuous and fierce at once.
You came here without allies? Alone? Nobody else… His thoughts grew harder and more determined. But I would have told them not to come too, I would not want my children, or our father, here in this.
“No need to celebrate your self-pity. None of them knew I was coming. None of them believed me when I said he wasn’t you. They thought I was mad when I tried to slit his throat.”
You tried to kill me?
“I knew it wasn’t you, didn’t I? Everyone else was the problem. Damn your son’s reflexes. I almost had him; if Findekáno hadn’t struck me, I would have.”
With a darkness in his thought, and truth too, Nolofinwë told him, he meant for you to, no doubt. He wanted war in Valinor, endless bloodshed and kin against closest kin in the lands of the Valar.
“He is a loyal thrall indeed, to be willing to die for Melkor’s cause – and he is operating on the command of his master, I imagine. Another thing about which I was right to inform everyone of when we return.”
I think you are one of the most arrogant people in Arda.
Nolofinwë flushed. He had gone pale enough without tree-light that the tint was plain on his face. No doubt he had not intended to express the thought.
Purely in the interest of experimentation, to see what Nolofinwë would do, he said what he would have to Maitimo or Makalaurë to see them smile. “The single most arrogant, please. And outside of it as well.”
The choked sound that might have been a twisted mockery of Nolofinwë’s boisterous laugh was the accompanying music as Fëanáro made the last few passes of his file, and examined his work. He had weakened the metal of the cuff, created points of stress and facture where there had been none.
To Nolofinwë, he said, “I will tie you to me, but when I break the cuff, and as we climb, you will have to do your best to hold to me. That will be the best way to keep your weight distributed correctly.”
I don’t have the strength.
“You are our father’s son, are you not? Of course you have the strength.”
He frowned at Fëanáro, but when Fëanáro spoke Truth to the cuff, of its wrongness in making, of its weakness in the face of true light and power, he wrapped both arms quickly about his brother, and did not fall.