If you’re desperate, or reckless enough, go the entrance of the Towers in a night so still that the air sticks to the back of your neck and wait for thirteen minutes. As stupid and suicidal as it sounds, don’t bring any iron or salt and leave your throat exposed. It’s good faith, after all. And you need it, don’t you? Of course you do.
After these moments of waiting, and please be patient and refuse to complain, a boy will come. He has black eyes and an eerie mouth. Don’t ask me how eerie, you’ll see and know.
Back to point, this boy will come and stay by your side. He’ll smile with no edge and ask for a kiss, just one because it’s so lonely and so quiet. Yes, I understand that his lips taste of wet ashes, gasoline and something rotten, but you mustn’t gag.
The next four days will be dreadful. Your throat will be on fire, hurting too much to be just a cold or any known illness. The nurses, however, already know this tale, so relax. It passes, and every tribulation is going to have a solution, even if you can’t see it yet.
Except during these damned test weeks. He always disappears on test weeks.
My @officialtolkiensecretsanta gift for @shattered-royalty, who wanted a character study based on the Silmarillion. I hope you like it! I’ve actually never written Silm fic before, so I latched onto Beren as the character I was most familiar with and then fell in love with Finrod. Thanks for the fantastic prompt! I love character studies so so much so this was very fun!
Writing music: The Horsetamer’s Daughter Instrumental by Julia Ecklar and The Battle of Sauron and Finrod Felagund by Clamavi de Profundis.
***
The waters of the Narog shone in the last light of the setting sun, as Talath Dirnen settled into the gloaming. Finrod stooped over it, thrusting a waterskin into the water and holding it, letting the icy molten gold flow around his hand and into the container. He straightened up, turning away from the beams of bright sunlight lancing between the trees across the water.
To the north and east, the Shadowy Mountains rose above them, frowning across the plains below. Finrod’s sharp eyes could pick out the thin line of the Narog’s source flowing down the foothills, wending its way between dark stones and hardy black trees. It was lost for a moment in the shadows below before cutting a bright golden line across the intervening land. Many rivers flowed down from those mountains, and the Narog was not the least, flowing south back to Nargothrond and beyond, at last joining the Sirion when it was a wide and fast river rushing to the ocean.
The muffled sounds of nine elves moving about the streambank were disrupted as Beren slipped over the high bank that guarded their east flank. Finrod had known many Men, but Beren surpassed them all in stealth, even his father Barahir, whose ring he still wore on his right hand. Even to Elven ears he was a challenge to detect, and Finrod wondered silently at it.
Such a skill must have been honed in the long years the Man had spent in the shadow of the Dark One’s ire, as a close companion to his father and then by his own merit, a ceaseless thorn in Morgoth’s side. Of those days, Beren had spoken only briefly, rushing his story ahead to the love of Lúthien and to Thingol’s demand, but some detail Finrod had managed to ascertain: years spent evading orcs and more evil things until fewer than a score of men remained, then an allusion to some betrayal, but he had sped past that part, stating only what was necessary to explain the death of his father.
Finrod had wished nothing more than to inquire further. The death of Barahir had been rumored, but little news came from Dorthonion in those days so far south as Nargothrond, and much of that was woven of the lies of Morgoth. But Beren’s tale had confirmed it and the son of Finarfin had grieved deeply. But Barahir’s son stood before him and Finrod dared not impinge upon him by pressing for details on a subject that would only pain them both. Of Barahir’s death he knew little. But uncertainty in death was no stranger to him. Mortal Men, he had found, often made peace with death, as though knowing they could not escape it lent strength to face its fickle whims. Death came to the Eldar, and Felagund felt it draw ever nearer with each passing day, but the manner and the hour remained hidden from him.
Peace with death lay heavy upon Beren, son of Barahir, and yet he forged forward, struggling toward his goal with a determination that spoke of life and hope.
“Orcs are near,” he breathed, his voice almost silent in the still evening air, though all present heard him clearly.
Finrod nodded. “In what strength?” he asked.
“There are many,” Beren said, his brow creasing under the weight of his report. “They travel in groups of a score or more. They follow a path -- I know not their southern destination, but many travel north and east. They aim for Angband, I deem, past the Tol Sirion.”
His sharp grey eyes found Finrod’s, and there was knowing in them, and the Elf-lord saw that he knew of Minas Tirith, now known as the tower of Sauron, Morgoth’s lieutenant. Yet he spoke not of it, and Finrod followed suit. Of what use would such a dialogue be? To draw forth the shame of defeat? Their party had no business in that tower, and Finrod set his own thoughts on it aside.
“Perhaps we might use this to our advantage,” said Edrahil, stepping toward the pair. “That is our road, is it not?”
“Of what use to us is a road rank with orcs?” asked another, disgust clear to be heard in his voice.
Finrod capped the waterskin, studying the liquid that ran out of it and onto his hand, robbed of its golden sheen. “Our enemy would take little notice of one more band of orcs traveling toward Angband from the south,” he observed.
“True,” said Beren. “But we are not orcs.”
The skill of Beren Barahir’s son to hide himself against enemies was the skill of a man who understood his surroundings, and Finrod was far from unversed in it himself, but the comment still gave him pause. The gap between culture and ability was confused, and Finrod stood unsure for a time. Finally, he spoke. “The power is mine to make us unto the orcs,” he said. “It is a crude method, and one I would not use, were there another way. Yet surely it is better than to fall under our foes’ power as enemies.”
Beren looked with wonder upon Finrod, and then laughed, his voice low and soft, melding with the rushing of the stream against unfriendly ears. “It slips my mind at times,” he said, “the powers that the Elven-lords wield. But the plan is good. The orc-bands meet seldom, and exchange only insults when they do.”
“And there is no better way to infiltrate Angband,” Finrod said, “than to mask ourselves as creatures with business within.”
Beren only nodded, thoughtful eyes still fixed on Felagund, but coursing beneath with unspoken considerations. The quiet gaze strayed to Edrahil, and then to the other Elves, one by one.
Of Finrod’s many abilities, the gift of reading thoughts was absent. Beren’s gaze swept the assembled Elves, and then returned to the king in silence. “A group of thirty are camped to the north, he said. “They are alone, and we are more than a match for them.”
Determination shone in those eyes, overshadowed with something, hard to pin down. Finrod considered the others he had known of the race of Men, and of Beren’s kin; Barahir, Andreth, and Bëor himself, but he did not know the look. The muddy paths of the future cast no further light on the matter. The Oath of Fëanor hung heavy over the riverbank and everyone on it, overwhelming in its prevalence. He expected no less to cloud the quest for a Silmaril. Celegorm and Curufin had done their damage to this campaign, but it seemed the influence of the Fëanorians upon these events was far from done. Another tragedy to mourn.
“Can you disguise our supplies?” Beren asked. “The orcs that travel north carry little food, and their arrows are spent, for they are returning from their travels, but we will have far to go ere our journey is done.”
In that moment Finrod recognized the air that hovered around Beren -- a resolve, and strength of the will that they would all return alive from this perilous quest, and he laughed aloud, not in derision, but in wonder, that a mortal man should look upon the evil of Morgoth, as indeed Beren had, and should walk willingly into it, and should believe that twelve alone could stand against the Evil One and escape unharmed again. Naïveté it was not, nor foolishness, but a stubborn hope, that against all odds they might prevail against the darkness, strength to go forward when reason demanded he turn back.
Such strength was the mark of lords and kings, and Finrod found clarity, and in his clarity he saw that the Oath of Fëanor overshadowed this age, and all the ages following, yet with time it would diminish, and new dooms would rise to take its place, and he saw moreover that at the forefront of these new dooms Men and Elves would rise who were sons and daughters of Bëor through Beren, and of Lúthien. And such hope might be their only guard against the darkness of their own days, separate and yet one with the evil looming closer to Finrod with each day. He looked at Beren with new eyes then, and it seemed to him that no Man nor Elf was more fit to be the forerunner of those future days, wise and honorable and unafraid, and brimming with the love that drove him to great deeds.
If the Eldar should fall to set the stage for Men like Beren, how could it be counted a loss?
“I can,” he said, and he stowed his waterskin in his pack and drew the drawstrings closed, setting aside his uncertainty, for enough shadows clouded his path that regret and doubt need not be among them.
