Chapter Text
Together they ran just ahead of the flood. They pelted down the grey road with foaming water lapping at their feet. Fingon glanced back and saw a great wave washing across the gloom behind them like a dark wall. If it fell upon them they would be utterly swept away. There was no question about where to go. He sprang up onto the lower slopes of the black mountains, and Maedhros came after him. The dark wave hurled itself down on the ugly slope in a mighty cloud of white spray, and they both stopped a moment to stare at the glory of it.
Then Fingon saw another even larger wall of water rolling in behind it. They did not have time to stand and stare. “This way!” he said, and they managed to get above the wave’s reach just before it crashed as well, roar and grumble and sheets of white foam; and once again Fingon felt spray on his face. He could taste it too, in the air, just a hint of salt. The sea, he thought: the sea!
When the second wave receded, it did not recede far. Already the grey road was drowned. Dark water white-laced lapped hungrily around the feet of Thangorodrim. It was pouring through the entrance to Angband, and fierce churning whirlpools were forming about the gate. “The sea!” Maedhros said, stopping and staring again.
Fingon took his hand and dragged him on up the mountainside. Maedhros stumbled after him. He kept turning around to look. “I know!” Fingon said at last. “And it’s wonderful, but I don’t want to drown in it!”
Maedhros gave a surprised-sounding laugh. “I suppose not!” he said. They climbed swiftly up until they reached the iron bar that ran along the top of the gate; but there was no gate now. Little waves were breaking about the double row of spikes that had crowned it. Fingon worried about Maedhros’s balance, but he ran the treacherous path as easily as Fingon did: he seemed to have got some of his strength back somewhere between the chasm’s brink and here. On and up the mountain they went. It was a mountain that was shrinking every minute. The flood was swallowing Thangorodrim steadily, and Fingon and Maedhros could barely keep ahead of it. The path was treacherous as it had been the last two times Fingon had made this climb – third time pays for all! he thought wildly – and Maedhros plainly found it even harder one-handed. He no longer scorned help when Fingon offered it. At one point Fingon had to heave himself up a sheer slope of rock while Maedhros waited with the water already rising past his knees: only then could he turn around and haul Maedhros up after him.
Up and up they went, until they came to the flat patch of scree under the cliff where the adamant shackle hung. Here Fingon paused. As far as he knew there was no way on, and the water was up around his ankles already. “This way!” Maedhros said, and he urged Fingon up onto what had looked from the flat like a crumbling pile of rock. Indeed it was: but from the top there was an easy jump to another slightly higher pile, and then up to the top of a crag which swung out at a mad angle from the side of the central mountain; and if one ran along that to the end and jumped and was not afraid of the sharp rocks at the landing, it was a route onto a similar crag on the next mountain over. The landing did not look as bad as it could have been. It was half underwater. Fingon took the jump first and caught Maedhros when he came after, and together they waded and splashed back onto the slope.
Here was another ill-made path leading upwards. Now Maedhros led and Fingon followed him. “I had plenty of time,” Maedhros called back over his shoulder, “to get a good look at what was up here!” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the waves breaking. Fingon glanced back at the central peak. Already they had climbed high enough that they were level with the adamant shackle. Maedhros would have been able to see this path from there. But he seemed quite cheerful about it: and it was saving them now.
At last there was nowhere left to climb. They had reached the peak – though it was not a peak now. Nothing remained of Thangorodrim but three low black islands in a wide dark ocean. The central one was still the tallest. It was an evil-looking crag, but as Fingon and Maedhros watched one last great wave crashed upon it, and the whole black height of the middle peak came crumbling down and was swallowed up by the foam. Nothing remained where it had been.
Maedhros was smiling. He said, “I always regretted not seeing that one fall!”
“Well, you have seen it now,” said Fingon, and smiled too.
The water stopped rising. There were no more mighty waves. Now little wavelets broke gently on the black slag. Fingon sat down to watch them, and Maedhros sat beside him. There was just room on their black island for both of them. There was nothing else to be seen but a double darkness: a wide lightless ocean, and above it the everlasting night. Yet Fingon kept smiling. Certainly it was dark, but it was a better dark than the one that had come before. Now they had a sea, and just by existing the sea had created a sky. It was a black and starless sky, but any sky was better than none. He leaned against Maedhros’s thin shoulder.
Maedhros put his arm around him. “Well,” he said after a moment, “I am glad you’re here.”
“As am I,” said Fingon.
“Though I did not deserve it,” Maedhros said. There was no self-pity now. It was just a statement of fact.
“That is what Turgon said,” said Fingon. “I still say it has nothing to do with it.”
“And it was very rash of you to come at all.”
“Yes; that is what Irmo said!”
“The wisest of your siblings and the Lord of Dream! Fingon, will you never take good counsel when it’s offered?”
“Maybe someday,” Fingon said. He reluctantly pulled himself away from Maedhros’s side so he could dip his hands in the water. It was cool, but not freezing: the cold of a Hithlum spring, maybe. Fingon splashed some on his face, and felt refreshed for it. Then he remembered he was still all over cobwebs from that miserable scramble through the gate of Angband. He took more handfuls of water and sluiced off the worst of it. The sticky spidersilk disintegrated quickly in the cold water. Fingon ran his damp hands through his hair, tugging away more cobwebby strands, and washed them off in the dark sea. He felt much better for it. At last he turned to Maedhros, who was watching him silently, and lifted his brows. “You look terrible,” he said. “And you smell.”
Maedhros flinched. Then he laughed and said, “Thank you very much!” But he came and knelt by Fingon and started to wash away the worst of the webs that still clung to him. Fingon helped as best he could. Maedhros’s hair was the worst: it was thickly matted and knotted with spider silk, and even with the cobwebs torn away the foul tangles remained. After a moment Fingon got out the star-glass. Maedhros flinched away from the light, but then turned and looked and said with surprise, “It is not that bad!” After that he looked for a little while: then he winced and screwed up his eyes, and looked away again. But he kept sneaking glances at the little light.
Fingon meanwhile tried to use the clearer view the light gave him to sort out some of the tangles in Maedhros’s hair. But it was hopeless, and Maedhros winced and grumbled when he pulled. It took Fingon a while to work out that not all of the colourless strands were cobwebs. Some of Maedhros’s hair had turned grey. Fingon mourned for the bright copper-colour he remembered. But the grey was not that bad. Silvery, he thought: like Frodo the Ringbearer.
“Enough!” said Maedhros at last. “I think you’ve done as much as anyone can.” He did look better. He also smelled better. Fingon sat down next to him again. He set the star-glass down between them. “What is that?” Maedhros said. “It looks like –”
He cut himself off.
“Galadriel made it,” said Fingon. “To be a light in dark places. The light is Eärendil’s; the star, I mean.”
“So there is something of my father’s in it after all,” Maedhros said. “No darker place than this!”
He looked out across the black sea. Fingon looked too. There was nothing there.
“No way back,” Maedhros said.
“No: but I think I like this better than the chasm,” said Fingon. “I certainly prefer it to Angband and the spider queen.”
“A sea! Where did it come from?” said Maedhros, and he shook his head wonderingly, and took Fingon’s hand again. Fingon held onto him tightly. He picked up the star-glass in his other hand and held it up, wondering if perhaps he could get a glimpse of that broken tree. He felt rather attached to it now, and would have liked to know what had become of it.
There was no sign of any driftwood. But Maedhros exclaimed. Where the light of the star-glass fell on the dark water it illuminated a path, one that seemed to be made of nothing but pale fire. It was like the track laid down by the Sun as she sank beneath the western waves beyond the shores of Middle-earth: like that, but not so fierce in colour.
“It’s not a road,” Maedhros said. “It cannot be. There is no road from here. We’re on a mountain!”
“We’re on an island,” Fingon said. He stood up. He took a deep breath. He was possibly about to get very cold and wet.
He stepped onto the road of light: and it held him.
Fingon laughed and turned back to Maedhros. “Come on!” he said.
“There is no way back,” said Maedhros, but he stood up.
Fingon held out his hand. “No,” he said, “but there might be a way on!”
They walked the road of light. It felt very precarious. They could not see further ahead than what the star-glass illuminated, which was not all that much; and their pathway faded and vanished behind them as they went. But Fingon held Maedhros’s hand, and kept the phial aloft, and felt hopeful. They had a sea and a sky and a light in the dark: and if he had to walk through the Void, it was much better not to walk alone. Neither of them spoke much. The deep water lapped around Fingon’s boots and Maedhros’s bare feet. There were no spiders. Fingon thought of the spider queen hiding down in her lair with six arrows in her eye, and hoped she had drowned.
“There might still be dragons,” Maedhros said, as if answering the thought.
“I don’t think fire-drakes swim,” Fingon said.
“Some of them can fly!” said Maedhros, but his tone was less gloomy than his words.
At last the road of light seemed to end. It had not led anywhere. They were standing on a tiny patch of bright water in the midst of darkness still. But the star-glass lit nothing more. “Now what?” Maedhros said. “I told you! We had better go back.”
“No,” Fingon said. He handed the glass to Maedhros. “Hold this!”
Maedhros made a startled sound and nearly fumbled it. He looked as though he expected it to burn him. But it did not; Fingon had not thought it would. Maedhros held the light up. Fingon looked around, and then carefully took one step forward.
“Fingon!” Maedhros said in alarm.
“It’s solid!” said Fingon. The black water here was only a film over the top of something broad and dark underneath. “We can go this way.”
They went forward a little way, and then Maedhros gave an alarmed cry and did drop the glass in the shallow water by their feet as he hauled Fingon back from the edge of a cliff he had not seen. The fallen phial illuminated a rippling pool of light. Water was flowing softly over the edge, creating a great fine curtain of water pouring steadily into the dark, a waterfall that extended as far as Fingon could see in either direction. He looked back at the ocean that had swallowed Maedhros’s prison. It was not getting any shallower. There must still be more water fountaining up from the abyss. Then he realised where they were.
“We are standing on the wall!” he said. He had thought it went up forever: it had looked like it went up forever. But no. Here they were on top of it. He looked out over the edge again, though Maedhros said his name nervously. Were the twins down there? He could see no sign of them, and no way down. But far far below he could make out a tiny ribbon of grey. It was the cobweb road that had looked so wide and straight as he came to the gate. “Come and look!” Fingon said.
“I would rather not,” said Maedhros.
“No – look!” said Fingon.
Maedhros came and stood beside him and saw what he was seeing. The grey road was disintegrating as the waterfall pounded down on it. While they watched it coming apart they heard a great groaning sound, as of stone and metal under terrible strain. Then far below them the gate burst, and a foaming river poured out through it into the dark. Fingon imagined the ocean behind them spreading and spreading, washing away the whole cobweb road from beginning to end: the whole road and everything that lay along it. Good and evil, fair memories and foul, all the way back to the ghost of Valinor undefiled: let them drown, drown like Beleriand, and lie washed clean under this dark sea.
It occurred to Fingon then that the ivory gate was going to be drowned too.
Well, he had not had much hope for it anyway.
“I hope the twins got away from there,” he said, watching the dark waters swirling out of the gate.
“You did meet them,” Maedhros said.
Fingon looked at him. He looked very unhappy. “I was not sure you heard me when I was talking to the spider queen,” he said.
“You? No,” said Maedhros. “But I heard her.” He crouched on the edge, and picked up the star-glass, and looked out hopelessly into the watery gloom below. “I could never find them!” he said.
“I’m sure they got away,” Fingon said. Surely they had. Surely they must have left. What sense was there in staying to guard a prison that was empty? But in his heart he was afraid. They were only children.
“Well, we can’t do anything by standing here,” was all he said. “Maybe if we keep going we’ll find a way down. Then we can search for them together.”
Maedhros looked no happier. But he gave the phial back to Fingon, and consented to walk along the top of the wall. There was no way to know which direction to go. Fingon just guessed, and turned to the right. Side by side they walked along the dark height, listening to the waterfall pour down, and little ripples splashed their feet as they went.
They had been walking some time when Maedhros said, “Look there!”
He went and crouched at the edge. Fingon brought the light over and saw that the curtain of the waterfall was broken here by a narrow slippery stairway that wound uncertainly back and forth up the sheer face of the wall. It looked a very dangerous path, and Fingon could not see what was below. But Maedhros looked up at him beseechingly; and it was not as if they could count on a better way down. There was no doubt in Fingon’s mind that they must seek the twins. He held up the star-glass one last time, looking back at the ocean behind them.
Then something caught his eye.
“What’s that?” he said.
There was an odd shadowy shape up ahead in the dark. Fingon marked where the narrow stair lay and tugged Maedhros towards it to investigate. It was not until they were very close that he could make sense of it. A tree or a post he had thought it, but it was neither. Two long black spears had been planted side by side in a muddy mound and abandoned. There were footprints in the mud – small footprints, and fresh.
“Those are their spears,” he said. “They came up the stair in the dark. They were here!”
“We go after them,” Maedhros said.
Fingon nodded. But before they went on he stood a second before the twin black shafts, and then without letting himself think about it unslung his warbow and empty quiver from his back. He left them resting in the mud at the base of the spears. They would do him no more good, and seemed a fit tribute to that dark monument.
“Come on!” Maedhros said, and for the first time when they went on it was Fingon who had to hurry to keep pace.
They did not seem to be on the wall anymore. There was more mud underfoot, though they saw no more small footprints. The ocean and waterfall receded from view, and they were no longer walking through shallow water, but Fingon could still hear waves splashing off to his right. They did not see the twins, but Maedhros walked with purpose, and looked around often. “What way could they have gone but this?” he said. Then he hesitated. “Unless we passed them in the dark!”
“They would see the star-glass,” Fingon said. “I believe they would come to it.”
“Eluréd! Elurín!” Maedhros called. But nothing answered him.
“They do not know their names!” Fingon said.
Maedhros looked wretched for a moment. Then he said again, “But they must have come this way!”
They set out again along the muddy path. Fingon held the light aloft. Very small it was in such a great blackness, but still a great deal better than nothing. Perhaps it would draw evil things to hunt them, but he had not heard any spider-chittering since their queen had fled before him in the throne room.
Before long he began to notice something strange.
There were green things growing in the mud.
At first it was only a stray tough weed here and there. Fingon hardly believed it when he saw the first one, and said nothing. But then there was another, then two together, and then Maedhros noticed one and exclaimed, so Fingon did not need to point them out after all. Before long there were small patches of grass at the roadside, and then something approaching a verge. Fingon’s spirits mounted ever higher. This hardly felt like the Void at all. If there had only been stars! Still they had their light. And they were now most certainly on a road, and not a grey cobweb strand either: a real road that appeared to lead somewhere. Fingon thought he agreed with Maedhros. Surely the twins had come this way!
They kept going. In one patch of weeds by the roadside Fingon thought he saw a small white flower like a star.
“What’s up there?” Maedhros said, looking ahead.
Fingon looked too. “I think the road splits,” he said.
He was right. They were coming to a fork in the path. Around it the grass grew thick and green: but thicker and greener on the right-hand side.
Just at the point where the road divided in two an old man in a battered hat sat upon a tussock. He was thoughtfully smoking a pipe, Hobbit-fashion, and blew a smoke ring now and again. He looked up when Fingon and Maedhros got close. Fingon looked at him in astonishment.
“Gandalf?” he said.
“You have been spending a great deal of time with Hobbits if you call me by that name!” said the old man.
“Olórin – Mithrandir!” Fingon said.
The wizard inclined his head. “Whatever name you please!”
“Have you seen –” said Maedhros quickly.
The wizard gave him a fierce look. “The twins?”
Maedhros was silent.
“You will never find them! Because of you they went into darkness undeserved, and your spirit must bear the weight of that crime as long as you have a spirit. Done cannot be undone, Maedhros! Not by you: not by anyone.”
“But they didn’t deserve it,” Maedhros said.
“You must bear that as well,” said the wizard sternly. “Ask me no more! Eluréd and Elurín are beyond your help. And now you are near the end of your journey. I am here to see that you find your way.”
Maedhros stood silent and griefstricken. Fingon swallowed hard and reached for his hand. Maedhros did not react when he tangled their fingers together. Fingon had not thought he would. He looked at the wizard. If they could not save the twins, they could at least finish their journey.
“Which is our road, then?” he said.
“That one,” said the wizard, nodding down the right-hand fork where the grass grew green.
“Where does it lead?”
“Why, home, of course! Where else?” The wizard smiled at Fingon’s expression. “No, I am not speaking in riddles, though I have been known to do so. Home I said and Home I meant: to the gates of Arda, and then wherever you please. Home to hearth and hall and firelight, to the woods and meads and rivers that you know: and to your family, who will be very pleased to see you, for once again you have them worried. Off you go now! It is not far at all.”
Fingon with joy and relief turned towards the greenway. But as he went forward Maedhros’s fingers slipped from his. Fingon turned back and saw him still standing at the sundering of the ways. The wizard puffed on his pipe. Maedhros was looking at the other path. It was very dark that way. It led once more into the night where no stars shone.
“Maedhros?” Fingon said.
“That is not your road,” said the wizard. He had been stern before, but he was gentle now. “But you may take it if you wish. After all this fuss it hardly seems kind to deny you.”
“Where does it lead?” Maedhros said.
“Beyond the world’s end, as you have already guessed. And after that – who can say? Not even the Lord of Mandos could tell you. Yes, you may go that way, and I can understand why it might appeal to you. I do not claim that it is the easier path: to my mind, neither is easier: but certainly it is altogether beyond the reach of oaths! Only beware. Once you step onto that road, you really cannot turn back, for as you see it is much too narrow to be a highway, and it would cause a great deal of confusion to have people running up and down it all the time.”
“I understand,” Maedhros said.
“You may take nothing with you,” the wizard said. “And it is dark, and people have been known to get lost. Still for you perhaps it would be the easier path.”
“The only path, surely,” Maedhros said. “No evil thing may be brought out of the Void.”
“Quite right,” said the wizard, “so it is a good thing you threw it away!”
Maedhros looked up quickly.
“Which is not to say that it is gone for good. Things you lose here have a way of coming back. You may find you need to throw it away over and over, and I cannot promise that it will get any easier. Still I have told you that both ways are open to you. You are the one who must choose.”
Maedhros nodded once. He looked at Fingon. “Thank you,” he said, and smiled a little.
Fingon stared at him. His heart yearned for the greenway, where small white flowers were growing in the grass. The left-hand fork looked very dreadful to him. The road was narrow and hard, and quickly vanished in the dark. “Must you?” he said.
“I think so,” said Maedhros. “I’m sorry. Go home, Fingon! Go home; and give them my love.”
Fingon looked longingly down the greenway. Then he looked at the wizard. “May he not take a friend with him?” he said.
“Take? No, not take. He may not take anything.” The wizard looked at Fingon under his brows. His eyes were very bright. “Still a friend might go with him, if he chose. But the rules are just the same. You could not turn back either, Fingon, and that road would be very hard for you.”
“I am not afraid,” Fingon said. He did not have much left to carry anyway. With some regret laid down his harp in the grass at the roadside. Then he looked at the star-glass he held. “It seems wrong to leave this lying in the mud,” he said. “Eärendil’s light is in it, and twice now it has been a noble gift. If I give it to you, will you see that it is given again to someone who has need of it?”
“I shall,” said the wizard gravely, and accepted it from his hand.
“Fingon!” said Maedhros.
Fingon smiled at him. Now he had put everything down the dark road did not look quite so forbidding after all, though he still regretted the greenway. “Shall we go?” he said.
“No,” said Maedhros. “You need to go home.”
“And leave you to walk in the dark by yourself? Not for the world!”
Maedhros looked wretched. “Fingon, I don’t want to drag you this way.”
“You are not dragging me anywhere,” Fingon said. “I never had to come looking for you at all. I chose to. It would be very poor-spirited of me to leave you now!”
“You must go home.”
“So I shall – if you come with me.”
“There is no place for me there,” Maedhros said.
Fingon frowned at him. “Nonsense!”
“I doubt very much that you can change his mind, Maedhros,” the wizard said. “He has seen the worst of you by now, you know. If he was going to abandon you, he would have done it already.”
“Tell him he must not,” Maedhros said.
“I?” said the wizard. “No. I am not one for telling, as a rule. To say must and ought to people against their hearts only offends them, and evil was never turned to good by mere command. Nor does this chance strike me as evil. There are few greater goods than good friends, and one ought not complain about them. It seems that either he will go with you, or you shall have to go with him. Yes, and in fact I believe I agree with him: whichever way you end up going, it had much better be together!”
“But which way?” Maedhros said.
“I shall not tell you that either.”
“Can you give us no counsel?” Fingon said.
The wizard lifted his brows. “I can give a great deal of counsel, but I cannot choose for you. Let me say this, then. The dark road would be easier for Maedhros and harder for you; the opposite is true of the greenway. But neither will be altogether easy, and neither altogether hard. And though the choice is given to you, and you may make it freely, the greenway is the path you both were meant for – if that means anything to you!”
Fingon and Maedhros looked at each other.
“Let it be the dark road,” Fingon said. “You have borne quite enough already.”
“It would be selfish beyond words,” Maedhros said. “You have walked more dark paths for me than anyone ever should, and you would not have needed to face any of them if I had not chosen so badly so many times.”
Fingon rolled his eyes. “What has that to do with anything? I say let it be the dark road, for your sake.”
“No,” Maedhros said. “You’d hate it. I think I had better be the brave one for once.” He looked at the wizard. “Is that right?”
“What do you think?” the wizard said.
“That’s not helpful.”
“I am not helpful, precisely, and I never answer questions that people can answer for themselves. Is that right? You should know: or if you do not, you should try to!”
“It’s right,” Maedhros said. “At least, I think so.” He came and took Fingon’s hand, and they stood at the lip of the greenway. Fingon looked at his harp and saw that grass was already growing up through it and taking it to pieces. He did not think he could reclaim it now. He did not even consider trying to ask the wizard for the star-glass back. He had given it: let it be given again. Let it come to someone who needed it.
The wizard settled back onto his tussock with his Hobbit-pipe. He seemed prepared to sit there for some time. Fingon and Maedhros looked down the green road.
“I’m terrified,” Maedhros said.
“It won’t be that bad,” said Fingon. “People will be glad to see you.”
“Really.”
“Well, some of them,” Fingon admitted, but he squeezed Maedhros’s hand. “Let’s go home.”
Maedhros took a deep breath. “Let’s go home.”
Not more than a hundred yards down the greenway their fair path opened out into a low meadow. Fingon stared. Two gates stood before them. One was the polished ivory gate of Lórien. “But I thought it was drowned!” he said.
Beside the ivory gate stood another, much darker in colour. It might have been made of ivory too, though ivory old and discoloured; or of horn; or perhaps of bone. Lórien’s gate was fair to look upon, finely wrought and carved into elegant fluting shapes. But the gate kept by his brother was plain and very grim. Fingon looked between them in confusion.
“Which one should we take?” Maedhros said. His voice was steady, but Fingon could feel that he trembled.
Fingon shook his head. He did not know. Ivory, he thought. Ivory? Lórien had sent him off on this journey: had warned him to keep to the road, and fitted him besides with fair gifts. Though the harp had been Fingon’s own, he had left both dagger and bow behind in Middle-earth, and he owned them only in memory. And the rope he had never seen before at all. He had much to thank the Dream-lord for. And Irmo was kind: sorrowful, not stern, and spouse to gentle Estë.
But it was not as if the judgment of Mandos could be avoided.
Fingon tried to think.
Then he said, “Oh!”
“What?” said Maedhros.
Fingon smiled at him. “You were right,” he said. “There’s no way back. Every time I tried to go backwards something went wrong. It must be the dark gate.”
“You’re sure?” Maedhros said.
“I am!” He tugged Maedhros along with him. It was a forbidding portal, but its terror stemmed from its majesty, not from any evil. “Ready?” Fingon said.
“No!” said Maedhros.
Fingon laughed and dragged him forwards. As they drew close to the gate he heard a sound like falling water. And at the very last moment, just as he stepped across the dark threshold with Maedhros’s hand in his, he had an urge to look back and see if he could see who the wizard was waiting for with the star-glass. But on the whole he thought he had better not.