312th YEAR OF THE SUN, SPRING
Dorthonion
If it had not been for the berries, his temper would have held.
Half the glade was filled with them, red as garnet and shining between the grasses and primrose blossoms. He had not tasted them since he wandered with Baran through the hills above Andanahti-marei1 returning at the end of each evening with mouths stained and laughing, grinning sheepishly at Estreth and Belen while they handed over baskets that should have been full.
He and Nóm had stumbled upon the trove by accident, strolling through the highlands to ease their legs after the day’s ride, and found the glade brimming over with wildflowers and the tiny, laden stalks.
“Airna’akran!”2 Balan had darted forward, all the delight of childhood in his laughter as he bent down and loosed a handful of berries from the nearest cluster. He had not seen them since crossing into Ossiriand, and till now believed they grew only east of the mountains. He plucked them free of the stems and held out a handful to the other, grinning as he told how his mother would bake them into bread or how he and Baran would lie full evenings on the hillsides amid the berry patches, eating them from the stalks as the sun fell below the horizon. Nóm had taken the offering from his outstretched palm, then followed Balan along the slope, smiling as he searched out the red berries from the green, collecting a meager stash in the front of his shirt.
Even the red berries were tart, early as it was in the season, but they feasted on them nonetheless; stretched on their backs amid the waving grasses and watching the clouds dance in gold and lavender as the sun passed into the west.
It had begun with laughter, of course, somewhere between flirtation and feigned insult, vying for the last of the little harvest. “When Bel was first learning to eat,” Balan had said with a chuckle, slipping a berry onto the tip of his index finger, “he needed to be coaxed for every bite, so each berry would be a hat upon a dancer, singing a little song until he laughed hard enough I could slip one into his mouth.”
“And that was successful?”
“Of course.” He hummed a melody and bobbed his finger back and forth with a grin. “Does it not persuade thee?”
Nóm shifted in a swift motion and caught the finger in his mouth, retrieving the berry before Balan could pull it away. “It does,” he mumbled around the fruit, dropping back onto the grass with a mirrored grin. “But then I have no opposition to berries.”
“Gaitch!”3 Balan rolled over in mock offense. “That was my last.”
“Shouldst not have made it dance, then.”
“Another three thou hast!” He nodded toward the other’s palm, then lunged after them as Finrod closed his hand and held it out of reach. “Nay, give it here, I’ll have them off thee in recompense.”
It was a muddle from there, tangled limbs and grappling fingers, the crushed flowers filling his senses like wine, and laughter tumbling through the glade. Nóm’s palm pressed him back, Balan rolled to pin the arm in place. Balan launched toward the clenched fingers, Nóm’s legs wove through his and tripped him downward instead. The hand about his wrist, his leg hooked behind the other’s, the warmth of him, half-sparring, half-embracing, Nóm’s grip resting now upon his waist.
They rolled back into the trillium and Balan scrambled atop him at last, pinning his arms to the ground and grinning down at him in triumph. “Bested,” he gasped, laughing still as he caught his breath and tightened his grip about the other’s wrists, eyes glinting. “Loose thine hand, I’ll have my vengeance.”
But the other lay frozen, a sea of gold splayed about his head, and his eyes were fixed on Balan’s, unblinking. And again, as amid the dancing at Tol Sirion, Balan knew he might have him if he wished. The king lay at his mercy here within the trillium and violets, marked with the grass’ long shadows falling sharp against the golden light. He would yield. Balan could bend down now and press his lips to the other’s, stained bright with the berries’ dye, and no resistance would meet him. He could slip a hand behind his neck and draw him in, taste the tart fruit upon the other’s mouth and feel him fall away beneath his touch. And he had been dizzy with the knowledge of his own power.
“Open your hand,” he had said again, in his own tongue now, and obediently Nóm’s fingers parted. The airna’akran glistened in the sunlight, bright as blood against his skin. They had been crushed in the struggle, but held at least somewhat intact, and Balan shifted up slowly to gather them in his mouth. “There is a saying amongst my people—the nectar of justice is as honey upon the tongue.” His lips brushed the other’s palm and amusem*nt rumbled through his voice. “But these you’ve left me are tart as gooseberries.” A trickle of juice had run down along the wrist and he set his lips to this in turn, little bothering to disguise the kiss as he lingered, the other’s pulse pounding against his mouth. It pounded too against his palms where they held Nóm’s arms pinned in the grass beside his head, and Balan hesitated for a moment, then let his lips brush along the other’s forearm as he drew back to meet the grey eyes once more. “A creature of flesh after all, ghomenno?”
“Never anything other.” Nóm’s voice had been scarcely a breath, shivering as it drifted up to meet him.
He had felt the fear then, trembling through the other’s thought, the desperate clutch of trust, and with it he felt his own insistence falter. The other’s heart pounded still within his grasp as he pressed him into the trampled flowers, and Balan had bent down till his lips hovered a scarce breadth from the other’s. “It needs but a word from thee,” he breathed and felt the other shudder beneath him.
It was Balan who shuddered now at the recollection. Fool, why had he done it? What did he expect would come of it but a further quarrel, with each more bitter than the last? They had found an uneasy peace these last weeks and on a moment’s whim he had shattered it.
If the airna’akran had not lingered upon his tongue, if its taste had not brought the memory of all he abandoned, if self-loathing had not rekindled his envy…
If, if. He kicked furiously at the nearest patch, crushing the berries to pulp beneath his boot. What was it his mother had said? Search not for succor in the ifs and mights, nothing but distortion dwells within that valley. And yet Balan had ever delved there hungrily. If Esrid had lived. If he had not pressed his people on in their wandering. If Geberic had not been slain. If Balan had stayed by his sons, or abandoned the search for the mountain passes. If he had never met Nóm, never been lured awake by his song.
Only hours ere that midnight he was full of joy, sitting beside the fire with the hymn to Melishk passing between Baran’s voice and his own, no shadow of torn loyalties between them, laughing as they greeted the new land with hope. Baran, whose laugh he had not heard for nigh a year, whose sharp wit had been turned instead to name his father anew.
Lord Vassal. His fingers dragged through his hair and gripped it in handfuls. Nóm had never pretended anything but the truth—love was dear indeed, but principle dearer. What complaint could Balan bring? After all, it was he who had begged to follow the king from Estolad, he again who could not manage to break with him on the road from Ivrin.
And it was Balan too whose bruised pride hammered at the patient serenity till he could see the crack shatter along its length. Guilt stung him to recall it. Nóm had never been sharp with him till now, even in the desperation of Ivrin his outbursts were all of grief, and Balan was ashamed to have goaded him to it at last. Yet even as he bristled against the words, the truth of them scraped raw furrows across his anger. He wanted to push it far from his mind, to wall it over or shroud it that he need not see his reflection there.
There was a rustle in the clearing behind him.
His remorse prickled into frustration once more. It was Balan who had been cruel, but Nóm who had retraced his steps, who once again came back to him with gentle penitence and an apology he had no reason to give. He wanted to shake him and force him again to that biting honesty where Balan could press his own self-loathing into the other’s voice.
A stick cracked beneath the other’s step. Then a cold rush of bile as the realization struck him like a blow: Nóm’s approaches had ever been silent.
Balan’s heart pounded as he heard the steps continue, then pause, and he shifted to rest his hand on the knife at his belt, palm sweaty against the ox horn haft.
Turn. Better to know the threat than wait frozen for the blow.
Turn.
There were three of them at the edge of the tree-line. Two lingered in the deep shadows beneath the boughs, only noticeable in the brief glint of hair. The third stood at the boundary of the shade, pale eyes trained on Balan, with a wide-bladed dagger gripped in each hand.
Goblins. Orqui,5 his mind translated in frantic distraction, from the root urco: prowling creature, a thing that brings fear.
Another rustle, this time from the bracken to his left, and he spun round with a hiss. There were four now, either that or one of the hindmost had circled back without his notice.
This newest stood less than a stone’s throw from him. Other than corpses, he had never seen one so near outside the muddle of battle, and despite himself the curiosity held him transfixed. It was the hair that caught his eye at once, its variation of bone-white and colorless strands striking against the dark woods. Red ochre had been rubbed in strips throughout its length, along with some other pigment of burnt black, and these had been woven with the untinted hair into a series of patterns, some matching between the individuals so that Balan wondered whether they stood as a signifier—rank or kin or some other category of Angband that he guessed not. In contrast, the skin was pallid and nearly translucent about the surface, so that hues of muscle and sinew leaked into sight—a sickly pink, like chicken flesh or the salted trout Esrid’s people had taught his to preserve—and the eyes that lingered on him were cloudy, their irises dark as jet.
But it was the lines of the face that captured him, more familiar in movement than they had been through death’s mask, for here they yet held an echo of some bygone beauty. I told you once of those who were taken by the Foe’s servants... Nóm’s voice echoed in his memory and with it Balan’s fear overmastered him at last and he broke away, sprinting hard for the opposite tree-line.
For a moment he thought they might let him go. Perhaps they bothered little yet with Men, or he was inconsequential enough to be counted no more than a rabbit, a spooked deer. But then he felt them through the dim twilight, keeping pace easily as he crashed through the bracken. They flickered at the edge of his sight with the same illusion as the Silent Guard, melting in and out of the brush as those shades of the Talath Dirnen when he and Nóm first approached the hidden city. What was he thinking? The dusk was dark as night beneath the pine boughs and these creatures thrived in the sun’s absence. Why had he left the glade?
“Nóm!” The cry tore from him before his pride could hold it back, but the sound fell stifled amid the pines, deadened by the carpet of needles. He scrambled down a ravine, half falling in his haste, and doubled back toward where they had left the Guard setting camp earlier that evening. At least it should be this direction—or no was it behind him? Damn these pines, which way was the sun?
Another Orc appeared around the bend before him. This one had lost an eye, it was not of the original four. Balan swore and sprinted back the way he had come, passing the others as they followed his path down the bank. There were six now in that group.
Gods all, how many more were lurking in the wood?
Nóm. He fumbled frantically for the other’s thought as he ran. An image of a pear tree. White flowers dancing in the wind. The feel of the other’s arm beneath his fingers. Nóm! He had found him, but the barrier was ice yet, sharp and hostile to his touch. He leaned in against the king’s anger, pleading, and felt the jagged edges falter.
Three more Orcs. They had scaled the ravine ahead of him and fanned out as they approached, blocking the way. The bank behind him was rock, sheer and not sloped.
He was trapped.
Trapped. With a sharp gasp he pulled his thought back from Nóm’s and barricaded it before the other could reach toward him in return. Clever they are, Edrahil had said, and well served to be so. Tis a mighty bounty the Foe sets on the princes of our people—a fair price for a head, but a fortune should one be snared living.
Balan had tripped the snare and fallen into another’s net, this ambush was not meant for him. Very well, then. He shifted into a ready stance and loosed the dagger from his belt. He raised it as the first Orc neared.
His head they could have if they wished it. But he would not be bait.
❈ ❈ ❈
Finrod dipped his hand into the stream and drew up a palmful of water. Strange, he thought as he lifted it to his lips, how an argument clouded everything in its wake. The shades of evening were heavy and oppressive, the water bitter—even the birdsong seemed discordant and wrong.
His heart was out of joint.
Every fiber of him was restless.
He swore and splashed another handful over his face. They had been giddy only a short hour ago, caught once again in that same, familiar mirage. It had been like the days before Ivrin. Nay, like the road from Estolad where each heady hour was filled with contentment, laughter flowing without thought or effort and every moment threaded through with the warmth of the other’s presence. They had fallen back to it ere that first dance was done and moved through all the hours since with the same ease. And so, once again, he had let himself grow unguarded.
He could still feel the other’s weight atop him, the scent of crushed grass in his nose, the wilderberries stinging tart upon his tongue. The press of Balan’s palms against his wrists, almost painful as they held him pinned within the flowering grass.
Aikanáro had kept a collection when he was a boy—butterflies and moths and beetles, honeybees and the oversized dragonflies that whirred through the hills above the pearl harbors, their glassy wings like the patterned glass of Tirion’s palaces. He would collect them from the fields or courtyards where they had fallen and preserve each upon the walls of his chambers, caught with pins scarce the breadth of a hair.
Why should they be held unlovely because they have died? He would glare at Findekáno when his cousin teased him for the morbid fascination and the unruly hair seemed to bristle further in his indignation. They too bear the Song, even in these echoes they’ve left.
Finrod had tumbled down amid the crushed violets and found himself transfixed like one of Náro’s dragonflies; and he too could not shift a muscle to free himself while this echo caressed his palm, kissed the berry remnants from his wrist. It had been his own desire that pierced his breast and held him pinned beneath the other’s touch. Ai Valar, he could feel it still—his arm alight with the rough tickle of Balan’s beard, the breath upon his lips. It needs but a word from thee.
His own voice had been little more than a whisper against the other’s mouth. “Don’t be cruel.”
“I?” Balan had laughed at first, sharp and mirthless, then drew away in indignation and the mirage shattered as he stood. “Tis thou who will speak love and in the same breath scorn it.”
“Balan…” The sudden shift from intimacy to wrath left his senses reeling, and his heart pounded as he pushed up from the bracken in protest. “That is neither kind nor just.”
“What has justice to do with aught between us? Is it just for thee to count me unequal because ye hold the gods’ favor and we do not?”
“Beloved.” Finrod rose and the crushed flowers clung still within his hair as he crossed the distance between them. “I do not think it.” He reached out to brush a burr from Balan’s hair, tucked the strand behind his ear in a lingering caress. “But speak not so, even in jest.”
The other snorted. “Why, will they damn me not if I blaspheme in heart only?””
There had been nothing to say to this, of course. Finrod dashed a second handful of water across his face as though to clear the memory and turned to follow the river’s path down the hill. Were they ever to drive the knife by happenstance? There was a brief fumble of the other’s thought against his own and he shoved it to the side, bristling. Let Balan sit alone in the shade of his accusations, they were unearned, baseless. Finrod’s steps beat a furious pace along the bank and he seethed at his own folly. He had learned naught, it seemed. Again these past weeks he welcomed denial, bundled warm and unwary within its fleece; and so again he had taken the venom unknowing. He was at a loss when it struck, the taste of his own laughter still fresh upon his tongue while he apologized and sought to soothe, murmured affection and plucked a new berry to dance upon his own finger with a tentative smile. But Balan remained tense and brittle before him and a restless silence had settled over the clearing.
“What is it thou wouldst have of me?” Balan had asked at last, fixing his gaze on the far trees rather than meeting the king’s eye. “Friendship thou sayest, and yet will dance with half thy soul wound within mine own. There must be naught between us, yet thou wilt hold me here in thine arms, take my hand, speak to me with all the cadence of a lover.” His voice trailed off and he pressed his palms against his face, then after a moment he drew them down and shook his head. “Take me or leave me, Nóm. Do not hold me here half-claimed.”
Finrod’s smile had faltered and he let the berry fall back to the ground. “I never intended to grieve thee so.”
“Then what was thine intent?” The empty air hovered between them; and when no answer came, Balan had laughed at the silence. “And still thine own mind lies a mystery to thee! Dost thou see it not? We are no further than Estolad—unparted but never too near, chasing at thine heel but ever in my place. Ever in my place, but ever out of joint in it.” The bitter mirth melted away and his voice grew sharp. “Thou wouldst have the petals and leave the pith.”
“I would have the whole.”
“Then have it. Or if thou wilt not, leave me to make peace with vassalage and do not taunt me with what I may not presume.”
“How taunt thee!”
“Every touch, every false hope, every brush of thy lips—“
“I’ve done naught more than was ever our way.”
“And naught thou hast done is without consequence.”
“Truly! And didst thou never sleep in my arms upon the long road? Didst thou never take my hand or draw me near—or set thine own lips to my brow?”
“Do not shift blame.”
“I shift it not, it is shared between us. Didst thou not follow me from the encampment and set thy feet upon my path?”
“Aye, and the greater fool I—that I did not choose instead as those before me.” Balan’s eyes blazed and he turned away, the line of his shoulders hardening into resignation. “How many shall we be in the end,” he asked at last, “those abandoned in thy trail?”
Finrod’s brows furrowed and a vague disquiet warned at the back of his senses. “Speak plainly, I take not thy meaning.”
“My meaning, it seems, is to serve my lord as a passing amusem*nt while he waits for the gods to relent—that his heart might return to its true desire.”
“Its true desire?” He attempted to laugh at this, but the sound was forced and uneasy. “Come now, who has been gossiping to thee?”
“There was no gossip.”
“Truly!” An edge crept into his voice. “And so I am to understand this accusation was woven from air of thine own volition?”
“Thou hast not denied it.”
“I do deny it.” Finrod’s chest tightened. The other’s silhouette was sharp against the oncoming sunset, poised as it had been at Ivrin in anticipation of the blow, and again Finrod faltered before the sight. “Light of my heart…” He scorned prudence and strode toward him, cupping Balan’s face within his palms. “Light of my heart, I told thee. Did I not speak it even thus? All my love, and all my desire.” He let his thumb drift once more over the ridge of the other’s cheekbone, the curve of his lips, and for a moment Balan had lingered, his eyes falling shut at the touch. But they opened a short moment after and he pulled free of the other’s hold. “Balan—” Finrod reached for the other’s arm and flinched as he drew further away. “Canst thou think me false?”
“Is it faith to speak devotion if thou wilt own it not?”
His own words to Finduilas turned and molded, his own principle a knife’s blade against him. The silence returned, stretching so long that Finrod feared it was to be his answer, empty and final. But Balan spoke again.
“I think,” he said, returning to the other’s question, “that I have shared everything with thee. My heart thou knowest. The days of my wandering I have not hidden. My grief too I opened to thee, as I have not to any other, and yet all the while—“ His voice caught and Finrod felt the anger rippling from him, tamped down and tethered as he held himself in check. “Two years of whatever we have been to each other and thou couldst be all the while betrothed to another? Without so much as a word to me?”
For a long moment Finrod stared in stunned silence. “Betrothed to another?” he managed at last.
“Aye, so I said.”
“But I am not,” he stammered, reaching out again. “I am not.”
Once more there had been bitter laughter upon Balan’s lips as he glanced up at the other’s eyes. “Now I do think thee a liar,” he said and turned away.
“What reason would I have to lie to thee?”
“More, surely, than he who named it.”
“Who was it?” Finrod’s mind flew over every possibility. Hilyo would have no cause to invent rumor, nor surely would any of the Guard. Sídhon would never be so indiscreet. Guilin? Would Finduilas have relayed mismatched fragments of old gossip? Artaresto. He saw them again in his mind’s eye at the edge of the dance, Balan’s face set in an unreadable mask, Artaresto’s distant and wistful. “Was it Orodreth?”
“It matters only that it was not thee.”
“Yet thou wilt believe him over my own word.”
“Over what word? Thou hast said nary a one to me.” Balan’s gaze turned on him in an instant and Finrod felt the force of his anger strike like an opened furnace. “And what am I to take from that, save thou wouldst hold it in secrecy? And what from secrecy save that there was something to conceal?”
“There was nothing I meant to keep from thee.”
“Then why speak it not?”
“I…” He trailed off. Why had he not? He had thought of her often enough throughout their conversations, when Balan told him of Esrid, when they had lain amid the snowdrop blossoms, but each time some reluctance had stayed his tongue. Dread dropped through his stomach still at the thought of telling Balan, there beside the banks of the Celon, that he had sung so to another first, or that these were not the first features he had traced with the snow-white petals.
“Because if thou hadst spoken,” Balan answered in his place, “if I knew of her, then I would understand thy refusal was a simple thing: thou wouldst not risk any bond of soul that might leave thee shackled should thy gods call back their prodigal children.”
“It is not true.” The protest fell from his lips in hoarse entreaty. “Anarinya…”
“Do not call me that.” Balan’s eyes flashed as he turned back on the other. “What use to me are hollow endearments? I believed I held thy trust, as I have ever trusted thee.”
“So much, in fact, that thou wilt assign the most unworthy of intentions the moment doubt is sown? Short have been the years of our friendship by my people’s measure, Balan. I did not think it kept from thee, only not yet spoken.”
“And that is meant to absolve thee? It was no less deliberate. Untold hours have we spent in conversation over this or that, grave or merry—I know the name of the songbird who lodged in thy nursery window and yet hers I’ve learned by happenstance. You may dress a billy in merchant’s robes, but it remains a goat.”
“Or damn the butcher with mutton in your mouth. Thou hadst a wife.” He regretted the words as soon as they were from his lips. The sting of them blanched across Balan’s face like a slap and Finrod felt him recoil at once behind his fury—all edges and corners, sharp to the touch.
“My wife is dead.” The other’s voice was low, choked and dangerous. ”And not once did I hide her from thee.”
It was true, Finrod could not deny it. How well he had learned her features in the years at Balan’s side. How keenly he knew where the other’s eye would linger upon each, for he had gleaned intemperately from those memories and charted the shape of his jealousy through their rows. The texture of her hair, the three freckles beneath her left ear, the scar upon her chin, the echo of her laugh—Belen’s laugh, bright and clean, like bells in the morning air. Even now he felt the flicker in the other’s thought where the lingering taste of airna’akran had summoned her, reclining beside a basket, laughter spilling out while the boys darted to and fro along the hillside, mouths as berry-stained as his own.
The ache of longing bled through to Finrod’s heart; then anger rippled in its wake and Balan’s mind tightened against the intrusion, pressed him out, gathered all hints of her behind a wall and far from his touch. “That is not thine,” he snarled, and shame leapt hot across the other’s cheeks to be so reprimanded. “On false surety did I let thee go a’thieving in my thoughts. Thou hast taken me from them, leave their memory be.”
“That is falsely charged, and full well dost thou know it.” Finrod’s shame bristled to indignation at the accusation in the other’s tone. “I have never promised thee aught I could not keep, never offered what I could not give. There were no pretenses.”
“None? Thou wouldst not make of me a plaything—or so thou didst protest—and yet here I dwell as my lord’s entertainment, an amusem*nt to pass the brief hours.”
“That is a lie.”
“And what of the place at thy side thou didst promise, knowing full well what was in my heart?”
“Servant, soldier, stable keep…I too remember thy words.”
“Craft thine own blade if thou hast wish to wound!” Balan’s voice was stripped with pain, the lines of his face drawn and desperate. “I was to be something of use. Not the king’s tame curiosity, dressed like a doll in thy largess and paraded for the praise of courtiers. How generous his lordship! How benevolent is he! See how kindly he smiles upon these lesser children.”
“Castigate me not with thine own self-pity. This path thou didst beg of me, and against my wisdom I granted it.”
“Against his bountiful wisdom even! Aye, ever glad to take what I give, never owning thine own part in it.”
“I sought to spare thee. In the same hour I knew the truth of my heart I told thee the parting was nigh.”
“A truly noble sacrifice.” Balan’s accompanying grin was mirthless. “For thee I abandoned all I knew. I left my own children.”
“I asked it not of thee.”
Silence had frozen between them in an instant. Balan’s face contorted in fury, his hands clenched into fists at his side, and his eyes flashed in the fading light. “Ego!”4 he hissed at last, sharp as a blade.
And Finrod had sworn in turn, wheeled round and disappeared beneath the boughs without another word.
He drew up now at the bottom of the fell, breathing hard, both from the speed of his descent and the lingering fury, and he gripped a young sapling to steady himself. Shame wrapped about him like strangling ivy, gripping every surface, finding every crevice and clinging tight. Balan’s rage had been of grief, his jealousy too but a further guise of loss. Why had he let himself strike back? The answer was simple, but he quailed before its mirror. He had wished to cause pain, to wound in return, and remorse choked his breath. It disturbed him that he would turn so quickly to this sooner than see blame rest upon his own wounded pride.
Steady, faithful Balan…never had Finrod’s rage burned so fiercely against him.
“Aranya!” Sídhon’s voice broke through the haze. “Blessed Manwë, we thought you lost.”
“Lost?” It was with an effort that he wound the customary poise into his voice. “Did Gelmir not tell thee we had gone?”
“He did, but twas to the north he said.”
“So it was, but we drifted west as we walked. I thought to watch Anar’s descent from the tor above Rivil’s Well.”
“Then it was a merciful fortune that brought you down ere you had. They were climbing the western slope when we sighted them—even here where we stand. Ten Canneth counted,” he added in answer to the king’s querying glance, “though there may be more.”
“Orqui?”
Sídhon nodded. “A raiding band, most like. Though they’ve not up come through the pass, else we would have marked their signs ere now. They must have other ways yet, delved or hidden.”
Finrod’s blood had turned to ice, and fear lodged within his chest, nearly stopping his breath. The western slope led to the berry glade—and Balan would not have left it, not with memory pressing in so close. “When?” he choked out, catching the other by the arm. “How long since you spied them? How far upon the fell?”
“Perhaps a third of the ascent, less than an hour past.”
Finrod had spun around before the other finished and was sprinting back up the slope.“Go!” he cried over his shoulder, “find Edrahil and follow after me!”
“Arto, wait.” Sídhon gave chase without a moment’s pause. “I cannot—”
“Bring the Guard,” he shouted. And then again when the other made no sign of turning back, “That is not a request. Go!”
“Damned of the Void!” Sídhon swore in frustration, but he left off the pursuit and ran hard for the northern shoulder of the fell, a swift shadow in the twilight.
Finrod sped up the incline, leaping between crags in his haste to reach the glade. Had it taken so long to descend? Arien drew her ship beneath the horizon in the time it had taken already to reach this height and night wrapped its tendrils about him. He scrambled over moss and bracken, cursing the clinging brambles that caught about his legs, and at last shifted back to the waterside—it was the longer route, but he could run here upon the rocky bank or through the shallows when the shore was impassable. A third of the ascent, less than an hour past…he drove himself harder. Every moment lost sharpened the knife.
“Holy Manwë, Lord of the Air,” he gasped, prayers pouring from his lips as he raced beneath the trees, whispered and fervent, hoarse with fear, “grant me speed as the winds of heaven. Lord of the Waters, holy and wise, guide my steps, guard his way…”
There at last, just ahead. The fallen pine with its uncanny row of new growth. The oak with its blanket of ivy.
The empty clearing.
For a moment he drew up, frozen in the midst of it with the wildflowers soft and muted in the night air, and his eyes darted over the clearing for any sign of Balan. Here was the trampled patch where they had lain, fragrant yet where the blossoms were crushed beneath them. Beyond it, the marks of his own departure sliced away toward the downward slope, their earlier approach wide and easy beside it. And here—here was a new track where he had left Balan in his fury, branching off through the fern; a turned scuff of dirt, a patch of airna’akran smashed into the ground, another trail, breaking away beyond the berries, thin and straight with speed. He sprinted down its length and felt a new dread overtake him as three paths converged upon the first. It was a deer’s flight before the wolf-pack, frantic and desperate.
Then a new realization dawned on him with sinking horror; Balan had reached for him as he fled. Oh Valar, Balan had reached for him and he had pushed him away, met him with fury as he ran before the hunters. He called up the urgency of that brief touch in his memory and now he could discern it, the terror and the fleeting hope—that Nóm would hear him, that even now he would not be abandoned.
Balan! Finrod plunged beneath the still darkness of the pines and cast his thought wide in search of the other. He was here. He must be here. It was the king’s heart pleading now, fumbling for the other in the dark, pressing down the panic that only emptiness would meet him.
Warmth, a sudden clutch of relief, the rough solidity of Balan’s mind against his own, and Finrod cried out in relief. He was alive. But the consolation was short-lived, for it was only a moment before the touch turned sharp again, jagged and unreachable, and forced him out.
Finrod swore and scrambled down the bank at his side where a deep furrow had cut through the pine needles. It was fresh, the uncovered earth still damp, and here, here! Footprints at the base—the iron-shod tread of an Orc, the familiar shape of Balan’s boot. Finrod doubled back along the ravine, sprinting hard after their tracks.
“Holy Manwë, Lord of the Air,” he began again, “blessed Varda, lady of light—“ A choked cry broke through his prayer and he drew up before the far bank. The ground along the base of the cliffside was trodden and muddied, rent with all the signs of a struggle.
And blood stained the boulder at his feet.
He was on his knees in an instant, fingers running over the stone to measure the extent of the loss. It had collected in a few of the divots, only here upon the near side, surely not enough to be fatal? It had not been fatal, reason pressed through the haze to correct him. Of course it had not. Balan was there when he reached for him, and strong enough yet to force him out.
Balan. Finrod pressed once more against the wall of the other’s mind, but not even a crevice would yield. Balan!
Then he slammed his hand against the rock in frustration and rose, eyes scanning the tracks to learn which was the latest passage. The blood had been sticky still, they could not be far. A glint of metal caught his eye and he skirted the boulder, crossing to where it lay haphazardly beside the cliff—dropped or kicked aside.
A short blade, slightly curved. An ox horn hilt, polished with use.
The struggle had been fierce here, the ground marked with Orc blood as well as Balan’s, a hand print caught in the soft earth beside the bank. There was another impression beside it, long and heavy, dwindling into a taper where something had been dragged northward along the ravine.
Fury rose hot in Finrod’s breast as he bent to retrieve Balan’s knife from the dirt and clasped it against his own palm.
“Blessed Varda,” he hissed as he sprinted in pursuit, “Queen of the Stars, kindle me after Menelmacar’s form. Great Oromë, Master of the Hunt, set your holy wrath within my blade.”
❈ ❈ ❈
It was growing difficult to keep him out. The king’s presence leaned against his own, unrelenting and precise, seeking ever for where he knew the cracks should lie, and Balan’s will had begun to falter. At first it was simple to shut his mind and set defenses, as though raising them about Nóm himself, but fear was overmastering his resolve and he knew not how much longer he could hold.
They were swift. More swift than Balan had anticipated and he stumbled as he tried to keep on his feet. Each time he fell, he had been dragged a few paces until his minder turned back and pulled him upright again, caught by his collar like a pup by the scruff of its neck.
“Soil of Melishk,” he whispered as he slipped on a patch of wet moss, “Rain of Guënid. Earth bear me, river sustain me…” The rope cut into his wrists and he narrowly avoided another fall, earning him a barked reprimand from the Orc ahead of him.
They had planned to kill him, he knew, when they pinned him at last against the cliff. Two had held him, his arms stretched out against the stone and hand bashed upon it until his grip failed and the knife fell from his hold. It was only the scabbard at his side that spared him when the strike was nigh. There was a decorative ring about it, flat and gold, a clasp upon one side and the king’s device upon the other—Nóm had offered it to him in the midwinter when the original binding gave way—and it was the sight of this sigil that stayed the Orc’s hand.
“Danwedh,”6 she had growled, striking him across the face instead of drawing the dagger through his throat, and Balan had been stunned to recognize Elven words scattered amid their speech. They had bound him then, knocking him to the ground and dragging him forward until speed became a more pressing desire than sport.
The leading Orc disappeared into a thin corridor branching off from the ravine. The banks had lowered as they moved northward up the fell, and here it reached no more than twice Balan’s height. The passage was thin, tapering in until only two or three could walk abreast, and it was swallowed nearly at once in the darkness beyond. Panic took him as the last of them entered. It was the same that had come over him before the gates of Nargothrond, only here he knew with certainty there was no light awaiting him beyond the looming stone. Balan dug his heels into the dirt and flung himself backwards, thrashing against the cord like a goat led in at slaughter. But the Orc’s grip held tight, turning the rope about her waist and knotting it securely, so that any hope of pulling it free was gone.
“Nóm!” Resolve gave way before the darkness and he cried out, desperate, while the rope cut deep into his skin and he wedged his foot against the stone. All unavailing. The Orc surged ahead and Balan’s legs buckled beneath him, collapsing once more into the mud where he was dragged haphazardly at the end of their line. “Nóm!” He fumbled at the rope, gripping as much as he was able to ease the strain against his wrists. His shoulder struck a rock. A broken stone left a cut along his shin. The sound of footsteps began to shift, to echo, and he craned his neck about in trepidation.
The passage ended in a shoulder of rock, rearing up into the line of the fell. Slim and nearly hidden, a crevice yawned beside it and the Orcs had begun passing through this, one at a time, and slipping away into the dark. “Earth bear me,” Balan whispered again, his voice shaking with terror as he was dragged toward it, “river sustain me…”
A shadow dropped before him. A quick glimpse of gold. A gurgle and a faint rasp.
The Orc who bound him fell to the ground, eyes unseeing and blood streaming from her throat.
And then it was Nóm’s face before him, Nóm’s hands running over his arms, working quickly at the cord about his wrists. Nóm’s heart steady and determined against his own.
Holy god of fire, do not let it be a trap …
An Orc had swung about. He must have glanced behind before passing through the cleft and was now rushing toward them, blade raised. “There!” Balan croaked, his voice hoarse with pain. “Nóm!”
The king plunged into his thought in an instant, and Balan reeled as the other’s presence surged behind his eyes. Nóm was drawing on both lines of sight, he realized, a quick mirror of what lay behind him, and turned with precision below the oncoming blade. The Orc stumbled and in a quick flash Balan saw a knife—his own knife—pierce the gut, sweep up, open the throat.
But this kill was not as swift. The Orc had time to cry out before the blade severed his voice and any hope of a silent escape fled with the sound. Footsteps echoed against the rock, sprinting, and Finrod leapt forward before they could gain more than a few steps beyond the cleft. He loosed his own knife as he ran and met them with one brandished in each hand, wheeling and striking like a wildcat.
If he could keep them cornered in this narrow end, Balan reasoned frantically, if Nóm could use the passage to his advantage and never face more than two at a time…A third Orc fell and another was immediately in their place. There were three upon him now, a fourth just out of reach, and Balan could no longer discern each stroke and parry, so swiftly did they fall.
It was like watching a wild animal, cornered and vicious. The speed of his movements, the blind fury of the attack. The king’s thought remained open against his own and Balan fought down nausea, his head spinning as he fought to free himself from the fallen Orc, dizzy with the other’s frenzy coursing through his veins. He fumbled at the knotted rope, fingers clumsy and half-numb from the bonds. Where were the others? Where was the Guard?
There was a sickening crack and Balan looked up in time to see the nearest Orc stagger to the side, one knee clearly broken, and fall into the arc of Nóm’s return swing, the hilt shattering the back of their skull. That was four already. If he kept on in this way—
Gods all, it was capture, not death that they sought. The realization dawned on him with horror as he watched Nóm hew away a hand that dragged him back—they were toying with him, hemming him in, waiting for him to wear himself out in the fray. But the responding epiphany came in the same instant: Nóm was toying with them in turn. He played into the trap one moment, luring them with a feint of easy prey, then struck out in the next; wounding, slowing, breaking their pattern, ever a step out of the net. Balan found himself reminded of Tol Sirion and the dancers whirling through the center of the hall, for Nóm moved with the same precision as Gelmir’s steps, dodged with the same grace as Sídhon’s responding turns.
An Orc loomed up from the darkness where she had scaled the sheer embankment, perched above the king and leaning out with dagger outstretched, poised for the leap.
“Nóm!” The cry tore from Balan’s throat in terror and Finrod twisted away just as the Orc sprang, taking the strike in his shoulder and driving Balan’s knife through her chest with the weight of her own fall. Yet the impact had forced him to the side and another Orc stood waiting to catch him by the injured shoulder, twisting him round and breaking his balance.
He fell.
Balan cried out again, unintelligible in his fury, and tore at the rope. It was tangled beneath the Orc’s body still, but the knot about the waist was on the near side and easier to reach than these about his wrists. He could grasp a rock with hands still bound, if he could only be free of the corpse, and he would bludgeon them till his last breath sooner than stand by while Nóm was dragged into that yawning crevice. His fingers slipped again and he swore.
They were in a tangle now, Nóm upon his knees, half-pinned by three Orcs and fighting as one possessed. The one-handed Orc lay dead at his feet, he had driven his knife into the thigh of another, cut through the cheek of a third. He would be taken. Or he would be slain—however high the price on his head, they would have none of it in death. Soon, Balan’s fear insisted, soon they would turn to the kill.
The rope was shifting. It was almost loose.
Nóm had regained his feet, blades flashing like teeth in the moonlight and tearing into the limbs that clutched at his shoulders, his legs. He slammed his elbow into a windpipe, stabbed and turned, twisted out of reach. Another Orc fell as the knot came loose in Balan’s hands and Finrod wheeled around towards the next blow. But the lead Orc caught him by the braid as he turned, pulling his head back with a snap, and he cried out, staggered sideways. A second Orc was upon him at once, pinning him down against the rock while the third saw Balan pulling the rope free and strode toward him, knife raised for the kill.
He felt Nóm’s fury rising like a gale. Light spilled out—white light, blinding and brilliant—and the king’s voice tore through the gully in wordless rage. One arm wrenched free and he sliced through the braid, the Elven blade cleaving his hair like water, then launched up in the brief moment this gained to hurl his knife forward, and the third Orc fell gasping, the blade protruding from his neck.
The second was dead in an instant—fingers through the eyes, neck snapped, body heaved aside as the last leapt upon him. She had stumbled back when he severed the hair, but surged forward nearly at once and bore him to the ground with a snarl, teeth sinking into his shoulder, fingers clawing at his throat.
Balan dragged himself forward and wrenched the knife from the Orc’s neck, staggering to his feet with blade in hand.
But it was over.
The body lay torn upon the ground and Nóm stood gasping in the midst of the wreckage, Balan’s knife still clutched within his grip. Hand and blade alike were stained dark with blood, his own blood streaming from a gash above the eyebrow, from the mangled shoulder, from the side of his leg.
And oh gods, the beauty of him was jarring—tall and pristine amid the carnage with the remains of his hair hovering like light about his face, wild fire still flashing from his eyes and his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath.
Balan too was suddenly fighting for air. He was trembling, shaking uncontrollably now that they stood free and the full horror pressed in upon him, the narrowness of escape clenching in a vice-hold about his lungs. His grip upon the knife hilt faltered, he let it fall.
And then the king was striding towards him. He was taking him in his arms, stumbling back with him against the stone. He was kissing him with a passion Balan had never dared imagine, clasping Balan’s face within his hands and marking him with blood.
“You live.” The Taliska was hoarse, a whisper gasped against his mouth. “You live. Oh Valar, you live.”
“Aye, I live,” Balan choked out in echo as Nóm’s fingers tangled in his hair. The world was buckling around him and he would have fallen had the other’s hold been looser, or had he not been caught fast against the rock. Still he clung to the other’s shirt like a drowning man, dazed and foundering, suspended between extremes—the rough abrasion of the stone against his back, the soft tongue slipping into his mouth; the sharp pain of his split lip and burning wrists, the mad fervor in every vein.
“I never understood.” The words slipped out between breaths as Finrod clutched Balan’s face within his palms and kissed him feverishly upon his eyes, the crest of his cheekbone, his forehead, his lips. “He was ready to kill him where he hung and I never understood how…”
“Who?”
“It matters not.” He pressed him back and kissed him again, long and fierce, and Balan could taste the echo of airna’akran lingering still upon his tongue. “I’d have killed you with my own hands sooner than let them drag you alive to the bowels of hell.”
“Stop talking.” Balan took the other’s lip between his own, his tongue running along its edge. He tasted of berries, of honey and the warm afternoon, of sweat, of blood.
Balan was burning, fire kindling across his skin as Nóm pulled him closer, arms about him now and palm pressed upon the small of his back. Balan’s senses reeled and he crumpled in against his warmth, kissed him deeper.
But a hiss escaped him as the rope pulled tight about his wrists, the skin swollen where the coarse strands had cut in, and the king drew back with a sharp exclamation.
“A fool I am—I’ve left thee bound.” Finrod retrieved his knife and cut him loose in a swift motion. “Here,” he murmured gently as he eased the cords away from the broken skin, “beloved…” He cupped the bruised hands within his own and would have set each palm to his lips, kissed the marks of captivity in penitence, but Balan caught him behind the head as soon as his hands were free and pulled him in, ardor met and doubled in the returning.
“Gods all,” he breathed, heady and fervent against the king’s lips. “Elenya…” His fingers wove through the shorn hair, grasping it in handfuls as he kissed him in long stifled worship, fevered and desperate. He was like wine, Balan thought incoherently, like summer mead, like the sharp liquor of midwinter’s dawn.
His hands slipped down to cradle behind Nóm’s jaw, breath quickening at the drumming pulse, and he pushed up onto his toes to draw nearer the other’s height. A twinge had run along his neck and Balan found himself fighting the urge to laugh aloud. It was an anchor, growing ever sharper, his neck cramped only because he stood here upon the uneven earth with his face tipped up to meet Nóm’s lips.
It was only a moment, for the other’s shoulders had stiffened, his lips grew hesitant, and Balan clung tighter as he began to pull away. “No,” he breathed, pleading, “do not do this.”
But Finrod had already stepped back, his face gaunt with remorse. “Oh Valar…” He released him and shook his head helplessly. “Forgive me. I should not—I should not have…”
The king’s words trailed off and then Balan did laugh aloud, collapsing against the limestone and sliding down till he rested upon the ground, tears streaming from his eyes and his laughter high and unnatural.
“Balan...?” Finrod watched him first in surprise, and then in growing consternation when the barrage showed no signs of slackening. “Balan, you are hurt,” he exclaimed, shifting once more to Taliska; then again, more doubtfully as he knelt to run his hands along the other’s arms, his neck, his ribs, “are you hurt?”
Balan could only shake his head in response as the storm wracked over him, somewhere between laughter and sobbing.
“You are.” His eyes found the torn wrists, noted the right hand turning purple where it had been battered against the stone, and he took it gently within his own. “Your thought was closed against me—why did you close me out? I would have found you ere this!”
“I was bait.” Balan was laughing at his own laughter now, nearly giggling as he tried to reign in the attack. “Bait, I thought—to draw thee out.”
“And would I not sooner fall with thee than know thee taken on my behalf?” The laughter was growing frantic now and Finrod clasped the other’s face in fear. “Look at me,” he said, forcing his head up till he met his eyes. “Balan, look at me.”
“I know not.” The mirth had given way to hiccups as it began to spend at last, and he wiped furiously at his eyes. “I know not what thou wouldst have, lord.” And then he was weeping in earnest, shoulders shaking and breath heaving in great gasps. “I know not, I know not, I know not.”
“Balan!” Finrod drew him into his arms, aghast, and held him cradled against his chest. His own tears were running loose as well, mingling upon the other’s face as he smoothed the matted hair from Balan’s forehead, kissed along the line of his scalp. “Oh beloved, beloved, I have thee. They are gone, it is done. I have thee.”
And at last, the sound of hoofbeats echoed against the stone.
❈ ❈ ❈
Thunder threaded its murmur through the morning air. It had begun with the dawn, first in a downpour beating against the tiles, then easing to a spring rain, steady and soft—which now lulled Finrod’s senses as he leaned against the parapet and looked out over the fells. It was one of many watch towers, the Cened Beraid,7 that lay scattered throughout the highlands, particularly here along their northern marches. They were small and spare, shooting up like the thin spruces that surrounded them, and placed at measured intervals along the fells, so that where one tower’s vigilance ended, the next began. It had been Angaráto’s innovation—or was it Eldalótë’s? The two of them together, most like. One was never certain from which an idea had sprung, so closely were their counsels entwined.
Finrod was glad of it now, whencesoever it came. They had ridden hard for the nearest of the Cened Beraid as soon as the Guard found them collapsed against the stone bank in the dark. Sídhon’s hounds had pressed in at once, snuffling in concern until Edrahil dismissed them with a shout and caught the king by the arms, looking him over in furious evaluation. Finrod nearly smiled at the recollection—he might have been a pup himself for all the reproach in Edrahil’s lecture. He had been rash, he had been foolish. He was the king, not a foot soldier without command, and yet he had flung himself headlong into an ambush with nary a thought for his own defense. Was he mad? He was, he must be, surely, to rush in so heedless of all but his blind rage.
It was rare that the captain forgot rank or decorum, but he had cast off both in his relief to find them alive and chastised the king as soundly as an errant child, binding his wounds with brusk efficiency all the while. Finrod could hardly blame him. It had been foolhardy at best to give chase, alone and knowingly outnumbered. Indeed, a grave breach of his own duty. But when he thought of the crevice at the end of the gully, jagged-edged and dark as pitch…nay, he could not manage a single regret for his folly.
Finrod flinched as water struck his face and startled him out of contemplation. The wind had shifted to the northwest while he was lost in thought and now a steady rainfall drifted into the alcove where he tarried. It would have been pleasant on another day, the mist gentle and cool, the air fragrant with damp earth and rain. But the binding about his shoulder was long in the securing and Celiel had been adamant it should remain dry and undisturbed till nightfall, when it would be cleaned and bound anew. He lingered a moment longer, then sighed and drew back from the parapet. Enough trouble had he caused already without needlessly undoing her work.
The Cened Beraid were built in mirrored pieces, there should be another battlement on the far side—one flight down, if he remembered correctly, and nearly opposite, looking out over the heart of Dorthonion—and there the tower would block the rain.
He ducked back into the corridor and started down the stair, grimacing whenever his left leg bore weight. That wound he had hardly noticed at the time and the depth of it astonished him when Celiel cleaned and packed it in the small hours of the night. It throbbed as he reached the end of the descent, a bone deep ache that gritted his teeth and made him long for the seed-cordial of the Sindar. More fool he—Celiel had offered it ere she cleaned the wounds and he refused. Better to have his wits about him, he had reasoned, better to be alert, should Balan wake and have need of him. He took several slow breaths, steadying his senses before continuing down the passage. A wishful delusion. He had betrayed his trust, Balan would not call for him.
The king had been ushered at once to the healer’s rooms when they arrived, and by the time his own wounds were cleaned and set, Balan had long since given over to sleep. At first, Finrod had lingered in the doorway and watched his slumbering by the faint light of the hearth. He was curled on his side, the blanket bunched around one arm, his other draped over a mound of dark fur—one of Sídhon’s hounds. Greweg, the smallest of the pack. He had been a frail and helpless little creature, Finrod recalled, nearly lost amid the squirming riot of his siblings. Sídhon had plucked him out of their number after the first day and carried him about, tucked within the front of his robe and tended carefully through feast and council, much to the amusem*nt of the rest of the king’s household. Finrod too had cradled the pup upon his lap in the long autumn evenings and he and Sídhon took it in turns spooning milk through a hollowed cow’s horn to keep him fed. Greweg they had called him, little bear, and he had grown at last to match his siblings—the smallest still, but filled with bumbling affection. He had taken to Balan at once when Finrod returned from Estolad and was ever trotting after him through the stone halls or curled at his feet beside the hearth. And since the Guard found them the night before, Greweg had refused to leave his side.
Like as not Finrod would have remained lost in the solace of that vision, had Sídhon not found him and sent him firmly back to his own chambers to take what rest was left in the night. It was well that he had, the king reflected as he passed through the lower corridor and neared the eastern bend of the tower, he had slept nearly as soon as his head touched the pillow and not risen till half the morning was gone.
The scent of rain grew stronger as he rounded the corner, green and fresh, and he thought again how pleasant it was to fill his lungs with spring’s vigor. It was a strong tonic, this artistry of Ulmo and Manwë and Yavanna, mingled together in air, and the ache of his wounds eased before it.
There, just as he surmised. It was indeed a mirror of the floor above and he passed into the battlement with only a few steps. The downfall drifted outward across the highlands, draping like strands of diamond where the sun broke through the clouds and lit the hills in an uncanny contrast.
And Balan was there before him.
His heart tripped from its rhythm to see him standing at the end of the alcove, one hand resting upon the stone, the other scratching absently behind Greweg’s ears. Living and whole. For a moment, the sun had reached beneath the overhang and bathed his face in her caress—and the king’s breath must have caught at the sight, for Balan glanced back at once and his brows lifted to find the other there agape.
“Forgive me, I did not intend to disturb thee.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
Already Balan had turned back toward the fells, but there was warmth in his voice and Finrod was surprised to find his mind unguarded, welcoming. “A caution over-late, I fear.”
Balan’s lips twitched and he shifted to make room as the other approached. “I am not angry with thee. Leastwise not enough to wish thee gone.”
Finrod managed a smile as he ran a hand along Greweg’s muzzle in greeting, then leaned against the parapet and rested his arms beside the other’s upon the stone. Near, but not too near. Close, but do not touch. His mouth burned with the memory of Balan’s lips; his tongue tasted him still, berries and earth, sunlight and sweat and the lingering scent of cedar oil within his beard. Blood. Balan’s blood or his own?
He pulled his mind back with an effort. Balan was here. He was safe. He was little harmed.
“May I?” he asked at last, indicating the bandaged wrists, then lifted the left in his hands when Balan nodded acquiescence. He found himself reminded abruptly of the road to Estolad, of Balan’s fingers binding the sash to staunch his blood, of his own shiver at the touch, and he realized with a start that he too was grasping after any tenderness that might be permitted. Gently, he unwound the linen binding as he cradled the hand within his own.
The skin beneath was worn raw, marked with deeper ruts where the cord had pulled tightest—beneath the thumb’s base, along the outer bend, across the small bones of the hand. Fury clawed at Finrod’s breast once more and he frowned as he turned the wrist carefully in the light. He should be glad of it, he told himself. These were the marks of Balan’s life spared.
“Hast thou no trust in thine own healers?”
The wry teasing had returned to Balan’s tongue and Finrod’s anger dissipated before it like mist. “I do,” he said, and the hint of a smile played again at his lips. Of course he trusted them. But nonetheless they knew little here of the Secondborn. What if they applied a salve that caused festering instead of mending? What if the draughts that granted relief to his kind were poison to Balan’s? What if…He wrapped the linen about the wound once more and returned it to rest upon the stone. “It has been well tended.”
The rain had heightened while they spoke and wrapped in grey sheets about the tower, whispering along the leaves below, through the sodden pines. Balan watched it with a faraway expression and in the flicker of his thought Finrod felt a stab of joy, pained and marveling—to see the world yet, when leaving it had been a certainty.
“And thou?”
Finrod smiled at the question and shifted his weight against the parapet. “I am well. Thou art living,” he added when the other peered at him skeptically. “I am well.”
Balan reached out and laid his palm along the other’s cheek, turning it to bring the left side into the light. A dark bruise lay along one cheekbone, another above the king’s eye where the gash had been carefully stitched closed, a scab ran across his chin. Balan traced his thumb along this last and there was concern in his eyes despite the sardonic twist of his brow.
“I will mend. It was no great harm.”
Balan’s laugh slipped out despite himself and for a moment Finrod feared it was the former panic returning, but this mirth was genuine—and his heart strained at the sound. How near he had come to losing it, how certain he was only a handful of hours before that its last echo was gone.
The kind of laugh that sets your soul to dancing.
Nay, that was Esrid. That was Belen. Balan’s laugh was Finrod’s own treasure, rough and wry and kindling a heady warmth within him.
And it echoed beside him still. Oh, merciful Valar…
“I could understand them.” Balan’s gaze settled on a raven gliding over the ridge, his voice quiet now that the mirth had passed. “Not everything, but enough that I could follow their intent. They said danwedh. They spoke your tongue.”
“Yes. Fragments of it.” Finrod too fixed his eyes upon the raven and focused on each beat of its wings. He could still hear the last Orc’s voice in his ear—otheidior! otheidior!8 It had taken his full weight to push through her grip for the kill and she held his eye all the while, hissing condemnation as the knife drove slowly into her chest. He shuddered. “They draw from other tongues, borrowing and shifting as it suits, but there is not one cohesive form among them—or none that we have been able to discern.”
“I believed thee not when thou didst speak of them as rooted from thine own kind.” The raven passed out of sight and Balan shivered, moving nearer in reflex. “I saw it in these. Perhaps because they are the first I’ve faced since dwelling among you, but there was familiarity. I could see their beauty still.”
Their arms had shifted together upon the stone and Finrod grounded himself in the touch, setting his center-point in the warmth of their meeting. “We were ambushed the first time I killed, wandering and half-starved from the Ice when Orcs fell upon us.” There had been horror in Balan’s stare when Finrod rose from the carnage the night before, stark and unmistakable amid the relief. He tried to press the memory aside. “He was young, I think, a hand’s breadth taller than I, with a face of my father’s shape. My knife pierced his skull like a chisel.” He broke off for a long moment and when he began again, his voice was flat. “I retched when the battle was done, over and again on the bloodied ground until naught was left but my own horror shivering within me. It was years ere I could work in stone, so close was its strike and give to my blade against his bone.” His fingers pressed hard against the parapet as though holding himself to the present and he trembled with the force of his grip. “And now I have killed ten of their number and say to thee with ease that I took no great harm. Little wonder we seek to believe them formed of mud and malice. How can we reckon with our own deeds else?”
“Deeds are not weights on a scale,” Balan’s pulse was steady against the other’s arm, a steady measure against his own, “and in truth I know not how to reckon thee. But I know thine heart, and I know I would have been dead ere now—dead, or maimed, or strung up in some devil’s ransom.”
“Yea, doubtless. And thus I cannot see my way to regret. They stumbled by chance upon the weightiest leverage they might hold: crown and life alike would I have given for the price of thy release.” Finrod passed his hands along his face and shook his head, weariness cutting lines along his features. “Hilyo was right to upbraid me. I forsook every duty in my weakness—and indeed would do so again wert thou new-taken from me.”
“Elenya...”
“I should not have left thee.”
“Aye, perhaps. But lay it not overmuch at the feet of thy guilt—I would have gone hadst thou remained. I was in a rare fury.”
“Well do I know it.” The rain was driving harder now and its rise and fall reminded him of Belegaer’s sighs against the far coastlines. He had brought Amarië to Alqualondë once, eager as a boy to show her the crags and hills he loved, the gem-strewn beaches where he paddled as a child, and she had smiled as he pointed out each well-loved landmark—the alcoves where he would hide from consequences, the line of flat rocks in the sand that he had called his own palace, the slope with its waving grasses where he would slip away with scrolls and bound leaves, the high cliff where Meril would sit and sing over the waters. She had smiled at each of these and laughed when he told her of the mischief he and Angaráto would wreak, but her presence had been distant, unsettled. It was only later when they returned to Tirion that she confessed the Sea had filled her with dread, its dark unknowable depths stretching away beyond comprehension. That memory had dogged him through Araman and upon the Ice, when the Sea was all fury and vengeance, when the dread was his own. “I did conceal her from thee,” he said at last, and was surprised to hear the hoarse grief within his tone. “I know not why. Shame, perhaps, or fear that thou shouldst think less of me.”
“And why would I think less of thee were it spoken? I who once had a wife, as thy wit was quick to remind me.”
Finrod blenched and his knuckles whitened where his hands lay clasped together. “That was cruel of me.”
Balan dismissed this with a faint shrug. “I am little proud of my own barbs,” he said, reaching down when Greweg whined and scratching him again behind the ears. “We neither of us spoke in kindness—let it lie. Wilt thou tell me of her now?”
“Yes, shouldst thou wish it.”
“I do.” The words seemed to come from him with a struggle and he turned to rest his back against the parapet, occupying himself with the hound. “I would know thee, Nóm, in any way thou wilt grant me.”
Finrod’s arm twitched as he caught himself mid-motion. He had nearly drawn Balan into his arms, nearly lost his resolve already at the tremor of devotion in other’s voice. He closed his eyes and breathed in the rain-scented air. One breath, two, speak on the third. “It was half true, what he told thee—Orodreth, was it not?”
Balan nodded. “He meant no harm by it.”
“No, he would not. He was the least eager of us to go and thus his memory lingers ever upon those we lost through our choice.” Finrod faltered and again he trained all his thought upon the brush of the other’s arm, his blood flowing like fire from the touch and anchoring his purpose. “We were never betrothed,” he continued at last, “though most assumed it to be so, and I did not disabuse them. I could not decide for myself whether our affinity lay in love or in friendship, and I dreaded above all that I would choose in a moment of false surety and learn not the error until it was done. She was my elder by several years and had studied under Manyarë, an eminent master of philosophy and one whose work I had long admired, and so our conversations at first were all of my eagerness to learn what she might tell me. Friendship grew quickly after that, for each of us found a reprieve from pretense in the other’s company and we sought each other often, whether in Tirion or in Valimar. All our kin believed it a love beyond friendship—and perhaps it was. Nay, there again I shy from it in the speaking. I did love her. But I could never discern my own heart and so I tarried, and I tarried, and I tarried; and then the Darkness was upon us and the madness and the haste of our vengeance. She would have none of it. We were each of us convinced in our own perception of duty, each sure in the soundness of our principles and the rightness of our intent, and we argued—bitterly. And we broke. She named me faithless, I named her haughty, cold. Though we were both of us blinded by pride, I as much as she; moreso perhaps. ‘Go in thy folly,’ she told me at the last, ‘and carry not even my memory beside thee.’ “
Balan’s hand had formed a looping pattern about Greweg’s head: scratch behind the ears, scoop around and rub beneath the collar, pass up and scratch the chin. He repeated it in a steady rhythm as he listened and his jaw was set, his face unreadable.
“And so I went. Turvo had taken her younger sister to wife, and Elenwë’s heart chose exile sooner than parting, despite her sister’s ire; and I walked into the wasteland in envy beside them. But my bitterness was short-lived.” He let a brush of memory touch Balan’s thought—the crack in the ice, Turgon’s cry as leapt from its edge, his own desperate dive after them. “Turvo and I walked side by side through the remainder of the Ice, passing his daughter from one to the other with envy hovering in a truce between us.” Finrod’s fingers traced a pattern along the sandstone and his voice had grown quiet, distant. “I did not speak of her after Elenwë fell. At first it was to spare Turvo, then it was from habit. And silence too was a simpler thing than speaking, for to speak a grief I understood not seemed a pernicious falsehood. Did I grieve in love or in friendship? Did I wish still for either?” He turned at last to face the other and withdrew his hands from the stone, setting aside his fidgeting in surrender. “And in that lies the truth of my silence, I deem. For how could I speak of it in the same air that held thine own grief? A presumption it seemed and an insult to thy trust to say I too have loved and lost when my own heart could not discern the truth of it.”
“I would not have seen it so.” Balan murmured after a long pause, his eyes resting still upon Greweg, who yawned, sated, and lowered himself to stretch across the floor. “I would sooner have known thy sorrow, faceted and contrary as all sorrows must be.” He fell quiet again, worrying his tongue along the split in his lip. “He said she was the beauty of Valinor incarnate,” he added as though in afterthought, “light and wisdom, innocence and joy.”
“And so she was. But for all that, I could never find certainty.” He broke with restraint at last and reached out to cup Balan’s cheek within his palm, turning the other’s face to meet his gaze. “Dear one,” he breathed and his caress moved along Balan’s neck, “thou hast no rival there. Never have I been more certain than in my love for thee.”
“A strange way thou hast of showing it.” He leaned into the other’s touch, the ghost of a smile tugging at the edges of his mouth, and Finrod’s heart turned to water at the sight.
“Anarinya…” he whispered, and heard his voice break as it left his lips.
“Beloved.” Balan’s eyes did not waver now and they burned with all the fervor of Ivrin. “I would choose it again—to follow thee. I would beg thee as fervently still as I did above the flax fields and barley.” He lifted his hand to rest upon Finrod’s chest, his touch steady and firm despite the dark bruises. “Let me be thine. As whatever thou wilt.”
And then he was in his arms, tucked close beneath the king’s chin, arms twined about each other and neither sure which had drawn the other in. Finrod’s shoulder throbbed with the sudden movement, but he pressed it aside and clung tighter still, burying his face in Balan’s hair, breathing him in. “Might we not be this instead? Lovers in soul if not…” his voice faltered and he felt Balan’s arms tighten impulsively about him. “Thou art more to me than any other. I cannot pretend to thee it is otherwise.”
“Nor I.” Balan’s face rested against the king’s neck, the soft prickle of his beard drawing fire through the other’s veins, and for long they remained thus: unmoving and poised as though outside of time, the minutes or hours passing over them, oblivious. “Sometimes,” Balan murmured at last, his voice muffled still against the other’s skin, “sometimes I think I have wandered all my days seeking only for thee—that thine was the whisper in the midnight, the hunger ever in my heart. I am home, Nóm, here in thine arms with the sound of thine heart setting my own. Here I am at rest.”
Finrod was silent, holding him close as he drew his fingers through the dark waves, set his lips to the edge of Balan’s forehead. “Light of my heart,” he whispered at last, calling back once more to the holy waters and the alder trees, “to what am I to turn on the day I do lose thee? When I cannot scream and strike at Death, when no force or love or fury can keep thee in my arms?”
“I will rest within thee yet, deathless in thine heart as my people have held all those who went before us.”
“A rolling echo, chasing me through the years. A remnant only and never the sounding.”
“Nóm…”
He buried his face once more in the other’s hair, savoring his warmth, memorizing the touch of his hair, the scent of his skin, the tangible weight of his thought resting against Finrod’s own. Then he drew back at last and smiled, cupping the other’s face within his palms and he kissed him between the eyes. “Heed me not, I am being foolish. Thou art weary, freithe eil9—nay, I feel it in thee, do not feign it is otherwise. Go now. Laugh and rest and be at peace.”
“I cannot not leave thee so unwell.”
“I am well. Truly, Balan. That day is not this whose dawn we’ve passed; thou art living, thou art whole before me.” He let one hand linger upon the other’s cheek and warmth reached his smile at last. “How could I not be well?”
Balan held his eye for a long moment, then nodded and set his lips briefly to the hand at his cheek. “As thou wilt, then. I am weary, as thou sayest. Weary to my bones.” He stepped toward the corridor and Greweg rose at once to pad after him.
“Anarinya.” Finrod did not turn, but kept his eyes fixed on the stone where the hound had lain. “I am sorry.”
“Mm?”
“Open not that wound I cannot bind—twas all thou didst ask of me. And I have transgressed it ere a season has passed.”
Balan paused, then turned and closed the distance between them, slipping his hand behind Nóm’s head. “Then I shall transgress as well,” he said, and he kissed him, soft and lingering, and felt the king’s strength fall away into his arms. But Balan pulled back a moment later and his hand shifted shifted to rest against lightly against the other’s jaw, holding him back as he pressed forward still. “And now the scales are leveled,” he breathed. Then he smiled, a brief flash of mirth, turned again, and was gone.
