an arrowhead or two

Maglor trudged wearily toward two of his brothers were. He heard news just now that Maedhros was wounded, and worry curled a cold fist inside his guts, and he shoved elven soldiers out of his path in his hurry to get to where Maedhros was. It wasn’t fatal, he hoped – and by now Maglor knew that no simple orc blade could kill Maedhros, but still, the very news alone that someone managed to injure the strongest of the brothers was ill-taken.

He found Celegorm already with Maedhros, both on the ground. Maedhros had two arrows lodged into his person; one by his right flank, and another by the left side of his chest, far enough from the heart but surely pierced the ribs. Celegorm sat behind him and was already cradling him in preparation for the pulling out of the arrowheads; it was not going to be a pretty thing.

Maedhros himself was pale not with pain, but rage. These days, whenever rage or some other such strong emotion distorted his already scarred face, the silver-gray of his irises become tinged with red, or else melt into red entirely. Of course, the first time this happened, this had terrified his brothers in differing levels. Maglor admittedly, and to his eternal shame, had been scared half to death. Celegorm took it in stride and made no comment about it, while Caranthir took it most calmly of them all. Curufin and the twins were afraid, not just for their brother but also for themselves, though whatever comments they had, they kept to themselves. And so there it was – Maedhros pale with blood loss and rage, his eyes red, gnashing his teeth as Celegorm wrapped his arms tighter around his torso.

Celegorm began to sing a song, of soothing hurts and healing and recovery. Attempting to put Maedhros at ease.

“Do it, godsdamn it, just do it already,” Maedhros hissed just as Caranthir, Curufin and the twins arrived. He snarls, not much different from a true orc, challenging his brothers.

Maglor took one look at his brother’s half-monstrous face, and he declared: “I’ll hold him, you do it,” he tells Caranthir, and he proceeded to avoid the ugly task ahead by grabbing Maedhros’s legs.

Caranthir’s ruddy face darkened. His jaw tightened, and he shot Amrod a look. The elder of the twins quickly scrambled around, found a piece of wood, and he gingerly darted forward and bade Maedhros bite down on it. Maedhros obeyed; he bit down, and Celegorm sings louder and tightens his hold around his torso. Curufin and Amras ran forward to secure his arms, and Caranthir removed his gauntlets and doused his hands with disinfectant that a healer gave.

The fourth son of Fëanor got distracted by this; he managed to glare at the healer, who could only look away. It took the bravest and most obstinate of healers to treat Maedhros with injuries sustained from combat; otherwise he frightened them all off anyway, and none can look into his half-elf, half-orc face, nor bear to have the Lord of Himring snarling at them with the voice of a monster made in Angband.

Right.

Now for the first arrow.

Caranthir grasped the arrow by Maedhros’s chest first, and he met his brother’s feral gaze, and mentally, they both counted by their breaths: one, two, three—and the rest of their brothers braced, and Caranthir pulled, and Maedhros growled like a creature from Udûn, and the wood between his teeth cracked.

There was the ugly sound of ripping flesh—the arrowhead was barbed, and Caranthir put all his strength to it, and it came loose, and dark blood, darker than normal, spilled forth from the wound. The healer quickly clasped a clean cloth over the first wound, and Caranthir turned his attention to the next arrowhead.

Maedhros breathed and panted and huffed and puffed like a trapped monster. The growl came from the depths of his chest, and his irises bled into outright crimson now, and the healer’s fear spiked and batted against Caranthir’s mental barriers, and Caranthir for a moment entertained the idea of backhanding the healer across the face to get the ellon to get a grip on himself.

“Alright, hanno?” Caranthir asked their brother. “Just one more. Just one more.”

Maedhros, red-eyed and snarling and growling, nodded. Celegorm sang louder, and this time Maglor’s more powerful voice melded with his, and Curufin and Amrod and Amras grasped what limb of their eldest brother they could to hold him down with all their strength.

Caranthir grasped the second arrow, and pulled.

The sound torn from Maedhros could not have been made by an elf. He growled, deep and sinister, and he gnashed his teeth so hard the wood between his teeth broke and splintered. He roared.

Caranthir and the healer were quick on their feet and jumped away as far as possible first, the second arrow in Caranthir’s hand. In a burst of monstrous strength Maedhros pulled free from Celegorm’s hold, and headbutted the nearest brother in reach who wasn’t fast enough to escape him: Maglor. There followed the crack of skull and against skull, and Maglor’s own pained shout.

Still growling and roaring, Maedhros got to his feet, blindly grabbed for another within his reach, and the unfortunate bastard to get trapped next is Curufin, captured by his ponytail. “Ai, ai!” Curufin yelled as he tried to pull the clasp holding his cape in place, but he isn’t quick enough, and Maedhros’s flesh-and-bone fist crashes against his brother’s cheek, and the blow knocked out Curufin, and he crumpled to the earth like a puppet whose strings were cut.

“Nelyo! Calm down!”

“Nelyo!”

“Ai! My nose!”

Amras scrambled forward, ducked low, and pulled Curufin away to safety. Maglor was crouched nearby, clutching his bleeding nose.

Maedhros growled, still seeing red, and he rounded on his brothers, who skirted him, leaping away from his grabbing hands. Blood frothed on the Lord of Himring’s mouth.

“Stop it, Nelyo!” Celegorm yelled. “Stop!”

Maedhros took several heaved breaths. As they watched, slowly, the red began to retreat from his irises to reveal silver-gray once more. The snarling and growling stopped. When the Lord of Himring fell to his knees, Amrod braved darting forward. Caranthir followed, and together they quickly got Maedhros out of his armor plates, then out of his chain mail, then followed removing his tunic. The healer crept forward last, armed with disinfectant and more cloths.

Maedhros dwindled more after that. Celegorm returned to holding him propped up from behind, as his wounds were cleaned out and potential poisoned flesh carved out. The bleeding was staunched, and nobody dared comment on his darker blood, almost black. Then the healer would have stitched his wounds closed too, if not for Caranthir shooing away the healer from the task, and doing the job himself. The healer instead tended to Maglor and Curufin.

Celegorm smoothed back Maedhros’s grimy, matted red hair from his face. Then kissed his cheeks. “Well done, hanno. Well done,” Celegorm murmured. Now he was mostly hugging Maedhros into his chest. Caranthir wiped their brother’s scarred flesh clean for a final time, and barked at a nearby soldier to bring a fresh tunic for their lord. The soldier ran to obey.

Caranthir then observed his stitchwork. Convinced they’re perfect, he nodded, then picked up one of Celegorm’s abandoned wineskins. He popped it open and drank, then pressed it to Maedhros’s lips, and he too, drank three deep swigs. He sagged in Celegorm’s hold.

“Just another day in Beleriand,” Maedhros muttered, his voice still ragged with his recent hurt.

“Yeah,” Celegorm agreed. He took his wineskin back and drank deeply from it. “Just another day.”

Caranthir sat beside them, and stretched out his legs, his weight down his arms. He let out a long sigh. The healer returned to his side now, and made to look at the bloodied gash by his left temple, but Caranthir slapped the healer’s hands away. “Get thee gone and look at Makalaurë’s nose instead. If it heals crooked, he will have your head.” Yet his voice has no real hostility in it; just exhaustion.

Above the battlefield, victorious though it was, carrion-birds circled.

awakening

When Fingon returned from Thangorodrim on the great eagle’s back and first handed over the wrapped bundle of what’s supposed to be Nelyo to Maglor and Celegorm, Caranthir stood a little bit at the back. He saw a bony arm dangle from beneath the folds of the bloodied blanket, and at the end of that bony arm was a crudely wrapped stump, the cloth Fingon used soaked with too much blood it was black. Caranthir admitted he recoiled at that moment, if not physically then mentally, fortified his own mental barriers against the gaping wound that was Maedhros’s mind. 

He hung back even as Maglor and Celegorm rushed Maedhros to the healers’ tent, and for the next stretch of days an unease and tension descended upon both camps of the Noldorin factions. That first night, when Maglor and Celegorm first gathered the rest of the brothers, Maglor wept as he described the extent of Maedhros’s injuries.

Yet Caranthir said nothing of the injury of the mind; so raw and deep that he could almost taste the half-rotting, metaphorical flesh, a putrid kind of a hint of sourness at the back of his throat, a sensation. 

Helwion, who would be the chief healer of Himring, barred visitors except from the brothers during that first week.

On the eighth day after Fingon’s miraculous rescue, Caranthir awoke in the middle of the night.

He opened his eyes against the darkness of his tent, and he could hear the night insects humming and thrumming. The footfalls of the night-shift guards as they enacted their patrols. Around Caranthir the minds of the Noldor swirled, a gigantic mass of color blurred and slipping together, such that if he focused hard enough on a single train of thought, he would know who is thinking it, and where they are. But this is not what drew him from Irmo’s hold.

Just beyond his guarded perception is the sensation of Maedhros’s raw mind, and it is the first time Caranthir felt it unfurled. A wound, gaping, the flesh at the edges rotting and dotted with black, bone and marrow faintly visible. Again, the faint hint of rot and the ghost stench of decay threatened to overwhelm his mental perception. Caranthir mustered his strength against it, just as he swung his legs over the side of his cot. 

He shrugged into a coat, tied the belt, picked up a Feanorian Lamp, kindled it, and he went out into the cold night, the mists rolling from the mountains offering low visibility, punctured only by the light of the torches and lamps. His feet crushed dew-stained grass, and he followed the rot and decay of Maedhros’s mind as he navigates through the pathways between tents indistinguishable in the half dark. 

He steels himself, and peers even closer at his brother’s mind. Raw and open, but there is something else in the midst of that exposed ‘flesh’; something dark and veined with gold, throbbing there at the very center of the hurt. 

He closes in on Maedhros. His brother is inside a supply tent, and Caranthir wastes no time ducking into the tent, the flaps pushed aside with his free hand. The proximity increases the ghost stench and the ghost aftertaste at the back of his throat. He almost retches.

“Nelyo?”

The name rolls off Caranthir’s lips just as his breath mists white before him. Caranthir navigates through the crates and boxes, and he finds his brother crouching by an opened crate, scarfing down thick-crust bred like an animal. Bony, scarred arms appear to him like the limbs of some eldritch insect under the light of his lamp. Maedhros’s hair glint red, like dried blood. Telperion-silver eyes mirror alarm when Caranthir look into them for the first time, then recognition, then relief.

It happens too fast for Caranthir’s taste.

For someone who supposedly hung from Thangorodrim’s precipice for some decades, Maedhros should not be capable of such quick clarity and alertness, much less quick recognition of who had come to seek him out. It clashed against what Caranthir could feel of his mind, the wound of it, the throbbing blackness at the center of that wound that–

“Here, hanno, do not eat so fast,” Caranthir tries to dissuade him from eating the entirety of the loaf of bread. “If you want, I will find some soup for you, that’s all you can eat for now, soup, something light and easy on the stomach…”

“No,” Maedhros whines like an elfling when his bread is taken away. His voice is akin to a river flowing over some jagged rocks. “My bread–.” Yet his bony fingers slacken, and he recognizes the futility of his struggle, and grudgingly surrenders the bread.

Again there is clarity that should not be possible, for someone exposed to the elements for thirty, forty years.

There is something else here, that Caranthir rapidly begins to understand despite himself.

He helps Maedhros to his feet. He supports his brother’s bony weight, then decides to just carry him back to his tent, which smelled of medicated herbs and concoctions. Maedhros limps in his hold and hides his face into Caranthir’s chest.

There is something here.

As he lays Nelyo back onto his abandoned cot and pulls the blankets back over his brother, their eyes meet. Telperion silver and the dark gray of storm clouds. 

Memory comes unbidden to Caranthir: Morgoth’s echoing laughter, then the black chain wrought with song, and how the Vala hung Maedhros on that precipice five days before Fingon claims his ‘miraculous rescue’.

Caranthir understands.

Maedhros wasn’t rescued.

Maedhros was hung precisely to be found.

The awful truth and all of its implications rises in Caranthir’s mind, like a rogue wave out in an open, stormy sea, threatening the land yonder, and all that the Noldor think they know so far.

He sees Turko again at a family supper by Fëanáro’s mansion some time later. Turko looked properly Noldorin for the occasion: clean and well-kept, his braids impeccably done. No stinking pelts and war paint on his person, though his sharpened nails, made to imitate talons, belied his true occupation. 

“So,” Carnistir turns to his brother as Nelyo starts serving the strawberry cheesecake he brought for dessert. “A maia of Oromë came to me a week ago with ten bags of gold, your money.”

“Yes,” Turko confirms. “I signed a letter where it says there I let them give my money to you or Curvo.”

Carnistir lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Hanno,” he begins. “But this is your money. You should manage your funds, or at least have a know-how on what you want us to do with them.”

Turko looks at him. “Do with it as you like.”

“And what if I spend it all on buying more silkworms for my farm?”

“That’s great.”

Carnistir put his right hand over his own face. “Hanno, I am not horsing around with you. What do you want me to do with your money?”

“I said, do with it as you like. I don’t care,” Turko says. He perks up when Nelyo turns to him and Carnistir, and he grabs Carnistir’s empty dessert plate and holds it up as well. Nelyo puts big slices of the cake on their plates. 

“With this attitude I can probably rob you dry,” Carnistir says, unimpressed.

“Nah,” Turko says, leaning over to kiss his ruddy cheek. “You won’t.”

[my brothers' keeper / AO3]

They regard each other again in quiet. It is clear that Ereinion took more from Caranthir in terms of personality. Both of them are ellon of few words.

“I became King,” says Ereinion. “I inherited the crown after Gondolin fell.”

Carnistir nods slowly. “I see. How long did you reign?”

“Long. I became patently sick of it, in the end. I never wanted to be king. I was content to be a fisher-elf at the Havens of Sirion, then there arrived an elf who called himself Voronwë, and Círdan called me and then they told me I was king. I tried to refuse, you know. I tried to say that Telperinquar was supposed to be king, but Círdan stamped out my argument. You are older than Telperinquar’s father, and so there I was.”

Caranthir rubbed his chin. He looks thoughtful.

“And how did you die?”

Ereinion felt his lips twitch. Then a smirk spread. “Valiantly, I am afraid. Me and Elendil tried to take Sauron down with us. Sauron burned me with his right hand.”

Caranthir slid his right hand across the table and caught Ereinion’s own. He squeezes him there.

“For what it is worth, I am sorry, yonya.”

Ereinion turns his hand palm-up. He holds his father’s hand properly.

“Don’t be. I had a long, colorful and fruitful life. And I got to fulfill my dream. I met you.”

[among those returned / AO3]

madilyn bailey: wiser album … sentence starters

The bankers' guild of Tirion sent representatives to Finwe's council every week or every month; oftener if things are urgent in Valinor, and they almost never are. But today is a send-a-representative day, and this is how Morifinwe Carnistir finds himself sitting by the long table in Finwe's council room, by the middle section. His eldest brother Maitimo is surprised to see them there, and Maitimo wastes no time circling the massive table and engulfing him in a hug, which Moryo returns.

"Good morrow, hanno, it is nice to see you here," Maitimo greets, pulling back just enough so he can briefly press their foreheads. The gesture, reserved for childhood, has never been seen as such in Feanaro's household. And all of his sons delighted in this small tokens of appreciation, grown elves they are all.

"Good morrow," Moryo returns. He grasps his brother by his forearm and surveys him. Beautifully imposing as always; Nelyo has his red hair styled in Noldorin braids, yet sans his copper circlet. His robes are a deep forest green trimmed gold on a backdrop of off-white Telerin silk for his inner layers, embroidered with a paler gold for contrast. His boots are perfectly polished. Mm. Crisp and everything princely, as it should be for these councils. "Beautiful robe and tunic, hanno, who made it?"

"You, of course," Nelyo laughs.

The rest of the council arrives. Lords mill about and greet each other, Moryo sparing everybody worth his attention with a bow. At once, some of the elves around begin shifting nervously seeing him there and his ledgers. His cousins arrive as well: Findekano and Findarato, who greet him in varying degrees of cheer. These two, Moryo also spares with a curt nod.

Finwe is the last to arrive, waddling into the council in Vanyarin clothes today. Moryo purses his lips and stands with everybody else, and the long morning of council begins. He is here of course to report on Tirion's economic standing so far, and if certain projects submitted the months passed could be funded. Of course, as one of the main signatories for any treasury warrant of the Noldor, Moryo has a say which projects can be funded or not. He approves funding for those urgently needed. The more frivolous, relegated to the whims of lords like Ninimben and Thilior, are rejected. Moryo knows he has long made enemies of the two older elves, but he doesn't care. They are not of Feanaro's people, but Arafinwe's.

It is a long, tiring morning. They end about an hour past the midday meal, and Laurelin has abandoned her zenith to begin her soft waning in preparation for the Mingling. Moryo gathers his ledgers, spares a greeting for Finwe as he passes, and endures his grandfather's pinching of his ruddy cheeks; valiantly bearing Finwe's perpetual complaints of 'he should eat more'.

Nelyo went on ahead with Findekano and Findarato. Moryo is the last to leave the council room, and he descends the steps leading to the palace and finds himself waylaid by Makalaure his second oldest brother, of all people.

Long story short (and because he can read the harrassed thoughts wafting from Makalaure), his brother needs money to fund the costumes for his next opera at the Telerin stage, due in two months.

Moryo frowns. Makalaure (and Curufinwe) have grown up with the terrible notion that debts should not be repaid, especially if they borrow from family. Much less their own brother. If Makalaure coursed this through the budget, it would have been an instant rejection, for him. The theater can recycle costumes. And don't they earn revenue from each show, each elf that watches?

“I tried to help you once, against my own advice," says Moryo after a long silence. "Twenty thousand crowns you owe, and I have yet to see a single coin returned to me."

Makalaure tantrums. Wheedles. Pleads his case. Moryo wouldn't let his brother the greatest musician of the Noldor fail a project, would he? Have pity on his students! His apprentices! His entire music class, whose final project for the semester this show is. They just need costumes!

"If it is your students who need costumes," says Moryo. "Then they can buy them themselves, or make them. For those who have not yet attained Majority, then solicit their parents for the funds. I am not going to let you borrow from me, not until you pay back all that you owe first. You have been given all the extensions for each debt. If you doubt my records, come see me at the bankers' guild. I am there every Isilya, Alduya and Menelya. Business hours only."

He continues walking. Makalaure puffs up his cheeks, determined to continue the harrassment, and waddles after him. Moryo shutters his mind against the relentless beating of his brother's thoughts against his mind.

This will indeed be a very long day. Sigh.

“Thargelion will increase according rates to recover this massive loss,” Caranthir says, sneering nastily. “As I am sure, Ladros will as well.”

Of course, Caranthir still worked on the assumption that Finrod still held and resided at Ladros.

Finrod cleared his throat. “Well, yes, I have no choice but to do so. Ladros alone will not be able to sustain the demand of goods and trade needed by Barad Eithel, Dor-lomin and Nevrast. But surely the east shall also increase trade flow to our lands to cope?”

Fingolfin started massaging his temple again. Eru forgive him, but he wanted to find Turgon, smack the brains from his second son’s head, and then strangle him until said head fell off his shoulders. Leaving him and Fingon at the mercy of Caranthir and Finrod! And their people! He can already imagine the massive scroll of escrow agreements, trust receipts, with their thousand footnotes and fineprint interest rates, and—and—

Fingolfin wanted to be sick.

There is a sinister coldness to his hands and feet, and his back was sweating cold as well.

{money / on AO3}

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: minor Maedhros/Finrod Characters: Finrod Felagund | Findaráto, Maedhros | Maitimo, Caranthir | Morifinwë, Fingon | Findekáno, Aegnor | Ambaráto, Aredhel (Tolkien), Celegorm | Turcafinwë, Celebrimbor | Telperinquar, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë, Original Elf Character(s) Additional Tags: Humor, Flashback, Years of the Sun, Beleriand, Lake Mithrim, Economy and Trade, Finrod and Caranthir are extortionists, Family Dynamics, in which the Amanyar are robbed by their own, this is why you bring money people, Extortion, Finrod and Caranthir's highway robbery, Service Fees are things of horror, No beta we die like Carcharoth Series: Part 6 of Glissando Miscellany Summary:

Finrod and Caranthir exchanged a look.

“Six thousand,” says Finrod, and even Maedhros had to pause to make sure he heard correctly. Aegnor blanches at the exorbitant price. “What?! Six thousand for a bottle of soap? I’m your Manwe-beloved brother!” Finrod’s fair face schools itself into stern blankness. “Twelve thousand, because you are my Manwe-beloved brother, as you said.” “What in the–?! Ingoldo!” Aegnor protests. “Convenience fee,” Caranthir unhelpfully supplies. “Considering as none of you brought your own bottled soap all the way from Tirion and did not help pulling the cart besides.” The feral grin that curled Finrod’s lips was simply impish.