Okay, so it’s a day late for Halloween, but here’s the Tol-in-Gaurhoth fic where I decide that I should stop limiting myself on describing the blood (fair warning, it’s not really any more graphic than the others in this series, only a tad more.) And answer one of those plot-holes of The Silmarillion that is never answered aka the feeding of prisoners. The inspiration of the two characters are Galad and Gawyne from Wheel of Time, but if I didn’t explicitly tell you this, I doubt any reader could guess. Final version will be posted soon to AO3 and SWG.
Expanding once more on This list
- The Eighth: Take Thy Brother’s Hand
In the dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth, Gadwar prayed to his half-brother who had remained in Nargothrond. This was not from a lack of piety towards the Valar or a mistaken belief that his brother could rescue him – hope of rescue disappeared in the dungeon’s darkness several deaths back- but because Gadwar’s reflex was to call out for Galuven when in distress. Long imprisonment begat illogical reflexes and automatic litanies of prayer instead of conscious planning, as such higher thought grew pointless after the long black weeks. Tacholdir still spoke of escape, but in tones of madness. Even King Finrod resorted to quiet mantras of prayer and apologies, worn smooth into meaninglessness by repetition, with periodic stern commands to his followers that they remain strong and not break inserted like choruses in a ballad’s recital, flowing his words like a song that could somehow defeat this darkness. When the wolves came, by the third time when they devoured Aglar, Finrod took to singing Teleri lullabies to attempt to drown out the noises of death.
What that Gadwar beseeched of his brother in that pitch-black hell was as amorphous as his intentions. He could demand nothing from Galuven, even if the older elf had been physically present, and even in his moments of greatest desperation he could not crystallize his prayers into a single request. Gadwar waivered unsure if he wanted his half-brother beside him or if he felt remorse that he had not also refused to accompany King Finrod to fulfill this life-debt. If he wished his half-brother to avenge his coming death or hoped that Galuven remained ignorant of his fate. If he wanted Galuven’s forgiveness or the opportunity to assure his half-brother that Gadwar did not curse him.
Any and all were his prayers in the darkness of Tol-in-Gaurhoth.
Each time that the wolves came and consumed Gadwar’s companions, he cursed his half-brother. He screamed and railed at Galuven for not sharing in this pain. He recalled how his half-brother stood silent in the throne room of Nargothrond, hands folded in front of his white robes, watching in stern disapproval as Gadwar volunteered for Finrod and Beren. “Traitor!” Gadwar screeched to the memory of his brother, but then he sobbed and took back his words when the blood dried, regretting each hateful curse. Sometimes Gadwar broke into tears and called for his mother or twin sister, biting off their names before he spoke them aloud. Mostly, he closed his eyes and silently repeated his half-brother’s name as a mantra to retain sanity. And when sanity abandoned him, he kept to this prayer of his half-brother’s name. Gadwar never looked to his father for guidance or protection. The man’s absence from his life was never missed, and Galuven had substituted for that role exquisitely anyways.
When he thought no one could hear him, Gadwar’s father would complain how he missed his chance to cross aboard the stolen Swan-ships, and had that not happened, he and his family would not have had to cross the ice desert. Had Tarlangon boarded the ships, his first wife would not have had the opportunity to decide to disappear into the darkness to die of despair somewhere in the fathomless cold. Gadwar’s older brother had been even younger than Princess Idril during the crossing and had little memory of his mother. When Heledir, Bân, and other veterans of the Helecaraxë spoke of the endless darkness and cold and of everyone who died during the crossing, Galuven could only offer vague memories of a freezing nose. Therefore Galuven lacked the resentment that plagued their father. Tarlangon had been an opportunist searching for power, latching first onto Fëanor’s reactionary party, then switching allegiance to Fingolfin because of the far greater number of followers. Any words that would grant him more status at court and more public attention to his studies and publications Gadwar’s father said, with whatever pronunciation he needed to. But Tarlangon did not possess the single-minded devotion and loyalty demanded of those allowed to board the stolen Swan-ships.
Anyways, there was no opportunity for him to rejoin the following of Fëanor’s sons once he remarried.
Gadwar’s father married his mother, a noble woman of the Mithrim Sindar, for political stability and power – and to have someone to care for his young son. How much his father loved his mother, Gadwar could not guess, and his mother spoke of Tarlangon in only a fond but distant neutrality. Meluiniel’s own motives for marriage had been equally calculated, she once admitted in private, as a young Gadwar once again listened from corners that he was not meant to. She had no strong desire to be a wife, but she strongly wished to be a mother.
Galuven treated Meluiniel as if she were his birth-mother. He had little memory of his first mother and little reason to cling to her memory. Meluiniel taught him to read and write, to ride a horse, to account his finances, to sing and dance, and to comport himself as a righteous man. The last was a particular sticking point to Gadwar, for if he were to describe his older half-brother with a single phrase, it was that Galuven was concerned that his every action be morally just. Perhaps it was fortuitous that Tarlangen died a year after Gadwar and his twin sister were born, for Galuven disapproved strongly of his status as Exile. Father and son would have had dreadful public denunciations, perhaps, instead of the one-sided and quiet but no less stringent condemnation. As a child, Gadwar found his brother’s adherence to rules and justice vexing, for he could do no mischief within his brother’s presence. No sneaking of sweets, no innocent lies, no shirking of lessons to go play with Galuven as watchful nursemaid.
If Gadwar were objective, the other description for his half-brother would be the world’s most handsome man. His sister and he were immune to the effects, but that everyone noticed and were affected by Galuven’s beauty was to the twins privately hilarious. Always there was that delay when a person first beheld his half-brother, their disbelief. More than just the perfect symmetry of his facial features, his slender and tall body, or that when unbound, his glossy dark hair fell to his knees, it was Galuven’s attentive courtesy that bowed everyone over, that he treated each person that he met with an intense consideration because they were deserving of his time. And, admittedly, he was unfairly handsome. Had he been a woman, the gossiping tongues of the Noldor would have championed Galuven as a rival for Lúthien’s beauty, and only his lack of princely status limited his fame. Gadwar found living as Galuven’s younger brother onerous at times, for more than one reason.
Mother’s servants were the one to gossip about their father and the careless terrible words he said. This solidified Gadwar’s feelings towards Tarlangon and his decision that if asked for his names, he would refer to himself only as Meluiniel’s son. Galuven never used that matrinomic aftername as Gadwar and Gelril did. Still, only Meluiniel was honored by both his thoughts and spoken oaths as his parent, and Meluiniel spoke always of her three children, her two fine sons and one strong daughter. Though Galuven never voiced it, his desire to restore honor on his father’s line through his righteous conduct was easy to deduce, to redeem a name that Tarlangon had tarnished. As Gadwar gave little thought to his father, aside from stale servant gossip, he lacked sympathy for his half-brother’s moral quest.
When Gadwar was still a few years from reaching his age of maturity, Galuven convinced their mother to relocate to Prince Finrod Felagund’s new city, on the basis of a rumor that it was the Vala Ulmo himself who instructed Prince Finrod to build the city. Such divine inspiration and tacit approval appealed to Galuven, and the wealth and security of this new metropolis also appealed to Meluiniel. Her approval deepened once she learned that Lady Alphen had been hired as Prince Finrod’s chatelaine. A woman of exceeding cunning and acumen, Meluiniel considered Alphen second only to Queen Melian, Princess Luthien, and Princess Eregiel in garnering respect. She would have her daughter, Gelril, learn statecraft and wisdom from this older Sindarin noblewoman who had instructed her in her youth. Gadwar appreciated the instructors made available to him with this move, especially for swordsmanship and woodcraft. New companions he found in the city, new bosom friends, and thus he let go of his older half-brother’s hands and began to create a space for himself divorced of Galuven’s shadow. Not entirely so, as both brothers shared instructors and martial duties, both serving in Captain Heledir’s command during the Bragollach, but as Galuven grew close to Guilin and Gwindor, Gadwar spent his time in the company of his roommate, Ethirdor, or his fellow soldiers Tacholdir, Aglar, Faron, and Bân. Such friends surrounded him, chained together in this dungeon pit, and as they perished one by one via the teeth of the enemy, Gadwar called for his brother.
His hands were chained almost together high above his head, straining the muscles of his back and arms, pulling against his shoulder and elbow joints. His fingers could not touch, no matter how he stretched them. They grew numb, purple and bruised like the raw flesh around his wrists. To amuse himself in the total darkness and convince himself that his hands were still attached to his body, Gadwar took to swinging his chained wrists against the stone of the dungeon wall, reveling in the sharp bite of the metal against his bleeding flesh and the dull clang of stone and iron. He played cacophonies to drown out the echoes of Finrod’s sea shanties. Edrahil screamed for him to stop, also Beren. Petulantly, Gadwar pulled at the chains, until his strength was once more exhausted, leaving him to hang limp. When the wolves came, Gadwar twisted and turned, freshly dislocating his elbows, until he faced the wall and could attempt, as best one could, to hide from the terrible process. Crying, he cursed his brother as Consael was disemboweled, sobbing and jerking at the chains to try and mask the dying sounds of the elf beside him, slamming metal against stone to create a ringing note loud enough to hide the noise of entrails and spine crushed by wolven teeth. Long after Consael died and the werewolf feasted in his corpse, Gadwar sobbed against the dungeon wall and felt the pull of the chains against his wrists.
He dreamed. Odd that he was able to fall asleep in the dungeon, but the physical realities could not be overcome. Odder still was that his dreams were not nightmares. Gadwar dreamt that he lay upon his mattress in Nargothrond, the thick quilt covering his body and warming it from the cold bite of Tol-in-Gaurhoth. In his dreams, his body was uninjured, his belly full, his muscles rested from the faint soreness that came from a day of exercise and labor. Through the walls of the Hidden City, he could hear others moving about, soldiers and civilians and the hum of their conversations. Muffled noises, but loud in comparison and overwhelming in their variety after the dungeon. Light shone under the door, reflecting off the mirror sitting on the small table across from the garment chest painted a bright cheerful green with white roses. In the dream, the return of any illumination, no matter how gentle and slight, did not bother him. This was how he knew it to be a dream. He looked at that green chest with its giant brass hinges and a hanging lock in the shape of a fish.
No. His lock was a supine lion, the two-prong key bar fitting through the lion’s open jaws with the red tassel hanging down like a long loose tongue. He had no standing mirror upon his desk. The quilt was too thick and too heavy, the weight pressing against his chest. The position of the door mismatched with his memories. There was no second bed, no Ethir.
Ethir was many weeks dead, a few bits of bone and stubborn dried bloodstains in a corner of the pit, Gadwar’s rational thoughts attempted to reestablish. But then where was his bed, his chest of clothes, his bow-stand and books? If this be memory of Nargothrond, why was all sign of him gone?
Gadwar woke from his dreams to Captain Heledir dying. The captain had called for the wolves to eat him. This was the shout that pulled Gadwar to consciousness, just as he realized that the room that he dreamt of was not his own but that of Galuven. A desire to swap current locations with his half-brother was not so unfathomable a wish, when confronted with the smells and sounds of his commander being torn to bloody chunks by a wolf that delighted in his screams and that the death was near quick nor painless.
Gadwar turned back towards the wall, but he had scraped the skin of his cheek, exposing the flesh. The stickiness of the blood made it cling to the stone. If the wound healed, it would leave a terrible facial scar. Or perhaps he would face dire infection from this. Fân had grown sick; Gadwar knew the possibility was there. Maybe fever would grant him more dreams. The taste of blood also filled his mouth. He spat out what he could and screamed, waiting for the wolf to leave. He cursed his brother, and this time cursed his captain for calling out to the wolves.
Bân repeated Heledir’s act of madness.
In-between their deaths, Finrod murmured his apologies. Gadwar pulled at his chains.
Gadwar did not starve in the dungeon. Hands saw to that.
After the wolves fed, though how soon after in the chaotic passage of time of Tol-in-Gaurhoth’s darkness none of the prisoners could surmise, the hands returned – disembodied, cold, implacable. They gripped his hair and pulled his face up, pressed with unwavering dispassion at the hinges of his jaw until he was forced to open his mouth to lessen their pressure. Then a chilled tasteless mush with the texture and consistency of twice-mashed beans was shoved into his mouth, and the cold hands pressed his jaw up until closed, holding him as he struggled, relentless until his swallowed. Futilely, Gadwar attempted to kick at the owner of those hands or turn his head and bite at those iron fingers, but to no avail. After he swallowed, the hands disappeared. Never could he sense the figure who fed him. No one heard either their approach or departure. They had no schedule or warning. Only that they came, and so each time they came was accounted one day for the prisoners. Gadwar lost track of the number. He could not discern their presence in any manner or method until he felt the icy touch on his face, sudden, unwarranted, and hateful. Nowhere else was touched, no other action taken, no cruelty beyond the dispassionate, mechanical feeding, and this was cruelty enough in its disregard of him beyond this task.
He would not have attempted to bargain with the owners of those hands, even if he thought the chance existed. After the first few times, the prisoners pretended they did not exist. Only Beren fought them as well, Gadwar thought. The mortal was the only other he could hear thrashing, though Fân made retching noises. That was probably an unconscious act, from the fever that plagued the blond soldier.
The memories of those hands Gadwar scrubbed clean from his brain, scouring the details away through the same force of will that would drive a scullery maid to take sandpaper to floorboards, scratching away the wood grain in a quest to remove blood stains. The deep gouges in his memory of the torment worried him naught. All that mattered was the forgetting.
Instead, he chose to focus on his dreams.
Gadwar woke and saw his brother’s impossibly perfect face in the mirror, the beautiful proportions and smooth hair that fell like sculptural drapery pass his waist, the long lashes that framed eyes paler than his own, the jaw that never jutted out like an enraged boar, or a brow creased with deep, inelegant wrinkles. Gadwar had thin lips and greenish eyes, like his sister and mother, and his teeth were crooked. In the mirror, Galuven did not smile, but if he had, his teeth would have been perfect. Strange – his half-brother had dark circles under his eyes, a prominent blemish and worrying sign of prolonged lack of sleep. His brother washed his face, and Gadwar could feel the cold water, then the strokes of a comb against his scalp, the cool linen shift, the laces of his white doublet against his fingertips as he threaded the rows of eyelets. He felt as if he was the one to slip each of the golden rings and bracelets on his fingers and wrists and hook the heavy golden chain with a pattern of rayed suns around his neck, but the mirror showed Galuven and not him. His brother pulled a heavy white cape on over his ensemble, and Gadwar wanted to ask if his brother felt unreasonably cold, for the underground city felt as warm as it always did.
Gelril passed him in the corridor, her green eyes hard and sliding away from his face, refusing to make contact. Gadwar wanted to call out to her, beg to hear her voice once more. She was his twin sister, the one from birth he had been raised to defend and defer to, the one Gelril would trust and turn to even when she had none other. Galuven did nothing. He allowed their sister to lift her nose and pull her green and red skirts tight to her body as she hurried away from him, refusing to give even the courtesy words of greeting. The heavy chains of her necklace frightened him in a way that Gadwar could not explain. Her skin was unnaturally pale, almost as white as the embroidered lions on her gown. Gadwar wanted to at least turn his head and catch one more memory of his sister. Instead, she disappeared. Nor did he catch sight of Gwenniel, or the other fair maidens that were her companions. Galuven walked up the gradual spiral of Nargothrond’s hallways in isolated silence, nodding his head once to Faron. The other elf, once so smiling, returned the gesture with tight lips, shoulders hunched. Faron did not stop to speak with Galuven. No one spoke to either of them. The crowds ignored them, but then it seemed that no one was stopping to converse in the thoroughfares. Music could be heard in echoes from the higher levels, but the tunes seemed too loud and yet flat, as if the players were forcing false joy into the notes. The fountains were not running. Faron wore his sword belted at his waist, and with a shock, Gadwar realized that his brother too was wearing a sheathed shortsword and not just a dagger at his belt. Such behavior was unlike Faron – or Galuven. Faron rarely wore a sword, trusting to his bow, and never inside. Gadwar wished to question him of the strangeness of the city, the pinched and hurried feeling of everyone, the coldness to the halls, and the carrying of weapons. Still he had no control over this body’s actions, and that curdled the comfort of this dream.
Galuven finally stopped outside the chambers of their mother, Meluiniel, and knocked politely against the stone. He did not enter until beckoned in, because he was Gadwar’s brother and would never break a rule of society. He bowed to Meluiniel, his movements the epitome of smooth grace, then sat across from her in the private parlor. Their mother looked as tired as Galuven had in the mirror, her green eyes ringed by dark circles, her posture as stiff as the starched white linen she wore beneath her high-waisted velvet gown. Candlelight sparkled against the golden hairnet that covered the turban of braids that crowned her head, and it was odd to see over Meluiniel’s head. Galuven was so much taller than her. Their conversation was at first stilted, eyes watching for any listeners, and Gadwar realized this room was chosen for the muffling effect of the heavy tapestries hiding the walls.
Gadwar remembered falling asleep beneath one of those as a child, using the fabric a blanket. He used to trace the white boar and lioness with his fingers, memorizing their contours.
Galuven had been the one to find him huddled beneath the tapestry, and the lecture had been pedantic and tedious. But his brother had also hugged him and listened to his babbling stories of the imagined adventures of the lion and boar, never once showing disinterest.
Mother sat primly like a queen in her oaken chair, a cup of honeyed water held delicately in her hands as she addressed her son. “Celegorm and Curufin went hunting this morning, so we have a few hours to act. They were seen taking King Felagund’s hunting hawks with them, and Curufin wore King Felagund’s jeweled cuffs around his own wrists, that fine matching set with the emeralds and diamonds that recently went missing. He is still wroth that we deny the usurpers the Nauglamir. Lady Finduilas and Alphen have hidden the remaining treasury keys.”
Galuven’s beautiful hands reached out to clasp their mother’s own tightly clenched hands, quelling the faint shake that disturbed the liquid of her cup. Sword-callused thumbs ran smoothing strokes over the raised tendons. “Peace, Mother, we must be cautious.”
“I would have Alphen tell the servants to spit in their soup, if such commands were not superfluous.”
Galuven reacted with neither outrage nor surprise as Mother’s crass words. His lips felt as if they were upturned into a smile, which could only be a projection of Gadwar’s own reaction.
“What next does Steward Orodreth wish of us?” Galuven asked.
“Oh, my son, we cannot save them,” Meluiniel whispered, and Galuven’s hands convulsed around hers, upsetting the cup and causing water to splash down the back of his rings and soak into the cuff of his sleeves.
The shredded tendons of his shoulder joint stabbed with fresh pain, waking Gadwar in time to notice that Tacholdir’s breathing was gone. Mouth too dry to make sounds, Gadwar could not call out to the other three that remained, silent Fân or singing Finrod or the mortal Beren who had miraculously survived so long. An act of spite towards the one to try to defy Sauron, Gadwar knew that to be, a petty revenge to ensure that Beren would be last to die, because that fate was cruelest. But love, the love of others trying to protect the youngest, that also explained Beren’s survival thus far.
Gadwar could no longer feel his hands chained above his head, but he imagined that one was wet.
Galuven woke from a dream of his half-brother. Even the light from the single candle beside his bed hurt from the brightness. His muscles felt stiff and unused, his wrists raw. With a lurch he leaned against the table and stared into the mirror, his black hair hanging like a pair of curtains to frame his pallid, sweat soaked face and bloodshot eyes.
The right iris was no longer grey, but tinted green in the candlelight. Galuven looked down at his hands and the bare, unmarked skin of his wrists.
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