Silmarillion fic -- Composition
Another story with Maglor in the Third Age -- this follows Forsaken by about 200 years.
Late autumn, and a night of rain. Maglor is playing in the court of Rhovanion. The hall is large and well defended, even if it is built of wood and not stone, elaborately carved and painted, the ceiling rich with bulls and horses and stags whose gilt paint reflects the light of the torches below. Someone goes to a great deal of trouble to clean the soot off all of it, but the effect is lovely. He plays the courts of Men these days, though he will not set foot in an Elven realm. The court of Rhovanion is safe enough. These are Men of the North, and they do not know the old tales except when he tells them. To them, Oropher is a distant legend, an Elven king killed centuries ago in the Last Alliance, and Thingol a name and no more. Thranduil is the Elven King, and to them always has been. He is Durlinn, and if they have ever heard of Maglor it is only the name of a minstrel who wrote a famous saga long ago. They would not believe he is Maglor if he told them.
Autumn, and a night of rain. The feast has gone late, and the king has retired as have most of the notables. A few sleepy pages remain waiting on the last diners, a few women who are taking the cloths off the upper tables and folding them for the morrow. He sits alone on the edge of the dais, his hands straying softly over the strings of his harp. The rain weaves in with his song, water seeking the sea, sundered from it to fall thousands of miles inland, exiled.
Like the Forsaken. He has seen Elleth a dozen times in two hundred years, coming by accident or later by purpose to her island in the Anduin. She greets him now as an old friend, and when she is not there he goes away again feeling oddly empty. It is only, he tells himself, that there is nowhere else he is welcome where anyone knows his right name.
His hands have found a thread of melody, a song teasing him just out of reach, mingling with the rain. It’s a thin thread, a simple tune like the rills of a wood elf’s flute but in a minor key, speaking of darkness and a single voice. Yes, that’s what it is. A single voice in the rain, barely more than a whisper. Like hearing it in darkness or deep underground. The tune resolves, turning round and round, a fragment of a children’s song from his boyhood, a song he wrote the notes for when such notation was new. He hasn’t thought about it in a thousand years, but it’s still there, sweet and simple and clear, full of the innocence of not knowing that anything bad has ever happened anywhere nor ever will.
And there. It twines around the wood elf tune in the minor key, twisting and turning around it, changing it, transforming it. He wishes he had a flautist at hand. This is really for two instruments, not for one alone. But he can make it for one alone. He can shift and change as the song does, a prisoner in darkness hearing another singing.
And now. Now the children’s tune stops, is taken up in richer, lower notes, a darker key. Now it’s growing. It’s stronger. It’s got muscle and sinew behind it. Yes, there is power there. If he had many musicians they would come in now, taking up the tune with deeper pipes, with the rich wood tones of the viol. Growing. Stronger. A beat behind it, a walking song, a marching song, a song of power as rich and full as any he has done, as the swelling power in the Noldolante when blood is spilled on the white stones of the Havens at Tirion. Yes, that. And that tune winds its way in too, the ruby themes of the Noldolante twisting around the other song. A joining of themes, tragic and wild, dark and bright like blood and gold.
His hair is falling forward in his eyes, and he glances up to see that all movement in the hall has ceased. The women are standing quiet, listening. One of the pages is squatting in front of him to listen, his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide.
For a moment his fingers falter. Silence almost falls. And then, once again, there is the sweet theme. The childhood theme, turning round and round the wood elf’s song, until it drifts into rain and the notes as pure as a distant flute heard in the greenwood, as pure as song heard from afar on a night of rain when sleep takes you by the fireside of a friend, drifting into peace. With the last note he stills the strings.
The page almost falls forward on his nose. The woman behind him, plump and kirtled, catches him. She looks at Maglor, eyes bright in her homely face. “Who is she?” she asks. “The woman you love?”
Outside, the rain gusts against the hall.
“The highest and fairest lady still on these shores,” he says. What other truth can there be?
“Then hadn’t you better be getting back to her then?” the woman asks.
“Maybe I should at that,” Maglor says.
Late autumn, and a night of rain. Maglor is playing in the court of Rhovanion. The hall is large and well defended, even if it is built of wood and not stone, elaborately carved and painted, the ceiling rich with bulls and horses and stags whose gilt paint reflects the light of the torches below. Someone goes to a great deal of trouble to clean the soot off all of it, but the effect is lovely. He plays the courts of Men these days, though he will not set foot in an Elven realm. The court of Rhovanion is safe enough. These are Men of the North, and they do not know the old tales except when he tells them. To them, Oropher is a distant legend, an Elven king killed centuries ago in the Last Alliance, and Thingol a name and no more. Thranduil is the Elven King, and to them always has been. He is Durlinn, and if they have ever heard of Maglor it is only the name of a minstrel who wrote a famous saga long ago. They would not believe he is Maglor if he told them.
Autumn, and a night of rain. The feast has gone late, and the king has retired as have most of the notables. A few sleepy pages remain waiting on the last diners, a few women who are taking the cloths off the upper tables and folding them for the morrow. He sits alone on the edge of the dais, his hands straying softly over the strings of his harp. The rain weaves in with his song, water seeking the sea, sundered from it to fall thousands of miles inland, exiled.
Like the Forsaken. He has seen Elleth a dozen times in two hundred years, coming by accident or later by purpose to her island in the Anduin. She greets him now as an old friend, and when she is not there he goes away again feeling oddly empty. It is only, he tells himself, that there is nowhere else he is welcome where anyone knows his right name.
His hands have found a thread of melody, a song teasing him just out of reach, mingling with the rain. It’s a thin thread, a simple tune like the rills of a wood elf’s flute but in a minor key, speaking of darkness and a single voice. Yes, that’s what it is. A single voice in the rain, barely more than a whisper. Like hearing it in darkness or deep underground. The tune resolves, turning round and round, a fragment of a children’s song from his boyhood, a song he wrote the notes for when such notation was new. He hasn’t thought about it in a thousand years, but it’s still there, sweet and simple and clear, full of the innocence of not knowing that anything bad has ever happened anywhere nor ever will.
And there. It twines around the wood elf tune in the minor key, twisting and turning around it, changing it, transforming it. He wishes he had a flautist at hand. This is really for two instruments, not for one alone. But he can make it for one alone. He can shift and change as the song does, a prisoner in darkness hearing another singing.
And now. Now the children’s tune stops, is taken up in richer, lower notes, a darker key. Now it’s growing. It’s stronger. It’s got muscle and sinew behind it. Yes, there is power there. If he had many musicians they would come in now, taking up the tune with deeper pipes, with the rich wood tones of the viol. Growing. Stronger. A beat behind it, a walking song, a marching song, a song of power as rich and full as any he has done, as the swelling power in the Noldolante when blood is spilled on the white stones of the Havens at Tirion. Yes, that. And that tune winds its way in too, the ruby themes of the Noldolante twisting around the other song. A joining of themes, tragic and wild, dark and bright like blood and gold.
His hair is falling forward in his eyes, and he glances up to see that all movement in the hall has ceased. The women are standing quiet, listening. One of the pages is squatting in front of him to listen, his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide.
For a moment his fingers falter. Silence almost falls. And then, once again, there is the sweet theme. The childhood theme, turning round and round the wood elf’s song, until it drifts into rain and the notes as pure as a distant flute heard in the greenwood, as pure as song heard from afar on a night of rain when sleep takes you by the fireside of a friend, drifting into peace. With the last note he stills the strings.
The page almost falls forward on his nose. The woman behind him, plump and kirtled, catches him. She looks at Maglor, eyes bright in her homely face. “Who is she?” she asks. “The woman you love?”
Outside, the rain gusts against the hall.
“The highest and fairest lady still on these shores,” he says. What other truth can there be?
“Then hadn’t you better be getting back to her then?” the woman asks.
“Maybe I should at that,” Maglor says.