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~ Nerdanel slept, and his sons too. Fëanor did not sleep or have any desire to. He sat in the quiet outer chamber and thought —

— He thought that no matter how many allies they might gain, Eldar or Maia, they could do nothing against the Valar. Nothing would ever change in Valinor. The Powers did not want it to. If the Eldar wanted change and freedom, they had to leave. (And a little warning voice whispered ‘If we can’. He snarled at it, and burned it away).
As they were, they could not topple the Valar from their thrones and yet even that would be easier than changing their stone-set attitudes.

Quietly, Fëanor checked his sleeping children, knowing that he would not subject them to unknown lands at their young age. For a time, he was tied to Valinor.

Except — he was not. As Laurelin’s gold trumped Telperion’s silver he smiled as his fingers turned the Mirror case. He was no fool; he had seen and felt the Outside, but it served as a reminder that the cage of Valinor was permeable. There were ways out. He touched the case as if it were a talisman. Or a key. It was certainly the latter and helped him to view the coming years with something at least approaching equanimity.

Eönwe had left them with warnings: ‘While we may meet and talk, we should be cautious. There are many who are bound to the Valar, who revere them and they may carry tales. Could thy minds stand against the Valar’s sight? And even if they could, Manwë waits only for an excuse to banish thee — and kill thee.’

Fëanor tossed his hair back, hot words ready to spill from his lips, but Fingolfin caught his wrist in a steely grip which brought his head around to the burning star-blue eyes. He said, instead: ‘We will be cautious.’

And after, when Ingwë and Eönwë had gone, he forgot all caution in the magnificent convulsion of sex. It had been wilder, more savage, more angry than at any time before. ’The secrets we share also keep us apart, Fingolfin had said. Yet he, too, had been glowing, after and Fingolfin thought: Whatever we are growing into is glorious.

After Maglor’s extraordinary performance, which seemed to affect him not at all, Nerdanel was eager to leave the next morning. Indis was conspicuous by her absence whereas before she would have called Nerdanel to her chambers. Finwë looked as if he held his temper tightly in check and there was a frown between his brows. Fingolfin (superbly haughty) stood beside their father as Fëanor and his people rode out of the ward and toward the great gates. Fëanor, not turning his head, sent a stinging mental kiss into his brother's mind. He felt the hot shock of its return and smiled. And, as they rode he thought of Vanimöré’s kiss, an inferno that some inner alchemy had turned to a burning cold.

What happened to thee?

There was no answer, and he knew there would not be. Not yet. Vanimöré had put up barriers as high as the Pelori and as impenetrable. But even that mountain chain was split by the Calacirya. Fëanor would discover the chink in that armour one day and not from prurient curiosity, but sympathy. For now though, he must return to Formenos; there was Hilyaro (Sáro) to see.

And the bard came only three days later. He arrived quietly and Fëanor had him brought to his private study. He was not inclined to look with favour upon anyone who touched his sons but if Hilyaro knew something, if it explained his actions, Fëanor would listen.

‘High Prince.’ The man looked uncomfortable but the long, sour set of his mouth was nowhere in evidence. ‘I must tell thee I am here in defiance of King Finwë’s orders.’

Fëanor rose from his seat. ‘Indeed?’ This played so neatly into the lie of a schism between Tirion and Formenos it seemed unlikely to be true. Fëanor planted the palms of his hands on the great desk and stared at the bard.
‘Why would he object?’ he asked, thinking he knew full well but wanting to hear it.

Hilyaro hesitated. Fëanor waved him to a chair.
‘The King does not like such things spoken of,’ he replied expressionless. ‘Cuiviénen,’ he added.

‘I know,’ Fëanor responded dryly. ‘This is about my son’s voice? The Power of Song as thou didst call it.’

‘There were some in Cuiviénen who could use their voices thus, yes. A few. Everyone had different talents, but then…’ He looked down. ‘It was like a game, but if it were trained…’

It could be a weapon, Fëanor nodded. ‘Different talents,’ he repeated. ‘Yes…Thou art thinking that those who were snared by the Dark God could have fought back had those talents been trained?’

Hilyaro’s eyes came up. They were very dark and filled with an old and helpless pain. ‘We cannot know, and we are not gods but when thy son released the power of his voice…’ He groped. ‘There was one I served. He did not have that power but one of his friends did and they were taken. If they had known how to use it, direct it…’

‘Thou didst not serve Finwë, then?’

The man flushed. Fëanor, impatient, said, ‘I do know he had a twin.’

Hilyaro came up from his seat. ‘You know about Élernil?’

‘Yes. I know he was taken by the Dark God.’ And such was the expression on the bard’s face that Fëanor wanted to tell him that Élernil, now Edenel, had survived, as had others. But Eönwë’s warning echoed in his memory, and the wings of fear for his children, for Fingolfin, cooled him.

‘And Finwë never searched for him. He forbade it after some of our people went and never returned.’ There was so much rancour in the reply it could not be mistaken but neither could Fëanor dismiss the suspicion that Finwë had sent him as a spy.

‘So, if thou didst feel so passionately, why didst thou come to Valinor?’

Hilyaro said on a breath of cynical laughter. ‘I thought the Valar would do something!’

Fëanor was momentarily surprised but it made sense did it not? The Valar, the apparent rescuers of the quendi were gods. They had waged war on one of their brethren.

His hands clenched. He said, ‘And they did not?’

‘They said that when they descended into Utumno, they found abominations and slew them.’ Hilyaro’s eyes closed briefly as if to trap the horror within, but Fëanor felt it like an emanation of heat.

He very much doubted the Valar would ever send a spy whose work entailed expressing disapproval of them. Their egos were too great. If Hilyaro were a spy he was one of Finwë’s. There was one way to find out: Edenel still walked upon Endor.

‘Thou may dwell here in Formenos and teach Maglor,’ he said. ‘But touch him again and I will pull out thy heart.’

Hilyaro did not react in the way he expected. Instead, he flushed, and Fëanor recalled that he was not born in ever-bright Valinor and was of an older time and world. ‘For that,’ he said. ‘I am sorry.’

Fëanor regarded him. ‘Very well. And thou wilt also apologise to him.’

~ Fëanor had seen visions of Edenel in the Mirror shard, but had only spoken to the one from the old universe. Because, he thought the one here, who walks on Endor does not have a piece of the Mirror. It was obvious once he considered it. And he remembered the shards spinning out across the multiverses and that he had made the original.

It is my creation. I can control it.

He briefly considered stepping into the Outside again, peril be damned. Vanimöré had warned him and he well recalled the horrific feelings he had become entangled with, but at no time had he felt any fear. It was tempting. It was yet…he had two shards now.

He waited until the Mingling fell, after the evening meal, when most of the workshops were closed up. Not all; there were always some where the men and women worked at any hour; he did himself. But habit was strong in Valinor, and most were accustomed to using the Mingling hours to sleep.

Nerdanel had been in her own workshop today and he was glad to see her returning to her craft. But after the meal she had gone to bed, pleading tiredness. Fëanor spent some time with his boys before they too, slept, and then went to his study.

He closed the thick drapes against the light and sat down, drawing the Mirror case and the shard from his pocket. He opened the case and set both on the table.

The blank silver showed him nothing but his own reflection. He delved deep into his mind, and commanded: ‘Show me!’

The surface of the Mirror rippled then cleared to a wheel of stars.

No. Not that. Not yet. Show me Endor.

Green leaves in an embroidery of full-leaved lushness: a place of trees; a small hillock from whence a fresh of water burst, cascading down a ferny rockface.

Show me…my father.

His heart pounded at the words, at the meaning of them. A remembered loneliness felt like a misstep he might take and fall into a crevasse.

And walking out of the trees came an Elf. Élernil. Edenel. Scorched-white hair braided back with black raven feathers, startling against its pallor, wound into it. He was dressed from throat to feet in soft hide, and looked wild and strange and powerful. Yet his face might have been a carving. It held no expression at all.

The way he walked was like Vanimöré and Fëanor recognised it now. It was purely dangerous, alert, ready to flash into movement, yet smooth as the slide of honey down glass.

What was done to you…what was done to him…?

Edenel paused, unslung a leathern flask and held it under the flow of the water, stoppering it once it was full. He drank from the flow, shaking the wetness from his fingers. Fëanor slowly pushed his hand through the Mirror and at once could hear the sounds of the world, not merely see it. The breeze through the branches, the flow of water, birdsong. Fëanor flicked his wrist and released the shard. It struck the rock, tinkling, bounced down the tiny gulley and landed at Edenel’s booted feet.

The reaction to that sound was instant. A pair of knives seemed to spring into the Elf’s hands with a spark of light. He went into a crouch, eyes scanning the surroundings. Whatever he heard or felt eased some of the tension. Birds still sang; there were no alarm calls as they fled disturbance.

He sheathed one knife, reached and picked up the shard. Fëanor’s long perspective changed in a blink to a close one of Edenel’s face, eyes staring into the Mirror, a faint frown between his brows. Tiny silver and gold sparks lit the white of his eyes.

Fëanor’s throat tightened. Heat swept up his body, bloomed across his cheeks.
‘Edenel,’ he said. ‘Élernil that was. I am Fëanor and I speak to thee from Valinor.’

~ Lake Como eventually (reluctantly) released Raymond Callaghan’s body as if bored with the taste and spitting it out. Vanimöré tipped a mental nod to his sister and waited for the official announcement. He had been politely requested to remain at Villa Fiorini until the body was recovered, which he had expected.

The body was something of a shock to the divers and the forensic pathologist — and Howard, who returned from the autopsy looking exceedingly grim. Vanimöré poured him a tot of cognac and waited while he sipped. Howard glared at him, but it lacked a little of his usual force.
‘Nothing is simple with you, is it?’ He gestured with his glass. ‘Nothing is ever bloody simple.’

Vanimöré quirked a brow. ‘Well?’

Howard drank again and closed his eyes.
‘Callaghan’s body was found a lot deeper than it should have been. There was a large, very wide piece of wood found lodged up his rectum.’ He coughed. ‘Very wide. Another down his throat. And—‘ as Vanimöré’s expression remained unchanged. ‘There were bite marks on his body that had torn off flesh, and hand prints — all of them were small. Young. And that,’ he ended. ‘Is classified at the moment. As is the fact that Callaghan did not drown. Not enough water in his lungs.’ His eyes held Vanimöré’s for a long moment of silence and when Vanimöré only steepled his fingers, Howard burst out: ‘You knew didn’t you?’

Vanimöré shook his head. ‘So how did he die? Trauma?’

‘Pretty much. Shock, blood loss. Technically, homicide.’

‘And a most poetic ending. Especially the use of the branches.’

‘What’s down there, Steele?’ Howard barked. ‘In that lake?’

‘My dear Howard, nothing,’ Vanimöré said. ‘Or not now. I trust the report will omit this?’

‘Consensus on that is in agreement across all the services. He drowned.’

‘Well done. You may have your Christmas bonus after all.’ He absorbed the baleful glare. ‘So, his son James is arriving today. Will he want to see the body?’

‘Apparently not. It’s you he wants to see.’

James Callaghan was not under arrest — yet — no-one was, although the veracity of the witnesses to his father’s unequivocal admission of guilt had placed him in the spotlight. The investigation had begun and it had lit a fire under a great many powerful people.

‘Be careful,’ Howard cautioned. ‘On the surface, James Callaghan’s blameless but he does inherit his father’s empire. Callaghan has a daughter who lives in New Zealand and cut ties with her father twenty years ago. We’ve begun following that up but she’s being unhelpful. No love lost there though she lives on money he sent her monthly. She’s the oldest child. James is from another wife and twenty years younger. Not rich in seed, Callaghan.’

Neither did James look anything like him. A golden boy with a golden tan and short, thick golden hair, suave and smooth and primped and scented, glossy as a male model. He was suited in charcoal grey, possibly as a nod to his father’s death, though his tie was a rich blue that matched his eyes. Vanimöré had seen him before albeit briefly and from a distance, and read all the information the DDE had gleaned but now, seeing him in the flesh, he took a second look.

Camino, who had shown him in, shut the door and James Callaghan stopped dead. A look of puzzlement swept across his face, banishing the annoyance that no doubt stemmed from being searched for concealed weapons before entering. He glanced around the salon as if expecting to see someone else in the room, then his eyes came back to Vanimöré.

He said, ‘You can’t be Lucien Steele.’

Vanimöré rose from his chair. ‘If I’m not, then you are most definitely in the wrong place, Mr. James Callaghan.’

‘But—‘ He stopped. ‘I’m sorry, I thought you would be older.’

Ignoring that, Vanimöré gestured to a chair. At that moment, one of the staff entered with a tray of tea. One of Howard’s staff rather than Vanimöré’s own. They set it down and retreated. Vanimöré poured the tea.
‘Do help yourself to milk and sugar.’

James took one of the delicate cups with well-trained social grace. He was not awkward here, in this beautiful room; it was something his life had accustomed him to. Yet he held himself stiffly. It was not the surroundings that made him nervous but the meeting, the man he had come to see. Well, it did no harm for him to be off-balance. People in that state of mind were prone to make mistakes and Vanimöré was quite prepared to push.
He sipped the tea. It was Lapsang Souchong, rich and dark and smoky.
‘You wanted to meet me,’ he said. ‘That interested me. Your life is almost as elusive as mine.’

James had been his father’s shadow, and groomed (though the connotations of the word were unpleasant) to take over Callaghan’s empire — or so it was widely believed. Educated in the United States, he had then gone to Cambridge. Married and divorced at twenty-three, he was now twenty-nine. Apart from photographs of his father, in which he often appeared, very little was known of him. No spreads in Tatler or Harpers, no newspaper articles. For a billionaire’s handsome son, he apparently lived the life of a monk which was interesting in itself. Callaghan senior had held the reins tightly.

James gained time to answer by drinking the tea, then put the cup down on a small table.
‘Thank you for seeing me.’ Stiffly. ‘I understand this meeting is off the record.’

Vanimöré nodded. It was an ongoing investigation; legally they should not be speaking with one another.
‘You are not here,’ he agreed.

Taking a breath, James hesitated then said quickly: ‘When I contacted Apollyon to try and arrange this meeting I was told that it was unlikely I’d be able to see you. Later, I was called by Howard Wainwright.’

‘Yes.’

‘I wanted to meet you to ask one question. I asked Mr. Wainwright and he told me nothing. I’m hoping that you will, Mr. Steele.’

Vanimöré spread his hands. ‘Then ask.’

James eyed him as if he mistrusted this openness, and he was right to, but he took the plunge regardless.
‘Before the police were called here that night, one of my father’s security staff phoned me. He told me what happened. Then, I assume, he went to try and find him. Or that was his intention. He didn’t.’
‘My father was…I’d call it excited but that doesn’t cut it. He was triumphant when he was invited here. Yes, it was Héloïse Gauthier’s May ball but the villa is yours.’ His hands gripped together. Vanimöré said nothing, only waited.
‘Everyone who’s anyone wanted an invite. So my father’s bodyguards were wired with a recording device.’ Colour mounted into his cheeks. ‘He hoped to speak to you and incriminate you in some way that he could later use…for blackmail.’ He spoke with a well-educated and modulated voice rather like David’s, save the American accent was far more apparent. Both young men were of the same mould: only sons of rich and powerful men. But whereas David’s dark time in London had matured him, James Callaghan seemed younger than his years. Not juvenile, Vanimöré thought, not unworldly but rather as someone who has been shut away from the world. Yes, that was it.

‘I suppose they destroyed it,’ Vanimöré murmured, as if it did not matter at all. Howard had said that every guest should be searched for both weapons and devices. Vanimöré had taken it on himself to downvote the motion. On his head be it. And it might be useful.

‘I told him to give it to me,’ James Callaghan told him. ‘I wanted to hear it.’

‘And did you?’

‘Yes.’ It came out curtly. ‘It’s my understanding that…’ Again he paused. ‘That my father and Mortimer Worth abused Worth’s son, Blaise.’ He swallowed. ‘There seems to be no doubt that there were others.’

‘That is my understanding too,’ Vanimöré replied, watching carefully. Then, with a sudden bite: ‘How much did you know?’

James sat up. His eyes looked almost blank as if the mind behind them had closed itself off.

Vanimöré sipped his tea, then said, his voice hard as hammered steel: ‘Your father’s words before very credible witnesses, his attack and later murder of Mortimer Worth and his own death has set off a fuse, James. It is not the end; it is hardly even the beginning. MI6 and many other agencies across the world are collaborating. Already, as you must know, people who knew your father and Worth have disavowed any knowledge of child sex abuse. As they would. Others have gone completely silent. Your father and Worth were only two people. This organisation has tentacles that spread around the globe. If you knew anything, it will come to light. And you will be looking at dying in jail, I promise you that.’ He watched the blue eyes widen. ‘No-one involved in this is going to escape. It is not going to be brushed under the rug no matter how important, influential and wealthy the people involved are, it is not going to be bogged down in legalities for years. And at some point, someone is going to squeal like a stuck pig and give names.’ He put his cup aside and rose, using the power of height to intimidate quite deliberately. He stared down at James Callaghan who looked back at him as if turned to ice. ‘But the fascinating thing is, that I am not seeing a man in grief for his father’s death. I am seeing relief. And that interests me considerably.’

The lovely old clock ticked in the quiet.

James shook his head in an odd bewilderment.
‘My lawyers have told me not to talk to anyone. They don’t know I’m here. But as far as I’m concerned this investigation can uncover what it wants.’ His mouth compressed. ‘I — you don’t know my life, Mr. Steele, but I can assure you my movements are all accounted for and none of them lead to a child sex ring.’ He pushed out through his teeth. ‘Am I shocked? No. I could never be shocked at anything my father might do. He was… Wait a minute, please —‘ as if Vanimöré might begin to speak and stop him. ‘I thought — Blaise Worth. Is he dead? Do you know?’

Vanimöré blinked. ‘Blaise Worth vanished seven years ago,’ he said hardly. ‘His father searched for him but so did yours. Some of the private investigators Worth hired died or are still missing persons. I assume that the people your father hired did that. Possibly Mortimer Worth wanted to find his son for laudable reasons, but I doubt Raymond Callaghan did. Blaise was out from under their surveillance — and I think he was surveilled from the time he was abused, all the way through Marlborough. When he fell off the radar, that represented a danger to them.’ He saw the quick contraction of the sleek brows and James said, ‘I heard the accusation after the play. Was Blaise in contact with MI6? How else would they know? And they must have told you, so that you could set the trap.’

Vanimöré frowned, regarding him. ‘You should, by rights, be here either to attempt to threaten me, cut some kind of deal, or to convince me of your own innocence. I would not advise it, by the way. Yet you want to know about Blaise Worth. That is the question you came here to ask. And I must ask you. Why?’

James stood. He was tall, but still had to look up. He shot his cuffs, adjusting the gold links. ‘Because I think he’s my half-brother.’

Chapter Text

~ By agreement, there were only three of them here. Manwë knew that if necessary he could influence or even bend others to his will, but Oromë, Estë, Ulmo and Nessa were always difficult, Nienna too far gone into her madness, and Irmo was often incomprehensible.

And so the great chamber held only himself, Varda and Námo. Even Eönwë and Ingwë were not in attendance; not for this. A wind, lifeless, smelling of agelong ice moaned through the immense arched windows and hummed about the pillars.

‘Thou wouldst say our brother is penitent?’ he asked and not for the first time. Melkor was not one of them, but naming him thus avoided the mystery of his origins. Melkor had not come into existence with the Valar; the universe seemed to have spat him out of its dark core. And with that arose something equally disturbing: it was not possible for the Valar to read his soul. Any attempt glanced away.

Námo’s hooded head lifted. ‘I have said so.’ Infinitely patient.

‘But how do we know?’ Manwë spoke the nagging doubt, eliciting a bony shrug of Námo’s shoulders.
‘I judge by his words. We set the time of his sentence: Three Ages. It is almost upon us.’

‘It could be prolonged.’

‘I could be, but I advise against it. The Halls are…changed since he was bound there. They are dark even to my sight, filled with whispering shadows. His presence has affected them and my thought is that they are warped and may — possibly — weaken.’

Varda turned her haughty head and raised a brow. ‘It was my belief that thou hadst utmost control over thy halls?’ she challenged with a mocking lift of her brows. ‘That thou didst create them and that they are inescapable. Thou art telling us they are not, and that Melkor may break free if he is not released?’ She swung to Manwë. ‘My Void-cell would have held him until this universe dies!’

Of all of them, only Varda had been able to experiment with the universe itself and the beyond, where nothing existed, antithetical and terrifying even for gods so that they had named it the Void or the Everlasting Dark. She had been successful in making a prison from a sliver of it and encircling it with her power. The act had irreparably drained her and the cell had never been used. Yet its creation had been useful; Námo had thought long on it and so his Halls came into being. In some way, they were part of his labyrinthine mind, both internal and external to it. Varda’s jail was only a part of the whole of the Void, yet limited so that ‘cell’ was an apt name for it.

‘We wanted Melkor held close,’ Manwë reminded her coldly. He was (or had been) more powerful than they were. It had taken all of them and the army of their Maia servants to capture him. Individually, he was immeasurably more mighty. Námo however, said that his tampering with the life force of Arda had drained him much as Varda was diminished after creating her cell but still he was perilous.

‘Yes, thy prison may yet be used, Lady,’ Námo bowed to her. ‘And for others beside Melkor. But we must release him and not only because we set his term and the end of it draws nigh. Think on it.’ A pale hand emerged from its sleeve, almost skeletal and the digits abnormally long and spidery. ‘Fëanor forms a court to rival Tirion and his mind is one of creation and fire. Aulë admits that Fëanor has outstripped his tutelage and because he is no god, he innovates and discovers. Many wonders he creates but he is dangerous. He has no respect for our Laws.’

He would not name what he suspected; neither would Námo. It was enough.

‘He has no respect for us.’ The insectile chittering became more audible when Námo was enraged, his back more bowed and hunched. ‘He will raise his children to follow in his steps, and he is the High Prince of the Noldor not some house servant whose words would be dismissed out of hand or punished. He exercised an unhealthy influence on his brother, though that appears to have waned — if reports be true.’ His head swung to Manwë.

‘I believe the reports of Eönwë,’ Manwë said dismissively. ‘He is bound to me and cannot lie. Olórin, too, went to Formenos. The foundations of this schism between the half-brothers were built long ago when we permitted Finwë to remarry so how can it surprise thee that Fëanor’s jealousy and arrogance have splintered their early friendship? All we need to do is encourage it, drive the wedge deeper. If Fëanor becomes an anathema to his father and the great lords, Fingolfin may — and with the approval of the Noldor, and us, naturally — become High Prince.’

‘Leaving Fëanor free to spread further sedition,’ Varda pointed out. ‘Banishment is not enough. Why not kill him?’

‘Thou knowest why,’ Manwë snapped. ‘The Eldar who transgressed and were rightly punished were then not wholly under the influence of the Holy Nectar but enough so their people made no great outcry and were satisfied by the answers we gave them. They knew our Laws and one cannot break them with impunity. The Trees have been wronged and their dew no longer imparts tranquility and obedience. We cannot suffer a rebellion among the Eldar. True, we could destroy them if they rebelled against us, but then what?’

Then what? They would have no pretty servants or so few that it would be unsatisfactory. The Eldar who worshipped them and loved them would be made to see that their kindly overlords were tyrants. There were Elves in Endor, but they were the descendants of those who had turned away from the Great Journey or never chose to set foot upon it. And now, there was no Tree dew to tame them.

The Valar were accustomed to lordship. It was what had brought them from the Timeless Halls to the nascent Arda in all its young fire: the visions of the Children who would come, born to the world and free. They were strange, they were beautiful. They would make the most wonderful little slaves, decorative and useful for they had minds that thought and sought, hands that fashioned, hearts that could love — or hate.

The Valar could not leave Arda; they were trapped here and so could find no other world to begin anew. And what is a god if they are not recognised as such? What is a god if they are not worshipped?

‘Yes, the Holy Nectar,’ Varda said with fragments of ice in her mouth. ‘And still we do not know who is responsible for that crime. And others.’ The indelible marks like bloodstains that marred the statues, the sensation of being watched by unseen eyes. ‘Unless it is Eru.’ She looked pointedly, mockingly, at Manwë.

‘It is not.’ Manwë could say nothing else as the purported mouthpiece of the One. But in truth he did not know. The Timeless Halls they had found upon awakening…existed. The great mountain-throne with its stupendous palace was inaccessible but it was not abandoned. Living power shone from it as if the mountain were a burning sun. But whoever had created it did not step forth to speak with the new-born Valar. So they had imagined a Creator and Manwë claimed that the Creator spoke to him alone. But there was nothing. There never had been. If it were indeed Eru who silently meddled in Valinor then there was no defence and inwardly Manwë (and all of them) feared.

‘Let us not stray from the path,’ he intoned and nodded to Námo. ‘Say on, brother.’

‘Fëanor is dangerous,’ Námo reiterated. ‘And his — passion,’ he picked the word and dropped it before them as if it were something unclean, sullying the white floor of the chamber. ‘Ignites hearts. Oh, many go to Formenos to learn, or so they tell themselves, but it is truly to be near him.. He has a kind of attraction that is potent it seems. And Fingolfin possesses the same, though his temper is less volatile. It is providential that they are now unfriends. The two of them allied could be…difficult.’

Manwë had known passion only once, under Melkor and, because he loathed that he had been used and then mocked, that Melkor had treated him as if he, Manwë, were nothing after ripping his purity away, he turned away from the memory as from filth. That was the chiefest reason for his wishing Melkor to remain imprisoned. For so had he possessed that kind of magnetism, at least in the ancient days.

‘Melkor too, created though his makings were abominations as did his mightiest servant Mairon, whom Aulë still mourns,’ Námo said insinuatingly. ‘What would be more natural than for Melkor, when he is free, to seek out Fëanor, one of his own ilk. And who better to destroy him, leaving our hands clean?’

The words hung like a bloody banner on the mournful wind.

‘Melkor is arrogant,’ Námo continued. ‘Fëanor is arrogant. They will clash heads like two bulls. And neither of them forgets a slight. But Melkor is a Power. Fëanor, for all his fire, is but Elda. And then —‘

‘The Noldor will demand justice,’ Varda mused. ‘Or even declare vengeance upon him. And we, of course, have the perfect excuse to imprison him again.’ She glared at Námo’s faceless hood. ‘If we can.’

‘He is not undefeatable,’ Námo reminded her but none of them (save Tulkas) had enjoyed their battles against Melkor. They had known pain — and fear, too. ‘Let the Noldor take up arms against him, then. We would prevent full war of course, but Melkor has no other allies here, not Mairon, none of the fire demons. Even a brief conflict against the Eldar — before we stepped in to halt it — might be enough to weaken him at least a little. Then send Eönwë and his legions and Tulkas into battle.’

Varda said silkily. ‘But the Eldar here are not trained in arms.’

‘But they did use weapons,’ Manwë said. ‘Mostly for hunting or sport. Not for war. And some are used in the athletes fields: spears, bows. They simply have to be…reminded.’

‘Then send Eönwë to train them,’ Námo suggested.

‘And what reason do we give?’ Varda inquired, sounding uninterested. She had only twice descended from Ilmarin; once to welcome the three tribes of the quendi to the Blessed Realm then to sit in conclave in the Mahanaxar where the Valar debated Finwë’s wish to remarry. She preferred her icy-white chambers elevated far above the masses where she might contemplate the stars she could never return to. She had attempted it and with her failure came the realisation that they were as bound to Arda as the mountains and seas. More bound even than the Elves as their experiments had shown. Námo might suck souls into his endless Halls when they were newly ripped from the body and vulnerable, but if he permitted release, the Elf’s spirit went beyond the Valar’s knowledge. They could feel it, free and brilliant for a moment. It was not extinguished like the light in the dead body’s eyes. But they could not trace where it went. That was disturbing and another mystery to lay at the feet of the Creator. Better to gather those souls quickly. So far there had been few. As for the Elves on Endor, their fates on death were unknown.

‘Let Eönwë enact friendship toward them,’ Námo said. ‘Let him murmur words of battle since Melkor, as is known, was a murderer and torturer of quendi. He will speak only to the princes and lords of course, and they will train others. They will want to. No doubt there will be some rivalry. Let it be so. Great Houses in competition with others. Yes.’ The word drew out like a serpent’s hiss.

Manwë considered it. Eönwë was his, part of his status as King of Arda. He had bound the power of storms and drew it from his herald whenever he wished yet something in Eönwë remained out of reach, aloof. Stormrider. Windweaver. But for all that, he was wholly obedient (for he could be nothing less) and was the only one suited to this task. He was the greatest warrior in Arda not excepting Tulkas, whose mighty bulk might be stronger but lacked the speed and finesse of the Maia. He had only thrown down Melkor after Eönwë fought him. And Tulkas did not use weapons; he wrestled. The Eldar wrestled for their games and needed no teaching.

‘Very well,’ he said, and summoned his herald.

~ He was a hunter, a tracker, a warrior. He was Chieftain of the Ithiledhil. He was a survivor. Perhaps, as Mairon had said in the red-lit depths of Utumno, he was a different kind of monster. But before all those he was a survivor. All his people were.

In the south, on the edges of vast Taur-im-Duinath, spring green deepened into summer gold. It was a rich time of warmth, of short, light nights and misty mornings that rolled lazily into hot days of dappled sunlight. Sometimes, storms rolled in from the Bay of Balar and the great trees roared like surf but often the summers settled into a calm that bleached the grasses. To the East the Gelion still flowed deep, fed by the seven rivers running down from Ered Luin. Even in the driest summers, yonder Ossiriand was green.

The Ithiledhil had not crossed Gelion since the Nandor Elves came across the mountains some years ago and settled in that rich, quiet land.
Denethor, son of Lenwë had led them and so changed were the Ithiledhil that they shunned other Elves lest they be seen as abominations. Only from a distance, and more silent than hunting foxes, they watched and withdrew. After, they hunted north toward the lone hill of Amon Ereb and sometimes further or struck south following the river and the forest edge. Game was bountiful in those years and a time when the Ithiledhil rested.

Not healed. Never healed. The abyss of dark Utumno split their souls asunder. But the ‘Heat’ came upon them, a terrible, violent release of their torment. They fashioned it, learned to control it, for the abandonment of ecstasy and agony was too furious, mindless, leaving them open to ambush or attack. And so they set aside certain times for its release: midsummer, midwinter, the time of flowering (Later called Tarnin Austa), a day when autumn sank toward winter and mists stalked the forest — and with them, sometimes, the houseless souls of the Dead.

But the spring-time of the ‘Heat’ had passed. The forest dreamed and though Edenel ranged far on his lone patrol, there was no danger in the woods or the green margin of land beyond. But he was not relaxed. He could never allow his attention to sleep, not for a moment. None of them could. (Because the screams were always there, that blinding horror, the black crush of a mind like a mountain, the long, long fall that never ended.)

And, because he was a warrior and a survivor when the bright thing struck the rock and fell into the rivulet of water, he instantly tensed into battle-readiness. Ironic, thought that ever-watching guardian that barred the doors to madness, that he had learned this in Utumno.

But the forest sang easily to itself. The birds called and the water danced like a maiden of Cuiviénen in the days before the Shadow came down from the North. There was no scent of danger in the bright, warm air. Sometimes the miscreatures of Utumno, the giant Fell-wolves, roamed south in winter — and there were other things. Once, Edenel thought he caught the stink of Thuringwethil, blood and old death and sour, tainted earth.

The Ithiledhil hunted the Fell-wolves, remembering too well that Mairon could take that form. But they never glimpsed that huge white wolf with its glowing eyes, only those of its dark seed.

Slowly, when he was certain that nothing stalked the forest margins, he picked up the glinting shard of glass.

In Utumno, he had not dreamed. Melkor was within every part of him, violating the soul. He could follow one into sleep; there was no escape from that colossal, eviscerating Mind. But after…after they had walked from the doors of Utumno and defied him, Melkor was gone from their souls, never to return. Only his imprint remained, like a brand.

Edenel dreamed of a terrible light, of a titan tower rising into a sky of dust; he dreamed of a Mirror and winter and people he had never seen before but knew to the core of his soul. He could not name them but their faces were like the glance of sunlight on dewdrops, brilliant and brief. Those dreams were shared by all of them.

And this was a face he knew from those dreams. It was like and unlike Finwë’s enough for Edenel to instantly recognise it even without those fragmented visions. And with that came pain and relief like a sword in his heart. This man was his blood. And his twin’s. But stars, he had the face of a god. His eyes were backlit by a stupendous and uncontrolled light. His brow seemed to flicker with the ghost of a crown.

And then came the shame, not wanting this man to see him as he was now, after Utumno. He controlled it and his expression. The desire to know waxed greater.
Edenel had seen the hammer of Melkor’s black sorcery and Mairon’s cruel, artistic magic so the artifact he held did not startle him unduly. The man and his words, did.

‘Fëanor?’ Edenel ran the unfamiliar name across his tongue. ‘Thou art his,’ he said and then with utter certainty. ‘Finwë’s. He lives? And Míriel and Indis?’

There was a tiny silence. Fëanor said. ‘Míriel was my mother. She…died.’

Grief caught, unexpected and burning, in Edenel’s throat. But he saw its shadow, too, in those diamond-fire eyes.
‘I am so sorry,’ he said tightly. ‘She was a friend, and somewhat more and dear to me.’ Then: ‘How?’

The shadow deepened, sharpened by anger. ‘They believe it was me. That I took her life, her energy.’

‘No.’ But Edenel’s mind flashed back to the women in Utumno, their rapes and following births, if one could call them that. Many died, and they were the lucky ones. But Fëanor was no monster.

Not a monster. But something…something only barely constrained by his form.

‘Indis is bound to Finwë.’

Edenel only nodded. Fëanor followed his words quickly. ‘There is so much I must tell thee, and so much to ask thee. But my brother — son of Indis — and myself mean to leave Valinor and our children too. Endor is our home. Valinor was a trap made to look inviting, baited with honey that turned sour on the tongue.’

Edenel listened in deepening horror as Fëanor told that the quendi. His people, his soul-brother, Míriel, Indis, so many others, and Ingwë, wild and beautiful under the bloom of stars, shackled to the Power who called himself the King of Arda. He heard of the Two Trees, awful and beautiful and unreal, of the dew that dripped always and was gathered, and had drugged the quendi into somnolence. Had. But no longer. When Fëanor related the god from the Outside who had entered Valinor like a thunderclap and negated the effects, Edenel drew in a breath. Fëanor paused in his tale.

‘The Dark Warrior. The god who walked the stars,’ Edenel murmured. ‘When we opened our eyes here, for a moment…We saw him.’

Fëanor’s eyes blazed with affirmation. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Who is he?’

A stunningly attractive smile, wry, brilliantly humorous, swept over Fëanor’s face.
‘Someone,’ he said. ‘Far more powerful than the Valar, but that, Edenel, is the problem.’

Edenel raised his eyes, looked around. The woods dreamed in the hot afternoon. Even the leaf rustle was stilled under the sun. He went down into a hunter’s crouch from where he could spring up at a thought, a sound.

‘Tell me.’

‘His name is Vanimöré.’

~ Vanimöré had not expected this revelation and yet…he was not wholly surprised. He had, since James Callaghan came in, been subconsciously tracing the bones of the face, the set and shape of the eyes, the elegant height.

‘I see,’ he said slowly. Although he did not, as yet.

An oversight. Mine, probably.

James said as if pushed, words tumbling: ‘He’s darker, yes, but —‘ And then his voice changed completely, the colour of anger hit his tanned cheeks and he cried furiously: ‘Did my father really abuse him? Did he—‘ Then his teeth snapped shut. His eyes burned, then the lids dropped to hide them.

‘Yes, Vanimöré said harshly. ‘He did. So did Worth. And there were others, too. This is a worldwide ring of child abusers, as I have said. Blaise was allowed to live — perhaps Worth put his foot down, though a man who would rape his own son can have no conscience. But I think the others were killed. If you knew nothing, suspected nothing, Callaghan must have kept you as confined as Danaë.’

James opened his eyes. If he was acting he was an excellent performer and wasting his life. But he was not. Vanimöré could feel the intensity of his emotion and it was completely authentic. Anger and horror have colours: firestorm red and black-shot white.

‘He did,’ James replied in the same tone though a quiver, tamped down, had shaken it. ‘Since I left university anyway. I suppose Cambridge was safe as I wasn’t around him, and didn't know what he was doing. He always said it was in my best interests to keep out of the limelight, that he was training me to be his partner and eventually his successor. He might have owned a media empire but he didn’t want his son to make any headlines.’ An odd, shaken laugh escaped him. ‘And all the time…But I need to know about Blaise, if he’s alive. I met him once, but then, I didn’t know anything, it was only after—‘

‘—Where did you meet Blaise Worth?’ Vanimöré asked abruptly. ‘You were not at Marlborough.’

‘Oh, no. Virgin Islands. My father was staying on Guana. Business and pleasure. Sometimes I sat in on the meetings but mostly he told me to take the yacht and have fun.’ A bitter non-smile came and went. ‘And that’s how I met Blaise. He wasn’t with Worth but a friend from school. Two or three families had met and their kids hung out together.’

He and Blaise had immediately hit it off (James said) and for a week or so, whenever James came over from Guana, all of them formed a group. He took them out on the yacht. There were a few parties, ‘Not too wild, just fun.’ He was a couple of years older than the oldest in the group and ‘I was like a surrogate big brother.’ They dived and swam or just cruised on the yacht.

‘The master was a decent man. I assume he was supposed to report to my father, but I don’t think he ever did; he said I should enjoy myself. And I did. It was the best holiday I ever had.’

Which said a great deal.

‘Did you tell Blaise who you were?’ Vanimöré asked. He sat down again, crossed one leg over the other.

‘No I—‘ A shrug. ‘I didn’t want to use my father’s name. I just wanted to be me.’

I absolutely understand that. He had made a name for himself but under his father’s hand he had been ‘The Slave’.
‘How did you come to think that he was your half-brother?’

‘Have you ever met anyone you thought you knew?’ James walked back and forth and then sat back on the edge of his chair. ‘It’s just a kind of recognition.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Vanimöré assured him.

‘I kept thinking that I must have met him somewhere, and then one of the others said we looked as if we might be brothers. I remember that we laughed, but it made me think, after…’ His voice trailed off. He looked at the teapot and, when Vanimöré nodded, poured. It was no longer hot but he drank it anyhow.

‘My father was leaving in a few days. We exchanged numbers, but I didn’t put them on my phone.’ He paused. ‘Even then I was careful, but not careful enough.’ Then he said, as if to himself: ‘It’s all going to come out anyhow. All of it. Everything.’ He looked up at Vanimöré and again that expression of puzzlement fleeting across his face. ‘Once I finished university and went home, it felt as if my father locked me into that world. His world. Even my marriage was arranged like a business deal. I thought everything was business for him, but clearly I was wrong.’ The brief flare of anger lost itself in what was unmistakably a resurgence of horror. ‘And you might think how can anyone control an adult that way — in the West anyhow — but it’s easy enough. It always comes down to money or threats or both. Not against me, he added. ‘But he bought security for me, and he had all his staff in his pocket. They were afraid of him.’ He straightened his already perfectly straight tie. ‘A cleaner must have found the phone numbers from the holiday and given them to my father. He called me in to see him and asked me why I hadn’t told him at the time. His questioning was too…too intense. He grilled me. And that made me suspicious because he didn’t care about the others, didn’t ask about them, only Blaise.’

And Callaghan’s strange attitude had the effect of making James close up, dismiss the matter as a brief holiday friendship. But his father seemed to want to know everything Blaise had said, the minutiae of their conversations. Nothing important, James replied. Vacation talk, made soft and lazy with sun and sea.

It was only after the long vacation, when he went back to university, that he began to really look into it, to search. He had been aware, the rest of his holiday, that he was watched. His father discouraged his going out on his own. If he did, he was followed.

Back at Cambridge he had used a university computer to search for Blaise Worth and his parents. He had met Mortimer Worth once or twice and not taken to him; like his father, he was a cold man who seemed to love only money. His son had been entirely different. And then he found a picture of Joanna Darling, Blaise’s mother, who had left her marriage and husband when Blaise was a boy and returned to Bermuda. She died a year later in a boating accident.

Joanna was tall and blonde and lovely. The photograph he found had appeared in Harper’s magazine and was taken on a yacht during her marriage. She was all long tanned legs and sun-bleached hair. James saw Blaise’s features in her own. But that was not what startled him, made him sit back and look into the distance at nothing. What he recalled was a memory long buried and forgotten as childhood memories often are.

‘Did you know that my…’ He hesitated as if to choose a better description, but went on: ‘My parents were married for just two years?’

Vanimöré nodded. ‘Solange Berkeley. Yes. Do you ever see her?’ The reports Howard had gathered said that mother and son had no relationship.

‘No,’ James replied curtly. ‘I don’t even remember her. From some of the staff, the yacht master for one, Louis — we used to have a beer in the evenings sometimes and talk — I gathered that she gave as good as she got. And I definitely got the impression — from him — that she despised my father. He never talked about her. There’s a saying that people who marry for money always end up earning it. I think she did. You see I think…no, I’m sure that Joanna Worth, nee Darling is Blaise’s mother. And mine.’

Chapter Text

~ The only outward expression Vanimöré allowed himself at James Callaghan’s words was a faint uplift of the brows but his mind reached instantly to Edenel and Coldagnir. Since Fëanor had entered this world and Vanimöré had stated he himself must return to the Monument, they had been especially vigilant of his movements. He felt their mind-flares, sun-storm and the ice-wind of deep winter.

Contact Howard. Tell him that James Callaghan believes that Worth’s former wife Joanna is both his mother and David’s. It might even be true; we will need DNA testing.

Howard was only a few rooms away, but Vanimöré could not speak into his mind, or not without it causing pain. Some minds 'received’ far easier than others. While excellent at his job, Howard’s mind was not one of them. Insofar as was possible, he ignored the ‘paranormal’ elements of the DDE and concentrated on ensuring the general public ignored them too.

Neither did Vanimöré wish to pause the conversation lest James think better of speaking to him. He was in the mood now to open his heart and Vanimöré could not snap that fragile thread. But the DDE needed to act on this information (supposition?) quickly. Vanimöré wondered, smiling a little, if Howard’s bellow of annoyance would be audible across the villa. He could delegate and would but the DDE were a small team; the kind of people that Vanimöré needed were exceptionally rare.

James stood up, walked to the windows and looked out. Vanimöré watched the rigid set of his shoulders under the expensive suit jacket and thought how David had held himself just in that way: taut and braced. But there were differences as well as similarities. James had inherited more than a little of his father’s assurance; it had rubbed off on him through proximity. A child will mimic their parents. Vanimöré knew he had adopted some of Sauron's mannerisms.

Blaise once possessed the confidence of his schooling but, dropping into the black underbelly of London at age eighteen had known a very different, dangerous, shadow-life. There was no security, no-one to turn to. His taut wariness was borne of that life. Too, there were none of the signs that Callaghan had abused his only son, rather he had wanted him kept close, almost protected.

‘So you see why I want to find Blaise Worth?’ James asked, not turning.

‘If it is true,’ Vanimöré murmured calmly. ‘Then naturally.’

‘It’s true. I think…I’m almost sure.’ His shoulders rose and fell. ‘I should start at the beginning.’

‘Certainly, if you feel it is any of my business.’

James swung back to him, eyes oddly piercing; the dead father’s confidence showing, for a moment, plainly in the son.

What is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. Vanimöré thought of Fëanor’s bloodline and Fingolfin’s. But James had inherited nothing physically from Callaghan. He must be all his mother’s.

‘I’ve never spoken of it to anyone else,’ James told him. ‘I can’t now discuss it with my father. I never would have. And you seem, Mr. Steele, to have connections with MI6 — and someone told them about Blaise’s past.’

‘Then I am at your disposal. More tea? Or a drink?’

James glanced at his watch. It was going on for six o clock.

‘Stay for dinner,’ Vanimöré suggested. ‘It will only be myself and Mr. Wainwright.’

‘I was going back to the Palace.’ James seemed to weigh something in his mind before accepting. Naturally. Raymond Callaghan had been lured here and died here, or at least very close by. Then, as if coming to a decision, James said, ‘Thank you, I will.’

Vanimöré nodded. ‘A drink then? Dinner is at seven.’

‘Thank you.’ His smile was genuine and appealing. A boy’s smile.

No, I do not think he is guilty of anything only ignorant and overwatched.

When the drink was poured, James took a sip and exhaled. Then he began to speak.

‘The beginning then: I vividly remember a night when I was young, four, five and couldn’t sleep. I had bad dreams, sleepwalked sometimes. Night terrors the nanny said. Still get them sometimes. Never mind that.’ He gestured it away with a motion of his glass. ‘But this wasn’t one of those times. I got up and left my bedroom.’

His father’s house in The Hamptons was enormous and mostly empty save for staff and his nanny who slept next door. Raymond Callaghan might have guests to stay there on occasion, but most of the bedrooms were empty, the staff living in their own quarters. James recalled the long dark corridors and how they had frightened him as a child. That night there were unseasonal high winds and rain and he could hear the rolling boom of the sea, the pebble-scatter of rain against the windows. It was that, he thought, that woke him.

Then, along the corridor he heard a woman’s voice carrying, a laugh trailing off. James trotted toward the sound but stopped when he reached the wide landing.

He saw a woman walk toward the head of the stairs, tossing a fur wrap over her shoulders. The low lighting illuminated her fair hair. He saw the gleam of gold on wrists and hands, and could smell her rich perfume. She looked, he thought, like a princess, fair and glittering.

She stopped, one hand touching the bannister and turned. She had smiled and even then, a small boy, he had seen something in it that made him shrink back into the shadows. A smile like a bared knife. No innocent Disney princess this, but something far more dangerous.

Raymond Callaghan had come to her. He was dressed as the boy thought ‘for bed’, in a short silk dressing gown. He was far too young to attach any significance to it; only years later did he make any connection.

‘I can’t remember everything that I heard,’ James said. ‘When you’re young, adult talk often goes over your head, unless it’s directed at you and then you recall it sometimes, especially if you were afraid or excited at the time. The woman said something to my father that I didn’t really hear, and then turned away and looked directly at me. I don’t know how she saw me; the corridor was unlit, but she did. She dropped her wrap and walked toward me. And I was…frozen.’
‘She stooped and reached out a hand. Her nails and rings seemed to burn me as she stroked my face and smiled again. And she said, “How’s my boy? Pretty little thing, isn’t he?” My father followed her and was obviously angry with both of us. He started to say something, but she raised a hand. She said—‘ He stopped and then clearly, enunciating each word: ’“He’s mine as much as yours. And he’ll be useful when he’s older, when you’re gone, Ray. No-one lives forever.” She laughed again but there was no laugh in her eyes and she was still looking at me.’

His own eyes came back from their frowning distance. ‘My father snapped, ordered me to bed, but she kissed my forehead and said, “Go on now, son.” I ran back down the corridor to my room. I could hear them arguing and she said something like: “He’s a baby. He won’t remember.” And: “Be sure you look after him.” And I did forget until I saw her photograph years later. Joanna Darling was at the house that night. She must have had Blaise nine months after that. She was wearing a long sheath dress, silver, it sparkled and she was slim.. I thought how tall and slim she was. She wasn’t pregnant then.’

‘She could have been very early in her time,’ Vanimöré pointed out. ‘And you have a remarkably good memory from all those years ago. So, you believe she was carrying on an affair with your father when she was married to Worth? And that she, not Solange Berkeley, is your mother?’

‘You think I’ve made up some kind of false memory,’ James stated.

‘A child’s memories would not stand up in court. And Solange is registered as your mother.’

James offered a cynical smile. ‘Wealth can buy anything, Mr. Steele. It bought her silence. I was a home birth. Solange received a very large divorce settlement not eighteen months later and from a man who notoriously hated to spend money unless it was on himself or his companies. He was not a generous man, my father.’

‘True.’ He steepled his fingers under his chin. ‘Well? You recollected that childhood memory when you met Blaise?’

‘Not then and might never have,’ James responded dryly. ‘Had not my father been so particularly interested in the fact that I met him. A week or so later we were back at The Hamptons and there was some bad weather. Maybe that was it: The rain, the wind, just like that night when I was a child. I woke up and lay there. And I remembered. It was so incredibly vivid.’

But he had said nothing to his father. He returned to Cambridge and considered contacting Blaise at Marlborough (so the loss of his phone number had turned out to be unimportant) or even driving down to see him.

‘I would have liked to see him again, but—‘

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t know…I felt that unless I had proof I shouldn’t involve him and even if I did, how would he take it? And I began to realise that even at Cambridge I was watched.’ A faint smile flickered. ‘Or thought I was. I was afraid I was becoming paranoid. As it turned out, I wasn’t.’
‘Then I finished university and went home and my father arranged my marriage.’ His expression closed like a door. ‘It was my duty and it would give me greater responsibility.’ The way he said it was a quote. Vanimöré could imagine Callaghan’s dry voice intoning it. ‘And we were to live at his homes, wherever he was, following him as part of his damn entourage. I wanted to buy my own place. I could have. He employed me — Yes nepotism at its finest!— but he wouldn't hear of it.’

‘No,’ Vanimöré drawled. ‘He wanted you under his eye.’

‘Yes, and I knew it. My then-wife Gina was a nice woman but—’ He stopped and then said coldly, ‘I’m sterile.’

‘I see.’

‘My wife wanted children, and I couldn’t give them to her.’

‘You were not married long. It can take time.’

‘She’d been married before, had two children one after another. She was older than me, but not so old that her fertility had dropped off a cliff. So…’ It was clearly difficult for him to speak of this but he went on with something of a snap: ‘We went to a clinic. It was me, not her.’ He shrugged, his colour rose. ‘My father was involved in a business deal with her father and thought the marriage would be a good idea. Security, if you will. Antiquated. But I went along with it because…I had no choice.’

Vanimöré left that for now.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ James went on quickly. ‘The marriage pretty much ended after that. Then I heard that Blaise had gone missing. I overheard my father shouting into his phone to Mortimer Worth. He was furious. I only caught the tail-end of their conversation. My father ended the call and turned his anger on me. Then he seemed to think better of it and sent me off to Dubai for a business meeting, with one in London on the way back.’

He was glad enough to go, he said, to be out from under Callaghan’s shadow even for a few days. He needed time to think about what had happened, what he had heard. The meeting went well, and he booked the return flight with a two night stopover in London.

That evening, he had contacted a private investigator to search for Blaise Worth. He had very little information to give the woman save age, appearance and name — and that he had been at Marlborough, but her voice, dry and clipped and businesslike, accepted that.

He explained that she must not call him and was given the link to a chat room where messages would be deleted within seconds of reading them. It seemed dubious to James and Ms. Evans admitted such rooms were often used for darker purposes, but they were also untraceable, at least at the moment. It was surprising, she added, how many people who used private investigators wanted to remain anonymous.

Payment was a problem, since his bank accounts were monitored.

‘Not really a problem,’ she told him, making a suggestion that raised his brows but agreed to, enacting an apparent sexual transaction that his ‘watchers’ (the security staff sent with him by his father) would only smirk at. Which they did.

Ms. Evans arrived at the hotel as ‘Lara’, a sex worker in a red wig and smoky-dark eyes. James had seen her when he went out for lunch (and almost laughed at how she walked up the street playing at her ‘game’). There was more than a little of the performer in Janet Evans or perhaps she was simply used to the vagaries of secretive clients. He arranged a meeting then and there, unable to will down the flush that rose to his cheeks knowing that his security detail were watching and commenting. But at least it bypassed a need for the computer.

Underneath her assumed appearance and the conformable suit that passed her as ‘business’ to the hotel staff, she was a dark haired woman in her thirties whose definite attractiveness paled against her intelligence. She seemed to find the situation more amusing than anything and left after two hours with a substantial amount of cash in her purse. She promised nothing which he said was fair enough considering the paucity of the information he had, and told him to check into the chat room weekly at a certain time.

‘Did she find anything?’ Vanimöré asked, interested.

‘Nothing,’ James replied flatly. ‘I employed her services for over a year. Blaise flew to London from JFK and just vanished.’

Yes, Vanimöré thought, he had.

‘I told her to keep looking, even if it seemed useless, which it was in the end, but I did find something else in London that I wasn’t looking for.’ He took another sip of whiskey. ‘Joanna Worth, who was supposed to have died in a boating accident years before.’

Vanimöré said softly, ‘Are you sure?’

‘I saw her,’ James said emphatically. ‘As far away from me as from here to the doors.’ He pointed.

‘Where was this?’ Vanimöré leaned forward.

‘Covent Garden. When we were leaving I saw her, she dressed to the nines and with a man. She turned toward him and it was her. She looked no different to her photograph or the woman I remembered, and I will never,’ he added. ‘Forget that smile. Or his.’

A ghost-breath blew on the back of Vanimöré’s neck. It came from another world, so far gone in time that only its dust remained and still, after everything, his muscles locked into tension.
‘Can you describe him?’

‘Tall. Not old. Maybe my age now. Slim. Fairer than I am. Almost white hair, long.’ He made descriptive gestures with his hands. ‘Drawn back in a ponytail. He wore dark glasses, which was strange, but some people do. He had this attitude about him.’ His eyes narrowed as if to bring something into focus. ‘As if he owned the place.’

The ghost-breath turned to ice.

Sauron.

Vanimöré had not seen him in this world. Sauron had sent out Thuringwethil — who died at the hands of Claire James. That must have irritated him, but there would be others. Sauron had never lacked followers.

‘It might be useful if you remembered the date and performance,’ Vanimöré said, controlling his voice.

‘I made sure to remember it,’ James said grimly and wrote it down. ‘I kept the programme; it was the first time I’d been to see a performance of the Royal Ballet. But I can tell you the date and time without that.’

‘You seem very sure it was her.’

‘Oh, I am.’ His posture tightened. ‘They were leaving the Grand Tier, so were we. They were ahead of us and walking quickly; most people were lingering, making their way out slowly, chatting, but not that pair. I wouldn’t have seen her if she hadn’t turned her head. And then she looked over her shoulder and straight at me. She was still smiling. She blew a kiss and then carried on walking. The man looked back, too, for a moment. The same smile, a closed smile, a dark smile.’ Straightening, he blew out a breath. ‘So yes, I’m sure. I thought of following them but I was a guest of Max Nelson and couldn’t just rush off. I wished after I had. I messaged Ms. Evans on that chat room, asked her to find out anything she could about Joanna Worth.’ He shook his head. ‘Of course she couldn’t. Joanna died in Bermuda. Except, she didn’t. And she didn’t give a damn that I saw her.’

‘”He’ll be useful when he’s older, when you’re dead,”’ Vanimöré quoted. ‘That is what you heard her say to your father?’

‘Yes.’ James’ eyes narrowed. ‘And now he is dead. Do you think — what do you think? You know something. Don’t you. Don’t you?’

‘I think,’ Vanimöré rose. ‘That your life might be about to become very interesting in the manner of the Chinese saying. And we should talk to Mr. Wainwright.’ He walked down the salon to the door.
‘Coming?’

~’We will speak again,’ Fëanor said to Edenel, not wanting to go wanting, with a dreadful ache, to pass through the Mirror Shard into that green world beyond the Sea, to hold his father in his arms.

‘Yes,’ Edenel affirmed. Beautiful and aloof and dangerous as the ice-winds atop Taniquetil, yet something in his voice and eyes had warmed as Fëanor spoke. He told Edenel things he would never tell Finwë, could not in all fairness, he did understand that Finwë was bound by kingship to the Laws of the Valar, even if he detested it.

But Fëanor did not tell him that he and Fingolfin were Edenel’s sons. The words had been there, imperative, clamouring to be spoken, yet Fëanor bit down on them. Not yet. Fingolfin must be present for that denouement. Nevertheless, Edenel learned of Valinor and the Valar, of their crippling Laws and that Fëanor and Fingolfin were determined to leave.

Speaking as if the very words made it a fact, an inevitability helped in the days after, when time seemed to go nowhere and nothing happened.
Tirion preserved an aloof silence. Fëanor assumed he was still under a cloud of disapproval.

He spent his days in his workshops teaching, overseeing but did little. He became conscious of a sensation familiar to him now; that he had experienced before creating the Lamps and the Palantiri. It was a growing emptiness, a hollowness as if his creativity were being drained away like water running into a crack in the earth. His soul was waiting for something. Making space for it. He did not have any inkling of what that was and knew not to push for it. The vision would come. Freedom, too, he reminded himself, would come. Still, the slow days seemed interminable. Only with his sons did he find any peace.

And of course things did happen. Even Valinor was not stagnant. Under Hilyaro, Maglor began to train his voice. They had to be somewhat careful. Fëanor believed that Formenos was one of those places where the Valar were deaf and blind, and with good reason, but there was the possibility of Elven spies. He thought ruefully that protection or no, precautions or not, Maglor’s voice might be heard on Taniquetil; it shattered glass, snapped metal, made crystals chime.*

In the end, they could not test to the limit of what Maglor might do. When the marble floor of the room cracked from end to end Fëanor, laughing helplessly as Hilyaro dropped his head in his hands, nonetheless decided to terminate that part of the music lessons. Maglor, glowing, proud, utterly unabashed, was clearly well pleased with his talents and reluctant to stop. He almost (not quite) rebelled, wanting to test himself but when it was made clear to him that such power was dangerous, that the Valar might disprove, he nodded solemnly.

Fëanor hated to involve his sons in the danger and secrecy of his life. Afterwards, he accepted that they acted as a rein on him, at least when they were young. But they comprehended much more than he thought they did — or should. Either others talked, Rúmil perhaps or his wife Laurorne, or they were simply subconsciously aware. Anyhow, another door closed on discovery. For now.

Fëanor’s impatience mounted, making him feel too tight in his own skin. Trapped. He wanted to do something, to act, to break out. In the world where Vanimöré dwelt it had been almost wholly dark, a state that did not exist in Valinor. Edenel, in the Outer Lands, had been in a forest where sunlight made moving dapples as it fell through the leaves. It was so different from the Tree Light.

So many worlds. So much to learn. All of it stymied — for now.

More than once, unsleeping and restless, he thought of the ring he had deliberately left with Vanimöré and contemplated returning for it. There was more than a little mischief in that but also that ever-present yearning to know more. Vanimöré fascinated him, so unlike the Valar and immeasurably more powerful. A Power that could send part of itself onto a world, leaving the Totality behind on the Outside. Fëanor had seen both.

The world beyond that one room he had stepped into (and that was interesting enough in itself) beckoned, but so did Endor, so did the terrible, lonely Monument and the Outside and that perhaps more forcefully than anything because it was far stranger. Boundless. It was perilous and danger fired Fëanor’s blood like levin.There was, he thought, an infinity of discovery. But not here, not in Valinor.

And then a cold wind sighed down from Ilmarin and cut through the ennui of sameness. It touched calm white Valmar, hurried down to hum through the towers of Tirion and raced further to Alqualondë and the glimmering shores of the sea. The wind whispered a rumour: Melkor was to be released from his long imprisonment.

The rumour grouped the Elves into quiet clusters of conversation, frowning and muttering.
When the murmurs reached Fëanor he reacted like one of the half-wild white cats that roamed Valinor and the hair of his scalp seemed to lift. He remembered the pain-vision of Edenel and his memory of earth-crushing and obliterating Power.

‘It is said he is penitent,’ murmured Rúmil.

‘Who says?’ Fëanor demanded. His nails dug into his palms carving bloody crescents. Rúmil spread his hands.

‘After what he did, how could they even think of releasing him?’ Yet Edenel had spoken of it, the other Edenel, relict of a dead universe. It happened there. It would happen here.

Does everyone and everything tread the same path, then? The thought brought a spark of panic.

‘Manwë enjoys a show of penance,’ Rúmil said with a wicked and accurate sharpness. ‘He does like seeing people grovel.’

Fëanor looked at him, gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Indeed.’ He thought of Ingwë, and Eönwë, chained. ‘He does.’

‘Now if only thou were to learn that art, he would look upon thee with favour.’ Fëanor thought he was jesting until he saw that Rúmil’s face was perfectly serious. ‘It is because thou wouldst not, that he deems thee dangerous and rebellious. That and the outrageous and public flirting with thine own sex.’

‘If that is what the Valar deem outrageous—’ Fëanor began. Then came a knock at the chamber door.

At Fëanor’s ‘Enter’ a messenger came in. His livery was Finwë’s and he bowed, holding out a sealed scroll.
‘From the King, High Prince.’

‘My thanks.’ Fëanor opened it and read. ‘My father calls a council of all his High Lords. That includes his sons.’ He drew vellum and a pen toward him and dashed off a response, handing it back to the messenger. ‘I will be there.’

‘The clouds lift a little it seems,’ he said dryly when the man had gone. ‘Politically at least.’ He slapped Finwë’s message with the back of one hand. ‘It will be about Melkor, naturally. What does he think a council will achieve?’ He doubted his father was going to object, yet Finwë knew, or at least must guess what had happened to his twin, and most of his High Lords were unbegotten. All of them had known someone taken by the Dark.

Nerdanel elected not to travel to Tirion and, as she was often in her own workshop these days, Fëanor took Maedhros and Maglor.

The mood in the city was somber; the people who watched Fëanor’s entourage ride in were quieter though they bowed and others waved. In the palace too, there was a sense of watchfulness. Faces were unsmiling.

Finwë came to greet him, mouth straight, though to Maedhros and Maglor he spoke kindly. He looked troubled, as if the kingship weighed heavily and waited until Fëanor’s sons were settled in bed before speaking.

‘Thou wilt have heard the rumours,’ he said.

‘Of course.’ Fëanor flung himself onto a cushioned settle.

‘Fingolfin,’ Finwë shot him a swift, wary look. ‘Advised me to call my Lords into council.’

About to reply ‘Good for him’, Fëanor recollected he was supposed to be unfriends with his half-brother.
‘Did he indeed?’ Seemed to suit. And: ‘Wouldst thou have done the same had I advised it?’

‘Fëanor! I would have considered it, yes. But the both of thee are young!’ He stopped, took a breath as if to curb his annoyance. ‘Others advised me also,’ he said shortly. ‘There is much discomfort in Tirion at the thought of the Dark God walking among us.’

Fëanor sat up and poured glasses of nectar. ‘Somehow,’ he said. ‘That surprises me not at all. So. Have the Valar spoken to thee of it?’

‘Eönwë came from Manwë. He went to Olwë, too. I am assured that Melkor has learned penitence and that he is on parole.’

‘Grovelled, has he?’

Finwë said coldly, ‘I do not know what has passed. But surely they know his heart?’

Fëanor’s teeth locked. ‘Just like they know ours?’ He raised a brow over his glass and drank, watching the colour come into Finwë’s face.

‘Fëanor—‘

‘Please. Spare me the homily. The Valar do not know us because they have never cared to. All they want is pretty little slaves! They only see what they want us to be.’ He replaced the goblet on the table. ‘What is this council supposed to achieve exactly?’

‘Thou art deliberately obtuse and understand nothing, ever,’ Finwë snapped, turning to the outer door. ‘We are to welcome Melkor — if he comes among us — as one of the Valar. That is what this council is about.’

Fëanor stiffened. Revulsion shivered through him in a cold, rippling wave.
‘Is that the command come down from Ilmarin?’ he demanded and when Finwë did not answer, he came to his feet. ‘Well? Do they expect us to worship him, too?’

‘Do not be a fool. But he is to be accorded the same courtesy and respect as the Valar.’ Finwë opened the door. ‘Thou may speak of thy concerns in council,’ he said and then, not to Fëanor but someone in the passageway beyond, ‘He is in no mood for reason.’

Fiingolfin’s lovely, steely voice replied, ‘I can but attempt it.’ And he entered the room, holding the door ajar. They looked at each other in a hot and fulminous silence.

‘Beginning to show some spine, half-brother? Beginning to think for thyself?’ Fëanor sneered, knowing Finwë would hear. ‘Asking for a council meeting?’

‘Any High Lord of Tirion may request,’ Fingolfin shot back. He closed the door behind him and his steps quickly crossed the distance between them. Fëanor saw the silver star-flashes, brilliant in the backlit eyes and then they clashed together, all heat and hardness and need.

But the marble walls of Tirion were thick and Finwë, departing, did not hear.

Chapter Text

~ Howard Wainwright was not impressed. Howard was not inclined to be intimidated by powerful people or their sons, only thoroughly exasperated by this fresh development. He glowered at Vanimöré, glared balefully at James Callaghan and puffed out a breath.

‘The first thing,’ he decided. ‘Is to find out all we can of the late (or not) Joanna Worth. I’ll get back to you. But this is departmental business.’ He shot a look at Vanimöré who gave an infinitesimal gesture that only someone familiar with him and watching for it would have picked up.

‘We will eat,’ Vanimöré said. ‘And talk.’

They ate dinner in the great dining room with the long windows open to the evening, and Howard’s unobtrusive staff ensuring no-one overheard their conversation. The first few bites seemed to improve Howard’s mood a little but he did not return to the subject of Joanna. He waited, Vanimöré knew, for James to broach it. Which he did, soon enough.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why?’ He laid down his knife and fork; they clattered against the bone china plate. ‘I always thought my father was a misogynist. He was. I never knew him to have mistresses. And his confession here at the ball…He was a child abuser.’ His eyes closed and his head shook a little. One could almost see the ripple of revulsion that shook through him. ‘Why would he be with Joanna Worth? And why the hell would she be with him? For money? Worth had plenty of his own.’

‘If you saw Joanna Worth,’ Howard said, clearly unconvinced. ‘Could have been any tall, blonde woman. You were a young boy.’

James' eyes narrowed. ‘I know what I saw, Mr. Wainwright. And what I heard.’

‘We will act on the assumption that it was Joanna Worth,’ Vanimöré intervened calmly. ‘And so yes, why was she there? Did she not come from a wealthy Bermudian family? And she married a multi-millionaire so money seems unlikely, but look into it, Howard. Was she left nothing by her family and therefore dependent on Worth; was it an attempt to make Worth jealous? He was reported to be a cold man who saw very little of his son. Or was it none of those things?’

James laughed derisively. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘If you think she was in love with him…it didn’t come across that way. I know appearance isn’t everything, but my father was a bastard to women. He treated his female staff with contempt. I’ve been to meetings with him where he reduced some of them to tears. It wasn’t even sexual, but genuine contempt for what they were: women. Don’t tell me that’s appealing, unless you enjoy being treated like shit. But she looked as if she were used to being treated like a queen. And there was nothing about her that suggested she was attracted to my father at all. Rather the reverse.’

‘She was on assignment,’ Vanimöré murmured. ‘Callaghan was part of it. I think Mortimer Worth was, too.’

‘For whom?’ James looked from one to the other. Both faces were very carefully blank.

Howard deliberately forked a delectable mouthful, chewed, swallowed and wiped his mouth. He glanced at Vanimöré then sat back and said to James, ‘You could be in danger.’

‘From whom?’ James demanded exasperatedly.

Vanimöré gave a slight shrug. Howard narrowed his eyes and grated, ‘He may use several names and that is the problem. We have no images to run through facial recognition software unless the Royal Opera House has CCTV. I’ll get onto that, but you know what CCTV images are like and even then—‘

‘It is a place to start,’ Vanimöré said, and then to James. ‘But you may need a security detail.’

‘I have security. Always have had. My father always had it. And much good did it do him.’

‘Are they vetted?’ Howard asked. ‘They must be.’

James raised his hands. ‘I assume they would be. It’s not something I’ve looked into yet.’

‘Do you know if your father employed them himself?’ Vanimöré asked mildly.

‘No,’ James shook his head. ‘His secretary, Peter Thomson. He’s been with us longer than I’ve been alive.’

‘Then I’d like all the information you have on him,’ Howard said. ‘If he’s still employed.’

‘Of course. And yes he is. He didn’t want me to come here. At all.’ He smiled faintly but there was a hardness to it.

No amount of stress or annoyance could spoil Howard’s appreciation of fine food and he attended to his meal in silence. James looked questioningly at Vanimöré who simply shrugged. Only when Guila’s desert was eaten and the coffee poured did Howard sit back.
‘I’ll need to talk to you, Steele and then to you,’ he looked at James. ‘Ten minutes.’





Vanimöré waited until Howard opened his laptop.
‘Who could we insert as a security detail for him?’ he asked.

Howard frowned as if he wanted to find something to disagree with in the suggestion but couldn’t.
‘We’re stretched really damn thin if this really is AB.’

AB or Agent Beta as Sauron was named by the DDE. Howard couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge let alone say the name and any report noted him as a non-human intelligence from another world with godlike powers. Maglor was AA, as he had been upon this world long before Sauron. There were several such lists and each dealt with different non-humans operating or seen upon Earth. Vanimöré was primarily concerned with those from Middle-earth.

‘I am certain of it,’ Vanimöré said sombrely.

One could see Howard mentally change gear. Whatever his personal views on the paranormal, this was deadly serious.
‘I’ll have to trace Solange Callaghan as was,’ he said. ‘We’ll speak to some people in Bermuda about Joanna Worth’s death but if it was a staged death then I doubt there's much to find, not now, so many years later.’ He sat back in his chair, stared at the screen. ‘If Joanna Worth is working for him, what the hell does he want? You think she bore James on his orders? David too?’

‘It is possible.’

‘And why was James left untouched and David abused?’

‘Mortimer Worth was wealthy but he did not have the international clout that Callaghan possessed,’ Vanimöré said. ‘He wanted James to supersede Raymond Callaghan, to take over from his father and be unspoiled. No mental health issues. James is accustomed to obeying his father.’ He smiled acidly to himself. ‘Not permitted to live in his own house, marrying at his father’s command. A permanent fixture in his father’s entourage; living in his shadow.’

Howard nodded slowly. ‘Right, so if AB now targets him, he is manageable.’

‘Manageable, and malleable. And our esteemed AB is far more charismatic and persuasive than Callaghan senior.’ And far crueller.

‘The sex trafficking? Laying enticing bait for Callaghan?’ Howard tapped the keys.

‘He would have known about it, I am sure, but involved? I doubt it.’ The Sauron of this world was not his father, but one could only assume that he was not far different in temperament and character.

Vanimöré thought of Utumno seen through the memories of Edenel and his own early life in Angband. Mairon’s tolerance for children extended to how he could mould them to his will and in Vanimöré’s case, that had not included sexual abuse. That came later, when Vanimöré was older and was a punishment, not something he indulged in for pleasure. Sauron used sex as a weapon.

‘He knows human frailty very well, and I believe he had Joanna Worth warn Callaghan against subjecting James to abuse. As for David—‘ He paused, thinking. There was something scratching at the back of his mind. He sought it but it eluded him.

He had to go to the Monument.

Seeing Howard watching him warily, he said, ‘Perhaps AB genuinely did not know about David. Worth was lured in by Callaghan. Possibly that night, when Worth gave his son to Callaghan and his cronies was his first time.’ His mouth moved into distaste.

Howard grunted. ‘Makes sense,’ he agreed. ‘I doubt it’s worth looking at any CCTV. AB would fry the camera.’

‘In more ways than one.’ Vanimöré gazed into the distance for a moment. The long study curtains rippled in a soft breeze.
‘This investigation into Callaghan’s death is winding to a close. I want to see David before he goes to St. Andrews, after that…’ He had been idle too long, not only here but the measureless time spent at the Monument. He needed to do.

Suddenly, he smiled. A laugh rose in his throat.
‘Howard. I have just the person to watch James Callaghan.’

~ ‘There is no time.’ Fingolfin’s words were a hot whisper that tore at the edges. ‘Now, Fëanor. Now.’

Sometimes there was a battle for domination, but only when there was time to spare for it. Fingolfin came out of another savage kiss and seized Fëanor’s face with one strong, slim hand. The pressure of his fingers, the power in the grip was delicious.
‘’I am prepared for thee,’ he hissed. ‘Another time, thou wilt do the same, but now, Now—’

They were two fires that could burn alone, but when they came together were a conflagration.

He is a star wherein one could forge sword-metal to break worlds.

Their unions were a way of becoming themselves. No lies, no artifice, only the truth of what they were.

Fëanor pushed Fingolfin’s neck down, black hair sifting under his hands, and Fingolfin bowed to it like a conquered king. Yet it was no abnegation; it was an temporary acquiescence. Every taut line of his tall body quivered with the willpower it took to submit. He resisted, his opening tight, until his head dropped lower in surrender and Fëanor entered in one violent drive. He saw Fingolfin’s hands stretch and flex and then grip hard to the back of the settle, saw perspiration spring and sleek his sinews like silver, heard his groan muffled as he bit into a cushion. And then he saw and heard nothing as reality was burned away. He pushed toward the core of the starfire, that place that welcomed him where he became himself.

There was a place…he could almost touch it. The heart of the inferno, where stars collided, where universes were born. He strove, even as his body strove, a thunder of power that Fingolfin accepted and met and joined and demanded. At this level, there was no domination, no submission. Nothing so simple.

Break the glass. The Mirror. The shattered Mirror. Take Fingolfin with me and become…

And just for a moment, there was an infinity of starlight and the vast pinwheels and clouds of galaxies that he knew and a Song that resounded through all of it and a terrible and beautiful light…

He blinked, trembling. Fingolfin’s skin slipped under the hard grip of his hands, Fingolfin’s own fingers were still tight-gripped to the back of the settle. Then his head rose, and his silk-black hair rippled and spilled. Fëanor withdrew and Fingolfin straightened. When he turned, his eyes still held the blue-white fire of the stars. He stared at Fëanor then abruptly drew his head forward and kissed him.
‘What art thou becoming?’ he whispered, his breath dusting Fëanor’s lips with the taste of blood and wine.

Fëanor shook his head. ‘What are both of us becoming?’

‘Fëanor—‘

‘I do not know. I do not know. But I will. We both will.’

Fingolfin drew a sharp breath. ‘I cannot stay. Father — I have to think of him and call him that — will probably be waiting. But never think to go where I cannot follow thee, Fëanor. Because I will. I will follow thee.’

An icy frisson sparked up Fëanor’s spine. Into the luminous glare of those eyes, he affirmed: ‘I shall not.’

~ As they quickly washed in the bathing room, Fëanor, his eyes appreciative as they mapped Fingolfin’s body, said, ‘So this council meeting is simply to publicly declare Finwë’s loyalty to the Valar? That is it?’

Fingolfin dried himself and drew on his breeches. Speckles of water still marked his lean torso.
‘Yes. He had to call it, the High Lords all-but demanded it.’ He threw his braids over his shoulders. ‘So,’ his mouth twitched. ‘How do we enact this?’

‘I have already argued about it with him, but I am sure thou art aware.’

‘So I support him.’

Fëanor nodded. ‘Not that the Valar would care if we refused Melkor entry into Tirion.’

‘No. Fëanor—‘

There came an upsurge of the near-panic, the feeling of being trapped. He could sometimes forget it in Formenos, but the palace seemed to close around him like a first. Fëanor’s teeth clicked together. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Listen, I must tell thee: I spoke to Edenel, the Edenel of this world.’

‘What?’ Fingolfin’s brows drew into a sharp frown. ‘Why?’

Fëanor laughed suddenly. ‘I wanted to know if he knew Hilyaro, lest that one be a spy from Finwë. In fact I forgot. But I did tell him everything about Valinor and that we were going to leave.’ As Fingolfin’s lips parted again, he added. ‘I did not inform him that we are his sons. It is something we should tell him together.’

‘I thank thee for that.’

‘This is a game. It is not real,’ Fëanor told him stiffly and Fingolfin stepped up to him, stared into his eyes. As one, they grasped each other’s jaws in strong fingers. They held in that position for heartbeats; Fëanor watched as Fingolfin’s pupils widened to black pools and felt a resurgence of his own arousal.

‘I remember,’ Fingolfin hissed. ‘And I do not want thee to forget it.’

‘So when shall we speak to Edenel together? Canst thou think of a reason to come to Formenos?’

‘As the King’’s emissary? Undoubtedly. But —‘

‘But what?’

‘I like this not at all. Yes, we began this but it took nothing at all for others to follow. I did not realise that people feared thee.’

Fëanor frowned. ‘Fear me?’

Fingolfin’s head tipped. One side of his mouth curled up. ‘I wish thou couldst see thyself as others do. Much of it is jealousy of course, or devolves from Mahtan who hoped to be elevated after thy marriage to his daughter.’

Anger bloomed. ‘Mahtan betrayed my trust. I will never forgive him for that!’

‘And he knows it. One of his apprentices sought to leave and go to Formenos and he forbade it. There is bad feeling.’ Fingolfin frowned. ‘Jealousy, malice even, and I am supposed to lead this faction. I abhor it.’

‘I abhor that we must do this,’ Fëanor agreed. He brought Fingolfin’s head forward and their brows touched. ‘But to be with thee is worth it. And it is not just for us.’

‘No,’ Fingolfin murmured. ‘For our sons and all those who would be free.’ He drew back slowly. ‘I have to go. To continue the lie.’

Fëanor watched him leave. As he opened the outer door Fingolfin’s other persona descended on him like a cloak. It was in the set of his body, the clench of his jaw, the tilt of his head drawn back by haughtier and the heavy weight of hair. It was the pose of a man who had just argued bitterly with another.

It was perfect. Fëanor wanted to call him back, watch him turn and shed the act. Instead he followed, ensured that anyone watching would see him slam the door behind his half-brother.

He hated it. And yet…it was exhilarating. Closing the door, he leaned against it and closed his eyes.

~ ‘In the light of what Melkor has done in the past,’ Fëanor said, rising in his seat. ‘He shall not be welcomed in Formenos.’

It was an illuminating council meeting. The factions were clearly drawn, black and white; those who would support their king and those whose memories were too bitter to do so. Some of the latter camp surprised Fëanor. What surprised him the more however, was how they looked to him. These were people who had, not so long ago, treated him as a precocious boy. He laughed to himself though anger was uppermost.

‘The Valar have decreed he will be welcomed.’ Finwë’s voice was strained. ‘He is on parole. The Valar have seen into his soul and judged that he has served his sentence and is penitent or they would never release him.’

Finwë sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. The council — both factions — wore stony faces.

‘It seems there are some who do not forget,’ Fëanor’s eyes swept the great hall. ‘What Melkor is responsible for. And yet the Valar would allow him to walk among the kin of those he captured and tormented.’ There was a sudden outcry, voices raised and Finwë rose, grasped his staff of office and thumped it down on the marble, commanding silence.

‘These are the words of Manwë Sulimo, High King of Arda,’ he proclaimed. ‘And they will be obeyed.’

‘And I have spoken,’ Fëanor returned.

‘Formenos is in my gift,’ Finwë reminded him stonily.

Fëanor, who had turned to leave, whirled back. What was in his face he did not know, only that the King stiffened and Fingolfin stood up eyes blazing. The silence crackled.

Fëanor swept out without a look back.

The council broke up then, whether Finwë willed it or no. Shouts followed Fëanor as he crossed the enormous entrance hall. He had readied his people to leave immediately and his retinue waited in the courtyard.

Light footsteps sounded behind him. ‘High Prince?’

He turned to see the High Lord Nullion, a hot-eyed beauty with hair and eyes the colour of worked iron, appropriate since his House owned and worked the iron mines to the south. Due to his interest in metallurgy, Fëanor had met him before but knew none of his fathers lords well. He had spent most of his time in the workshops and so quickly had he been married off and then moved to Formenos that there had been no time to become acquainted with the people who made up Finwë’s council.

‘Yes?’

‘Thou art not alone in this,’ Nullion said quietly. ‘The King seeks to fulfil Manwë’s commands but even a Power cannot command the hearts of the Noldor.’

Fëanor nodded. ‘Walk with me to the courtyard.’

They passed down the shallow steps. Maedhros and Maglor were already mounted and waiting. Fëanor smiled across at them and said to Nullion, ‘Art thou Unbegotten?’

‘No, a First Child, a Woman Born. I was young when we began the Great Journey.’ Nullion walked swiftly. ‘Young but accounted an adult. My mother chose not to come and my father…’ His mouth twisted. He lowered his voice. ‘It was not the same then. There was no marriage, no family save the clan. My mother informed me of her choice but no-one could have forced her. My father came here but—‘ Fëanor’s giant stallion moved with a clash of hooves, and beneath it, Nullion said, ‘He is one of the vanished.’

Fëanor laid a hand on the glossy, muscled neck. Huiro stilled.
‘The Valar took him?’

Nullion’s hot eyes burned with steady, banked fires. He nodded briefly then swept on intensely: ‘High Prince. Thou shouldst have a presence in Tirion. It would be a boon for those of us whose tempers and thoughts do not always align with the King.’

Fëanor experienced an odd and contradictory desire to defend Finwë and it annoyed him.
‘He is in an invidious position,’ he said.

‘That I will grant,’ Nullion allowed.

‘And there is no second court in Formenos, whatever rumour may say.’ Fëanor looked back toward the wide double doors of the palace. ‘It is my home and the place where I work.’

‘And yet rumours flourish when the High Prince shuns his own city and gathers more people to him by the day.’

Mounting, Fëanor looked down at Nullion. ‘People come to Formenos to learn or perfect their crafts.’

‘Of course they do.’ Black lashes dropped but not in time to hide the twinkle of amusement. Then they lifted again, and all humour was gone.
‘They come because of what thou didst say in the council. Because there are things that thou wilt not bow thy head to, and rightly.’ He rested a lean hand on the stallion’s neck. ‘Be a presence in Tirion, High Prince. Thou hast friends here, or would if thou didst but see that.’ Stepping back he aimed a bow that included Maedhros and Maglor. They gravely inclined their heads.

Fëanor stared at him. ‘I will think on it,’ he said, and turned Huiro. His escort, waiting, fell in behind him and they clattered out of the gates.

Chapter Text

~ The Unchaining of Melkor was to be a spectacle. A showing of the Valar’s power and benevolence.

For the first time in years Manwë and Varda descended from Ilmarin in great state with Eönwë carrying Manwë’s banner and his host of Maia warriors in their train.

Under the enormous pillars, the Valar’s thrones were arranged in an inward-facing circle. The floor, made of some opalescent stone, blossomed outward from a circle of plain black where the one who came before the Valar would kneel.

Only Námo was absent when the Valar seated themselves. Eönwë stood behind Manwë’s seat and Ingwë sat at his feet. Beyond the pillars the Eldar began to gather. All had been invited (commanded?) to come.

A spectacle, thought Ingwë dourly, designed to show the errant Melkor the glory of the unfallen Powers and the Children they ruled.

They had chosen the Mingling as the time, perhaps to show the wonder of the Treelight at its most beautiful. Yet for an eyeblink, the Light seemed to fail when Melkor came.

A grey mist rose from the black central circle, spinning upward. It fell back suddenly as dropped dirt; some of it bounced and a piece landed by Ingwë’s booted foot. Black, sharp, like chips of metal or glassy obsidian. It steamed with an unearthly cold.

Silence fell like a palm pressed down upon Valinor and Ingwë saw Námo, hooded, holding the ends of a great chain. The chain seemed to run into what was no more than a black shape, an occlusion of the air. Then it coalesced into form.

Ingwë’s stomach clenched as the figure raised its head and the hood slipped back.

He had never glimpsed Melkor, only the shadows of his hand; he thought that sitting at Manwë’s white-shod feet might have given him an inkling of what to expect. It did not. Melkor was nothing like the Valar.

His eyes, spacious and black-fringed, burned in the perfect architecture of his face. They were so dark they looked black until one realised they were the darkest blue and shot with light like a star field and a strange opalescence. Hair like a flood of poured jet fell back over the wide shoulders. The skin was so flawless and so white that the light of the Mingling drew deep bluish shadows under high cheekbones.
The simple tunic and breeches befitted one come from the Halls of Námo as a released prisoner. Nothing else did. He was a Power. More than a King.

And cold. Cold. A pitiless cold like the corries of high mountains where the ice never melts but grows, year upon year.

Those eyes flicked over Ingwë as if he were no more than a butterfly resting on a stone but the cold from them, the awful power flashed like pain across his skin. He felt like a mouse scuttling through broken stems of hay when the shadow of a hawk falls over it.

The Valar did not rise. Námo walked to his own seat.

‘Brother,’ Manwë greeted Melkor without warmth even, Ingwë thought, with wariness. ‘The time of thine imprisonment is over.’

Melkor did not reply, only inclined his head a little. The shining hair slid and gleamed.

‘Our brother Aulë has built a place for thee near his halls. In Valinor thou may walk freely if thou wilt. Thou seest the Children who live here under us. They have their own abodes, their cities and lands which they farm and mine. Among them also thou may go, in peace.’

Oromë sat directly across from Manwë. Ingwë saw him shift restlessly, his eyes boring into the back of Melkor’s head. From the sudden swift blink, Melkor must have felt it.

Then he spoke. He had a voice like dark thunder.
‘I thank thee…brother.’ White teeth showed in a flashing smile that never reached his eyes. He turned his head looking out past the pillars to the Elves who watched silently. He glanced back down at Ingwë and this time the smile was genuine; the dark, shifting eyes glowed.

Ingwë smelled burning, like molten metal, like the ash that had fallen over Cuiviénen after the Unroofing of Utumno.

Fëanor had felt Edenel’s horror and terror. He thought he knew what to expect.

He was wrong.

He had not expected the Dark God’s charisma, the beauty and an emanation — that the Valar wholly lacked — of sexuality. Fëanor’s every muscle locked, braced as if to attack.

He cast a look to where Fingolfin stood with Finwë and Indis, saw his brother’s lifted head, his fixed, and frozen stare. Then, as Fëanor turned his eyes back toward the Mahanaxar, the Dark God’s eyes met his, brief as the gliding stroke of a flame and a weight like iron.

Fëanor moved, tossed his head as if to throw the weight from him. There was a clangour at the back of his mind; the roar of a furnace.

Then the Valar rose, walked through the pillars. Manwë, with Melkor at his side, raised a hand.

Fëanor thought: He is not like them. If anything, Melkor was even more alien. And, They are afraid.

Tulkas glowered under his heavy brows, Oromë shifted like a wild stallion, Varda’s head was high on her long neck as if reaching away from this situation. Irmo wore a faint troubled frown. Ingwë, who had paused beside the pillars, was white as his hair only, under the arch of dark brows, did his cobalt eyes look hard as coloured glass.

‘People of the Eldar,’ Manwë called and his voice sounded thin and high. ‘Behold our brother Melkor, once wayward, now returned to us. Greet him in peace.’

Peace? There was no promise of peace in this Dark God, neither in his bearing or his eyes.
Surely now, Fëanor thought, Surely now was the time for the kings to speak up, to object?

Manwë expected the Eldar to bow, simply because they always did. But Melkor expected it also. He too was accustomed to obeisance.
Fëanor had no intention of lowering his head, and could not bear to see if Fingolfin or Finwë abased themselves. The shame of it! Instead, he stared at Melkor half-fascinated, wholly repulsed. A sighing rustle went through the ranks of the Elves.

The time was then, and it had passed. Furious,
Fëanor gestured to his companions who fell in behind him as he whirled away.
There was a whip of fire on his back. He flung around— away from the burn, toward the threat?— but saw only the gathered Valar and the tall, dark figure of Melkor within them.





Two days later, when Formenos was quiet, Eönwë came.

Fëanor was in his workroom but for once, he was not working. Seeing Melkor had shaken him. It was not a power he was familiar with. He saw shadows in the brightest noontide of Laurelin, remembered the feeling of a whipcrack that seared and burned, saw Fingolfin’s upright, rigid stare as if recognising something that was…that was…

The scent of storms brought his head up. He rose.

‘I am commanded,’ Eönwë said, his eyes like the break of stars through flying black cloud. ‘To teach the Noldor to fight.’

Ice. A wind whipping dry snow like sand across a cold and somber land…

Shadow.

Flame.

Burning.

~ Vanimöré waited. Howard swung himself entirely round and spread his hands.
‘Well? Who?’

Smiling, Vanimöré watched the dawning horror. Howard looked as if he had swallowed a small frog.
‘No. Oh, no.’

‘I have done this kind of thing before, Howard. Before your time.’

On his feet and waving his arms in front of his face as if to ward off an oncoming train, Howard reiterated ‘Nonono.’

‘The easiest way to protect someone — or to kill someone is to be close to them, be trusted by them. It will not be in your records.’

Howard’s eyes narrowed, eyes flicking aside as he sought mental information on high-profile criminals or drug lords killed by one of their bodyguards. Vanimöré continued,
‘David is much safer than James. No-one — we sincerely hope — knows Blaise Worth is even alive and that is how it must remain, at least for now. James, however, is in a great deal of danger.’

‘You want to put yourself in the sights of —‘ Red in the face, Howard gestured wildly at his laptop screen. ‘You’ve said more than one he’s more — he’s stronger than you are.’

‘That is true.’

‘And if he cottons on to who you are? There isn’t a man born who won’t break under torture, eventually.’ Then, as if realising what he had said, he added hastily. ‘Everyone can break.’

Vanimöré nodded.

‘And you don’t care.’

‘If his attention is focussed on James Callaghan or even on me, then it is not upon our friends, is it? He came too close when he sent one of his agents to follow Claire James.’ He thought of the sports car and the body of Thuringwethil buried deep under the grounds of Summerland.

‘Exactly.’ Howard jumped on it. ‘Too damn close. I’ll find someone.’

‘No-one knows him better than I do.’ Even the torment. And that would feel familiar, would give Vanimöré a taste of the old world long gone. He shook his head briefly. A dangerous mood for a strange evening.

‘I was a bodyguard to Prince Edward of England for three years.’ Vanimöré told Howard, who stared. ‘I can produce excellent references.’

‘You were not.’

‘The records will say I am, and the prince will cooperate.’ Vanimöré rose. ‘Now, we need all the information we can get on the late and unlamented Raymond Callaghan’s secretary.’

‘Where are you going? Look, Steele, you can’t do this, what about—‘

‘I can keep in touch through Eden and Aelios.’

‘Why can’t one of them—?’

‘I want them where they are.’ He nodded to the laptop. ‘Peter Thomson.’





James stared at Vanimöré and exclaimed, ‘You?’
His tone left absolutely no doubt of his opinion.

‘I know many forms of combat, and can use weapons.’ At James’ expression Vanimöré smiled faintly.

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ James said hurriedly, colouring. ‘You do carry yourself as if you know how to fight —‘

‘Thank you.’ Vanimöré said gravely and the flush deepened on James’ tanned cheeks.

‘My father’s bodyguards don’t mess around,’ he said urgently. ‘I’ve seen it. Some of them are ex-mercenaries; he used to boast of it. They’re brutal.’

‘Not a problem.’

‘But why?’

‘Because the man who Joanna Worth is working for will approach you as soon as the furore over your father’s death dies down and you take the reins of his empire.’

‘To kill me?’

‘To control you and what you control.’

‘The media,’ James nodded. ‘Are we talking about unfriendly foreign powers or—?’

‘In a way.’

James dropped his head, gazing at the floor.

‘I would advise you,’ Vanimöré continued. ‘To give Peter Thomson a golden handshake, dismiss the present security staff and employ new ones. Howard is looking into Mr. Thomson but even if he is merely a loyal secretary, with his long service, he is likely to think he knows better than you.’

Straightening, James frowned. ‘Oh yes,’ he said grimly. ‘He does.’

‘I have an old gardener here, employed by the previous owner, a decayed nobleman.’ Vanimöré told him. ‘He does exactly what he wants, no matter what I say. He considers me nouveau riche, a usurper. In my gardener it matters not at all. In your secretary, James Callaghan, it could matter a great deal.’

Blue eyes sharpened. ‘I’m not a complete fool, Mr. Steele.’

‘Now is the time to make some changes.’

‘I was raised to take over,’ James said thoughtfully and then, with a short, hard little laugh, ‘I just don't think he ever thought he would really die.’

‘Did he ever say so?’ Vanimöré asked mildly.

‘No. It was just his attitude.’ He moved his shoulders. ‘You’re not just a billionaire are you?’

‘It would be so dull to be just a billionaire, do you not think?’

James paced. ‘There’s going to be an inquest,’ he said. ‘In Milan. I’ll stay for that.’

Howard entered the room frowning.
‘Peter Thomson’s done quite well for himself,’ he said without preamble. ‘A shareholder in Canning PLC — whose shares are currently falling off the bottom of the world, by the way.’

James did not seem perturbed. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘Went with your father everywhere.’ He glanced briefly at Vanimöré. ‘He’s still at Callaghan’s house in the Hamptons.’

‘He was always with my father, yes, as long as I can remember,’ James replied. ‘And he didn’t want to come; said there was too much to arrange there.’ His brows rose. ‘I’m impressed, Mr. Wainwright.’

‘He made a call just now,’ Howard told him. ‘Mobile phones are a personal beacon, everyone knows that. But so are landlines. Seems like he wants to ride this out, though he’ll be questioned. But he hasn’t dived for cover, yet.’

And Thompson knew, Vanimöré thought. Thomson might have been present at the house where the young Blaise Worth was raped. Anger lashed him and James, at the same moment exclaimed, ‘He knew, didn’t he?’

‘It must have occurred to you,’ Howard said in a dry voice.

James looked at both of them. ‘He’s older than my father; a dry stick. I don’t know,’ he said in a rush of what sounded like grief. ‘How the hell many people did know, and how many mouths were closed.’

‘Most of the children,’ Vanimöré said harshly. ‘Their mouths were closed — permanently.’

James flinched. ‘But not Blaise—‘

‘It killed him, too. There is more than one way of dying.’

‘If he’s alive,’ he said. ‘I need to find him.’ James’ voice cracked on the last words. He looked stricken. ‘I didn’t come here to talk about my father though everyone thinks I did, or about Canning PLC. I told you. I came here because of Blaise, because he, or someone who knew him contacted you and told you what happened to him.’

‘Classified information,’ Howard responded. ‘If he’s still alive with the ant-heap stirred up by your father and Worth’s death I assume he’s intelligent enough to stay dark.’

‘You mean,’ James said slowly. ‘That he’s still in danger.’

‘This was a global ring of abusers. If he were alive to give evidence…’ Howard was extremely good at this kind of inference. His face was bland as if it were of no interest to him one way or the other, but there was a little furring of doubt that gave the distinct impression he felt it unlikely Blaise Worth was alive.

James gazed at him, then his mouth set in a hard line.
‘Then I hope they’re brought to justice. And I have to believe Blaise is alive. I don’t mean to play a tiny violin but I— he’s my brother.’

‘You have not mentioned that to anyone, I hope?’ Vanimöré asked. ‘Not Thomson, not a friend, anyone at all?’

‘Of course not. One becomes accustomed to being… silent, Mr. Steele. Look, can’t you even tell me how the informant contacted you?’

Howard said as if reluctant, ‘Wouldn’t do you any good. It was a public phone in London. Greenwich. Look, Mr. Callahan—‘

‘James, please. I’m not in the least proud of that surname.’

‘James. It might be someone who knew Blaise Worth, even years ago. The call was to the Met Police. They have a line for reporting sex crimes.They contacted us.’

Nice improvisation, thought Vanimöré, watching James’ face. It was to be hoped he did not contact the Met himself.

‘But why? Why would they and why now, years after Blaise vanished?’

‘Unknown.’ Howard shrugged.

James' face set grimly. ‘Well, I’m going to try again, hire some people to look for him on the quiet. If he’s dead or alive — I want to know.’

‘So would we,’ Howard responded easily.





The press, once again, were clogging the roads, though most of them had never left. A lot of them represented Callaghan’s newspapers. James, leaving for his hotel, wore a look of anger as he drove out through the gates. Unlike his father, he did not use a chauffeur.

‘Good luck,’ Vanimöré replied with amusement. It was not as simple as that and James knew it, or if he didn’t, was about to learn it. The editors-in-chief might have jumped for Callaghan senior, but the son had his work cut out.

All sons have to prove they are not their father.

‘Thank you.’ James held out a hand. ‘Would it be possible to come back tomorrow?’

‘If you wish,’ Vanimöré said. ‘Although at the moment there is little else I or Howard can tell you.’

‘Not that.’ His head shook decisively. ‘About my security detail.’ A faint smile glimmered.Vanimöré returned it.

‘Very sensible. Then yes, of course.’





Howard was waiting in the study, glowering at the laptop. As Vanimöré entered he said, without looking up, ‘If you’re thinking he can change his father’s media empire into liberal and left-wing-looking force for good, I think you’ll be disappointed.’ When there was no answer he turned. ‘Raymond Callaghan was a ruthless, perverted bastard. But he had drive. This boy doesn’t. He's not his father.’

‘Rather the point.’

‘He hasn’t the backbone, Steele.’

‘No sons like to be judged by their fathers,’ Vanimöré said coolly. ‘James has not had the chance to see what — or who — he might be. Wrapped in cotton wool on Joanna Worth’s orders. Wholly unlike David because the son of Raymond Callaghan would be more influential than the son of Mortimer Worth.’ There was a coldness in that attitude which was wholly Sauron. Vanimöré sat down and crossed his legs. ‘Change takes time. People — even the best of them — like to live in echo chambers that reflect their own beliefs. When I ruled—‘

Howard interrupted him hastily. ‘I do not want to hear about some mythical kingdom in never-never land, Steele—’

‘It was an Empire,’ Vanimöré gave him a limpid look from under his lashes. ‘Or the second one was. The first was a city-state. So I did tell you?’

‘No. I just think—‘

‘If Sau— AB wants to influence Canning PLC with its enormous media reach, I think we should ensure he is not pulling the strings of young James. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ said Howard. ‘I just think that potentially putting yourself within the jaws of the lion is irresponsible.’

‘It would not be unfamiliar territory.’

‘What? No, never mind. Okay, so Solange Berkeley, Callagan as was—’

Vanimöré hid laughter. ‘Go on.’

‘She was English,’ Howard said crisply. ‘She came back to England after her divorce, and was a resident at the Dorchester for a few months. Then,’ he glanced up under his brows. ‘She became a patient at Rampton in Nottinghamshire.’

All amusement quenched, Vanimöré sat up. ‘Rampton?’

‘It’s a secure psychiatric hospital. High security. Complete psychotic break, apparently.’ He turned back to the screen. ‘Hallucinations, paranoia, terrified to sleep —‘

‘She saw something, or heard it.’ Vanimöré rose. ‘They could not afford for her to speak. Poor woman.’

‘You think it was deliberate? Callaghan, or—?’

‘Callaghan would not have the ability to drive her mad.’ Vanimöré paused. ‘She is dead.’ And at Howard’s swivelling look, ‘You said she was English.’

‘Yes. Died two years ago. Cause of death: heart attack.’

‘And James never knew.’ Vanimöré moved toward the door. ‘Rampton would keep records of her, of what she said, what terrified her. Get someone on that Howard. Oh, and we need a blood sample from James tomorrow for the DNA test. We can say the DDE needs it in case Blaise Worth were ever to show up.’

‘You seem to trust James Callaghan,’ Howard remarked. ‘And in my business, snap judgments can sometimes come back and bite us on the ass. Hard. He wasn’t even that surprised that his father should be a child abuser.’

‘He knew nothing about it, Howard. But no, he was not surprised. Subconsciously, he did realise his father was capable of anything.’ Setting his hand on the wood panel of the door, he turned. ‘I can scent a pervert, Howard.’ To him, they seemed to stink of unwashed, sour body fluids like the Mouth whose mind was a midden of sex and the need to cause pain. Toward the end of Sauron’s reign, secure in his power and longevity, he would masturbate in public, insatiable and unable to wait for privacy. His hands had reeked of his seed. Sexual perverts all seemed to carry that stench about them, be they never so clean.

‘James is not of that ilk, I promise you. Trust me on this.’

‘Hmm.’ Howard puffed out a breath. ‘Okay, but I was thinking along different lines. He says he’s seen Joanna Worth and AB. But what if he spoke to them; what if he’s working for them and his coming here was an order?’

‘That is a possibility,’ Vanimöré admitted. ‘I do not think so, but I have been wrong before.’

‘Really?’ Howard said sardonically. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To speak to Eden and Aelios.’

‘Well, maybe they can persuade you not to be a fool.’

Pushing the door open, Vanimöré smiled. ‘You are an optimist,’ he said.

Howard, in a goaded voice, invited him to explore his own anatomy.

Chapter Text

~ Fëanor rounded the table, eyes fixed on Eönwë’s.
‘Manwë ordered thee to teach us?’ He could not credit it.

‘He trusts neither thee nor Melkor,’ Eönwë replied evenly. ‘And so he would prefer, if Melkor were to rebel, that his eye be fixed upon thee, not the Valar.’

‘Rebels,’ Fëanor repeated with a harsh laugh. ‘People who think for themselves?’ And with gathering anger: ‘He would pit the Edar against a god? In battle? We know nothing of war. And if the Valar are so concerned about him, why release him at all?’

Eönwë smelt of snow and thunder. ‘Nor wilt thou know anything of war, until it comes.’ He paced around Fëanor as if measuring him for new robes. ‘I can only teach thee to fight. The Valar are not natural warriors save perhaps Oromë and Tulkas. They fought in the Wars of the Shaping against Melkor when Arda was unformed. Most of them fear war for though they cannot die, they can be hurt.’ He stopped, facing Fëanor again. ‘And pain is an anathema to Manwë. As to why they released Melkor I know not, there is something…some secret.’

Fëanor shifted, still feeling the burn across his back. There was nothing there, no mark, yet it hurt.

And I have felt it before.

His eyes strayed to the Mirror case on the table, one shining object among many, then back to Eönwë.

Secrets…

‘Swordplay will become another competition in the Games,’ Eönwë continued. ‘Already arrow, spear and unarmed combat are practised.’

‘The first two are used in hunting,’ Fëanor observed. He did not tell Eönwë that Vanimöré had begun instructing him and Fingolfin in swordplay and knife-work. ‘What thou wilt teach us—‘

‘Also takes lives. And thou wilt need those skills, Fëanor.’

~ It was not only Eönwë who taught the Eldar but his Maia warriors too. They drifted quietly down from the Mountain and Fëanor had to laugh at their supposedly elaborate secrecy. Manwë was not supposed to be aware, Eönwë had told him, as if Eönwë could do anything without Manwë’s direct order.

So Fëanor took up his sword again. It felt as natural in his hands as did the tools in his workshop. There was just one thing lacking: He did not need Eönwë to tell him (as Vanimöré had also stressed) that practice was not the same as reality.

‘Do not underestimate the memory thou wilt build into thy muscles,’ Eönwë told him with a cold little smile. ‘Thou art not Maia, Fëanor, and so this training is vital. When the time comes — and I think it will — thou wilt act on reflex.’

Six days later Fingolfin cantered up the road from Tirion. It looked like a hasty visit; it was certainly unannounced. He did not come in state and brought only two companions, one of which was Nullion. Controlling his curiosity and eagerness, Fëanor walked swiftly to the mansion. Nerdanel was in her workshop; Maedhros, young as he was, would have acted as his parents' proxy, but was at his lessons. The sensescal had shown them into the hall and provided them with wine.

Fëanor inclined his head. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ he asked sardonically.

Fingolfin’s eyes flashed wonderfully; it might be interpreted as anger or passion— or both. Perhaps it was both. Nullion, Fëanor observed, smiled a little and tried to hide it, which was interesting.

Eönwë has come? Fingolfin asked and Fëanor gave an infinitesimal nod. Fingolfin paused and his chest rose and fell. Nullion is here as an intermediary between us. The king appointed him to come. But we need to speak in private and talk to Edenel.

Aloud, Fingolfin said, ‘The King wishes me to speak to thee of Melkor.’

‘Of course he does.’ He gestured to the curving stairs. ‘Come to my study.’ He turned to Nullion. ‘Welcome to Formenos. I will have Mistress Melehte show thee around while I speak to my half-brother.’

Nullion looked from one to the other, no doubt wondering if he ought to leave them together. Apparently satisfied by what he saw he acceded with a bow of his head.
‘My thanks. I would indeed like to see Formenos.’

When the tall Melehte had guided Nullion away, Fëanor mounted the stairs, showing Fingolfin into his study and closed the door.

‘What happened?’ Fingolfin demanded, pushing him back against the door.

‘When?’

‘Melkor.’ Just the name but Fëanor’s skin tightened. ‘I saw thee,’ Fingolfin pressed ‘What was it?’

‘I am not sure. A feeling like fire, a whip of flame.’ He shook the thought away, ‘And thou? Yes, I saw thee, too.’

Fingolfin shook his head. ‘I am not sure either. But not fire—‘ He broke off abruptly. ‘I wanted to speak to thee but…what if he could overhear? I had to come.’

Since Fëanor had wondered the same thing, he did not scoff.
‘We will speak to Vanimöré about that,’ he said. ’And then to Edenel. But first, tell me of Nullion. Dost thou trust him?’

‘It did not go unremarked that he followed thee from the King’s council and spoke to thee.’ Fingolfin smiled. ‘And so he was judged the right person to come. Though in fact…trust him? Would I trust anyone?’ He laid a palm flat against Fëanor’s breast. ‘Like him, yes. He sees as we do. I expect he will follow thee sooner or later.’

‘He would be welcome.’

‘I am sure he would, but dost thou not see?’ Fingolfin traced his hand up to Fëanor’s face, then around to the thick braid of hair which he seized. ‘The schism is there whether we will it or no. And I am on the wrong side of it.’

Fëanor, pulling back against the grip of his hair, glared at him.
‘Gods!’ The breath exploded out of him. ‘I hate this place. I hate this lie.’

‘Are they all lies?’ Fingolfin slammed back, shocking him. ‘The rumours that say thou doth resent me and even Finarfin—‘

‘Finarfin? I hardly know him! He is a boy—‘

‘— and that thou wouldst fain see us gone from Tirion but will not return while we dwell there.’

‘Who says these things?’ Fëanor demanded. ‘Who?’

‘No-one knows. It is always “I have heard that…” and “I was told.” No names, no way to trace whence these rumours come. Is it not the same here?’

Fëanor opened his mouth then closed it again. He wanted to say he paid no attention to gossip, which was true enough, but he had indeed heard his people murmur that Fingolfin sought to have him, Fëanor, displaced as High Prince. Because the whispers were often followed by denigrations of his half-brother, he had to ignore, or refute them, losing his temper in the process.
‘Let go,’ he tugged at his hair irritably. Fingolfin’s grip tightened, then fell away. ‘I do not start such rumours or heed them,’ Fëanor told him. ‘And no more must thou. Perhaps Nullion was right in saying I should spend more time in Tirion.’

‘Yes, he told me he had mentioned that. And yes, he is right. It is the distance, Fëanor. It breeds silence, it builds walls; it allows people to create the most egregious lies and sews doubt.’ Fingolfin shook him, eyes wide and burning. ‘We want people to believe we are unfriends, not bitter enemies. Is that not why we began this?’

Yes, and Indis, clever woman, had known that this would happen, that the rumour mill needed no more than a whisper to begin turning.

‘Very well,’ Fëanor said. ‘But do not doubt me.’ He drew their heads together. ‘Do not doubt us..’ It did not occur to him that anyone could. ‘Not now.’

‘One forgets,’ Fingolfin said after a quick-breathing silence. ‘In Tirion. That is why I want thee there. The air feels cleansed as with fire.’ He drew back.

And I feel the trap pressing in, constricting.
‘I have said I will come. Now, we do not have much time, so let us use the Mirror.’

‘There is never enough time.’

They clashed into an embrace that held no tenderness, only desperate hunger. Fingolfin raised one long leg over Fëanor’s hip and drove against him. Fëanor pushed him to the table and bent him back. Parchment and scrolls hissed aside and fell.

No time, just enough to unloose their breeches and for flesh to touch flesh, for the hardness to become unbearable and their breath to mingle in rough orders and pleas and groans. Fëanor detested concealment and the reasons for it. His ever-simmering rage, his loathing of deceit and secrecy poured into this brief, snatched half-coupling and was matched by Fingolfin. In the white, thundering pulse and rush of release he saw a flash, felt an obliterating energy that seemed to pass through him like a wave of lightning.

He pushed himself up, looking into the silver-blue eyes below him. Fingolfin’s hands dug into his arms.

‘What was that?’

‘Didst thou feel it too?’

‘Yes. Like soundless power passing through me, and…an unbearable light.’ He slid upright. ‘Like a memory.’

Fëanor’s eyes widened. ‘Yes.’ He turned his head as if he could see its passage, through the walls, across Valinor, but there was nothing.
Memory.

Fingolfin turned his head back. ‘Flame of my heart, we must wash. I have to return to Tirion before the Mingling.’

Passing through the inner door, Fëanor brought a washbasin and cloths. When they were clean and fully dressed they sat down at the cleared table, (Fingolfin cast a glance at the scattered papers and smiled) and Fëanor opened the Mirror case.

There was a rich, warm golden quality of light in that other world, in the room where Vanimöré spoke to them. Not the same room Fëanor had stepped into but as elegant, white and gold, uncluttered and spacious.

‘How may I help?’ Vanimöré asked. He smiled faintly, genuinely, but there was a certain wary attentiveness there. Fëanor recalled the tall body against his, the unexpected softness of that scrolled mouth and the sinews taunt as steel wire.

Fëanor said, ‘Melkor is freed.’

The smile fell away; black brows drew down as if at a spasm of pain. His eyes went otherwhere for a moment then returned, acute and blazing.
‘It was to be expected. So, what were thine impressions?’

‘He is not like the Valar,’ Fingolfin said.

‘No. He is something else,’ Fëanor agreed. ‘Though they call him “brother”. But when I saw him, I was reminded of—‘

‘Of what?’ Vanimöré prompted.

‘Of thee, a little.’ It was Fingolfin who answered.

Vanimöré’s face became completely closed, unreadable. Fingolfin’s cheeks mantled with faint colour and Fëanor stepped in quickly.
‘It is true. He is stunning. He has a dominating presence unlike the Valar, and a power that feels quite different. That is the similarity. But he repelled me, and thou — as thou must know — have quite a different effect upon me.’

Fingolfin’s brows rose at that. Mirth sparked in Vanimöré’s eyes.
‘Fëanor, how very diplomatic of thee.’

Fëanor cast up his eyes, but smiled.

‘What is he?’ Fingolfin asked.

Every vestige of humour departed, Vanimöré said, ‘Melkor is — at its simplest he is an amalgamation of parts of me and Eru. The worst parts.’ He stopped. ‘In that universe— ‘ gesturing to them. ‘He is a memory that did not vanish into nothing. All those facets, those aspects coalesced into one being: Melkor. Our thoughts create.’

‘Thou didst create him?’ Fëanor demanded, appalled and yet curious. ‘Then cast thou not destroy him?’

A strange expression flitted across Vanimöré’s face.
‘We did not create him knowingly. Perhaps it would be better had we owned our own darkness and kept it entombed within us. But the multiverse contains everything, Fëanor. Light and Dark and all that lies between. Melkor is a force of destruction, greed, violence that had a mind and will behind it and a memory he does not even know: of rejection. But he cannot be destroyed without changing everything and disrupting the balance.’ He tilted his hand back and forth.

There was a small silence in the study. Fëanor glanced at Fingolfin and saw the sleek brows drawn into a concentrated frown.
‘So it has always been thus,’ he half-stated, half-questioned. ‘In the old universes.’

‘Yes, Fingolfin. There is no such state as perfection. Or rather there is.’ Vanimöré regarded them with a dark, wry self-deprecation. ‘It is Nothing. The only time when there is the possibility of perfection, before reality destroys the dream.’ His eyes closed briefly, then opened again. ‘I am sorry.’

Fëanor’s pulse jerked, started a rapid tattoo. The last words seemed separate to the rest, springing from a very different thought.

‘There is no true contention,’ Vanimöré continued. ‘For both Light and Dark serve a purpose. One must try to find the balance between them and the balance is within us, not some external force.’ His long hands steepled as he looked at something beyond their range of vision. ‘The Valar believe that they represent all the goodness — the Light — upon Arda. They tried to create their perfect place upon Almaren and when that was destroyed, in Valinor, guarded by the Pélori. But it is not ideal for the quendi is it? And so, there is no such state as perfection. Assuming that what is ideal for you is ideal for everyone else is the height of arrogance.’

‘And the Valar have released Melkor into their perfect world,’ Fëanor bit out.

‘I doubt it has been perfect since the Tree Dew was changed,’ Fingolfin offered. ‘Not for the Valar, anyhow.’ Vanimöré nodded. ‘Eönwë has been ordered by Manwë to befriend us, to teach us his skills.’

‘I see. Thou wilt need those skills, I am afraid.’

Fëanor thought of the Elves, vulnerable now as children and leaned forward.
‘And we must learn quickly. What does Melkor want?’

‘Everything,’ Vanimöré returned. ‘And most of all? The Flame Imperishable. He never found it, before, and could not have held it if he had. The Flame is why the desert blooms, why flowers grow from a handful of dust. It is even within Melkor but he cannot harness it, and so he made a mockery of life — and hated it. When thou findest it, thou shalt know it.’

‘One moment.’ Fëanor raised his hand peremptorily and saw an appreciative gleaming smile flash out and fade. But Vanimöré had the look of a man who was about to leave them for other business, like Finwë or himself when he had finished listening to the petitions of his people. ‘Before we spoke to thee we felt something, like an invisible wave of impossible energy that passed through us. Yet there was nothing. It felt like a memory. What was it? This Flame that thou speakest of?’

Vanimöré regarded them. ‘In a way. A memory, yes. The end of the old universe. Its ending created…ripples and they still move throughout the multiverse.’

There was nothing to say to that. Fëanor observed that sculpted face but it might have been a statue’s, yielding nothing. At last Fingolfin’s voice, low and somber, broke the silence.
‘Melkor— can he overhear us when we speak mind-to-mind? Can he feel the Mirror shards?’

‘No,’ Vanimöré replied. ‘But do not grow careless or —‘ He stopped with a tiny upcurl of his lips. ‘I was going to say “do not draw his attention” but that cannot be avoided. Now,’ he said crisply. ‘I must leave thee. Oh, but wait—‘ He moved from their view for a moment then returned holding Fëanor’s ring between finger and thumb. ‘Thine, I believe?’

Fëanor smiled as Fingolfin’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
‘Keep it.’
‘Until it is time for thee to take it?’ Vanimöré’s brows lifted.

‘Exactly so.’

‘Fëanor. The time in this world and thine does not pass at the same speed. Thou couldst enter this world, this place to find me gone; in fact that is very likely, and so I will keep this and take it with me. This world is not one to walk into without great care.’ His eyes held a clear warning. Fingolfin half-turned to Fëanor, his own echoing it, but there was something else there too: a deep glitter of fascination.

‘Am I a fool?’ Fëanor demanded, annoyed.

‘Intemperate, impatient and arrogant,’ Vanimöré rapped. ‘And liable to act before thinking.’

‘And that was supposed to be diplomatic?’

But Fingolfin was smiling. ‘Ah, a man who truly does know thee, and is not afraid to speak the truth.’

It snapped Fëanor’s rising temper. He cursed and laughed.
‘All of those,’ he acknowledged. ‘But not quite a fool.’ And he gazed at Vanimöré.Yes, we knew one another. Can I remember that dead universe? Maybe not here, but on the Outside…?

‘Do not be,’ Vanimöré returned, with something in his eyes a little like love and a great deal like sorrow. Then with an inclination of his head at both of them, he was gone.

~ Edenel and Coldagnir were alert and waiting. Vanimöré expected some protest to his plan but it did not come. They were, he realised, more concerned at his returning to the Monument and remaining there than working undercover as a bodyguard. And he did have to go there but despite the lure of oblivion he had a duty to discharge.

Is there anything else we can do other than be thine intermediary to the DDE Coldagnir asked.

Unknown. There might be occasions when thou canst move much quicker than the DDE. The situation will be aah…fluid and to paraphrase: “rumours of my death will be greatly exaggerated”.

Vanimöré.There was a warning in Edenel’s voice.

I mean it would not matter; it is hardly permanent. When he spoke again, he made his voice businesslike. I estimate my new job could begin in a few weeks. I leave for England tomorrow to see David before he goes up to St. Andrews.

St. Andrews, Coldagnir said thoughtfully.

Smiling, Vanimöré said, Yes. And no, I had nothing to do with that choice. As Blaise Worth he was preparing to go there before he lost himself in the underbelly of London. His heart was set on St. Andrews. It would have been wrong to guide him toward a different place.

It is not entirely safe there, Edenel remarked.

I know. A pity that there were not others to keep an eye on the place. The DDE could only do so much, and some things they could not see.But Sauron’s attention is, I think, elsewhere for now. Howard does have people there, and will assign more for David. Speaking of which… He told them of James Callaghan and, more to the point, of Joanna Worth and her connection to Sauron.

He sews seeds, Edenel mused. And if this woman bore both of them on his orders, those two boys are in more danger than they know, at least this James Callaghan. No-one should know that Blaise Worth is even alive. Hence thy plan. It is not just to find the abusers but to protect both David and James.

James has been too used to taking orders, yes. A babe in arms compared to Sauron. He would buckle too easily. Probably.

Coldagnir said, Be careful.

Of course. Once (long ago) in that odd, wonderful interim between the Elves apotheosis and Dagor Dagorath he would have called it a challenge and accepted it with anticipation. But then, he always knew he could go back. To the Timeless Halls, to walk among those he loved. Just to see them. It was enough; it was more than he had ever hoped for.

Now, there was nowhere to go back to.

~ There was a wind that night, blowing down the lake, sighing in the tall pines. Vanimöré closed his eyes to its rhythmic sound — and opened them to the Outside. A wind blew here too; the lifeless moan of it was unceasing.

But…

He was not within the structure itself, that mad, mated creation of chaos, Barad-dûr driven into the bulk of Angband like a sword into a stone. He stood in the endless desert that surrounded it, a place he never walked because it lead nowhere. The Monument rose before him, a black shape veiled by wind-driven dust.

A dream. I am not here.

The dust glittered across his view; rust and diamond dust. Raising dream-eyes he looked up — and up. From this angle the Monument took a different, paredoilian aspect, fooling the eyes into seeing it as a man on one knee; the spikes of the topmost battlements might have been the excreessances of a helmet or a crown.

Or…the hilts of two swords.

With a movement as graceful and immense as the curl of a tidal wave the shape shifted, rose to fullest height. It blocked the ceaseless moaning of the storm, cleaving the dust as a ship’s prow cleaves the ocean and stood, feet planted a little apart, head aloft, the long tail of hair a tumbling banner.

I am the Monument.

He closed his eyes and stood upon the topmost battlements — and saw himself. He stood as he often did, bracketed by the black spikes, gazing into the nothingness beyond.

A dream.

Then the image of himself — himself and the Monument itself — turned.
‘No dream,’ he said. ‘In physical form the body is bound to the world. Thy mind is not. Each time thou goest forth from here thou must leave most of what thou art behind and forget. There is no other way. That is why thou art always thinking that thou must come back, to remember.’

‘It is why I must come back.’

Vanimöré was not accustomed to looking at himself in mirrors and loathed the figure before him, eternal power, unassailable and permanent as the black rock he stood upon; Barad-dûr, raised by Sauron’s mind. The alien eyes held the loneliness of power and, if one looked deeper, galaxies wheeled and vanished into impenetrable blackness.

‘I cannot be separated, no matter how many avatars of myself are sent out to different universes and realities. Thou must learn to connect with me from there. It is what Eru can do, or so I think.’

Something…a whisper from another world…I have not yet learned to forge that connection. But Eru had learned and used it.

‘And the Flame Imperishable too. We all have totalities.’

‘Yes.’ Vanimöré faded until the dust blew through his shape, yet the eyes still gleamed in a blackness that was darker than the Void.

I ate Darkness, here, before the Dagor Dagorath.

Yes. It was a sigh through the wind. Take the knowledge thou doth need and go.

His own exhalation sounded as weary.
‘I should stay here.’

‘Thou art here. Always. And so are they. The Flame. Eru. It is the only place we can truly exist, is it not?’
The figure solidified again, stood in the whipping winds, twin swords forever rising behind his shoulders, body locked in that stance where it might at any moment reach for them and stride into battle.
‘Take the knowledge and go.’

The child abusers, yes. Their eyes met and they smiled; it was a smile as merciless as Utumno’s pits.

‘Too easy to kill them from here.’

‘Those children suffered, their victims. Blaise was perhaps the only one who survived. And their abusers think their wealth, their position makes them immune to justice. They have nothing but contempt for the commonality. Well, they are going to learn. It is so much more satisfying to do this face to face, no?’

‘There is that,’ he admitted. ‘Despite everything.’

Everything.

The supple black armour faded. White flesh glowed faultless for a moment — and then it was overrun and the mapwork of injuries blossomed like rot on fruit.

Vanimöré had gained the reputation of being unkillable but it had not come soon or easily. His bastard blood, Noldo and Maia in unholy union had given him advantages: only certain poisons could induce fever, and he healed swiftly. But such quickness of knitting bones, sinew, organ and flesh brought its own pain. Before his eyes the history of that pain wrote itself and faded out, every injury, each bruise, cut, gaping wound. But for that core, blazing red-shot black, a pain that was not of the body. Unquenchable. He ignored both.

‘But how do I hold the knowledge that I cannot hold when I leave here? How do I recall it?’

‘Why wouldst thou think I would make it easy for thee and tell thee? When did I ever make things easy for myself?’ That smile, so self-mocking, self-hating, so pitiless. Vanimöré tilted his head in wry acknowledgement. ‘It can be done. It will be done. So do it.’

In the dream, he followed himself down the spiralling stairs to the great chamber where the Portal shimmered. He watched himself pluck the shining time streams multi-web like a master harpist. So easy to see what he needed, to track down the abusers of that child sex ring. Rage made the glittering lines spark red where he touched them.

And now, Joanna Worth…Long fingers moved through the dimensional webwork faster than even the dream-eye could follow.

Shock broke the dream open. He sat up to the peaceful, lulling sound of the wind in the trees. For a heartbeat dream and waking blurred together so that he saw the interdimensional glitter of the portal transposed upon the calm, dim bedroom. The former winked out. Like a dream that is so vivid and fades on waking, the knowledge slipped away easily as a fish down a river. He grasped at it knowing it was vital, that he must remember but though it winked at him tantalisingly, it refused to return.

Cursing, he rose. It was early, just after dawn and the wind had died. The lovely light lay over the gardens and lake soft as silk.

He breathed slowly, remembering how he had trained himself to go within when things were unbearable, deep into meditation. In a way it had been unsuccessful as a place of mental retreat, because in that deep state visions could come and few of them were pleasant. They were like faces bursting out of the dark, vivid as a blow.

It was worth the attempt. He quickly showered and dressed and left the house, walking down to the lake terrace. It did not trouble him that Mortimer Worth had died here, that the lake had claimed Raymond Callaghan’s body and given up its tortured remains. All battlefields were graveyards and battle was his milieu.

He went down to the jetty and with a breath fell into his training moves, the lethal speed of battle slowed to a concentrated dance-like fluidity. It was, in fact, a little like Tai Chi and anyone observing might have thought it was, but he had developed this in Angband. Over the years it had grown and changed as he learned from every fighter he came in contact with: orc, troll, Balrog, Elf, Mortal. Every careful, controlled, balanced move allowed him to free his mind.

He closed his eyes. His father had blindfolded him in Angband. It improved balance, so Sauron said, forcing him to rely on senses other than eyesight. There were, naturally, more injuries at least at the beginning, but desperation is a marvellous teacher and now, it was as natural as a breath taken and released.

He pivoted, bending one knee, lowering himself as he did so like an ice dancer…

…To slice at the achilles heel, and turning, turning, rising on one leg…To stab behind the knee…
Swift enough and one could go here, under the plate of the kneecap, even detach it if the armour were loose or weak.

The Monument. Endless wind. Blowing sand.

He resisted the temptation to seize and examine the image, let it hover there at the borders of his consciousness as he rotated behind the invisible foe to bring the edge of an imaginary blade up to stab at the kidneys. Still slowly spinning he envisaged one of his foe’s arms raised and stabbed up into the armpit, then whirled again to return to his first position.

The groin. Often heavily protected, even in orcs and trolls, but for the sake of mobility there were always gaps. One must gauge the timing to the very moment.

The Portal.

Vanimöré increased his speed. The dance of the swords, the dance of death. Faster until his surroundings blurred into the memory of his own hands racing over the web of the portal…

He came out of the spin in one move. The lake shocked back into his vision, but he did not see it or the race of otherworldly wind that flashed across the water like the pressure wave from a low flying jet fighter.

Ah, Vanimöré! Thou didst speak to Fëanor of arrogance, but what of thine?

Joanna Worth…It was not something he had known and forgotten because he had never consciously looked. He had not truly cared. He thought he had known enough.

And he was wrong. It was appalling. It was very, very Sauron.

Howard’s reaction, he thought, was going to be unprintable.

Fëanor is not a fool no. But I am.

He turned and raced up to the villa. Behind him, the lake settled like a breath in the quiet morning.

Chapter Text

~ The villa lay quiet in the dawn. Banked by flowers, guarded by pines, it looked, in the mellow and lovely light, like a painting, or something from an older, quieter, more elegant world.

Those within slept. It was not an establishment where the owner demanded the servants be up at four o-clock preparing breakfast, though under its late noble resident it had been. Only when Vanimöré had guests did he bother with more than coffee and he was quite able to make that himself. Camino and Guila did not rise until after seven and Vanimöré considered them the true residents of Villa Fiorini and himself and occasional passer-by. He was a passer-by everywhere save Summerland— or the Monument.

Two of Howard’s staff were just coming off night shift. Vanimöré made them coffee as they prepared their reports then took his own cup to the terrace. In this green place, surrounded by roses, he drank without tasting, looked without seeing.

Secure in his knowledge of Sauron, he had made assumptions: The first and greatest was that Sauron was interested in him which was true as far as it went. There had been a Vanimöré in this world and presumably Sauron thought that his son had either survived or died and been reborn. The only thing one could say was that he, too, predicated his plans on assumptions.

But Sauron was not yet ready to approach Vanimöré directly. Thuringwethil’s death at the hands of Claire James had possibly caused him to rethink and anyhow, he had other irons in the fire; he had not been content to wait until he could claim his son back.

Vanimöré decided not to wake Howard; he would have more than enough to deal with when he woke. If he did not know the man actually thrived on pressure (despite outward appearances) Vanimöré would be looking at sparing him the knowledge. But that was impossible; the DDE needed to know.

And so did Edenel and Coldagnir. Not yet though. The immediate and instant emotion of outrage had separated into aspects that he had to examine and more importantly to control. He needed time to assimilate.

Sauron.

He could have killed his father. He had not. By the time he had been powerful enough to effect such a thing, he had outworn the desire. Once, he and Sauron had performed what amounted to a supremely perilous play in the Mines of Moria wherein Vanimöré did indeed appear to kill him. All artifice, but for a purpose: He had wanted the people involved in that ambush and battle to believe that Sauron was gone.*
Even long after, when he could have wholly unmade his father, he had withheld. The roots went too deep, were too contorted ever to be unravelled.

I remember everything. The betrayal, the horror, the agony, the soul-destroying shame and self-loathing that followed — and the times when Sauron talked to him like an equal, as someone who could follow the working of his mind.

Vanimöré had never fallen into the trap of thinking his father respected him; he knew perfectly well the game Sauron played, yet he longed for and cherished those times. Only then did he feel more than nothing, more than the Slave. Sauron knew that, of course and Vanimöré hated that he did. He detested himself for needing that kind of validation of his mere existence.
There had been no name for it then, but he fully accepted that his father had deliberately fostered a kind of Stockholm Syndrome. Even then he had known that Sauron played him. It made no difference in the end.

He could not kill his father, had told himself that others had a greater right to vengeance. Then came Dagor Dagorath. That Sauron had survived it was ironic. He was now guarded in the Timeless Halls.

Can I kill this version of him?

The answer was clear. From the Monument he could have done it already and with just a thought.

Guila’s arrival at the table with breakfast brought Howard in her wake as if conjured by the smell of fresh coffee and croissants. Suited, neat and dapper, he grunted a ‘good morning’, which was all anyone would get from him until his first coffee. Vanimöré poured and handed him the cup, assessing the expensive suit with a flick of his eyes. Even on the rare occasions he had visited Howard’s substantial London home, he had never seen the man without a suit, winter or summer. One of his staff had said ‘He never takes his business head off.’

A breeze sighed in the pines and stirred the roses, wafting their scent across the table. A perfect morning to spoil, Vanimöré thought grimly.

‘Well,’ Fortified, Howard sat back and wiped his mouth with a napkin. ‘Nice morning,’ he observed as if seeing it for the first time. ‘When is James Callaghan arriving? I have to get—‘

Vanimöré lifted a hand. ‘I need to speak to you.’

Suspicion leapt into Howard’s eyes. ‘Oh god, now what?’

Vanimöré rose and gestured to the villa. ‘After you.’

Howard did not immediately explode. He spent at least a few seconds in mute shock beforehand.
Vanimöré simply waited through the storm that then broke over his head as Howard paced and jabbed a finger at him. At last, he ran out of breath.

‘You are completely correct to berate me,’ Vanimöré said calmly. ‘I simply did not consider this possibility. Pure ego, I admit.’

Howard shot him a look, dropped into his chair and opened the laptop. ‘What will you do? Correction: What will we do?’

‘Wait until she approaches her son. She will.’

‘How touching, a real family reunion.’

‘She is not my sister.’ The rebuttal sounded, in his own ears, like a charge of shot and certainly brought Howard up short. ‘Not in any real sense, just as the Sauron of this world is not my father. He believes he is, which gives me something of an advantage.’

‘The multiverse.’ Howard regarded him with an odd expression. ‘But why would he do it?’

‘Every ruler needs his faithful commanders.’

‘And Joanna Worth is his? So, who was her mother?’

‘A woman in his employ.’ At least it had not been a horror of rape and torment this time although later Sauron had killed her quickly and painlessly like putting down a sick pet. Naturally. He wanted the child to be influenced only by himself.

Joanna’s upbringing, too, had been very different to Vanimöré’s. She had been taught to be emotionless, calculating and clever but there had been no rape. Discipline, not torture had refined her. Sauron was creating a useful tool, not a weapon, and Vanimöré doubted Joanna would survive once she had served her purpose. His father was utterly without sentimentality. He had sent Vanimöré from Angband before the War of Wrath and from Númenor before it was destroyed. Neither time had been from care or if it was, it was the care afforded a half-finished weapon that he had not finished working upon.

‘If she sees you, will she know you?’ Howard asked.

‘Quite likely. Kate Barrington, as she called herself when tracking Claire, had a picture of me on her phone. After she was dealt with, I deleted it. But I wonder if she took it herself, or he did?’

‘It’s always been an article of faith that you can’t be photographed,’ Howard interjected. ‘I’d have liked the department to have examined that picture.’

‘Neither can I under normal circumstances, but he is not normal; not even human, and he is brilliant.’

‘Then you can’t do this! Send Eden or Aelios—‘

‘Howard, they are far more conspicuous than me.’

That was undeniably true. Hair of flaming red and milk-glass white turned heads far more than black and that was not taking into account their eyes — however much they tried to conceal them. Like Vanimöré they at times used coloured contact lenses but they were effective for only a short amount of time. They were gods in this world and disguise could only go so far. Howard’s glare subsided; he sank back in his chair then a moment later sat bolt upright again and exclaimed, ‘Your sister! She could—‘

‘No.’

‘But—‘

‘No.

Balked, Howard swore. ‘Why the hell not?’

‘My sister will involve herself if she believes it necessary or if she decides to,’ Vanimöré said harshly. ‘She is not at my command — nor anyone’s. I know you do not like going there, Howard but we are going there just for a moment. On this world — any world — Vanya is immeasurably more powerful than I. She oversees Apollyon Enterprises when I am away as a personal favour to me and because she has some interest in my work. She knows I can deal with anything else. She is Gaia. Her concerns are different. Also, goddesses do not view life and death in the same way as humans do. It is not, in the grand scheme of things, that important. They take a very, very long view.’

Howard’s mouth had opened. He closed it again. He took a long breath. Vanimöré released his own, deliberately relaxing his tense muscles.
Looking at his laptop screen, Howard clapped his hands together.
‘You’ve proved my point.’

‘What?’

Swivelling round, he raised his brows. ‘You jumped right in there Steele. Vanya is your sister. She doesn’t need protecting, but you flung yourself into her path like a fucking silent film hero rescuing a helpless female from the path of an oncoming train — and you probably would. Joanna Worth is not your sister, you say, because of the bloody multiverse, but she’s a woman.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I know how you regard women, Steele. You respect them. You’re gentlemanly, and now you’re going to — probably— confront a very dangerous member of the sex. Someone like you. His daughter. Do you see what I’m saying here?’

Vanimöré’s jaw set. Howard was no craven and his shoulders straightened as he made an admirable attempt to meet the unblinking stare.

‘Howard, you are under-appreciated and I do not pay you enough.’

Since Howard’s annual wages topped six figures, he looked bewildered for a moment. Then his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

‘That needed to be said,’ Vanimöré told him without heat. ‘And you are quite right of course. I’m aware of my ah…consideration toward women, thank you. And I am still the best person to deal with this.’

Howard puffed his cheeks. ‘Why?’

‘He did not raise Joanna in the same way I was raised.’ Vanimöré smiled coldly. ‘She probably believes he is fond of her. Father’s beautiful daughter whom he trusts absolutely and takes into his confidence. She clearly has an immense ego. But she is only a tool. A baby-making tool. She is no fool, surely? The thought has to be there, under the glitter, the money and the beauty.’

A frown furrowed Howard’s brow.
‘Granted, but.’

‘But what?’

‘But what if she tries to seduce you?’

Vanimöré looked at him. Howard shifted on his seat.

‘I am more inclined to believe she will try to seduce her son.’

‘What?’

‘She will have been raised to believe anything is permissible,’ Vanimöré said patiently. ‘That laws and societal mores do not apply to her.’

‘Fair enough. But…two birds with one stone?’

‘Then she will find out I am — and always have been — extremely choosy.’

Howard shrugged a grudging assent. He knew better than most that one could dig in the dirt for ten years (Callaghan’s papers already had and the DDE had, on the quiet, dug even more extensively) and find Lucien Steele linked to absolutely no-one romantically, be they male or female.

‘What about James? What will you tell him?’

‘Well,’ Vanimöré grimaced faintly. ‘I am not going to tell him he is Sauron’s grandson. At least not today.’
But he would have to know sooner rather than later.

And, eventually, so would David.

~ Edenel and Coldagnir were not as shocked as Howard; they were what they were. Both of them had known Sauron and knew what he was capable of. Vanimöré skimmed over the fact that he had been to the Monument and what he had learned (always known?) of his place there. The fact hovered over their conversation but could wait. After all, he had returned.

What does it mean for those young men? Coldagnir wondered.

Nothing good, was the answer. Vanimöré wondered now if Sauron had allowed Blaise Worth’s rape. Two sons: one sheltered, the other thrown to the wolves as he himself had been. Experiments, both, usable either way. And if they were not, he had a beautiful, fertile and unaging daughter who could produce as many children as was required.

He wondered suddenly if Sauron had tried to trace Blaise when he fell out of sight. Had he even found him but elected to let him live that life until he was tempered — or destroyed?

Didst thou not feel anything? Edenel asked. That they were not wholly human?

There is something about them certainly, Vanimöré replied consideringly, fixing his mental gaze upon both. I never thought of it, and even they are not aware, as if that blood is sleeping. They certainly have inner strength; David to survive what he did and I have seen it in James. I thought it was his father’s character coming out in him, but perhaps not. I am not sure that the fathers’ count for anything. James and Blaise both have a similarity to their mother if one looks, and seem oddly young to me, which would make sense. And their eyes have a peculiar brilliance. He paused, frowning. James has a remarkable memory too; he recollects things from young childhood to a degree which seemed abnormally vivid. That could also be an indication. We will carry out DNA testing to confirm they are related though for Howard’s benefit and James’, not mine. I do not need that proof. I saw it. It makes me think of my Khadakhiri, he added with a resurgence of the old, old sorrow. Sauron’s blood, my own blood and yet there was nothing to see or feel, unless one looked, for twenty or thirty years. And godblood is…ambiguous anyhow, neither good nor evil until the one who bears it decides.

Vanimöré— Edenel broke in.

Forgive me that I did not tell thee I was going, he apologised formally. I promise thee that while I feel I have a duty, I will not stay there.

It would have to do. They did not need to know that he was always there. There was nothing they or anyone could do about that, and the idea of limitless versions of himself in other realities was not something he could afford to dwell on at this time. He had to suppose (and hope) that his totality had everything in hand.

I have found out a way to access the information, as one might say.

Yes? Coldagnir asked sharply. Good.

Unseen, Vanimöré smiled bitterly. As thou sayest.

~ James arrived just after ten o'clock. Guila brought coffee into the sunny salon.

Vanimöré had had endless (wearisome) practice at showing an expressionless face and he secured it firmly in place as he searched for the similarities to Sauron in James.

They were there, as they had been in David; Vanimöré had simply not known to look for them. His only thought has been how unlike their respective fathers they were. Joanna Worth was tall, fair and beautiful — and so was Sauron. David’s hair was darker, but the clean, hard lines of his face and luminous eyes belonged to neither of his supposed parents. Vanimöré knew he would not be able to see either of them as anything but Sauron’s grandsons from now on and that was hardly their fault. He would need to watch his step.

‘How goes it with the reporters?’ he asked smilingly.

James paused the cup half-way to his mouth. ‘You knew didn’t you,’ he said. ‘That it would not be easy.’

‘I find that threatening to kill them is effective.’ And it was not entirely a jest. It had certainly worked in Sud Sicanna and the Imperium simply because it was no mere threat. It would work in some countries in this modern world. James’ eyes widened then narrowed.
‘Unfortunately I think there are laws,’ he said.

‘Do you think your father lived by any law save his own?’ His own certainly did not. James flushed and looked away.
‘You are an unknown quantity,’ Vanimöré said. ‘And his shadow lies long and dark over you. No, they are not going to jump when you say “jump”. You will have to make it clear you mean business, that you are not asking but telling.’

There was a tiny silence. James carried the coffee cup to his mouth and sipped.
‘Was it like that for you?’

‘It was. We are not them, but we have to prove it.’

‘Yes. Well.’ Rather deliberately he replaced the cup on its saucer. ‘You’re right about that. I heard from my lawyer this morning that I will be investigated to see if I’m implicated in my father’s crimes.’ His head shook slowly. ‘I did half-expect it but it’s still…unpleasant. I am seriously considering selling everything off.’

‘It’s an option, certainly.’

The doors opened to Howard and one of his staff. With a nod of welcome, Howard addressed James:
‘Morning! I’d like a blood sample from you while you’re here, in case Blaise Worth ever shows up on our radar.’ His tone was so casual, Vanimöré inwardly applauded. The DDE already had Blaise Worth’s blood; it was standard procedure. It had not yet been tested but Howard was flying out tomorrow with the sample from James and both would be tested in London. Vanimöré was interested to see the results.

‘Of course.’ James said willingly, taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeve. ‘Let’s hope, but I do intend to look for him myself, or hire people, at least.’

Howard shared a quick glance with Vanimöré.
Once he had gone, James rebuttoned his shirt-sleeve and sipped his coffee.
‘What would you do in my shoes?’

‘When the wolves gather my instinct is to face them,’ Vanimöré responded. ‘And they are gathering, are they not? Especially with the shares plummeting.’

‘You know that as well as I do, I’m sure.’ Something of a snap in that reply. ‘And it’s not wolves, but vultures. Will Apollyon buy it out, Mr. Steele?’

‘I could, of course.’ Without the power of Callaghan’s Empire, what good would James be to Sauron? Vanimöré considered. If it was known that James was selling off Canning PLC, in fact dismantling the empire, Sauron would have to move fast. ‘We might talk about that. But at the moment, for your own safety, say and do nothing, at least until after you are cleared of any wrongdoing.’

The blue eyes watched him. ‘I wondered if…it crossed my mind if that was why you agreed to see me and why you proposed to be one of my security detail…if you’re serious about that?’

‘Would that it were that simple.’ He rose. ‘And yes I was and am completely serious. Last night we spoke of Joanna Worth as working for someone who was likely to approach you once the fuss has died down. You saw her with him in London.’

James came to his feet. ‘You’ve found out more about her?’ he questioned sharply.

‘Oh yes. She is working for him, but he is not her employer.’ He watched James’ face intently without seeming to do so. ‘He is her father.’

~ Edenel was on Amon Ereb when he felt the nudge in his mind. The Ithiledhil kept a camp there; it provided a superb view across the lands: West along the line of Andram, south to the vast, dark sprawl of Taur-im-Duinath, Eastward to Gelion and green Ossiriand and beyond to the hazy peaks of the Ered Lindon.
And North. Always they gazed northward. There had only been hints as yet: scents carried on the breeze, a dark hand on the heart but the Ithiledhil were ever vigilant. They had seen the monsters that had once been quendi and killed them. Some of the horrors had survived the destruction of Utumno. Marion and at least one of the Balrogs had also escaped.

Nothing is over. Nothing is ended.

But now, early summer lay across the land in kindness. A time of leaves, a time of warmth.
Amathon and Arassel, who had accompanied him, cooked a grouse over a low fire. The day was grey but the wind blew mild from the great landmass to the East.

All the way from Cuiviénen.

The Ithiledhil had never returned there, to those abandoned settlements, to the echoes sweet and sour, to the few who lingered on the great shores, in the Wildwood.
Edenel watched his companions feeling, like the beat of blood through his veins, the bond that was far more than blood, more even than love. These two had ever been his friends, tracing him even into Utumno’s blackness. He would have done anything to prevent their torment. And he had, but they, like all the quendi who had been swallowed by the Underworld, did not escape. There was no mercy in the Dark God. No pity. His unhuman and titan power had broken all of them.

Black-haired they had been once As I was. Now their hair, braided with crow feathers was stark as snow.

Edenel did not know why some of them, a score only, had burned into this whiteness but his gratitude that some at least had survived was bottomless. They were forever set apart from their kind, but they were not alone. The bond between the Ithiledhil was deeper and stronger than the Dark God’s corrupting sorcery.

Edenel had felt that same connection between the two who had spoken to him from the Mirror shard. Since then, journeying Northward to Amon Ereb, he had thought of little else.

None of the Ithiledhil forgot their past — how could they? — but the chasm of the Underworld lay between what they had been and what they now were, between what Melkor had called his White Slayers and their kindred. There was no returning, but they had, once, been quendi.

Fëanor, who had spoken to him, seemed unsurprised by his appearance and asked no questions. When he had closed the connection, promising to speak again, Edenel walked long in thought. Returning to the Ithiledhil he spoke to them because that faraway land of gods concerned them, too. All of them had lost someone to that Great Journey.

‘Thinks’t thou that they will indeed return?’ Tathreniel asked. She was of Ingwë’s people — or had been. The ‘willow dancer’ she had been called for her matchless grace. Now she used that grace to hunt and kill. Her chosen weapon was the spear, and she used it with terrible precision.

Fëanor had spoken of Ingwë as High King over all the Elves in Valinor, and of how he had sat at the feet of the King of the Valar for years before awakening as from a drugged sleep. He had also admitted that those who wished to leave Valinor might not find it easy if the Valar decided they should remain.

‘Some,’ Edenel told her. ‘I think some may, if they can.’

He sensed, rather than saw the communal flinch away. Soiled. Corrupted. Unworthy. He felt it in himself; he knew the shame and grief that lay on their souls and felt his own swell to encompass them in unalloyed love. They inclined toward him as a flower to the sun. They had made him their leader and he bore their pain as his own, as any ruler must.

‘We are the Ithiledhil.’ His voice rang through the clearing and into the trees. ‘I need tell none of thee that the Darkness was not destroyed. We watch and ward against its coming and if those who departed this Middle-earth do return we will aid them in all the ways we can.’

They extended their right hand, palm out. ‘We are the Ithiledhil.’ In that echo Edenel heard the blood and thunder of their first oath; their rejection of Melkor.

By the scent, the grouse was almost done. Edenel turned.
‘I will fetch the mead,’ he said and the two white heads rose and nodded. There were springs on the hill and he had lowered the mead into one to keep cool. It was merely an excuse, now, to retrieve it. The pull on his attention was stronger, peremptory, a knock on the heart.
The spring welled like tears, shadowed over by wind-writhen hawthorns. They formed a little dell, a cup in the hillside, with a view that rolled East to Gelion and the mountains. The lands lay serene and calm under the clouds.

Slowly, Edenel reached into his tunic and drew out the Mirror. He had looked at it since that strange conversation but saw nothing but his own reflection; that in itself was so disturbing that he had immediately thrust it back. Now, he waited, breath coming short and sharp. His heartbeat dinned like muffled thunder in his ears.

The Mirror surface shimmered like lake-water then cleared to show Fëanor and beside him another man so similar that Edenel knew this was the half-brother he had spoken of, son of Indis. Fingolfin. His eyes blazed silver-blue fire.

‘Edenel,’ he said.

‘We needed to speak to thee together,’ Fëanor told him. His face was unsmiling. The brother’s turned their heads to glance at one another and their profiles, fine and hard as etchings, caught Edenel’s breath and stopped it.

They looked at him again and his mouth dried.
‘What is it?’

‘Thou didst call me Finwë’s,’ Fëanor said. ‘And I did not correct thee.’

He felt it like an approaching storm, something immense and shattering that had built on a far horizon and was now about to fall upon him. Yet in their eyes, diamond and star-brilliant, he saw only a reined, impatient eagerness.

‘Not his sons?’ he asked slowly. ‘Then—‘

‘Not his,’ Fingolfin agreed and reached out a hand. ‘Thine.’

Chapter Text

~ ‘But that is not possible.’ Edenel’s voice came thin and high as the cry of the hawk over the thunder of his heart. ‘It is not. We followed the Great Journey. I saw Míriel and Indis, even unto the shores of the Sea. They were not with child then —‘

‘It was the gift of a Power,’ Fëanor told him, his eyes lucent with that unearthly light, like a wolf’s eyes caught by firelight. ‘Listen.’

Edenel’s blood hissed. He closed his eyes. Opened them. The world was the same. But the words Fëanor and Fingolfin uttered reshaped it moment by moment.

An unknown goddess who had walked Arda and reached out her hand, stilling the seed in the women’s wombs until they reached Valinor. Finwë believed that Fëanor and Fingolfin were his sons but Indis knew the truth. None of them had enlightened Finwë.

‘I cannot,’ Fingolfin admitted slowly, with a sideways glance at Fëanor. ‘Say then, I will not. He is lonely.’ Then, looking straight at Edenel: ‘Dost thou not feel it?’

Edenel was mute. He thought of the spirits of wood and water and stone, of the bright, wild airs, and of the Dark God under Utumno and Mairon. All were powers of varying degrees, unhuman and ultimately unknowable, but he had never imagined some overarching goddess of the land, though it sounded right for was the land not their mother?

The Ithiledhil did not weep. Utumno, and the fire that had burned them white had scorched all tears out of them. Nevertheless, he felt the shiver in his chest that presaged tears and their faces blurred into bright shadows. His sons?

He said, hammering control into his voice: ‘It was Finwë who wanted children.’ And was willing to do anything to have them. ‘I was not moved by the same need as he.’

‘But my mother and Míriel both foresaw thou wouldst father their children, did they not?’

Edenel hesitated. ‘They said they had dreamed of it,’ he acknowledged after a moment.

‘And they were certain they had kindled. But nothing happened at least not then, and not in Middle-earth.’

‘But why — why?’

“Because,’ Fëanor said. ‘It should have been so. Dost thou ever dream, Edenel?’ he asked. ‘As if thou hast lived before?’

The wind passed through the hawthorn boughs. Edenel, silent, thought of his dreams.
‘Perhaps,’ he said.

‘We did, we have and that universe ended. I know not how or why, but we were reborn into this one and it is very like to the old one. And that one left echoes, like ripples passing to the shore, breaking on the sand.’

‘There were a very few survivors,’ Fingolfin said. ‘Thou wert one of them, and all the Ithiledhil.’

Gateways and doorways. Openings to another time. Visions and dreams, glimpses —
— White fire spat across the Mirror. Edenel almost dropped it. He jumped back. But there was no heat, only a prickling in his fingers like the bite of frost.

‘What was that?’ Fëanor’s voice sounded startled, even angry. Slowly, as through a clearing mist, their faces returned.

‘These Mirror shards,’ Edenel said urgently. ‘How many are there? Who might possess one?’

‘A very good question,’ Fëanor replied. ‘I wonder…’ Then, ‘Edenel, we must go for now, but dost thou believe what we have told thee?’

Both of them looked at him with such burning need that his throat closed. His sons, not Finwë’s, who had so yearned for children. It seemed unfair, and yet Fëanor had told him of Valinor, the strict Laws that one must follow or be punished. And Finwë adhered to them stringently, as if he had forgotten, or put away the memory of their transcendent bond, their love.

He said, ‘Believe? No. I feel it. I…there are no words. I am humbled. And I was Élernil, then, not what…I became.’ They were sons from the man he had been, unbroken.

‘Thou art a survivor,’ Fingolfin said sternly. ‘And a magnificent one, as are all the Ithiledhil. We are proud to have thee as our sire.’

How could he accept that? Yet there was no mockery or derision

‘Is it possible,’ he ventured quickly. ‘That I could speak through this connection to Indis?’

Again the brothers exchanged a glance. It reminded Edenel so much of that long gone time, when he and Finwë could communicate without need of words. And with that, the realisation.
‘Thou art lovers,’ he exclaimed softly. ‘And the Valar consider it a sin.’

‘Yes,’ Fëanor confirmed, glittering. ‘And yes. If we — or any like us — wish to love openly, it will not be in Valinor. We are unfriends — publicly. We have to be. It was Indis bethought the idea and it works. Rather too well,’ he concluded dryly. ‘But one day when we are free…’ The look he turned on Fingolfin surprised a shock of blood into Edenel’s loins, so desirous was it. He thought of the earliest days when none of the Unbegotten had even thought to question he and Finwë’s relationship. But then, they were not born of women. Was that even important?

‘There is another matter,’ Fingolfin said, though his high cheekbones bore a flush of colour as the recipient of that burning. ‘Melkor has been freed by the Valar.’

Black fear choked Edenel’s throat. That presence, eyes like the slaughter of worlds. Before them he was nothing. Less than that — or more mayhap — because he was something in that Black God’s eyes: a thing to be used, experimented upon, to suffer agony and terror with no appeal. It would be better if such a Power did not see or notice the quendi. But he had.

‘Why?’ It emerged as a breathless rasp. (His throat remembered the screams). He swallowed but there was no moisture in the tissues of his mouth and the air felt thick and red and hot. ‘Why — They descended upon Utumno, and took him away. Thou hast told me he was imprisoned. Why?’

‘There was a term to his imprisonment,’ Fingolfin said through set lips. The Valar abided by that term. We saw him. His release was a full spectacle.’

Ah, stars, no. ‘They cannot know what he is,’ he said in a cold and rising rage. ‘Or…do they?’

‘They know,’ Fëanor nodded. ‘We do have some allies in Valinor. Eönwë, the Herald of Manwë and the finest warrior in Valinor has been sent to train us in arms, purportedly in secret because he wishes to help us, but in actuality by Manwë. If Melkor rises again, his target is to be us.’

A species of helpless horror descended like a mudslide upon Edenel. The world felt hostile, dark, for if the Powers that claimed it as their own kingdom had no humanity the inhabitants of Arda were at their mercy. His eyes closed; his head bowed and then, as in Utumno, he lifted it as if against a mountain of iron.
‘I saw Eönwë. The winged warrior. But even with such a tutor Melkor is not…’ He ran out of breath and forced it into cramping lungs. ‘He cannot be defeated.’

The quendi believed all life, even earth and stone possessed some kind of inherent soul, but if Melkor owned one it was of an order Edenel could not fathom, an external thing, dark and vast and utterly unhuman.

‘Well, not yet,’ Fëanor returned with a bright, hard, challenging smile. The words would have seemed foolish coming from anyone else, but the protest on Edenel’s tongue withered. For a moment fire seemed to burn about Fëanor’s head.
Then he and Fingolfin turned as if hearing something beyond his view and Fingolfin said quickly, ‘We must go.’ His eyes warmed to stunning deep-water blue and he smiled. ‘Father.’

‘Father,’ Fëanor echoed. They placed their hands on their breasts in the old gesture of respect and bowed their heads to him.

Edenel leaned forward, touched the glass as their image faded. ‘Be careful,’ he begged them.

The wind blew through the dancing leaves and the pool rippled, clear and deep. His heart wrung itself out then raced forward again. He was tortured upon an altar of exalted grief.

Be careful. Be careful.

~ James started for a long frozen moment at Vanimöré. A breeze billowed the long curtains, snapping his head around as if he expected an attack, or the flash of a paparazzi’s camera. There was nothing, just the wind. He looked back and exploded from raw nerves: ‘That’s impossible. I saw him. He was young.’ Into the continued and unruffled silence his voice stuttered and broke. ‘You…you must be mistaken.’

‘Unfortunately we are not.’

‘But who is he?’

‘He goes by many names. He has wealth and influence and wishes to expand that influence. Both he and his daughter are interested in you.’

‘And you want me to meet them?’

‘He is pertinent to the interests of MI6, Howard’s department in particular. The question is: Do you want to meet your mother?’

James, his face strained, hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted after a moment. ‘I don’t know. This is why she had me, and Blaise too? To use as pawns?’

‘Yes.’ There was no way of softening it and Vanimöré was not sure he would have, anyhow. This young man was going to go through the fire whether or no. Sauron, certainly, would not be gentle. But James, like Blaise, had never known a mother, only a distant or domineering father, and the pull of the mother, a figure of nurture, was strong.

‘I want to ask her,’ James said in a flustered burst . ‘I want to ask her why it was so easy to give me up!’ The words seemed to surprise him with their vehemence but not Vanimöré.

He said like a dash of cold water: ‘Then you hand her — and her father — everything with both hands and immediately concede the battle. For make no mistake, it is one.’

James flushed as if he had indeed been slapped, and his mouth closed in a firm line. Vanimöré imagined he must have done this all his life when chastised by his father. Held it in, seethed in silence, choked it down.

‘They do not want to contact you because they love you,’ he said, deliberately brutal. ‘They want to claim you for a very different purpose. To use you as a tool. Is that what you want? After the way your father treated you? Or have you grown to like it?’

He wanted James to react; he had injected enough contempt into that last question to rouse the mildest of men. And James took two swift steps forward, fists knotted in the first sting of rage.
‘No, I…did not! What the hell are you trying to say?’

‘That freedom is not easy.’

The young man stopped, turned his head toward the ceiling and closed his eyes. Pent breath billowed out of him.
‘I know. I know.’ He looked down. The blue eyes had heated like burnt gems. He had been raised to hide his anger, but he was not devoid of it; it had just been buried too long and too often.

‘Yes, and so do I, which is why I will be one of your security detail in the near future.’

‘You’re serious about that?’ James blurted.

‘I am involved with the DDE, and have been for a long time. Yes, I am serious. Are you returning to New York?’

‘Yes, briefly, but I called a meeting of the Editor-in-Chief of the Towncrier and the Latest. I need to be back in London for it.’

The two red-tops were rankly Right-wing. The ’crier had been delving into ‘Lucien Steele’s’ life (or attempting to) for years. Notwithstanding, it considered itself a serious newspaper, which was the cause of raised eyebrows and a few sniggers in the halls of the Times and Guardian.. The Latest, far more lightweight, dealt with celebrity gossip and scurrilous stories.

‘Really?’ Vanimöré lifted his brows. ‘Why?’

‘Surely you — the man they’ve kowtowed to for decades, writing everything he wanted them to write, was a child abuser!’ James threw out his hands. ‘You set him up, yes, but you were right to. They slavishly followed the wrong star, and I want them to lay off you.’

‘And do you think they will?’ Considering both of them had known.

‘If they think you’ll sue them into the next millennium.’ James smiled and it was hard and glittering. It reminded Vanimöré shockingly of Sauron, but then he laughed.

‘There was never a cause before,’ he said. ‘Speculation as to my sex life and whereabouts and genealogy is hardly grounds for legal action, merely distasteful. But in this case…’ Suing would not go far enough.

‘I’ll say that,’ James nodded. ‘Not quoting you, of course.’ He shook himself a little. ‘I wanted to ask: Can I see where he died?’

The day had strengthened into heat but the breeze tempered the sun’s glare, pushed the brilliant water into whitecaps. The encircling mountains looked hard and stark against the depthless blue of the sky, cut off abruptly at the waterline. An illusion; this hollow cupped the lake; the mountains plunged down into the cold depths and further, to roots of hidden fire.

Vanimöré stopped in the lake terrace and gestured.
‘Mortimer Worth was shot here.’

There was a stain still on the ground. James frowned, then followed Vanimöré down the steps to the jetty and walked to the end of it.
‘I don’t understand why the body took so long to recover.’ Lifting his head, he looked across the water. ‘But it’s deep, isn’t it?’

‘A glacial lake, yes.’

The wind lifted James’ thick hair. Such a pale gold. Because of his tan, Vanimöré had assumed that his hair was sun-bleached, perhaps dyed. It was not; this was natural. Blaise, darker, still showed those sparking golden highlights. How bright and glittering Sauron’s hair had been in the glowering red-dark of Angband. A torch to light his service to a God.

James gazed into the water. ‘I’ve been trying to summon grief,’ he said emotionlessly. ‘I find I can’t. I’m glad he’s gone. Does that sound terrible?’
Lifting his head he turned and his profile, hard-cut, against the water, brought the taste of ichor into Vanimöré’s mouth. Ice-hot, potent, sweet and bitter both. Then he realised it was his own, not the lingering memory of a slave’s service. He swallowed the blood from his bitten tongue.
‘Hardly. He seems to have been no father to you.’

‘No. You said freedom was not easy?’ He walked back to the steps and leaned against the terrace wall. The vines of the pergola dappled his face with light and shadow.

‘One is at their most vulnerable when the chains are struck off,’ Vanimöré murmured. ‘He knows that. So does your mother. That is why they waited all these years from your birth — for now.’

His face flinched. He pushed himself away from the wall. ‘How do you know this?’

‘I know it.’

‘I wish…’

‘What do you wish for?’

‘Before this, I thought…I could just go away. The laugh came shaken and hollow. ‘Just…wander around Europe. Visit a winery. Learn the trade. Make wine; make things that grow and give pleasure, not exploit and tear down.’

‘There are worse ambitions.’

‘Yes.’ He dropped back against the stone. ‘But I can’t do that now. That’s what you’re telling me. That my birth was planned, that I’m a pawn in a game I can’t escape.’

‘Not a pawn, a Knight or Bishop at the least. And some of us are given no choice, James.’

The too-bright eyes focused on him.
‘Is that why Blaise vanished?’ His voice rose. ‘Maybe he knew, maybe they—?’

Vanimöré stamped hard on that. ‘Blaise Worth was sexually abused as a child, by his father and yours. He ran from the unendurable, not from Joanna Worth or her father. And he — or someone who knew him — clearly wanted us to know the truth.’

James’ breath shivered into the breeze. He passed a hand through his hair. The flecked sunlight sparked it into glittering cream.
‘I’m going to sell the house in the Hamptons,’ he said after a while. ‘I want to live in London. I’ll stay in a hotel for a while and look for a property. Whatever happens with Canning — and I don’t care that much, I never did — I do have my own fortune.’ He offered a wry grin. ‘My father’s mother left me some. He was furious but couldn't do anything about it due to the conditions of her will. I want to search for Blaise or be on hand if anything is found. Even if he…he’s dead. But I don’t feel it. I…’ He shot a glance under his lashes at Vanimöré who said nothing. ‘Anyhow, I’ve called this meeting. I can’t do anything legally I know, not yet, but I did inherit everything. And I also, personally, hold over half the shares in those two newspapers.’

‘I suspect Joanna Worth made certain you inherited everything,’ Vanimöré said. ‘You would be of little use without that influence.’

‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ James challenged hotly, then threw up a hand. ‘I have something they want. I understand.’

‘But at least you know that, and can — I hope — be on your guard. They will be quite persuasive.’ He added: ‘I know how hard it is, believe me.’

The gold brows drew together. ‘Your father was the same?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘And dissuaded you from having friends because they were only after your money — or a route to him?’

Vanimöré laughed without humour. ‘I doubt my father even thought anyone would wish to know me. I was not a person. He gave commands as from a master to a slave.’

‘You’re not serious?’ James stared. ‘My god, you are. What did…what did you do?’

‘I resisted. I fought. Ultimately, I obeyed. I never thought I would be free of him, but one day, I was. Just as you are.’

‘But you must have friends now. I know Madam Gauthier is one.’

Vanimöré smiled. ‘One or two, yes.’ Because it was almost impossible. Who could be trusted with the knowledge someone they knew was immortal? At the least, the friendship was built on a lie and could not endure. The unchanging face and body would end it long before the Mortal’s death did. James would learn this, as would David. Half-Elven blood would eventually be diluted. Ainur blood endured far longer.

I will have to speak to them both, and talk to James before Joanna Worth or Sauron drop that knowledge on him like a bomb.

Realising the silence had stretched, he shrugged.
‘As for someone just wanting your money, what the hell does it matter? You know as well as I that an obscene amount of wealth is owned by the 1%. Of course some people would want a rich friend, and why not? The point is: Are they decent people? The point is: Do you like them? You will soon see through those who do not care about you in the least; the rest — if you enjoy their company — why not be generous?’ He regarded James through eyes half-lidded. ‘Yes, to simply wander around the world without a name, on your own, would be an excellent experience for you. And perhaps you can — after.’

‘Did you?’

‘Wander? Yes,’ he said. ‘I did. And I consider myself honoured to count Héloïse as a friend. But friends are not what I…er…do and are few and far between. In the end, James, everyone has to be able to survive alone.’

The wind riffled the vines. A crow call came from high in the trees, mocking.

‘But—‘ James began slowly and then something in his face cleared like lifting mist. His face shone as if hope lit a candle beneath the skin. ‘I have a brother.’

~ Over a light lunch, they discussed what Howard called Operation Tense, at which Vanimöré laughed and earned a dour glare.
James was returning to New York where he would present Peter Thomson with his golden handshake.
‘Then coming back to London as soon as possible. The meeting is scheduled for the 21st.’
He’d booked the Townhouse at Great Scotland Yard until he found a suitable property to purchase.

‘Somewhere that’s my own,’ he stressed. ‘Not my father’s.’

‘I’d always advise interviewing and vetting your own security staff,’ Howard said over Guilia’s Fiori di zucchine fritti e ripieni di ricotta. ‘But if you need a private secretary-cum-general factotum I know a man who might suit. An ex privy councillor. Retired three years ago when his wife died but regrets it now. He needs something to do and he’s the most close-mouthed man I’ve ever known. Completely discrete. Had to be.’

‘How do you know him?’ Vanimöré asked.

‘Oxford and Cambridge Club,’ Howard said briefly, then expanded: ‘We were on the same rowing team in uni. We go fishing together sometimes.’

‘Ah…perhaps you could send me his name and contact details.’ James looked from him to Vanimöré as if he could feel his whole life falling into a pattern of control and arrangement that was different to his father’s but only in respect of who was doing the controlling.

Howard nodded. ‘I’ll do that. Archie Fenwick-Brown.’

‘You have my private email and phone number of course,’ James said, with a little edge and Howard, unperturbed, nodded again. Vanimöré hid a smile.

‘He can arrange for your security staff,’ Howard continued. ‘One of which will include—‘ he pointed his fork at Vanimöré. ‘So we’d better get on with that today. Don’t let your current security staff go until Archie is in place. It’s only common sense. Nothing to do with Joanna Worth or her father. You may be innocent as a baby but some people will see you as your father’s son and therefore guilty.’

‘I brought two,’ James said, then caught himself. ‘I’m sure you know that. They’re not here, as the Villa Fiorini has enough security of its own.’

‘I’ll get on the phone to Archie.’ Howard drained his coffee and pushed back his chair. ‘Expect a call today.’

James, thanking Vanimöré for the meal, also rose and said he had a flight to catch. After a slight hesitation he put out his hand. Vanimöré shook it.

‘See you in London, then?’

‘In London,’ Vanimöré acknowledged. ‘For my interview.’

James looked as if he might say more, but did not. Vanimöré watched him drive away, frowning, then joined Howard. He was in conversation with his friend Archie who, it seemed, was perfectly obliging, even grateful to be handed this job on a platter. After a quarter of an hour or so, Howard terminated the call and sat back.
‘Archie practically fell on my neck; said he owed me one. He’s going to ring James Callaghan now.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m flying back to London tomorrow. You?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not happy about James Callaghan relocating to London,’ Howard muttered. ‘And he’s not stupid. Sooner or later he’ll remember that Blaise Worth was going to university — and where.’ The look he shot at Vanimöré was withering. ‘Okay, he wouldn't find him under that name at St. Andrews but it’s one of the places he associates with Blaise and might send someone there, or go himself. So…I’m thinking it might be time to identify a body, a drowning in the Thames, maybe. There are always some who are never claimed. One of them could — retroactively — be Blaise Worth.’

It was the sensible thing to do, Vanimöré knew. James would accept it but he thought of the abject loneliness the weight of that news would bring down and remembered his own.

He said, ‘No.’

‘Don’t go soft on me now, Steele!’

‘He’s vulnerable enough as it is, Howard. Add grief — he feels none for his father — to that, and the only way we will stop him falling into his mother’s arms, is force. He wants freedom.’ Vanimöré made the gesture of a bird fluttering away. ‘Well, he cannot have that, not yet; he is a chess piece on a board now, a rather important one; he knows it and resents it. But if he has hope: of freedom, of finding his half-brother, he will be more accommodating of necessity. And, if he is going to turn to anyone, I would rather it be us.’

Howard looked at the laptop screen then made an infuriated sound that approximated to: ‘Argh!’ and swung back. ‘You might be right. I hate that. But if you and Héloïse hadn’t practically thrown David toward St. Andrews this job would be a lot easier.’

‘And you, my estimable Howard, would be bored.’

Howard raised a warning finger. ‘Don’t push it!’

‘I would never!’ Vanimöré batted his eyelashes.

‘And…oh well.’ Deflating a little in acceptance of the inevitable, he said grudgingly, ‘I’m interviewing next week. There may be some more staff forthcoming. I want you to listen in, of course.’

‘Naturally.’

Howard looked around the room. ‘Well, back to work, I suppose. But this place is so peaceful. I don’t know why you don’t spend more time here.’

Vanimöré executed a little bow. ‘It is yours, Howard, whenever you wish to come.’

‘Thanks, but I think my vacation time is done for a few months.’

‘Because this was such a restful break,’ Vanimöré said straight-faced. ‘A beautiful spot, excellent weather, wonderful food. Uncovering a global child abuse ring. Murder.’

‘Yes, like I said, a vacation. Now back to the real world. I’m still concerned about that guy who vanished after the car crash at the crossroads on the B4001.’ He lifted his brows.

‘He used a portal, so he is rather more than a footsoldier,’ Vanimöré remarked with a nod. The knowledge would be there; he simply had to access it.

‘We have Ashdown House under surveillance and we’ll keep that even after David leaves, I think?’

‘That would be wise, yes. And Lord Grey is a nice old boy. It would be a shame if he were dragged into this.’

‘You’re going up there aren’t you? Right, I’ll give you the package for David: Burner phone, numbers he’ll need if everything goes sideways, escape routes.’ He considered. ‘I was going to give him a last talk, but you can do that. Just stress that he has to maintain his cover.’

‘He does realise the seriousness of this,’ Vanimöré told him. ‘I want him to feel comfortable in his assumed persona, not frighten him into jumping at shadows. That’s not how our agents work, either.’

‘He isn’t one of our agents. He hasn’t had the training.’ Howard glared. ‘But if we have to work with it, we do.’

‘We do. And we will.’

The scent of pine and cypress gusted into the room and the drapes billowed and snapped like a sail. Vanimöré went and secured the cord. When he turned back, Howard was staring at him.
‘David,’ he said reluctantly. ‘You don’t think there was anything too…coincidental in us locating him, do you? His being Joanna Worth’s son—‘

‘You said it was the work of years to trace anyone.’

‘It was, but…’ The expression in his eyes was unfamiliar to Vanimöré until he realised that it was simple faith; an expectation that he would know which, from Howard, was strange.
‘No,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘No, David is who and what he is.’

‘Good.’ With a gusty sigh, Howard turned back to his laptop. Vanimöré left him to it. He crossed the black-and-white tiled hall and climbed the curving stairs. In his room he quickly packed, and withdrew the ring that Fëanor had left here. In lieu of a better hiding place, he slid it into his finger. The warmth sank into his skin, deep and rich with a flickering edge of the power that Fëanor owned but could not yet harness to the full.

‘And thou, Fëanor, Flame Imperishable, behave,’ he said softly.

Chapter Text

~ The sun rolled off the back of night as the Bombardier climbed from Milano Malpensa airport. Over Switzerland, the Alpine peaks were still white but the sun blazed from clear summer skies. Europe sprawled below in mountains, lakes, crumpled hills, rolling to the north.

Vanimöré’s original plan had been to fly to Capri and pick up ‘Nanny’, before returning to England but after the ball, Vanya decided she would go back to Summerland early. Journalists and paparazzi were bound to trouble the village, she said. ‘Nanny will see them off.’

It had been an early start and one the flight path levelled off Howard and his staff slept, all save the youngest. With a mere year of service to the DDE, Vanimöré had noted that Bahir seemed to want to prove himself. As he went down to the galley, Vanimöré touched his shoulder, told him to sleep. The rather shy but dazzling smile reminded him of Tanout. He would never (and certainly the DDE would never) employ someone because of sentiment yet over the decades the spark and tug of memory had happened enough times to halt Vanimöré in his tracks. Before the destruction of the old universe it had been poignant. Now, it was painful.

When he returned with coffee, Bahir had reclined his seat back and his eyes were closed, his breathing quiet. The last weeks at the villa had been a time of constant alertness and strain, and all of them had gone above and beyond the call of duty. Howard, though grudgingly, had agreed they take a week off. A considerable bonus was already in their bank accounts.

Vanimöré drank coffee watching the slim white wing of the aircraft slice the sky. He twisted the ring on his finger and closed his eyes, not sleeping, but falling into a state almost of mediation, where the access to his totality was easiest.

Sauron’s blood explained many things. Blaise Worth had not been spared because his father balked at murder, but because of who his mother was. Joanna Worth had demanded that her son live. Worth had known.
Worth was dead. Callaghan was gone. But there were others who had escaped justice. One of them was Ollie Skinner, editor-in-chief of the Towncrier., whom James was to meet in a few days time.

After a time, Vanimöré drew himself out of thought, went through to the cockpit. Rick Collins had flown Eurofighters in the RAF and handled the Bombadier with the lazy, negligent ease of a national hunt jockey riding a gentle old family pony around a sunny paddock. The co-pilot, Tony Brookes, had been a BA pilot.

‘Thunderstorms developing over Île de France, Mr. Steele,’ Rick said in that clipped way of his, a relic of the RAF.

From the cockpit window, Vanimöré could see them, curdled clouds lit to dazzling white by the sun and rising, rising in silent, billowing threat, beautiful and immense.

‘Cu nims at forty thousand feet, and rising.’ He turned his head a little. ‘We‘ll fly over them Mr. Steele. No problem.’

The altimeter numbers began to rise as the aircraft climbed. Slowly, the storm crept north, casting its shadow over Paris, the giant cloud below still reaching upward. Fëanor’s ring burned so suddenly hot that he clenched his fingers.

Fëanor. All power answers to power, or perhaps I should say: energy.

He remembered his sister’s words at the ball. He should have taken the ring to the Monument and had not.

I should have. It is an artefact of Power and not of this world. Dost thou know, Fëanor, what thy creations contain, or is it always that the maker leaves part of himself within?

‘Storms forecast to cross the Channel,’ Rick said. ‘But we’ll land before they reach London.’

They did, but the air was humid, breathless with approaching thunder when they came into Heathrow. Vanimöré collected his car and drove into London. The storm broke before midday, washing the dusty roads, gushing down the storm drains. From the windows of his penthouse he watched the flicker of lightning across the black sky, the great window streaming in the downpour.

It was a day of storms and spearing sunlight. Pedestrians moved under umbrellas that mushroomed and collapsed between the thundershowers. Shepherd Market with its market-town charm and little old shops, was a quiet oasis; the rain it seemed, kept the custom to a damp trickle, but the pubs and cafes, their outside tables empty, were busy behind steamy windows.

The tinkling bell sounded tinnily as he pushed open the door of the jewellers. It was like walking into the past, and Bellman and Sons had indeed served successions of royalty for three hundred years. Now, it dealt in rare antique jewellery and watches. The latter was why Vanimöré was there.

After David left the villa, one of the cleaners had found his expensive Breitling in his room. She was concerned that the young guest had forgotten it, and Vanimöré had told her he would return it. He was not going to. David had taken it off deliberately, he knew, hating what he had done to earn it. It was understandable but he would need a watch at university, governed by hours and so Vanimöré had contacted John Bellman and asked him to source one. Within a day, John had done so, a rare Jaeger LeCoultre and almost wept when Vanimöré instructed him to engrave something on the back.

‘Mr. Steele, you’ll deface it!’

‘Think of it as making it one of a kind,’ Vanimöré smiled into the phone.

He had sent the instructions and now the old man, a genius, came with the watch in its leather case.

‘Mr. Steele.’ He blinked behind his glasses, short-sighted from years of close work. ‘You’re early, sir. And in this weather!’

‘A busy day,’ Vanimöré apologised. At his nod, Bellman senior lifted the watch out and turned it. His expression was a study in pleasure at his art and horror at what he had done.

The engravings were small, delicate and superb. A phoenix, feathered wings outstretched, head pointing up toward a new future. David had carefully packed his fabulous outfit though whether he would have any occasion to wear it, Vanimöré did not know. Still, it would have been a shame to leave it behind.
Across from the phoenix were two crossed palm trees whose roots were the blades of twin sabres facing outward: The insignia of the Dark Prince, ruler of Sud Sicanna. The first time and place that he had truly been alone, himself, without Sauron at his back like the shadow of black wings. It was a thousand years of freedom, growth, and experience.

I made mistakes but it was strange — or not — how I rode so easily on my father’s black wings. Never a doubt that I could do whatever I wanted. He broke me, time after time, and yet (and still) never a moment that I doubted. That immense and awful confidence. Was it Sauron’s? Was it Fëanor’s? Was it mine?

Héloïse had called him intimidating. Héloïse had not seen him on his knees before Melkor and Sauron, that or the other manifestations of torture. The pain was breaking-point but the degradation was worse and lasted far longer.

I understand, David.

Very gently, he traced the engraving with a fingertip. In this world it carried a different meaning: very few people possessed this insignia. To the DDE and its associates it meant ‘instant access’. At a more somber level, if David ever went missing and this watch surfaced, it would provide a lead.

He raised his eyes to the old man’s. ‘Superlative. I expected no less.’

Jon Bellman nodded in satisfaction. ‘If I may ask, who is it for?’

‘A friend,’ Vanimöré said easily. ‘And they will be delighted.’

‘I’m glad. May I offer you coffee?’ As Vanimöré turned away.

‘Thank you but not today. I have an appointment.’

He opened the door to rain and the flickering flash of lightning. The square was almost empty but for a couple hurrying toward him under a small umbrella and a man whose jean-clad legs were the only thing visible under a much larger golfing umbrella that was catching the whippy gusts of wind like a sail. Fëanor’s ring, always warm, throbbed into sudden heat.

The couple stopped, side on under a small awning, Both of them were hooded. The shorter figure, a woman, lowered the umbrella and shook spatters of moisture from it. Pale gold hair slipped from under her hood in a gleaming curve. Through the smell of city rain, Vanimöré caught a whisper of expensive perfume. She laughed, tucking her hair back in. Her fingers were long and white, each one ringed in diamonds. Turning her head slightly to her taller companion she laughed and the sound was like the chink of cocktail glasses, rich, hard, confident.

The photograph he had seen of Joanna Worth in Bermuda had been bleached by the brilliant light and her pose. As she looked back into the square her profile, side lit by the illumination from the shop behind her, was so familiar that Vanimöré felt every sinew tense. She was ten feet away and beginning to turn her head and the one beside her…

The man walking with the umbrella tripped, crashing down almost at Vanimöré’s feet. He heard the smack of knees on the stone, heard the gasp and stopped — on something rather more than reflex — to help. The great bell-wheel of the umbrella, still grasped in one hand, acted like a concealing shield.

‘Thank you.’ A light, breathless, pretty voice and a flash of enormous, startled eyes under a wet hood that clung to his face. Drenched curls, even paler than Joanna Worth’s, were painted to his forehead. Then Vanimöré’s offered hand was gripped hard. There was a soft exclamation of pain. Fëanor’s ring felt like a brand on his finger. It must have been hurting the young man but he did not drop Vanimöré’s hand or flinch.

Joanna Worth laughed again, glittering. Vanimöré’s head snapped around. He heard the tap of heels and the softer press of a man’s flat-soled shoes. Every inch of his skin prickled.

The hold on Vanimöré’s fingers tightened. The hooded face before him bowed as if in pain. Long wet lashes were closed over his eyes.

Lighting shocked over the square followed hard on its heels by another tearing roll of thunder.

Both pairs of footsteps came to a halt.

‘One moment.’

Sauron’s voice, smoothed to a different world but familiar as a touch.

Crouched as he was, the umbrella concealed Vanimöré and he kept his head lowered as the grip on his fingers tightened. He thought of nothing. He was blank as a lead sheet. I am not here. I am nothing, as thou didst once tell me.

Then the bell of the jewellers shop tinkled and he heard the hiss and click-shut of the door. As if he could see through the fabric of the umbrella, he stared, eyes narrowing.

Now, that is interesting.

With Vanimöré’s assistance, the young man came to his feet, lifting the umbrella. He withdrew his hand. The rain hammered, bouncing off the square, the worn step of Bellmans and Sons where Sauron and Joanna Worth had entered. It streamed down the softly lit windows; the beautiful jewellery pieces, all nested in velvet, were smeared into a reddish, fire lit glow.

Possibilities sparked and faded in Vanimöré’s mind. He considered. Wavered. The moment between thought and action or inaction can stretch a lifetime but it must be seized or it is gone forever. It had all happened in a minute, no more.

Water dripped from Vanimöré’s soaked hair. He strained against the desire to burst through that door and confront Sauron and his daughter. But the ring still yelled a warning and Sauron, in this world, possessed the greater power. There was too much at stake: Maglor and Claire, St. Andrews, David, James, the entire DDE and their operations — although if Sauron were ignorant of that Vanimöré would be very surprised. But, long ago, effortlessly, he had been able to see into Vanimöré’s mind. There was no reason that should have changed.

He swung round to the square, empty now of people. The rain fell like silver rods through pewter unlight.

The young man had gone. He saw a shadow fading into the murk. The ring still burned. The door of the jeweller's shop seemed to quiver as if anticipating the moment that Sauron would sense that hovering power and come out. He had felt something and decided, for who knew what reason, not to investigate — at least not at that moment.

There was a spy hole in the door dating from Victorian times. Bellman senior said it was still useful. Was there a lizard-quick flicker there, an eyeblink?

Vanimöré looked quickly away. His back was stiff, like a man expecting an arrow as he walked across the square.

~ The storms had not tracked as far west as Berkshire. Ashdown House rose white against the woods and rolling downland under a mild, dappled sky.

Héloïse, after a day at Henley, had made a flying visit to Paris on business not unconnected to the ball. She had visited her son and spoken to lawyers and was very willing to testify to her part in Callaghan’s invitation to the villa. She told this to Vanimöré when he rang before leaving London, adding that David and Lord Grey would be delighted to see him.

Lord Grey certainly was. As the summer stretched toward July, the steeplechasing world was quiet. While Lord Grey had a few flat racers, his main interest was in National Hunt. Many jockeys and trainers took their holidays now, before gearing up for the autumn and with his hip still healing, the old man had little to do. He accepted the wine and cigars with an endearing dignity and Tommy, presented with some excellent pipe tobacco and whiskey, allowed Vanimöré to carry an extremely large F&M hamper into the kitchen.

Héloïse twinkled at Vanimöré. ‘Formidable,’ she murmured. ‘Now we will not have to eat shepherd’s pie. Oh, it’s much better now that David sometimes shops but still Tommy cannot cook!’

David came skimming down stairs at that moment and Fëanor’s ring pulsed like a hot heart.

The presence of power? Or am I influencing it, knowing what I know of his blood?

There was a change in David: He moved more freely with a grace that had, until not so long ago, been compressed into wariness. Rich, gold-tipped curls haloed his face in glossy profusion and his eyes were brilliant, intensely blue. He had picked up a slight tan, perhaps during his walks and looked much healthier and more vivid than the nervous, too-pale pretty-boy Vanimöré had first met in Italy.

Resilience, Vanimöré thought. Blaise Worth had always possessed it.

The resemblance between he and James Callaghan— and their mother — was enough that a stranger seeing them together would have guessed they were related. Vanimöré had said nothing yet to Héloïse. Later, he would walk with her and talk. He had no concerns of her repeating it or broadcasting her thoughts.

David smiled shyly, putting out a hand, which Vanimöré gravely shook.

‘You look very well,’ he said truthfully.

‘Thank you,’ He glanced at Héloïse. ‘I feel it.’ He almost bounced a little on his toes and said to her, ‘Did you tell Mr. Steele about the flat?’

She smiled with affection and threaded an arm through both of theirs.
‘There has not been time and it is your flat non? Come let us have tea. It is one English custom I approve of.’

They took tea in the walled garden, Lord Grey saying he could very well manage it.

‘Of course, mon cher.’ Héloïse agreed. ‘It is healing well is it not?’

Afternoon tea, courtesy of Fortnums, consisted of delicate little sandwiches and scones with cream. Lord Grey made great inroads and when Héloïse told him what he might expect for dinner, he exclaimed, ‘My dear chap, most kind of you,’ to Vanimöré. ‘I do hope there’s enough for Tommy,’ he added earnestly in an undervoice. ‘He’s not really my servant but he does like to pretend he is. Wouldn’t want to leave him out, you know.’

Vanimöré assured him that he had not forgotten Tommy and there was more than enough for everyone. Smiling, David said that Tommy was enjoying his own cream tea in the kitchen while watching the television.

‘Good, good.’ Lord Grey looked pleased. ‘Now, dear chap I’m sure you didn’t come here just to bring gifts. You want to know what young David’s been up to!’

Smiling, David flushed and began to speak of St. Andrews while Héloïse nodded and sipped tea and Lord Grey dolloped an immense amount of cream on another scone, interpolating the odd endorsement when he had finished each mouthful.

That the flat was on Howard Place had indeed made Howard Wainwright groan and declare that Héloïse had done it to annoy him. Vanimöré laughed, but it was in fact a good choice. The garden opposite would be useful for the security detail as would the fact that it was the end house.

When tea had been cleared away, David asked Vanimöré quietly if he could talk to him and lead him to the library. Closing the door behind them he showed Vanimöré the beautiful book sets that Lord Grey had presented him with. Visual arts, philosophy, history, they were bound in glowing calf-skin and clearly heirlooms. They did not even seem to have been read and David handled the pages reverently. Vanimöré guessed he spent much time in this peaceful room with its scent of old pages, leather, wax.

‘I didn’t know how to thank him,’ David said. ‘I felt I could hardly accept them but he wouldn’t hear of Tommy having to climb all over to put them back.* I couldn’t think of anything else to say but thank him.’ He looked up smiling. ‘He’s very kind. He hardly knows me.’

Vanimöré admired the lovely things. ‘Yes, he is a kind man, and he clearly likes you.’

‘He wouldn’t if he knew what I…what—‘

‘You do not know that,’ Vanimöré cut through that. ‘Do you? I believe he would be horrified and pity you.’

‘I don’t want anyone’s pity,’ David said with muffled passion as he closed the book. ‘No-one forced me into that life. I chose it.’

‘You did not choose to be raped. You did not choose to be traumatised by it. You did not choose to be targeted by filth. David, look at me.’ The too-bright eyes lifted slowly. ‘You were a victim. But now you are David Balfour who is about to enter a new life. Live it.’

‘Yes.’ David nodded jerkily and then with greater resolve: ‘Yes. It still feels like a dream but when I saw St. Andrews it felt that I should be there.’ His face changed, warmed as at a memory of sunlight on old stone, the curling froth of waves breaking on long sands, the winds off the North Sea and the wheel of white gull’s wings, the ancientness and learning of the city going deep, deep into the bedrock of the place. His shoulders rose and fell. ‘I’m a little nervous, but…’

‘A positive nervousness,’ Vanimöré suggested.

‘Yes. I…did Héloïse tell you we stayed at the Fairmont?’

‘She did, yes.’

‘It was very…expensive clientele. It would be. Well, she saw someone she knew there and said it would be better if he didn’t see us, so we dined in-room.’

‘Ah, yes, Howard did mention it. Jonathon Harlow. I know him, or rather of him. It had nothing to do with the ball, David.’

‘He was with a young man. An escort.’ David’s lips curled down in an expression of distaste. ‘Well later I went outside and met him. He was just walking, getting some fresh air as I was. He said hello to me, introduced himself as Nael. Mr. Steele—‘

‘Lucien.’

‘I’m sorry, yes. I know I’ve got to be careful and I was but he reminded me of…’

‘Yourself?’

‘I suppose so. He asked me to have a drink with him, and I remembered that I always needed one before my work.’ He stared, a little challenging. ‘We talked. Not about that, about St. Andrews. He said there were ghosts and things that were more…more perilous was the word he used. It was rather a…strange conversation; I thought he must be self-medicating, Valium perhaps. A lot of sex workers do. I did.’ A look of self-deprecation, a glance into the past that limned his face with shadows. Then he blinked himself out of it. ‘I would have thought it odd: the talk of ghosts, but for the night of the ball.’ He turned the book in his hands. ‘I think it’s the kind of thing people will tell themselves they misinterpreted or it was quite natural, but I won’t forget the crows and what I thought I saw in the lake and…’ he hesitated then rushed: ‘Other things. In the gardens, at the ball. And…you.’

Vanimöré considered simply staring him down but at the waiting, the need for truth in those blue eyes he temporised.
‘There are things in the world that are not easily classified,’ he said as if it were perfectly normal. ‘In part the DDE exists to monitor and sometimes deal with them. Every government possesses such departments. Some of the things they investigate fall loosely under the category that people might refer to as “paranormal”.’ He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. ‘And most of them are quite easily explained, David. I would not let it bother you that much.’

Not yet, anyway. Complete ignorance would not help him and he had long passed the stage where he might have believed Howard’s mantra of Nothing happened. No-one saw. But neither did he need to know everything. He was soon to start a new life under a false name; that would require concentration and caution not the fear and shock of something dangerous and unknown. If he were forever looking to see something in the shadows, and was always on guard, it would affect his time in St. Andrews detrimentally and indeed, his whole life. There was a delicate balance here, and Vanimöré was not sure how much knowledge was enough, how much was too much. He would prefer it to come gently and incrementally, not as Claire’s had in smashing blows of fear and pain and the horror of Thuringwethil’s claws and poison kiss.

But is it too late? With his blood…I do not know.

David had been frowning at him and now exclaimed: ‘The paranormal? You mean ghosts, aliens?’ A disbelieving laugh stuttered out of him. ‘Like the X Files? What has that to do with Callaghan and my father and child abuse rings? Those things aren’t paranormal. They’re real.’

‘Yes, and some of those involved believe in a higher and often malignant power. Ancient gods perhaps, even ones they invent.’

‘That black circle on my father and Callaghan,’ David whispered with a contraction of dark brows. ‘Like a Freemason’s ring? Secret societies you mean?’

‘Yes.’ This was not a far cry from the conspiracy theories surrounding the Illuminati. If David’s mind followed down that path all the better, at least for now.

David’s gaze went distant. ‘Yes, but…that doesn’t explain what I saw at the villa.’

‘You witnessed death,’ Vanimöré said. ‘And yes, you saw or felt other things, because you were in a heightened state of emotion. It is true that some people do experience things we would call paranormal for want of a better word.’ He thought of Claire James and tangentially of Héloïse. ‘Yet you must still live your life. Take Hélöise for example. She has seen many, many things and will see more. Yet she lives, does she not? It does not alter her existence.’ He laughed. ‘She would never permit it.’

David, after a moment, also broke into surprised laughter.
‘No, no, I can’t see her ever permitting anything to disturb how she lives. She would tell the apocalypse or an alien invasion it was being ridiculous and anyhow, she was too busy to deal with it, at least until after Henley.’ He choked. ‘She is so superb, isn’t she?’

‘Indeed she is.’ Some of the tension had been laughed out of David’s muscles, which was just what he needed. ‘You could not do better than to follow her example. Even Howard. He knows, just prefers to pretend that he doesn’t.’

David’s mouth still held amusement, but he said thoughtfully, ‘Yes, I do see.’

‘Whatever happened, it did not prevent you from deciding to go to university, did it?’

‘No,’ David agreed, apparently struck. ‘Of course not. I never thought of it that way, but it’s true.’

‘Let it be the truth. Because it is.’

‘Nael spoke of ghosts,’ David said questiongly. ‘He said he liked to walk the town at night and that some places were unfriendly. He called St. Andrews ”A thin place.” I knew what he meant. He said I shouldn’t walk the Pends at night.’

‘For purely security reasons, we would prefer you not walk anywhere at night,’ Vanimöré told him without stress. ‘At least not alone.’
It was not ghosts Vanimöré was concerned about, but other things both human and unhuman who watched and waited and sometimes followed.

David had been holding the book, nervously smoothing the leather. He seemed to realise what he was doing and put it down carefully. ‘Anyhow, Nael told me he lodged in the town and I gave him my phone number.’ He crossed his arms defensively. ‘In case he needed help. Thanks to you I have plenty of money and the thought of him having to sell himself…’ His head shook.

David had chosen not to tell Héloïse and Vanimöré wondered why. He frowned a little.
‘What was he like?’

David’s head tilted. ‘He looked like an angel. I’m not exaggerating. Far too innocent to be in that game. Far too fine. Another pretty-boy.’

Vanimöré said calmly, ‘If you see him again, let us know: me, Héloïse, Howard. In the meantime, I’ll look into Jonathon Harlow and his “boys”.

‘Would you? Was I wrong?’ he asked. ‘I just remember thinking when I was doing that how I wished someone would just sweep in and rescue me.’ His mouth crooked wryly. ‘And you did.’

‘We were far too late,’ Vanimöré said harshly, self-condemning. ‘We should have found you long before.’

‘I wish you had,’ David replied honestly. ‘But you did find me. And I found him.’

The meeting had affected him; that much was clear. Vanimöré would have been surprised if it had not.
‘You liked him.’

‘I hardly know. Felt an affinity with him, yes.’

‘I’m sure something can be done. I told Howard that there were worse ambitions than hunting down abusers. It follows that helping the abused is just as important.’

David’s face lightened. ‘If you could. If I see him—‘ Then reluctantly, ‘I did wonder if he was some kind of well…agent,’ he confessed with some embarrassment. ‘But apparently his client often took his “boys” there, and I can’t see how anyone would have known Héloïse and I would be at the Fairmont.’

‘Caution is admirable,’ Vanimöré smiled. ‘Just do not let it fall into paranoia. You used the Tor browser to book the hotel?’

‘Yes. I use it for everything.’

‘Then do not worry about it. Was it something about Nael himself that made you wonder?’

David paced to the window and back; his fingers raked his curls in a restless, nervous gesture. ‘He just didn’t look as if he ought to be doing it, or even particularly bothered about it.’

‘Neither did you,’ Vanimöré observed, which earned him a grateful, flashing smile and a flush.

‘I think…’ He stopped. ‘When I spoke to you that morning I decided to apply for university, there was something I never told you. I think I should, now.’

‘Yes?’

‘And show you. Would you mind? It’s not far.’

Perseus and Medusa loped ahead as they walked across the field, sending early evening rabbits bolting for their holes. David pointed to Alfred’s Castle.
‘It’s an iron age hill fort,’ he said. ‘I came here before. I don’t, anymore.’ He slid a glance at Vanimöré. ‘It felt as if there was a high, humming wire going through me. There was no-one around. I brought the dogs and there was nothing and no-one to be seen. But it felt alive. Have you heard of Merlin’s Mound in the college grounds at Marlborough?’ A wheatfield rippled under the wind, and a red kite circled far up. A skylark’s song came down like falling jewels. David squared his shoulder looking up at the rise where the ancient ramparts rolled, softened by the mould of time. ‘We weren’t supposed to climb it except for ad montem** — but sometimes…’ A smile fleeted. ‘I went up for a dare one Halloween with a friend of mine. I’d quite forgotten.’ The downland wind swept through his hair. ‘But it felt a little like this, a kind of energy.’

Vanimöré could feel it. Yes, a thin, humming wire. Power. He felt he could put his fingers out and pluck it. Fëanor’s ring answered with a greater bloom of heat. He made a mental note to have the current ‘watcher’ here observe this place.

‘Some people believe these ancient sites to be portals,’ he said, gazing. ‘Doorways to other times or places— other realities. There have ever been legends of people who vanish at such sites. Or the Tuatha de Danaan of Eire who walked into the mounds and the Otherworld and became the Sidhe of myth, never to return.’

David shook himself. ‘And is it true?’ he asked softly.

Vanimöré shrugged. A plane went overhead, so high above that its sound came later, contrails were already wisping into nothing. The wheat bowed like waves before the wind.

‘I had a dream, after.’ David’s voice broke the quiet that fell back like a cloak. ‘I was running here from the house through a summer night and this place was illuminated, beams rising into the sky. I was terrified and drawn and then I was somewhere else. It was winter, sunset, there were ruins against the sky and a man stood there. I thought he was you at first, or rather, as you looked at the ball.’ Again, that flick of a look under long lashes. ‘Long black hair blown back from his face and an ear that was not like…ours.’ He sketched with his fingers. ‘A delicate point. And a woman’s voice whispered close to me: ”He’s not human.”.’

Claire.

Vanimöré had a vision of himself, in the Timeless Halls before Dagor Dagorath ended everything, watching this world through the Portal. Claire and Maglor.

That moment when she saw something that her subconscious had suspected. The sea wind — or the hand of a Power — had exposed Maglor’s unhuman aspect and she knew…

‘It seemed so vivid,’ David said

‘I cannot help you,’ he lied. ‘If dreams carry messages, they will reveal themselves in time but sometimes a dream is just a dream.’ He smiled. ‘I have something for you back at the house.’

In his guest room, Vanimöré gave him the package from Howard. Already David had a burner phone and his documents but Howard, in a superabundance of caution wanted him to have at least two more phones. Then Vanimöré took the watch case out and handed it to him.
‘One of the cleaners found your Breitling.’

David’s face hardened. ‘I don’t want it. I meant to throw it in the lake but the police were there, and divers.’

‘I do understand. Nevertheless, you will need a watch.’

Jaw set, David opened the case reluctantly then went very still for a moment. Abruptly, his head reared up. ‘It’s beautiful! Thank you. I can’t—‘

‘Look at the back,’ Vanimöré murmured and David turned it. His fine brows drew together.

‘This,’ Vanimöré indicated the crossed sword-palms. ‘Is an instant access when you wear it. There are organisations beside the DDE who work together at certain times, but even in the DDE very few people know what this is and there are those who are even more secret than they. So few people possess this that unless you and the watch are together it will be ignored.’

With a puzzled glance, David strapped it around his wrist.
‘But how would I know?’

‘You will come to know if need be. The DDE have their people and I have mine. A very few. And that is for your ears only, David. Even Howard does not know.’

David blinked. ‘No, of course. I won’t say anything, even to Héloïse.’

Vanimöré laughed. ‘Héloïse knows, my dear. She knows a great deal.’

David visibly relaxed, as if the fact that Héloïse knew was a source of comfort and trust. And why not? They had grown close. Vanimöré smiled encouragingly and clapped him on the shoulder. David’s eyes, as he withdrew his hand, blinked at it.
‘That’s a beautiful ring.’

Vanimöré tilted his fingers, regarding it. The wide, flat band of gold was so smooth it looked liquid. There were no marks on it at all and the tiny diamonds blazed in time with its heat.

‘Someone left it at the villa,’ he said. ‘I am merely keeping it safe. Now David, listen: Do not worry. You will be looked after. Everything else, what you have to be now, your watchers, they will always be there but become background noise in time.’ Or so he hoped. For a while, at least. ‘We want you to live the life you would have lived and I promise that no-one will take it from you. Now, when do you mean to move into the flat?’

The change of subject worked as he hoped it would.
‘Oh,’ David smiled. ‘I think at the end of July. We’re going shopping, and then we’ll drive up. I want to settle in, to get to know the place for a while and buy some furniture, make it more homelike. It’s strange,’ he added. ‘But my brain is almost slotting into the mindset it had before I went to St. Andrews. I can’t explain it.’ He made a helpless gesture. ‘But it feels like a miracle,’ he ended seriously.

‘Good.’ Vanimöré said. ‘Now, I need to talk to Héloïse before dinner.’

‘Tommy will overcook the steak.’ David’s eyes twinkled.

Vanimöré laughed. ‘I will cook it.’

‘Well, that I would like to see. Tommy is very protective of his kitchen.’

‘I can be quite persuasive.’

‘I know.’ David stroked his fingers over the watch-face. His eyes lifted, vivid and smiling.
‘Thank you,’ he said.

Chapter Text

~ Tommy was driving Lord Grey to Oxford for a hospital appointment and Heloïse decided to accompany them. David, invited, declined, saying that he thought, while he was here, that he ought to visit his foster-mother’s erstwhile ‘home’ near Marlborough.

‘I’m not sure it would come up in conversation, but I ought to be able to describe it. Although,’ he looked at Lucien Steele, seated elegantly and reading through Lord Grey’s Sporting Life. ‘I suppose it isn’t really mine?’

Lucien closed the paper. ‘It very much is, David. Would you mind if I came along?’

A precaution, David guessed. ‘Not at all.’

Saying their goodbyes, they went out. David had seen the beautiful black Bentley Continental the day before and paused.
‘Beautiful car,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’d love…but Héloïse agreed I needed a car that wasn’t too noticeable.’

‘It will not always be so,’ Steele told him. Standing by the car, eyes covered by dark glasses, he looked like something from a Vogue advertisement. ‘But for now, I agree.’ He dangled the key from one hand. ‘Would you like to drive?’

‘I couldn’t. I’m…I’m not insured.’

Steele flashed a smile. ‘Unless you drive dangerously you will not be pulled over.’

David fought the impulse and gave into it without much of a struggle. He slid into the driving seat, worked out how to adjust it a little (Steele was taller than he) and clicked the seatbelt into place.

He was careful down the long drive onto the road, but he could feel the power in the engine, like a racehorse at a walk, he thought, ready to fling itself into full gallop. Turning onto the main road he gradually accelerated and could not help smiling at the response, the purr of power. His fingers flexed on the leather of the steering wheel.

He was careful through Lambourne, cautious all the way to Hungerford and Steele sat in the passenger seat relaxed and calm in a way that gave David confidence. Near Hungerford they turned onto the A4. The traffic here was flying along. He glanced at Steele, saw a faint smile hovering on that lush mouth. He said, ‘Seran wants to show you some speed, I think?’

‘Seran?’

‘I rode a stallion once, black as the eye of night and with a lion’s heart. Seran.’

David took a breath. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘All right.’

The beast that had purred under the hood snarled into life as the Bentley leapt to the speed limit in seconds. It was a fraction of what it could do, David knew but it was potent and exhilarating. He found himself smiling with set teeth as the green landscape poured by each side and cars passed like blurring ghosts.

A mobile rang. Steele’s. He looked at it, swiped and answered. Concentrating on his driving, David half -listened.

‘Yes, James?’
‘Ah, that was to be expected.’
‘All of them? I present you my compliments.’ A soft laugh. ‘No, I do not suppose it was. Watch your back.’
‘Very well, yes. Howard will route the phone call. I will see you then. Goodbye.’

David eased down. He felt hot and light; his cheeks stung as if with fever.

‘Steady,’ Steele said in the same mellifluous tone. ‘You had no breakfast. Shall we eat in Marlborough?’

David heaved a breath. Like Steele, he wore dark glasses, but it was unlikely there would be anyone around who knew him. He slanted a small smile.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

They ate outside at the Lamb Inn, an old pub with excellent home cooked food. Perhaps he was just hungry, but David felt more stable after lunch. And yet, Marlborough unsettled him. It was so near to his heart, the best years of his life and seemed so long ago as to be another person’s dream. Most of the shops were ones he remembered; some had changed, the unevenly worn cobbles, the old stone, the air of quiet prosperity were all the same.

He tensed when the road took them past the entrance to the imposing Master’s Lodge; despite the full-leaf high summer foliage, he glimpsed the warm red block of B1. Suddenly as a door opening, he was there again hearing the bustle of the halls, the quiet shuffling whisper of class work; he could smell the sun warmed grass of the fields, and the crackle of winter air in the lungs.

He turned the Bentley along Bath Road between North Block and Morris House, saw a quartet of boys, jackets open in the warmth, the familiar ties showing. They were talking, laughing; he heard them as the car passed, carefree as the chatter of birdsong. David’s throat closed in a spasm of memory and grief for days lost.

‘Do you want me to drive?’ Steele asked quietly in his deep, calm voice.

‘No. Thank you. It’s just…Have you ever wanted a certain time in your life never to end?’

‘Yes. Yes, I have.’

David glanced at him. They were out of the town now, and the public entrance to the college lay on their left.

‘I was shy when I first came,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘It took me a while to find my feet. But it was a good place to build confidence.’ There were a few students outside, one boy in a turban and he remembered Harilal, the son of the King of Rajkot. David had spent a fascinating and educational month there and formed a close friendship with Hari who’d been a wicked polo and tennis player. Another friendship gone, like Teddy, like Jules, and the sisters Bab and Didi Rockingham, lanky and tough and pretty, talking horses from morning to night.

In those grey, early days in London David had, sometimes, googled their names but the gulf seemed so great he soon stopped. It was better to pretend that Marlborough had happened to someone else. He had to cut it out of him, live from day to day, the possibilities of his youth contracting to a windowless prison cell.

He fell silent, watching the road. The house lay a few miles outside Marlborough on the edge of a small village and was almost hidden from the road by a hedge and tall trees. The drive was closed by ornate iron gates and padlocked. David drew the car in beside them and stopped.

‘I don’t have the keys.’

Vanimöré reached into the glove compartment and produced a set of keys. They got out of the car and David opened the gates; the squeak that they made fitted the atmosphere of the house better than the warm sunlight, the breeze in the trees.

David had seen images of the house and they did not do it justice. It was a true monster of a place, built in the massive Victorian style that made it look as if only a direct asteroid hit would damage it. Huge and heavy, it seemed to press into the ground. High sash windows under deep stone cornices topped with moulded stone balls, a porch that would have not have looked out of place on a church and deep with shadows.

‘Ah…impressive,’ David said weakly as he fitted a yale key to the lock.

‘There are worse places,’ Steele replied.

David thought of some of the grim bedsits he had occupied in London at the beginning.
‘Yes…I suppose.’

Steele smiled. ‘It is not as bad inside.’

In fact it was not. David had expected gloomy, dark furniture and heavily papered walls, stuffed animal heads on the walls and memento mori under glass. There was none of this. Some of the tables, cabinets and dressers were indeed dark and weighty but the rooms were large enough to take it, and the walls and carpets were pale. The few pictures were landscapes and Impressionist. He twitched back a dust cover to see what he thought was a Chesterfield sofa and there was a huge Aga in the enormous kitchen.

But it was a warren of a house. There were three flights of stairs, one from the main hall, another near the kitchen and one from the library. He was rather disappointed to see that this room was bare of books, but there were shelves, a huge table, a shrouded sofa and two chairs. It looked out over the garden and he imagined the empty fireplace flickering with light on dim winter days.

Upstairs, there were seven bedrooms and four bathrooms, numerous cupboards and box rooms. He had expected the rooms to be bare but all contained beds, wardrobes, dressing tables and chairs that were clearly new. He smelled fresh paint, the lingering paste of recently hung wallpaper and the bathrooms had clearly been recently and tastefully redone.

‘Did you…did Apollyon decorate it?’ he asked.

Steele removed his sunglasses. ‘I threw armies of decorators into it,’ he acknowledged. ‘Héloïse made some suggestions — remotely.’

David laughed softly. ‘It’s beautiful actually but —‘ He rubbed the palms of his hands down his jeans and strove for lightness. ‘It ought to be haunted.’ He thought of…the villa, the crows, figures in the garden, a stag crowned ”brow, bray and tray and three on top” a sunburst headpiece, a shimmer of autumn and moonlight and the scent of honeysuckle and small, pale hands, reaching for the drowning figure of Raymond Callaghan.

The light dimmed as if a cloud had swum across the face of the sun. He shivered.

‘I have never heard that it is,’ Steele said calmly. ‘Come out into the garden.’

The sun emerged again drawing the sweet, soporific scent of cut grass into the air.

‘Gardners, too?’ David asked with an attempt at normality.

‘Yes, a couple come in twice a week.’

Old oaks and sycamore bounded the walled garden which was broken up into flower-beds but not regimented. The honeysuckle scent was stronger here, the plant climbing the old wall. Bees droned in and out of the tubular flowers, sleepy under the breeze, the sound of a thousand lazy summer afternoons at Marlborough before term’s end, early strawberries in the mouth, fresh cucumber in the sandwiches…

David looked back at the house, which still felt immense and foreboding in contrast to the lovely garden or perhaps…he sought for a word, watchful?

They walked along the length of the wall, warm, spotted with lichen and tiny flowers that had made a home in pockets of earth. A sound of trickling water pulled at him and he followed it to a low-built well, weeping into the grass. Maidenhair ferns fronded the old stone.

‘A spring,’ Steele broke the quiet. ‘The water is very pure. It was tested.’

‘Drinkable?’

‘Perfectly.’ He cupped a hand into the water and drank, shaking the drops off. David did the same; he tasted stone and earth and minerals.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘If I should sell the house? Or even gift it to some organisation?’

‘If you wish. Although it is useful to have some rural, quiet place.’

‘A bolt hole?’

Steele’s mouth curled. ‘Exactly.’

David hesitated. He looked back at the house, unable to imagine wanting to visit here and stay, except under extraordinary circumstances, and certainly not alone. And who on Earth would want to come here with him?
Somewhere in the boundary trees a crow called. He repressed a shiver and looked back at Steele who regarded him from eyes that — surely? — held a glint of purple in their darkness. He swallowed, mouth gone dry.

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

~ Indis, in those days, seemed a woman of steel and stone.
As the cracks in the court widened, as lords murmured in the corridors and arguments and protestations bloomed from low-voiced mutters into raised voices she became more stern. It had been easy, shockingly so, to begin the rumours of a schism but she would not permit anyone to whisper gossip in front of her and could quell a room with one level look from her eyes. Finwë withdrew among his councillors, cleaving Fingolfin to his side. Indis stepped to the forefront of life in the palace.

Anairë drew closer to her. Some kind of slow change was coming over her, but it did not incline her to her husband or son. She veered toward the company of women. With Fingolfin she appeared resigned but not settled.

Fingon thrived, but with Finwë leaning ever more heavily on Fingolfin, he did not see his son save briefly before the obligations of the day absorbed him and later, when he ensured he spent time with the child before he slept. Often Finarfin, stretching taller now, joined him. A quiet boy, he applied himself studiously to his lessons as Fingolfin had, too, in those days that were so recent but seemed like an Age ago.

He recalled Fëanor’s stories, and the day he had rushed eagerly from his lessons for an impromptu afternoon beside that quiet pool, riding back on Finwë’s great stallion. There was not such freedom now. Finwë seemed afraid that Fingolfin might walk away, as Fëanor had and kept him close.

After the Valar’s public release of Melkor nothing happened. Ingwë spoke to them privately from Ilmarin sometimes and said that the Dark God did not come there. Melkor dwelt near Aulë’s mansions in his own great house. He was not seen but his presence was felt. Fingolfin likened it to a brooding storm just over the horizon.

Some time before the Feast of Yavanna, Finarfin was invited to Alqualondë. To Fingolfin’s surprise, Anairë expressed her intention of going with him. Fingon would remain in Tirion, she said. Fingolfin objected to neither arrangement and suggested Finwë go also.

‘Olwë is thy friend,’ he said. And, seeing the King’s haunted eyes. ‘It would ease thy spirit.’

At first Finwë would not hear of it, but Indis added her voice.
‘Fingolfin and I are quite capable of overseeing in thy stead,’ she told him briskly as if it were a small matter. ‘Olwë visits thee often. It is only meet thou shouldst reciprocate.’

A weight seemed to slide from Finwë’s shoulders.
‘Very well,’ he acceded, and then proceeded to give them a long list of instructions that did not cease until his entourage were riding from the gates. A few of his lords went with him; the rest seemed not to dare to leave Tirion lest they miss a single eyeblink within the palace. High Lord Nullion, whom Fingolfin liked simply because Nullion was inclined to favour Fëanor, remained behind.

Fingolfin offered his mother his arm as they turned and went within the great doors.
‘I am surprised he did not command me to go with him,’ he murmured.

‘No, he wants thee here,’ Indis returned. ‘To uphold his crown. Alqualondë is a different matter.’

‘We need to speak,’ Fingolfin said softly. ‘In my rooms. After the court of petitions.’

She nodded briefly. The court was fortunately straightforward: complaints of land, water and mining rights that were easily dealt with. There would be no feast tonight, Indis had announced. Finwë held them daily and Fingolfin thought the King maintained this show of power and rule because he was afraid. He had to prove that he was King day after day. It must be wearying.

After a private supper, Fingolfin, in soft chamber robes, played with his son, stretching out on the rugs and helping him build a succession of high towers out of light, painted wooden blocks. Fingon, with immense concentration built them and then, with equal glee knocked them down, crawling away with delighted chuckles. Fingolfin scooped him up, tickling him and tossed him over his shoulder. The chuckles erupted into laughter and protestations of ‘Papa!’

‘He will be walking soon,’ Indis smiled from her seat.

‘He almost can.’ Fingolfin set his son down, onto his feet and balanced him gently. Fingon, grinning, swayed as Fingolfin removed his hands and edged back. ‘Come to me, Fingon,’ he encouraged and his son, face setting once again into acute effort and swaying a little, lifted his small feet and toddled toward his father, ending in a rush and falling against his chest.

‘Wonderful,’ Fingolfin picked him up, kissing the smooth cheek. ‘That was wonderful. My clever boy.’ Fingon dropped his head, snuggling into his shoulder. He smiled.

‘Time for bed. Shall we tell a story?’

‘Yes, Papa.’

Pulling the heavy drapes across, Fingolfin wove a tale of a world where the night was filled with stars and a silver bird who flew among them. She came with the Moon, the light that ruled the night, and always flew with him, away from the Daystar, the Sun.
Sometimes the bird alighted beside sleeping Elves and sang stories of faraway lands. The Elves never woke but dreamed of her tales and remembered them when they woke. At first Fingon watched his father’s face intently with those enormous silver-blue eyes and, as children will, was full of questions but then the comfort of his bed, the dimness of the room and his extreme youth crept softly over him and he slept.

Fingolfin waited until the boy’s breathing was so measured and slow that he did not notice the hand withdrawn from his own tiny one. He kissed the small brow and drew the covers up.

Indis waited in the next room. She had mulled wine and the spicy scent rose from the jug.

‘In Cuiviénen,’ she said, as she poured. ‘All the tribe would have looked to the child.’

Fingolfin rubbed the frown from his face and sat back.
‘Yes.’

‘Anairë never wanted children.’

‘So thou hast said. I do not blame her for it, never think it. She is fond enough of Fingon. I only wish I had more time with him.’ He sipped the hot wine then set it aside. ‘Mother, speaking of Cuivíenen — when I visited Formenos, Fëanor and I spoke with Edenel — the Edenel of this world who still lives in Endor.’

He watched her face and she stilled then slowly turned her head. ‘And told him he was thy sire,’ she stated. Her voice was level but her back and shoulders stiff as stone.

‘Yes.’

Her long, fair braid draped over one shoulder. She ran her fingers down it, a nervous gesture in one whose every movement seemed controlled and calculated.
‘Was he like…his himself?’ She rose suddenly. ‘Like the Edenel I spoke to?’* Her breath rushed out in something not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. ‘I lie awake thinking of these other places, other worlds and sometimes I think I am on the edge of understanding, but then…Does he know? Of this older universe that was destroyed?’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Fingolfin assured her. ‘And no, he does not. There was little time.’

‘Did he believe thee?’

‘I think so. Mother, he asked if he might speak with thee through the Mirror shard. He has one. They are scattered throughout the worlds. He believes we are his sons, I think, but desires verification from thee.’

Indis dropped her hand, clenched it into the soft folds of her robe. Then she nodded once, decisive.
‘Yes.’ But her face was moulded and very pale.

Fingolfin drew his Mirror case forth and opened it.
‘This is between the two of thee,’ he said gently and withdrew from the chamber. ‘Call to him, and wait. He will hear thee.’





~ At one moment Edenel was asleep, deep-drowned, then he was awake as if someone had touched him gently, like a lover in the night rousing their bed-mate. He rose at the call.

When first coming to Taur-im-Duinath, the Ithiledhil had found a low hill delved by caverns. Whomever had fashioned them — and they were not natural — they were now empty and so the Ithiledhil had expanded them, creating a linked complex of caves with a central meeting room. Smoke from cooking fire went up through widened cracks and a stream flowed in the deepest levels. They did not mean to make this their home forever; the forest was their resting-place where they had come to try and heal and it served them well enough.

Edenel drew aside the skin that hung over his sleeping place. He walked silently down the passage past other rooms, and through the central changer where a fire always burned, summer and winter. The passageway curved upward to the entrance, half-concealed by ferns, to the grassy sward that lay beyond the hill like a green lap.

The land sloped down toward the margins of the forest and the trees stood like motionless sentinels under the stars. But dawn was not far off. Edenel paused, scenting the sweet, cool air, listening. There were always sentries but the Ithiledhil never truly slept, never permitted their vigilance to lapse.
An owl called; deeper in the forest a nightingale’s plangent song echoed. Peace lay over the land.

He walked swiftly, one hand straying to the Mirror shard tucked within his clothing. It seemed to pulse like a heart and he recognised the mind behind the summons.

Lovely as a valley lily that survives the frosts, the biting winds of winter then, when spring comes, is still as beautiful, releasing its fragrance, cool and lingering.

It was very like her brother’s soul-touch.

He did not go far, settling at the mossy feet of a huge oak. The pre-dawn wind was wakening, that warm, dry wind from the East that could blow for days or weeks in summer and dried the grasslands to rippling pallor. The oak’s leaves rustled; their sound filled the air like whispers of far-off times.

His heart went wayward. Indis had known him before he was changed. It was almost unbearable he should have to show her this face, these eyes.

Unbearable? he mocked himself, who knew just how much a body and soul could bear and still, somehow, live. With a quick movement, he drew forth the Mirror shard.

She was wearing a soft robe the colour of spring bluebells, one light gold braid flowing down across her breast. A woman attired herself before sleep, soft, gentle fabrics. Her face was unchanged, he thought, but for a thought or worry that strained the fair skin across her cheekbones. He saw no shock or revulsion there.

‘Lady,’ he said softly, then gathering breath. ‘Indis.’

Slowly, her free hand rose to her lips. Her lashes sank and a tear, limned silver, traced its way down her cheek.
‘Oh my dear,’ she said.

‘Indis,’ he said again, helplessly, refusing to admit the shame and she wiped the tear away, a quick, abrupt flick.
‘My son said thou didst desire speech.’ She stopped. ‘Our son.’ She laid the two words down like a challenge. Then, at his silence she continued breathless, almost girlish, ‘I do not understand either, but I knew when he was born. It was impossible, and so I could not believe it. Nevertheless.’ Her choice evened. ‘Míriel knew too.’

‘Míriel,’ he repeated. Ah, thou shouldest not have gone. None of thee. He said, ‘Fëanor told me that the Valar say her death is laid at his feet, and yet there is no death in Valinor.’

Her eyes moved away from him. He watched them gloss again with tears.
‘Sometimes I wonder,’ she murmured. ‘Thou knowest she was my greatest love.’

‘I know.’

‘Then canst thou imagine how it felt to be told our love was a sin?’ Her head turned back to him. ‘That I must join my brother and clan and renounce her? That Míriel must be wed to Finwë but not to me?’

‘Ay,’ he said. ‘I do not understand this matter of wedding one mate nor why love between two women — or two men — is called a sin. I did not even comprehend the word.’

‘An offence against the gods,’ Indis said dry as sand. ‘They are not of this world and came here with certain entrenched beliefs that they wish to enforce. Here in Valinor they can and do and there are none who can stand against them. The Nectar from the Two Trees. Did Fëanor tell thee? It drugged us so that we accepted their Laws and now, even though the dew has been rendered impotent, some of us still feign to accept them. We have to. But as for Míriel…She did not like this land.’

‘I think I understand that,’ Edenel replied gently. ‘She was a woman who wove moonlight and loved the stars mirrored in the inland sea.’

Indis’ face softened, opened to a sudden poignant vulnerability. ‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Silver Telperion is no substitute for the Moon, waxing and waning, or for the stars. Golden Laurelin cannot match the touch of the Sun and its going down in splendour on a winter’s night, the sky burning red as embers. But when the Valar speak of Fëanor being her death…I believe it.’ She raised her hand palm out as if he were about to object. ‘Fëanor is thy son but he is…’ Her eyes cast about. ‘I do not know what he is, but there is a fire in him that even the drug hardly dulled and I should know for I married Finwë when Fëanor was young. He was angry, moody, rebellious but not half-asleep as most of us were. Everything in him is too strong for Valinor. And Fingolfin…there is something within him, too.’

‘Starfire,’ Edenel said. ‘And Wildfire.’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes searched his face. ‘Yes. And they have all thy fire. I think Finwë absorbed it from thee and when it was withdrawn — when thou didst go and never come back — it guttered out like a hearth fire that has no more fuel to feed it. Oh,’ the corners of her mouth lifted, wry and dry. ‘He is the perfect king for the Valar. Absolutely obedient. I think he hates himself.’

It hurt. Edenel pressed a hand to his breast. He wished…he wished, but there was no way back and Indis knew it. She would not accept platitudes; she had always looked clearly and boldly at life.

‘He would not return.’ She answered his unspoken question. ‘Because if he has less here in Valinor yet he is more: an unrivalled King. He was thy rival, Edenel, Élernil-that-was. Thou didst not see it, not for a long time.’

Throat tight, he said, ‘I did see it, Indis. I simply did not want to admit what I saw.’

She leaned forward. ‘As for me…Míriel is, as I understand — as we are told — in the Halls of Waiting that are ruled by Námo.’

‘Fëanor mentioned them yet I do not understand how any power can hold sway over our souls. They made themselves thy gods but they are not of this world and have no right to command us living or dead.’ He had spoken too vehemently, too loudly. The Ithiledhil were quiet, as quiet as they had learned to be in Utumno — beyond the screaming. He caught his breath on the anger, tried to will it down.

Indis was staring at him. Her throat moved as she swallowed.
‘That,’ she said with a quiver. ‘Is so very Fëanor and why thou wouldst never have come to Valinor. I agree, but Námo has the power and we do not. We have been told that his Halls are a place of repose for the soul.’ A hardening of expression showed plainer than words that she was uncertain (to say the least) of the veracity of that tale. ‘But I shall wait. Perhaps, one day, Míriel will return.’

He wanted to embrace her, reassure her, but could not. It was beyond his ken. ‘I, too, hope that she does. I know not what happens to our souls at death.’ Except…a glimmer in the shadows like dropped skirts of moonlight, drifting, a feeling, sometimes, that one was not alone…
‘But Fëanor and Fingolfin desire to leave.’

‘I know.’

‘Can they?’ he asked. ‘I mean will they be permitted to? And if Míriel returned, wouldst thou then come back across the sea, Indis Starblood?’

Her lips parted. It must have been long since anyone called her that; it was an honorific, a formal address bestowed on the Unbegotten who had no mother or father name.

Indis shaped the word soundlessly. Her eyes were filled with memory.
‘I…do not know,’ she admitted, her voice shook. ‘Thou hast not asked me why I left.’

‘I think I know why. Ingwë’s sister — with a responsibility to lead with him.’

‘As simple as that in the end,’ she nodded. ‘I should have known thou wouldst understand. And my brother is Manwë’s footstool. Or at least he now pretends to be and was. Whether Manwë would ever let him go…High King of all the Elves, he is called.’ Her face hardened like fine marble. ‘And for that he bowed and scraped and grovelled under the influence of the Tree Dew and whatever miasma of power leaches from the Valar. As I did,’ she threw at him. ‘There is shame in it.’

‘There is no shame in being the victim of gods, my Lady.’ He paused. ‘I do understand why thou didst go, and why thou wilt stay — at least for now. We followed thee at a distance to the edge of the sea. Some turned back. I knew thou wouldst not. Thou didst never abandon thy duty.’

Her fine brows drew down. ‘Sometimes I felt…Míriel and Finwë too, and my brother. But we never saw thee.’

‘We took care not to be seen,’ he replied. ‘Indis, we are not what we were.’ His voice floundered upon the inadequacy of that statement but he made himself continue. ‘Thou didst not see what was done to them. Friends, comrades, people that I knew and loved. What happened to them. We kill them now,’ he ended, as a cold wind blew through him.

Her eyes flinched. Only that. He would never — and had never — doubted the strength within her.
‘Edenel —‘

‘The Dark God corrupted them, made them into monsters.’ His hand curled into a fist. ‘We Ithiledhil are the other side of that. I do not know why, or how. But it has severed us from the quendi who remain. Even if any of thee were to return,how could we stand before thee?’

‘Not even thy sons?’ she asked and turned his own words back at him, as he ought to have known she would: ‘There is no shame in being the victim of the Dark God, and a survivor.’

Movement flickered across the Mirror as she rose, and he heard the swish of her robes. A moment later, she lifted the Mirror again and Edenel saw Fingolfin’s face beside hers.

‘Tell me,’ she challenged. ‘That thou wouldst not see our son if he escaped this land and returned?’

That dim silver light gathered in Fingolfin’s splendid eyes so that they burned like the starfire Edenel had named him.
‘Father,’ he said, and the haughty upward title of his head was that of a king’s. ‘Thus I call thee and thus I — and Fëanor — claim thee.’

~ Fëanor brought his family to Tirion for the Festival of Fruits.

The atmosphere was more relaxed than the general consensus might have predicted. The sojourn in Alqualondë seemed to have benefitted Finwë and Anaïre and an agreement had been made for Finarfin to be fostered with Olwë. Fëanor and Fingolfin exchanged brief, swift glances when it was announced to the Great Hall for this was a new thing but later, Indis told Fingolfin it was not. In Cuiviénen older children, those on the brink of adulthood, often spent time with different clans to learn their ways and skills.

Fingolfin seized a moment with Fëanor much later when the palace slept. Finwë’s library, he had said and watched as Fëanor’s long lashes dropped in affirmation. Tomorrow was the Feast which would begin with the first flowering of Laurelin and the halls were quiet. It was not unusual for Fingolfin to spend sleepless hours in the library and if anyone were to note him, there was nothing suspicious in it.

As he passed along the dim, silent passages, he thought that he had done this before, but not here and not in memory…somewhere else following an unrealised, subconscious sign from his half-brother. He heard, like an echo, the slide of his chamber robes as if a copy of himself walked beside him. Reaching the closed door he stopped for a moment, closing his eyes. A vision formed there. If I open the door, he will be laid on a settle as if asleep. I will think he is indeed sleeping… *

He lifted the latch softly. The library was windowless. Once, it had been lit by oil lamps; now the Fëanorian Lamps were everywhere though only one was uncovered. Its starry glow spread softly over the bookshelves, the table, the reclined figure, a book slipped down on his breast…

This has happened before…

Fingolfin walked over to him, his eyes mapping over features that even in sleep retained their proud beauty, the arch of black brow over lashes like fans.

Fëanor moved, blinked. He said, without moving: ‘It was here.’

‘Yes.’

‘I knew thou wouldst come. I waited, feigned sleep.’ He sat up, pushed both long hands into Fingolfin’s hair.

‘Am I in thy mind, or art thou in mine?’ Fingolfin whispered, raw.

‘Both. It is the same memory.’ I walked around thee so close I could feel the heat of thy body like a fire on my skin. And I looked at thee and knew I would be here in this place and that thou wouldst come to me.**

Yes. Fire in the roots of his hair, fire pouring down into his loins. Fire in the eyes that fixed upon him, in the fingers that drew away, leaving trails of heat behind.

‘Come with me,’ Fëanor murmured.

‘Where?’ Fingolfin demanded.

Fëanor opened his Mirror case.
‘Since Melkor was released I have been thinking and thinking,’ he said. ‘When I saw him I would have known that we would face him even had Vanimöré not told us. And we cannot win, not yet. But there is a place where we can gather power. And… I have to keep my sons safe, and thou and Fingon.’

‘The Outside.’

‘Vanimöré believes me too young. Us too young. I do not feel young, dost thou?’

‘No,’ Fingolfin said. ‘This has happened before. It has all happened before.’

‘Yes, and Vanimöré is not here, with Melkor’s shadow burning like a black fire in a mine, something beyond sight, yet the shadows around it crawl ever closer.’

That was exactly what it felt like. Fingolfin locked a hand on one of Fëanor’s wrists. Like living under a hammer that is raised to fall. He thought of Fingon, asleep, small and wonderful and growing under that shadow. He nodded once.

‘Anyhow,’ Fëanor’s eyes outshone the lamp. ‘Vanimöré is not a Power that guides. He wants us to learn, not be ordered, commanded, directed, like a servant. So.’ His sudden smile flashed. ‘Let us learn.’

The air in the room sang with an energy that shocked across Fingolfin’s skin. The surface of the Mirror blazed into starlight rimmed with white fire. So brilliant was it that the library seemed dark. The light expanded, filling his sight, his mind, drawing him in.

There was an immensity of light, of darkness, of flame.

And then he was within it.

Chapter Text

~ The sky to the south and west was an advancing wall of dark cloud against which the summer-rich landscape stood out stark as green paint. Far away, a thin vein of light pulsed suddenly against the black.

‘Tommy said there were storms expected,’ David remarked. Then, as he recognised a landmark,
‘Avebury. I’ve been here.’

Vanimöré, driving now, smiled. ‘Yes. There is no hurry to get back, so I thought we would come this way. An extremely interesting place.’

‘I came with the school, because of Merlin’s Mound in the grounds. It’s similar to Silbury Hill, only smaller and perhaps older.’ He glanced aside and Vanimöré felt the touch of those intense blue eyes against his skin. ‘About the house: I won’t make any decision about it yet. I do understand the importance of a...a bolt-hole. And I thank you.’

Vanimöré began to reply when Fëanor’s ring burned, pushing pain into his finger bone. For a heartbeat the Bentley seemed ringed with starfire, rushing forward into a vortex of light.

He swung the vehicle into the lay-by for the West Kennet Long Barrow. The tyres scorched; a following SUV sounded its horn angrily as it swept past.

David had grabbed for the handgrip and turned his head.
‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ His phone rang. ‘Howard?’ He got out of the car, gazing down the track that lead toward the barrow.

‘Steele,’ Howard returned. ‘DNA tests have just come in. Yes, I know it took time. Not the tests but burying the results. David and James. Their blood threw up some interesting results, but I’m sure you know that. And yes, they're half-brother’s, and I’m sure you knew that, too.’

‘Yes.’ He turned to look at Silbury Hill as the ring pulsed on his finger. Portals…some places weighed heavily on the multiverse. Avebury was one immense Portal. He, Coldagnir and Edenel had all used it at one time or another. No wonder…Damn it to the Hells, Fëanor. Now what?

He wanted to go to the Outside. He did not need to; his totality was already there. He was only operating on the old desire for control. Yet there was no time for him to reach out to himself and could not leave David here while he investigated.

‘…Steele? Are you there?’

‘Yes.’

‘James Callaghan is flying back to London tomorrow.’

‘I know. He called.’

‘I want to see you,’ Howard said pointedly. It was not a request. Vanimöré could not refrain from smiling.

‘You will.’

He got back into the car. ‘I apologise,’ he said to David. ‘I thought we might have picked up a tail.’

‘Did we?’ David asked anxiously.

‘No. I was being overly cautious.’ He pulled out onto the road. ‘What did you do when you came here?’

‘Oh…we had a tour around the stones and walked up there, to the Long Barrow.’ He smiled. ‘Yes, it was fascinating.’

‘Shall we stop?’ Vanimöré inquired. ‘Héloïse said they would be having dinner on the way back from Oxford. We could eat at the Red Lion, later.’

‘Yes,’ David said. ‘Okay, let’s,’

Vanimöré nodded. Sauron’s grandsons. There was no denying it placed them in a very different light in his mind. He had to continually remind himself that they were innocent, created tools as he had been and it was imperative they not be used. But even were they never to meet their mother and grandsire the blood could not be washed away. Vanimöré was aware of it now, like a deep current of fire under permafrost and that troubled him; he should have sensed it from the beginning and had not. Was it simply that meeting him had roused it from dormancy? Power called to power.

He glanced swiftly at David’s fine profile. There was no sense of kinship. The Sauron of this world was not his own father with all the complications that entailed. It might be the only advantage over Sauron he possessed.

The old pub was always busy but the lunch crowds had gone and the evening diners had not yet arrived. They took cold drinks to the Well table, glassed over and allowing a view far down its stony sides. Ferns grew lushly and there was a glint of dark water deep down. The legend inscribed on the table called it the ‘resting place of at least one unfortunate villager,’ whose ghost haunted the inn.

‘Eerie,’ David pronounced quietly, sitting back down. There was only one other couple near the window, murmuring over drinks. ‘But wasn't it the village well, once? Who’d want to poison their water supply?’

‘You will never make a ghost hunter,’ Vanimöré laughed. The eyes of the two diners passed over his briefly and only he — or Héloïse — would have seen the alertness in them. When David excused himself to use the gents, the man, after a moment, rose to follow. In his jeans and walking boots, his hair tied into a ponytail, he blended in perfectly. His companion remained, pouring idly over a menu.

Vanimöré looked at Fëanor’s ring and gently pulled it off, The flesh below was blistered and painful but already healing. Pushing it back, he closed his eyes. No need to seek a portal here in the centre of the henge with all Avebury humming like a plucked harp-string and drawing the storm toward it. All such places were liminal. He only had to reach…

The room darkened. There was a sharp pebble-scatter of rain against the window; the door of the inn creaked open and a voice carried: ‘Hell of a storm coming…’

He stared down into the well, past the stone, the lush green growth of lichen and fern and down and down, as into a tunnel, a portal, with darkness at the bottom —

— And stepped through the Portal of the Monument and beyond into the vastness beyond, into the dark energy and the radiance and the Power.

And Music. That sound that arced across everything, like the echo of a mighty voice.

The Great Music. Maglor.

The multiverse was rent as with brilliant light, a tear in the aether, and through it came Fëanor and Fingolfin, burning.

Flame Imperishable. Star God.

On Vanimöré’s hand, Fëanor’s ring blazed like the white heart of an inferno.Then it was as if the Outside itself drew breath and slowed. From an immeasurable distance, from his own concealing shadow Eru’s head lifted, crowned with stars and shedding them like a perpetual stream of silver. His robes scattered light out into the blackness. His eyes were lucent as crystal and unfathomable. They had always been.

Vanimöré’s burst of reactionary rage was instant. It slapped the eternities with black whips. Violet and ember light erupted in billowing violence. The cascade of memory began with the terrible inevitability of an avalanche, image upon image Elgalad. Eru. Elgalad.. A baby, a child, a young man, a warrior, a lover.

A perfect lie.

Concussion ripped through the Outside, bleaching it white as burnt diamonds. Vanimöré swung in shock to face it.

The Power strode out of deepest infinity.

Fëanor.

The Flame Imperishable. His hair was fire, running rivers of all the light there was, flowing and flowing. The totality was beautiful beyond comprehension, terrifying. Every manifestation of light that existed in any universe was uncovered here, the only place it could be. His eyes eclipsed supernovas; his face was sculpted out of starborn worlds, polished like planed gold and silver. About his brow, blue-white stars blazed in a coronal.

The Silmarilli. The true Silmarilli.

Vanimöré collided with his feelings like two planets impacting. Fëanor. Eru. Elgalad. The Flame. The agony, the loss, the hatred that never dissipated roared back, ravenous.

He could pretend to forget, to endure the pain just as he had endured servitude under Melkor and Sauron because there was no way out but death. Sometimes there was simply nothing one could do but thrust the anguish down into the deepest part of oneself. Now confronted unexpectedly with the one who had betrayed him and the one he had watched destroy a universe (and loved) the control broke like a scream of torture. The eruption of emotion sent blooms of black booming across the multiverse and for a moment it was such a relief to release it. Then on its heels came the horror of what he might do — and that cold, aware inner voice reined him in with a hand of steel as, once, Sauron had pulled on the spiked biter-bit to curb him. Then he had obeyed, unable to do anything but rage. Now, he understood that his passion as a living being had no place here and did not resist.

This is not even about us.

And the Flame Imperishable looked at him.

‘Vanimöré.’ His name, like a recognition of something — or someone — long lost.

‘Fëanáro. Fëanor.’

‘We cannot meet in anger,’ The Flame’s voice held the frustration of that impossible impasse. ‘I tried,’ he admitted. ‘Eru veils himself from me like a shadow in a dream.’

‘I know.’

‘I was summoned.’

‘We all were.’

The Flame turned his radiant head, taking the burden of his regard away like a lifted weight and saw them: Fëanor and Fingolfin advancing into this all-in-all like heirs of power toward a throne. And, in a sense, they were.

This was a court, Vanimöré realised. They were its judges, the only ones there were. Nothing else mattered; his feelings were utterly irrelevant.

‘Fëanor seeks power,’ he said, levelling his voice. ‘And to take it back to Arda.’ Too much and too soon. No more could he or Eru walk into any world as themselves. ‘We are to decide if it is permitted.’

‘It is dangerous.’ Eru’s voice hummed with the echo of dead universes.

The Flame flung up his head in a gesture so familiar to Vanimöré that he could have wept.
‘They are in danger, all the Elves, from Melkor. The imbalance must be redressed.’

‘It cannot be redressed in the forms they now inhabit, Fireheart,’ Eru responded. ‘That thou knowest.’

‘Decide,’ Vanimöré rapped. ‘Yay or nay, and if we allow it, how much?’

Three pairs of unhuman eyes fell upon those shapes, bright and small but growing every moment.

‘They cannot see us,’ The Flame said.

‘Not unless we choose it.’

But the Outside was not empty nor was it benign. It teemed with intelligences and now other gods drew closer, curious.
And Fëanor and Fingolfin were not hidden; they were coming into themselves. Light from blazing galaxies streamed into Fingolfin; his Totality was approaching complete manifestation.The fire from the Flame Imperishable was drawn inexorably into Fëanor. Soon he would become One with it.

The Flame and the Sword.

And the Flame devoutly desired that consummation. Vanimöré could feel the wild yearning of his soul to break out and burn upon Arda. And he understood suddenly and completely as he had not before: the Flame had been made manifest in the Ancient Universe, becoming embodied. An existence of simply being was not enough and could never be enough. He lived through Fëanor, being him, experiencing life. And yet he was bound too, perhaps through love (the strongest of shackles) for if he walked upon the Earth his fire would destroy. Worlds would burn in his wake; only ash would remain. He had to remain here, blazing in terrible solitude. Aloneness was natural to Vanimöré; he had withdrawn into the Monument like a wounded beast into its den after Dagor Dagorath. The Flame could never do that.

Vanimöré reached through the incandescence and touched that place where all Life and Light was born, renewing itself even as it gave, like a star that never faded.

‘Fëanáro,’ he said again. ‘I know. But it may not be. Not the whole. And that blame is upon me.’ Spinning universes out of blood and grief. Too many memories…

Enough, commanded the cold, clear voice within. It slapped him like a metal gauntlet. He continued, ‘Life must not obliterate Life. Thou canst not enter Arda.’

The Flame’s eyes could have melted suns. ‘I am not Life alone. I both create and destroy.’ He looked down at Vanimöré’s hands that gripped him. The fire flowed into him, and the black tattoos seemed alive.
‘Thou doth take it and it affects thee not at all. Where does it go?’ he asked, suddenly curious. ‘What abyss does it fall into, Dark Prince?’ He turned and levelled his gaze at Eru who lifted his lovely head and stared back mute, unreadable.
‘But let Fëanor take somewhat. I will not have him — any of them — tread the same old ground again. I will not allow that!’

Eru’s fine brows flicked up in a gesture unafraid, almost taunting. Puzzled, enraged, Vanimöré's mind forked like lightning, plunging into possibilities but always and yes, even here he ran into a bright impenetrability.

Eru. What art thou?

‘I agree. They must have something.’ He turned his head away from that collusive little smile. ‘So enough — so that Námo may not claim their souls if they die and the Everlasting Dark cannot hold them.’

‘And yet death is a step to ascension Dark Prince, and ultimately to apotheosis.’ Eru’s beautiful, unreadable eyes widened a little then his lashes dropped in a demure echo of Elgalad’s. ‘Didst thou not climb to what thou art by death, Dark Prince? And Fëanor, in the old universe had to be reborn, had to ascend.’

Vanimöré’s emotions strained at the leash and the Outside went black — until fire broke through it in a burst like the explosion of a giant sun and the Flame said, ‘Vanimöré! Is it for me now to restrain thee? I cannot destroy him. I seek vengeance, but the two of thee will annihilate all there is.’

Vanimöré snarled like a chained hound who longs to be loosed and leap for the throat of its prey but his rage and anguish meant nothing. If Power had taught him anything it was that what he could do was important; his emotions, what he felt were of no consequence. Nothing levelled the ego like absolute power.
He said, choking down the bitter knowledge like a dose of hemlock, ‘I did what I had to and I would not wish that on anyone, least of all those I love.’

‘But is it not the order of things?’ Eru interpolated stressless and milk-calm.

‘Is it? I made it the order of things for myself,’ Vanimöré lashed, goaded, loathing Eru’s tranquility, feigned or not. ‘Was it so for thee? Ilúvatar?’

‘Was it not? Did Elgalad not die?’ And Eru handed him the paradox of Elgalad’s life and death like a dagger entering the body, so sharp that the pain comes only when it is withdrawn. And the thought floated like spider-silk between them: Didst thou not kill him?

His reaction was instantaneous. He saw a bloody mark, as from a whip, open across Eru’s perfect cheek. It was not real in any sense here, where there was no form, only a vision created out of Mind but for an instant Vanimöré jerked back with shock until he saw the faintest smile bend Eru’s mouth as his hand rose to the wound, and stroked it away.

He tempts thee and tests thee.

The horror of it was that he could. After everything.

He did not know, might never know, if Elgalad was real or simply an avatar of Eru.

Cosmic thunder slammed through the multiverse. The Flame came between them, awful and terrible in his full glory. Still Eru’s mouth held in that tantalising cast that begged for conflict. Vanimöré forced his eyes away to Fëanor and Fingolfin.

‘They are orphaned from themselves,’ The Flame said. ‘From what they are. They reach for it, always.’

I know. ‘They take away enough,’ Vanimöré pronounced. ‘And I…’

Eru and the Flame looked at him. He bared his teeth in bitter challenge.
‘I said I could not smooth their path,’ he mocked himself. ‘But I have already interfered. They carry the memories of their other lives and that in itself might be dangerous. Yet it is their birthright.’

A moment passed, an eternity, here where Time meant nothing. He shrugged.
‘I cannot enter Arda in fullest power, either, none of us can. But once there I can call upon what I know, and remember.’

‘Thou wilt go there?’ the Flame demanded eagerly.

‘At times, yes.’ He had no idea what he might do, stripped of most of his power but so he had gone down to the modern world and even viewed it as a challenge in those high, heady days before Dagor Dagorath. That joy was ash now but at least he had learned how to reach for his Totality. It gave him certain advantages. He hoped. A sudden frisson racked him and he knew it for anticipation. Of course. He was never meant for a dull life.

Then Eru said in that high, sweet, clear voice that roused such contradictory emotions within him: ‘It is thou art the paradox, Dark Prince, not I. This has all happened before.’ A glimmering veil clouded his features. ‘I say that it is permitted for Fëanor and Fingolfin to draw greater power from their Totalities and take it down to Arda.’ He drew back, vanishing into an impenetrable mist but not before Vanimöré saw the smile gleam out, innocent, reprehensible, a promise.

He wanted to destroy it, to scream out into the unending deeps. He could do neither. Or would not.

‘They must leave now,’ he told the Flame. ‘It is enough.’ Even if they had taken nothing the Power of the Outside would cling to them like another skin.

‘Enough to make a difference, perhaps. But we want more.’ Those eyes turned to him, a chatoyance of fire and fine metal. ‘To walk in the Timeless Halls again with those we love. To be ourselves. Can it come to that again?’

‘It will be so again.’ He ached. That time was held as a treasure in his heart and soul. ‘I vow it.’

The smile blazed. His eyes moved to Fëanor. ‘I cannot meet with myself here. I need too much.’ He caught Vanimöré by the shoulders and his voice resonated like the raw and thunderous blaze of an eternal fire. ‘I want us to be one. Not this existence. Not the Outside..’

‘Yes. Yes. I understand.’ He drew their brows together for a moment. ‘But this is where Power resides. It must. We wait, while the story unfolds.’

‘Let me into the Monument.’ The Flame demanded. ‘Thou didst allow Fëanor.’ Power slammed against Vanimöré like a steel door, ‘Let me in.’

‘I took him there to show him.’ Vanimöré drew back meeting what was tantamount to a command as he had always met power: blank, resolute, unbending. ‘To protect him. He has no fear at all. Not for himself.’

The Flame laughed. ‘Why should he? He knows what he is in his heart even if his intellect has not yet realised it.’

‘Indeed. And so, I took him there and then sent him back. The Monument is my place. It is my penance for what happened. I saw thine intention.’ It was too much, that memory. ‘I should have prevented thee.’

The furnace flashed out, sending fire across the limitless expanse.
‘Thou couldst have attempted it. Never try to control the Flame, Vanimöré. It is Wild.’ He drew a hand down Vanimöré’s cheek to wipe away the blood-red tears. ‘I will go. But I will not wait forever. First though, one gift. From myself to…myself.’ He lifted the Silmaril crown from his head and released it. It descended through the spaces between he and Fëanor and settled on his brow.
‘A promise,’ the Flame said. ‘Of course he cannot take it back to Arda but it is there, now and always. And he will know it, and bring the Silmarils into being.’

Then with a soundless detonation of diamond light he scattered into the infinities.

It seemed so dark when he was gone, but then Vanimöré saw the glow behind him, like light entering through a crack in a closed door and he turned.

Fëanor and Fingolfin burned brighter with each passing moment. They looked as if they belonged here or not here — it was as the Flame had said, the Timeless Halls were their milieu.

Neither would he uncover himself. Like the Flame, he needed too much. Gently, he guided them back to the Portal, the Mirror shard that had brought them here. There was one brilliant pulse, then the tear sealed itself. They were gone.

He stood in the Outside, letting the galaxies blow through him, then passed into the Monument and the whine of the old, dull wind.

Eru. The Flame. Fëanor. Elgalad.

He spoke into the glimmering ochre dust. ‘I cannot meet him, not here, so he eludes me again and there are no answers!’ His cry slammed out, buffeting the storm, then he snapped around, descended the curve of the black steps to the chamber he knew so well, and its flashing, glinting Portal.

~ ‘…think it’s raining too hard to walk around the stones.’

Vanimöré blinked back into Lucien Steele. His physical form had never left; mere minutes had passed, yet the snap-back from there to here required a moment of reorientation.
‘I’m afraid so,’ he said.

‘Mr Steele.’ David stared. His voice hushed. ‘Are you alright?’

‘Of course. Why?’

‘Your eyes look— Or maybe the light…?’

‘Just a moment.’ Vanimöré flicked a look at the two agents, then slid on his dark glasses and rose, crossing through the entrance foyer and through another and larger dining room to the toilets. In the mirror, he saw that the purple of his eyes gleamed through the dark contact lenses and cursed to himself. He drew another pair from his jacket pocket and quickly changed them. He splashed his face with cold water, examined himself for a moment coldly as if daring his reflection to betray him, then went back to the Well Room, walking to the window. Over the village and the great enclosing henge, lightning forked and flickered, an eldritch crown. The rain beat like a drumroll.

‘Perhaps,’ he said, returning to the seat. ‘We might have an early dinner.’

~ The house was night-time quiet. Lord Grey, tired after his physio and excellent meal, had gone to bed an hour ago. David had just bid them goodnight.

‘I will be leaving very early tomorrow,’ he had told them.

‘What a pity,’ Lord Grey said genuinely. ‘But please do drop by any time, old fellow. Quite welcome, you know.’

‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘That’s very kind. I will.’

Vanimöré and Héloïse climbed to the cupola. The storm had passed and the air felt fresh. A half-moon showed through the drifting clouds.

Héloïse, sipping from a glass of benedictine listened to Vanimöré in silence. Only her fine brows lifted in reaction.

‘James Callaghan,’ she murmured. ‘I have only seen him from a distance. But yes, he had the look of one…overwatched.’ Her eyes glanced down as if to the bedroom where David had retired. She tapped her lips with two fingers. ‘His grandson. And David, too.’

She did not say the name. Héloïse knew exactly what she wanted to know and nothing more. She knew Vanimöré was not human and that he was the son of the one the DDE listed as Agent Beta. Whatever else she suspected she kept secret to all but herself though he imagined she had read the Silmarillion and was quite intelligent enough to join all the dots.

‘Joanna Worth. He used her to get these boys.’ Her fingers flicked. ‘Ah, do not tell me, I know!’ She tilted her head. ‘And you will meet her, mon cher? I wish I could have seen Howard’s face!’

He smiled. ‘You are a wicked woman.’

‘But of course!’ She widened her black eyes.

‘And do you agree with him?’

‘Howard is too cautious, Lucien,’ she scoffed. ‘Me, I see this as an opportunity.’

‘They will also see it that way,’ he pointed out.

‘Yes, but they do not know you.’

‘He thinks he does.’ And to a certain extent, Sauron was right. He did know his son, at least the one born in this universe. But that Vanimöré was long dead and Sauron would view him as a failure. He must be curious as to why and how his son had turned up after many thousands of years. Well, he was going to be surprised.

‘I would give almost anything to see it,’ Héloïse said wistfully. ‘But this makes it more dangerous for both James and David.’

‘We will have more security in St. Andrews. Howard is interviewing. I was going to listen in but would you act as my proxy?’

‘Bien sûr.’ Her eyes gleamed in the grey light. ‘Howard will hate it. Poor man. Never mind, I will take him out to dinner. Now, David likes the watch?’

‘Your taste is always impeccable, my dear.’

Naturellement! But do we know what AB and Joanna Worth were doing in Bellman’s and is it being watched?’

‘One of his personas has an interest in antiques. It may be only that. But yes, it is now.’

She nodded and laid a thin hand on his arm.
‘You think of what is within them, non?’ she asked almost gently. ‘David and James too. Their blood. Diabolique.’

‘I am trying not to,’ he said. ‘After all, it is mine, too. Héloïse, it cannot be kept from them forever. They are not going to age, not really and there may be other effects.’

Her brows twitched. ‘Better that he never meets them, no? Shall you arrange it?’

‘James is of greater use if he takes over the reins of his father’s empire and uses it for good. He was half-thinking of selling it.’ He frowned. ‘But eventually he would have to disappear or conveniently die and take a new identity. Either we arrange that, or his grandfather does. I know which I prefer. And James wants to search for Blaise Worth. He has the resources to do it but then so did others and they never found him. I wonder…some of the private investigators…’

‘We assumed Raymond Callaghan had them killed. You think not?’

‘He may have. Equally possible it was someone who did not want anyone to find Blaise but himself. Howard said he could produce a body, a drowning from the Thames, unnamed until now to throw James off the scent.’

‘Sensible,’ Héloïse allowed judicially. ‘But a last resort, I think? At some time in the future it would be good for David and James to be reunited, n’est pas?’

Vanimöré agreed. ‘And if I am acting as James’ security guard for a time I can direct him away from taking too close a look at St. Andrews.’

‘Ah yes, that holiday he spent in the Virgin Islands.’ She nodded. ‘Youngsters, sun and sea and cocktails. David has spoken of it with…’ she snapped her fingers irritably. ‘Nostalgie! Of course he would have talked about what he hoped to do.’ She finished her drink. ‘So! I think I should meet James. His father? No and no and no! But you say the son is not like him?’

‘Not at all. I think he is another who does not know who he really is.’

‘I shall invite him to a meal in London,’ she decided. ‘It would be expected, an invitation from me, a…how do you say? reaching out? I held the ball where his father died. And,’ She pointed at him. ‘His security guard must accompany him.’

Vanimöré laughed in appreciation. ‘Very well. You will either charm the poor boy or intimidate him. Or both.’ He looked across the rolling, dark countryside. There was no-one out there in the windy night, only Alfred’s Castle pulsed power away beyond the woods.
‘James is holding a meeting. I should be there for it. Howard wants to see me beforehand.’

She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. ‘Bon! Lucien, it is always all or nothing with you. Months and months of nothing then everything.’ She slapped his cheek gently. ‘And the nothing is always so enneyuese!’

He laughed softly. ‘I apologise for the boredom, Héloïse. Now, let me see you to your room.’

She took his arm as they descended the steps, keeping their voices low. Outside her room, he kissed her cheek and waited until she closed the door. It was very quiet in the house. He went to his own room next door wondering, as he had not before, about their brief liaison so many years ago. He could not have children, and Héloïse (as she had informed him) was on birth control. Their night of passion had been unprotected. Did his seed, sterile though it was, confer something? He had never thought of it but Héloïse at seventy had the energy of a woman decades younger. Liaisons with humans were so fraught with difficulty that in this world, he could count them on the fingers of one hand. But if that was the only ‘drift’, it was harmless enough. Far less so than the transfer of blood.

He lay down, sleepless gazing up at the dimness as the call of a little owl sounded, far and lonely in the night and tried and tried (and failed) not to think about Eru. And the Flame.

Chapter Text

~ Power like light. Like Fire. An ingress. A door opened and closed. On the other side of that door was everything and fragments of it, hot, bright, shining, had come through.

From the mansion Aulë had built, his half-prison Melkor raised his head, scenting as a hunting hound snuffs the air.
There had been something, this tantalising taste and sense of the Outside when first he was brought out of that endless jail of no-time. Valinor, home of gods was, of course, more rarefied than Middle-earth but this was somewhat more. In a spasm of doubt he wondered if the Valar were able to pass between Aman and Infinity.

Melkor remembered the Outside as a birth into absolute consciousness, into anger, ambition and hunger that was him and seemed pre-existing; it had come with him, fully formed, out of the black blink before awareness. He could not rule infinity; it was already ruled or was something far greater. But there were worlds within it where he would be supreme.

Arda was spinning itself out from a molten hot core when he came to the Timeless Halls and found the Valar already watching it, coveting it. Like them, he attempted to break into the great mountain Palace that dominated that place but had no more success. It was shut tight, his effort less than a butterfly’s brush against a steel door.

Piqued and infuriated, he turned his attention to the gods. They did not know him and, then, were intrigued rather than wary. Naturally, he thought with contempt, seeing them for what they were and wondering how they had come into being, into such powers as they possessed. They were mighty, but not as great as he. Yet they could be useful and so, in the time-before-time he had seduced them. It had been easy and they had not liked what he had shown them nor the depths to which he could take them. Even less did they like his flaying, scornful laughter.

Some might still have followed him: Oromë the Wild, Irmo, but not the others. Unable to claim the Valar, bored with their flagellating guilt, he had turned to the spirits of the stars and there he had more success. Only he had tamed the solar flames that, on Arda, became the Valaraukar — and Mairon whom had always stood apart.

Upon Arda, the Valar contested with him. The arrogance! It was their world no more than his. But by then, they had feared him. It had taken them all to bring him down in Utumno, and they had only fought after their winged warrior Eönwë and his legions descended. Later, wounded as only gods can be, they withdrew into the land they called the Blessed Realm as, long before, they had contained themselves on Almaren.

Valinor was another island, overbright with the light of their Trees. Always they sought to control and contain, to drive back the darkness, to exist in Light. Oh, he knew them. He knew them. He had marked them like the Fell-wolves of Utumno marked their territory. What he sensed was not them.

To Melkor, the world was multilayered; he moved through it like one of the great sharks of the most ancient seas, feeling every current of air, scenting presences in the water, temperature changes, depth. In this place there was a background power, diffused but evident, and Fëanor was a hot point of energy as was Fingolfin, though both were different. He had noted them without seeming to on that day he was released in the Mahanaxar with Manwë gloating and Varda watching as aloof and cold as her chosen stars.

He detested the Valar, but had their measure. It was Fëanor and Fingolfin that had shone and he wanted to know why. Of Fëanor he had heard much from Aulë, who clearly felt a proprietary pride in him. A teacher cannot, perhaps, help boasting of a talented pupil even to a prisoner on parole, but Fëanor seemed to have arrived at his own genius of invention with very little help. Fëanor, Spirit of Fire, Finwë’s eldest son who had almost turned his back on his father and resented the King’s second wife and her sons.

Finwë, soul-twin to Élernil whom Mairon had captured and brought to Utumno. The first of his White Slayers.

His mood soured. A score of them there had been, scorched white in the extremity of agony both physical and mental.

They had been lethal, those quendi, far more dangerous than the other creations, twisted into monstrosities (and whom he hated). But somehow they had broken free of his will. Marching out of Utumno under orders to approach and capture more of their people, they had not returned. When he called for them, they resisted and their screams of tortured and furious defiance echoed in his mind for a long time. Wherever they were now, they had never come to Valinor. They, like Mairon and the Valaraukar must still be in Middle-earth.

And Melkor, for now, was in Valinor which was a prison, if not that cell of nothingness where Námo had tormented him. Melkor knew the vast spaces of the universe, the singing of the galaxies, the thundering diapason of dark energy and his own power-delved and immense fortresses of the world. In Námo’s halls eternity was crushed and compacted, warped into something that felt both cramped and immense, a cracked-mirror labyrinth without egress. It was a place to drive even a god insane. (It had).

Aman was a step back to freedom, separated from Middle-earth only by the sea — and the Valar’s powers. Once, he could have bestrode the oceans. Once. All the gods had lost something upon this world, binding themselves too closely. Melkor had chosen to willingly pour his spirit into it, so that now it flowed in the rivers, the rocks, the soil, the very air and he deemed his sacrifice worthwhile. Mairon said it was the only way for a Power not of this world to gain any mastery of it; for Melkor and the Valar were all interlopers.

‘Thou must give to get something.’ And Mairon’s eyes, backlit by ember fire, held that secret, disquieting half-smile.

That was not in Melkor’s nature but he
valued Mairon for an intelligence wholly unchained from any sense of morality. Now, there was nowhere not touched by him save Valinor but he was reduced, even as the Valar were reduced, and so he must abide and watch and plan, spin a persona quiet and seeming penitent and allow the Valar’s suspicions of him to lull. Their egos would believe his change of heart after three Ages of imprisonment. Not all of them accepted that he was ‘reclaimed’, or not yet, but Manwë was too sure of his own rectitude. He named himself the mouthpiece of the Creator and believed even gods must wish to bow to him. Blinded by his light, Melkor thought with contempt. He thought he could see into others’ hearts and minds. He was blind to Melkor and always had been, and that was a weakness that could be exploited.

It was Námo whom Melkor had to thank for his freedom. There was no satisfaction in seeing Melkor cowed and repentant if it could not be witnessed by many. Námo wanted his humiliation to be visible, paraded across Valinor.
Námo, Death god and so called Doomsman whose appetite for dark torture might have made him an ally but for the thin, grey prudery he had put on like armour after Melkor’s seduction. He might delve and peel apart and rape a mind and body and call it justified but he himself was inviolable.

The Valar had told Melkor they had rescued the quendi from his malice but also liberated them from their sins. Sins. It was a new word but once Manwë explained it, Melkor saw how well it fitted the narrow white box of his mind.

Prowling his prison-house, spacious enough but another cell to one who had delved the caverns of the Underworld, Melkor put the Valar from his mind and considered the Elves. He had only seen them in torment, never as they had lived beside Cuiviénen, but Mairon had and reported faithfully. Their lives in Valinor were much straightened by the Valarin Laws. Why had they accepted this cage; was it as simple as fear of him, for Melkor; maybe and why not? His power had stretched far over Middle-earth. Yet for all that, he remembered how they had struggled and fought against him in Utumno and could not quite believe it. He needed to know more.

At the beginning of his parole Melkor did not stray far from Aulë’s mansions and his own jailhouse.The Elves who worked there, apprentices from Tirion and Alqualondë, did not speak to him. Aulë’s orders, no doubt. Their sidelong glances held every emotion from plain terror to defiance, but no welcome at all.

Melkor set his teeth. He was not accustomed to soft play, but subterfuge (call it by another name) was how he had seduced the Valar. He was free of Námo’s prison. He could wait. He could plan.

But now this…as if somewhere a gap had opened from the Beyond and allowed Power to enter. And it was still here.

There were World-spirit guards at his doors. Maia warriors. Once, he could have discarded his form and walked unclad. Could he still? Perhaps, but it would need testing. He needed to find out what had come through.

Again and again, his mind returned Finwë’s eldest sons as he had seen them at the Mahanaxar, blazing gems in a crown of beautiful Elves. But their minds were impenetrable; glittering shields raised against his sight.
And that should not be possible.

~ The airliner flew into the rising sun. James opened his eyes after a sleep he had not expected to take.

‘Coffee, sir?’ One of the waiting staff appeared at his elbow as if they had been hovering.

‘Thank you.’

There was an odd sense of relief at returning to London. New York had been…difficult. He smiled into his cup wryly at that understatement; he had been thrown in at the deep end but sometimes that was the only way. One by one, people who had worked for his father for years had been dismissed and one of them had, very dramatically, committed suicide. James felt the fool Peter Thomson had called him for not anticipating it.

Thomson had been in constant contact while James was in Europe. As soon as the news of Callaghan’s death came, he was on the phone to the lawyers. Everything, he instructed as if he, not James, were stepping into the patriarch’s shoes, must be locked down tight. James, in a long-deferred spurt of defiance, did not trouble to consult him before leaving for Italy, which resulted in a near screaming telephone call. But Thomson could hardly deny that James had reason to go, though his father’s death was not it. The security guard’s panicked phone call from the villa Fiorini had given him the only lead on Blaise Worth in years.

There was something in Thomson’s attitude that raised the fine hairs until James realised with a shock that he believed business would continue as normal, that he would work for James as he had for Callaghan.

Could the man be innocent? He dismissed that notion almost immediately. Thomson had been a permanent fixture for fifty years or more. Wherever Raymond Callaghan went, business meeting or holiday, Thomson was there, ubiquitous yet unobtrusive, a tall, cadaverous presence; a grey man in grey suits and slicked back hair that year by year seemed to absorb their colour until they, too, were dusty grey. As a boy and teenager, James had shrunk away from him; Thomson reminded him of a butler in some old Hammer Horror film who was privy to his master’s dark, secretive purposes. As he grew older that whimsy changed to a dull resentment.

Thomson had known. He had been like a deer caught in the glaring headlights of truth, unable to accept that the man he had served so long and faithfully was dead and forever disgraced. The backlash had hardly even begun.

The FBI had met James off the flight, as had the cameras. He was accustomed to the press who followed his father everywhere except when he required their absence and James had often been there, in his shadow. Yet he recalled the sheltered beauty of the Villa Fiorini enviously. Lucien Steele seemed to have no problem with privacy, but he was clearly in another league entirely and was not at all as he seemed. Back on home turf, James felt peculiarly vulnerable and very much alone, as if a sheltering arm had been withdrawn.

But the one thing he did not feel was guilt. The FBI might have thought to catch him while jet-lagged, hoping he would stumble tiredly into confession but James had never suffered from that penalty of travel. Anyhow, the adrenaline rush of nerves would have banished any fatigue. He had come here ready to face this and if there was any positive facet of being tied to his father’s coat-tails it was that his movements were extremely easy to trace. After a long interview the FBI let him go — with certain directives. He was, as they say, “cooperating with the authorities” and, like him, they had Peter Thomson in their sights. James made a suggestion. After a moment of discussion, they agreed. They did not ask him about his meetings with Lucien Steele but perhaps it was not within their purview; they dealt with domestic matters, the CIA with international.

But first things first. James, booking into a hotel rather than returning to the Hamptons, arrived at the Park Avenue office on a morning already hot. The towering ranks of high windows flashed painful prisms of sunlight back at the pale sky and the air already smelt of dried fumes. He had flown into an East Coast sweltering under a week-long heatwave. The Canning building was blessedly cool and quiet after the rush of the streets.

His father would have entered with his usual entourage of secretaries and bootlickers without which, it seemed, he could not function. James was alone and had sent no word ahead. In hindsight that was stupid but he wanted to shake off the associations with his father as soon as possible. The FBI had facilitated that by taking the two bodyguards who had accompanied him into custody.

The ever-present security staff came forward as he crossed the marble-tiled foyer to the private elevator then, recognising him, drew back. Behind their huge marble workstation the receptionists stared mutely as the door whispered shut behind him. He saw their heads turning to follow him, the avid curiosity in their eyes. When he got out on the fourth-fourth floor it was to a muffling silence. No security was in evidence here and his father’s personal secretary was absent.

He opened the office door with a gentle, cushioned whoosh and sigh of air. The huge space with its chairs and enormous leather-topped desk seemed to still retain his father’s presence and the lingering trace of Cuban cigars. Slowly, he crossed the room. It was an intimidating walk, as if approaching a king seated upon a dais. (Of course, his father had liked to sit there, staring down whomever came into his presence) If he closed his eyes and opened them again James would see him, bald head shining, small height boosted high by the chair, lipless mouth twisted into that perpetual downturned smirk of superiority.

What a truly vile man you were.

He shook himself, strode to the desk and sat down. There was nothing on it but three framed photographs of his father with various billionaires, all smirking at the photographer. A certain bloated self-satisfaction typified those few people Callaghan had called ‘friends’ and these were no exception. James shook his head as he brought Lucien Steele to his mind’s eye; a man so different he might have been from another world entirely. His father had been almost obsessed with Steele and could get nowhere near him for all his media power and wealth. No wonder he had been hell-bent on attending that ball. James wished he had been there. He had received the beautifully presented invitation from Madam Gauthier but his presence was not needed or required, his father said. Accustomed to obedience, James had made no objection.

Two of the photographs were backed by expensive interiors, the other by a glittering blue-green sea. The Virgin Islands, probably; his father had invited several people to his island. He gazed at it as he tried the drawers (all locked), then swivelled around in the chair to look at the inner door. It lead, as he knew, to a private suite. Investigating, he found it locked. He didn’t have the code, but Peter Thomson would know it.

Returning to the desk, he set up his laptop and logged into the personnel files.

The first hours were easy enough if not pleasant. He called his father’s personal security guards and one by one, let them go. A few did not have phone numbers. He was not surprised; they were the men who had been in Italy with his father.

When that task was completed, he sat back. The whole building felt as if it were waiting as, only recently, it would have waited for his father; he had been the pulse-beat and every one of the staff was attuned to his presence.

Rising, James stretched and went to the windows, swung one of them open. Hot air gusted in, and the sound of snarling traffic rose. He didn’t mind. The oppressive quiet of the office was unnerving, closing him off from life as his father had tried to shut him away. He took a long breath and stepped onto the small railed balcony where his father had liked to stand looking over the city like some despot gloating over his domain. More than once he had ushered out visitors who were clearly uncomfortable with the narrowness and dizzying drop while his security hemmed them in from behind. James knew it for a test when he was beckoned out but it seemed heights did not bother him.

There was a stiff breeze up here, funnelled down the street by the skyscrapers. It was dry, hot and brought no relief from the heat. Stepping back inside, he made himself coffee then lifted one of the office chairs to the desk, facing him. At precisely 10.30 reception called up.

‘Mr..Ah…Mr. Callaghan. Mr Thomson is here for an appointment.’

‘Thank you. Send him up.’ He settled himself. Callaghan. He despised the name and meant to change it as soon as possible. Remembering the grandmother who had left him her fortune, he rather thought he might use her surname: Hart.

Peter Thomson entered with a bulging briefcase. His always pale cheeks seemed more withered and caved than before. His lips were puckered inward as if meditating on the taste of a sour fruit.

‘About time.’ He thumped the briefcase on the table, folded long, thin bones into the chair and snapped this case open and slapped down documents. James glanced over them.
‘Thank you, Thomson. Do you have the code to his suite?’ He gestured with his head.

‘Ah, why...I’ His eyes flicked to the door then returned, weighing something. ‘Of course.’ He unfolded like a mantis. ‘You can close that window. It lets the heat in.’

Yes, this is a man for a cold climate.

‘Thank you for your concern but I need some air.’

He joined Thomson and watched him key in the code and open the door. The suite was luxurious and empty but for a few clothes in the closets. Still, who knew what the FBI might find?

Behind him, Thomson said, ‘If you’ve satisfied yourself, there’s a lot of work to be done.’

James turned. ‘Not for you.’

‘What?’ He blinked rapidly, then an unpleasant half-sneer grew. ‘Your father meant for me to remain if anything happened to him.’ He sounded dismissive, even contemptuous. ‘I hope you intend to honour his promise.’

‘I intend to honour nothing about him,’ James replied coldly. ‘Not even his funeral’

‘You’re not serious! You can’t hope to step into his shoes without me. You’re nothing but a boy.’

It was like turning over a stone and finding something unexpected underneath, some grey crawling creature, slicked with venom. A cold anger rose up, steadying him as much as it surprised him.

‘You knew, didn’t you?’

Thomson glared back at him. ‘This was a set-up. Come on, boy! Apollyon have always had their eyes on your father.’

‘I rather thought it was the other way around. Well, Apollyon might just get his companies. I might sell it all off. Probably at a loss. That would make him spin in his grave wouldn’t it? I do hope you remember I hold the majority of shares in everything? I can’t be outvoted and I know the details of the trust.’ It had always surprised him that his father had arranged it in that way. But he didn’t. Joanna Worth did.. ‘But first I’m cleaning shop. My father may have paid for your silence all these years, but he’s dead as you have pointed out, I am not him.’

‘You don’t have the guts to be him.’ His face had gone white and now blood mottled back into it. ‘You’ve inherited an empire—!’

‘The guts to abuse children, the guts to destroy people’s lives because you can? Yes, Thomson I’ve seen that too often. As for the other…My god, I hope you and anyone else who colluded or connived to keep his crimes quiet rot in hell.’ His hands slammed down on the table. Thomson’s teeth clicked shut.

‘You can’t do this. You need me—‘

‘Need you? What were you, Thomson? His pander?’ The turmoil of fury peaked. ‘He raped and murdered children. Did you; or did you watch?’

His words hardly seemed to register. Thomson took three steps toward him, then seemed to see that Callaghan’s son was almost a foot taller than the man he had served, more than forty years younger and was not backing down.

‘You’ll ruin everything. They can’t prove a thing.’ He leaned forward on the desk. ‘You stupid boy—‘

James over-rode him. ‘Oddly, I can’t seem to trace some of his security guards, and his private secretary is gone, as you may have noticed. And quite a few other people have vanished. I don’t think you realise the seriousness of this. But the authorities certainly do.’

‘You don’t see, do you?’ Thomson’s breath was rank: coffee and the sour sickness of fear. ‘We can deal with this. Yes, anyone that can say anything is gone! Nothing will stand up in court except that Lucien Steele had him murdered—‘

‘It was an accident,’ James interrupted. ‘And recorded as such. He killed Mortimer Worth and he admitted before witnesses that he raped Worth’s son!’

‘That fucking ball was set up to make him confess!’ Thomson snarled. ‘I advised him not to go. I told him…But we can salvage it and you can continue with his plans.’ He scrabbled in the open briefcase. ‘Listen—‘

James weighed the moment like a fencer. ‘His plans? Or Joanna Worth’s?’

The office fell silent. A blind rattled in the wind and the city noise rose, the snarl of vehicles, a siren in the distance. Life. Normality; hot-baked dust and exhaust. One of the papers blew from the desk and skidded across the floor.

Thomson’s figure crouched like a predator. There was an expression so vicious in his eyes that James almost stepped back. That under-the-stone creature…

‘He should have been harder on you. He should have made sure…’ His hands groped like clicking talons to return the papers to his briefcase. ‘Well, I’ll make fucking sure.’

The door clicked open and two men surged in. Strangers to James but not to Thomson, who didn’t turn his head. They were big men, swollen with muscle under their suits and both of them carried guns.

‘You’ve forced my hand.’ Thomson told him. ‘We’re going to take a little ride somewhere and I’ll explain things.’

A hollow shock opened out in James chest but his heart filled it with hectic, shuddering beats. He looked from the men back to Thomson and forced himself to say, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, I do think so, you pretty-boy little prick,’ Thomson said savagely. ‘Yes, I remember the Worth kid. Delicate little piece of ass. We should have kept him.’ His long teeth bared.

The room darkened before James' eyes and then returned overly-sharp, blanched into brilliant hardness by fury. His head hummed with it. His fingers flexed as he imagined wrapping them around that scrawny neck…Then another sharp gust of wind swept through the office and the open door creaked.

The three men that entered were absolutely silent in their dark suits.
‘Drop the guns,’ one of them said calmly.’ Now.’

Thomson’s men spun, already firing, the shots muffled by silencers, but the Federal Agents agents were quicker, dropping to one knee so that the bullets meant for them went over their heads and smacked into the wall. The return fire took them out neatly. Thomson started moving even as they crumpled. He grabbed his briefcase and made for the half-open window. James followed, reaching for his jacket, catching it. The fabric tore as Thomson, grunting, wrenched himself free.

‘Stay where you are! You too, Mr. Callaghan.’

Three guns levelled on Thomson. He turned, clutching the briefcase to him like a baby. James watched a peculiar smile writhe on the thin lips, the dart of his eyes before they settled on him. The gleeful malevolence in them was shocking.

‘You’re going to regret this,’ he promised. ‘You don’t know how much. You have no idea.’ And he launched himself backward through the balcony window. Warning shots smacked into the glass, blowing it into shards. An alarm shrieked.
Thomson slammed against the railing. His shirt, too, was ripped and flapped in the wind and his skinny chest, over the heart, bore a back circle.

Then, quite deliberately, his eyes on James, he hurled himself back and over the railing.

James was on the balcony in a blink, feet crunching glass. The body plummeted, smaller and smaller above the traffic but James still thought he could see those eyes fixed on his face, the rictus of carious teeth until the final, brutal meeting with the ground. Horns blared.

‘Goddamit,’ one of the agents swore.

James drew back. ‘Get his briefcase,’ he said. He turned, strangely calm, walked to the door of the suite and picked up the wind-blown sheet of paper, folding it.

Another meeting or rather a debriefing, followed. James had not expected the plan he had conceived ending quite like that, but he could not say he cared, only that Thomson was dead and there could be no justice and no opportunity to question him.

There was also no recovered briefcase, which could have been just opportunistic theft or something rather more worrying. CCTV was being looked at, he was told.

From the hotel, James gazed across Central Park, beautifully green even as the city baked. The flight to Heathrow was booked and he was packed. The suite was as quiet as the office had been. Once again he felt that acute sense of being alone, unmoored.

He pushed a hand through still damp hair. After returning to the Plaza he’d felt a need to shower again not so much from witnessing a death but the proximity of Thomson.

‘You had him and let him go,’ one of the agents had remarked. And it was true enough, Thomson, hampered by his precious briefcase, would have been no match for a younger, stronger man.

‘His suit tore,’ James replied. But I guessed what he might do. It was in his eyes. Thomson was not prepared to be arrested and questioned or to go to jail. And he had been there when Blaise Worth was raped. He was one of them, perhaps. If he had not fallen (and the FBI agents had fired to warn not to kill) James would have killed him and damn the consequences. He hoped that the old bastard had felt an eternity of terror during that fall before his body hit the street. And it still wasn’t enough.

After a moment, he sat down and picked up a burner phone from the coffee table. The very action of depressing the numbers gave him an odd sense of unreality.
Cloak-and-dagger stuff. He took a long breath.

‘Yes, James?’

The sound of that rich, accented voice was like a draught of red wine, intoxicating and soothing both but not soft; there was a hard, clean edge to it. From the background noise, he sounded as if he were in a car.

‘Mr…’ He hesitated over speaking the name and discarded it. ‘Peter Thomson is dead. Suicide. I’m sure you’ll hear about it.’ He paused, biting down on the resurgence of anger. ‘There was no way he was going to let himself be arrested.’

‘Ah, well that was to be expected.’ Steele sounded almost amused.

‘The ones I could dismiss — those that had files — I have.’ He picked up a beautiful glass paperweight from the table and turned it restlessly in one hand. It was cobalt, swirled through with paler turquoise, like a frozen sea.

‘All of them? I present you my compliments.’ A soft laugh sounded.

‘It wasn’t…’ The blown glass seemed to ripple. He smelt the sea, sun lotion, heard the creak of the yacht, soft, drowsy laughter, the splash of water, a voice languid with the idle drift of the boat and the somnolent air… ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to do this for a week, a month…? What say you, James?’ And he saw the face of Blaise Worth, clearer than in any dream, chestnut curls tipped by the sun’s gold, eyes startling against his tan. Sea-colour. He was smiling lazily from under an awning.

A memory-flash. There and gone. In the air-conditioned suite, a flush of heat prickled into his cheeks.

‘It wasn’t quite what I expected,’ he filled the expectant silence lamely, pinching the bridge of his nose. Thomson’s words about Blaise rolled around his head like a ball bearing in a steel box, trailing echoes of horror. The killing rage still simmered.

‘No, I do not suppose it was. Watch your back.’ There was a definite warning at the back of the light tone.

‘The FBI will see me onto my flight. It’s at 10.p.m. I’d like to talk to you — and Mr Wainwright, although he probably knows what happened already. Nevertheless…’ He set down the paperweight. ‘I’m seeing Mr. Fenwick-Brown at midday tomorrow; he’s coming to the hotel. Howard suggested we conference. Are you with someone? If so, I'll wait.’

‘Very well, yes.’ Crisply. ‘Howard will route the phone call. I will see you then. Goodbye.’

Unsettled, James rose, nerves shrilling like the sirens that had heralded the approach of police and ambulance on Park Avenue. He closed his eyes and memories flared and faded: His father grinning, Thomson’s open-mouthed glare as his body fell, Joanna Worth smiling at him, Lucien Steele making everything else look like background, Blaise laughing as the yacht skimmed through waters blue as his eyes. and behind them all a briefly glimpsed figure, tall, slim, gold-white hair, eyes shaded by dark glasses who turned his head and smiled as if he had always known James.

My grandfather. Who are you?

He poured himself a shot of brandy, knocked it back, then, as he had been instructed, took the SIM card out of the burner phone and broke it.

Chapter Text

~ The dream ended with a gasping leap into consciousness that was like opening a door from one place to another.
He lay still. My room. Formenos. Home. Every time, after waking from dream he half-expected to be somewhere else.

The chamber was dim save for one slim beam of light through a crack in the shutters that he had forgotten to entirely close. Precise as harp-string, it striped the wall-hanging, bleaching out the blue, and red and gold. Early Mingling lay over Valinor, the quiet time before the day.

He sought out the dream that hovered on the margins of his mind like mist over water. Music running behind it and through it, a voice; a smell, sea-salt and damp stone, a cold, wild whipping wind and a strange amber-fire light…

Alqualondë? No. The light piercing through Calcirya touched the waves with silver and gold. There was always a warmth in the air and water.

Mist, moss grown in damp stony crevices, a wind raw and cold with briny spray, the crash and suck of waves.

Araman? Their father had taken them all over Valinor once the twins were old enough, long exploratory treks to the very borders of the Outer Sea where, far from the light of the Trees, the stars fell into Ekkaia, south to the towering mountains and gloomy ravines of Avathar and northward to the bitter fogs and clashing ice floes of Araman. That was a deeper, biting chill.

Slowly, he drifted back to the dream as if it were a shy animal that might startle. He felt the music on his tongue, in the back of his throat, the swell of it deep within.
It was like nothing he had ever sung before, a simple, rollicking tune and…It was hot, glaring lights, a platform, some kind of dais? a crowd that cheered and stamped.

Performing was natural to him and had been since childhood but his audiences had never been so loud in response.

Maglor pushed aside the covers and rose, crossing to a table. It had been some years since he and his brothers had revealed to their father and one another that they dreamed of these strange and otherworldly people and places. Fëanor, too, dreamed and Maglor doubted that his family were the only ones; one could pick it out in conversations, if one listened carefully. Words spoken and not spoken.

He had decided to note down what they could remember to see if there was a pattern, if anything made sense and now opened the leather-bound book of dreams. Carefully, he flipped the pages. Sometimes the writing was harder than others, like attempting to translate words from a language he had no knowledge of; and his father had said it was exactly that. With that illimitable smile that warmed to the bone (and Maglor now understood could likewise burn to the bone) he explained:
‘The Elves of the Outer Lands will no doubt speak other languages though they must proceed from one root,’ he said. ‘Rúmil, and some of the Unbegotten still know our ancient tongue and one can see how it has changed since we came to Valinor. Language is a fluid thing.’

Maglor learned the ancient first-tongue of his people and even some Valarin. All of them had when they were old enough to incorporate it into their lessons; Maglor had not known why then. He did now; it was in preparation for when they would leave Aman. That hope hung before them like a far-off beckoning light.

But the languages he heard and spoke in his dreams were wholly alien, never heard nor spoken in Valinor. When he woke and felt them in his mouth some were hard and awkward as chipped marble, others were softer, like the rolling curl of a wave but all of them were unknown and unknowable. (‘As yet,’ his father corrected). He wrote them as he heard them, even if the black script that stared back at him from the pages meant nothing at all. But there were images that appeared with them and these he sketched, forming columns of relationship. He never duplicated anything; the columns grew like branches, some interlocking — perhaps, he silently amended.

And there were some dreams that he did not commit to paper. There was blood in them and fire, and grief.

Grief. How could he know the word and what it meant? He was born of Valinor. Yet the agony of someone, something he loved ripped from him, gone, completely gone from the world, into the dark—he knew it.

The first time he woke from one of those dreams he had been crying out, tears already on his cheeks, stinging, scalding like fresh blood. He had thought to see blood, vivid and awful on the sheets, on his right hand which throbbed agonisingly. But there was nothing to see.

Maedhros had come and comforted him and in their quiet talk, as he settled, his brother admitted that he, too, had experienced similar dreams. He clasped a hand over his left wrist and a shutter closed over the pale luminosity of his eyes and he would say no more not then, and not since.

Secrets. Things not told. Even his father had them. Especially his father. They were a family of secrets…held against the Valar, against their own people and, from love, against one another.

He found the word he was looking for and traced a finger over the column beside it: Ruin. Sunset. Winter. Yes, he had dreamt it before, more than once.

None of those words had meant anything to him when he wrote them. It had been Rúmil, years ago, who gave him the words in the old tongue when Maglor described what he had seen in the dream.

‘Ruin. Or a ruin, or ruined. Places that have been abandoned and fallen back to nature, homesteads, towers…There were few of those in Endor, perhaps an old sheep fold, a hut — a wreck, something fallen in or destroyed. There are ruins on Tol Eressëa where the Teleri dwelt long before coming fully to Aman, mansions, palaces, walls. Thy father saw them years ago.’

‘Yes, I saw them,’ Fëanor agreed with a curling smile. ‘The word is not used much here where there are no ruins. One could perhaps use it to describe a person, too.’

‘And the rest?’ Maglor questioned. ‘The light is strange. It is not Tree-light.’ He had learned as a child of Varda’s Dome. ‘Sunlight, then?’

Fëanor’s eyes had gone distant. ‘A setting or rising sun, from what you describe.’ And for Maglor — all of them — he sketched out a diagram of the Sun and Arda. The Sun was so enormous in size that Arda was a tiny ball against it. How canst thou know this? Maglor wondered.
‘The world circles the Sun, and so some of Arda will be in sunlight, other regions in darkness and it will change. Sunset and sunrise?’ Fëanor raised a sleek and quizzical brow at Rúmil who looked thoughtful when he spoke; a man recalling his past.

‘Sunrise,’ he murmured. ‘When we would see the Sun rise above the horizon and climb into the sky. Sunset, the opposite when it sinks behind the world and the dark comes with starlight.’ His words were a poem. ‘The whole sky ablaze with them.’

Maglor absorbed this. ‘And the feeling of cold? Yes, we have felt it in Araman, but only because it is far from the Trees.’

‘Winter,’ Rúmil told him. ‘The dark time of the year, a time of rest for leaf and herb, when the trees are bare of leaf and nothing grows, sleeping, waiting for the spring. There can be snow and frost or wild winds and rain. But a good time …a time to tell tales at the fireside with hot mead, to spin and weave and for the hunters and the protectors, the land is clear with the trees bare of leaf and one may see far.’ Abruptly he stopped. Maglor, waiting, saw his father’s expression; the snap of a frown, a memory or thought behind it.

The idea of ‘seasons’, was explained to him: part of the turning of the world. Valinor, under the control of the Valar had times of harvest, of cooler temperatures but it was not natural. The land itself, bathed with Treelight, would not have naturally produced fruit or grain, so Aulë told Fëanor years ago; the Valar — Yavanna in particular — had used power to make Aman more familiar to the Elves. Only in the regions distant from the Trees could one glimpse anything similar to the dusk-light of the Outer Lands.

But I know that, too. And not from any dream.

Crossing to the window, he drew back the shutters. The Mingling rushed in, dispelling the gentle shadows. His bedchamber looked out over the sprawling garden, alive with flowers, herb beds, shaven lawns, fountains that threw sparkling curtains, all bounded by fruit trees. Beyond, a high stone wall separated the garden from the stable block. Everything was familiar but what if one day, he opened the window on another vista?

It was quiet now, but soon Formenos would be busy with servants, journeymen and ostlers, brewers and weavers and smiths— all the bustle of a great house. Maglor heard the soft creak of shutters as another pair were drawn back in Maedhros’s bedchamber. Naturally his brother would rise early; today was not a normal day, if any could be called normal in this increasingly volatile political atmosphere. It was their cousin Fingon’s Begetting Day and the Fëanorions were invited to the palace. The invitation had come written in Fingon’s own hand and Fëanor had glanced under his lashes at Maedhros and said, surprising them all, ‘Yes, of course we will attend. It would be discourteous to refuse.’

When Maglor was young, they spent little time in Tirion. That had changed quite suddenly and though Formenos was home, they were a presence in the palace. Even Finarfin, who had been fostered in Alqualondë and married Eärwen, Olwë’s daughter, now dwelt close by the Great Square below Mindon Eldaliéva. Fingolfin, of course, lived there permanently. The great halls and corridors were busy with the whisper of political rivalries.

Maglor remembered the murmurs of the schism within the House of Finwë from childhood. He had accepted it then, but was saddened; he was fond of Fingolfin. But the half-brother’s unfriendship was the one thing Fëanor would never talk about. He did not denigrate Fingolfin when in Formenos but Maglor had witnessed the clashes in Tirion, which ranged from brief vicious sparring to far more spectacular encounters. Fingolfin had a way of withdrawing into — admittedly — splendid and icy haughtier while Fëanor simply burned, intemperate and furious. Yet more than once, Maglor had seen the sword-fire blaze in his uncle’s eyes. If he appeared cool and controlled, it was a trained reaction, he thought, not his natural state.

Maglor had been thrown head-first into the political fray a few days after his majority when, walking in the palace gardens he found himself confronted by a disdainful and cold-eyed lordling with acolytes hovering behind. Speaking loudly as if continuing a conversation with his followers, but with his eyes darting to Maglor, he named Fëanor arrogant and more than half-mad. ‘And he has bred sons the same. Formenos,’ he enunciated through a petulant mouth, ‘Is a nest of vipers.’

Maglor backhanded him without a second thought, knocking the sneer from his face and the lordling almost off his feet. The palm of his hand stung. He was a little surprised at his own uprush of rage, but rode its still hot and cresting wave.
‘Well?’ he challenged. ‘If thou hast anything to say about my father or my brothers, say it now. And then we shall take thine accusations to the King.’

They blustered, though none of them made any move to attack, being occupied with helping the lordling to his feet. A bruise had already formed on his cheek and he looked shocked but then as abruptly, all of them froze.

A hand settled on Maglor’s shoulder and a voice beside him said, ‘What’s this?’

Fingolfin’s voice was ice; his eyes were not. Below the beautiful circlet of blue-white jewels they flamed like Telperion flashing down the edge of a steel blade. Maglor stared. There were differences between his father and Fingolfin but those were minor, never more so than when Fingolfin permitted his temper to show. He wore his power and arrogance closer to his skin than Fëanor but when he released it, like a man casting off a cloak, a living star blazed forth. He looked perilous and far more than beautiful. Maglor though suddenly, Valinor is too small for the both of them.

The young men were no less affected; they scrambled with words.

‘My Lord I…’

‘We were but…’

Fingolfin raised his hand and the voices ceased as if cut off.
‘Thy voice is quite penetrating, Þandion,’ he said. ‘Indeed Prince Maglor,’ (A definite stress on the title) ‘Is correct that such accusations should be taken before the King. It is not meet for a boy to speak thus of his elders. Only thy youth excuses thee. But if thou doth judge thyself the injured party and wish to take this to the Field, now is the time to speak.’

Maglor stared at the lordling unblinkingly and inclined his head, expressing his willingness. This method of settling arguments and disputes more personal than political (which was its own arena and more bloodlessly vicious) had been initiated years ago. The Noldor were by nature passionate and competitive but the inflicting of violence upon one another was prohibited by the Laws. If two people met in anger it must be at the Field of Games, presided over by two judges. By the end of the duel, the participants' hot blood had usually cooled and the onlookers had enjoyed a spectacle.

Þandion swallowed, darted a look up toward Fingolfin, another at Maglor and said sulkily, ‘No, my Lord.’

‘Very well. Go to thy homes. All of thee. I will speak to thy parents.’

They melted away, blushing fierily and bowing. Maglor had not spoken and did not move. Shivers of anger still weltered through him.

‘A pity,’ he said. ‘I would like to meet him on the Field.’

‘It would be an unfair contest,’ Fingolfin remarked, the perfect arch of his brows drawn into a faint frown. Then he said, ‘Thou art very like thy father.’ There was no censure in the words there was even, Maglor thought, a glint of something — amusement or approval — in his eyes as he walked away.

The sons of Fëanor along with Fingon and others among the Noldor had gained something of a reputation both at the Games and in duels. Fëanor and Fingolfin had never taken their quarrels there, though Maglor had seen his father sparring with Eönwë, their martial teacher and privately thought it a good thing the half-brothers had not crossed swords. Perhaps they could not; the formalities that cloaked the sons of Finwë were supposed to ensure that arguments did not escalate into physical violence.
The quarrels that ended in duels were generally between young hot-heads, small jealousies blown up but occasionally they masked something deeper, and sometimes there were injuries. Maglor would not, he realised, have been ashamed of injuring Þandion.

He heard nothing more of that altercation, though by the next morning the news had grown wings and flown. Fëanor had shrugged and embraced him, saying that such men were as yapping dogs and as ineffectual. He said nothing about Fingolfin’s intervention. More and more, Maglor found his silence strange. Fëanor was not the kind of person to hide his teeth. Face-to-face with Fingolfin he most certainly bared them and snarled.

Maglor had been younger then. Now, though a scant handful of years had passed, he felt a great deal older. He knew (and suspected) much more. The climate of Tirion and even Formenos, did that — and the instinctive, burning protectiveness the sons of Fëanor felt for their father. Visits to Tirion were fraught but they were always interesting and now there was an added complication: Maedhros and his carefully hidden desire for Fingolfin’s eldest son.

Such a thing could never be sanctioned. It was enshrined in the Laws. Everyone knew the rumours of people who had gone missing, men and women taken away by the Valar when they dared to transgress. It seemed not to have happened for a long time, but the threat hung over the Elves like smoke. Fëanor said, with an expressively curling lip, that it was the reason the Eldar were pushed into marriage so young, before they could truly know if they might prefer their own sex. He himself had never so much as suggested his sons take wives and turned a deaf ear to the petitions.

Maedhros had said nothing, at least to Maglor or his brothers. He might have spoken to Fëanor, who certainly knew or guessed, though Maglor thought this lust, love, attraction, call it what one would, was a new development. Last year, Fingon had become old enough to sit on the High Council.

The leap from youth to adulthood was always sudden and pronounced, and of the mind as much as the body. No longer did Fingon linger on the edge, coltish and still half boy. He had strode decisively over the threshold and was now a young man. He was also a beautiful one, very much like his father.

Somber, Maglor bathed and dressed for the journey. His body servant, Nárendil, brought in a breakfast tray and lingered to pack a few things. Not much was needed for they all maintained chambers in the palace. Maglor joined him; he liked the man, formerly one of High Lord Nullion’s people. His father was a miner but Nárendil (nicknamed thus) had not wanted to follow in his footsteps.

Maglor himself packed his lap harp. This done, he returned to the writing table to put away his journal. He gazed at the words he had written, frowning. They were incomprehensible but the tune sang itself in his mind; he began to hum it as he wrapped the leather bindings around the book. Nárendil looked up.
‘An interesting tune,’ he offered and cocked his head. ‘Different. Strange, but lively. I like it,’ he decided. ‘What is it called, my Lord?’

Maglor shook his head, forced to demur. ‘I have not named it yet.’ Then, ‘I think… something to do with the sea, and ships.’

‘Ah! A Teleri mariner’s song,’ Nárendil exclaimed.

‘Perhaps.’ But that did not seem to fit the feeling of the song. The mariners certainly sang and their music drew on the waters and the winds of the Bay of Eldamar, the cry of the wheeling gulls and the whisper of the waves.

There was more than a little daredevilry in the song Maglor had dreamed, a laugh at fate.
’Sometimes,’ he had said to his father. ‘It feels as if I am living another life somewhere else. And more than one.’
The mariners spoke of the pull of the sea. Maglor felt as if something similar yet far more powerful than the ocean’s tides was at work within his consciousness, sometimes running strongly as a riptide, at others a gentle whisper at the back of his mind. But always present.

Nárendil returned to the packing and cast him a sidelong look.
‘Will the High Prince wear the Silmarils to the feast, my Lord?’

His voice had softened on the name, brushing it with the kind of awe that the jewels had ever evoked.

The Silmarils. Nothing like them had ever been seen. Maglor recalled the moment his father walked out of his workshop wearing them on his brow as if he had always worn them; they looked so natural on him.

The Valar had proclaimed the Light of the Trees was captured in those faceted gems but in fact they blazed like Fëanor’s eyes. Even in a darkened room they shone, the air about them coruscant. Dust motes were set afire where the light touched them, raindrops and dew glimmered with a thousand sparks.

Fëanor told no-one how he made them. He had created self-luminous gems before even in his younger days, and Silmarils were the crowning glory. With the arrogant flair that sat as naturally on him as his storm of hair, he had walked into the Great Hall of the palace for Fingolfin’s Begetting Day feast and brought silence down upon the gathering. Fingolfin’s eyes had flown wide, catching the Silmarils brilliance, and then narrowed briefly. Finwë and the rest of his court simply looked stunned.

It was not true (as rumour ran) that Fëanor hoarded the Silmarils, denying the sight of them to anyone but himself. Maglor had touched them as had they all.

‘He wears them when he wishes to make a statement,’ Maedhros had said once, and Maglor thought that was true. So many things said or not said with a gesture, a look, an impression given and gleaned.

Maglor glanced at Nárendil’s waiting face and saw on it a kind of yearning. The Silmarils did have that effect: he had seen people stare at them as if entranced, drawn to their unmatched and unmatchable light. One of those was the Vala, Melkor.

Fëanor had never welcomed Melkor in Formenos.
He had come, anyway.
Maglor did not know what his father had said but Melkor had never been there since. Yet the rest of Valinor seemed to accept him. He could be seen in Tirion at any time when he was not with Aulë, even in the palace at feasts. The Noldor had caught his interest. Only rarely did he journey to Valmar or Alqualondë.

Maglor needed no instruction to be wary of him. The gods were all strange to the eye, not quite real, as if they had forced their feä into a human form and changed it in the execution so that even their movement and expressions were unnatural and eerie. Ilmarin was equally disturbing with its impossible architecture and bleaching light. But Melkor held his power in his eyes, splendid under deep-arched lids and haughty brows. Blue-black and iridescent; they sucked one into…red-black, a storm of power, of emptiness…like the dim and lonely shores of the East, where one felt one could walk across the still, dark water of Ekkaia and into the stars. But Melkor’s eyes did not promise starlight.

Yet Melkor seemed more like the Noldor than any of the Valar and, disturbingly, he reminded Maglor of Fëanor. He was beautiful beyond dreaming, but it was a terrible, destroying beauty.
Fëanor, whenever he saw him, threw back his head and his eyes ignited in pure challenge. There was no fear, only a look hurled straight as a spear.

Rúmil had said to Maglor and Maedhros, ‘Thou art not afraid enough of Melkor, nor any of the Valar. They are Powers, forget it not.’

The door to Maglor’s chamber opened and Maedhros stepped in, flashing his lovely smile and banishing Maglor’s preoccupations. He was dressed for riding but the circlet of nobility was set on his hair. Serpentine hair, Maedhros had, as if an artist had brushed cinnamon and gold and bronze through the polished copper that spiralled to his knees. He was the tallest of all Fëanor’s sons and beautifully formed, long-legged and wide-shouldered. All of them had inherited their father’s features and winging black brows but Maedhros’ eyes were the palest of silvers, luminous and almost distant until he fixed one with a slicing stare. His younger brothers acquiesced to him as they did to Fëanor. Maedhros was their natural leader.

‘Father said we would leave early,’ Maedhros said with a friendly nod to Nárendil.

‘I am ready,’ Maglor smiled. They shared a private and collusive promise as they always did before leaving for Tirion. They would watch for their father and guard his back and they would observe. It had become a habit that was now deeply ingrained within Fëanor’s sons.

Chapter Text

~ It was easy for him to pass unobserved. Sometimes he used glamour: the young man becoming older, a workman in overalls, a smartly-dressed office worker, a student passing unobtrusively through the streets of the old town just one of many. At other times it was as simple as a baseball cap, curls tucked inside or, on wet days, the golfing umbrella that had hidden his face from Vanimöré in London. A frisson thrilled coldly through his nerves when he thought back to that risky intervention.

Nael could be as patient as the movement of mountains, but when the opportunity arose he would take it and take it fast. Let the dice fall as they would.

Eru. Vanimöré. An impasse of power. Betrayal that spanned aeons. Universes that orbited one another, each waiting for the other to blink.
It was perhaps just as well that Vanimöré’s attention had been fixed upon Sauron that day. He might have forced himself to play the part of unbiased Overmind on the Outside but it had been a near thing. He had burned into a destroying storm, crowned and winged and glorious — then hammered himself into control.

As I knew thou wouldst.

But Vanimöré in the physical world was less powerful and for that very reason, likely to be less cautious.

Vanimöré. Thou canst not understand — or will not. He smiled to himself, the temper of which only Vanimöré would have understood.

The DDE’s agents in St. Andrews were exceptionally good. Nael expected no less. Sent there long before David Balfour arrived, they blended into the town, eliciting no comment whatsoever, but while he could hide from them, no-one could hide from his sight. It was not they he was concerned with, anyhow. There were other things. This sea-fretted place of stone and ruin, of wind and water, was numinous. It had been, for men, a holy place, but one that (like all holy places) had known violence. Then the students came young, vital, bringing their own energies. And energies lingered. Most were harmless, remnants of life, echoes of emotion. Some were not.

The Pends, even on bright summer days, was a discomforting place. It affected Nael not at all, but he felt and he saw the bleed-through of memory, pain, the imprint of emotion upon the stone that replayed itself over and over. His warning to David had not been idle.

The so-called Nun’s Walk, haunted by the ghost of a mutilated nun seemed, even on bright summer days, peculiarly dark. Nael had seen tourists or students turn down it laughing and chatting to become more and more uneasy and silent as they progressed. Between the walls, it felt oppressive, oddly silent with a watchful heaviness. Where the Pends bounded the graveyard a wind hissed over the stones, whispering secrets. It was not a place for anyone when the dark came down, especially no one with the kind of blood that acted like a beacon.

October tinted the land. The long northern afternoons of September slowly contracted, though the air clung to warmth long after it should have yielded to chill. A golden autumn like a benison, with only a few days of wind and rain and those driven on a mild wind.

The students made the most of the kind weather as did the tourists, though the latter began to thin out as the month moved toward November. Along Lade Braes the trees burned into brightness; leaves fell slow and idly and the air was soft with autumn's gentle melancholy. Though the sun set earlier each day, the dusks stretched, reluctant to yield to night. Sometimes the evening air was so still the sea seemed hardly to breathe.

Nael spent little time in his rented room on the outskirts of town. He had not lied to David Balfour when he presented himself as a sex-worker; he was like Vanimöré in the way that he would use himself without pity or mercy if the need arose, but prostitution was not his career. He had done it to give himself an opening, to elicit sympathy and had needed to seem authentic. Harlow was a cover story lest anyone look deeper. Nael would never underestimate Vanimöré or the DDE.

Recalling, Nael grimaced a little, more a reflex action of minor distaste rather than disgust. Harlow’s appetite for young men was well-known but despite his fearsome reputation as a malicious gossip, sexually he was easy enough to please and seemed to enjoy looking more than participating. His salacious talk was just that…talk. At times he wanted to watch his ‘boys’ self-pleasure, which was harmless enough compared to what some of Blaise’s clients had demanded. The memories squatted behind the very blue eyes like a diseased old toad.

Harlow had wanted to ‘book’ Nael again and take him on a two week trip to Paris. Nael had politely demurred, claiming a previous commitment. He could not afford to be too closely associated with anyone, more especially with someone known to the formidable Héloïse Gauthier, and David’s intention had been clear even if he had not yet admitted it: He wanted to somehow help Nael, in whom he saw himself and his old life. Hence the impulsive gift of his phone number to one he considered trapped and vulnerable. If necessary, David would ask Héloïse or Vanimöré for help in tracing Nael and the DDE would quite likely be able to do so. Héloïse, in five minutes or less, would turn Jonathon Harlow inside out, gleaning every piece of information on the young man he had hired. Nael preferred, at the moment, to remain elusive.

Like Vanimöré, like Sauron and Maglor and others who were not human but walked this world, Nael had access to wealth and maintained homes across the world. He was a shareholder in many companies and the dividends mounted up but he lacked Sauron and Vanimöré’s interest in big business. His mind was that of a Power. Vanimöré, even after his apotheosis, was a warrior and commander first and foremost. He ran Apollyon Enterprises as a commander of armies. Sauron, with his acute intelligence, was always himself, whatever names he might take. He also had the same aims.

The house in St. Andrews was only one of the many places Nael had stayed in for a long or short time. His roommate was a plumber, always in demand, and though the two shared a kitchen and bathroom they might go for days without running into each other. The owner, who lived in Dundee and called in once a week, was satisfied that they kept the house clean and the garden neat, that there were no parties or damage to the property. Windsor Gardens was a typical outer suburb of families and workers with a few student and holiday lets but removed from the center of St. Andrews and the pulse of university life. The street backed onto fields and Nael could come and go easily without remark.

Often he would leave the house before dawn in one guise or another and walk into the town for breakfast. At times, sitting in a cafe or pub he might bring out the card David had impulsively given him in the Fairmont. The time might come that he would use it, but not yet. David was watched and the agents would certainly report who he met and where and Nael was here to observe the Watchers: The design engineer who worked from his home-office on City Road, opposite David’s Howard Place flat and who liked a pint or two in the Central; the poet with a rose-dyed buzz cut and blue pashminas who rented a flat while working on their first book and haunted second hand bookshops. And others.

There was less surveillance now than a year ago when Thuringwethil haunted the shadows and followed Claire James and Rosie south to Devon. Thuringwethil had watched in St. Andrews but not dared to approach or waylay Maglor. Claire had seemed the easier target and, had she been captured, Maglor would certainly have accepted the ransom demand of himself and walked into Sauron’s hands.

The plan had failed spectacularly though it was a close-run thing. Thuringwethil had lived for thousands of years, trailing shadow and agonising death in her wake. Claire had done far more than save herself when she killed Sauron’s servant: she had rid the world of something malignant.

Thuringwethil’s death flashed through the aether leaving tremors and forcing Sauron to rethink. The past had taught him that to invest in one thing alone was dangerous. He had, as they said, many irons in the fire.
His agents in St. Andrews were almost all human, not as professional as the so-called DDE but rather those left over when Sauron had pulled out his best people to trace Maglor, Claire and the rumours of other unhuman powers. Harrison, Rosie, Theo and Luc were watched but not as closely as in those heated days of summer and early autumn. None of that group were obtuse and now they were alert and aware. People and events that did not fit the well-known parameters of the town would be mistrusted.

David Balfour might have made the perfect infiltrator of that close quartet — or perhaps not. Nael thought they would have felt something deeply amiss were he an agent of Sauron. He was living under an assumed name but there was tragedy behind that, not a darker purpose. His bloodline was unknown to him and though the power was there for those with the eyes to see, it drowsed like a cat in the sun only blinking awake at whiles in warning or fear. Similarly Vanimöré as Sauron’s son and Slave had consciously sublimated his Ainu power. Yet power forces itself to the surface as a subterranean magma chamber shows its existence by venting steam and superhot geysers. Some people were born to do one thing, and Vanimöré’s talent was war. Unlike the legend of the goddess Artemis he had not sprung to life fully armoured and warlike. He had simply focused his steel-hard will at what he wished to do and ensured he became good at it. But the stamp of godblood was evident.

That blood was also apparent in David. Unsurprisingly, considering his lineage, he was intelligent. He was also physically strong, though his abuse in childhood had wounded his soul; the slender, vulnerable ‘pretty boy’ of the London streets who had attracted the worst of predators had not been wholly a facade. At that time, it was a mirror of his mind. The horror of his memories, of the life he plunged into had buried the confidence his public school years instilled. He was a young man in a dangerous, alien environment and the battle to keep his head above water had been as much mental as physical.

His reclamation, or rediscovery of self had begun in Italy; in St. Andrews it blossomed.

But it was always the eyes that showed the blood of power most strongly. They were the reason that Vanimöré, Edenel and Coldagnir wore dark glasses or contact lenses. David’s eyes, while less obviously unreal, yet held that not-quite-human light and were a not-quite-natural blue. People probably dismissed it as a trick of the light.

Blood will tell. Blood always tells, no matter how far in the past it may lie. And, deep in the unconscious, it recognises the ‘other’.

Sauron would know David at once, but he had lost Blaise Worth in the dark half-life of London, that shadowy world that ran alongside and beneath the city. There were ghosts in those streets and alleys, in the mist that rose off the Thames. They were old and nameless and they served no power. They had hidden Blaise as they hid everything, both the good and the bad.
Callaghan and Worth had also lost him. They were gone, their investigators floundering in the gap left by their deaths. That left only Sauron…and Callaghan’s son.

Nael did not think any of Sauron’s lesser agents would recognise Blaise Worth or even be aware that their master was searching for him. Sauron trusted few and even they did not know everything. As for James…he, like David, did not know what and who he truly was. David was safe, so far. The spotlight shone upon James Callaghan.

Walking the mellow streets of St. Andrews, sitting in a cafe or inn, Nael watched David take to university life as if it were oxygen to a man starved of air. As the nights drew in, the big bay window of the house on Howard Place glowed softly golden as he studied late. On weekends, a barbecue might be lit in the garden, the smoke wafting up over the wall with the sound of laughter and conversation. At other times he met his friends for meals or a drink in The Central or North Point after a walk to one of the beaches. The long and lovely autumn drew students down to the sands to light fires.

The watchers, those who noticed such things, or who knew David would see the countless small tells of caution. London had left deep scars on his psyche. But there was nothing that would bring the chance eye of suspicion upon him.

Like a bird spreading its wings for the first time and knowing the air as its home, he reclaimed something of his old life: the Rifle Club, helping with the props for Guys and Dolls, impromptu dips in the sea. They said one could never go back, but sometimes, quite easily, one could see how it might have been. The time was different, the age, even the experience but maybe it was all the richer for that.

At times, David drove his friends further afield. They were always followed. Sometimes Nael sent a mist down to confuse Sauron’s people, or a signpost was turned, a road blocked but most often the journey went unhindered. If the agents were foiled too many times or met with fatal accidents Sauron would become suspicious. Nael had no more compunction in killing them than a man would brushing away a mosquito, but it was better not to draw attention…unless there were no other choice.

Once, David glimpsed Nael on Market Street. It was unexpected for both of them; Nael was following one of Sauron’s people and was not ready to meet David openly, not quite yet, and not on a street when David was in company. It had been a brief enough glance that Nael’s oh-so-casual turn into The Central might go unremarked. At least he could claim later that he simply didn’t see David or had not wanted to bother him. A touch of diffidence would carry the lie: the sex-worker almost coming face-to-face with a wealthy university student he had met but once and thinking that David would ignore him. Inside the pub, he walked swiftly past the central bar and toward the kitchens and toilets. From there, he emerged into a side-alley that lead onto a narrow cobbled street.

Shrugging off his jacket, he drew a cap from the pocket and set it on his head then, turning the jacket inside out so that the pale lining showed instead of the dark outer fabric, he slung over one shoulder. He knew at least as much about surveillance and disguise as Vanimöré and the simplest things were often the most effective: changing the clothes, or the shape of the head and body deceived the eye. He would have cast glamour over himself but there were pedestrians passing; two young female students who glanced at him with interest. A change might be remembered.

College Street. Maglor had lived here, in that little cottage with the mossy steps and the little stone mouse at the base. Nael’s steps slowed.

Dost thou not realise, Maglor Fëanorion, how the trace of thee lingers like the smoke of incense?

Fire in the blood, grief, the unlooked-for and always unexpected gleams of happiness like the run of light down harp strings. Silver eyes that could blaze into hot white fury. All of it cloaked and hidden — until it was not.

Thuringwethil had traced him there but even Sauron had, at that time, been wary of direct approach. With reason. Maglor was still the Fëanorion prince who had slain the Balrog Lungorthin in the Dagor Bragollach. If Sauron expected to find him reduced, a mist-haunting wreck, all fire extinguished, he would not, anyhow, have been interested. Time and fate would have been a cruel enough judgement on the last son of Fëanor. Probably he had not known what to expect, and the reality gave him pause.

So Sauron hesitated and Thuringwethil obeyed his orders, hovering on the shadowy margins. Had she been too bold, Maglor would surely have sensed her.

Nael paused beside the cottage. There was no following call from David Balfour, no pursuing footsteps. He looked up and down the street then quickly walked down onto North Street, feet silent on the cobbles. He cut down past St. Salvator's Chapel, glancing up at the bell tower, then came out on the Scores. A wind followed him, skittering dropped leaves. The weather was changing as Samhain opened the doors. The sea, grey-green as slate, broke in foaming rollers on West Sands.

Even the most earth-bound must feel a hint of the static electricity that charged the thin places of the land. The Portals emitted an edge-of-hearing whine that deepened as dusk fell. Clouds swam across the face of the moon and the cobbles shone in the streetlights with a faint, fine drizzle of rain.

No glamour was needed that night with students donning costumes. Halloween fell on a Friday this year; the town was busy with parties and the half-shivery excitement of ghost tours but this was, under the surface froth, a liminal time when things might watch from the shadows or prowl the dark corners.

Dressed in black clothes, Nael made his way from Windsor Gardens into town. He took the way through the Pends, not empty tonight with a group on a guided ghost tour but they kept in a close huddle. Some of them were clearly aware of the atmosphere that lay even more heavily on this night.
Nael was the only solitary person passing through. The presences that watched and the ones who simply lingered gave way, drawing back. He saw one of the group turn and look after him, as if wondering how he could walk so unconcerned.

At St. Salvator’s Chapel, the bell tower was floodlit and, because of that, there were pockets of blackest shadow. He went up the wall like a cat, and cat-quick; had anyone glimpsed him they would have thought it a trick of the light. At the top, he moved into the dark. The wind, strengthening, flicked misty rain into his face. He smelled smoke, old, damp stone, the sea. The voice of the town floated up: Footsteps, laughter, the muffled beat of music, the occasional crackle and pop of fireworks from the beaches.

To Nael’s eyes the thin places of the town — and there were many — cast up beams like searchlights. On the horizon, too, they glowed faint and faraway: tumuli, standing stones, wells. And through them and between them non-human traces and energies ebbed and flowed: memories, thoughts, dreams from other times…other worlds. But there were darker things too that had never been human; they stood in unlit angles of walls, behind the crumbling gravestones, in cellars and empty rooms.

Nael dropped his glamour. Silver hair flowed and triple wings snapped out in silent thunder, cupping the wind. An unfurling of himself brief as a heartbeat, there and gone but enough to show that a power had glanced across the city, and proclaimed I am here.

The six bells of the tower responded to the slam of power and suddenly clashed and pealed out. Lightning forked white across the clouds and backlit the hills. The lights of the town flickered and went out. Nael laughed half-surprised, half from sheer exhilaration. Entering into the physical world from the Timeless Halls never became easier and while he could access some of the power easily, it was never the whole and could not be. Vanimöré, in some ways, preferred the restriction. Eru did not.

In the darkness, he slipped down from the tower. By the time he reached the Scores, the power was back on. But, for hours after, lightning still arced across the sky.

Chapter Text

~ The time after eternity — so Fëanor named it to himself when he looked back.
Eternity was timeless but the years in Valinor raced like a storm-swollen river. Children were born one after the other. His own sons numbered seven, but Fingolfin and Finarfin also fathered offspring. In this creation of body and mind, there was a sense of urgency and little time for reflection.

A part of Fëanor was aware of the swift-seeming passing of years but some greater compulsion was a hurricane wind at his back. It drove him on, relentless. And I have done this before, ran behind all his thoughts like a refrain. There was a light on the horizon that beckoned. The desire to leave Valinor was not lessened but it was put aside in the press of events.

At times the pace did ebb; on the edge of sleep he pondered. He knew the potential within him now, almost remembered, almost understood. Then it would elude him. But the sense of it, an internal power remained. From it — with it — he had created the Silmarils. That was the light on the distal hilltop that summoned him.

The gems grew in his hands like children of his mind. Tiny sparks no bigger than seed-pearls at first. He knew them, knew what they would become as he could look at a raw diamond and know the fire that sat within it and the shape that would show the worked gem to its greatest advantage.

But in the creation of the Silmarils there was no stone to grow, no cleaving or cutting, no shaping by tool. His mind conceived them. His mind worked them.
Light from him, heat and power that dimmed the lamps in his workroom. It was fire in his lungs, in his veins, in the roots of his hair, the throb of his blood. The fire of the cosmos became something solid, became three jewels.

It felt as if he had always known them, that they had been waiting to move to the forefront of his mind, that everything he had done before had been a preparation. Into them he had poured so much of himself that he felt, at the end, hollow as blown glass. Emptied.

And then the Silmarils had poured it all back. Like thunder in the bones, heating his blood to magma. They were of him and creator and creation could not be separated.

He saw eyes watching him. Immense, universe-devouring, purple, ice-clear, and diamond. They were immeasurably distant and close as his heartbeat that he felt as slow, heavy pulses, a drumbeat across Time. He was there on the Outside; he was in his workshop — and he was guarded against any intrusion. The eyes of his enemies were closed by those who watched.

News of the Silmarils went out as if winged. He showed his family first, let them hold them, and watched as the fire in them answered the light in his son’s eyes. His creating of gems was no new thing, but the Silmarils were. Aulë came to marvel, then Eönwë to tell him that he was summoned to Ilmarin.

Fëanor’s instinct had been to refuse. Fingon’s Begetting Day feast was in a few days. Never let it be said that Fëanor had no feel for politics or drama. The rumourmongers would say that he had usurped his half-brother’s feast. Naturally.

‘Thou canst not refuse,’ Eönwë said. ‘I know not what veil is drawn over the Valar’s sight. But it would be wise not to disturb it.’

The Silmarils would tear that veil, at least for a time.

‘Duty first, then,’ Fëanor said reluctantly. There was time to travel to Taniquetil and back.

‘We will come with thee, naturally,’ Maedhros told his father as if there could be no argument.

‘Thou wilt not’ Fëanor replied. None of his sons had climbed the long, cold road to Taniquetil since Maedhros, as a baby, had screamed out his discomfort in the Throne Room. Afterwards, Fëanor and Nerdanel had vowed never to subject any of his sons to that upset. But now Maedhros stood a little taller than his father, and was a man grown. Yet still innocent. Fëanor could not recall being that young.

‘Father,’ Maglor came to his older brother’s shoulder. ‘We will come. If aught were to happen to thee, we would not sit here idly.’

Maedhros raised his fine brows in challenge. Maglor fixed eyes of burning silver upon Fëanor and folded his arms. As if summoned by unspoken communication, Celegorm, Caranthir and Curufin entered. Celegorm at a feral lope, black eyes lustrous against cream pale hair, Caranthir, dark brows drawn down as a precursor to argument, Curufin, lean and flashing and jewelled. The twins did not follow; they were at their lessons but Fëanor had no doubt they would demand an accounting from their brothers later.

Fëanor compromised. He kept the party that travelled to Ilmarin small, but his two eldest sons went with him. Four of their knights accompanied them, and his banner-bearer. Fëanor (always challenging) wore the Silmarils set in a circlet upon his brow and even the most obtuse would have seen the lust-spark in Varda and Manwë’s eyes. Námo, the only other Vala present, was faceless beneath his deep cowl.

‘Fëanor has captured the Light of the Trees,’ Varda declared. It was clever, but the light of the Silmarils was not that of Treelight and no-one who had seen both would compare it. Yet it set a claim upon the jewels immediately.

‘Laurelin and Telperion. Our greatest creation after the Lamps that are gone,’ Manwë intoned and Fëanor’s eyes narrowed under his circlet. Their words reduced him to a clever apprentice who had made something pleasing for his masters. The inference was clear. Fëanor ignored it.

Námo’s robes rustled. ‘They hold the Fates of Arda. Earth and Sea and Air.’ Something strange moved through his dusty voice. It was said he possessed foresight and this, maybe, had come upon him unawares.

‘I shall hallow them,’ Varda said in a lift of triumph. ‘So that no unclean hand may ever touch them.’

She approached, her own white hands lifted as if in a benediction (but it looked like nothing so much as acquisitiveness). Varda sought to dazzle with her glamour and Fëanor was aware that with the majority of Elves she succeeded but to him, it was as unnatural as forcing an Elf into the hollow skin of a horse. The angles and movement were all wrong.

He stood his ground, Maedhros and Maglor each side of him like guards who would defend him with their lives. They had met Aulë and Oromë, Eönwë had taught them to fight and Olórin was a not infrequent visitor to Formenos. But they had never seen Varda or Manwë or cloaked Námo, never set foot on the Mountain or within the weird, shadowless colossus that was the Palace of Ilmarin. Fëanor had warned them, shown them in a Palantir but could do no more than that.

His sons hid their reactions well, but he knew them even though they had drawn down mental barriers of steel over their minds. Their eyes widened, taking everything in; there was a subtle change in their demeanour. Always elegant, straight-backed, they adopted the posture of battle. Fëanor’s heart swelled with love and. He would have embraced them, but he was High Prince and before the Valar, he would not show the love they would construe as weakness, something to use against him. Ingwë, seated at Manwë’s feet, stared at the Silmarils as if they held the answer to his chained life. The gemlight turned his cobalt eyes to blue fire. Eönwë, behind Manwë’s shoulder, was motionless but for the unseen winds that stirred his black and silver hair.

Fëanor looked back at Varda, whose fingers were curled like a raptor’s as if to wrench the Silmarils from their settings. The jewels brightened, sending prisms of light dancing across the white walls, turning the dull glare of Ilmarin into diamond rainbows that caught her eyes. There was no answering brilliance. The gems exposed her so that Fëanor, raising his head, looked within, and back and back into a dying emptiness of stars. A few embers, only, gleaming far off. A fading memory.

She stretched out her hands, red lips parted. Fëanor did not move. He felt, without seeing, his sons shift infinitesimally closer.

The Valar said, after that Varda had indeed hallowed the Silmarils. The truth was somewhat different. When she touched them, the jewels spat light; radiance exploded in the Throne Room. The milky pallor of Ilmarin was swept away. This was living fire and it was not gentle.

And so, though it was declared that Light answered to Light, Fëanor and his sons knew the truth. The Silmarils would not suffer the Valars’ touch. Varda’s actions had shown her the unpalatable truth and she would hate it.

And how she and Manwë wanted them! Their desire hung in the air, heavy and potent as the odour of sour, spilled wine.

As the light faded, Fëanor saw Eönwë as if in a storm, eyes stuck with lightning, fixed in both awe and a kind of realisation that was shocking. Yet Fëanor felt no fear even for his sons. The power within the stones — of them — was bound, but it was there, existing in some part in this world but beyond it too. And that power looked to him, not to the Valar or any other god. His muscles and mind locked to break it open should the need arise though he knew it would destroy the Mountain and all upon it.

But the Valar let him go. No, they sent him away. Fëanor thought, then, that they might even permit him to leave Valinor as long as the Silmarils were theirs.

Word flew ahead of them that Varda had touched and hallowed the Silmarils. Fëanor thought that the Valar lied to themselves out of pure ego. What they refused to recognise could not be, and so the truth was not. They desired the Silmarils and so they would make believe that they were entitled to them.

The Silmarils were a catalyst.

Nothing would be the same again.

Riding down the Mountain, the whiteness of the snow showing blueish and strange, the vast statues of the Valar throwing black shadows across the road, Fëanor looked at his sons. Their faces were set as chiselled stone. They would not relax until clear of the road and perhaps not then, not anymore.

He smiled at them, concealing his own doubts and fear for them. Their heads turned to him with absolute trust.
Ever had he wanted the eyes of the Valar turned away from them. The Silmarils were birthed of his mind, but they were not his sons and if the Valar threatened to harm them, he would give up the jewels with both hands. But the Silmarils were not ordinary gems; they were a part of him in ways that were indissoluble. He did not know how it might affect him to see their hands upon them. Upon him.

And still, of course, he would do it.

‘Home,’ he said, breaking the quiet. ‘And thence to Tirion.’

~ London did not feel like home, though James had stayed there many times, but it did feel like a tenuous possibility. A new beginning. The Townhouse, which James had chosen because his father had never stayed there, was a quiet haven, not an oppressive enclosure.

If anything, the London office was even more hectic than New York; the only difference was the attention of the press. Canning PLC owned the most prurient and invasive of the newspapers in the UK and they were conspicuous by their absence, leaving the field open to the more measured journalists. James doubted anything he had said was responsible for this unlikely hands-off approach. Probably, the editors-in-chief were worried. Their meeting was tomorrow. He found himself looking forward to it.

His father’s private secretary in London was a woman in her 60’s with a reputation for being utterly close-mouthed. She was also extremely good at her job. She had worked here for forty years and always, apparently, wore a blonde bouffant, a deep tan and chunky necklaces. James could not really imagine her as privy to his father’s depredations but he could not say he knew her. Yet he thought not.

The first thing to do was to call a meeting of the London office which he did with a whip-cracking suddenness that his father would have approved. And he did not spare them. This was an ongoing investigation into a worldwide child abuse ring, he reminded them with unfeigned anger, and anyone associated with Canning of its subsidiaries might be questioned. In the meantime, he expected them to go on with their work. He watched their faces, refused any private meetings and returned to his hotel just before midday.

Archie Fenwick-Brown, friend of Howard Wainwright was as tall and thin as Peter Thomson but there the resemblance ended. Fenwick-Brown had the long, faintly lugubrious face of an ageing university professor whose faded blue eyes behind rimless glasses had seen everything. He had a plummy, lazy voice so quintessentially English that James thought of the thwack of cricket balls on willow and quiet, sunny-afternoon applause. The mind behind all this was as incisive as a surgeon's scalpel.

James ordered an in-room lunch and Fenwick-Brown, with exquisite, old-fashioned manners spoke of nothing but James’ flight, the weather in New York, and London until the meal was finished and the coffee was drunk. Then, it was as if a switch was flipped in his head and he said, ‘Howard has brought me up to speed. There’s certainly a few young fellows I have in mind for security detail — so dramatic to call them bodyguards — and I believe you’ll be interviewing one of them…’ He consulted his watch. ‘In about an hour?’

‘Ah…yes.’ James hesitated. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Never met him in my life,’ Fenick-Brown said cheerfully. ‘Looking forward to it. Howard will be joining us remotely. Which reminds me…’ He picked up a laptop case and opened it. ‘Courtesy of Howard. Don’t use yours until I’ve taken it in to have his computer bods look at it. It’s the new touchscreen with facial recognition and the same security is used by Howard’s Department. And I'm sure you’ve heard of the Deep Web and the Dark Web?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, this one is the Challenger Deep. There are things on here that you won’t find anywhere else. But don’t concern yourself.’ He waved a hand. ‘It’s all for your own security.’

‘I see. Thank you.’

‘Thank Howard.’

‘Of course. I will.’

Fenwick-Brown regarded him quizzically. ‘Interesting developments in New York,’ he drawled. ‘Pity the chap’s dead and his briefcase was snatched. Rather reckless, don’t you think, to see him alone after dismissing your security…no, the FBI arrested the ones who accompanied you to Italy, I believe?’

‘I wouldn’t have trusted them anyhow,’ James said defensively, then stopped, closing his eyes for a moment as the memory of Thomson’s eyes slapped across his mind like a spray of sewage. ‘I thought he must know. And he did.’ I wanted to confront him. I wanted to kill him. But that was not something he could say to this ultra-civilised man.

A nod. ‘Of course. There’s never been a servant yet who didn’t know all his master’s secrets, and we have to think of him as that although I wonder who the real master was.’

James said slowly, ‘Yes, I wonder too.’ He thought of the paper he had picked up while the FBI were busy after Thomson’s fall. He had recognised some of what was typed there and googled the rest, but was none the wiser. Yet it meant something; everything in that overstuffed briefcase had been important to Thomson, enough that he wouldn’t give it up willingly at the end.
Enough that someone had been waiting and coolly picked up the briefcase in the immediate aftermath of Thomson’s death.

They removed to the den, where James set up his new laptop and familiarised himself. Archie Fenwick-Brown (‘Call me Fenny, everyone does’) settled his long bones into a chair and waited with seemingly limitless patience. James looked up, a little flustered at the regard. He was reminded of how his father would watch him, but the benign smile he received could not have been further away from that downturned sneer.

‘So have you considered your next move? The meeting with the editors-in-chief, isn’t it?’

‘Tomorrow, yes.’ James’ instinct, still, was to walk away, sell the papers off. The only trouble with that was he would feel like a coward. ‘There is something else: I want to hire a good private investigator.’

‘Indeed?’ Fenny peered over the top of his glasses.

‘There’s someone I want to find. I tried several years ago but nothing came of it.’ And the woman he had hired had closed her business. At least he hoped she had closed it and had not met with any accidents.

‘I’ll look into it,’ Fenny nodded. ‘So how long has this person been missing?’

‘Seven years. Steele and Mr. Wainwright know about it.’

‘It’s a long time but—‘

The in-house telephone buzzed softly. James answered it.

‘Mr. Callaghan? This is reception. There’s a Mr. Lucas Sterling for his 1.00 interview.’

About to deny knowing anyone of that name, something in James' mind clicked and he said, ‘Yes, Please send him along.’

Lucas Sterling. Lucien Steele. Immaculate as a Dior runway model, Raybans over his eyes, smiled as he entered the Townhouse. James experienced a moment of complete disbelief that this man was proposing to be his bodyguard until he remembered that there were no images of him in existence, or if there were, they were carefully concealed. He had checked it himself, before travelling to Italy and again back in New York. There were articles in plenty: many of them were in business publications, others were in the media his father had owned and carried the wide-eyed, lip-licking tone that the gullible loved to lap up. A few surfaced in online forums and were truly bizarre: Lucien Steele was a time-traveling alien, apparently.

But pictures there were none. James disliked photographers himself and did his best to avoid them (impossible when his father had owned and loved the press) but in this age when almost everyone carried a phone with them, it was also odd. Primped, polished influencers and celebrities flashed their perfect smiles from every media outlet. The richest man in the world was still very much a mystery.

‘James,’ Steele greeted in that dark-timbered voice and turned, inclining his glossy head. ‘How do you do?’ to Fenwick-Brown, who took his outstretched hand.

‘How do you do?’ Fenny responded. Steele removed his sunglasses and slid them into his top pocket. His eyes were dark as iron.

‘That’s no good at all,’ Fenny tutted. ‘You’re not exactly inconspicuous.’

Steele looked amused. ‘Best I can do, I’m afraid. It will not be for long if you can source some decent security guards.’

‘Of course. There are a couple of ex SAS that I’m setting up for an interview.’

Steele’s brows lifted. ‘PTSD?’

‘You won’t find a Special Forces operative without it,’ Fenny admitted. ‘But you can also sometimes find the kind of men who are simply unaffected.’

‘Yes,’ Steele replied. ‘I know.

James looked from one to the other and Fenny elaborated: ‘Very rare but that almost none percent handles it better than others.’ Abruptly he changed course. ‘Did you drive here from Hyde Park?’

‘No. Windsor. Stayed in a hotel last night.’ Steele removed his jacket. ‘I drove into London, parked the car, took a change of clothes and changed into them in a pub toilet, and left by the back exit. Then I walked here.’

Fenny nodded along like a schoolteacher listening to the recitation of a bright pupil.
‘Not bad at all.’

A flickering smile. ‘Howard did not tell you I have a little experience?’

‘Ah!’ The man sounded delighted. He wagged a finger. ‘Official secrets act, Mr. Steele. Howard takes it very seriously. I knew nothing at all about you until Mr. Callaghan employed me. Howard did say you could be subtle.’

James opened his mouth to say that he had not officially offered the job to Fenwick-Brown but it seemed redundant and he shut it again.

‘Sometimes,’Steele acknowledged, the smile still in his eyes.

‘The meeting with my editors-in-chief is tomorrow at 11.a.m.’ James said as they drank coffee.

Steele looked at him. ‘I would like you to have the meetings individually,’ he said. ‘Ollie Skinner is the one we want.’

‘He…how do you know?’ James demanded.

‘Howard has emailed some pictures I want you to look at.’ Steele shot one look under long lashes that stripped James to the bone. He felt as if the man saw right through him and tensed but went to his laptop.

‘They are post-mortem pictures. Including one of your father.’

James jerked his hands back from the keyboard. He had not viewed his father’s body in Italy; he did not want to now but could hardly say so. Tightening his jaw, he opened the email as Steele continued, ‘Callaghan, Worth and Thomson all bore the same tattoo. We believe that it may be the mark of some kind of exclusive…club.’

Bracing himself, James swallowed, but the photograph was not that of a body, only of a part, the area of chest. On all three images the same black circle, perhaps the size of a dime, showed clearly on the pale flesh, but faded enough that it had clearly been limned years ago.
The fourth picture was different in that it was of a living man rather than a dead body and looked as if taken with a telephoto lense. James was familiar with them; his father’s papers sold through images volées like these. They were not pap walk shots arranged by the famous and perfectly composed, but the kind that they hated, often showing them in dubious places and undoctored poses.

The man was half in shadow emerging onto a colonnaded porch. He was a big man, beefy with muscle. A short-sleeve shirt hung unbuttoned over creased shorts; the kind of scruffiness only the wealthy could afford because they had nothing to prove. Sunlight struck him full on, almost bleaching his face but James knew him. The circle over his chest was a black stain, sharp and dark as if fresh.

Sitting back, he looked up. The two men watched him with perfectly expressionless faces.

‘That was taken two days ago,’ Steele said. ‘At Skinner’s house in Henley.’

‘He’s one of them,’ James said, a reflexive anger rising. ‘I’m not surprised. So anyone with this tattoo is part of the same organisation. Child abusers?’

‘I believe so, yes.’ Steele’s eyes were unblinking and there was a force behind them that James felt as heat. It shocked into his cheeks and he rose quickly.
‘I am not—‘ He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt, pulling it away from his chest and pushed the words out through his teeth. ‘Anything to do with it.’

‘I did not think you were,’ Steele said calmly. ‘How well do you know Skinner?’

‘Sorry.’ James rebuttoned his shirt with stiff fingers. ‘But I know I’m implicated. Investigations are ongoing, as they say.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Skinner? Not well. He’s a bully. Huge chip on his shoulder and likes to make a big thing of his rough upbringing. Wrong side of the tracks.’

‘Mmm,’ Fenny nodded. ‘Yes. He’s climbed rather far hasn’t he? And further yet, into a circle populated only by the ultra rich and powerful.’

‘The harder they fall,’ Steele murmured. ‘And he will.’

James stared at him as the memory of Peter Thomson tipping himself backward over the balcony replayed itself in his mind’s eyes. He blinked, remembering the sheet of paper he had picked up in the office. He had folded it and placed it in an inner pocket. Now he removed it and handed it across.

‘The briefcase that was taken from Thomson’s body,’ he explained. ‘This piece of paper was blown out of it. I picked it up before the FBI could take it.’

Steele unfolded the paper and, after a moment, looked up.
‘Why did you not give this to the FBI?’

‘Because of the names on the back. One especially.’

There were only a few names here, typed, but with question marks against them.
‘Abaddon,’ Steele read.

‘Another name for Apollyon. Yes, I looked most of them up,’ James acknowledged. ‘Astaroth, Beleth, Gaap, Semyaza…fallen angels. But some of those in that short list are not. The Unfallen?’

‘I would not say that.’ Steele’s eyes went distant. He handed the list to Fenny who perused it.
‘Well, well,’ he muttered. Code names, do you think?’

‘It’s likely. The short list we can tentatively assume are not their associates or colluding in what they do.’

‘Never assume anything,’ Fenny waved a finger in warning. ‘They may just be uncertain. People to approach, perhaps? Yourself excluded, of course. Or maybe not? We know Callaghan wanted to meet you for years.’ His bright gaze moved to James. ‘That’s right, yes?’

‘Yes,’ James agreed. ‘It was almost an obsession with him. The articles in the paper were an attempt to bring you out. He used to say “Let’s see if he’ll bite.”’ And, in his own time, James reflected, Steele most certainly had.

‘It's just a matter of finding out who is who. Well, apart from Abaddon.’ Fenny leaned over the list. ‘Interesting. And who is Skinner then?’

‘Morax.’ Steele’s lingering smile went cold. ‘Does he not look like a bull?’

James typed in the name. ‘It’s just nonsense. Why on earth would they use names like this?’

‘Pure pretentiousness,’ Fenny told him, gesturing with his glasses. ‘And not that uncommon. Of course they like to think of themselves as kings or earls presiding over hell. They believe that they can do anything they wish though the law and society and common decency proclaims it wrong. But to them there is no wrong, only hunger to be sated. Astaroth for instance, one of the unholy trinity with Beezlebub and Lucifer. Your father, do you think?’

With memories of Milton, James said dryly, ‘I’d always imagined fallen angels as being more impressive.’

‘Yes,’ Fenny drawled. In his accent it came out as a long-drawn Yaas.. ‘Although they’ve been known to disguise themselves. Still their disguises are bloody good wouldn’t you say? I'd ask for a bit more proof if someone declared they were an angel or demon or god.’ He winked, and Steele looked highly amused. ‘Did they believe it? Maybe some of them did or do. Wealth wasn't enough; they had to be special.”Perhaps other souls than human are sometimes born into the world, and clothed in human flesh.” Uncle Silas. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.’ He shrugged bony shoulders. ‘Some people do believe that kind of thing.’

‘My father was an atheist,’ James said. ‘Power was his god. That and money. He sneered at religion.’

‘Yet such people are susceptible to thinking of themselves as gods,’ Fenny pointed out. ‘Above all laws.’

‘Granted. Well, if he called himself Astaroth, who are the two others?’ James wondered. Steele, the sparkle of humour in his eyes fading, said, ‘They will be found. Angels have certain attributes and associations. The links will be there, even if tenuous. You have met some of them and may have met more, all unknowing.’

‘A list of names and their attributes is easily done,’ Fenny interpolated. ‘When we have it,’ he turned to James. ‘You might recognise some’

‘And the Unfallen?’ James asked.

‘Israfil, Michael, Puriel, Eremiel, Zihrun, Anael,’ Fenny read out. ‘You looked these up?’

‘Enough to know that they’re not fallen angels.’

‘I would not be too influenced by the images of angels you might have seen on Christmas cards,’ Steele murmured. ‘The messengers of any god would be terrifying when unveiled.’

Fenny looked at him quizzically. James stared. Steele blazed that smile. ‘If such a thing existed, of course.’

‘Of course,’ James echoed. ‘But if you know, why has Skinner not been arrested?’

‘He will be,’ Steele said. ‘You’ll show him prints of those pictures tomorrow.’ This time the smile was as dazzling and as cold as the edge of a knife. ‘I’d like to see if he has anything else to say. Cancel the meeting with Jean Southcombe for the time being. She is guilty of nothing more than working for the gutter press. Now, Howard is joining us from his office.’

Howard looked impatient and the information he received did nothing to improve his temper.
‘Names of angels?’ he said. ‘Angels? Why can nothing ever be normal?’

‘Wrong department,’ Steele told him, straight faced but his eyes, once again, were dancing.

‘Well, I’m not a department of the Vatican, Steele. I’m assuming that they’re not real angels?’ He glared.

‘Anything is possible, but some things are…unlikely.’

James frowned; the subject seemed too serious for levity. Howard sighed heavily.
‘Okay. The Met Police are just waiting on some info. They’ll be there at 11.15.’ He gave Steele a look. ‘No dead bodies, please.’

Steele placed a hand over his heart. A wide gold band, beautifully tooled, caught the light like liquid. The sparks slid across James’ eyes and he blinked. His face flushed and his heart suddenly jolted.
‘I will certainly do my best,’ Steele said demurely.

‘Should I alert security?’ James asked.

‘No, leave that to the police.’

‘I don’t understand why Skinner hasn’t run, gone into hiding?’

‘He doesn’t know that we’ve seen the tattoos. What did you call the meeting for?’

James shrugged. ‘In light of everything, mainly to tell them the papers have to be quiet. This is too serious. No speculation, no spurious articles, and to lay off Mr. Steele.’

‘Mr. Steele can take care of himself,’ Howard told him dryly, leaning forward. ‘This is what I want you to do: Begin as you meant to and then show him the pictures. We need to see what his reaction is. Well?’

‘Very well,’ James said slowly, his heart still wayward.

Steele’s eyes narrowed. ‘You fear him?’ he asked without any accusation.

James flushed. His instinct was to deny it but something in those so-dark eyes drew the truth from him.
‘I didn’t like the way he looked at me when I was younger,’ he said honestly. ‘My father used to take me to the offices here in London — and New York — from when I was about thirteen or fourteen. Skinner didn’t work for the paper then, but my father knew him through a mutual acquaintance. Skinner would come in sometimes for meetings, I think.’ He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘I was in the men's room and he came in.’ He was annoyed at himself. Surely he was too old to feel embarrassed and to blush. ‘The way he looked at me made me feel dirty. He stared at me in the mirror and said it was hard to believe I was Callaghan’s son, such a “pretty boy”. It sounded like an insult but the way his eyes were crawling…’ He turned a shudder into a shake of his head. ‘After that, I tried to avoid him but it wasn’t always possible. Then one Christmas a few years ago, my father held a party for his senior staff.’

James could never avoid these occasions. His father had begun taking him to them when he was seventeen and James did not have the right to refuse. It was ‘business’. As the years went on, his dislike grew apace. He hated the company, the artificial laughter, the displays of vulgar wealth, the greed and callousness. The newspapers Canning PLC owned relied on the working classes to buy them, but their contempt for that class was scalding and at such parties there was no pretence. Even Ollie Green, who had been born in a council flat, had turned his back on what he termed the ‘grunts.’

The men’s restroom was all grey-veined marble and polished fittings. A uniformed attendant occupied a discreet office-cubbyhole, ensuring the place was kept pristine.

James dried his hands and checked his reflection in the mirror, adjusting his blue tie. It was a brief respite from the fruity laughter, the cigar smoke and scent, the aromas of food and good wine. Resting his hands on the cool marble, he bowed his head, taking in and releasing a long breath. He was well aware that he lived a life of cushioned privilege. It came at a price. Even his brief marriage, now over, had been arranged for him and as he grew older, he saw the bars of the cage, swathed in velvet and silk, more clearly. The illusion had always been thin, but returning from university had unveiled the steel behind the rich drapery beyond all doubt.

It was the marriage, though, that had stripped away any illusions he might have had though by then, they were few and tattered. Arranged, supervised, James had the sickening feeling that if his father could have watched the joyless and uninspired marriage bed, he would have, so keen had he been for his daughter-in-law to fall pregnant. Perhaps he had watched, though James had searched the room for hidden spy holes and cameras.

James had quite liked Gina, but it had to go a long way beyond mild fondness for him to want to sleep with anyone and he had no intention of pressuring his wife as his father pressured him. As far as James could see, Gina was willing but she, too, would have been far happier in their own house. She was as aware of the scrutiny as James, though neither of them spoke of it. It was Callaghan who, as months became two years and there was no sign of pregnancy, arranged for the hospital tests, and was furious when James was shown to be sterile.

The marriage had effectively ended then, and the divorce was quickly finalised. And, for whatever reason, Callaghan stopped speaking about it. He even began to give James a little more responsibility. He travelled to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, the Middle-east and Hong Kong. But never alone. His father had retained security staff for many years but James had no misconception that the ones sent with him were there only to protect him. They were there to watch him.

At this point James was, he realised, not for the first time and without any sense of guilt, waiting for his father to die.

The door into the men’s room opened with a sigh and Ollie Skinner entered. He walked in the way some men do, a swing of the arms and legs that occupies the greatest space possible, setting his feet down with heavy thumps. A big man with a receding slick of greying hair and flat and burly face, he looked more like an ageing beer-bellied soccer hooligan of the kind that easily transfers to far Right protests than a businessman. James couldn’t help but think that if he had not climbed the corporate ladder that was exactly what he would have been doing.

‘Well, James, enjoying the evening?’ Without waiting for an answer, Skinner emptied his bladder at the urinal before coming to the line of sinks to wash his hands. His eyes, in the mirror, watched James unblinking. ‘Your father does know how to look after his staff. You know I’ll be joining in January? Editor-in-chief of the Towncrier?’ His voice was loud; he was half-drunk, James thought, and at the garrulous stage.

‘Yes,’ James said coolly. ‘I know.’

‘I told your old man you’d be six foot two, eyes of blue. Or it’s a bit more than that, right? Six three?’ His eyes roved up and down. ‘Yeah. You remind me of someone.’ And then he smiled. He had small even teeth, almost a child’s dentition lost in the wide mouth. But the smile was not that of a child; it was lascivious with some meaning, as if Skinner were recalling something enjoyable and vile. Sex, James guessed since that always seemed to be in the forefront of Skinner’s mind. At least, he found a way of bringing it into every conversation.

‘Sorry about your marriage going down the pan.’ Skinner smoothed back his remaining hair. ‘Still, maybe you prefer a bit of the other? Maybe pussy don’t make you hard. Always wondered about you.’ One hand came down heartily on James’ grey-suited shoulder in a old pal, old friend gesture that repelled. Skinner’s breath was hot and heavy with alcohol. ‘When I first saw you,’ he confided, grinning. ‘I thought that’s a boy who wants a bit of cock.’

James brushed his hand off. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he asked icily. He had first seen Skinner when he was ten. What adult man would think such a thing? ‘Excuse me,’ he added, turning away. Skinner’s bellow of laughter followed him out and his, ‘See you later, pretty boy.’

‘Did you ever speak to Callaghan about him?’ Steele asked him, bringing James back to the present. He blinked. Steele’s right hand, the one bearing that gold ring, was pressed so hard to the table that it was bloodless. James expected the wood to splinter under his fingers.

‘I learned a long time ago not to speak to him about personal matters,’ he said. ‘I assumed Skinner was drunk. He was, but— in vino veritas? And it’s common knowledge that people in the company consider him a sex addict and think he ought to seek treatment. My father used to laugh at it.’

‘That surprises me,’ Fenny remarked. ‘Callaghan, whatever else he was, was a businessman. Sex can be as much of an addiction as drugs or alcohol. That kind of person is a liability.’

‘Skinner knew, or suspected something about Callaghan,’ Steele said. ‘These kind of people always recognise others like them.’

‘He didn’t like him,’ James said. ‘That much was evident. Not that my father liked anyone. But he said manure had its uses. And what happens if we get a reaction from him when we show him the pictures? And what if we don’t?’

‘We will,’ Steele promised with a smile that sent a shiver down James’ spine.

‘No more bodies,’ Howard warned and Steele turned his sleek dark head and laughed.
‘Howard,’ he said. ‘Trust me.’

Chapter Text

~ Fëanor had spared his sons as much as he could until they achieved adulthood. He did not want their childhoods spoiled. They were taught the lessons the Valar handed down (for expediency's sake) but in private he revealed his own thoughts.
No more than that, not until they began to ask questions themselves. To him, the controlling nature of the Valar was obvious, but he did not want to lead them into belief. They were intelligent enough to make the connections and decisions themselves.

Maedhros was the first, because he was the eldest and had already formed a friendship with young Fingon. And that had been a ticklish subject. From all that he said and did and was supposed to be, Fëanor should not have accepted that relationship and Maedhros had been extraordinarily subtle in concealing it. Yet neither could Fëanor forbid it, whatever his public feelings for Fingolfin. This was Maedhros and the happiness of his sons was paramount. He would not compromise it, but they would not understand what he was doing and why unless he explained it. That was not knowledge a child could understand or carry. Vanimöré spun a protective shield around the Valinor Elves and Fëanor was grateful for it — but still concerned that his sons were vulnerable.

He let it be known that the blossoming cousinly friendship was — if not approved by him — accepted. Everyone knew he loved his sons. Finwë was glad of it, as were many in Tirion. It was a fragile bridge in an increasingly volatile political environment. Whether he willed it or no, Maedhros stepped onto the political stage.

And he did it open-eyed. Formenos was no rustic backwater, it was a thriving court that rivalled Tirion and in some way surpassed it. Certainly the crafters and dreamers and free-thinkers thronged there, perhaps inevitably. Tirion was the seat of the King of the Noldor and politics was the wine they drank, the food they ate. Formenos was different, bolder, a place of learning and creation. Maedhros was the eldest son of the High Prince; he could not be other and did not try to avoid it. Young as he was, he embraced it. His frequent visits to Tirion, often accompanied by Maglor, might have been spurred by the desire to see Fingon but they served a deeper purpose.

Fingon was very like his father and for years the cousins were simply friends. But it reminded Fëanor too much of his own relationship with Fingolfin who had one day been his young half-brother and the next his lover. When he began to notice a certain reticence in Maedhros at the exact time that Fingon left his childhood behind, he knew what caused it. One night, walking restless in the gardens, he chanced upon his son, equally sleepless, and waited for him to speak.

Maedhros had learned a certain control in Tirion. He did not immediately broach the subject but seemed to want to choose his words carefully. Celegorm and Caranthir would have come straight to the point immediately, Maglor and Curufin would be quieter, yet intense. There was something of all of them in Maedhros and none of them lacked the courage of conviction.

He began by speaking of his long friendship with Fingon and then his long, fine hands became more nervous, twisting his rings, pushing back a loose coil of red hair, until he fixed Fëanor with those pale and burning eyes and said, ‘The Laws of the Valar tell us that desire for our own gender is wrong.’ And then, before Fëanor could speak, the admission came as a challenge. ‘And yet, father, I feel a desire — for Fingon.’

Fëanor said, ‘I know.’ And as Maedhros’ expression lifted from determined to startled: ‘I hope I have always made it clear that I believe the Laws wrongheaded and ridiculous. If we were not meant to feel this, then we would not. It would be impossible for us as it would for a fish to take to the air and live on dry land.’

The coiled tenseness in Maedhros fell away with a visible relaxation of muscle. His wide shoulders lost their rigidity. A long breath eased out of him.
‘Then what do I do?’ he asked simply. He was still so young, Fëanor thought tenderly, lifting a hand to cup his son’s cheek.

‘How does Fingon feel? Does he know?’

Maedhros leaned into his touch. ‘No. But…’ And his eyes moved into the distance. ‘But…Father.’ He straightened and the faraway look sharpened. ‘Hast thou ever had dreams that seem too real. As if thou hadst stepped into another world?’

‘Yes,’ Fëanor replied. ‘Oh yes.’

‘I see…’ Maedhros described with his hands. ‘Places, lands, fortresses. I see…battles. I know that the Valar fought Melkor in the Wars of the Shaping but these are…these are us.’ His brows drew down. ‘Sometimes they are terrible. I think they are dreams but—‘

‘But?’

‘I wonder if they are foresight.’

The fear that ran like fire deep under the earth surfaced in Fëanor. He recalled Maglor singing a song after looking in the Mirror Shard, calling Maedhros the Flame of the North. And there was his own vision, of Maedhros sitting in a great chair, with one hand of gleaming silver.

A memory of before? Or the future? His throat closed. Nothing can harm my sons.

It was time. He rose and extended a hand.
‘Maedhros, thou art a man now, and there are things I wish thee to know. Come.’

~ When Fëanor entered the throne room, his sons at his back, the Silmarils on his brow, Fingolfin knew them. This had happened before, exactly this, Fëanor, his sons — and those gems, blazing as they advanced like conquering kings. They looked as if they had come from another world, somewhere brighter, more dangerous, a vivid, lost, legendary place. A wind came with them, swaying the lamps on their long chains. It carried the scent of the sea blown up from the Bay of Eldamar and behind it, far more distant, Fingolfin breathed in snow-peaked mountains, leaf-fall, the fume of rain falling on moorland. The smell of dreams.

Then there was darkness. A gap, and empires snapped across Fingolfin’s mind too quickly to grasp. There were only impressions: Light and fire and blood, the roar and clash of war, banners snapping against a red sky…and a piercing and unending loss. The room darkened around him until all he could see were the gems, glowing brighter as if the world had become night and they were the only illumination, and Fëanor’s eyes watching him as if across a vast distance. And then pain exploded through his body like the dreams of childhood that had woken him in gasping terror.

Never had he been so grateful for the years of learning to conceal his emotions until outwardly he became something his inner self could not recognise: poised and cool and proud. His shock was, anyhow, lost in the reaction of the hall. He curled his hands over the arms of the chair and gripped until the polished wood pained him. Reality faded the vision.

Even those who mistrusted Fëanor left their places as if drawn by the Silmarils and the formal tableau broke up. Fingon sought out Maedhros, Aredhel swept across to speak to Celegorm and Curufin while Turgon folded his arms, mouth set in a thin line. His stubborn stance against befriending any of the Fëanorions as his siblings had done, showed no sign of change. In some measure, Fingolfin understood it: a younger brother jealous of an older who’s eyes were all for another. Finarfin had been thus when very young. Now grown and with children of his own, he was the epitome of a perfect Noldo, the kind of man people thought Fingolfin was but in fact not in fantasy. He sought to mediate between the factions and Fingolfin regretted that he could not tell Finarfin there was no need. Not on his part.

But their artifice had long gone far beyond a play enacted for the eyes of Elves and Valar. The fractures had been taken up by others and grown all-too real. It was one of the reasons the more level-headed welcomed the friendship between Fingon and Maedhros, unlikely as it seemed, save to the fathers. Finwë had become one of their spokespeople. Rather too late, he seemed to realise that Fëanor within the fold was more to be desired than Fëanor on the outside. Unfortunately, it was beyond his control to bring peace. It would have worked, years ago, but too many had been born since then and taken sides.

Fëanor cleaved a way through the expanding crowd with an inborn sense of self that tucked a tiny smile into Fingolfin’s mouth. Fëanor did not need to ask for people to give way; they simply moved. He stood before Finwë’s throne and bowed his head. Before he raised it, the splendid eyes flicked a glance at Fingolfin and he winked. Warmth and relief curled about Fingolfin’s heart. Relief because when the messenger reported that Fëanor had been summoned to Taniquetil, Fingolfin was terrified. The Valar dared not harm Fëanor or his eldest sons and escort, Indis told him. No matter how they justified their actions, what they accused Fëanor of, it would forever destroy the trust of the Eldar.

Fingolfin hoped she was right. He bent his mind upon the fire that was his brother’s soul and waited. He would know if Fëanor was ended. The severance would scream through him.

Finwë had no such concerns. He had been pleased and now he was all praise. No jewel-smith, he had embraced the proclamation that the Silmarils had captured the ‘Light of the Trees’. Naturally. The Valar had declared it so.
Fingolfin watched Fëanor’s face and saw the spasm of annoyance.

No, that is not Tree-light. It looked like the fire in Fëanor’s eyes. The light that they had both seen when they stepped through the Mirror shard into the Outside and that Fëaor had somehow moulded into these gems.

And, quite beyond their brilliance, Fingolfin felt power.

The King saw nothing of the sort, or if he did, concealed it; but he was undeniably proud of his son’s achievement. That feeling however, seemed to coalesce around the fact that Varda had hallowed the gems.

She did not touch them. Fëanor’s voice sounded in Fingolfin’s mind when the feast began. It was in honour of Fingon and so made a little more lively by the younger generation, insofar as Noldorin manners (as expected by the Valar) allowed. When the meal was done, the guests left the Hall for other rooms or the gardens. Turgon made his way toward Elenwë, his betrothed, whose parents had, in the last year, escorted her frequently from Valmar to Tirion.

The forthcoming marriage had Fingolfin’s blessing. His second son would marry young just as he had, but this would be a union of love, not force. Elenwë was a lovely woman of golden curls and a rich smile that seemed to lend some of its gloss to Turgon, at least when they were together. Now they sat together and murmured in low voices, angled toward one another but straight backed and still within the bounds of propriety. Her mother and father looked on with approval. They liked Turgon’s punctilious manners.

Aredhel was a different matter, a different personality altogether. She found herself truly in freedom; when riding out to hunt, her black hair streaming, white robes speckled with upflung mud and blood from the kill. Palace life stifled her and she could not abide it for long. Her friendship with Celegorm did not surprise Fingolfin for there was something fey in Fëanor’s third son that his daughter answered to. When Finwë expressed delicate concerns that Celegorm might take advantage of her, leading to intimacies that were forbidden by Law, Fingolfin had laughed outright.
‘No-one could take advantage of my daughter,’ he said firmly.

For some time, he had suspected that the lust-drug affected the characters of the children conceived under its influence. Both he and Anairë had taken it with Fingon who possessed both fire and balance.
Anairë, in the early years of their marriage, swung between resentment (of him, his mother and the Valar), hate and slow awakening of her true self. The night of Aredhel’s conception, she imbibed it by choice. It was not a happy memory. Turgon, on the other hand, was coolly, dispassionately engendered.

Drifting oh-so-idly, toward the doorway, Fingolfin did not need to look to know that Fëanor mirrored his movements. Fingon’s laughter as he spoke to Maedhros and Maglor, spiced with the fiery, impatient flash of Caranthir’s tongue, drifted back.

His eldest son gave Fingolfin no heartache, only the necessity of speaking to him soon. There were matters he deserved to know.
It seemed inevitable that Fingon would be drawn to Maedhros from childhood. It was an old pattern set down before the Unbegotten opened their eyes to the starlight: Élernil and Finwë, himself and Fëanor and now Fingon turning to Maedhros. Even without that history, Maedhros was stunning and turned heads. All of Fëanor’s sons turned heads. They had inherited their father’s magnetism and, to a greater or lesser degree, his fire. Hopeful suitors or their parents had bid for their attention as each one came of age. Thus far, they were unsatisfied.

Fëanor would never arrange marriages for his sons; neither would Fingolfin for his own children. The Sons of Fire had, anyhow, something of a reputation. They were too much like the father and parents who harboured thoughts of wedding their daughters into the House of Fëanor were generally confined to Formenos. There were fewer in Tirion and Fingolfin took note of them as possible sympathisers or the coldly ambitious. As it was, the sons seemed to have little interest in wedlock. They were as close-knit a clan as might be seen and unswervingly loyal to their father. It would be difficult for anyone to break into that.

Watching Fingon leave the hall at Maedhros’s side, Fingolfin thought that Fëanors eldest was a born king, and Maglor too. All of them, perhaps, could rule, as could Fingon and Turgon. Aredhel, while she possessed the intelligence and will, would doubtless find it too confining. Finarfin’s children likewise possessed inner strength.

Tirion, Fingolfin thought, was becoming far too small for the Noldor and rare were the occasions when he and Fëanor could meet in private. The palace, with his own growing family and Finarfin taking up residence, with the courtiers and servants ever in attendance was, while not crowded, always bustling. No longer did Fëanor and Fingolfin have to hide their relationship from the Valar and a few, but from many. Formenos, which Fingolfin occasionally visited as a matter of diplomacy, was little different. He found himself now, thinking of Fëanor both with yearning and a terrible kind of doubt. The concern that Fëanor, whose passions could be illogical, might begin to believe the lies that circulated, was a constant dark thread on the loom of his mind.

So, when he heard that voice, resonant and personal, in his mind, his heart leapt into a tattoo of pure thrill.

The Mingling spread its light over the gardens, lay like pools of shadowy silver in hollow and grassy dip. Fingolfin paused as music rose, a voice lifting it beyond the beautiful into the extraordinary. Maglor. It sent quivers through his flesh and arrowed down his spine. Always there was a thrum of power in it, even when singing this lighthearted ballad. Fingolfin remembered the glass in every window shattering at Maglor’s cry as a child and of rumours that he had cracked stone. It did not surprise him. He thought that Maglor’s voice might lift the very earth.

He said to Fëanor: Tell me.

It was not words so much as an offering of memory that he received. The Silmarils grown from his own mind, the power that created and drained and then returned it; the Minds that guarded him. And then Fëanor showed Fingolfin the jewels rebuttal of Varda upon Taniquetil.

Fingolfin paused beside the lip of a fountain. He looked down at the water, silver now, the open flowers.

They are thee, he said. I remember them.

After a moment, Fëanor said, As do I. But not everything. I want to remember everything!

Fingolfin turned his head, looking across the space that separated them. Fëanor stood beneath a flowering archway of roses, the Silmarils matching the brilliance of his eyes. The Mingling seemed to flow into them as if summoned. He was a thing of impossible brilliance and beautiful beyond measure, the black storm of his hair drawn back and cascading to his knees. And he looked unapproachable, more aloof than the Holy Mountain, than the stars that had blazed over Tol Eresseä. Fingolfin could hardly believe that he had touched such splendour, possessed it, seen it naked and open to him, or felt the burn of its possession.

He could cross the distance that separated them in twelve paces. His muscles gathered to move when someone came between them.
Melkor was taller than either of them. His robes were black with touches of deepest crimson like the running of blood. He too, wore a circlet of rule. No-one seemed to have contested it. He came and went very much as he pleased, like an honoured guest. Fingolfin guessed that Finwë was not overly pleased but stubbornly loyal to the Valar. Indis emphatically hated Melkor’s presence and had said, ‘When he looks at me I am sure he knows…about Élernil and remembers what he did with pleasure. The torment, the death.’ Her well-modulated voice lashed like whips suddenly. ‘And we can do nothing save smile and bow and accept him!’

But she did now bow, rather she lifted her shoulders and held up her head and Finwë (as ever) did nothing, but that Melkor should come to Fingon’s coming-of-age feast incensed Fingolfin. Neither he nor his son had been consulted.

He said, his voice as cold as Varda’s eyes, ‘I did not realise thou hadst been invited this evening, Lord Melkor.’

The Vala’s head turned, haughty as if deigning to notice a lowly servant.
‘Thy father the King made me welcome to the palace many years ago, Prince Fingolfin. I trust I do not intrude?’

Silent thunder. A power that Fingolfin’s could feel like pressure against his chest. Ribs breaking, organs crushed, blood bursting from his mouth. His sight dimmed and all he could see was the Silmarils blazing, blazing, as Fëanor turned his head…

‘Yes, it is a surprise, Lord Melkor.’ The stress on the title was only a little shy of a hiss. Fingolfin, breathing carefully through the slam of the vision, fixed his eyes upon the jewels, the hard-carved beauty of Fëanor’s face, tilted upward in challenge.

‘High Prince.’ Melkor bent his head, but there was mockery in that slight gesture. ‘This is not Formenos.’ Then his head turned from one to the other. ‘Perhaps I am indeed intruding. Yet they say the two bright half-brothers are unfriends.’ And a laugh followed that was subtle and knowing, even indulgent. ‘If one did not know that, one would think I had stumbled upon a tryst between lovers.’

It was not the first time Melkor had hinted at something. Fingolfin thought, Politesse and politicking fit him as ill as if an eagle took on the manners of a dove.
He slipped on his mask, the one that fooled the entire court and his own father. He lifted his brows.

‘But such a thing is unthinkable,’ Melkor continued, as if smoothing over a verbal error. ‘I know too well the Laws of the Valar. And what they do to those who break them. Only if the Eldar were free would they be able to love whom they wished.’

‘I trust there is some point to this rambling discourse,’ Fëanor sounded exasperated. Fingolfin mentally applauded him even as fear fluttered in his chest. For all his much-vaunted intemperance, Fëanor was a superlative actor. Were it anyone but Melkor, this Power that had been more mighty than any one of the Valar (was he still?) Fingolfin might have slanted silent laughter toward his half-brother. He did not. There was a storm here, in these quiet, beautiful gardens, a monumental and terrible presence.

‘But of course not.’ Melkor did not lose that white and perfect smile. It looked painted on. ‘But I am glad to see thee, Prince Fëanor. Already word has gone about of thy latest creation. I see rumour did not lie. They are…incredible.’

And now, he was speaking the truth. Fingolfin tensed like a drawn bow. Melkor. The Silmarils. He wanted to cry out a warning.

Fëanor mirrored the smile, close-mouthed, acid as tart citron.
‘My thanks.’

‘I would speak with thee about them, and thine other works.’

Fëanor said nothing, sent no mind-to-mind message, but nevertheless Fingolfin knew what to do. As one, both of them sketched a bow and peeled away in different directions. He heard Melkor’s deep, awful laughter, awful because it held echoes of such beauty.

I will come to Formenos, he sent because he ached with unspent passion and a deeper need for connection, to simply talk without disguise.
Tirion, more and more, felt like a glass bowl and those who inhabited it were always on display. Formenos was where the Elves went when they longed to be more simply themselves.

High Lord Nullion had been the first to leave Finwë’s court for Fëanor’s, but there was a peculiar and unspoken understanding between him and Fingolfin. Without ever saying a word, Nullion seemed to know…something. He formed one of Fëanor’s household; he also spoke to Fingolfin. Delicately couched messages passed between them with Nullion as the mouthpiece. Insofar as he trusted anyone in the kingcity save Indis and his children, Fingolfin trusted him. From Nullion, he knew much of what passed in Formenos. He knew that Fëanor had taken his children into most — if not all — of his confidence. And he knew, too, that he must soon take Fingon into his.

~ The Fëanorions rode back to Formenos as if spurning the dust of Tirion. Most of it was an act. Maedhros had invited Fingon hawking in the hills and wanted to ensure all was in readiness. Fingolfin would be escorting his son and Fëanor, mistrusting how much Melkor knew, the extent of his powers would not speak to him in the palace.

But before Fingolfin and Fingon arrived, Melkor came to Formenos.
Fëanor wondered why it had taken him so long.

It was unlikely that the Vala was ignorant of Fëanor’s ban. Formenos certainly was not and when Melkor came, word was sent from the gates. Fëanor rose from his work, thinking. The gate-guard waited and Fëanor saw the fear in his eyes. He should not be charged with denying entrance. Fëanor must confront Melkor himself.

‘I will come,’ he said and the guard bowed, relief in every line of the crisp gesture.

Melkor rode a stallion black as the slaughter of jet. By the way it rolled its white-ringed eyes it feared the one who sat upon it. But Melkor sat straight-backed, casual, disdaining all harness, holding its skittering hooves with his will. He was alone. He looked as if he should have an army at his back.

Fëanor planted his feet and stood barring the opened gateway with his body. His head was lifted to meet the endless, devouring eyes and his flesh prickled. He bristled like an angry cat. Seeing Melkor was like a dry wind starting a brush-fire.

This was the power who had delved the Underworld and twisted the quendë into abominations. Fëanor had felt Edenel’s agonals before he exploded into white burning.

He had not spoken to his father in some years and Edenel had not revealed all the horrors of Utumno but Fëanor knew enough. For his sons’ sake, he banked the fury but it sat under his heart like a pit of magma.

‘What dost thou want here, Melkor?’ he asked, not giving anything: no title, no pretence of politeness.

‘Fëanor,’ Melkor returned after a moment, drawing out his name like a furl of velvet. He tilted his head. A smile seemed to lurk at the corners of his moulded mouth. ‘But we spoke of it in Tirion, did we not?’ He dismounted gracefully, a dark cloak settling around his heels like water. His hair flowed into it, held back from his face by a simple circlet in what looked like moulded obsidian. It took a master to work that sharp, volcanic rock.

All of him was black and white: black robes, white flesh. But those eyes were not black. They lowered to Fëanor and he felt the force behind them like heat on his flesh. He thought of the darkness that stretched between stars, the invisible, unseeable energy that linked them. He thought of the chaos of creation twisted and forced into self destruction.

Melkor leaned close to him. He smelled of molten metal in a crucible and behind that, of nothing.

Fëanor gave no ground. The Valar stretched taller than even the most lofty Elf, but Fëanor threw his own head and shoulders back to meet it, knowing it for a chosen form, one that was meant to overawe and intimidate. Within him the fire sent up tongues of flame.

‘I would speak to thee of the Valar,’ Melkor said and Fëanor’s brows snapped into a frown.

‘Thou hast nothing to say to me,’ he snapped. ‘Nor I to thee. I know,’ he measured each word like a stone, ‘What thou didst in Utumno.’

The pause was less than a heartbeat. Then Melkor laughed, a deep sound without humour, only power and mockery as a god might laugh after causing an avalanche.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Thou knowest nothing.’ He walked
around Fëanor so close the warmth of his skin could be felt. ‘But what a fascinating creature thou art. I have seen many of thy creations in the palaces of Aman. What a mind. No wonder the Valar fear thee. But they will never permit thee to leave,’ he added in a soft, conspiratorial murmur. ‘They want their pretty toys, Fëanor. They require worship. What use is their power if they cannot wield it over a land of slaves?’

Fëanor spun to face him. ‘I find thee presumptuous,’ he hissed wondering how, how Melkor could know he longed to leave. Had Fingolfin spoken? No. He could not imagine his half-brother wished to entertain Melkor’s company any more than he did. ‘Do not presume thou knowest me, Vala.’ But he does know his kin.

‘I am no Vala.’ Anger backlit the response. ‘I am not one of them.’

I know, Fëanor’s mind whispered.
‘And yet, they imprisoned thee.’

‘And it took all of their forces!’ The anger took a step forward, glaring from Melkor’s eyes and the moment stretched. Fëanor did not move, though his nerves sang a warning. Then Melkor laughed again, but softly, a cold thunder on the edge of hearing.
‘And I have served my sentence. Wouldst thou survive it, I wonder? For thou canst be sure that the Valar are thine enemy as much as they are mine. I could help thee, perhaps.’

‘I need no aid from a murderer,’ Fëanor hissed.

Melkor’s mouth refused to lose its hard white smile.
‘And are the Valar not murders? Námo torments souls in his grey prison, those that have been taken away in silence and secrecy for breaking their Laws.’

Fëanor’s heart knocked hard against his breast and Melkor continued, implacable as truth itself: ‘Hast thou seen his true form, Fëanor? Any of them? One would not think that a desiccated insect would have such appetites. But he does. He has a hunger for filth.’

Fëanor saw things crawling in slime, felt the slippery rape while a voice creaked furtive laughter. There was no escape from the invasion, sluglike, repellant, crawling, sucking, humping. The laughter spilled into frantic, awful grunting like a beast beyond all control. He heard the screams…

Recoiling in horror and saw Melkor’s whirlpool gaze pinning him like a moth against a window pane.

He is mad. He always has been, but after his imprisonment…

‘Thinks’t thou thy sons would return from that? Or thy half-brother?’

An alarm belled within him like the onset of the hunt. How can he know?

‘Somehow,’ Melkor murmured. ‘Thou art able to conceal thyself from them. That is truly intriguing. I wonder…I do wonder…what thou art, Fëanor.’

And Fëanor saw the hunger in his eyes. It almost knocked him back on his heels for it was unhuman in its vastness and intent. It was filled with teeth and devouring, the shriek of pain. He was a prize, a crown bathed in his own blood to be set upon Melkor’s brow.

‘Leave my lands and my house.’ He straightened. ‘I do not deal with the slaughterer of my kin.’

‘Thou wilt,’ Melkor promised, all the painted-on facade gone. ‘And this advice I give thee freely: The brightest light casts the deepest shadows and draws the worst predators. And almost all of them sit upon Taniquetil. They do not wish to understand thee. They only want obedient slaves. But I understand thee, Fëanor. We are not so unalike and it would be a shame to see thee snatched into Námo’s feeding parlour.’ He laughed, a shocking, crazed sound, then spun and his cloak and hair seemed to drop ribboning shadows as he sprung to the back of the great stallion. From its back he glared down at Fëanor then turned the horse and set it galloping back down the road.

Chapter Text

~ Howard lived in leafy Edwardian splendour in Wimbledon with live-in housekeeping and a wine cellar that was appreciating nicely.
His home bristled with security that was mostly ultra hi-tech and subtle enough that the house might have been that of any ordinary rich man rather than the head of the DDE. It was both comfortable and beautifully furnished. The housekeepers, who looked and were ex-military and were part of the security, were also excellent cooks. Vanimöré called after dinner. Two of the Lake Como agents, fresh from their well-earned leave, were watching James for a few hours.

Howard, relaxing over cognac and a cigar with Fenny, grunted when Vanimöré was shown into the study.

‘Everything’s up to speed. Before you ask.’

‘Of course it is.’ Vanimöré was impressed by Fenny’s imperturbability considering what his being brought up to speed entailed. He did not need Fenny to tell him Howard had divulged nothing over the years.

He took the chair Howard indicated. ‘Skinner knew David in the early London days.’

‘Damn.’ Howard closed his eyes. Fenny frowned looking from one to the other.

‘James feels something of Skinner’s nature,’ Vanimöré said. ‘If he had not been who he was, Skinner would certainly have approached him when he was younger. He likes the vulnerable; it gives him a sense of power. Luckily, if the word even applies, James was untouchable.’

‘You’re not going to tell him?’ Howard’s eyes widened. ‘Steele, we need some of these bastards under arrest. We need them to talk; we need confessions. We don’t need bodies.’

‘You would be surprised,’ Vanimöré murmured. ‘The dead can sometimes speak quite loudly.’

‘Oh god, don’t start! You know what I mean.’

Fenny muffled a chuckle behind one hand.

‘You think James would kill Skinner?’ Vanimöré asked. ‘You believe he is capable?’ He put the question to both men.

Howard nodded a fraction after Fenny, who said, ‘He’s been shut in a box all his life. There’s a lot of rage there.’

‘Understandably,’ Howard agreed, then dourly: ‘I’d rather he didn’t indulge it at the moment.’

‘We don’t really need anyone charged,’ Vanimöré told him sweetly. ‘These er…people can be dealt with.’

Howard sat up straight in alarm. ‘No. Yes, I know they can be dealt with as you so euphemistically call it, but HM’s government does need to know we’re actually doing something quantifiable. Paperwork, Steele, and proof. Where the money's going. Results. Not body bags or lack thereof.’ He emphasised the point with his cigar. ‘I know you fund 90% of the department, and so do they, but they need the illusion of running it and being in control.’

Fenny swirled the cognac in his glass. ‘Not keen on rogue elements,’ he agreed. ‘Especially one technically run by MI6. And a child abuse ring smashed would look good. It sends an excellent message. You won’t hear a peep out of this current government about Callaghan or his death. One of their biggest donors, but had he lived, they would have been the first to fling up their hands in horror and cast him to the wolves.’

‘No honour among thieves,’ Vanimöré inclined his head. ‘Point taken.’

‘Good,’ Howard sent him a look. ‘Also better if this angelic name business goes no further. Get people thinking religion is involved and all the crazies come out of the woodwork.’

‘There is no need to mention it,’ Vanimöré said. ‘However, Callaghan’s society were fed certain names. The ones James called the Unfallen: Mine, Eremiel, one of the ‘souls of fire’ who watched over spirits in the abyss, Zihrun, a divine messenger of radiance and glory. Israfil, who blows the horn to herald the Day of Judgement, Puriel, who examines the souls of the dead brought to Heaven, Michael, General of God’s army and, in Catholicism, the Angel of Death. Ananiel, or perhaps Anael. Ananiel is a Watcher, Anael is called the ‘Grace of God’, one of the Angels of Creation.’ He quirked a smile. ‘Shall we play a game of who’s who?’

‘No,’ Howard said hastily. ‘I don’t care. What I would like to know is how he knew.’ He glanced at Howard. ‘AB. If it was him, he’s been watching far more closely than I find reassuring.’

‘He does have certain abilities,’ Vanimöré said flatly. ‘But do not make the mistake of thinking he is the only one.’

Eru.

There had been a time, between the Elves coming to Valinor and the Dagor Dagorath, when Vanimöré lived something of the dream he had cherished since childhood. It was not perfect; it could never be. There was too much history, there was blood, bitterness, hate and jealousy. They were not perfect and the past was carved into their minds. But all he had to do was walk in Valinor or the Timeless Halls and he could see them. They were alive and had come into their power. It was enough.

He had, long before, turned away from Fëanor’s acceptance. It was impossible. He was Sauron’s son, and yet he hugged the knowledge that Fëanor had offered it deep, like a warm coal burning in his heart. He loved them. That was enough.

And Elgalad. Vanimöré had known too much grief and guilt not to welcome him back, but he was not entirely able to trust him…because the person who returned from death was not Elgalad.

Or so he realised with hindsight.

But then, I was blind.

He had been (strange word) happy. Despite what lay in the future and the unbridgeable chasms of the past, there was Light, fierce and hot in that eyeblink of forever. It had dazzled him. He did not see the shadow at his shoulder.
He had never suspected the deep game Eru played, never dreamed of that final betrayal.

When Vanimöré first saw Claire James and Maglor in the Great Portal, Elgalad had been intrigued and interested but otherwise expressed no interest in the world.

’How does it end for them?’ he had asked, and Vanimöré had said truthfully it would end in sorrow if things remained unchanged, as it ever did between Elves and Mortals.

’If things remain unchanged,’ Elgalad had echoed and brushed the surface of the Portal as casually as one would draw back a drape. The absolute assurance in that action would have befitted Fëanor, but it had not registered with Vanimöré. His mind and conscience, or what little he considered he had, was poised to leap over cold logic that counselled him to not get involved.

’Of course, I cannot interfere.’ His eyes met Elgalad’s, fathomless, clear as rain and saw the dancing amusement in them.

’No, of course not.’ A smile hovered. ‘So tell me, my dear – what dost thou have in mind?’ *

My dear. It was an affection Vanimöré used, but Elgalad did not…not before his return. It was an endearment to someone younger. That, too, he had not understood.

Elgalad had been preoccupied, spending time with Bainlaph and those he had known in Mirkwood long ago. Vanimöré did not question it. Their relationship was subtly changed. It was more equal, for which he was glad, and he had never been the kind of lover to either want or need someone beside him all the time.

Now, he felt like a fool. He had no doubt that Eru-Elgalad had passed through the Portal many times and so, after Dagor Dagorath, Vanimöré was forced to disclose to Howard that there was a Power he himself could not trace, that could hide from his sight and who was wholly incalculable.

‘That’s unfortunate,’ Howard had said. Or words to that effect.

In fact, Eru could be at work on any world and Vanimöré would not know it. He would only see the ripples, not who cast the stone.

‘The wild card,’ Howard closed his eyes and swore pithily. ‘I thought you said he wasn’t er…evil.’ He did not like the word. It was too esoteric for him.

Eru had released Melkor from the Void and opened the doors to the Dagor Dagorath.

’Thou wert willing to see them die.’

’They are gods, and I knew thou wouldst save them. I know thee very well…a universe in thy hands, to make anew, from the beginning, from a womb of rebirth.

’Evil is a human word,’ Vanimöré murmured. ‘And limited. Beyond a certain degree of power it loses its bite.’ Eru destroyed a universe. I permitted one to be destroyed. Evil? Inaction? The tragedy of immortal passions? Watching these two very civilized men in these very civilized surroundings, the impossibility of explaining such things was all-too apparent.
He said, ‘He is incalculable. Unknowable. But he is not the other.’

‘Well, that’s a great comfort,’ Howard snapped.

Vanimöré’s phone buzzed softly.
‘James,’ he said, and answered.

~ The Townhouse was part of the hotel but also separate and like most of those old houses, possessed a letterbox. James didn't expect it to be used and might not have seen the letter until the next morning had he not been restless.

He was used to being alone, at least under the shadow of his father, who always knew where he was and he was, anyway, an only child. But he was not accustomed to the disorienting taste of freedom. When Steele and Fenny had been here, he did not feel it but left alone (‘Only for a couple of hours, Steele had said. ‘And we have two agents watching for the duration.’) the feeling returned. Unsettling.

‘Don’t go anywhere.’ Another order. ‘This is no game.’

He knew that and he did not want to go out, or rather, he did, but didn’t know where he wanted to go. Socialising held little appeal. His father had always organised that aspect of James’ life. The meetings, the working lunches, the parties where his father chose every guest with an eye to their influence or whether he could use them had been at best a bore, at worst a trial.
In university it had been different. The holidays where he had been permitted to slip away, sailing remained in memory as the most freedom he had experienced. Even then, he had been at the end of a leash. Now, the leash was decisively cut and James floundered like a man who had wanted to leave a cruise ship but had not expected to be thrown overboard. Freedom was so alien it was alarming.

He shut the laptop and rose pacing around the Townhouse. He poured himself a glass of wine. It was quiet, only a tall old Grandfather clock telling the minutes.

When he saw the white square on the floor by the front door, he thought at first Fenny must have dropped something from his briefcase. But it was a simple envelope and bore his name. Frowning, he slit it open and pulled out the single typed sheet of paper.
And went cold.

James,
As you intend to interview Oliver Skinner tomorrow, it seems important that you should know something about him.

Six years ago, before he was initiated into your father’s little club, he booked the services of a young male sex worker who had not long come to London.

Skinner likes to debase those he has sex with. He chooses the vulnerable. He has an instinct for sniffing them out.
The boy he booked went by the name of David. I was searching for him myself, but it is easy to become lost in a great city, and he remains lost.
David’s true name is Blaise Worth. I’m sure that is familiar to you.
What Skinner did to David was not pleasant. One might argue that when a prostitute accepts a contract, they enter into a mutual agreement. Yet I am sure you know how common it is for them to suffer violence, rape, even death at the hands of clients.
And by the way, Lucien Steele and his pet department know a great deal more about this than they have told you. You could ask him about ‘David’, too.

Shock was a fall of ice that froze James where he stood. Then red rage blurred his vision. His ears roared with the thunder of his blood.

No.

There was no signature, only the hard, black text staring from the paper. He moved then, not knowing where he was going, half-blind with fury. Above it rose the crystallising thought that Skinner had harmed his brother. He went from room to room, opening and closing drawers only vaguely aware of what he was looking for.

It couldn't be true. Blaise Worth had not been a sex worker.

But he had vanished.

Skinner —

— And Steele. What did he know?

Back in the hallway, James grabbed his jacket and
quietly opened the door. The last thing he wanted was to be stopped by the two men Howard had posted.

The Townhouse accessed the hotel by a short corridor, allowing the resident to make use of all the five star facilities while maintaining their own privacy. The normality of the soft lighting, the well-off guests would almost have been reassuring if James were not focussed on the one thing he had to do.

‘Mr. Callaghan?’

He had expected it. His mind was working fast now, and quite coldly as he turned to see the young man introduced to him earlier Bahir Shehmi. He had been at Lake Como, James remembered, which meant that despite his relative youth, he was good.

‘Bahir,’ James summoned what he hoped was a casual tone and smile to go with it. Behind it, his mind still raced. ‘I was just going to thank the kitchen staff.’

‘Ah, of course.’ His smile was returned. White teeth in a handsome face, a cap of glossy curls. His suit was expertly cut. James had met such men as this when in the Middle-east, smooth, hard, incredibly wealthy. And dangerous. Often, they were bodyguards which was the role Bahir was playing now, of course. There would be a gun, but James could not see it.

Bahir fell a little behind him. James felt as if he were floating, disengaged from everything. He had to throw the young man off.
Reaching the reception, he repeated his excuse and the woman smiled.

‘How very kind, Mr. Callaghan.’

‘May I speak to them?’ he asked.

‘Ah, why yes, of course.’ She beckoned to someone and a neatly-uniformed boy came across. ‘Andrew, would you take Mr. Callaghan to the kitchen? He wants to thank the staff.’

‘Wait here for me,’ James said over his shoulder as he was lead behind the expensive facade and Bahir, after a moment’s hesitation, nodded.

The kitchen was large, all shining chrome and steel and despite the hour, still busy. The head chef, about to come off duty, seemed unfazed by someone wishing to personally thank him and accepted the largesse ‘For all of you,’ with dignity.
James turned to his youthful escort.
‘I have a…rather private meeting and need to leave discreetly out the back.’ He drew notes from his wallet. ‘Could you show me?’

He could not help but wonder what on Earth the kind of clientele the hotel was accustomed to when he was shown, without a blink, a back way out.
‘Oh, and the young man waiting for me?’ he added, peeling off more notes. ‘I would rather he didn’t know. Yet. I’ll tell him later.’

‘Of course, sir.’

Money, thought James coldly, could buy one anything. His father had always known that.

The back of the hotel was bins and vans, a delivery area, stream venting, the muted roar of extractor fans. A rat scurried into the shadows. It had rained earlier and the lights shone on the puddles. He took a long breath of city-night air.

One thing he didn’t have was a car. He meant to buy one, but there had simply not been the time.
It didn’t take long, however, moments from Covent Garden, to find a cab.

‘Henley, please,’ he said. ‘Near Henley Bridge.’

He’s been to Skinner's house exactly twice, to garden parties with his father during Henley Week but he remembered it. A lovely old place right on the river. Skinner had refurbished it to his tastes and ruined most of the charm, so James thought.

Only then, as the taxi pulled out into the traffic, did he allow the repressed emotion to break through.

He was hardly aware that he had called Steele’s number until the already-familiar voice answered.
James’ breath shook in his throat as he said, ‘Skinner…someone told me he and Blaise—‘

‘What?’ Steele’s voice cracked like a metal whip. No alarm, no guilt. ‘Who told you?’

‘A note through the door. Unsigned. It suggested you knew more about this than you’ve told me. What do you know ?’

‘Someone clearly wants you to think I know a great deal.’ The reply was dry and calm and it stopped James, but only for a moment. ‘And where,’ he asked. ‘Are our agents that this note could be simply posted through your door?’

‘I expect you’ll be hearing from them any minute,’ James snapped.

‘Stay there,’ Steele warned him. ‘I’m coming back now. Don’t let anyone in, even Bahir or Judy. No-one.’

It would take some time to drive from Wimbledon to Great Scotland Yard, even in the best of traffic. James sat back in the seat. It might be a weekday night, but London did not sleep. The scent of rain and exhaust blew in through the window. The taxi passed the Victoria and Albert and the National History Museum, illuminated in the night.

There was an incoming call. He ignored it, and switched the device off. Mobile phones were as good as a beacon, Fenny told him. Never mind. He hoped there would be enough time.

He reached into his jacket and drew out the note, the words seared into his mind. It was impossible!
But Blaise Worth had vanished. James recalled his father’s anger when he had walked in on that telephone conversation with Worth senior and the sick fury rose again in his throat.

If I hadn’t walked out, if I had challenged him…

It would not have helped. His father would have brushed it off. None of it mattered. I should have done something!

Spots of rain hit the windshield. The driver flcked on the wipers. Oncoming headlights blurred orange.
‘Another storm,’ he commented. ‘Strange weather all this summer.’ A little pedant swung from the mirror; it swayed and flickered hypnotically.

James closed his eyes. Skinner. That pervert. You remind me of someone. Of course he did. Skinner had been remembering Blaise.

But why the hell would Blaise do such a thing? He’d run from New York to England but he had friends here. In the Virgin Islands, there had been that boy Edward, was it? Edward Bentley; and others were mentioned. From Marlborough and a millionaire lifestyle to the backstreets of London and selling himself was such an impossible reach…

Or was it?

If I had made the decision to run, what would I have done?

With his bank accounts monitored, even his cards tied to his father’s accounts — at least until his grandmother passed and left him a fortune that could not be touched by anyone else — James would have been virtually penniless.
For Worth’s son, it might have been just the same. If he wanted to remain off the radar, he could not involve his friends. He would need to take another name and earn a wage under that name. Which wasn’t all that easy, these days. An electronic trail followed one from birth to death and almost everything required proof of i.d. Cash-in-hand jobs were increasingly rare, but there was one — the oldest profession — where no questions were asked. And where better to lose oneself than in one of the biggest cities in the world?

But prostitution? James hands closed into fists. He did not know what made him more sick, that his father had abused Blaise, or that Skinner had — because he would have, transactional or not. And it was difficult to see his father as a sexual being though James did not doubt he had been a predator. Skinner, on the other hand, talked of nothing but sex. He seemed to think it was normal, but all excesses were indicators of a mind out of balance. It might have been treated, had Skinner ever sought therapy, but he saw nothing wrong with it. It was everyone else who was odd.

’Yeah. You remind me of someone.’ Over-loud, half drunk, leering.

If I’d known…

Well, he knew now.

He leaned forward in the seat.
‘Will you need to stop for gas?’

The driver’s head shook. ‘Filled up before I came out for the night. In a hurry? Shouldn't take more than half-an-hour now. Outbound traffic’s lighter.’

Good. he hoped he had a head start. But he would never underestimate Steele and Howard.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am in a bit of a hurry.’





~ Thunder rumbled off to the east, the storm following the river, but not yet arrived. James paid off the taxi and walked back across Henley bridge. Cars passed, but it was late enough that only the restaurants were still open. Had it been Regatta Week, the town would still have been humming.

Below, the dark Thames rolled, lights spilling across its surface. James stopped for a moment, bringing to mind his two visits to Skinner's riverside mansion. The grounds had been almost surrounded by tall trees, giving it a private air. There would be security, but James doubted that Skinner would want anyone else listening to what he— purportedly— had to say.

The summer night was warm, humid, but the river smelt dank, of mud and cold water and hidden things and its flow was desolate. There was nothing human in its voice. James imagined Blaise lost and alone or, more terribly, gone into this great river in London, his body taken out to the sea.

Stop. You don’t know.

There was no gated entrance, just a gravel drive. The house, half-hidden by trees and shrubs, showed a few lights. James paused, then recalled another smaller drive a little further on for deliveries, he assumed. The tree shadows were deep but he resisted using his phone torch. He would need his eyes to become accustomed to the night.

On the gravel outside the house were two cars. Skinner’s Ferraris.

Everything seemed quiet. James walked around the back of the house. The garden was empty, tree-fenced and the buildings across the river looked remote, part of a world that was distancing itself from him with every heartbeat. The outdoor pool lay undisturbed. There was the door where Skinner had been photographed a few days ago, the black sphere of his tattoo like wet paint against his skin.

The orangery, with its view over the Thames, was unlit. James raised his head to the light that showed above. Skinner’s bedroom? Then he took out the burner phone he had picked up from the Townhouse and called Skinner’s private number.

The answering voice sounded rough, furred with sleep or alcohol, and suspicious. ‘Who’s this?’

‘I was in the area,’ James said, and his own voice sounded completely ordinary. ‘I thought I would speak to you before the meeting. Some information has come to light that I think you’ll want to hear.’

‘James? What the fuck? Where are you?’

‘Enjoying your garden. I’d forgotten how nice it is.’

‘You fucking drunk?’

‘I think we need to talk. Privately. Very privately.’ He paused, then, ‘Morax.’

He heard Skinner’s cessation of breath before it returned in a long exhale.

‘My father made certain plans in the event of his death,’ he said calmly. ‘New pieces have come into play on the game board, Skinner. I’m one of them. And it occurs to me that with my father and Worth both gone, there may be opportunities. For both of us. Come down to the bridge.’

The footbridge crossed over a little river inlet. Thunder muttered. The storm was drifting toward the town and the air was very still. Under the willows, no leaf moved. The water lapped below his feet. From the opposite shore drifted voices and laughter; a group of young people out late lighthearted and untroubled. He listened as their chatter grew more distant and faded but a prickle walked up his spine. He wondered if there was someone else nearby, watching. That sense of eyes on one’s back…

Don’t get paranoid.

Skinner came, using his phone torch to show the way. James watched the light bob over the grass until it reached the footbridge.
Skinner had thrown on a dressing gown and his feet slapped heavily on the boards. He brought with him the hint of marijuana smoke and alcohol. All the better. Skinner, as he knew well, liked to talk when he’d had a drink or two, but James had not known he enjoyed weed. Then the thought came, He’s afraid. He had been attempting to calm himself down.

‘Well?’ Skinner asked curtly. ‘You’re a fucking idiot calling me from a mobile!’

James held up the burner. ‘Not quite such an idiot,’ he corrected. ‘This will go in the river. Now, kill the light.’ He had his night-eyes now and did not want them compromised though the storm would be here soon and render it useless. Behind the house, the sky illuminated. A wind stirred and the air was filled with the whispering susurrus of leaves.

Skinner grunted, but switched it off and put it in his pocket. His house-robe gaped open, showing the black circle of his tattoo. The simmering emotion threatened. James pushed it down. Wait.

‘Hurry up then, it’s going to rain like shit any minute.’ Despite the drink and smoke, Skinner was all bulk and muscle and wariness. James leaned back against the wooden railing, his posture deliberately relaxed.
‘First,’ he said. ‘I need to clear up an old mystery that eluded my father. You remember a Christmas party you were invited to, just before you were appointed Editor-in-Chief of the ‘Crier?’

A shrug. ‘Yeah.’

‘You told me that night I reminded you of someone. Who was it?’

Skinner’s mouth opened and shut. He said slowly, suspicion still heavy in him, ‘What’s this got to do with anything?’

‘A very great deal. My father was looking for that person. Tell me about him.’ He added impatiently, ‘You know that I was to be kept out of certain matters until he died.’

‘Your old man.’ Skinner nodded thoughtfully. ‘He said he was grooming you.’ The connotations were nauseating but the knowing, lascivious smirk broadened. ‘Okay. Well, he was a whore, this kid. It’s no secret. Why’d the old man want him?’

‘Because that wasn’t all he was.’ Thunder followed his words like a presentiment. ‘He was a runaway. A security risk.’ After a pause he added: ‘And still may be.’

Skinner stared. `Well, well, well. I always said your dad should have brought me in a lot sooner. Can't tell some people. Huh.’ He scratched his cheek. ‘He was very pretty.’ His voice dropped, savouring. ‘He had tattoos, green. Ivy or something, up his arms to here.’ He indicated his collar bone. ‘He couldn't have been on the game long. Didn’t know shit. I soon taught him.’ He looked up at James squinting then his face broke into something that was nothing more or less than a leer. ‘You’ll see. You’re just a neophyte, old man’s son or not. You’ll learn. And you’ll like it. Tight as a little bitch he was. Squealed and bled like a pig in the slaughterhouse.’ His snigger was lost in another roll of thunder.

James hit him in the solar plexus. This was not America where he could have carried a gun and a quick search of the Townhouse had yielded no sharp knives but at Cambridge, he had been in the amateur boxing club and good at it, as he was at rugby. Both those highly physical sports had allowed him to expel some of the growing resentment against his father. He still used a punch bag in his gym sessions and had never forgotten how to use his fists.

The air went out of Skinner’s lungs with an audible grunt. James felt a cold sense of satisfaction.

‘You shit.’ He closed one hand about the thick throat and squeezed as Skinner’s eyes bulged back at him. ‘You perverted bastard. He was my brother.’

And for what he had done, James would kill him.

He had thought he might lose all control when he finally allowed the tamped-down fury to release. He did not. He fed the uprushing white-hot fire into his attack, striking Skinner methodically again and again, not allowing him to recover air or balance. The blows held him against the railings. Blood flowed from a broken nose; James felt his knuckles cut on Skinner's teeth. He was hitting Skinner, his father, Mortimer Worth, every as yet unknown predator who had sated their appetites on innocent children.

In the end, he was just striking meat.

Fire hazed the edges of his vision. Fire of liquid rock erupting in geysers and splashing back into red-hot-white-hot lava. Eyes backlit with fire widening upon him. A wheel of fire turning, revolving…A voice saying his name.

Under the pressure of another punch to the ribs, the railings cracked. Skinner went into the water like a toppled log.

The leaves whispered laughter. James.

Lightning burnt over the town. Then, with a sound like tearing cloth, the thunder followed. Rain scored the Thames like the strokes of a huge metal brush.

James nursed his hand feeling the pain only distantly as harsh, tearing sounds broke from him, too angry to be sobs.
The water of the inlet rippled and swelled as if a tide were running up the river then, as James stared down at it, a pale shape surfaced. Skinner’s face bobbed almost under his feet, pallid as a drowned moon. James’ eyes narrowed on it.

Then the shredded lips opened. Blood gouted black over his teeth and spilled into the water. Skinner must have been unconscious before he went in and the shock of the water had roused him, but the blood was a sign of massive internal damage. Icily, James swung both legs over the edge of the bridge. It would not take much to drown the bastard.

White shapes writhed alongside the floating body.
James did not know, could not comprehend what he saw. At first he thought they were fish or little eels disturbed by Skinner’s descent into the water.
But they were not. They were small hands. They latched onto the body, clasped the face, pushed into his gaping mouth. James heard Skinner’s muffled moan, a vocalisation of absolute horror that froze the skin and then, with a violent and abrupt jerk, he was pulled under.

James pushed himself away from the lip of the bridge, shuddering. Lightning flamed and the thunder was directly overhead, dinning in his ears. He backed away.

A hand closed on his shoulder and he must have jumped a foot, whirling, ready to hit out. His fist was caught in a grasp like a steel vise. The light, glaring, washed over hard, white features. For an instant, the eyes looking back at him sparked purple.

‘You bloody fool,’ said Lucien Steele.

Chapter Text

~ The leaves overhead were painted silver-gilt with the Mingling. This was a long hunt that Maedhros and Fingon had been all too eager to embark on. They had ridden Northward toward the rolling, sheep-flecked uplands that unfurled all the way to Araman. To absolutely no-one's surprise, Aredhel had elected to come and she had given them the lead too, on her raking, long-legged grey. Some called her wild. Fëanor did not. He thought she would have loved Cuiviénen and the untamed lands of the East; she was made for it far more than white-walled Tirion. It was little wonder she spent so much time away from the city.

The hunt, like everything else these days, was viewed as a political manoeuvre, albeit a positive one. And it certainly offered opportunities for Fëanor and Fingolfin to speak which appeared formal and stilted to anyone who overheard them. Mind-to-mind possessed a very different flavour.

Before the Mingling when they were to camp, Fëanor had ridden off one way and Fingolfin another. That was hours ago. From their vantage point, Fëanor could pick out the encampment by the smoke of cooking fires. Their first day had been more relaxation than sport, and they were only half a day’s ride from Formenos.

Alone or no, their situation was not ideal. Both he and Fingolfin had maintained their act of meeting up by accident and of prickly distance in their conversation. There was too much at stake now. Even their reaching out to Vanimöré through the Mirror shards must be done with caution, using Osanwë. They did not sit together. There could be no intimacy save in a look. Even in those, they were careful. Fëanor despised the need for it, loathed the Valar for the necessity.

We have to leave. He would need to speak to his people, and then go before the Valar and state his intention. As if begging for a boon!

I do not know what Vanimöré knows. He would tell me. If… Fëanor severed that thought. Let us speak with him.

The shards opened to the mutter of thunder, a sky of dark stormlight beyond Vanimöré. An open place.

‘Thy timing is atrocious,’ Vanimöré said, but with a wry smile.

Then I apologise,’ Fëanor replied dryly. But with Melkor going where he will in Valinor, it is not easy. There are things thou shouldst know.

‘The Silmarils,’ Vanimöré tilted a brow. ‘I felt thee create them. Every world must have felt that, and the Outside.’

One of those things thou wouldst not reveal to me?

‘There was no need. Was there? They are of thee. They burnt in thy mind.’

Well, now the time is coming when they must burn upon Endor, Fëanor snapped. Yet will the Valar let them go? He spoke of the summoning to Taniquetil, his fear that he would not leave Ilmarin.

‘They cannot touch the Silmarils,’ Vanimöré told him. ‘And I think they know it. Though I agree they lust for them.’

They might attempt to take them,Fingolfin said. Or to use them against thee. If they were to threaten thy sons...

Fëanor turned his head to look at his brother.
We need a way out of Valinor. I have decided to ask Olwë to sail us but if he refuses, for all his protestations of friendship, then the other way is the Helcaraxë or—

Vanimöré’s face went still, eyes burning purple. ‘A long way and a perilous and a cold that will bite even the Eldar.’

I have been to the far north, and into the south. I have felt that cold. I have seen the Grinding Ice in the Palantiri, also.

So have I, and to lead a population of thousands across it? Fingolfin interpolated. Tens of thousands. And why should they leave Valinor for such bitter danger?

I have no intention of taking that path, Fingolfin, Fëanor told him. There is another way. We spoke of it before. He tapped the Mirror. But the more people who know of these the greater the danger someone will inform the Valar.

Fingolfin shook his head. And someone would have to remain behind, would they not, or the Mirror itself be left.

Then it — or both — should be left. The Valar do not need them to traverse the ocean.

But why would our people leave?

For freedom.

From what? Fingolfin demanded. The Valar have been distant and well-nigh silent these last years. Fëanor, listen to me. Apart from a very few, no-one knows the things we do.

‘Hold,’ Vanimöré interrupted. ‘Yes, we spoke of using the Mirror shards, but I also cautioned thee. They can lead anywhere, to any reality. I also said thou wouldst need to be discreet and leading the population of Tirion and Formenos through them is hardly going to go unremarked if that is thine intent. The logistics would be…interesting, for one thing.’

Fëanor bit down on a retort. He took a breath.
I think the Eldar do know somewhat. Maedhros has dreams and Maglor sang of his memories from childhood. They will not be the only ones. We simply do not know how to awaken those other lives, or even our own, not wholly, he added with a minatory look at Vanimöré, who said sternly, ‘Such memories must not be forced. There is too much trauma in that, and it could do great damage. Wouldst thou have people relive their tragedies, Fëanor, their deaths? And thine own? Fingolfin’s?‘

There was no sound but, from the other world, the back-of-the-throat mutter of thunder. Fëanor’s head had whipped around to Fingolfin, whose eyes burned back.
I know I died. His voice was taut. When I was young I dreamed of…pain. And… The line of his jaw clenched.

Fëanor shot out his free hand toward Fingolfin, who shook his head and glared a warning. Furiously, Fëanor looked back at Vanimöré.
We died, he said. I know. I would have known even if you hadst never told us of the old universe. I felt it, I think, when I went to the Outside. Many of us died. And my sons… The awful impotent fear took him by the throat, choking him.

‘Yes, and remember it was another universe,’ Vanimöré said. ‘So long ago that time is meaningless. It does not have to be the same. But to remember…I do not know; I truly do not know if it would be a blessing or a curse. Everything that happened is writ within thee, but it is buried deep. For a very good reason. To know it would be too great a shock, I think.’

And yet, didst thou not say to us long ago: “thou wilt need every memory, both good and bad. They will help arm thee for the future.”? Fëanor felt the forge hammer of his pulse throbbing behind his eyes. If we knew our old lives, could we not avoid the pitfalls?

‘Damn thee.’ Vanimöré’s eyes had flicked away as if he were listening to something beyond the impending storm. He half laughed. ‘Yes, I said that. But I did not mean that thou shouldst be given a copy of the ah…’ Fëanor could almost see him pull up and then he smiled charmingly. ‘A book to peruse at thy leisure.’

Fëanor shared a narrow-eyed look with Fingolfin. A book? Like the one thou didst leave for me in the palace library? Is there a history of our old lives written down?

An odd expression flitted across Vanimöré’s face. ‘Well, in a way, yes. It has certainly passed into myth and legend.’

At the Monument, Fëanor pursued. Thou knowest everything, is that not so?

‘It is.’

And so, is it better to know?

The eyes changed, opened to eternity. Then a crooked smile made him familiar again.
‘I always wanted to know everything,’ he said. ‘I thought it all the better to build defences with. I was not born with power, even of choice. There were thousands of years when I was as blind as any man. And now, I have no option but to know.’

Far off, the sky flickered. Fëanor tasted lightning in his mouth. There was a storm to the East — and a storm where Vanimöré walked.

Dost thou bring this storm? he asked. As thou didst bring one to Tol Eresseä?

The whorled pads of Vanimöré’s fingers appeared, lightly touching his side of the Mirror. His head tilted, eyes half-closed.
‘Thou didst bring a storm to this world,’ he murmured. ‘Some realities are so porous; a bright shadow crouching at the margin of Light and Darkness. A whim of the mind. The edges are tattered and many things can bleed through.’ He removed his hand. ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘There is a matter I must attend to urgently. I will speak to thee soon.’

What is so urgent? Fëanor asked, wondering why Vanimöré was standing in a storm, the lightning flickering behind his head. Is there danger for thee?

‘Not for me. I rather think someone is about to be killed, however.’

In Valinor, death was alien. Míriel’s death had been the one and only occurrence, a fact that Fëanor knew was somehow laid upon his shoulders. The word and the concept was still, to him, an aberration, a strangeness. Like the fact that the Valar had taken people and presumably killed them for their sins.

Does that often happen in that world?

‘Death? Murder? It is frequent. And now, I really must leave thee. We will speak later.’

The Mirror surface returned to gleaming silver. Fëanor, with the snap of a curse, closed it and stood up. His steps took him unconsciously to Fingolfin, who also came to his feet. They stared at each other.

What art thou thinking? Fingolfin demanded.

Wouldst thou know? Fëanor threw back.Everything?

I would, Fingolfin returned steadily. I know somehow that it was not…a child’s story. I know thee and have known thee before and loved thee and I think, hated thee, at least a little. To anyone observing them Fingolfin looked haughty, remote. Only the fire of his eyes gave the lie. His head rose on the elegant column of his neck. So yes. I would know.

Both of them had drawn closer, forbidden, dangerous, but pulled as if each possessed the gravity of a giant planet. The touch was not enough, the brief kiss like the scent of food to a man who hungered for a feast. Fëanor shuddered.

Then we need to unlock our ancient past. I will think on it. It is all there, within us…

~ If Fëanor appeared somewhat preoccupied during the hunt, no-one was surprised. Even his eldest sons did not know about his relationship with Fingolfin and thought him simply irked at playing host. But there were no icy glances, no biting remarks and it was deemed, when they returned three days later to Formenos, that the excursion had been something of a success.

Once Fingolfin, his children and their companions had ridden away, Fëanor immediately closeted himself in his study.

Do nothing impulsive, had been Fingolfin’s parting extortion.

Impulsive. Fëanor smiled to himself. The thoughts had been turning since speaking to Vanimöré. He had focused his mind upon them with the same intensity as he devoted to his craft.

Most often, they returned to that world where Vanimöré now walked (or a part of him). The elegant room, objects of art and beauty glinting in the shadow. Books from floor to ceiling, their spines turned outward, lettered in an unknown script.

It has passed into myth and legend…
A book.

’Thy passions have sabotaged thee before,’ Vanimöré had warned. And, ’To avoid something that came to pass in another world, another life, might bring that very thing — or worse — to pass in this one.’

’Omnipotence is no cinecure, Fëanor.’

He turned the Mirror case in his hands. In that world he could not read the alien languages, so even if the book Vanimöré referred to was under his hands, Fëanor would not be able to understand it. Yet there must be a way to decipher it.

The Silmarils? They were a power from beyond that he had drawn into this world. And, on the Outside petty considerations like language were unknown and unneeded. Of course, he could go there, as he had once before.

’I felt I could move the very stars, that it would be as easy as a breath taken.’

He wanted the knowledge, but Vanimöré had told him that he left most of his power behind to— what had he called it? World Walking.

Yes, of course. Power of such magnitude would break the world.

And to know yet not be able to do would drive one mad, surely? He must ask how Vanimöré dealt with such frustration.

But Vanimöré was not the only colossi of Power. Fëanor had heard the other one speak his name through the sleet of Galaxies.

Who is he? he had asked.

Eru.

Is he an enemy?

And the terrible, brittle ambiguity in Vanimöré’s voice. The face shut like a vault. ’He would not say so, no. He would say everything he did was for love.’

Fëanor had not pursued it. There was too much sheer loss on the other side of that barred door. Eru, whom the Valar spoke of as the Creator, whom Manwë proclaimed he knew and was the Mouthpiece of. Lies of course. Vanimöré had, slowly, and with palpable reserve, refused to name him evil. Fëanor meticulously recalled the few things Vanimöré had revealed about Eru, winnowing them out of memory.

’There were two of us, myself and Eru, called the One, the creator. We met in the nothing before my universe came into existence. He wanted to take my memories to create a new universe. He had destroyed his own.’

Eru…As he had said to Fingolfin: ‘I did not get the same feeling from Eru as I do from the Valar.’

Unlike Vanimöré, Eru did nothing either to help or hinder.

’Eru is staying out of my way,’ came the echo of Vanimöré’s words. ’He wanted to take my memories to create a new universe. He had destroyed his own…If we meet, the power would destroy reality itself. And so, I let him go. To destroy him might have affected everything else, every... potentiality. I could not risk it. I wanted to bring back the dead…Eru is a mystery to me.’

Bring back the dead. Us. He brought us back. How?

Eru (Vanimöré said) had wanted to rejoin with Melkor.

’In that battle the universe was born, and Melkor was torn out of Eru. All he desires, or all he did desire, was to rejoin with that part of him. I cannot call him evil, but he is a deceiver, a betrayer…’

All of those things were, Fëanor admitted, an excellent reason not to trust Eru. A reason, even to hate him.

And yet…Fëanor! a voice had called on the Outside, a gleaming, lovely voice and he had glimpsed fathomless eyes, silver hair cascading about a face like a lost legend.

And he had felt…love. What would the Creator be without Melkor who brought out an immediate antagonism in Fëanor? Something fine and essentially good — or something out-of-balance, lost, filling up that missing part with something else.

Caution did not come naturally to Fëanor; he had to wrestle it into use. And still…he felt the building of a wild excitement, as a wave gathering far out at sea.

Do nothing impulsive. Fingolfin’s eyes had glowed like a lake with the light of Telperion upon it.

Very well, my starfire, I am not being impulsive. I am thinking.

If it were just himself, unbound by the obligations of fatherhood and love, then he would have leapt. He did not regret those bonds for one heartbeat but chafed at the prudence they imposed.

Well then, if not Eru, then the other way, the one which appealed to him with its strangeness and challenge. It was, after all, what he had left the golden ring of his House in the other world for: A beacon to guide him back if necessary. A world where the Valar were distant. A place, possibly, of refuge, if need arose. He had considered it, when the boys were younger: asking Vanimöré to protect his sons.

’This world is not one to walk into without great care,’ Came Vanimöré’s voice from the past.

But with thee, I believe they would be safe.

But he was not a father only. He loved his sons more than thought or heart could encompass but he was the High Prince whatever half of Tirion thought of him. More than half, if he were truthful.

He closed his eyes and brought all Formenos to his mind, from the farmers, to the servants to the High Lords. They all looked to him. He ordered their lives. As they were beholden to him, he was no less beholden to them.

His thoughts flew the leagues of the Great Sea, to Endor — and Edenel whose people would, he guessed, follow him into the Everlasting Dark. Abruptly, he snapped open the Mirror case.

Edenel had been far more than circumspect. He never contacted Fëanor or Fingolfin. When they reached out, he answered but would not initiate.

‘It is Finwë,’ Fingolfin had said when Fëanor wondered. ‘Or so I think. He feels guilt at having fathered the sons that his soul-brother should have begat.’

‘It is Finwë who should feel guilt,’ Fëanor returned sharply, and Fingolfin laid a finger over his lips and said, ‘Truth now, brother-mine. Dost thou not still think of Finwë as our sire? Did he not raise us?’

The complications of truth in Fingolfin’s words had struck home. And they were undeniable. Fëanor knew Edenel had fathered him, but all he had known through his childhood and into adulthood was Finwë. Finwë had never understood him, had, maybe feared him — or feared for him. But still…

It took him something to admit it, but in a way he did consider Finwë his father — with all the spoiled love and bitterness a failed familial relationship engenders. Thus he could understand why Edenel, so strange and unearthly now in his white-scorched beauty, maintained a courteous distance.

It was winter in Taur-nu-Fuin. Edenel’s face was framed in fur as white as the blowing snow.

‘Fëanor.’ His name sounded as warm as the blizzard eyes were cold. ‘How goes it? I have felt thee, across the sea, and Fingolfin too, and so I know thou art safe.’

‘For the moment. Melkor walks where he will in Valinor.’

‘Yes. I feel him, too.’ Edenel went so still he might have been turned to stone; some ancient statue left in a lonely place as the winds of winter blew around it, year upon year. Then emotion shuddered through him. ‘Even here. How could they free him, knowing what they do?’ He seemed to be speaking to himself.

‘So he would step into my path. As he has.’

‘Yes, his target is to be the Quendi of Valinor, thou didst say.’ His voice annealed. ‘Thou art not afraid? Thou shouldst be.’

‘I fear for others,’ Fëanor said. ‘But not for myself.’

He propped the Mirror case against a stack of books and placed the Silmaril crown on his brow.

The jewels were always self-illuminated, but when Fëanor put them on he felt the connection, like being rejoined to his greater self. It blazed under his skin, in the hollow of his heart. And the jewels burst into incandescence.

Edenel started. Even through the glass, the iridescence of the gems flared and danced in his eyes, played across the taut skin of his face.

He said, ‘Fireheart.’

Fireheart. The name whispered of memories. Another place, or no place at all. A voice of incomprehensible Power; a voice like cold silk and metal.

Edenel had raised one long hand to his face as if against a too-bright light. Now he dropped it, brought his own Mirror shard closer so that Fëaor could see the pale sparks in the burnt-white eyes. ‘How? What are they? This is…these are not gems. Even in Melkor’s throne hall I never saw their like. Marion would have gone mad trying to create these.’

‘They are,’ Fëanor answered slowly. ‘Part of me. I thought them into existence.’

‘Yes,’ Edenel said distantly. ‘This fire. It is thee. Concentrated.’

‘The Valar covet them. Melkor too.’

‘He would.’ Edenel moved. Fëanor had the impression of swaying tree branches, the flick of snow, then a quietness, some cave or shelter, perhaps.

‘What wilt thou do?’ he asked.

‘I intend to tell the Valar that I am determined to leave Aman.’ He stated firmly as if it were already accomplished. ‘And I will take any who will come with me. Were it only myself, I would already be upon Endor. Edenel, thou art the chieftain of the Ithiledhil and such responsibilities go deep. I too am bound whether I would be or no and I shall not shirk my duty. My sons, my folk…It makes it all much more difficult.’

‘Yes,’ Edenel agreed. ‘But it is in the blood of thy House. Myself, Finwë. We cannot lay down such responsibilities and I think would not, even if we could. As for the Ithiledhil—’ His beautiful face was stern. ‘The binding goes yet deeper. To Utumno. It is forged of blood and pain…and love, all of those and something more.’ A faint softness showed in the curve of his lips, then they hardened again. ‘I ran, Fëanor, leaving the burden of our people on Finwë’s shoulders. It was the act of a coward and a fool. Do not thou follow in my steps. They lead me to Utumno.’

Fëanor protested, hotly, ‘Finwë drove thee away.’

‘No-one forced me except myself,’ Edenel corrected coldly. ‘And we all bear the consequences of our actions…one way or another.’

And Edenel bore it in the horror that was Utumno, and in his otherness. He was not, Fëanor thought, wholly an Elf any more.

‘Be careful,’ Edenel warned. ‘The Valar and Melkor have great power. I know Melkor’s firsthand. I cannot imagine him submitting, or acting within the constraints placed upon him. He will not abide it forever, and will be plotting, planning his escape just as thou art.’ His head turned. ‘I think that those who survived Utumno have felt his reemerged presence just as we Ithiledhil have. Four of us went on a long journey East in the autumn. There were signs and scents of the Corrupted. A stench of the pits of the Underworld. It was faint. Nothing was seen, but we remember it too well to be mistaken.’

‘What does it mean, think'st thou?’

‘There were rumours,’ Edenel murmured. ‘Of a fortress West of Utumno, conceived and delved by Mairon under Melkor’s orders. We never saw it, but the Dark was not ended when Utumno was unroofed. I intend to hunt northward myself in a few days.’ His brief smile was like ice; there was a promise of death in it. Fëanor thought that anything facing that deadly intention would flee rather than fight. But when he and Fingolfin looked in the Palantiri to see Endor, there had been that mountain range far in the North.

‘The Iron Mountains. Beyond them lies the lands of ice and the polar regions. Here is Melkor’s second fortress, called Angband, the Hells of Iron, where he will return.’

‘Angband,’ he repeated Vanimöré’s words. ‘It will be called Angband. The Hells of Iron. We saw it, Fingolfin and I. We want to familiarise ourselves with the lands.’

‘Angband,’ Edenel said slowly. ‘The Hells of Iron.’ There was a movement as if his whole body braced. ‘There has been no sign of Mairon. He must have gone there. Perhaps it is he who gathers the Corrupted — or sends them out. And he, above all others, would feel Melkor, would prepare… I thank thee, Fëanor. At least we know.’

‘Then thou also be careful,’ Fëanor retorted.

They looked at one another. Fëanor could hear the deep threnody of the wind in the trees, and it tugged at him with the desire for those vast, unbounded lands. He had travelled all Valinor and not all of it was tame, but it was not Endor.

‘Was that what thou didst wish to know?’ Edenel asked. ‘If it was ever forgivable to leave the hindmost or the faint hearted?’

‘No. I know it is not. And the Noldor do not deal in faint hearts. They simply need the fire within them lit.’

Edenel’s expression changed. ‘Thou art that and Fingolfin too. A different fire, I grant thee. But not only moths gather to the light, Fëanor. There are things that hide in the dark, yet are drawn toward the flame.’

‘It will burn them,’ Fëanor said thinking of how Varda had recoiled when the Silmarils spat at her. And then, Vanimöré’s: ’If thy light becomes too bright it will burn through all shadows.’

‘And some would deem the pain worth it.’

Fëanor’s attention sharpened. Yes, they undoubtedly would.
‘When we come,’ he said. ‘And we will, we wish to see thee. Wilt thou come to us? Or us to thee?’

‘The Ithiledhil have vowed to help our kin of old.’ His voice was quite level. ‘But we will not go among them.’ Something in the way he stated it, no give in it, reminded Fëanor of Vanimöré when he slammed the door upon conversation— or upon something he could not endure to speak of. ‘Thou and Fingolfin, my sons beyond all understanding or hope, I would meet with, but privily.’

Fëanor had known he would run into this wall, this bloody intransigence.
‘But —‘

‘I would not ask them to do it. Do not ask me to request it of them.’ Edenel turned so that his hard profile showed. ‘It is for them to decide when they know the full story. I am their Chieftain but I do not command them.’ With a quick, almost feral movement he looked back, directly into Fëanor’s eyes. ‘There are six of Ingwë’s tribe, six of Elwë and Olwë’s and eight of mine — Finwë’s and mine. Now, we are all Ithiledhil.. But,’ he added. ‘There are those among us who bore children or fathered them. Some of their descendants may come with thee. And so, it must be for them to decide whether to meet with them or no.’

Fëanor berated himself for being a fool. He had not considered this. He and Fingolfin would have to find out — discreetly if possible — whose mothers or fathers had been lost to Utumno.

‘Why would they not want to?’ he demanded. ‘Thou dost.’

Edenel’s head shook. ‘When the time comes, they will decide. But some…it was worse for the women. Because they can bear children — or the monsters that were got on them in the Underworld. I saw it. I saw it.’ His voice hissed out of its measured calm. ‘Ten of the Ithiledhil are women. One of them no longer speaks. We all drank the corruption of Utumno, but the women were by far the strongest, Fëanor, to return from it. To be violated and then seeing a horror grow within…Culina, she forced herself to miscarry. Thou wilt not know that word but it means that she rejected the monster and expelled it from her body before it was come to term.’ His teeth shut. His face was colourless but his eyes blazed white fire. ‘She was the first woman to become other, like this.’ He gestured to himself. ‘Burning white. I watched her. Some of the other women likewise used their will to miscarry. Others birthed abominations yet somehow survived it. They see themselves as the mothers of a race of monsters. It is not wholly true, but there is a measure of truth in it. To see children birthed in joy or those of their bloodline after that? Canst thou imagine? Thou hast not known what it is to hate thyself for not being strong enough to fight back, for surviving. Gods, Gods, I would have taken their place, but I could not. I would only witness.’*

Fëanor stared, mouth gone dry. He imagined Nerdanel, carrying his sons with increasing weariness, but cosseted, looked after and in a place of peace and beauty, able to rest. And never forced. He closed his eyes at the horror Edenel’s words had slammed into his mind. Fury drove upward from his core. Opening his eyes again, he saw the Silmarils raging, casting their light on Edenel’s beautiful face.

Hate thyself.

No, he did not know that emotion but if anything happened to his sons or Fingolfin and he had to stand by and be unable to do, then he would feel the same.

Edenel said, still granite-hard, ‘I do not know why they chose me as their chieftain. They followed me to Utumno and I could not save them. But they do, and I will never set my will upon them.’

‘Because,’ Fëanor said, out of nowhere. ‘That is what a king does, Edenel. He takes the pain of his people upon himself. Thou canst feel it, all the horror of it.’ He thumped a fist to his breast. ‘Thou didst rise above Melkor and all that was done to thee, and brought them with thee. Utumno changed thee but did not break thee. Its shadow is not upon thee.’

‘Oh, it broke us. And we do carry its shadow.’ Edenel gave a strange, cold little smile. ‘We may have defied Melkor but we can still sense him and, when we came upon the Corrupted, scattering and fleeing Utumno’s fall, we ate their still-beating hearts.’

Fëanor was surprised but in no way shocked. He had long accepted, and with perfect equanimity that he possessed none of the delicate sensibilities that the Valinorian Eldar were supposed (in the Valar’s eyes) to possess. But the Valar had tried to mould the Quendi into perfect dolls, to pose them and set them in an unreal world. They had used the Tree Dew to drug them into complaisance. Were it not for Vanimöré they would still be drifting, elegant and passionless, through their so-ordered lives.

‘I cannot blame thee,’ he said.

Edenel tilted his head. ‘Thou art not repulsed,’ he observed, now cool and composed as if his helpless horror and hate had never been.

‘No’ It sounded like the sort of thing he himself would do, and for no other reason than vengeance. ‘I can imagine…but why?’

‘Not out of appetite or cruelty,’ Edenel suddenly sounded almost weary with a tiredness that went beyond anything physical. This was deeper; of the soul. ‘But grief and rage. Once they, or their descendants, were Quendi, I knew all of them, those who Melkor and Mairon tortured into monsters and drove mad. It is…symbolic. We want to take something of them back.’

‘Ah, yes’ Through the awful pain and pity, Fëanor completely understood. He laid his fingers on the mirror briefly. ‘And yes. I would do thus.’

‘I suspect thou wouldst,’ Edenel agreed and another smile flickered but this one was warm, rueful. ‘And there are many things thou shouldst know of this Middle-earth both before coming here and after. I will meet with thee. As for my companions, they will each consider and will choose for themselves in the future.’

‘Very well,’ Fëanor acceded. ‘Good hunting, and keep safe.’

‘And thou tread lightly,’ Edenel returned.

The Mirror returned to its reflective surface. Fëanor, frowning, was about to snap it shut when another face drifted over it. Eyes as clear and deep as eternity, a spilling drift of silver hair caught in some unseen wind.

‘Fëanor.’ The voice sang his name like a spell.

Chapter Text

~ Vanimöré caught James’ arm and marched him through the garden, back down the tree-shaded drive. James did not resist and was silent though rage still burned around him like fire.

The road was quiet under the hammer of the rain until the swish of car tyres on tarmac went slowly past, and then stopped. The Bentley wings on the rear caught the light in a sharp silver flash.

‘It’s my car,’ Vanimöré told James as he baulked. ‘Come on.’

He opened the back door of the Bentley and manoeuvred James in it, before climbing in himself. Howard was driving, Fenny in the passenger seat. Without a word, Howard drew away from the kerb.

‘What fun,’ Fenny drawled. ‘Well, James what have you been up to?’

James pushed wet hair from his forehead. ‘I.’

‘Killed Skinner,’ Vanimöré supplied. ‘Not that I blame you.’

James’ head whipped round. ‘What?’

Vanimöré leaned forward. ‘Howard, get us back to Wimbledon. We’re wet.’

‘Wet? If it was up to me, I’d toss you both in the Thames,’ Howard snapped. ‘And hold you down. What did I say about no more bodies?’

‘You said no more bodies,’ Vanimöré replied meekly. Fenny snorted.

‘He…He abused Blaise,’ James burst out. He was shivering hard enough for Vanimöré to feel it. ‘He said Blaise was a sex-worker.’ Horror ballooned like blown glass around the two words. ‘And that letter said you knew about it.’

‘I’d like to see that letter,’ Howard said coldly. ‘It has the smell of a set-up. Someone knew exactly how to pull your strings.’

The sound of James’ breathing was loud, juddering. He tugged something from the inside of his jacket. Vanimöré took it and unfolded the paper, then handed it over the seat to Fenny.

‘You do know who sent this,’ he said. James' profile, briefly lit by streetlight, reminded Vanimöré disturbingly of Sauron. When he had attributed James' flashes of confidence to Callaghan, he had been completely wrong, he thought wryly. That confidence and internal power were all Sauron’s.
From what James remembered from his childhood and Vanimöré’s own brief glimpse Joanna possessed it, too.

But then James turned his head and the expression was David’s after he had watched Callaghan die. Shock, a kind of bewildered horror. Guilt there was none.

‘You think it was…’ He hesitated. ‘Joanna Worth?’ He could not call her ‘mother’, Vanimöré noted.

‘On the orders of her father.’

‘You said they’d approach me. To control me and what I control.’ James’ hands were knotted together. There was iron in his voice. He was exerting all his self-control. ‘You said they want to use me, even…her.’

Howard smacked one hand on the steering wheel. ‘We have a leak.’

‘Not necessarily.’ Vanimöré stamped on that. ‘He — rather Joanna — was keeping an eye on Callaghan. AB would have known of Callaghan’s interest in me. It’s possible he even provoked it. I have met a lot of people in my time, Howard. Some of the situations were quite…fraught and I was not as careful in those days. And then there was the Summerland incident. She knew who I was. AB could have suspected for a long time.’

Howard swore. James brows drew into a frown as he attempted to follow. Fenny, unperturbed, passed something over into the back seat. A small silver hip flask. Opening it, Vanimöré smelled the fumes of brandy. He passed it to James who hesitated then tipped it back and swallowed. He choked, gasped and coughed. Vanimöré swatted him on the back.

‘Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?’ he demanded hoarsely.

‘You just passed a test your grandfather set you,’ Vanimöré told him. ‘Congratulations. He and Joanna would baulk at nothing. And now they know that you will kill.’ But hot bloodedly or cold? He would have to find out.

A strange, breathless sound escaped James’ mouth. ‘A test?’ Then he went still. ‘But how would they know what I did? Do you mean they might have been there, watching?’

‘Possibly,’ Vanimöré acknowledged. Sauron, no matter how he glamoured himself, Vanimöré would sense, but had not. ‘More likely some expendable subaltern sent to watch and report back. Do not concern yourself.’

‘Concern. Myself.’ James placed the words down as if they were heavy, unwieldy objects. ‘But it does concern me!’ Then he went still. ‘I saw…there were hands in the water. They dragged Skinner down. He wasn’t quite dead.’

‘Then you did not actually kill him, did you?’ Fenny said consolingly. ‘Er…you did say “hands”?’

‘Some were like childrens.’

‘Nonsense,’ Howard rebuffed. ‘It was a traumatic event, and storming. An illusion.’

‘Some rivers have legends, spirits attached to them,’ Fenny volunteered comfortably as an old professor in his study. ‘It was said, in older times, that they took a life a year.’

‘And the Thames takes many more than one,’ Vanimöré thought of the cold brown roll of that old river.

Howard flung up one hand.
‘And you shut up or you can get out and walk. We need to silence the taxi driver this bloody vigilante used. Skinner's body might be downriver by morning, but there’s still loose ends.’

‘Bahir saw the taxi leave,’ Vanimöré smiled. ‘He’s extremely apologetic. But he did take the number plate.’

‘So he should be apologetic.’ A pause. Grudgingly, ‘That’s something.’

‘He’s young. And in all fairness, he was not told to expect James would give him the slip.’

James sat back against the seat. ‘It’s not his fault,’ he offered stiffly. ‘I didn’t want to get him into trouble. He did stay with me. I told him to wait while I thanked the kitchen staff. After, I gave one of them a tip to show me out the back.’

‘Oh god, the staff saw you too?’

‘No problem there,’ Fenny said calmly. ‘We’ll find someone that James wanted to meet privately. The reclusive Lucien Steele perhaps.’

Vanimöré smiled. ‘He is at your service, naturally.’ The rain slackened. The windscreen wipers slowed, then stopped.

A summer of storms. Vanimöré frowned out at the road gleaming in the headlights. And each time they seem centred on someone, or more than one. Fëanor’s ring pulsed like a hot, passionate heart.
Then, like a line drawn in the sand, the road was dry.

‘Howard,’ he said abruptly. ‘I want the Landseer Satellite tracking all the thunderstorms in Europe. From Italy, shall we say, to the north of Scotland.’

Howard’s head twisted. ‘Eh?’

‘They’re extraordinarily localised.’ He leaned to tap Howard’s shoulder and murmured, ‘The demarcation line from wet to dry back there was impossibly sharp.’

‘It’s those bloody Portals.’ Howard hissed through his teeth. Fenny’s agreeing that, ‘The weather’s been most odd this summer,’ rendering it almost inaudible.

Possibly. Probably. Vanimöré had told Howard to drive the Bentley to Henley and himself used Caesar's Camp not far from Howard’s home, to cross the distance. Danesfield Camp was the closest to Henley and had occasioned Vanimöré running through the night to the town. No great distance and still quicker than using more conventional means.

‘It’s done,’ Howard replied in a more normal tone. ‘Or it will be as soon as we get back.’

‘You won’t kill the driver?’ James asked into the pause. His tone suggested he would not be in the least surprised at an affirmative.

‘That will not be necessary,’ Fenny reassured him.

Another — and longer — silence fell, that of relaxation after exertion or relief after fear. James' eyes closed. Vanimöré opened the window a little and fragrant night air blew in. In the rear-view mirror, Howard’s eyes met his, brows raised. Vanimöré offered only an ambiguous shrug.

~ In the embracing comfort of Howard’s house, Vanimöré led James to a spare room.
‘Have a shower,’ he suggested. ‘Then we will talk.’

James emerged ten minutes later in a towelling robe, his wet hair combed. Vanimöré had poured him a glass of brandy and now handed it to him.

‘Skinner would have been taken out anyhow,’ he said. ‘And so his death matters not at all.’
Perhaps Sauron or Joanna might have killed him once they had learned all they could from him. There would be no vengefulness in it for Skinner’s touching one of their own blood. Sauron possessed no sentiment and if Joanna did it would have been methodically excised a long time ago. No, they would do it as a passing thought, like the swiping claws of a great cat.
‘I simply want to know how you feel about it.’

James gave a short hiss of laughter. He took a swallow of brandy and closed his eyes.
‘Is this a debriefing?’

‘Yes. Sit down.’

His eyes widening, James sat. ‘You said what I did was a test? But that letter—‘

‘Was supposed to cut you off from us; supposed, in fact, to spur you to do exactly what you did.’

‘But how did they know about you? How did they know about Blaise?’ On that name his voice rose, jagged as breaking glass. He leaned forward, shoulders rigid; his fingers, curled around the glass, were tight and bloodless.

‘Your grandfather has a great many contacts,’ Vanimöré replied flatteningly. ‘He has wealth, influence, but he works subtly. The DDE is not secret, after all.’

‘But you are.’

‘I am not actually a recluse for all I am known as one. I travel, I own property. I pay taxes, I use hotels, I eat out. I know people. And I do occasionally visit the MI6 building. If someone is determined to spy upon me, has the time and the money, they will eventually see something.’ But it must have been discreet; he and Sauron had never crossed paths until Bellman’s so Sauron must have used his minions.

And Blaise?’

‘Fenny will help you investigate.’

‘If he’s alive…’ The last word faded. He flung himself back in the chair, eyes vivid and burning.
‘What aren’t you telling me about my mother and her father?’

Vanimöré regarded him. He answered, at last, obliquely and with a question.
‘You said you had night terrors when you were young, and that you still have them at times. What are they?’

James’ mouth opened. He closed it again, moved his glass so that the liquid swirled and webbed.
‘Calling them night terrors was inaccurate,’ he said at last. ‘Although they were frightening.’ He looked into the distance. ‘Sometimes it was a place…Like a dungeon or fortress. All lit in red. Enormous and impossible. I would be walking along the corridors and the rock looked both carved and moulded, or maybe melted. Like something out of a film or computer game. I could hear noises like distant thunder and screams.’ He sipped the brandy. ‘I would always wake up then and think I saw eyes watching me. Strange eyes, fiery.’

He dreams of Sauron. Hardly surprising.

With a glance as if to gauge Vanimöré’s reaction, James continued but a little haltingly.
‘At other times I was standing on top of a tower. It was so high. I’ve been up to the top of the Burj Kalifa and it dwarfed that. And there were feelings of…of power. I thought that I was creating similarities to my father in those dreams, towering above everyone, looking down on them. Even the eyes watching me from the darkness.’ He ran a finger around the rim of the glass.

‘Did he ever take you to a child psychologist?’

James showed his very fine teeth in a cold smile.
‘I never said anything to him. I learned that very young and if my nanny did, I expect he brushed her off. He didn’t believe in mental health issues and thought treatment was for the weak-brained.’ He shifted and rose, pacing around the room. It was peaceful, with a soft pallet of colours and windows that looked out over the garden though the curtains were drawn now. Pausing before a picture of a misty purple landscape his shoulders rose and fell. He said, without turning round, ‘You think I do have mental health problems, don’t you? What happened in New York, Skinner, seeing those hands—‘

‘I think a person without them is a rare creature,’ Vanimöré cut in. ‘As for killing Skinner, a great many people had the right to end his life, you among them. Soldiers kill; they are trained for it. Quite ordinary people kill for a variety of reasons. I am only concerned with how the action impacts you: negatively or positively.’ Or not at all.

‘How the hell should I know?’ James burst out, whirling round. ‘I wanted to kill him. Yes, I’d do it again. That sleazy piece of crap and what he did? That bastard who thinks with his dick and talks about nothing but fucking—‘

‘Thought,’ Vanimöré amended. ‘Talked. Past tense.’

‘What? Oh yes.’ He exhaled. ‘I’m fucking glad he’s dead! I was about to let myself down into the water and drown him, finish the job, when I saw he was alive.’ He glared a challenge. ‘I thought of how to get the body into the river. It was raining hard, the current would have taken it.’ He stopped, a heightened colour on his cheeks. ‘What?’

Vanimöré was smiling. ‘Thinking on your feet. I appreciate that, and so would he.’

James bristled. ‘Does he have a name?’

‘Several, no doubt. He is known to the DDE as AB and that operation is ongoing and genuinely top secret.’ He smiled. ‘And this is where we move into rather unethical territory, James. There are some people who are so dangerous that they are not approached. Those who observe them — or attempt to — would rather not startle them into vanishing. It is better to know where they are, do you see?’

James’ brow creased, then smoothed. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And you’re one of them?’

Oh, well spotted.

‘Me? I am just a man with money and a certain sense of justice.’

‘Don’t forget who raised me,’ James said dryly. ‘I’ve moved among the wealthy and powerful all my life. And none of them were anything like you. You give orders to Wainwright as if you’re his CEO.’

‘One can wield a great deal of power with wealth,’ Vanimöré replied, ignoring that for the moment. But James missed nothing. ‘Callaghan knew that. Others prefer simply to indulge themselves.’

James drank the last of his brandy. ‘You said this was a test,’ he prompted.

‘It was. They have no use for the weak. If you have some hope that your mother will be loving, maternal, helping to heal the scars you bear, forget it.’ He was deliberately brutal. ‘He is using her but she would not have survived had she not been as merciless as he.’ One did not, he knew.

James turned his head away slightly. ‘I don’t think that. She gave me away.’

‘One can hope beyond all reason. But do not forget that Joanna left Blaise without a second glance, too.’

‘Blaise…Did they test him too? By allowing my father to abuse him?’ It looked as if he might hurl the glass against the wall but inherent manners won over impulse. Just. He strode to the window as if to throw back the drapes.

‘Stop,’ Vanimöré snapped. ‘Don’t let anyone see you. Howard’s house is one of the safest in London, but this is no game.The stakes are…anything you care to imagine.’

James jerked to a halt. His raised hand dropped.
‘You’re not going to talk about the Illuminati I hope.’ He snapped a scornful glance over one wide shoulder. ‘I don’t buy into conspiracy theories.’

‘Neither do I. No privileged person does. It is only those who are poor and feel helpless who do so. A conspiracy against them means they matter, even if only as victims.’ Vanimöré shrugged. ‘No secret societies control the world. But there are secrets and there are powerful people who play chess games in the shadows. You’ve seen it yourself. Think of those who are silenced by money or threat.’

‘Yes.’ James’ turned. ‘Yes, I’ve seen it. Do you think my grandfather has Blaise?’ The thought was sudden and stiffened his whole body. ‘I never thought—‘

‘No,’ Vanimöré said firmly.

‘You’re so sure?’ Suspicion prickled through his voice.

‘I am. They would have used him as a lure. They will know how well you got on with him when you met.’

‘Oh. Yes. Of course they would. But at least I’d know if he were still alive. It’s an appalling thought that he felt he had to do that…and people like Skinner abused him.’ The horror in his voice took on a cold timbre on his last words; that hate was still there. ‘I was thinking, what if it was me and I wanted to disappear and realised that I wouldn’t have any money either, not at that age. God!’ he exclaimed bitterly. ‘I wish I’d known that time we met! Or after. I would have helped him.’

‘You were watched, yourself,’ Vanimöré reminded him.

I know but there would have been some way,’ James said in frustration. ‘And now, if he’s alive, I want to make sure he’s all right. That he has money, counselling if he needs it. The thought of him on the streets—‘ He put up a hand as if to ward something off. ‘And don’t they end up on drugs, sex workers?’

‘Yes, many do, but others look after themselves and become escorts, the playthings of the wealthy. Do you think Skinner would pick up someone off the street?’

The question served to bring James back from the edge of panic that showed around his eyes.
‘I don’t know.’ Then, more consideringly, ‘Perhaps not. “Only the best for Ollie Skinner”.’ He parodied the man’s voice precisely and with loathing. ‘He always said that. But we’re talking about a man who abused children! How can we know what he might do?’

‘That abuse ring favours the untouched.’ Vanimöré did not try to keep the distaste from his tone. ‘After they have been used, they are disposed of. Blaise is probably the only survivor. So, no, I do not imagine Skinner picked him up off a street corner. More than likely another wealthy man or woman passed his name on as someone Skinner would like.’ It was no kind of reassurance, but there was none Vanimöré could give.

James was staring at him as if he could strain what meagre comfort there was out of the air. There was not much.

‘You care a great deal,’ Vanimöré remarked. ‘Yet you only met him once. What drew you to him? Did he seem burdened, lonely?’

‘No, not then.’ His eyes strayed into a time and place that warmed them, a memory that was light. Tropical seas glinted and sighed. ‘He was with a friend. Bentley. Typical of Worth to palm his kid off on someone for the summer vacation I thought, but it was probably the best thing for him. No, he was enjoying himself, I’m sure.’ A smile blossomed briefly. ‘He was confident. The next year must have been his last at Marlborough and he and Bentley were talking of going to university.’ He paused.’And that’s something I don’t understand. He was raped, abused and there was nothing of that in how he acted?’ He ended on a query.

Vanimöré said tonelessly, ‘Children and young people can sometimes forget traumatic events. It is something the brain does to spare them reliving the memory. It can be triggered later in life, however. Look it up.’

James’ eyes narrowed. ‘Okay, I believe you. Then when he vanished, it must have been triggered by something?’

‘That would seem logical, yes.’

‘Well…’ James shook his head. ‘He wasn’t like that when I met him. We were out all night once. I’m sure he and Bentley were AWOL.’ Suddenly, as if it bubbled up and took him by surprise, he laughed. ‘Nothing wild. A few drinks, a lot of talk and just being out on the ocean at night. It’s beautiful.’ He trailed off and then sighed. ‘Look, it was easy to talk to him, even though I didn’t tell him who I was. We were both the only children of very rich fathers. Maybe that was it. But as I told you in Italy, I never gave him my last name. I’m Callaghan’s son. You don't think he’ll want to know me?’ he questioned. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised and I wouldn't blame him either. But I still want to help him.’

‘Very well,’ Vanimöré said mildly. ‘But that is for the future. Now, listen to me: Skinner is supposed to come to a meeting tomorrow. The Met Police will be there to arrest him. What will you do?’

James blinked. ‘Ah…when he’s late, I’ll have my secretary call him. If the police are there, I’m assuming they’ll make their own inquiries? They’ll go to Henley.’

‘Yes, and if you are going to fall apart in front of the police, I need to know now.’

‘I am. Not.’ James said very distinctly. The angry glitter returned.

Vanimöré was accustomed to the aftermath of battle and the reaction of young warriors after their first blooding. A rather less civilised world, and in many ways simpler. He reflected briefly that the persona of Lucien Steele was as thin as the trace of paint on an ancient statue. Had James been one of his youthful warriors he would have known exactly how to behave and he missed being completely and wholly himself. The thought of returning to what he had once known for a day, a moment even, thrilled him. And he would; he had vowed to aid the Exiles. If he came across himself upon Middle-earth he would, of course, have to kill the other. It would be too confusing.

Aware that James was watching him, he said calmly, ‘Tell me about it.’

‘I…’ James sat down. He recounted finding the letter and leaving the hotel.
‘I remembered his garden. We’d been there during Henley week. There was a little footbridge over a small inlet of the river. I went there and I rang him. Yes, I used a burner.’ His mouth twisted. ‘He’d been drinking I think and smelled of weed.’

‘Good, then that should be found in the police search. Was he known to use drugs?’

‘I have no idea. Others who worked with him might.’ Then James smacked a hand down on the arm of the chair. ‘His phone!’

‘They can access its GPS, yes, if they find it. I doubt they will. And I think Skinner would have gone to great effort to make sure no-one could trace any of his calls. Go on.’

‘I talked to him, reminded him that he once said I looked like someone he knew, and said that person might be a security risk.’ He grimaced at his own duplicity. ‘Then he began to talk about what he’d done to Blaise…gloating about it!’ His eyes fixed on memory, hard, bright, pitiless. ‘I did some boxing at Cambridge. Not so much now, a punch bag in the gym. I kept hitting him. The handrail broke and he went in.’ He stopped and then went on slowly, ‘I thought I saw fire…those eyes that I had seen in dreams. But I was awake. And don’t say it was my imagination,’ he warned. ‘I knew exactly what I was doing. There was no…no red mist. I wasn’t berserk.’ His chin went up coldly in a challenge Vanimöré himself might have offered.

Cold blood then. Cold iron, some called it. The most useful to Sauron.

‘I believe you.’ Vanimöré regarded him. It would, in some ways, be simpler to reveal everything, but it would also be impetuous and possibly dangerous. Sauron and Joanna had made their first move toward James and would make another very soon. Better, perhaps, to wait and see. In dealing with Sauron, impulse could be fatal.

‘Stay here tonight,’ he said. ‘We'll need to do a security check of the Townhouse anyhow. I’ll drive you back there tomorrow to change for the meeting.’

‘Is that all?’ James exclaimed.

‘No, but I require you to be patient.’

He watched the explosion build and held the furious gaze with his own. James, after a stormy moment, dropped his eyes.

Vanimöré came to his feet. ‘Try to sleep. If you cannot, then think calmly about the future and what you want from it. We will try,’ he ended with a smile. ‘To see it done.’

He moved to the door. James said, more quietly, but with a firmness Vanimöré could only admire,
‘I’m not going to forget about what I saw, Mr. Steele.’

‘I would hope not.’

‘I don’t…believe in the paranormal. I was raised an atheist and by one. At least he always said he was, but that nonsense about angelic names…’ he shook his head. ‘But I do know there are some things that are…inexplicable. What I saw tonight I can’t explain.’

Vanimöré turned. ‘Nothing is inexplicable.’

‘But you’re not going to explain it,’ James stated flatly.

‘Not yet. But I will.’

‘If I stay around? If I’m…part of this?’

‘I am not putting a gun to your head,’ Vanimöré said. ‘It is safer for you to be a part of this until matters are resolved but you can walk out now if you wish. I wouldn't advise it.’

James’ eyes shifted past him to the door and back.
‘I can’t walk away from this.’ His voice was tight. ‘I don't even want to, not now.’ He ran his hands frustratedly through still-damp hair. ‘I want to see these bastards brought to justice. Skinner was just one of them. My father’s dead and Worth but there are more. I want them found.’ He bit the word. He looked, for a heartbeat, astonishingly like Sauron issuing a command.

‘Even if the department gave you a new identity, Joanna and her father would never cease looking for you,’ Vanimöré said matter-of-factly. ‘So, no, walking away would solve nothing. And believe me, I wish to see these people brought down, too.’

James gave a slow nod and closed his eyes. The adrenal flood and aftermath were ebbing away into weariness. Despite everything he would sleep soon.
‘All right,’ he said, like a pact or a promise. ‘Anyhow, I think the department will be able to help me find Blaise.’ A taut smile came and went. ‘So it’s pure self interest, I’m afraid.’

‘That we can work with but consider one thing.’

‘What?’ His eyes opened.

‘It is you who is in the spotlight. If Blaise lives, I am sure you would not wish him to draw their attention.’ He let that hang in the air, then closed the bedroom door quietly behind him .

Chapter Text

~ ‘Eru.’ Fëanor stared into the Mirror. Eru’s mouth, a lush curve that yet held no weakness, folded into a deeper smile, lips closed, like a man hiding a secret. There was an ambiguity moulded into the cast of his features, a touch of the ‘other’. Fëanor thought of Edenel changed in Utumno to something not wholly Elven any more, of Vanimöré, of the Valar. Of Melkor.
He sought Eru’s eyes but there was no end to them, no dark fire as there was in Vanimöré’s with a steel door slammed at the back. They were like glass and far, far down, a mirror reflected everything back.

Secrets.

Fëanor had more than his share of curiosity. Faced by this elusive being that yet seemed familiar he did not hesitate.
‘Thou art a destroyer, so Vanimöré said.’

‘All Creators are destroyers, Fëanor.’

‘And do all Creators obfuscate their answers?’

Eru threw back his head with a ringing laugh. Stars streamed through his silver hair.
‘Of course they do, because the questions are too simplistic. Words are clumsy and cannot carry the weight of the question. What need do we have of questions on the Outside? Or of speech.’ His head lowered. The laughter faded like mist and now he looked utterly remote, incalculable as even the Valar on their high thrones upon Taniquetil were not. For the first time it was born upon Fëanor that this being was unimaginably ancient and unhuman. He was, perhaps, the progenitor of those others, of all that was unknown…and unknowable.

‘Then I will ask,’ Fëanor enunciated distinctly. ‘Why thou didst destroy.’

‘From too great a love…become too great a hate. Both emotions are dangerous because they are extreme.’

‘And dost thou regret it?’

‘Yes,’ Eru replied without hesitation. ‘I have had a great deal of time to regret it. But it also took me a long time to reach a place of regret. I do not speak of centuries or millennia, but billions of years.’

Fëanor thought he should close the Mirror case, walk away, place Eru among his enemies…were it not for the echoes in his voice or —not even that, something more ephemeral. Yet it was there to be heard and felt: an unhealed wound, a hurt beyond all measure. He had seen the same kind of pain in Vanimöré, never in the curated faces of the Valar and not in Melkor. But there was another thing there. Eru, he thought, was not quite sane.

It was a risk.

He watched Eru’s face, mapped it searching for the self, for truth or lies or purpose.

‘Eventually, thy birthright was returned to thee. I was there. I saw it.’ He regarded Fëanor with eyes, unblinking, fathomless. ‘But Vanimöré was right in that no-one should take the mantle of godhood without first living.’

Fëanor’s skin burned. His heart felt like an immense coal in his chest.
‘And while we live and learn or die learning our enemies do as they will and mock us,’ he spat, hating the feeling of powerlessness. It was a tunic that cramped, ill-fitting, not made for him. ‘They are stronger than we.’

‘But thine allies are stronger than they,’ Eru told him.

‘Art thou an ally? Vanimöré has aided us,’ Fëanor returned. ‘Hast thou?’ Thus far what Eru had said mirrored Vanimöré’s words. But — ‘Regret is not enough.’

‘Is it not? What else is there? I cannot go back. The dust of the Ancient universe and all its memories built the foundations of the universe-that-was. That too, is gone, but lives on in the new.’ Eru reached out a hand. ‘I will tell thee something. Thou may count it as aid mayhap.’ He looked a little quizzical, a little rueful (a strange expression on that inhuman face) as if expecting a refusal. ‘Or perhaps thou wilt curse me for it.’

It might have been that which decided it. Not that there would have been much of a mental struggle. Fëanor knew well the iron-cold taste of fear; it was there every moment he drew breath when he thought of what the Valar and Melkor might do to his sons, to Fingolfin, to his people. But that fear was not for himself.
With a hard smile of challenge, he reached out — through the Mirror.

This time, he knew what to expect. That explosive and strange moment of slippage, of familiar surroundings bursting open to something alien.

First, the scents. Some of them were vaguely familiar from his brief time with Vanimöré — that background acrid smell he had noted and made him think of the runoff from Aulë’s forges, or his own in Formenos. This room was smaller, nothing like the spacious, silk draped elegance of the chamber he had visited with its tall windows and high ceiling. In comparison, it was almost bare. His eyes tracked over it. Pale walls, a bed, bookshelves, a chair, a settle, a table, though the construction of all these things was subtly different to what he knew. Other things, he could put no name to.

All was neat, ordered and without any personality, as if the one who lived there had not troubled to make it their own, or was rarely there. Only one glowing picture on the wall gave colour to the room. He glanced at it, but then his attention was drawn to a window that let in mellow light. Not Tree Light. This was the Sun, the Daystar of Endor. He moved toward it, only for a touch on his arm to halt him.

‘Eru.’ Except it was not. And was. Silvery curls haloed a lovely, attenuated face of high cheekbones, full mouth and spacious eyes. The eyes were the same, clear as cut quartz under a rill of fawn-coloured lashes. This Fëanor saw for a moment before he dismissed the vision and the reality of Eru burned through.

‘My name is Nael.’ The light, pretty voice was younger and brought him back into full focus. ‘Eru cannot enter this world in his power, Fëanor.’

So Vanimöré had said. Fëanor, riding the deep thrill of World-walking almost smiled. Nael laughed.
‘One forgets, living among humankind, how tall the Quendi are. And how very brightly they shine.’

‘Humankind?’ repeated Fëanor.

‘Humankind. Like and unlike the Elves. They are short-lived, growing to adulthood and then ageing and dying within the span of one hundred years.’ Eru (or Nael) spread his long, elegant hands. ‘They are…interesting. They can be as cruel as Melkor or kind as a beneficent spring. In your world, your universe, there are very few, far in the East, but they will grow and spread. Here—‘

‘Melkor. Yes.’ Fëanor stepped across the small room toward the window. Slats of stiffened material barred the glass vertically. Through them was a neat garden and beyond, green fields, trees. ‘Let us speak of him. Part of thee once, and part of Vanimöré, too.’ He pushed at one of the barriers with his hand and then looked to see how to draw it aside. ‘Yes?’ he prompted. Nael watched him with a lurking smile.

‘These are blinds, not curtains. They can be pulled back.’ He directed Fëanor’s attention to a slim rod hanging from the top. ‘Push or twist. Yes. Yes, that is true.’

Interestedly, Fëanor experimented, opening and closing the material, then skimming the ‘blinds’ fully open on their track. He made mental notes. But the material would need to be much darker to shut out the Tree Light.

‘And dost thou want him back?’ he turned fully to Nael. ‘As part of thee?’

‘Eru did, once.’

‘Who exactly am I speaking to,’ Fëanor demanded, in no mood for further riddles.

‘To Nael. To Eru. To both. He has to leave the greater part of his power on the Outside,’ Nael reminded him patiently. ‘Even Vanimöré is not wholly himself but he is always and only Vanimöré. He is accustomed to living in the world. And so,’ he turned and took a few steps to a bookcase, drawing out a volume. ‘The part of me that is here has developed its own ‘self’ if you want to call it that. Nael has thoughts that Eru would not have although at times—.’ He held the book between his hands and a frown etched his forehead. ‘There is more Eru than Nael. If the need or whim arises.’

‘And how does it feel?’ Fëanor snapped ‘As if thou shouldst be like he is — always? What is it like to know thou canst have greater power and for it to be taken away?’

Nael was in no way discomposed. ‘I am accustomed to it, and I know what I am — I think I know. You never were, in the old universe. You did not remember but you knew that you, your people were greater, more glorious than they had imagined!’ Emotion bloomed his cheeks into colour and his eyes shone with some ancient light recalled to this mild, quiet little room. ‘But…’ He stopped, began again more calmly. ‘Do you know what being an Overmind never teaches one?’

Because it was so close to what he had been thinking, Fëanor answered immediately. ‘Fear.’ He knew how it was to believe he could move the stars, to feel invulnerable.

‘Yes. Not true fear, only the fear of a selfish child that may not get what it wants.’

‘Like the Valar, then.’

‘And like Eru in the Ancient Universe. Yes. Those with Power should live without it to see what it is like.’

‘As we do, yes,’ Fëanor said impatiently. ‘We were gods and our power was taken from us.’

‘Not all the way,’ Nael whispered. ‘He could not do that. The Elves are half-way between Mortals and Gods. And are not the Silmarils the work of a god?’

‘They are the work of my mind.’ He said it without arrogance, as a fact.

‘Because you created them before. They are of you, always. And the Valar covet them. And Melkor.’ Nael bit his lip. ‘Like children who see a shiny new toy and want it more than anything. But what they truly want is not the Jewels, but that which lives within thee. You are the Fire.’

Fëanor inhaled through his nose. ‘I am not theirs.’

‘That does not stop them desiring. They believe that they can take what they wish.’ Nael gestured to the small settle. ‘Please sit. No time will pass in Valinor, if that is what you are concerned about. Eru owes thee a tale. Or part of one.’

‘So thou wilt tell me what Vanimöré will not?’ Fëanor swept a look from head to heels. ‘Why do I find that suspicious?’

Nael’s troubled expression melted into a shockingly lovely smile. ‘Not everything,’ he said. ‘Not yet. Vanimöré desires you to learn does he not? Perhaps he wagers on the fact that you will discover for yourself — one way or another. And there are things he cannot tell you or will not. His honour would not permit him to speak for Eru and Eru cannot truly speak for Vanimöré. And then, there are things he has forgotten that he knows.’ Then the smile dropped away like a discarded cloak. ‘Or rather that he wills himself not to remember. I think that is true for both of them.’

Those words struck Fëanor oddly. He stared at Nael wishing he could peel back all the veils that shrouded him — and Eru.
‘Vanimöré says Eru is not an enemy,‘ he stated. ‘And it cost him something to do that.’

‘Noble of him.’ There was no mockery in the reply. ‘Eru is not an enemy, not as you would call it. Eru loved Vanimöré, and used him and deceived him. For that there is no forgiveness. Eru broke his heart. Do you know Vanimöré — or only what he shows himself to be?’

With an incisive inward glance, Fëanor said, ‘My soul knows him. I knew him in that other place, in the universe that is gone. And thou also, not like this…’ As if his mind had only needed to be jolted by seeing Nael, it drew out and presented to him an image of a tall and beautiful Elf, silver hair falling in a flood of light. There was a vulnerability in his face, a sweetness that Nael likewise possessed but that Eru wholly lacked. The full lips begged to be seized in a kiss that would shatter the elegant poise. It was not a personality that Fëanor was usually drawn to (though he admitted his experience was not large) but the beauty and temptation was undeniable.

‘Elgalad.’ Nael drew the name through his lips like a piece of silk. ‘We remember Elgalad. Child of Light. Son of Love. He was Vanimöré’s innocence. So he said. No-one can be that.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘I am not sure. Eru knows but I am not permitted to see. Eru once said that when a Creator imagines something it becomes real. I think he imagined Elgalad — and me, too.’

‘Explain this,’ Fëanor said peremptorily. ‘Art thou Eru in this world or not? Is Vanimöré himself or not?’

Nael closed his eyes as if in thought. ‘Vanimöré passed through blood and agony to ascend. He is so…consummately real. He is himself but…reduced, with less power.’ His hands tightened on the book. ‘In the Ancient Universe, Eru awoke on a new and untouched world and completed it to his design. Until war came there were tens of thousands of years of joy and peace. To him, it was perfect. He did not know…until the last, anything but perfection. Vanimöré knew nothing but struggle, fear, battle, pain of body and mind. Eru did not live.’

‘The Ancient Universe sounds like the Valar’s idea of Valinor,’ Fëanor observed drily.

‘They have memories of that Ancient Universe and subconsciously will to recreate it,’ Nael agreed. ‘But Arda is Marred. Not only by Melkor but by Eru, and Vanimöré too.’ He shifted on his feet almost as if looking for someone who was not there. Then his eyes, endlessly clear, came back to Fëanor. ‘Vanimöré is what he knows and remembers. Eru is what he knows. To live in…imperfection is alien to him, not so to Vanimöré. But sometimes he will place himself — or a sliver of himself upon these worlds. That was what Elgalad was. And I am. An avatar, almost or a conduit, or a puppet, even. I do not know what happens to us. Maybe we return to him, or simply cease.’

Fëanor said roughly, ‘Thou art real enough if thou hast thoughts Eru does not.’ Nael, arrested, tilted his head. ‘If Eru would create puppets of himself then discard them, he is no better than the Valar!’ In an abrupt decision, he sat down. All knowledge is worth having. The peculiar material depressed softly under him so that he shifted. Nael went to a closed door flush with the wall.
‘Let me offer you some refreshment,’ he said. ‘And thank you.’ Quickly, he went out.

Fëanor, heart still beating high and fast, leaned back, his eyes passing over everything in the room. Strange, alien things, ornaments or somewhat more?
And something else was here. Restless, he rose again and went to the widow. The air that blew it held an odd tang among the more familiar scents of grass, trees, a whisper of the sea and there was a background noise…The sky on the horizon was grey as pewter. A storm was coming.

But that which he sought was neither smell nor sound. Like the lingering note of a harp that found an echoing resonance in his soul. He quested like Celegorm’s great Huan with all his senses. He knew this. He knew…Fire, music…

The swing of the door broke his concentration as Nael returned. Again the dissonance between how he presented himself and what was. Eru shimmered behind him like a vision seen through water. But he is himself, too.

‘How is it done?’ he asked. ‘This changing?’ He swept a hand up and down.

‘Ah, that.’ Nael set down a tray bearing a slim bottle and two fluted glasses. ‘It is called ‘glamour’; the old meaning of the word. The Valar do it, you must have realised they are not truly as they appear? One imagines what one wishes others to see; if the mind is strong enough then the observer does see that. It becomes real to them though great shock or heightened emotion might allow them to glimpse the truth for a moment. There are many factors.There are few powers in this world Fëanor, and fewer Elves. Those who remain needs must disguise themselves in this way. You would be far too noticeable; far too beautiful to walk among them looking like that. I, on the other hand, am Nael but your sight is powerful enough to discern Eru, my Maker.’ He eased the cork from the bottle and poured two glasses of clear gold liquid that bubbled.
‘Champagne,’ he smiled. ‘It is only grown and produced in one place in this world.’

Fëanor sipped. The taste was dry and light and the bubbles burst across his tongue. ‘Most pleasant,’ he approved. ‘Why are there so few Elves? And what is that smell, that sound always in the background? What—‘

Nael laughed. ‘It would take many years to give all the answers and they are not a priority.’ He picked up the discarded book. ‘First: This is not your world. No reality is the same. The differences may be marginal or vast.’ Fëanor nodded impatiently. Vanimöré had shown him and he, in his anger, had said some things could never happen in any universe.

‘Such certainty,’ Nael murmured and there was sadness in the words. ‘Nevertheless. In this world, the time of the Elves has long passed into myth. This book is supposed to be fantasy. And not everything in it is the truth; it has a certain bias against you and your sons. But the events, the things that happened, those are true, in this world. They, or a similar version, are true in many.’

Fëanor glared over the wineglass and took the proffered book. The cover was stamped with a circular sigil, a flower perhaps. The lettering above and below was quite incomprehensible.
‘If this is the aid thou wouldst offer,’ he snapped. ‘I cannot read it.’ At least not here. He should go to the Outside and discover for himself. He should have done that in the first place.

‘But I can read it to thee.’

‘I would rather learn to do so myself,’ Fëanor told him flatly. ‘How could I know if thou wert reciting the truth?’

‘I would not lie to you,’ Nael said seriously. ‘Though I might wish to.’

A mutter of thunder and the room dimmed as if a shadow of dark wings passed over the sky. Nael looked up.
‘A time of thunder,’ he said. ‘A time of storms. You bring the lightning, Fëanor.’

Fëanor threw back his head. ‘I will bring it into the hearts of my people! But if this is not my world and if none are the same, is this book of any use to me, after all? I wanted to know how to avoid what happened in the old universe.’ He rose, the book in one hand, wineglass in the other and gazed about this strange room. ‘I have feelings sometimes, glimpses. I know it was…dark.’

‘Vanimöré spun your universe — and others like it — after the destruction of the old from his blood and from grief and love. He wrought from memory.’ Nael’s eyes seemed to expand, like a cat’s. Fëanor leaned forward instinctively to see…but there was only the endless fall. For the barest instant he wanted to follow it, to find the answers that lay at the bottom of the light-well. But then some pinprick of caution stabbed at him. He jerked back.

‘In his universe, this was what he knew.’ Nael gave no sign he noticed the response or the withdrawal. ‘He gave himself no time to think. Grief…does that. The mind and heart cling to what they long for. There is such fury in the loss. And so the thing was done and his memory shapes everything. Already you march toward what is written here. Many versions of you do. Do you recollect your experiment with mirrors?’

‘Thou hast watched me?’

‘Eru knows everything.’ He paused. ‘He can choose not to see. He and Vanimöré can close themselves off if they wish. Imagine knowing everything all at once. It is natural for an Overmind but there is a sense of being…disseminated. To remain — or become — a single being, they must concentrate and gather themselves and be apart from it. Vanimöré has the Monument and Eru the Eternal Palace.’ His mouth quirked. ‘Unless one has been there it is not easy to explain.’

But Fëanor nodded. He thought he understood, as when he was on the Outside and knew all but could not cling to that knowledge, like a vivid dream that fades on waking. He had experienced many of those. Other-life dreams, he called them.
‘The mirrors,’ he said briskly, ‘Were not an experiment. When I broke the great Mirror on Tol Eressëa there was a moment when I saw Vanimöré in all the fragments. It interested me.’
Years later, he had faced a small room in his workshop entirely with mirrors. ‘It was unsettling, and fascinating.’ To see one’s own image duplicated again and again into infinity. ‘It made me consider the nature of reality.’

‘And what were your conclusions?’

‘That I did not have all the required information,’ Fëanor responded. ‘As I do not have it now,’ he ended pointedly.

‘Perhaps nothing is real,’ Nael murmured but with the flicker of an acknowledging smile. ‘Perhaps Eru and Vanimöré dream.’

‘And what happens when they wake up?’ Fëanor raised a sardonic brow though the words had ignited his mind. He laid them aside forcefully, made himself think of Valinor, Melkor, the Valar, the danger that hung over the heads of those he loved. When he had time, when matters were not so urgent he would consider that question — and so many others.

Nael too, seemed to lift himself from thought. ‘What you saw in the mirrors? There are that many versions of you, and more,’ he said. ‘All of them have your essential soul but all are different in some way. To the version of you that was here, in this world, this story,’ he gestured to the book. ‘Is the strongest, the truest, the one that has most weight and it pulls at all the others to a greater or lesser degree because this is the one Vanimöré knows and when he danced the new universes into being, this was what he held in his heart. It is this that pulls at thee. As to what could be done to avoid it: If you bowed before Manwë, kept your head lowered, offered the Silmarils for your offences against them—‘

‘What offences?’ Fëanor barked, roused from the intensity of thought, the pleasant cadences of Nael’s sweet voice. Outside there was a flash that lit the room. Nael’s eyes burned white.

‘Thou knowest the Valar are naught but our gaolers, though a pleasant enough prison it is, which is why so many accept it. But we have been forced to live by laws that contradict everything we are! Valinor is not our home.’

‘You are right.’ Nael moved to pour fresh wine. ‘A clever enough ruse was it not, to offer the quendi a refuge from the Dark? Gods do love to be worshipped. Most of them.’

A rippling roll of thunder sounded in the distance.

Fëanor swallowed a mouthful of wine. And thou? he wondered. Dost thou enjoy worship?

Nael smiled, demure as one of Varda’s maidens.
‘Neither Eru nor Vanimöré require or need it. All gods exist, but those who rely on worship wax or wane according to the beliefs and prayers and sacrifices of their worshippers. They do not cease to exist without them but merely are. They are little more than a name or memory, something written in an ancient scroll. An echo on a desert wind, a silence behind the snow.’ He put out a hand for the book and Fëanor, watching him, relinquished it. ‘Vanimöré and Eru create universes. Yes, and destroy them. Belief in them matters not at all.’

Fëanor sat down, angling his body toward Nael. ‘So without worship, the Valar would become weaker?’

‘Yes. And they bound themselves to Arda to gain mastery over it. A mistake that, but necessary for them. The time of their power is already over, Fëanor, and Manwë knows that in his heart. But it will make him more dangerous, not less.’ He bent his head, opening the book. His lashes curled like waves above the high sweep of his cheekbones. They lifted suddenly as those incomprehensible eyes flashed a look. ‘You were the catalyst, as you were and are and will be the catalyst of so many things.’

Fëanor raised the glass in an ironic salute.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Tell me.’

Nael was motionless for a heartbeat. ‘Not all, or not yet. And remember this work was pieced together long after the events by one who did worship the Valar and believed you damned.’

‘Damned?’ Fëanor’s brows flew up. Then he laughed scornfully. ‘Yes, let me be damned then! Am I not already? The Valar have already judged me!’

But Nael did not laugh with him. He said sombrely, ‘And so you are, Fireheart, and so you were. But not you alone.’

It felt like a warning, a trap closing. Fëanor bared his teeth in defiance.
‘Then tell me what this book says of me, of my other self. What is it called?’

The lightning was in the room with them even when the fierce flash of it faded into the rolling embrace of the thunder. It shone in Nael’s eyes, limned the pages of the book. Fëanor felt it like fire in the running of his blood.

Nael said, like the tolling of a silver bell under the storm, ‘The Silmarillion.’

Chapter Text

~ ‘No.’ Fëanor was on his feet. The one word rang out like a challenge to fate. It was. The room blanched with lightning.

‘This is what was,’ Nael said steadily. ‘It happened. You wanted to know the past to avoid it.’

Fëanor shook his head, but not at Nael’s words. The Fëanor so sparsely yet vividly depicted in the book was thoroughly recognisable. He had at first wanted to laugh in self-mockery. And then had not. A shadow loomed over the narrative.
And it was impossibly strange — compelling — to hear of himself in that long-destroyed universe, like seeing a broken reflection in fiery glass.

He was not that person, proud, arrogant, disdainful and yet he was, and knew that some viewed him in that light. If he were prone to blushing, he might have done so, yet the tale laid its spell upon him, beckoned him in. Listen, listen!
It was something Rúmil might have read from an old scroll or one of the bards set to song. Yet, gods, the weight of it tilted so heavily toward the Valar! They were kindly overseers who wished only to aid the Eldar. He, Fëanor, was brilliant but rebellious, suspicious, jealous.

‘I would never set the point of my sword at Fingolfin’s throat!’ he dismissed but paced the room that gave him no space to shake off his anger. ‘We might pretend enmity, as indeed we do now. But that…!’ He flung out a hand toward the book, then paused, thinking. ‘But he is jealous and possessive of his father. I was, but not to that degree.’ He looked at Nael who had laid a hand flat across the pages. ‘I wonder…it must have been the Tree Dew.’ He was reluctant to acknowledge the idea but it made sense. ‘By the time Vanimöré changed it, my childhood memories of my mother were dim anyhow. I was very young when she died. I miss her of course, still!’ Or the idea of her. It was not something he wanted to contemplate for there was no answer to it and it led into a thorny thicket of murder: that he, as a growing baby in her womb, had taken all her strength. ‘With him things went far deeper.’ Into the paranoia that he fought himself at times. And Melkor had fed it, going among the Noldor then as now, murmuring poison into their innocent and open ears.

Of the coming of Mortals it spoke too but Fëanor dismissed the rumours (spread by Melkor) that the quendi would be defrauded of their inheritance of Middle-earth by these Secondborn of Eru. It seemed unlikely and intended only to cause dissension. He would meet with these Mortals himself in time.

‘As to the rest…’

The estrangement between him and Nerdanel was no surprise. The twins' pregnancy had worn her alarmingly and after, though she recovered, the desire had faded. But— “Loving the Silmarils with a greedy love, forgetting that the light within them was not his own!’ His teeth snapped on the quote. ‘It is mine and the Valar know it! Neither have I yet spoken words of rebellion against them though the wording is interesting. How does wishing to depart from Valinor make me a rebel unless the Valar are indeed tyrants?’

‘They would not like to be seen as that,’ Nael said. ‘It would uncover them before all, and more than anything they wish the Elves to be their servants and remain in Aman.’

Fëanor tossed his head in agreement. The storm still rumbled overhead; rain blurred the window in shining silver. The air that gusted in smelled cleansed and sweet.

‘But to summon me to the Mahanaxar!’ And they would of course. ‘Even if I whispered in a dream they would pull me up before them.’

He had been warned that the Valar would use any excuse to kill him but that they would never do so publicly. To banish him seemed to be merely pushing the problem away for a while. And Finwë unkinging himself to go with Fëanor, leaving Fingolfin to wear the crown of the Noldor—thereby proving all Fëanor’s suspicions.

‘I cannot think of any circumstance whereby Finwë would accompany me into so-called exile.’

‘Think like him, not like you.’ Nael’s voice jerked him from thought.

‘But I was him.’

‘In a different universe.’

‘So this was my intemperate youth?’ His brows flew up.

‘It was, yes.’ Nael came to his feet lithe and light. ‘Everything that happened — everything! — proceeded from your creation of the Silmarils. Listen.’

Fëanor drank the bubbling wine as Nael, serious and sonorous, read on. The words held him like a spell. When Fingolfin had promised to release him (“I will release my brother.”) from his exile. It sounded terrible and poignant from his own memories of passion. He could imagine those star-blue eyes on him as Fingolfin pronounced it, proud and controlled and princely. No. More. Kingly. For twelve years he had acted as King of the Noldor.

Nael told how Melkor vanished until one day he came to Formenos and pled friendship. And Fëanor shut the doors in his face. “Get thee gone from my gates, thou jail-crow of Mandos!” A brief gasp of laughter because yes, he would say those words. He had already faced the Dark God at his gates and would again. But the thought banished his amusement.

‘Do not underestimate Melkor,’ Nael warned him. ‘In Aman, he cloaked himself and anyhow the Eldar were accustomed to seeing the Valar. His imprisonment made him mad but cunning. He waited. When he knew he could use the Eldar, when you turned him away, he cast off all pretence.’

There was a weight building in Fëanor’s chest. The room seemed very dark.
‘Go on,’ he commanded. ‘Tell me.’

And so Nael bent his head again and read of Oromë and Tulkas hunting Melkor who had vanished, it seemed, from the land of Aman. In secrecy he went far to the south to the lightless, unexplored region of dark Avathar, far beyond the Tree Light.

‘Not unexplored,’ Fëanor refuted. ‘I journeyed there, although I admit I did not linger.’
The memories of the raw eastern flanks of the Pelori, dank and grey, towering into mists where unseen water chuckled like a mad god and the shadows massed still disturbed him. And those long endless shores where the sea seemed to mourn stretching for league upon league. How desolate was Aman without the Tree Light, grey-on-grey; a land of ash and stone. Like a world before the light — or after all light had been extinguished.

‘There,’ Nael recited. ‘Ungoliant had made her abode.’

Ungoliant. It was said that the Eldar did not know where she had come from or what she was, but Nael said that she was the Nothingness of the Outside, a thing of emptiness that craved for Light.

‘Unlight,’ Nael said. ‘Not darkness which coexists with light. Unlight. Even the Valar’s eyes cannot pierce it.’

She was a spider in shape but immense beyond imagining. Her massive body was studded with eyes to drink in what light passed into the dim south and the pillar-like legs spiked with hair like sword-thorns. In a dark ravine, Melkor found her and plotted with her.

There came the time of the Festival of the First Fruits and Manwë had declared a great feast, gathering the Vanyar and Noldor to Taniquetil. Here, the book said, he willed them to put aside their griefs and the lies that lay between them. Fëanor narrowed his eyes but maybe that was true enough. If peace was wrought there was less likelihood of rebellion.

But Fëanor came alone to this gathering; his sons and Finwë remained in Formenos. And Fëanor did not choose to dignify the occasion with finery nor did he wear the Silmarils. But he was reconciled with Fingolfin before the throne of Manwë. ”Thou shalt lead and I will follow,” Fingolfin declared. Fëanor smiled at those words, but it slipped away as they echoed and re-echoed in his mind. I remember… Had he truly not seen Fingolfin for twelve years? And what of Maedhros and Fingon who, if not lovers, were still close.

And it was then Melkor came with Ungoliant, covered by a cloud of Unlight and speared Laurelin and Telperion deep, so that their sap gushed forth and Ungoliant, craving, drank it. Darkness descended on all Valinor. And in that gloom Melkor and Ungoliant vanished.

Yavannah stood upon the mound of Ezellohar and the Trees were dead, and she said she might not recreate them again, that their light lived now only in the Silmarils of Fëanor. But if she might have their light she could bring back life to the Trees.

‘Ah,’ Fëanor said grimly. ‘Clever. They did know, then, that my own soul was within the Silmarils and if I unlocked them — broke them — my soul would break and I would die. Or so they hoped! So I would end my own life and they would not need to dirty their hands.’

‘Knew or guessed,’ Nael nodded. ‘The result would be the same.’

‘I would not die. But perhaps he would have, first to be slain — as he said — in all Aman.’

‘Not the first,’ Nael said strangely. ‘So Námo spoke.’

‘My mother?’ Fëanor puzzled. ‘But she faded. She was not slain.’

‘Not Míriel.’

Not Míriel but Finwë who was in Formenos when Melkor came with Ungoliant and in that darkness Melkor slew Finwë at the gates and broke open the vaults. There was great treasure in Formenos, artefacts of beauty that Fëanor and his sons and great smiths had crafted; raw metals and gems. They were all seized but Melkor’s aim was the Silmarils.

Messengers came while Fëanor still brooded in anger and doubt and at the news, he came to his feet and cursed Melkor naming him Morgoth the Black Foe of the World. And then he sped into the dark, stunned by grief for he loved his father beyond measure.

Nael broke off as Fëanor as if in a reenactment of the tale, lifted up his hand and cursed. He bowed his head and then flung it up, and the room looked white in his sight.

‘Gods,’ he cried. ‘Not my sons? Not my sons too?’ He broke out of the frozen cage of horror and took one stride toward the door as if he could walk out of it and back into Valinor. It was instinctual and he swung back, searching for the Mirror shard.

‘No,!’ The cry was Nael’s, anxious to reassure. ‘No, your sons were unharmed.’ He drew the shard from a pocket in his odd-looking breeches. ‘I don’t like to leave it laying around — understandably.’ He laid a hand on Fëanor’s arm. ‘Please. Your eyes…Listen, you cannot change what happened.’

Fëanor stared. He seemed to stand within the storm. He gulped in charged air, trying to think. A tale. Yes, one must not get confused. But the blood pounded in his veins. He pressed his fingers to his eyes.

‘Finwë would not unking himself for me.’ He attempted to speak levelly. ‘Gods! He values what he is above everything! But I would not see him dead.’

‘He was your father once.’ Nael’s surprisingly strong grip urged him back to the settle, to sit and drink the wine. ‘And he does love you, Fëanor and all his sons. Do you not see that he feels guilt that he led his people into a trap…and too, that he walked away from his brother?’

‘Do not ask me to feel pity for him!’ Fëanor snarled. ‘I have heard all this before. I understand that he believed he had a duty to his people but he was not the only one who could have led them. I could never have left my brother!’ He would die before he did such a thing.

‘You do not yet know what you might do in such extremes,’ Nael offered quietly. ‘Or rather, you have not remembered.’ He leaned forward, capturing Fëanor’s eyes with his own so that the rage poured into their glassy infinity. ‘The mind is very complicated. Sometimes it will protect you from truths that might harm you.’

‘Harm was done!’ Fëanor caught Nael by the neck of his shirt and dragged him forward. ‘Mouthpiece of Eru or whatever thou art, who loved us then hated us and cursed us to be less than we were! Would Vanimöré do that? Why should I even trust that what thou art telling me is the truth?’

‘You underestimate Vanimöré if you think he would not kill those he loves.’ Nael did not struggle. ‘Or overestimate him. His life was a crucible and he was forged and refined upon it. Both he and Eru are driven by stressors you have not yet known. But you will. You will.’ His eyes pierced like an awl. ‘Everything you want to know is within you, Fëanor, Spirit of Fire. Even the name…!’ He laid a hand against Fëanor’s cheek. ‘The Flame burns through all restraints, even those of the mind. I tell the truth and you will remember.’

Fëanor breathed in, drew the lightning though his mouth. He tasted it on his tongue. Outside, the storm grumbled itself into nothing. The rain’s music faded.

‘I must stop this,’ he said, releasing Nael and standing up. Glancing down at the book he saw there was much yet to read. The thought gave him no comfort. The pages seemed to hold a greater terror within them. Opening them would be akin to releasing some unknown but dreadful monster. Then he shook his head to throw off the morbid fancy. He knew what he had to do now. And he could always return.

‘The Mirror.’ He held out his hand.

‘Not yet! You have learned too much and not enough!’ Nael’s concern pressed through Eru’s cooler rebuke like heat so that for a moment their two voices were distinctive. He caught Fëanor’s wrist and continued intensely, ‘I do not know if it will make any difference. None! But to know some of it and not all would be more dangerous.’

Fëanor swallowed the fear that sat under his tongue like a stone.
‘Very well,’ he said tightly. ‘Tell me.’

He did sit and this time did not interrupt. He stared at the book without seeing as Nael’s words, breath by breath, released the monster within it. His mind recoiled but something within lifted its head in recognition. There were no questions. This was the truth. The Oath shattered the stone in his mouth; he found himself speaking the words aloud as Nael gazed at him, as the blood thundered in burning torrents under his skin.

The Oath. The Exile. The Kinslaying at Alqualondë and the Doom of the Noldor. Mandos’ curse.

‘Tears unnumbered shall ye shed…’

The tale did not falter, it swept on. The ship burning so that Fingolfin’s host was abandoned in cold Araman. The orc-host and the ten day Battle of Dagor-nuin-Giliath where the Fëanorions had slaughtered the enemy and driven them from their siege of the Elves of the Falas. But Fëanor, fey with wrath, had pursued them north to Morgoth’s mighty fortress of Angband. He had drawn far ahead of his sons and warriors and was alone when Morgoth sent out his balrogs. Fire demons they were, princes of his Iron Hells, wielding greatswords and carrying whips of flame.

Long Fëanor fought them alone, wounded and burnt until his sons came and drove them off. But he was dying. And so he died, telling his sons to hold to the Oath, and his body was consumed by flame.

The storm had returned, that or another one. Fëanor barely heard it. He thought, I remember. Briefly, in the lightning flashes, he felt the agony of those wounds and the rising up of his spirit that would no longer be contained in a failing form. The last sight was the anguish on his sons faces, then there was only light, searing flame…a rebirth of fire…Then, before he could control it, become one with it, an inexorable and brutal pull on his soul that hurled him into the lightness nothing of the Void.

Nael had ceased to read but Fëanor saw, like the bloody trail of a wounded beast, how his sons went on, trying to fulfil his twice-damned Oath and failing and dying…

‘It shall not be!’ The house shook with his passion. Nael caught him and cried his name. A dew of sweat was on his brow, the bones of his face pushed hard against the fine skin.

‘Fëanor! The storm. It’s you.’ His jaw set. The cords of his neck stood out. He arched back. ‘Eru calms the storm through me but it is too much!’

With a snapped curse, Fëanor felt the tumult, his emotions. Tendrils of light danced under his hands as he gripped Nael’s sinewy arms and called it back into himself. His heart swelled; he felt it as a glowing orb, a jewel in a furnace. He wrestled with the denial and fury not to control it but to contain it. Why he was causing this he did not know and at the moment, did not care. The thunder quietened like a beast rolling to sleep. It was within.

Nael sagged. Fëanor caught him, holding him up. His body blazed with heat.

‘Thank you.’ Nael lowered himself onto the settle. Fëanor poured wine and held the glass as he drank. Damp curls clustered over his forehead.

‘Eru should calm the storm himself, not use thee as a conduit,’ he said fiercely.

‘I heard something once…it said that being touched by the demon was like being touched by the back hand of God.’* His mouth moved in something not quite a smile, wry and wise. ‘Eru is not a demon — though some might argue that — but it can feel the same way.’ His fingers closer around Fëanor’s hand. ‘Being touched by any power leaves its mark and that mark can be seen by those who have eyes. I am not the only one. Your touch too, is upon me.’ Like a vise, his hand closed. His brows drew down in stress. ‘This world is too porous,’ he whispered. ‘We should have realised…You are more here. I do not know why. You have to go now Fëanor, and prevent what happened from happening again.’

‘I intend to,’ he said ominously.

‘It was always about the Silmarils and never about the Silmarils.’ Nael raised his head and kissed Fëanor’s cheek, a light touch like a moth’s wing. ‘It was about you. The living Silmaril. You swore that oath to reclaim parts of your soul out of grief and rage but also because Melkor and the Valar had been pecking at your mind like a gor-crow at a carcass when it was vulnerable.’ He moved and cupped Fëanor’s face. ‘And if you swear it will be twisted again as it was before. It will never release you or your sons. It will claim you all, and Fingolfin and his children and Finarfin’s and any who are bound to you or even walk into its shadow.’

Fëanor’s throat was painful as he swallowed. Never.

‘All your sons.’ Nael reiterated and his eyes glanced light like mirrors. ‘Only Maglor who wandered forever…’ He hesitated. ‘He was… lost.’

Oh gods. Fëanor felt the storm strain against its leashes. No.
‘I will do anything I have to.’ He felt over-full as if he might shatter, or become flame as that other Fëanor had at his death.

And if Námo had not captured my soul — oh yes, I recognised that touch! — I would have become what I truly am.

‘The Mirror,’ he said.

Nael proffered it. Fëanor propped it on one of the shelves with a frown. ‘Where didst thou find this?’

‘There are shards on every world, in every reality.’ Nael followed him.

‘Thou hast said the past is done. But Vanimöré spoke of something called retrocausality. When Fingolfin and I watched Edenel in Utumno, his rape.’ The undying disgust and fury brought out the word like a shard. ‘And how he changed. Vanimöré’s exact words were, “‘Events in the present can affect events in the past. It has happened before, that I know of. It was necessary for thee to reach out to Élernil. And so thou didst. Just now.” Well?’

‘Yes,’ Nael agreed slowly. ‘But even the gods would use that with caution.’

Fëanor turned and smiled challengingly. ‘Would they indeed?’

‘You will always be the exception.’ Nael’s mouth turned up. ‘But it had to happen because it had already happened.’

‘I must think on it,’ Fëanor said briskly. ‘A paradox is always fascinating.’ And so he would. But there were more important matters.

‘I wish you all luck,’ Nael said and Fëanor regarded him, from his feet to the crown of silver-light curls and fastened on the unearthly eyes.

‘Luck?’ he repeated. ‘I make my own.’ He nodded toward the book. ‘There is so much more and none of it good. What of Fingolfin?’

‘He followed thee; lead his people across the Helcaraxë.’

‘Across the Ice?’ Fëanor was appalled. No-one would make that journey save through desperation. But with Fingolfin it would be sheer steel willpower that clove a path.

‘But you were already dead before he reached Middle-earth.’

Fëanor closed his eyes. He laid a hand over his chest to contain the storm that seethed there.
‘And what happened to him?’

Nael’s breath came and went unevenly. ‘He challenged Morgoth to single combat. And died.’

The sound that erupted from Fëanor’s lips was agonised, scorching his throat. He bent over himself. ‘No, no.’ And when he straightened he saw the fire in his eyes reflected in Nael’s.
‘I will not permit it! When we meet the Dark God we will stand side by side!’ He caught Nael’s face and bestowed a kiss like a blow. ‘But I will take thy wish of luck and make it true.’

He swung back to the Mirror shard. The surface shimmered then spidered into white cracks. For a moment he thought it would break and leave him stranded here. He flung a hissed command at it, he knew not what, and thrust first his fingers then his wrist through. It opened to him.

This was not the same, the odd slide and break into another world.

This was…

Within the Mirrors…

Those splintering lines as when fine porcelain is struck…

He saw himself, a dozen, hundreds of himself, more and more, and they were not reflections but moved independently of him. They passed through and then were gone.

There are that many versions of you, and more, Nael had said.

Fëanor was within the Mirror, observing, while they moved on, oblivious. He walked in a prism somewhere outside Time itself. Outside universes and worlds.

With a shadow-flash one of the Mirrors opened and shut. This Fëanor was almost close enough to touch, the mane of his hair swinging. He recognised that preoccupied frown, the intent of his swift stride and something in the eyes that compelled him to reach out. The long blackness of the hair passed through his fingers.

At the contact, Fëanor’s head turned, so that for a moment, their eyes locked and both turned toward one another before their momentum carried them on. And then the Mirror spat Fëanor out.

He stumbled hard and unexpectedly to his knees. He was not as he had been, sitting at his desk. This was…not his study. The furniture was placed differently. He rose, picking up the Mirror and stared at the case.

This is not the same Mirror.

The design of the case, whilst he recognised the artwork, was not, down to the finest and most minute intaglio, what he had fashioned.

This was not…

This is not where I came from.

This is not my world.

~ ‘Like the back hand of God,’ Nael murmured, ‘Or the kiss of one…There is no difference. It marks us.’ His lips burned. He picked up the Mirror shard and spoke to the face he saw there.
‘It is done.’

‘Yes. And it may work. This one might have avoided the Doom but his counterpart would not have. They may have gone exactly where they need to go.’ The smile was hard, fierce.

‘It will be a shock,’ Nael offered.

‘Undoubtedly! Both of them are intelligent enough to weather it. This one is at least forewarned.’ A glittering head-toss like a war-stallion who smells battle.

‘And if he desires to speak to me again?’

‘Then let him.’

‘Vanimöré may tell him he should leave.’

‘He may, but I doubt it. He will see the possibilities. His reaction,’ the Power smiled. ‘Will be exceedingly interesting, but surely he must know,’ added the Flame Imperishable, blazing, blazing and sounding almost reasonable. ‘That I would not idly stand by?’

Chapter Text

~ Two o clock the next day, and Detective Inspector Morris, a quiet, hunched man with flinty eyes and blue jowls faced James across a desk.
Why, wondered James, half-way between puzzlement and irritation, didn't Lucien Steele with his ink-black hair possess any shadow of stubble at all? He threw a quick glance at his silent ‘bodyguard’.

‘How well do you know Oliver Skinner, Mr Callaghan?’

Not well.

‘Have you ever been to his home in Henley?’

Twice with his father. Garden parties during Henley week.

When Skinner did not appear for his meeting, the police drove to Henley. The CID, the Criminal Investigations Department, were in charge of the case now as were their counterparts across the world.
James knew he would be questioned but dreaded it nevertheless. He did not have a guilty conscience over Skinner’s death but the fact of it glared at him so strongly he was sure anyone looking at him would see the blood on his hands. Under the table, he surreptitiously flexed them. There had been some mild bruising from Skinner’s jaw and cheeks, and splits in his skin but both had faded leaving no sign or stiffness. Scrapes and bruises always healed fast on him.

D.I. Morris merely looked tired and bored, as if this was all part of a hard day’s work. Steele, a most impressive if ridiculously stylish bodyguard, stood with his back to a wall as if on some kind of military parade. He looked as if he could stand there for a week and never move.

Morris had not wanted the bodyguard in the interview room. Steele said nothing at all, but sometimes intimidation needs no words and Steele possessed plenty of the silent sort. After a few moments, Morris acceded and James could not help but be glad. It was like having a wall at one's back. He hoped his own attitude was as calm but doubted it. The band of an incipient headache tightened behind his eyes; stress or lack of sleep, or both. Nightmares had woken him twice, the second time at dawn when he got up and showered.

He’d once thought the dreams were over, fading away as he matured. But it was not surprising they returned now like a virus, with the memories of his youth and those stony grey years in the huge mansion that his father was so proud of and that James loathed.

’If they think you’re mad, you’ll be taken away. Understand? Locked up. Nothing I can do about it.’

‘If you want the boy locked up in an asylum then by all means take him to a doctor.’

Nanny Bridie, James had called her, the few months she was employed, the only time warmth had come into the endless corridors and perfect, barren rooms.

Nannies came and went regularly. The shortness of their employment was not because James was difficult; a quiet boy who expected nothing and did what he was told. The fault lay with Callaghan. For all his wealth he was stingy with his domestic staff and autocratic to a degree. James believed now that it was deliberate. His staff turnover was always high; he had not wanted anyone to become too familiar with him or his house — or his son.

Nanny o’Flynn was of proud Irish descent, a solid energetic widow. James remembered lacquered black hair piled into a bouffant and the scent of 4711. Perhaps his father thought that James, then ten years old, needed a firmer hand than his former nannies had provided but in Mrs Bridget o’Flynn he got more than he was prepared for. A mother six times over, she took her duties seriously and also took time to know her charge, something none of the others had done. She baked cakes, introduced him to the comfort of strong, milky sweet tea and told him tales of her grandparents' lives in Armagh. She was also a staunch Catholic, carrying rosary beads in her purse but to her credit, never made any attempt to convert James.

‘Mother of God!’ she had cried back at Callaghan’s threat. Born in New York she might be, but at such times the accent of her ancestors surfaced strongly. ‘They don’t do things like that now! All I’m saying is having nightmares all the time isn’t normal.’ James hiding out of sight with indrawn breath heard the rattle of her rosary beads. ‘It’s not right.’

‘He’s just growing.’ Callaghan’s voice dismissed. ‘But if he’s causing you trouble then he should be looked at. I know of a very good place. Apparently they can work wonders with the clinically insane. Yes, that might be a good idea. You’re not the first to mention his nightmares. There must be some drugs that can calm an overactive mind, and I’ve heard good reports of electroconvulsive therapy.’

Bridie sounded appalled. ‘He doesn’t need to be drugged or shocked! The boy’s not insane. He’s troubled!’

‘Then he’s better off in medical hands, isn’t he? Now, Mrs o’Flynn, I wouldn't want to think I have any complaints but I had Thomson look into you — and your past — a bit more deeply.’ There was a shuffling of papers. ‘Interesting reading. You still have a big family in Armagh with a…deep history. Links to the IRA…and all that.’

‘All in the past,’ Bridie retorted sharply.

‘Is it? Is it really? But there’s a lot of tension, isn’t there? And the British Government is still looking for some of the commandants who went into hiding. There’s still a price on their heads I believe. So you might say.’ James could see, in his mind’s eye, his fathers wide and lipless mouth tug into the grimace that passed for a smile. ‘Not the right choice of words? The penalties of owning newspapers.’

A breathing silence. Then Bridie exploded. ‘Don’t think I don't know what you’re doing Mr Callaghan. Drugs, electric shocks, the IRA! Well, you can have my notice. I like that boy but his father’s another matter! And this house stinks to high heaven! There’s something wrong with this place and I don’t have to look too far to see the cause of it!’

‘The notice will not be necessary,’ Callaghan dismissed her. ‘And I needn’t tell you — I hope?— not to discuss with anyone the fact that my son might be insane.’

James, who saw the glitter in Bridie’s eyes, the swell of her body, did not ask her to stay. He was not used to asking for anything. She heaved a great sigh, caught his shoulders and shook him with rough affection.

‘Be strong boy. Learn to look after yourself because no-one else is going to. You’re not the first to have to learn that, nor the last. There's nothing wrong with you. It’s him.’

To that, there was nothing to say. He wished he could have kept in contact with her, but his father’s bony cage closed around him even more tightly after that. Nannies were exchanged for a selection of home tutors and carefully supervised sports. James did not protest. He never did. In the last years the threat of being ‘taken away and locked up,’ oft repeated, had gone so deep that he was hyper-vigilant for any sign of insanity. The terror was a constant high note in his head. It was the only thing his father spoke to him about when he bothered to speak to his son at all. He would call James into his office and make him stand like a guilty schoolboy expecting chastisement.

Callaghan never looked directly at James until he was older; his eyes would flicker away and return with an expression that James had believed to be boredom. Only now did he realise it was a baulked and bitter hunger for something he could not have. The thought nauseated him. Joanna Worth had made it clear her son was not to be touched but Callaghan for perhaps the only time in his life, saw a young boy that was beyond his destructive and perverted reach.

We both survived, Blaise. But you paid the cost.

In his teens, James foresaw only a grim shadow-life ahead until an unexpected visit from his grandmother, Elsa Hart, allowed him to apply for university.

James had met his paternal grandmother only once when he was very young. There was something of a mystery there. It was possible that his grandfather hid a past as shady, if not more, than his son Raymond. If he did, it was well buried.

Bertie Hart died when Callaghan was thirty-five and the widowed Elsa had, as if chains were struck from her, emigrated almost immediately to Australia. She never married again but was very much part of the Melbourne social scene, and a patroness of many First Nation Australian charities. Discarding her surname she reverted to Hart and seemed to cut her son wholly from her life. Once a year, James received Christmas and birthday cards written in a brisk, flowing hand and given to him stiffly by his father. Callaghan himself never visited her when in Australia and she never returned to America.

Then one day at the end of May she arrived at the Hamptons with a companion, a social secretary and some very expensive luggage that portended more than a flying visit. James, out on the tennis court, was startled by the appearance of an upright little woman in her well-preserved seventies who took off a pair of sunglasses to reveal grey, sharp, and (he thought) sad eyes.

‘You're nothing like your father,’ she remarked after a long and silent scrutiny and held out her hand. ‘Hello, James. I’m your grandmother, Elsa.’

The atmosphere in the house was more than electric. Callaghan, who usually left for his office most mornings, remained at home. The meals were stilted and uncomfortable. Although he knew nothing of the past, it was apparent to James that there was no love lost between his father and grandmother.

And Elsa was not afraid of her son. Voices were raised from behind closed doors and she would emerge with set lips and a closed, inward stare, low heels clipping across the tiles. She deliberately singled out James to talk to — and how his father hated that. And (he did not know if she arranged it or not) her secretary had a habit of running into him and engaging him in casual conversation.

Waru was a First Nation Australian in his thirties, handsome and impeccably dressed yet in his eyes and deep voice James felt the ancient spell of his people who had walked the great landmass of Australia for tens of thousands of years.
He found himself imagining and dreaming of vast lands under wide, hot skies, endless red desert, gum trees and shining waterholes, mist-wreathed mountains and strange rock formations that looked as if they once might have lived. Sometimes, a gleam showed in Waru’s eyes and then James was sure he was being tested in some way, that Waru was playing a game, as was his sister Jedda. They moved among the staff and the peculiar war between Elsa and Callaghan with enormous and inborn poise. James thought for no reason of the monolith statues of Egyptian gods rising out of the sands to awe early western travellers — and yet the history of Waru's peoples was so much older that the Pharaonic dynasties were children in comparison.

Shyly, James asked questions on the few things he had heard about, the Dreamtime which he imagined was a kind of creation myth of Waru’s people.

The man made a friendly, scornful sound.
‘Jukurrpa, he corrected. ‘Some whitefella academic used Dreaming in the ‘50’s and it’s stuck ever since. And it’s not in the past, it’s eternal.’ His teeth gleamed. ‘Whitefellas have flatland minds.’ He tapped the top of James' head. ‘You don’t have the languages for it. You can learn, but it takes a long time. More for some than others. There’s plenty who can feel it when they expand their minds.’ He raised his eyes and looked into the distance and James followed his gaze thinking that Waru looked not at the view, but far across the planet to his home. ‘Elsa tries. But whitefellas have to open their minds, make them pliable, do you see?’

James frowned, wanting to understand and Waru looked down at him with a not unkind laugh.
‘You should come out one day and stay with your gran. Have you heard of the Bunyip?’

‘A monster?’ James guessed.

Waru grinned. ‘A monster that lurks in swamps and billabongs and hunts at night. Academics say it’s —‘ And here he parodied a high-falutin tone — ‘An aboriginal memory of megafauna. Great creatures like the giant sloth and sabre tooth tiger that roamed the earth within living memory of humankind. It would take a whitefella to explain it in that way. In very simple terms bunyip is a spirit of place. You call it genius loci Look it up.’*

Those times with Waru were the bright spots in the three jagged weeks. In that time, James suffered no nightmares, only the excruciating feeling of a rabbit caught between two wolves.

But the old she-wolf was the more cunning.
At the end of Elsa’s visit, James was informed coldly by his father that if he wished to apply for university, he should get on with it. He suggested Cambridge. James looked in grateful puzzlement at his grandmother, saw her lifted chin and infinitesimal nod and knew whom he had to thank.

Cambridge saved him, or as much of him as it could. The night terrors became less and faded altogether and though he was watched, he also had a life outside his father’s purview, if not his influence. He began to think he was not mad and never had been. Tentatively, he made friends and learned boxing with which he expelled some of the anger he had not even realised he had been harbouring for so long. And, in the last year, he met Blaise and the two of them, keepers of secrets, had never touched on anything but the banal; a brief holiday friendship that could have been so much more. Knowing what he did of Mortimer Worth, he thought he and Blaise had much in common — quite apart from their shared blood.

He did not see his grandmother again, but a letter arrived at Cambridge for him in his second year. It had been hand-delivered, not posted and in it Elsa wrote that she had named him in her will as sole beneficiary. His father, she stated, could not overturn it nor touch the money; she had made absolutely certain of that. She advised him to make his own life and not to attempt to write back, email or telephone. No doubt by now you know that he watches you as he has always watched me. Her only regret was that she had not been able to raise James. But you’re nothing like him — I hope…I hope he hasn’t ruined you. She ended by promising that one day they would talk ‘properly’.

That day never came. Six years later she died in her sleep and James inherited her fortune. Callaghan had done what he could to overturn the will (without success) and so the money had come to James less than two years before his father’s death.

In the Scotland Yard room that smelled of long-impregnated cigarette smoke, coffee and fear, he passed his hands over his face apologising that he hadn’t slept much. He thought he had long outgrown the fears and the dreams. Clearly not! D.I. Morris was not impolite but his job would hardly nurture trust and his questions, to James overly-sensitive ears, sounded like accusations.

~ Vanimöré did little but observe James, who played the part perfectly. He remained, through the questioning, calm and unruffled but for the faint tension-frown that deepened between his brows.

Too perfect. He walks right on the edge.

And it was so easy to take one step…more…into the dark. But all through the tedious day, while Skinner’s villa was searched, James exuded a kind of bored calm. Only once did a tremor break through. Had Skinner attended the party at Lucien Steele’s Como villa?

‘Not to my knowledge,’ James responded but with the flicker of a look at his bodyguard. Vanimöré thought for a moment that he might lose control and start laughing. ‘My father never said anything. I wasn’t invited.’

It appeared, Morris stressed the word, that Skinner had been drinking and smoking when he left the house by a back door. His cars were there so the obvious conclusion was that he had gone into the garden, possibly further, over the little inlet bridge, even to the river itself. Under the influence of alcohol and marijuana and with the storm…Divers were sent down but apart from the usual rubbish, had found nothing as yet.

Two days later, events took a more serious turn when a concealed door was found leading to a small cellar. In the absence of any key, it was opened by force.

Dank from the proximity to the Thames, the room had nevertheless been fitted out as a sex dungeon. Forensics swarmed over it. A safe was discovered with old DVD’s, some dating back to the 70’s. Though Skinner was not featured in any of these earlier films, Raymond Callaghan was, along with others. And Mortimer Worth.

One of the more recent DVD’s was of particular importance.

Howard’s ‘I need to speak to you privately,’ brought Vanimöré to the DDE. Fenny, with two agents remained at the Townhouse, watching James who, as soon as he could drop the ‘professional’ mask, was restless as a chained hound.

Howard’s office was as usual an ordered explosion with the man himself sitting before several screens. As Vanimöré entered he swivelled around.

‘Too many people know about the play,’ he began. ‘And the allegation that Blaise Worth was abused. The CID are looking into his disappearance again and gathering a dossier.’ He opened a drawer and pulled out a dvd, the case showing an old black and white film. ‘One of the sex crimes unit recognised him when they were going through Skinner’s collection of porn. Or he thinks it’s Blaise Worth going by the first photograph of him taken at Marlborough. This is hard evidence if it can be proved it’s not just a likeness.’

Vanimöré’s gut tightened. ‘Good.’

‘None of the films are great quality apparently, and the abusers wear masks most of the time but the kids…no.’

‘Of course not. They were going to be killed anyhow. Yes this is hard evidence and no, we’re not going to involve David.’

Howard sat back. ‘Before this I’d have advised against a trial, too. But with it and everything else—‘

‘And you know what would happen,’ Vanimöré snarled. ‘He would be made to watch that, and possibly others. You know how they treat rape victims even if with all the other evidence they may be inclined to go easy on him. No. Don’t forget Worth senior reported him as a runaway and drug user. An ungrateful spoiled rich kid who went off the rails.’

‘Alright, alright!’ Howard barked back at him. ‘I know. I agree it would be hard on him, but if you don’t like the thought of that you’ll hate this. I said the abusers wore masks most of the time. Not always. They slipped, came off sometimes. So they want James to verify that it’s his father on these tapes and look through some of the others.’

‘No.’

‘They’re not requesting anything, Steele.’

Vanimöré closed his eyes. Opened them. ‘I don’t think you realise how potentially dangerous James is,’ he said quietly. ‘It only needs one thing to tip him, make him easy prey. Gods, the blood already pulls.’ Did he not know it?

‘And I can’t tell the CID that a fictional fallen angel-type character is James Callaghan’s grandfather!’ Howard pushed himself up and marched to the coffee machine. Over the whir and grind he said over his shoulder. ‘They’ll be calling him later so you may want to warn him. He can refuse, but it won’t look good.’ He carried two cups of black coffee to his desk and planted them down. ‘They think he knows something. With his proximity to his father they think it’s unlikely he wasn’t aware.’ He took a long drink.

‘He knew nothing,’ Vanimöré dismissed. ‘I know.’

‘And I can’t tell them that, either!’

‘Life was so much simpler once,’ Vanimöré muttered. He picked up the dvd and turned it over in his hands. Howard regarded him closely.
‘You want to watch that?’ he asked with distaste.

‘No need.’ He knew it, at least his Totality, the Monument knew. ‘Is this the only copy?’

‘At the moment. So put it down. It has to go back to Scotland Yard. I’ve never envied the poor bastards who have to look through this.’

‘Or the victims.’ Vanimöré replaced and brushed off his hands. ‘I think it would be unwise to expose James to this. If he sees Blaise Worth…Listen to me: James has no-one Howard, and his biggest anchor is gone.’ And he knew how that felt, for all his most peculiar relationship with his father, Sauron had always been there until the One Ring went into the fires of Orodruin. It had not been the end, but Vanimöré believed it was. When that constant presence was reft away, one swung in the breeze. He recalled waking, rain dripping through the slots of his helm, and feeling the absence, the enormous space that Sauron had occupied burning the air about him. The terrible freedom had almost driven him mad. As it was, he had made too many mistakes.

Howard shook his head. ‘It’s not my call, Steele.’

‘No.’ He drank the coffee slowly. ‘But thank you for telling me.’

Vanimöré did not immediately return to James but walked the three miles to his penthouse. Dressed in sports clothes and with dark glasses hiding his eyes he watched and sensed for a tail as he jogged across Vauxhall Bridge.

The muggy summer day was busy; this was the height of the tourist season and easy enough for someone in the crowds to follow him. He left Vauxhall Road for the streets of Pimlico and Belgravia, then Knightsbridge with its ultra wealthy stores and clientele. There was no place to easily seek a Portal. The dark old pulse of London beat under the frenetic life of modern day like an ancient and undying heartbeat but Vanimöré needed space and secrecy.

Both to his surprise and not, he spotted Hélöise outside Hérmes, the height of simple elegance in a wheat-coloured linen suit. She was talking to another woman with short grey-blonde hair. Both of them carried bags.

From behind his glasses he scanned the street and found the agent that was watching her. Hélöise was aware of the dangers, but she lived life to the full and to expect (or even request) her to be careful, to remain in her hotel room or go home would be foolish. Anyhow, he doubted that she would be targeted, not yet, not until Sauron had a great deal more power. The furore that would accompany any move against Hélöise would be shattering.

Vanimöré crossed the street, tapped her on the shoulder then ducked around so that she swung her head back to face him. He gave her a moment to recognise him, caught her face in both hands and kissed her. Backing away, he blew her another kiss.

Hélöise shot at him: ‘ P’tit con va! T’as pas de couillas!’

‘Hélöise!’ her companion exclaimed.

Vanimöré bowed floridly, which earned him a very decisive hand gesture. He choked. A completely spontaneous laugh bubbled out of him and he jogged on.

He was still smiling when he entered the penthouse and drew out his Mirror shard. As he did so, he reached for Coldagnir.

The Monument met him with blowing dust and absolute solitude. He both loathed it and yearned for it, this last remnant of the lost universe. The wind tasted of rust — the atomised blood of the dead gathered here for eternity.

Somewhere in the limitless Beyond, Eru’s Eternal Palace spanned the leagues of a world, and the Flame burned alone in glory.

Forgive me for not preventing it.

But Fëanor had known what he was doing when he faced Ancalagon-Melkor. It was not Vanimöré’s right — or Eru’s — to step in.

He ran down the steps into his chamber and the glimmering curtain of the Portal.

I am here. Coldagnir’s voice.

Vanimöré plucked at the Time Strings. Earth, in the reality he had come from, London, New Scotland Yard and within it…
This room. Here.

‘I need thy very specialised talents, my dear. And I would like thee to be seen very briefly.’ Sauron had agents stationed not within Scotland Yard but close by, watching. ‘It will do no harm if they suspect thee to be here, not with Claire and Maglor.’

Then of course, Coldagnir replied, grim smile in his words. It will not take long. This evening? Shall I come to the penthouse first?

‘Yes. I could do it from here. It is tempting, but it is no bad thing for them to be reminded there are other powers in the world. I will be in clear sight with witnesses tonight.’

I may cause some atmospheric disturbance, Coldagnir warned. It also provides a certain amount of cover.

‘There are so many this year, what is one more?’

Too many. Not all of them are us.

‘I know.’

For a moment longer (for a thousand years?) he watched the Portal, then stepped through it and back into the elegant silence of the penthouse.

~ Not my world. The Mirror…I was — we were — inside the Mirror…

Who had done this, Nael-as-Eru? Vanimöré?

No. I created the Mirror—

The room darkened into shadow. Thunder galloped overhead.

The storm. He dragged it out of the sky, gulped it down as a soft knock on the door wrenched his head around. Heart in his mouth, he poised himself to defend — or attack.

‘Father, may I speak with you?’

Maedhros. That red hair was the same, its long mingling streaks of copper and russet and gold; the face, height, the pale silver eyes — all exact. Young, but well grown into adulthood. Maedhros, …and Nael had told him all his sons would die to save Maglor.
Fëanor’s bones shook. The black lightning of denial blasted across his mind. The storm within would not be quenched; it could only be chained. The Oath. The Doom. Tears unnumbered shall ye shed.

‘Father?’
‘Yes.’

The clothes Maedhros wore were not familiar nor was the expression at the back of his eyes: It was love—and wariness.

Do not look at me like that!

‘Of course.’ The helpless anguish sounded like a knell in his voice.

Maedhros closed the door behind him. As his back turned, Fëanor slipped the Mirror case into a drawer.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ The fire-storm sluiced through his veins, hot, bright, cleaving through the shock like a wild and living current, diluting it, denying it. Part of him wanted to throw back his head in abandoned laughter. Better than fear.

Maedhros' eyes narrowed, moved across his face. ‘Fingolfin’s begetting day feast.’ It came out in a little rush as if Maedhros expected a negative reaction but he went on firmly. ‘I believe it would be better for us to attend this year.’

‘Do we not…I mean—‘ Fëanor caught himself. ‘Yes. Why not?’

‘Yes?’ Maedhros’ face cleared, but his eyes remained puzzled. ‘’Yes, father? I truly did not think—‘ He rounded the desk. ‘It is important,’ he pressed as if Fëanor needed more persuasion. ‘Tirion is becoming like an ants nest kicked by a horse. Thou shouldst show thyself. I know thou hast little patience for the court and Fingolfin but — thou art High Prince and—‘

‘I agree.’ What exactly has happened here, and when is this? He thought of the other version of himself and his dark-bright look of fierce, glowering intent. His eyes dropped briefly to the desk drawer. ‘I agree we should go.’

If I can go to Tirion I have clearly not yet been banished.

He smiled at Maedhros who was his son no matter what reality this was. His eldest. Alive and so beautiful, such a leader. Flame of the North Maglor had called him in that song years ago. With sudden urgency, Fëanor wanted to see all his sons, to reassure himself that they were people he knew. Just to look at them.

‘Has something happened?’ Maedhros asked, returning the smile but behind that he was still scrutinising and it was not, Fëanor thought, a new thing. He had watched his father a thousand times like this. Wondering. Worrying. ‘Something,’ he added. ‘Is…different.’

And oh gods, he was going to laugh if he were not extremely careful and he feared it might lead to the edge of madness. He bit the inside of his mouth and tasted blood.
‘Nothing. Why? Have I been so moody lately?’

‘No more than usual,’ Maedhros teased lightly, his face relaxing a little. ‘But since mother left and then Alare everything has been a little fraught.’

So Nerdanel had gone. No matter how ragged their relationship might be in this or any world Fëanor doubted she would have left while the twins were very young and Maedhros himself looked no different to the Maedhros he had left in a different world. Was Alare one of Nerdanel’s women?

He shrugged. ‘Neither of us were happy. No-one should be forced into marriage. No-one should have to remain in a soured relationship. It affects the whole family.’ At Maedhros’ frown, he bit off the words, berating himself.

‘Yes,’ Maedhros murmured. ‘The arguments were quite…spectacular these last few years.’

‘I am sorry for it. So remind me: how long until Fingolfin’s feast?’

‘Only two days,’ his son regarded him quizzically. ‘Father, what is it?’

Fëanor needed to use the Mirror. But he needed to see his sons more. He slung an arm about Maedhros’ wide shoulder. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Let us find thy brothers.’

Formenos was the same and very subtly altered. The sweep of the great stairs from the main hall, the layout of the chambers were as he knew them, but there were touches in the design and colours that were just strange enough to jar. Laurelin, waxing through the brief storm poured jewelled patterns through the stained glass window so that the marble walls glowed crimson, blue, and green. But in his own Formenos the marble held veins of gold; here they were silver. The dimensions too, were a little off, a step or two, some more, some less. The sense of displacement rose up again in a wave. Fëanor thrust it down. There was no time for it.

He headed for the stairs and the large, private withdrawing room rather than the great hall, his steps long and confident, hoping he was going in the right direction and to the correct room. Maedhros, walking a little behind him made no protest and when Fëanor swung open the double doors, he saw the chamber with more than a little relief.

Here the family would gather at the end of the day and despite its size the room, with its warm hangings and drapes in tones of red and old-gold and bronze, the woven wool rugs and cushions offered comfort and ease. Or most of the time. There were arguments and raised voices aplenty; the Fëanorions, gathered together, were not a quiet family though they presented a united front to outsiders.

Fëanor’s gaze took in the books and scrolls, a bowl of white flowers and greenery fashioned out of semi-precious stones: pearl, nacre, opal, jade, malachite. He recognised his own touch in the work. Maglor’s great harp stood in almost its accustomed place, its strings catching the light . The small sculptures Nerdanel had placed in alcoves were not identical: a group of deer, a hawk taking wing, a horse with its head raised to the wind…

He remained standing in this room he both knew and did not as his sons, summoned by some inner instinct (or Maedhros’ silent command) entered. His souls drank them in wanting to ask them What is he like, thy father here who is me and yet not? A far more troubled soul.

Celegorm, his creamy hair wind tossed, was the last to come, striding into the house with dusty boots, bringing the scent of pine and earth and cool water from a hunt in the hills.

In face and form they were the same. Here and there a braid might be worn differently, or one remembered jewel be exchanged for another but Celegorm still favoured fire opals, Curufin silver. Caranthir wore a forbidding face, as ever; the twins completed one another’s sentences. Maglor was most like his father in face and bearing and in the thick mane of hair, silver eyes brilliant as the glancing flash from a mirror. Maedhros, a hands-breath taller than Fëanor, still chose shades of green and black. He and Maglor lead their brothers as they always had.

And Maglor, Fëanor thought, heart aching as he looked, was the only one of his sons to survive, wandering…

But no!. It had not happened. It would not! Yet knowing that it had occurred somewhere was well-nigh unbearable. His mind fumed fire; it hazed his sight in running flame.

‘Father?’ Maglor said gently.

Digging his nails into his palms, Fëanor blinked.
Something else was present here that he had never seen before; an alien note that hung in the air and permeated everything like smoke.
His sons were not afraid of him but he realised quite suddenly that they feared for him and far more acutely than in his own world. They bore themselves with a wariness that suggested stepping lightly around him.
And it shocked him. The divisions must be deep and real without the secret buffer of his relationship with Fingolfin. Fëanor’s own behaviour had been more intemperate or at least more authentic. Had he felt more trapped, less effective, had he never spoken to Edenel or Vanimórë? He possessed a Mirror shard, but it did not follow that the same events would have occurred.

He swore to himself. He would need to address those questions, and soon. When he thought of what the other Fëanor would walk into, he raised mental eyebrows and once more wanted to laugh. The possibilities were fascinating. He could do things here that his counterpart had not, but he must first take soundings as the Mariners said. He could not quite believe that there was true antipathy between him and Fingolfin. If there was, he must do something about it.

But…I should return to my own world. I could become too entangled in this.

And he could not — not yet; not until the other came back. Two Fëanor’s in one world would be interesting but possibly disastrous and that would mean no Fëanor at all in the other reality which some people would no doubt regard as an improvement. An irrepressible smile tugged at his mouth again. He ought to know how this had happened, Maker of the Mirror. He did not.

But I will find out.

The twins poured wine as gracefully as any palace servant, though their movements were, like Celegorm’s, suited to the wild places of Valinor. They too, were full grown though must only have just come to it and their hair red and copper, coiled down their slender backs. Fëanor sipped from his cup and let his eyes move around his sons reading, as he always did, their moods from a hundred infinitesimal signs. It was a thing every parent did without thought.

Caranthir’s arms were crossed decidedly across his breast, an idiosyncratic gesture which some might call a closing-out of others. Fëanor knew it was to restrain his flashing temper and a well-concealed generous spirit.

‘So if we are going to Tirion,’ he said abruptly. ‘Wilt thou wear the Silmarils?’

‘Why not?’

‘They all say thou art hoarding them, denying the sight of them to the Noldor.’ Curufin lifted his chin, his lips pressed into a sneer. ‘As if they belonged to anyone but thee. Yes, wear them, father.’ His expression became fierce, eager. He came across to Fëanor, eyes alighting on the small brooch pinned on his stiff collar. ‘A new insignia?’ he asked, examining it just as Fëanor himself would have done, the workmanship, possible flaws. Fëanor held his internal smile fondly. Curufin was a stricter critic than even he himself.

The brooch was modelled on the one Fingolfin had presented him with as a child and which Fëanor had used ever since as a template. The points of the star were flames, and he had melted garnets, rubies and fire opals in the cold forges, working gold about the cooled edges before polishing. His sons, he saw, wore similar stars but here the edges were straight.

‘The Fireflower,’ Fëanor said, wondering if Fingolfin had not designed him the first one. The thought was painful. I will see thee soon, and then…

‘I prefer this design. When didst thou make this?’ Curufin’s hand strayed to his own pendant. A look of restless preoccupation put distance in his eyes. ‘May I borrow it, father?’

Fëanor unpinned the brood and held it out. Curufin took it, weighing it in his palm and a small smile softened his stern mouth when he saw the humour in Fëanor’s eyes.
‘I will be in my workshop.’ He spun in a brisk, elegant move and walked to the door, wine cup still in his hand. Pausing, he looked back. ‘Celebrimbor will be awake soon, I think. He would like to come and watch.’

‘Of course.’ Fëanor’s mind startled, but he answered the question couched in the words. Celebrimbor?

Celegorm laughed. ‘Watch? Do not pretend thou hast not made tools for him in his size already.’

‘He is very keen,’ Curufin’s smile widened with an expression that Fëanor knew well: paternal pride. Celebrimbor was his son, and Fëanor’s grandson? Curufin had never shown a particular interest in getting a wife but he was also the only one of Fëanor’s sons who spoke of wanting children, and here, he had fathered one.

The door closed behind him and Maedhros said quietly, ‘At least he does not neglect his duties now Alare has gone.’

Alare. Curufin’s wife then, not Nerdanel’s maid.

‘He never did,’ Caranthir snapped. ‘And none of us mind watching the boy, though I would say he is too young to go to this feast.’ He turned back to Fëanor. ‘Why this year, father?’ His strong, arching brows were drawn in.

‘Am I not the High Prince?’ Fëanor asked with a wink at Maedhros who looked startled and then smiled. ‘I choose to dwell here but I am not exiled from Tirion. I — and my sons — have as much right to be there as my half-brothers.’

Heightened colour branded Caranthir’s pale cheeks like a flag. ‘Of course but they say thou art happier skulking here and fomenting discontent than shouldering the duties of the High Prince. Unlike Fingolfin! There are so many factions now—‘

‘Not really,’ Maglor corrected. ‘They all follow Fingolfin or Finarfin, or stand back from it with grandfather, who is studiedly neutral,’ he added dryly.

His voice in itself was a spell. Fëanor thought of the grain of oak, the opened bed of melted gold, a sliver of steel gleaming through — the forged steel core of him that lay in his eyes like a warning.

Maedhros shared a look with his brother. They had always been inclined to like Fingolfin, at least in the other world.

‘Fingolfin,’ Celegorm offered. ‘Is the true leader in Tirion; if anyone thinks it is our grandfather they are purblind fools.’ He looked around as Huan trotted in. The great hound’s wolf-like ears pricked forward, the ruff of his neck raised. He stopped dead, eyes on Fëanor then moved slowly across to him. Fëanor reached out a hand and the plumed tail began to wave.

Huan was far more than a dog; one of Oromë’s war hounds that had followed white Nahar across the mountains of Endor, hunting the Dark, but it had crossed Fëanor’s mind to wonder if there was yet more to Huan. Maia, after all, could take any shape they chose…

Scratching behind one ear, Fëanor said, ‘And what has Fingolfin been saying?’

‘The latest is that thou art plotting to drive him and Finarfin from Tirion.’

‘A rumour,’ Maedhros said with an admonishing frown at Caranthir who cast up his eyes. ‘Fingon swears his father has had no such thing.’

‘Well, thy dear Fingon would say that.’

Fëanor lifted his hand as Maedhros' eyes flashed. His sons fell silent.
‘Fingon might well say that, but let us first find the truth of the matter. Fingolfin’s feast is a good place to begin.’ He heard, in memory and very clear, Nael’s supple, silvery voice reading the Silmarillion:

“Whispers came to Fëanor that Fingolfin and his sons were plotting to usurp the leadership of Finwë and of the elder line of Fëanor, and to supplant them by leave of the Valar; for the Valar were ill-pleased that the Silmarils lay in Tirion and were not committed to their keeping…” And to Fingolfin and Finarfin it was whispered that Fëanor had small love for them and it would not be long before he persuaded Finwë to drive them out. From the outside it was so obvious but when one was living within it, one might not see.

Fëanor tapped his fingers on the arms of the chair. That there was jealousy and rivalry between the princes of the Noldor and the Great Houses who followed them was no lie. Neither was it in any way astonishing. The Noldor were a proud and passionate people. But Melkor lay at the heart of the rumour-mill in this world as in his own— Melkor and the Valar.

Fëanor had perceived Melkor’s presence here at once, as a sailor on a ship discerns a great cliff looming behind a wall of sea mist. And that both he and the Valar desired the Silmarils was most certainly true and at the root of everything. Nael’s words echoed like something heard in a dream, yet near enough to almost feel his breath, as if he spoke into Fëanor’s ear: It was always about the Silmarils and never about the Silmarils.

He came to his feet. ‘Yes, we must begin to sift the grain from the chaff,’ he said. ‘Well? Wilt thou all come?’

Caranthir let out a breath that might be acquiescence. Celegorm shrugged easily and the twins smiled. Like him they were hunters who felt cramped within Tirion and entered its confines with resignation, but they would stand with their father. Maedhros and Maglor nodded, ‘Of course.’

‘Then prepare,’ Fëanor said. ‘And we will ride into Tirion in full panoply.’

Caranthir’s dark eyes narrowed, then his dour smile widened into a rare blaze that warmed the room. Quick-tempered he was and could be supercilious and sullen but he possessed no less charisma than his brothers. He was quick to take offence on Fëanor’s behalf and liked to show that he was a prince of the Elder House of Tirion. His taste was exquisite; he favoured black and silver and blood-rubies and no doubt would deck himself in those colours for Fingolfin’s feast. There was more than a touch of the performer in Caranthir (though he would deny it) but so there was in all of them.

The others left save for Maglor who lingered for a moment. No question but would play at the feast. Whatever the contention at court, no-one could claim there was a better singer, not in all Aman. Fëanor thought of Maglor training his voice, the sheer power in it that he could tune now to shatter a crystal and wondered if he did the same in this world. There was a different feel here, a deeper darkness, the edges seemed sharper.

‘Maedhros is right,’ he said. ‘There is something different about thee. Thine eyes… One would think some god had given thee a vision, father, and not one of the Valar.’

Unable to suppress it, Fëanor allowed laughter to break free.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not one of them. I think I have been too closed in for too long, that is all. And I do not like for thee — any of my sons — to worry about me.’

Maglor’s sleek brows drew in. He put out his hands.
‘Father, all thy sons will stand with thee and walk beside thee step by step. Never doubt it. But we cannot help but fear for thee.’

Fëanor’s heart twisted. He drew Maglor to him and kissed his brow.
‘I know. And we must walk together; there is no other way. But I could never let harm befall thee. I would take my own life first; I would give the Valar the Silmarils with both hands. Never doubt that.’

Maglor went oddly still, his eyes unblinking and so shiningly brilliant that Fëanor could see his own reflection looking back. He said slowly and searchingly, ‘I never did, father but…’

‘Listen,’ Fëanor said urgently. ‘The Valar want the Silmarils and Melkor too. I saw their faces. They believe I should have handed them over, gifted them. But I do not want their hands on me. The Silmarils hold part of my soul. To have them wearing them, gloating, fondling them…I would feel it.’ Like rape. ‘Only for my sons would I part with them.’ And Fingolfin. ‘Better not to wear them, so I thought, but it seems the Valar still think on them.’

A small breath came out of Maglor as if Fëanor had answered a long-asked question.
‘I wondered,’ he murmured. ‘Curufin has said this. They glow even in a locked casket, in the vault, but when thou art wearing them, they blaze.’

Fëanor smiled at him. So did the jewels burne when his sons wore them, but had he been so obsessed with them here that he had not allowed that? Unlikely, but better not to trip. He shook Maglor gently by the shoulders.
‘I am going for a walk,’ he said, or rather to learn about this Formenos and its people. ‘We will speak at supper.’

‘Very well.’ Maglor’s mouth curled up. He was still looking at Fëanor as if to read something under his skin, his eyes. Marvelling. ‘Do not forget to take Celebrimbor to see Curufin at work. He would never forgive you.’

‘I will not. He is…in his room?’

‘Of course, but Rainiel will be with him. She is very devoted, and he will sleep for a while yet.’ He leaned his brow against Fëanor’s before drawing back. ‘Father, I was jesting. Of course Celebrimbor would forgive you — I think.’ With a laugh, he left the room.

A grandson. Fëanor inhaled deeply. Yes, he must certainly see him. But first…Formenos. And then the Mirror shard.

Chapter Text

~ James radiated an angry energy that was barely relieved by pacing around the Townhouse.
It was perhaps fortunate that the beautifully handwritten note from Hélöise arrived after lunch inviting him and Fenny (And their security detail naturellement) to a private supper tomorrow evening.

‘Why would she invite me?’ James asked. ‘After what happened?’

‘Possibly she thinks you are nothing like your father,’ Vanimöré responded dryly. More like his maternal grandfather, perhaps.

‘Delighted,’ Fenny professed himself. ‘And so should you be,’ to James. ‘Quite a triumph to be invited to one of Madam Gauthier’s soirées.’

‘My father would have thought so,’ James agreed, eyes narrowed. ‘He did think so. It was an invitation he couldn’t refuse. Madam Gauthier holding a party at Lucien Steele’s Como villa.’ Deliberately, he shrugged tension from his shoulders. ‘Of course I’ll accept. I’m just not feeling very sociable.’

‘Do you good,’ Fenny told him bracingly. ‘Can’t mope around here!’

James shot him a look.

‘Is it Skinner?’ Vanimöré asked.

‘It’s feeling useless. I want to do something.’ He thrust both hands in his pockets. ‘I want to find Blaise.’

‘Well we can start that almost right away,’ Fenny announced with a quick glance at Vanimöré. He had, in fact, been waiting for the DDE to set up a small but well-regarded investigative firm. Beckoning James over, he pointed to the page. ‘Batemans’ advertised themselves as discreet and experienced. ‘I’ve looked into them and done a bit of sounding out.’

Jame’s brow cleared a fraction as he read then looked up. ‘Yes.’ Then: ‘I was going to run a series in the papers, here, Australia, the US—‘ At Fenny’s widening eyes he added dourly, ‘Okay, no, I don't want Joanna and her father searching for Blaise.’

‘It wouldn’t advise it,’ Fenny agreed.

James was about to say something when his phone alerted him. He answered it and Vanimöré watched the brief lightness fade leaving his face a cold geometry that was exceptionally Sauron.

‘The CID,’ he said. ‘They want to see me again tomorrow morning. Some evidence they’ve found at Skinners.’ Shadows brooded in his eyes. ‘They didn’t say what.’ And then he swore them away. ‘They suspect me. That I knew something.’ A flush tinted his cheekbones.

Fenny said with large unconcern, ‘That’s just how they are. And in their place — think about it — wouldn’t you?’

James straightened, every muscle locking hard. Fenny merely waited. Vanimöré said nothing.
‘Okay. Okay. Yes, I guess I would.’ He made an effort, rubbing the back of his neck, but the simmering anger was still there. ‘It’s having my private life peeled open; letting them know that my father kept me on a goddamn leash! It’s…embarrassing! And looking back, no, I wouldn't credit it. You don’t know what he was like.’

“Do I not?’ Murmured Vanimöré and James looked at him.

‘Yes, I remember at your villa, what you said about your own father. But no-one knows anything about you and whatever I say to the papers some tabloid is going to get hold of it and splash it across the headlines!’

‘And so?’

James stared, then visibly backed. ‘Oh yes, I know he was always trying to hook you with the articles he had his tame journos write. You never took the bait.’

‘There was no bait to take. Rumours. Spurious speculation. A few minutes of gossip. Your father was like a man sitting on a mountain of his own shit pointing his fingers at anyone and everyone else so they wouldn’t take the time to smell the stench,’ Vanimöré said coldly. James blinked, then looked rueful. ‘There were rumours about him for a long time. Whispers. He made sure no-one thought too long and hard about it, did he not?’

‘Yes,’ James responded savagely. ‘That was probably the whole reason for his building and controlling a media empire.’

‘Yaas,’ Fenny nodded. ‘Whenever a corporation, or a politician or any individual spends their time desperately pointing at others one has to wonder why. Saw it all the time in Whitehall.’ He sat up and clapped both hands together. ‘Anyway, enough of that. You,’ he pointed at James. ‘Need to get some fresh air so I had them pack us a hamper. We’ll go out to Hampstead Heath. Plenty of people around this time of year, so safe enough, wouldn't you say?’

Vanimöré, to whom that was addressed, said, ‘Yes, I doubt they would want witnesses. Or not that many.’

James agreed with alacrity. It was not surprising, Vanimöré thought; he was all undischarged nerves and resentment. He would have suggested something of the sort, or a visit to the hotel’s gym, had Fenny not arranged the picnic. It was important that he remain with them and in clear sight all evening. Howard would not believe a word of it but Lucien Steele would be provably far from what happened at New Scotland Yard later tonight.

Fenny, thoughtful man that he was, had ordered a hamper for the agents too, who followed his big old Jaguar to Hampstead. At the Parliament Hill viewpoint, they found an unoccupied bench and sat, looking over the well-known city view. Towers and cranes punctuated the hazy skyline, the Shard reminding Vanimöré of a miniature version of Barad-dûr’s black spike.

Something in James loosened a little over the salmon and light wine. He had changed into faded jeans and a shirt and now lay back on the picnic rug, hands behind his fair head. But a little frown still hovered between his eyes.

Vanimöré, behind his dark glasses, remained alert, but there was no sense of danger in the warm air. Dogs barked, some children played, adults sat relaxed over their own picnics, and joggers went by. These he watched. Twenty years ago a jogger had shot one of the DDE agents and was gone before anyone knew what was happening. But the early evening was serene. Only, round the edge of the sky, there was darkness, like a ring of black about a blue eye. Storms were forecast for later.

As they packed up, Vanimöré said, ‘I need to call into my apartment for an hour. A friend is dropping by and my car is there.’ Looking at both of them he added, ‘It would oblige me if you waited.’

‘Of course,’ Fenny agreed amiably and drove them back into London with the ease of an old cabbie.
‘Never been here,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Wonderful views they say!’

The view was indeed spectacular but from the Penthouse one could see the storm light deepening. Vanimöré brought drinks to the lounge. James looked around and said with a cold little smile, ‘My father wanted one of these. There was nothing available.’

‘What a shame,’ Vanimöré threw over his shoulder. ‘Make yourselves comfortable, I just need to check something.’

In his bedroom, he drew out his laptop. The storm tracker showed a lively scatter over northern France crossing the Channel. But there were others that were quite unconnected. Vanimöré frowned.

A time of thunder. Everything is frayed at the edges.

He sat back, raised his hand to view Fëanor’s ring.

is it this? Or was this the hole that punched through the skin of reality?

Such weight in it, as if it were heavier than gold…
Like the One Ring.

~ James glanced back then followed Fenny out onto the terrace. Perhaps because, as Steele had said, he was not here often, there were no chairs or tables set out but there were potted flowers in abundance, frothing red, pink, creamy-white, blue and yellow. Bees hummed drowsily, a peaceful sound of cottage gardens in the heart of London. Beyond, much closer than from Hampstead Heath, the London Eye and the ice-slope Shard showed clear in the thundery air.

He remembered his father’s face screwed into anger when he could not acquire one of these penthouses. It would have suited his sense of importance and his papers would have reported it with lavish enthusiasm. The thought only served to remind James of tomorrow and his visit to Scotland Yard.

Fenny turned the professorial eyes that missed nothing and said, ‘If you’re worried about it, you have the right to refuse.’

‘Reading my mind?’ James asked a whit sharply. Then shrugged. ‘Worried…no. I didn’t know anything. It’s distasteful.

‘Mm, of course.’

James opened his mouth, snapped it shut on what he had been about to say and demanded suddenly, ‘Do you trust him?’

‘Trust him? Who? Steele?’ His neat grey brows lifted. ‘Can’t talk about my previous employment of course but suffice it to say that one learns pretty damn quick not to trust anyone. But there are people who’d stand with you in a tight corner and he’s one of them.’

James felt a sensation, like a tight strap loosened just a little, enough for him to breathe more easily. Fenny, apparently seeing it, gestured with his head for them to return inside.
‘The security’s excellent here,’ he said. ‘But. Old habits!’

Steele was still absent. Fenny lowered himself onto a couch but James remained standing.
‘Since I came back to England…’ He cast a glance at Fenny’s mild, attentive face. ‘I’ve been having dreams.’ Vivid, horrific dreams. ‘Of what my father did — amongst other things. As if I’m there, watching, and can’t stop him or do anything. Men in masks, laughing’ That brutal sleazy bray of the abuser. He had never heard it…he had heard it all his life without knowing what lay behind it, what his father did in the dark. Candles, couches, sex toys.

‘Not surprising,’ Fenny nodded sympathetically. Then with a genteel little cough, ‘There’s ah…no shame these days in seeking help for trauma. I could recommend a very good counsellor.’

‘I’m not traumatised,’ James said, too quickly.

’If they think you’re mad, you’ll be taken away. Understand? Locked up. Nothing I can do about it.’

Every night he woke in a gasping sweat from the nightmares, but it was the dreams that came after, in the dim gap between the small hours and dawn that terrified him. And those were not the same.
There was never any warning; they opened like the snap of a door, and took him within.

He would be driving on some lonely road and a great white, gold-eyed wolf kept pace with the car no matter how fast he accelerated. Or he was running through a maze of stone deep underground, knowing that the same beast stalked him at every step and would be waiting for him at the end.

He walked an endless beach where a grey sea foamed; Blaise was ahead of him and he called but was never answered. He ran but the sand dragged at his feet and he could not catch up. Then the sky darkened and he looked up to see black ruins and silhouetted there the wolf, big as a horse, white against pewter clouds.
There was a more-than-human intelligence in its eyes as it gazed at him before turning its huge head to where Blaise was vanishing in a glimmering mist. And with a flood of horror, James realised that the wolf was searching for Blaise too and that it had followed James right to him.

The sky broke apart in rivulets of scarlet lightning but the sun still blazed and turned, turned like a wheel made of fire — or the eye of the wolf.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said roughly. ‘It’s normal. But…’ He looked around the huge and beautiful room that seemed utterly unlived-in, as if Lucien Steele left nothing of himself in the apartment. ‘I did see those hands.’

‘I believe you,’ Fenny said imperturbably. ‘There are things in this world that we don’t yet understand. You’d be surprised how many incidents pass through Whitehall and are carefully catalogued and buried.’

‘Really?’ For some reason that surprised James while making him feel that perhaps he wasn’t teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown, which was something he feared. His father’s papers ran mocking ‘silly season’ stories on the paranormal. Mirroring their owner’s views, they succeeded in making the witnesses sound ridiculous.

‘There are frequent reports.’ Fenny stretched out and crossed one ankle over the other. ‘But it’s like UAP reports —what used to be called UFO’s. Every few years there’s a flap that they’re a national security risk. But it dies down. You can’t prove — or disprove — these things. They’re nebulous: ghosts, poltergeists, disappearances, werewolves and vampires, Bigfoot. The lot.’ He shrugged. ‘The people who witness or are involved believe what they see completely and some of them are impeccable witnesses and completely sound.’ He glanced toward the window. ‘Storm’s coming in.’

James turned back to the doors. The twilight held a strange nacreous quality and everything had gone still. Even on the terrace the air felt breathless. The Shard caught a last gleam of sunlight and turned to blood.

A sudden artery of lightning flashed and twitched, arcing across the iron-coloured clouds. Fenny, coming to James’ side, snuffed the air like an old hound.

‘Going to be quite a show. An odd summer this, but it’ll freshen the air, hey?’

The sky sheeted white as if some god’s eye had glanced across it. The louring atmosphere intensified and it seemed that the very petals of the flowers were limned in ochre, held still as if in syrup.

Then, all across the skyline, forked lightning sprang down like claws. Thunder followed; first a rumble almost on the edge of hearing, then a boom that James felt in his bones.

‘Better get in and shut the doors,’ Fenny suggested prosaically. ‘It’s going to chuck it down.’

They moved back, James almost reluctantly. A wind had begun, ozone-charged and he breathed it deeply into his lungs.

A snap. A blaze. Before James ducked his eyes into his sheltering hands, he saw the lightning broad as a river, blue white within, edged by flickering gold. Then the air contacted and blew out, lifting his hair like a wire at its roots.

He expected the glass doors to shatter. They did not. He lowered his hands and saw…

A figure walked out of the lightning. He wore the awful radiance of a destroying angel.
James saw great triple wings that shed burning sparks, an aura of hair scarlet-rose-ember-red. Eyes like twin suns shone pitilessly from its head.

Every atom of his being rose toward it, knowing this must be a last crazed vision before inevitable death. Yet he knew he smiled because his blood surged upward to meet it, something not of this world and magnificent.

The immense wings folded. Fiery sparks scattered and vanished. The sunspot hair recoiled in a thousand Medusa-whips to clasp a stern, beautiful face and the eyes banked like coals in a fire, to shining bronze. The man looked from James to Fenny with a rueful smile.

‘Ah,’ he said. “This is unfortunate. Is Van—Lucien Steele here?’

‘Aelios.’ Steele strode through the room with a quirk of his mouth. ‘James, Fenny, this is Aelios.’

‘How do you do?’ Aelios said very correctly to the staring men. Fenny, recovering first, put out a hand but could not disguise the slight jump as it was taken. James, his breath caught in his throat, but not to be outdone, offered his own. He met a look from eyes no longer inhuman but almost as strange, like beaten bronze. Slim dark brows lifted.

He expected the being’s skin to burn. A man stood before him now, but he could not think of him — or it — as human. His mind was frozen by the entrance of a living Sun. His eyes were filled with sunspots. The clasp that met his was hot as fever, but dry and so firm that it suggested immense strength withheld.

Releasing his grip, he turned away, smiling at Steele.

‘Of course I will understand if you wish to leave,’ Steele said to James and Fenny. ‘But this is DDE business.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘Thank you.’ As Steele and Aelios walked away Fenny turned to James.
‘You see?’ His voice held only a small quaver. ‘Happens all the time, this kind of thing.’ He gestured. ‘All the time.’

~ In layout and structure Formenos was almost identical to what Fëanor had begun to think of as ‘home’.
The long, shaded lawns of the mansion merged into orchards, and beyond the encircling walls lay the farmland and buildings. To the north and west rough, pine-clad hills rose and to the south, the flax meadows spread their cool blue lakes. Off to the right the granary and threshing barn still stood. Vineyards paced in orderly green rows up the hillsides. A wagon was coming up the road from Tirion. The walls were solid and tall, forbidding, but the gates were open. Everything was orderly and normal — and different.

Turning back to the workshops, Fëanor breathed in their scent of forge-smoke and hot metal. They were built in a half-circle around an inner ward with access for wagons from the mines. The outer-wall buildings were far larger; some rooms could only be accessed from the front. Apprentices and crafters, differentiated by their insignias, paused as he approached and he inclined his head. All of them were familiar, he noted with relief, although some of their positions were reversed.

‘My Lord.’ He was glad to see the two sisters Eriel and Pante emerge from a workshop, leather aprons well-worn, long hair braided practically around their heads. Pante gestured for him to enter and he passed through the open door which she shut behind them then walked quickly to the far end and another door, this one locked. Placing her fingers lightly on it, she hummed a tone in three notes and the lock clicked free.

The room behind was much larger and stocked with weapons: Swords, axes, spears, long shields and daggers. On stands complete suits of armour gleamed supple as the skins of fish, great helms that curved up to hold silken falls of feathers.

Eriel said in her calm and careful voice. ‘We received no countermand from thee, so we have continued.’

Fëanor shot her a surprised look, then turned back to the array of weapons. He had his own stock, yes, but this seemed excessive. Then he remembered his tendency to paranoia and could easily believe that this Fëanor was even more suspicious. And they would need such a store as this when they left Aman. But was all this created for Middle-earth or for use here? Surely not against his own kindred he thought uneasily.

‘Very good,’ he said, walking down the long room, pausing to examine and praise. There was little need for the former; the women were extremely skilled, but every crafter enjoys validation.

He called upon each of the workshops before entering his own. It was securely locked by a note-spell, though few people would ever dream of entering another’s private place without invitation. With a swift look around, he paced to the rear of the room. The door here, as in his own, was more securely fastened and the spell notes he used failed to open it.

Think how he would think.

I know thee.

And he would force his will upon this other Fëanor without compunction. Without knowing what he had done he felt the tension like thunder against his skin. It existed in his own world of course but had been planned that way from the beginning. That it had slipped both his control and Fingolfin’s and taken on its own life was simply because they were both princes and too prominent. But at the end, Fëanor vowed, they two would lock together like this sealed mechanism.

Yet it was different here. Darker, more febrile; Fëanor imagined the edges flaking and breaking like worn nacre. Even the light…He was accustomed to the metallic harshness of the glow that Laurelin and Telperion shed. This was softer, more similar to the sunlight and moonlight of Middle-earth. He thought of Vanimöré saying,Some realities are so porous…The edges are tattered… Nael too, had said the world in which he dwelt was porous. Fëanor thought that this one was. Maybe they all were.

He touched the lock with the confidence of a maker and pitched the spell-notes lower into something dark and dangerous, like the growl of a great hunting cat. He felt the minute vibration of the metal under his fingers and then the mechanism whispered open.

In the centre of the room, the Palantiri rested in silence. He lifted the lamp and watched as their surfaces responded to a living presence in drifts of starlight and purling colour, violet, blue and a black-beyond-black, dashed with pinpricks of radiance. Beyond lay racks of swords his own hand had forged. He frowned, bending his critical assessment upon them but could find no flaw.

Raising the lamp higher he gazed down the length of the inner workshop. The light burned down suits of armour with that same minute fishscale mail and slim overlapping bands of steel. Eight of them. One for him and each of his sons and subtly different from the others, leaving no doubt that they were made for princes. The rivets and joins bore the eight-pointed star as did the great helms with their crowns of red-dyed crane feathers. Tiny gems winked and glittered like a mist of rain. He let his fingers examine them, feeling every undulation, the smooth perfection.

If this was meant to be worn into battle against our kin, thy thoughts are dark, Fëanor.

He hoped it was not. He hoped he was wrong.

~ Celebrimbor was too young to dissimulate or step carefully around Fëanor. And he clearly adored his grandfather.

He was very like Curufin at that age, save his eyes were like clear white crystals, huge and luminous in a soft, childish face surrounded by black curls of hair. When Fëanor, with the ease of long practice, picked him up and settled him on one hip, Celebrimbor leaned around, craning his head and staring at him. He reached up a small hand to touch Fëanor’s face then beamed.
‘G’an papa smiling now,’ he pronounced with satisfaction and gave a little bounce as he was carried to Curufin’s workshop.

Curufin had, in fact, made tiny tools for the child; it was no jest, but he hovered over him watchfully as played — it was play now, not craft. He wanted his son to learn to handle the implements with confidence. Fëanor had done the same when his sons were young, if they showed interest — and with the same watchfulness in case of mishaps. All the Fëanorions had the craft of making at their fingertips but all save Curufin preferred other arts. But Curufin was not pushing his son, as Fëanor had not. Celebrimbor was genuinely interested.

Fëanor, watching the child’s intent expression suddenly laughed, but softly, and Curufin’s head rose.

‘What is it, father?’

‘He looks exactly the same as thou didst at his age.’ Still smiling, he saw that his son’s expression was warm…yet puzzled. ‘What is it?’

Curufin glanced down at his son’s bent head. ‘If I were a teller of tales like Maglor I would say that thou didst go into thy room and come out a different person.’ And quickly. ‘I understand thine anger, father.’

‘I would never put that upon thee,’ Fëanor said, even more quickly, and alert to any sign that he had done just that. Unforgivable, if so, but Curufin reached out to him.
‘Of course not.’ But we hate to see thee thus.

So his sons knew Ósanwe. He had wondered and been careful not to use mind-speech until he was sure.

I know. He squeezed Curufin’s shoulder. I should not have allowed my suspicions and temper to infect my sons. It will be different from now on.

He was aware, as he left the workshop of his son’s eyes following him. He felt the curiosity and still, the bewilderment.

His bedchamber looked as if no-one else had ever shared it, and except during her pregnancies he and Nerdanel had separate rooms. If their last years were dominated by arguments, it was unlikely she had slept here for some time. He frowned. At ‘home’ they had only one furious row when goaded, he revealed that he knew she had lied to him about her innocence in Finwë and Mahtan’s plan. Neither did she deny it. She hit back that she had wanted him and he would never otherwise have wed her. They glared at one another, Fëanor utterly stymied because he could not and would not say he regretted the marriage. He loved his sons.

After that, the chasm between them deepened, but it had always been a stealthy erosion, creeping year by year without notice. Theirs was a spent energy that had never bloomed save in friendship. Here, it sounded like a far more bitter relationship. His own might have been, save for Fingolfin. Closing his eyes he could feel the echoes of anger and resentment in the quiet room.

He crossed into the dressing room and flung open a clothes chest. From Maedhros’ words, Fëanor surmised that he had refused to attend his half-brother’s feast or at least not been expected, and his innate love of drama prompted him to ensure it would be an entrance worthy of the High Prince. Showmanship was a useful art to learn.

He chose a tunic in deepest garnet embroidered across the chest with gold and a necklace of yellow topaz and smiled as he caught himself once again judging this other Fëanor. But they seemed to diverge only in their moods; their tastes and workmanship were much the same.

The door to Maedhros’ room was open, and Fëanor knocked, then entered.

‘In here,’ came the response. Fëanor listened to that lovely, commanding voice and laid vow upon vow that his sons would never bear the weight of that terrible oath.

Maedhros, too, was choosing his outfit: the colour so dark a green it was almost black, and had in his hands a collar of open-work rose-gold set with emeralds. He had lifted it to inspect the stones.

‘Yes,’ Fëanor said, smiling. ‘Emeralds have always suited thy colouring.’

Maedhros smiled back and returned the collar to its casket.

‘Thou wilt not change thy mind?’ he asked, voice level but eyes intent.

‘No,’ Fëanor reassured him briefly. He touched the tunic, the velvet as fine and soft as silk. Maedhros too, employed the art of appearance. ‘This finery is for Fingon?’ he asked lightly, teasingly and without thinking.

Maedhros came to his feet in a blur of long legs and swirling copper hair.
‘What?’ he demanded, just shy of a shout.

The reaction shocked Fëanor for a heartbeat and then his eyes narrowed. Maedhros had always a delicate complexion; even his blushes were a mere trace of rose. It was his eyes that told his emotions. The pale silver was hard as steel yet blazing. Fire seemed to crackle down the coils of his hair.

But Fëanor, in any world, knew his son. All his sons. He looked past the burn to the pure consternation and even fear behind it. Not fear for his father, but a fear of losing something precious.

‘Maedhros,’ he said into the screaming silence. ‘I know.’

He saw the exact moment, shaved until it was less than nothing, when Maedhros debated whether to lie. The room filled up with the thunder of heartbeats. Then his head went up like a crowned king facing a challenge. Behind his eyes everything closed: thoughts locked away, door after door slammed and bolted as Fëanor had taught his all sons to do when they wished to seal their minds.

He does not trust me.

It was a blow. Fëanor had never doubted that his sons loved and trusted him. Wounded anger rose like a sea-swell.

‘Have I ever given thee cause to think thou canst not trust me?’ he demanded fiercely.

Maedhros blinked. His mouth parted. The firstborn and eldest son yet he was still young and it showed in his bewilderment and his words when he said, ‘Never, but there is no love lost between thee and thy half brothers! Especially Fingolfin. I know how thou doth dislike my friendship with Fingon—‘

‘Have I ever prohibited it?’ It was a risk. But Fëanor could not imagine any incarnation of himself ordering something that would hurt his sons.

‘There is no need,’ Maedhros retorted hotly. ‘Listen, father: Fingolfin is as proud as be-damned, as proud as thee, but I would take an oath he does not wish to replace thee as the elder line of Finwë’s blood. If thou couldst just—‘

‘What?’ And speak not of swearing oaths, my son.

Maedhros’ jaw clenched. He said tautly, ‘Speak to him. And let him speak to thee!’

There was a pause, as if Maedhros expected his father to violently rebuff the suggestion. Fëanor reached forward and gripped his shoulder, feeling the muscles under his press as hard and braced as an iron bar.

‘I will,’ he promised. ‘I should have done it long ago.’

‘Why?’ Fëanor felt the intake of breath before the explosive question. ‘What has brought this change of heart, father?’ Maedhros shifted closer rather than drawing away, eyes flaming through those bolted mind-doors until only the intensity of the question was left.

‘Everything I do affects my sons,’ Fëanor said. ‘Everything.’His grip tightened. ‘I do not wish the impact to be detrimental. For too long it has been. But there is more than me and my feelings. And so.’ So. ‘I will speak with Fingolfin.’ How? He did not know this half-brother but he could not be so very different. ‘It may not be easy,’ he admitted. ‘We may argue, but I have no thought of casting him and Finarfin from Tirion.’

The tension shifted, moved. A little of it was released, yet some remained. But Maedhros said, ‘Good.’ And put his arms around Fëanor and held him tight and hard. Closing his eyes, Fëanor embraced him then drew back and smiled lest the tears show. He missed the sons he knew — but these were his sons.
‘Please,’ he said and shook the wide shoulders gently. ‘Do not worry.’

Releasing Maedhros, he turned to leave the room. His son’s voice stopped him.

‘Father, it does just faintly occur to me that Fingolfin may not wish to speak to thee.’

Fëeanor raised his hand in a negligent gesture.
‘Then I will have to persuade him.’ He flashed a smile over his shoulder.

As with Curufin, he was aware of Maedhros watching him as he walked away.

There was some time before the evening meal and Fëanor went straight to his study. He shut the door quietly, leaned against it and closed his eyes for a moment.

I should leave. Now.

Crossing to the table, he opened the small drawer. He inhaled, held his breath then let it go.

The Mirror surface rippled, then fragmented. He saw Vanimórë and for a moment those glittering violet eyes seemed to see him. There was an impression of a city, crowds of people that passed like mist…Nael — or was it Eru, under a stormy sky, hair cast out in silver billows by an unfelt wind…

Then his eyes looked into impossible light. He almost blinked against it, then held his gaze so that it burned through them, opening him to the face that formed and looked back at him.

It was his own, but as if he had been fashioned from the radiance of the Silmarils. Here was Power made from fire, from light and it should have been polished and smooth and as remote as the vision of Eru, so terrible and beautiful was it. But this was fiercely, passionately real. Fëanor connected with it like a lover but there was a familiarity that went much deeper. He saw, quite suddenly, himself and Fingolfin standing within eternity and three godlike beings, immense beyond measure, part of infinity yet separate.

I went there, through the Mirror to access power and after, I brought the Silmarils into existence. I forgot it, like a dream that never fully shows itself.

He said, ‘Thou art —‘

And the Fire, smiling like a diamond, said, ‘Thee.’

Chapter Text

~ ‘Didst thou bring the storm with thee?’

Vanimöré lead the way to his study, aware, until they passed out of sight, that James and Fenny were motionless, staring after them. Damn, he thought mildly, but James must know sooner or later and Fenny, after the first shock, would absorb it.

‘No. I rode in on it.’ Eyes like a banked fire turned to him. ‘I deepened it. Unavoidable, I am afraid,’ But there was a glint of hectic enjoyment under the not-quite-an-apology. ‘I should have seen someone was with thee.’

‘No matter.’

‘Thou couldst make them forget.’

‘From the Monument, yes.’ Vanimöré opened the door of the study and then closed it behind them.
‘But I will not. James is Sauron’s grandson. Think'st thou Sauron would be so gentle with his feelings?’

Codagnir arched his brows. ‘And the other? Fenny?’

‘Old school and a consummate professional.’ He smiled.

‘So they will not leave? Or should I say “flee”?’

‘No.’

‘And thou?’ Coldagnir raised his brows.

‘I am not going to disappear,’ Vanimöré promised, smile turning wry. ‘Or flee. I have too much to do.’ At least now. Maybe that was the secret: Keep myself occupied so that I do not drift away again.

Coldagnir’s eyes regarded him, minutely mapping his face. He nodded slowly, but the doubt remained.

‘These storms are not natural,’ Vanimöré told him. ‘I have the Landseer tracking them. They are bubbling up out of nowhere.’

‘Yes.’ Coldagnir’s eyes dropped to the golden ring on Vanimórë’s finger and then rose again. ‘Everything is febrile. And there is that.’

‘Hmm, yes. Fëanor quite deliberately left it behind. Like a beacon, I think, to lead him back were it ever necessary.’ He tilted his hand back and forth so that the light ran like liquid over the band. Always warm, it sometimes burned like a brand. Now, perhaps reacting to Coldagnir’s presence, it was hot.
‘I should have left it at the Monument but he would only seek for it. It is not a good idea,’ he said wryly. ‘To leave such things around. This ring is an artefact of Power from another universe but so are we. And there are others here, Maglor, Olórin, Sauron…’ His lips pressed together. ‘Together there is a huge pressure on this reality. No wonder there are cracks.’

‘I know. We have spoken of it. I wish—‘ Coldagnir’s eyes turned molten in the ring’s play of light. His voice dropped into muted passion. ‘I grieve for the loss of that universe. For him.’ Outside thunder beat across the sky like the echoes of Dagor Dagorath crashing like waves upon the shores of this world. ‘The lesser flame must always serve the greater. I am bound to the House of Fire. Maglor, in this world.’ Brows crooked, he said, ‘Melkor did not know what Fëanor was, but he must have sensed something, sending us to meet him. To slay him. Yet had he known what he truly was, Fëanor could have commanded the Valaraukar.’

Vanimöré’s eyes narrowed as he considered it. The Balrogs were corrupted fire but the Flame could master them all and burn them back into a destroying Light as awesome and magnificent as Coldagnir unveiled.

‘Gothmog refused,’ he pointed out. ‘Eru unmade him.’

‘Gothmog deserved to be unmade.’ There was a deadly purr of a smouldering fire in the tone, a pitiless judgement. ‘As I deserved my death for what I did. But I am not sure the Flame Imperishable would allow that. I think he would force them back into what they once were, whether they wanted it or no. They — we — proceed from him. We belong to him.’

Vanimöré drew him close. The scarlet fall of hair glowed under his closed eyelids. Energy still sparked from it, hissing against Vanimorë’s cheek.

‘I know,’ he murmured. There was no need to say more. He knew. The mourning, the emptiness, the anguish.

Gently, he drew away. So long ago, Coldagnir, stripped of the greater part of his powers, had been a Balrog in Utumno and Angband, and not the greatest of them: Lungorthin, whom Maglor slew at the Gap, and Gothmog, were far mightier. They had made Coldagnir, who still held something of his original beauty, their toy. So long ago.

Coldganir was one of the few Vanimórë had forgiven. Coldagnir had also been an emissary of Eru…deceived as they all were.

Hot and alive as a magma chamber below a volcano, the anger within Vanimöré whitened. He could not see behind Eru’s veil. Even the Flame Imperishable could not. All of them were blind.

‘How are they?’ he asked, moving toward the heavy desk and his laptop. He waved a hand. ‘I know all is well but I do not wish to intrude on thy privacy.’

‘Well enough.’ Coldagnir followed. ‘Safe enough. We are being careful.’

Quite involuntarily, Vanimöré gave a shout of laughter.
‘As in Venice?’ he teased. ‘As just now?’

Coldagnir retorted, the corners of his mouth lifting. ‘Most of the time.’ Then the smile faded. ‘It is… difficult.’

‘Yes, it is always difficult not to be one’s true self.’

Coldagnir had to contain his power and discharge it into the Sun. Edenel, who personified winter, had to master the deep cold. Maglor, prince of the Noldor, had to live for thousands of years under glamour and forever move on.
It was easier for Vanimöré who had lived for so long as a Slave and refused to access his powers and yet not easy at all. He felt no real affinity with this world, only with some who lived upon it. Ultimately, it was not enough. There had been times, years ago, when he had simply allowed the glamour to drop because he did not care what the reaction might be.

‘We accepted this, Edenel and I.’ Coldagnir laid a hand on his back. ‘We will see it to the end.’

‘There was nothing else for thee,’ Vanimöré pointed out and Coldagnir flashed a smile hard and glittering as broken glass.
‘I swore an oath to Fëanor. I will hold to it. In any universe.’

‘Is it enough?’

Coldagnir moved to the window and, for a moment, was silhouetted by lightning. ‘Sometimes, yes. And no. We are always aliens, wherever we are. Remnants.’

‘There is something else,’ Vanimöré suggested. ‘Somewhere else. I have said I will go to Middle-earth.’ He raised the hand that bore the ring. ‘And Fëanor is always Fëanor. The best of him and the worse.’

‘But thou art there, or another Vanimöré,’ Coldagnir exclaimed, whirling back to face him. The flickering white light spat down his hair as it swirled and sank.

‘Yes, that could cause some confusion,’ Vanimöré admitted. ‘And I do not mean to remain there. I will go to help, if I can or at least throw some dust in the eyes of Melkor and Sauron.’

‘But what a temptation it would be to remain,’ Coldagnir murmured as if to himself.

‘I know but we are —surely — stronger than that. It is not our world but we would know it; it would feel familiar.’

‘Too much so.’ A look of intensity came over Coldagnir’s face, his inner power concentrated so that it glowed from within like a lamp.
‘I am there too,’ he said. ‘I have never sought to look, truth to tell.’

‘Thou art there,’ Vanimöré affirmed. ‘For myself, I would have the same powers — or lack of — as I did before my apotheosis, the same as I possess here, and if I die it will hardly matter.’

‘No, one cannot kill something that is already dead.’ Coldagnir’s eyes sparked back into sunfire. Both hands shot out, palms impacting on Vanimöré’s chest and knocking him back. ‘This is what we fear, this apathy, that it will send thee back to the Monument and never return. What does it take to bring thee back to life?’

‘The world that was lost,’ Vanimöré said, laying down the words like carved metal and stone, as hard and as solid and as obdurate. ‘When we had Valinor and the Timeless Halls, after the Elves ascended. And I could have it.We could have it.’

Coldagnir started back a step. ‘What?’

‘But not really.’ He grimaced. ‘I could imagine it but it would not be real. Dost thou understand? I could sit in the Monument and see it and it would look real and feel real but it would only be in my mind.’

‘But if thou canst do anything…’

‘When a Creator imagines something it becomes real. Yes. But the universes we move in have a progression.’ He opened his hands. ‘The Ancient universe that Eru destroyed became the old universe we dwelt in and I danced the blood-dance to create new ones from its dust. It is like new cities built on the ruins of the old. Like London. Anything else I might create would be simply a fantasy of my mind.’

‘I wonder if it matters.’

‘Sometimes there is a voice,’ Vanimöré murmured, closing his eyes. ‘As one calling to me in a dream, it tells me to “Wake up”.’

‘Who’s voice?’

‘I do not know. I wonder if this is indeed a dream. If it is, I cannot seem to wake from it, or not yet. So no, perhaps it does not matter.’ He laid his hand on Coldagnir’s shoulder and briefly gripped it as he moved past him. ‘Come.’

Coldagnir turned. ‘I saw thy dream Vanimöré, in the Monument. Nightmare rather. It took Sauron to wake thee from it.’*

Vanimöré cast a grim smile back at him. ‘Then it is just as well I did not unmake him, is it not?’

‘It is not a cause for amusement,’ Coldagnir’s voice roughened. ‘I was there.’

‘Yes, so was I.’ Vanimöré swung back, folding his arms. The humour twisted inside him to self-mockery. ‘That is the oldest dream,’ he reflected. ‘The strongest. Come now, my dear, I have to find myself amusing. What else is there? Listen, I have a duty to the universes I created. They’re too bloody similar to the one we knew, and the blame lies solely on me. So no, much as I might wish to disappear, or remain in some Middle-earth, I will not. Now come.’

He opened the laptop, fingers snapping over the keys to bring up the plan of Scotland Yard. Coldagnir came silently to his side but his long fingers drifted down through Vanimöré’s hair and settled on his back.

‘Why didst thou not?’ he asked soft as flame light against old walls. ‘Unmake Sauron?’

‘The evidence will be in this room in a secure safe,’ Vanimöré tapped the screen. ‘A normal fire would not touch them, but we do not want to burn down the entire building so thou wilt have to judge it finely.’ He spun the chair abruptly and looked up. ‘Sauron is the only person who knows me completely, absolutely. I forget nothing,’ he said stonily. ‘I never did, and now cannot. Every moment of torture, every rape. How he twisted my mind so that in the end, I came to want it.’ He did not blink; he stared up into Coldagnir’s eyes, pushing the truth home without flinching, and detesting that it was the truth.
‘But there were times when he spoke to me as if I was a person; his son. He challenged my mind to keep pace with his. It was exhilarating. And those moments tipped the balance. That there is one person who wholly comprehends one. It is not sentiment. It is powerful.’

Coldagnir held himself still, the opalescence that ran under his skin brightened like a lamp-wick turned up. He too, had known rape and torment that one came to beg for. Leaning, he kissed Vanimöré’s brow. The touch of his mouth was fire.

‘Unless I know which safe to burn, they will all have to be destroyed.’ He straightened.

‘I looked from the Monument. XA761A but destroying only one will look suspicious.’

‘It is so vital that James does not see these tapes?’

The room lit and darkened again.

‘He is right on the verge,’ Vanimöré said slowly, bringing the young man into his mind’s eye with a frown. ‘He killed Ollie Skinner without a blink in a passion of fury. Sauron cares nothing for him, neither does his mother. They want to use him, the worst parts of his nature. He is of their blood more than Callaghan’s and it exerts a pull. Gods, do I not know it? In all conscience, I cannot allow him to be used as I was.’

‘No,’ Coldagnir agreed, his fine, dark brows drawn down. ‘Sauron’s daughter, Joanna…Yes, we do keep alert. So what happened to thee, in this world?’

‘I died in the War of Wrath,’ Vanimöré said dismissively. ‘That seems to often be where I end in different realities.’ And would have, he was sure, had Sauron not sent him away to the South. ‘But Sauron believes his son has somehow returned. Well, he is going to be surprised.’

‘And where is he, that Vanimöré?’

‘In the Everlasting Dark, I assume. I did not look,’ he admitted impatiently. ‘I am not interested in failures.’

Coldagnir’s frown deepened but he said merely, ‘Wait for me. This will not take long.’ Trailing a hand along Vanimórë’s shoulder, he walked to the wide window and opened it. The air-conditioned atmosphere of the room freshened with the ozone-crackle of the storm. With one seemingly weightless leap he was on the sill. A flare of lightning and his hair was a storm of fire. His form glowed into energy. Vanimöré watched him burn upward into the sky.

~ ‘I existed before Time,’ the Flame said and the Mirror was filled with the untamed glory of the inferno. ‘And in potentiality before that. Only once have I merged the living Fëanor with the Totality. And then, I destroyed the universe.’

Fëanor stared into eyes that were not truly eyes at all. They were gaps into fire. That form was constructed around it by will. He reached a hand toward the Mirror’s surface.

I am thee… He recalled things that Vanimöré had said, and Nael’s words: Everything you want to know is within you, Fëanor, Spirit of Fire. Even the name…!

‘Thou wilt not be able to remember everything of thy previous lives,’ The Flame Imperishable said. ‘Not yet. I did not. Vanimöré was right that the Earth-born need to live, to learn and grow toward their apotheosis.’

‘Why?’ Fëanor demanded. ‘Why wouldst thou choose to be born into a world?’

‘Thou to ask me that?’ The arching brows, twins to his own, lifted. ‘I am Life. But I cannot experience life, the good, the bad, here and the Totality cannot set foot upon a world, just as Eru cannot or Vanimórë. We have to filter what we are into the brain of a living being which reduces it.’

‘Vanimórë said thus.’ Mentally examining the facts, Fëanor, with unblinking eyes, regarded the impossible Power that bore his own features and felt a visceral recoil at the thought of existing on the Outside.

Lonely. A lonely burning.

There were echoes in his blood, like the fading reverberations of a memory he longed to forget and could or would not, a no-place where he had hung upon nothing, writhing in fury and blazed…

‘I am the part of thee that comes through.’

‘And it is not easy to contain it, is it?’ the Flame observed. ‘Something always bleeds through and struggles against the constraints set upon the truth, and not for thee alone; there are others who were gods in the Ancient universe.’

Fingolfin, yes, Fëanor knew he was more and — ‘Maglor?’ he questioned. ‘His voice…’

‘Ah yes.’ And the smile that came was a father’s for a beloved son. ‘Yes. He embodies the Great Music, the Song that stretches from end to end of all universes and compliments the Flame. Maglor, yes, Maedhros, all thy sons and others too. The Elves still carry what they once were; it cannot be wholly taken away. What we must do is go back…or rather forward to what we were. When Valinor was ours and the Valar faded, when Vanimöré opened the Timeless Halls to us so that we could live as we were meant to.’

‘Then tell me how,’ Fëanor commanded, eliciting a flash of approbation.

‘Already thou knowest more than I did. Or more than he who was Fëanor in that dead universe, and that is who I speak for. I may speak for all of us because I am.’

Fëanor frowned. ‘Thou canst take form, be more than the wind through universes. So Nael said.’

‘Yes.’ The Flame stared into unimaginable distances. ‘I prefer to have a form — of sorts, especially here and I am always here. The Flame is Life, consciousness. When I died, I burned in the Void.’ His eyes came back to Fëanor who wanted to drink all the knowledge the Flame possessed at one gulp.

‘Manwë had already judged us,’ the Flame told him. ‘Elven dead are summoned — or snatched — to Námo’s Halls to await rebirth. Some refuse it and the strong succeed, most often the Elves of Middle-earth who never knew Valinor. But thou hadst spoken the Oath and there was a moment when thy spirit was unhoused and vulnerable, straining toward thy sons, not wishing to leave them. Námo seized it and flung it hence, into the Everlasting Dark.’

A lonely burning.

‘And then, one by one they died and were condemned: Fingolfin, all thy sons save one, and others who had transgressed against the Laws of the Valar.’ The Flame's mouth curled as if he would spit out another Oath and this one directed at the gods. ‘We were to remain there until the universe ended, to go with a whimper into the dust and darkness.’

Fëanor inhaled the fire of outrage.

‘So thou didst burn in the Void and reached out to the others condemned to it, who also burned. When I touch any soul, it leaves its mark.’ The Flame’s fingers traced fire through the universe leaving tendrils of brilliance in their wake. ‘Then Melkor was defeated, not without great cost and he, coming also into the Void, tried to consume thee. He always desired the Flame Imperishable, always searched for it, without understanding what it was.’

Fëanor saw (remembered?) the howling nothingness again. It was not the universe; he had walked that. This was something else.

‘It is not,’ the Flame told him. ‘It exists beyond even the Outside.’

There was no time, only the defiance of holding on, burning until the Nothing was shattered by incandescent light. A Silmaril shone and cracked the Void.

Fëanor felt his body again, strange and oddly weighty for a moment until his soul remembered the shape and feel of physicality. There was sand under his knees, his hands. He raised his head and salty air flooded his lungs. Sea-wind lifted his hair. He tasted it on his tongue.

‘Thou wert reborn. Re-housed rather. Thou and all were cast into the Dark. But Námo tricked the Elves of Valinor, lied to them.’ The Flame came closer to the Mirror. ‘All Elves have the ability to rehouse themselves. It is not easy, I grant that and it comes down to will.’

Fëanor narrowed his eyes, stared into the light. ‘Then my mother—?’

‘In thy world, Míriel does not wish to be reborn,’ the Flame said gently. ‘Not yet. She does not have the spiritual energy or the desire. Carrying the embodiment of the Flame Imperishable requires immense strength and love. She gave all to bear thee.’

‘Then I did kill her,’ Fëanor pronounced harshly, looking bitterly inward.

The Flame regarded him without pity but with fullest understanding.
‘Yes. And so it has always been. No Power can be born without loss and grief. No birth is without pain. So it was with Vanimórë. And with Elgalad. Thine own wife suffered a loss of strength, but thou wert with her, lending her thine own and she is a strong woman.’

‘Yes,’ Fëanor acknowledged.

‘Míriel needs time. And more than that, for she was ever torn by her love for Finwë and for Indis whom she was not permitted to love in Valinor.’

Fëanor had been so very young when his mother died; all he retained were impressions of a lovely face smiling at him, thickly braided silver hair. He recalled Indis’ pain, undimmed by the years while his own was of a a lack, a space that would forever be unfilled.

‘Is she…safe?’ He could not bear to think of Námo’s hands (or whatever grey creeping servants roamed his Halls) putting their hands on her soul.

‘She is safe. Not because of any mercy on the Valar’s part, but because Vairë has her eyes on Míriel.’ The Flame’s mouth thinned. ‘For her unparalleled artistry. But for now she sleeps.’

It was, Fëanor supposed, enough, at least for now.

‘And so remember it. Manwë and Námo do not hold the souls of the Elves in their hands. We are not theirs!’ His features vanished, even to Fëanor, in pure glare. Only the eyes remained, Silmaril-power blazing outward.

‘I will.’ Fëanor did not blink.

Slowly, the Flame’s features solidified again.
‘But now, let me explain why I brought thee through the Mirror.’

Fëanor gazed back. ‘It was thee?’

‘I have no form in that world where thou didst speak to Nael. But thou knowest why I did it?’

‘The situation is worse here. I am to improve it.’ He gleamed a smile.

The Flame returned it and Fëanor saw his own indomitable assurance reflected back at him. This was what others saw, muted of course, but he understood why it came across as arrogance. It was. The thought did not trouble him. This was what he was; why would he attempt to disguise it?

‘And the Fëanor who has taken thy place will see how things can be — and will be. This will not be forever.’

‘So then, tell me what I face. All of it.’

The amusement deepened briefly then smoothed away.
‘In that world, Finwë loves thee more deeply than Fingolfin or Finarfin,’ the Flame told him. ‘And they know it. There is some truth in the rumour that thou wouldst have them gone from Tirion and some truth, too, in the murmurs that they would replace thee as being dangerous. But they are only thoughts which cross the mind, something heard when thou — or they — were hurt, angry, frustrated. It can be mended.’

‘It will be,’ Fëanor vowed. ‘The Valar here, will they know?’

‘Vanimórë is not the only power that can hide thee. No, they will not know. We three, Vanimöré, Eru and myself held concourse to judge if thou couldst take greater power into Middle-earth. It had to be the Silmarils that carried it, not thee. Everyone who sees them are blinded by them. They see the power and the beauty, but they see objects, inanimate. And they cannot be broken even by the hammer of Morgoth. They are indestructible, thou,’ he ended. ‘Are not. If the power had been placed within thee the Valar would have moved against thee at once, Morgoth, too. And thou wouldst have struck back. Whatever the schisms among the Noldor, very few would have stood aside and there would be slaughter. We could not permit it.’

Fëanor considered it briefly. ‘I see that,’ he agreed.

‘But the Silmarils attract lust.’ The moue of disgust hooked itself in Fëanor’s gut. He knew. ‘It cannot be helped. And not only from the Valar or Melkor. There were others who desired it, all of them yearning for something they could never truly possess: Thee. There was no need for the Oath; the Silmarils would have destroyed those who took it in time. It did, overthrowing their minds and reason.’

‘The Oath…’

‘I had ample time in the Void to realise the Oath should never have been given voice,’ The Flame said grimly. ‘Do not thou make that same error.’ And then he intoned words that lifted the hair on Fëanor’s scalp and sent a fission through his hot blood.

‘…Our word hear thou,
Eru Allfather! To the everlasting
Darkness doom us if our deed faileth…’

The following silence loomed like the shadow of a mountain.

‘Comprehensive, is it not? And I would speak thus.’ Fëanor acknowledged. In grief, in passion. ‘Nael said the Valar influenced me, but…’ He shrugged, taking on the responsibility of his intemperance, the arrogance that looked back at him. He would speak those words. Had. And locked his sons and so many others into them.

‘The Valar took all thine emotions and twisted them to breaking point.’

Fëanor had noted how the Flame’s emotions showed as billowing fire, brighter and more terrible with anger which flared now.

‘The Oath would destroy thee and thy sons and all the others, like a night path with a hanging noose at every step; the Valar knew it.’

Fëanor threw back his shoulders. He said, tight and hard, ‘I would vow to reclaim the Silmarils, yes, for they are no-one’s to touch save those I give leave, and they hold parts of my soul, but it is my oath to keep.’

‘And if thou wert dead?’ the Flame questioned. ‘Thou set no Oath upon thy sons, remember. They took it up willingly.’

‘I assume I did not expect to die,’ Fëanor returned with mordant humour. ‘But I will not make that mistake again.’ He would not speak those words to be bound by them; neither would his sons.

‘Oath or death?’

‘Both, I hope. But if death leads to greater power then I will embrace it, and Námo shall not seize my soul.’ He flung the words like a challenge. ‘I am forearmed now!’

The Flame nodded, mouth curling. ‘First, repair the relationship with thy half-brothers. There is time yet.’

Fëanor dragged his mind back from vengeful contemplation.
‘Finarfin and I could be friends if he were not so exceptionally controlled,’ Fëanor replied indifferently.

The Valar viewed Finarfin as the preeminent example of what a Noldo should be. High praise, thought Fëanor sardonically. But Fingolfin concealed his true nature. Perhaps Finarfin did, too or perhaps he was exactly what he seemed. Fëanor’s interactions with his youngest half-brother had been limited; he spent much time in Alqualondë.

‘And Fingolfin…’ The muffled thunder of his heart quickened, clapped like great wings in his ears. The thrill of the chase. The memory of passion. Yet what if Fingolfin should survey him with those splendid star-blue eyes backed by all that proud, kingly haughtier and there was nothing behind it but dislike?

But Fingolfin was always Fingolfin, just as he himself was always Fëanor. He had no doubt of his ability to mend the divisions between them.

‘How long will I remain here?’ he asked. ‘Will Vanimórë return me when he finds out?’

‘He will not interfere,’ the Flame promised. ‘Not if I have acted. But he will not like it. As for Eru…’ He fell silent, brows drawn the incandescence of his eyes directed elsewhere, a far-off burning. ‘I wish I knew. He veils himself. Vanimörë secluded himself in the Monument for millions of years but he has an ironclad sense of duty that binds him. I know him. No-one knows Eru.’

Fëanor thought of the silvery remoteness that was Eru, the incalculable depths behind the smile, and the chasm behind Vanimöré’s eyes that told of pain past measure — and an impenetrability that permitted no entry.

‘What happened between them?’ he demanded. ‘Are they at war?’

The Flame shook his head. ‘They dare not war for they would destroy everything. Neither can I. Our wars must needs be limited to the physical world. Those two maintain an impasse. And what happened is for one — or both — to tell thee. I loved Eru too — or the person he appeared to be. In the end…like so many things, it came down to the bitter spike of betrayal — and love.’

‘And what—?’

‘Enough,’ the Flame raised a hand. ‘Enough for now, Fëanor. One step at a time. Focus. Go to Tirion in thy full magnificence as High Prince and thy sons with thee and do what thou must.’

‘I will,’

The Flame inclined his head. Fëanor recognised the gesture used between lords of equal standing.
It was the bow accorded a compeer.

Naturally.

I want to thank Ellspeth so much for this lovely piece of art she gifted me with 🤗

https://www.deviantart.com/annellspethraven/art/Vanimore-Modern-AU-6-panel-concept-953594799

I asked her if I could pop it on this chapter because it fits very well with Vanimórë’s thoughts and mental state and

This all started out with "I'd really like to make an art gift for a friend who doesn't prefer trinkets or clutter but does commission a lot of works. Eru only knows what will happen, but I've meant to start drawing her characters for a long time, and as an artist friend advised yesterday, "existing art will always be better than hypothetical non existing art." Enough said.
I had a week to work on this, surely enough time to meet the challenge to fill out six panels in a manga/web cartoon art style that I've been trying to learn of late, right? We know the answer to this...everything was going so well and then there was panel 5 which really became panel 5/6 because like the Borg it had to assimilate. I'm still not sure about this decision to break the 'rules' of defying the panel borders but the thinking here was...

The modern AU stories have amazed me in a different way than the original. For the latter, the protagonist's defiant endurance in the face of relentless abuse and adversity caught my attention. I have to emphasize that this was more than an 'our hero survives' tale, those stories and characters are legion. It was this relentless determination of the captive to always resist and maintain an outward stoicism coupled with the failure of his overlords to produce a monster. They instead molded a person with deep compassion for others similarly afflicted and the strength to offer help once his circumstances finally changed. But. A horrific past leaves damage, and as the Ages passed this formerly dynamic individual who had some element of if not an emotionally healthy side, at least a remaining facet willing to forge some intimate, passionate connections (however brief) had managed to (with what appeared to be subconscious deliberation) excise these constructs one by one even while extending aid to those deemed truly in need such intervention -- including the brilliant Fëanor, destined to play a key role in all that will unfold. In short, Eru and Vanimórë are the two greatest existing Powers, and no one can force either to confront their teetering mental states or in Vanimórë's case, engender any acceptance that his self-perception has gone clean off its already distorted axis (and cause him to give any fucks about resolving that issue). But there is the tenacity of love and loyal friends, always countering and disturbing his wishes to withdraw into his own self-hatreds and conviction of irrevocability.

With this summarizing how the stories/characterizations strike me, the panels comment on the inner state of the main character. Who, while mired in a state of mind so bad that I believe he would cease to exist if possible, has earned the unbreakable devotion of everyone whose path he crosses (who is actually someone of worth). Even his adversaries offer up some grudging admiration (well, of course, there are those who just want to degrade him but they tend to fall into the category of the terminally stupid or depraved so I'm not really discussing that faction).
Vanimórë continually finds himself locked in a chess game with a differently unstable Eru (who I have to call a proto-creator as the earliest existing consciousness in the timeline of this story...but there are enough paradoxes in the AU temporal and otherwise that everything is in the air at this point).  I know who has a following and who only has avatars, though...and it seems to me that even the avatars feel a bit dubious and under compulsion. 

An author has to be doing something right when readers want to create fanart. At this point it's also shameless self interest, given I'm blessed to write Vanimórë in my own stories, and trying to draw a sun-spirit (and uncorrupted balrog) and other Maiar could be useful later on. Practice, practice. 

This also was my introduction to Krita 5.1.5 and much was learned. I feel like an American Express commercial. "Drawing in a program designed for drawing? -- Priceless."

Chapter Text

~ James dug his fingers into his hair as the room glared and darkened. His eyes winced against the black-white aftershocks.

The instant of mad euphoria had dropped into something that was not-quite shock. This was a revelation that he had expected or known and refused to see, a mountain that had always been there concealed by fog. Then one day the fog lifts and the mountain devours the sky making everything else so much smaller…

Callaghan had been an atheist to the core and James had inculcated that non-belief yet it felt arid, as circumscribed and uninteresting as his life. The storm of fire ended something that had been slowly dying since Italy.

The figure that he had thought for one blazing moment, was a destroying angel, or a god walked away with Steele. Now, he appeared human, if taller than most, but James could not blink away the truth.

And Steele, who walked beside that…being…

He whirled on Fenny.
‘They’re not human.’ He heard his voice come hoarse with the strain of it. ‘Neither of them.’

Fenny blinked. ‘Ah…’

‘Did you know?’ James only barely managed not to grab him by his collar and shake him.

‘Working in Whitehall for decades we hear a great deal.’ Fenny’s mild, clever eyes were opaque. ‘Howard’s department has existed since, oh, the late forties? I can’t say I expected to see anything like this, though.’

‘No fucking kidding!’ James swung round again watching the door where the two had vanished. Two indisputably unearthly beings because while the one had seemed to contract, draw the fire into itself to present a more human form — short hair, jeans, polo-shirt et al — at the same time Lucien Steele shimmered into otherness.

And
James saw both: Steele, tall, runway-elegant and a being even taller, dressed in black, supple and workmanlike but serving as armour. A harness held twin swords whose hilts jutted above his shoulder and a great braid of black hair swung to his knees.
He walked in a way that made James think of those swords hissing lightly from their sheaths, of war banners against a red storm sky, of cities aflame.

The vision sighed inward, but still flickered like a heat mirage on a desert road.

He’d thought his father had power — of a sordid kind. Callaghan was nothing, a mouse scuttling through corn-stalks, squeaking. He had squealed too loudly and an apex predator had focussed on him. But the predator had toyed with him first, before the death.

You wanted him dead, so he died.

The mind, once opened, is not easily closed again and this had been no gentle easing into wonder but swift and brutal, a knife-sweep across his consciousness. Yet there had been harbingers before this that he had ignored or shrugged off until he saw Skinner dragged down into the water. With a shock through his veins he thought of his father’s drowning in Lake Como. What had he seen out there in that lovely place, in that deep, glacier-carved lake? Hands that pulled him down into the cold depths?

Shuddering, he pressed his fingers against his eyes. His father’s death was earned and he still felt nothing but relief for it; now that emotion opened fiercely into a dark kind of delight; there were forces in this world that could destroy Callaghan and those like him, and had done so. It was crazy and impossible, but it was here, now in this penthouse.

God, how often had he wanted such power himself, how often had he imagined it when stepping in his father’s train, watching him, loathing him and not having the guts to walk away.

He felt a nudge at his elbow. Fenny offered him his discarded drink. Accepting it wordlessly, he tossed it back but thought it would take more than a Martini to steady his nerves.

‘Who are they?’

‘I’m sure Steele will explain when he comes back,’ Fenny said soothingly, though he was a little wild about the eyes.

‘Steele. Yes, Lucien Steele, the mysterious multi-billionaire, richest man in the world,’ James mocked and choked down the edge of hysterical laughter he heard in his words. It was shocking and exhilarating and for a flashing moment, when the lightning entered the room and become that god or alien or whatever it was, he had wanted it to take him away from here, to die, to be burned free of the sordid slime that seemed to cling to his name, his life, as Callaghan’s son. His father, who had raped and murdered children — and Blaise — and rubbed shoulders with that creature Skinner. How many others, he wondered with horror, how many others were there out there and why were they still alive? He had just witnessed enough power to burn them all to ash.

He turned to the windows. Rain blurred the black sky that was rent, time and again, by the flare of light, thunder bursting in its wake. He imagined that there was another world out there, another dimension and that if he opened the doors he could see it, step into it. He put his hand to the glass.

‘My father's press,’ he said slowly. ‘They’d run these ridiculous stories sometimes in the really low-end red-tops. You know the kind of thing? And they’d throw in articles about Steele, well I’m sure you know that. To see if he would respond. My father ordered it. I never took much notice. I thought it was pathetic how obsessed he was, like some teenager who stalks a celebrity online. Such wild stories. But they’re not.’

He thought it dangerous too, although his thoughts had focused more on damaging lawsuits than death.

‘No.’

‘Has anyone — when you were in Whitehall — seen anything like this?’

‘Only 1% of these kinds of reports reach the government departments,’ Fenny said behind him, sounding more than ever like a professor elucidating on an interesting subject. ‘Most are perfectly explainable. Hallucinations, dreams, medication, recreational drugs, mistaken identity, wishful thinking. But some are not so easily explained and non-human beings, angels, demons, elves, aliens? More common than people realise. Read any online forum that deals with the so-called paranormal and you’ll find such sightings. As for our ah…visitor, that’s rarer, though I have heard of one last year in Venice, written off as an experimental hologram.’

James huffed a humourless laugh. ‘A hologram. Okay, that — probably worked.’ The rain streamed down the windows. ‘My father didn’t approve of books or films about this kind of thing: fantasy, science fiction. He said it was a waste of time.’ He grimaced at the memory. ‘And so naturally I read them when I managed to get hold of them and when I was at uni I devoured them, films, series. I wanted to think there was something beyond his idea of the world.’

Callaghan’s world. Self-satisfied grey men in grey suits sitting in their board meetings, the power-plays, the gutter press, the grinding monochrome dullness of it like a flat dusty road leading from birth to death. Eventually, he had stopped reading those books and watching those films, not because of his father’s sneering disapproval but because the only way he could exist in that pre-ordained life was to curb his imagination.

‘Nothing’s ever the way we think it,’ Fenny said matter-of-factly. ‘Probably for the best. But once the genie’s out of the bottle it’s pretty much impossible to put it back in.’

‘An apt analogy.’

Steele must move like a cat. James whirled to see him — to see for a heartbeat the person that he was, a figure out of the fantasies he had read but more because no words or film or art could encompass it. It was almost human but not quite.

Eyes no longer dark but vivid as backlit amethyst fixed on him.
‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I thought thou wouldst see me.’ His smile was as perfect and as cold as a sword. ‘Once the veils were torn away.’

~ Fëanor had never been afraid for himself. Never. The passion in him could burn wild enough to scorch any fear into cinders. Even before seeing the Flame in the Mirror shard he had been aware, on some subconscious level, what he was capable of, what he could do. Not in this form, perhaps, but there was a certainty of something more, like a shield at one’s back. A shield of fire.

He and his sons were not expected at the palace; so much was obvious from the faces that turned to them as their horses clattered into the outer ward, scarlet dorsal rippling above them. The surprise deepened as they entered the palace, shifting from astonishment to speculation. Whispers passed like the hiss of a breeze through the halls.

’The High Prince is here…’

’Fëanor has come!’

’The Silmarils. He wears the Silmarils!’

Their light went before him, casting silver glints against the walls. They drew every eye.

The Great Hall was filling, though Finwë and Fingolfin were not yet at their places. Word had gone ahead and it was Finwë whom Fëanor saw first. He was speaking to Finarfin. Both heads turned, two pairs of eyes widened.

The prick of contrition at the eagerness which melted the little frown from Finwë’s brow was unexpected; the expression was not one he had seen in his own world and jolted him back to the reality of the situation. It was too easy to imagine he was at home. Everyone, everything familiar and, as at Formenos, subtly different, like looking at its reflection in a mirror, he thought wryly.

‘Fëanor!’ Hands held out, Finwë advanced and took him by the shoulders, kissing each cheek. ‘I am delighted thou didst come.’ His eyes, warm, a little anxious, traced Fëanor’s features.

‘I thought I would,’ Fëanor said so casually that Finwë blinked.

‘Fingolfin will be —‘

‘Surprised,’ came Finarfin’s cool voice. Tall and golden and as perfectly collected as a lilly in a glass vase, he raised his brows.

Fëanor showed his teeth. ‘Surprises add a certain spice to the dish, brother, do they not?’ He flicked a wink that startled its recipient. Finarfin’s eyes widened.

His arm through Fëanor’s, Finwë greeted his grandsons with the same warmth then turned toward the dais saying, ‘Come, let us sit.’

A silence had fallen over the hall when Finwë spoke and a little frisson of anger shook through Fëanor. He halted. This was Fingolfin’s feast, and Finwë should, by all tradition, wait until his second son had arrived, King or no. It was simple courtesy. There was no need to demonstrate his favouritism.

Then the hall began to turn toward the wide doors. Finwë, glancing up, rearranged his expression into one of father-king, still affectionate but royal first and foremost. Fëanor, wrestling with the desire to berate him, disengaged his arm and lifted his head as Fingolfin entered. And for a moment, white light burst across his vision.

He was Fingolfin and he took Fëanor’s breath. He always, always did.

Blue eyes could be as cold as Finarfin’s. Fingolfin’s, under their circlet, blazed. He was all sapphire and black, waist and hips slim, shoulders wide and those long, long legs in tooled leather boots. Anairë walked beside him and his three children came behind: Fingon, so similar to his father, Aredhel, like no-one but herself and in her dark beauty, the cloud of black hair, that hint of wildness and Turgon who save for his looks, was Finarfin’s emotional twin, haughty and closed.

Fingolfin stopped as if a wall had obtruded itself into his path. His eyes met Fëanor’s for a snapping instance with so bright a blaze in them that the expression beneath it was impossible to determine. Then the long lashes dropped and he continued walking. Fingon stared then sought out Maedhros who took one step forward and a shared little smile flashed between them. Fingon’s brows lifted in silent interrogation. Maedhros’ head gave the briefest shake.

Abreast of Fëanor, Fingolfin paused again, turned his head slowly and deliberately and said, voice frigid as the ice mists of the North, ‘Welcome. We did not expect thee.’

Fëanor launched a fierce smile at him. ‘It was remiss of me not to inform thee,’ he responded. ‘How could I not come?’

He discomposed Fingolfin as he had Finarfin, but then the star-blue stare narrowed in suspicion. He swept past them, leading his family to the dais.

The long table was full tonight. As they sat and servers brought round the wine, Fëanor, seated on Finwë’s right, took the measure of the guests. Finarfin and Eärwen and their golden children sat beyond Fingolfin, heads bright in the lamplight. The guests at the long tables below were a glitter of silk and jewel-dressed hair. He noted the faces, easy to do when most were watching him — or rather the Silmarils.

‘Maglor, thou wilt favour us with music?’ Finwë asked, lifting his winecup.

‘Certainly, grandsire, if Fingolfin wishes it.’ The pitch of Maglor’s honey-and-steel voice was so perfectly judged that he raised it enough for Fingolfin to hear, who leaned forward.

‘Of course,’ he said and smiled and there was, unmistakably, warmth in it for Maglor, but as he leaned back, for the briefest instant his eyes crossed Fëanor’s and what lay there was a challenge. A raised sword.

‘Fëanor,’ Finwë murmured, hand reaching to grasp his wrist, his eyes almost imploring, which embarrassed Fëanor. ‘Do not argue with thy brothers, especially Fingolfin.’

‘I have no intention of it.’ With a little twist, he removed his arm from Finwë’s grip. From his demeanour, it was Fingolfin who wanted the argument. There was a star burning behind his eyes.

The meal was not protracted, the Eldar being more drawn to the music and conversation, though the atmosphere was not that of a Begetting Day Feast. Fëanor began to regret wearing the Silmarils which were obviously a rare sight in Tirion. The attention was not new to him, nor was the quality of feeling like a cynosure but it pinned him in view when he wanted to speak quietly to Fingolfin. Mentally, he shrugged. He would talk, no matter how many eyes were upon him…if he could detach himself from Finwë.

Finwë’s delight in Fëanor’s presence was so flagrant as to be uncomfortable. Loving all his sons equally Fëanor could not be unaware of how this attention affected Indis or his half-brothers. They concealed it admirably, but all the little tells were there and it incensed him on their behalf.

Was Finwë clinging to the last part of Míriel or was he trying to bestow the love on his firstborn son that she could no longer give? If so it might be understandable (though he had pled hard enough to marry Indis) but it concentrated too much upon Fëanor so that Fingolfin and Finarfin received only a glance of that light, and placed an unfair pressure upon the favoured son. To conform to a narrow ideal cramped and constrained and if the idealised object proved hollow or turned away, the separation would be no clean break but a tearing of living flesh that would leave wounds and carry guilt and resentment.

Fëanor hoped that he had never demonstrated such clinging love to his sons, whom he adored. The very intensity of his love must never demand anything of them, never feel like a weight on their shoulders. Finwë clung about Fëanor as if he were the elder and far from being flattered, Fëanor despised it. He preferred the Finwë he knew who, perfect in his role as King, admitted nothing that deviated from his vision — or could not afford to.

But one positive thing had come from that: Marrying young and fathering sons, setting up Formenos as his home, Fëanor had discarded any emotional need for a father in his life — or the man he had thought he was his father. Neither he nor Fingolfin were Finwë’s get and perhaps that made it easier. But he did not think of Edenel as his father either, a beloved peer, an older brother maybe; the years of nurturing were too long passed for him to want or need a father-figure.

But whatever the other Fëanor felt about Finwë, it was clear who held the power in Tiriron and it was not the King. He stood apart from the battleground that was his sons while too-obviously favouring Fëanor. It was ill-done. Small wonder the rumours thrived.

Maglor had seated himself at the great harp, his face gone distant as it always did before a performance when he reached inward to the music. The lamplight appeared to fall upon him alone, and the guests, whatever they might feel about the Fëanorions, murmured into attentive silence.

The tune was familiar but the words were not. Maglor sang of the waves on the shore and white ships riding on the sea-foam. The verses were secondary; there was a soothing power in the voice that was deliberate. Maglor shared it in one brief glance of those long-lidded silver eyes with Fëanor, who smiled, understanding and acknowledging it.

After, when the conversation returned, softer now, Fëanor watched as Maedhros and Fingon spoke, as Aredhel engaged animatedly with Celegorm and Curufin and he wondered what Fingolfin made of their friendships. Seeking him out, he saw nothing on that cut-glass face as he inclined his head to listen to something Finarfin was saying. Crossing the hall, Fëanor closed on the two and inclined his head.

‘Thy gift is not yet finished, Fingolfin,’ he announced. ‘But if thou wilt come to Formenos in a few days, it will be ready for thee.’

Fingolfin said, voice lifting, ‘Excuse me?’

Enjoying himself more than he perhaps should be, inhaling Fingolfin’s particular perfumed scent that heightened the intoxicating atmosphere, Fëanor’s smile curled deeper.
‘Perfection takes time.’ He turned away, aware of the silver-blue stare and mentally counted the moments until Fingolfin came after him.

‘Thou art asking me to Formenos?’ he demanded, just shy of seizing Fëanor’s arm. His hand hovered above the wrist then dropped.

‘Of course.’ Without looking anywhere save at Fingolfin’s face, Fëanor felt Finwë’s regards, his son's eyes. The entire hall seemed to grow a multi-head that swung their way.

‘But—‘ Fingolfin’s lips closed. The taut hollows beneath that arrogant sweep of cheekbone deepened with shadow. His eyes pierced into Fëanor’s like white-hot awls. ‘Very well. I will come.’

‘Good.’ It took some effort to turn away from him, from the memories. Fëanor found himself wanting to catch those wide, straight shoulders and drag Fingolfin into a kiss most un-brotherly. But there was only an alert caution in Fingolfin’s eyes, a tension. They had never been lovers here, he knew and he had a flashing insight or vision of his own world and of Fëanor there, confounded by Fingolfin’s demeanour.

Throughout the rest of the feast he felt Fingolfin’s regard like a weight pressing into his back, but if he looked, his half-brother's attention had moved away. So they had watched one another and affected not to in that other world. A game there, a dance. Not so here.

Later, when the guests had departed and only Finwë’s family remained, Maedhros and Maglor, catching Fëanor’s eye, moved without word to usher their brothers away but it was hardly needed. It was as a family that they ascended the great curving fan of the stairs.

At home he would not even have considered gathering his sons around him to retire but the atmosphere here crackled. Lightning ran across the high ceiling casting an invisible spider-web mesh across the hall. He imagined that if one guest brushed through it the strand and storm both would break and that they were aware of it and manoeuvred around it.
Or they manoeuvred around him. Very few had spoken to him, though Finwë’s claimant presence might have explained their reluctance. (Fëanor doubted it). He was observed just as he in his turn observed. His sons were treated to the same wary avoidance save in a few cases: Fingon, Aredhel, Finrod and Aegnor, though Fingolfin and Finarfin both spoke to them, albeit briefly. And even when their attention was occupied one could see Maedhros and Maglor’s senses scanning the room for their brothers, alert, protective. They had not been expected but there was no outright aggression.

Fëanor’s chambers had been hastily prepared after a long absence. They were a suite of rooms with space enough for all of them, so presumably Fëanor had visited with all his family before, if not for many years.

Maedhros, casting himself onto a settle with an elegant sprawl of long limbs, raised his brows at Fëanor.
‘That was not quite as awful as I expected,’ he said.

‘Didst thou not think I could behave myself?’ Fëanor answered with a glittering smile that, for just a moment, froze the expression on his son's face so that Fëanor laughed and said, ‘My dear, I know thou hadst doubts.’

Maglor strode, rather than strolled across the room and, in passing, touched Fëanor’s shoulder with a glide of long fingers.
‘It has been a long time since thou wert here.’ He stepped into the breach. ‘One could feel the tension.’

‘I anticipated it,’ Fëanor smiled. ‘And it must be eased. I note that Melkor was not here.’ He was not relieved; it would have been well to look his enemy in the face here as he had at home.

A frown fleeted across Maedhros’ brow. ‘Fingolfin would not have invited him. Whatever thy beliefs about him, he would never welcome that one.’

‘I did not think so, but Melkor would seem to have the Valars permission to enter anywhere he pleases, invited or no.’ His teeth set.

‘A wager?’ Caranthir flung from the adjoining doorway into the bedchamber. ‘Had he known thou wouldst be here, wearing that crown, he would have come.’ His black brows drew into a bar as he echoed, ‘Invited or no.’

‘A certain wager is no wager at all,’ Maglor remarked. ‘Didst thou want him to be here?’ he turned silver eyes back to Fëanor.

‘I like to know where the enemy is.’ And whether Melkor might see or sense something. The Flame was concealing him, well and good, and yet…

He thought of Nael’s voice, of the darkness of Avathar far south of the Tree Light where even now the eldritch monster called Ungoliant dwelt. Melkor had allied with it and used it, and been betrayed.

‘Not here, father,’ Maglor stated softly. Opponents, yes, but not enemies.’

Fëanor lifted a hand. ‘Of course not.’ He removed the Silmaril crown. ‘Words have been spoken, but there must be no schism. By the bye, I have invited Fingolfin to Formenos in a few days. I have a gift for him.’

The brows went up in unison.

‘And so we will leave tomorrow, but from now on I intend to spend more time here.’

Maedhros nodded but Caranthir said dryly, ‘Giving them the perfect excuse to imagine thou art whispering into Finwë’s ear.’

‘Yes,’ Fëanor agreed. ‘They. Where do these rumours begin? Have any of thee ever heard Fingolfin or Finarfin or their children traduce me — or any of thee? Have they said these things to thee?’

‘Never,’ Maedhros said at once. ‘Angry words enough but of Fingolfin and Finarfin wanting to replace thee? No.’

‘They would not dare,’ Caranthir announced, his mouth twisting.

‘Fingolfin or Finarfin would,’ Maglor contradicted. ‘Although I think they would accuse thee directly, father, not murmur to others and certainly not say anything of the sort to thy sons.’

‘No.’ Fëanor regarded them, tapping his fingers upon the arm of the chair. Curufin and Celegorm entering with the twins paused for a moment on the threshold. ‘It is a very serious accusation— ‘ How to phrase it? ‘We are too innocent here in Aman to think of upsetting the balance of the royal house. Finwë was made King of the Noldor by the Valar just as they made Olwë and Ingwë Kings over their people. It has always been thus since the quendi set foot on these shores. Only the first-comers knew anything else. But there is one who is not innocent at all: Melkor. He is permitted everywhere. He is a Power who was overthrown and imprisoned and is currently on parole. Think'st thou he enjoys it after what he was, what he did; that he likes bowing to the Valar? And who does it benefit to cause strife among us? Not the Valar,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Who wish everything to remain as it is—forever. Not the Eldar.’

Maedhros’ brow crooked. ‘Of course. But Melkor is still effectively the Valar’s prisoner. How could fomenting discontent among the Noldor help him in any way?’

‘His is a spirit of destruction and chaos, a desire for the absolute power that he had in Utumno.’ Fëanor directed his memory toward Edenel, the horrors that the quendi had been subjected to in Melkor’s dark Underworld. ‘Imprisonment will not have changed him. It may be that he cannot change his nature. But dissention among us may take the eyes of the Valar off him.’ He slapped his hand down, furious and impatient.

‘Think’st thou he plots to escape, father?’ Maglor asked.

‘The Valar unroofed Utumno, but never found all of his followers,’ Fëanor replied. ‘And once he was the mightiest of them all. He will not be content to lower his head in Manwë’s presence and enact the repentant brother forever.’ He rose restlessly and walked to the balconied window. ‘It is said Manwë can see to the ends of Arda from Taniquetil yet he cannot see the darkness in the heart of Melkor.’ He took leave to doubt either and thought of Nael’s damning, doomed recitation. ‘I think we may bitterly atone for our open ears if we allow Melkor’s whispers to take root and divide us. And they already have.’ He turned back. ‘I have been much to blame, I know.’ And he gleamed at their ill-concealed amazement. ‘But I have had time to think. And I will ensure — we all will — that my actions speak louder than Melkor’s malice.’

They came to him then, one by one, encircling him, touching him, and Maedhros lowered his brilliant copper head to touch Fëanor’s brow and sighed.

Fëanor’s love strained like something vaster than he was, that his soul could not contain. Not his sons but always, in any world, his sons. He thought the force of his emotion might eat through his form and leave only the fire of what he was. Resting upon the settle, the Silmaril gave a pulsing flare, a promise, a warning? His sons must not be harmed; whatever he must do, he would do it.

Except to bow to the Valar. The price would be too high.

Sleep was quite impossible. Fëanor felt as he had when creativity both fed him and refreshed him. He had worked sometimes for days without rest and felt only a satisfied calm when it was done, there was no hunger, no weariness in the aftermath. He rose and dressed and silently took the back stairs down and out into the gardens.

Telperion was beginning to wane; tarnished silver lay over the lawns like a wash of gilt. The water pouring from the fountains were as falls of mercury. The walls and towers of the palace shone like nacre. Far above, Mindon Eldaliéva lofted its tall spike into the unmarred sky. All was very still, the peace of Valinor immutable as a maker’s mark in mithril. The peace of Valinor that had always scraped against his flesh like the raw edges of scrap metal.

Because we are not of Valinor, we quendi.

They were the People of the Stars that one could not even see in Aman save faint and far if one ventured beyond the Tree-Light. Muted, as the Eldar were muted.

‘Fëanor.’ Fingolfin’s voice came sharp as the cleave of a blade.
‘What art thou doing here?’

He wore a house-robe of deep slate and the light gathered in his eyes so that the blue burned into silver-white. Telperion gilded his unbound damp hair into a river of black sapphire. The haughty, fierce beauty of him collided in Fëanor with the pain of imagined loss.

’He challenged Morgoth to single combat. And died.’

Those who saw only his perfect reserve, his steel, his control as befitted the Noldor would never believe that Fingolfin could do such a reckless thing. Fëanor could. He did.

Through the frantic heartbeats that tightened the sinews of his throat, he said, ‘Couldst thou not sleep either? How fortuitous for me.’And he made himself smile, bright and glittering.

For a moment, Fingolfin appeared nonplussed. Inwardly smiling with the thrill of it, Fëanor continued smoothly, ‘I am glad to see thee. I wanted to speak to thee privately.’ Without thinking, as he would have done at home when they were younger, he slid his arm through Fingolfin’s and began to walk.

Fingolfin jolted. Feeling the resistance, Fëanor turned to him, one breath away from a kiss. Or from a blow.

‘Who was it that told thee I wished to see thee and Finarfin driven forth from Tirion?’ he asked.

Chapter Text

~ Coldagnir hung above the city on a crackling artery of light.
Entire sections of London were dark; only the towers, served by their own generators, shot up out of the engulfing gloom. The Thames gleamed silver.

He rode down on a fork of energy, flowed down the pale walls of New Scotland Yard. The room he wanted was below ground, and so enter…here.

He flickered into an air vent, descended and emerged, pulling in his power as he scanned the empty room, the wall of safes. Very high security.

Not secure enough.

If eyes of fire could burn cold, Coldagnir’s did so. Records of debauchery, death, torture were gathered here. Evidence that would send the people involved to prison. The repercussions would shock through more lives than their own and topple governments and dynasties.

— If the evidence were ever used. There were some extremely powerful people implicated. Had he not known they would be dealt with, Coldagnir would have considered removing the files, the old DVD’s to a different place. But justice was in the hands of someone — someones , including himself — far more merciless than the criminal courts of any country in the world.

The metal began to melt under a heat directed and concentrated as a laser, eating through the sealed door. Coldagnir pulled the energy back into himself so that the sensors and alarms detected nothing and the files and cellulose of those damning videos curled and melted.

The safes above and on each side warped and sank into liquid slag, scentless and smokeless yet glowing, eating into the floor. Only when it was done, did he leave the way he had come, and only then did the alarms shriek into life.

~ James’ breath hissed inward, drying his mouth. Semi-precious eyes sparkled over him as if some unhuman hunter had caught up with its prey and was deciding where to strike the killing blow.

Then the penthouse shut into darkness. Those luminous eyes did not blink.
‘The generators will come on in a moment.’ His voice was calm.

‘What. Are. You?’ James shouted, the last word lost in thunder.

With a flicker, the light returned. Steele — the man whom James and everyone thought of as Lucien Steele, refused to return to normal. A fantastical, terrible figure in the oh-so-civilised apartment, he overtopped James, who was himself tall, by several inches.

‘My true name,’ the figure pronounced. ‘Is Vanimórë.’

It fit, somehow. His accent had grown richer and not as James had thought, with its hint of Russian but some tongue he had no name for.

‘It is hard, is it not, to detach oneself from one’s father?’ With a move as swift as light, he caught James’s chin in one slim hand. ‘Callaghan’s seed was weak, just enough for Joanna Worth to wring a few poor sperm from him. It was her blood that did the work, and hers — her body — that grew thee.’

James stared, rigid with the sense of purest danger from the ungentle grip, yet it was the eyes that held him fast so that he could not have moved. The sense of otherness pounded against him like the storm outside, black-shot with dark lightning.

‘There is nothing of thy father in thee,’ Steele said. ‘Nothing. Thou art all hers. Or rather his..’ He withdrew his hand. The twist of his mouth was dry with memories James could not begin to imagine.

He had not been thinking of his father. The memory of Callaghan had shrivelled into insignificance.

‘What are you?’ he gathered a breath and shouted, ‘What are you?’

‘What am I? I am one who dreams, an echo of a world long lost. I was a slave, a prince, I commanded armies, I have killed and I have died.’ He turned away, the twin hilts of his swords jutting above the wide flat bar of his shoulders. ‘I am the son of Sauron. My name is Vanimórë.’

The name came to James over pulses of silent lightning, books read years ago, films seen…But the impossibility of it — the disappointment — crashed through his singing mind like a hurled boulder.

‘Oh, what?’ His voice cracked into laughter because he thought he deserved more than this. It…disneyfied his epiphany, cheapened it. And he had no idea why this being — Lucien Steele — would use such a clumsy lie.

Steele, or rather Vanimöré turned, looked down from under those sleek brows, which lifted a fraction.

‘The world Professor Tolkien wrote of,’ he said calmly. ‘Was real. Sauron was real. Everything that Tolkien wrote of happened — and many things he did not write of. Thou must accept that, James and go deep into thyself. The blood is there.’

Sauron. In The Lord of the Rings he was the unseen presence of Darkness, a wheel of fire, the threat that loomed over Middle-earth like an iron shadow.

‘So he did.’ The dark voice came through the leap of flames, the clang of hammer on anvil, through the viscous run of lava across an ashen land. And at the centre in a vast black edifice that pierced the skies, some terrible and titan mind, a consciousness that had never been remotely human.

Then the Royal Opera House, and a man and woman, tall and elegant, their hair blond to whiteness, looking over their shoulders at him, smiling…knowing.

‘Impossible,’ James denied. And…his mind groped…Sauron had been destroyed.

‘So the books said,’ Vanimöré agreed. ‘But my father is supremely clever. And there are so many worlds, James. So many. This is the oldest story of them all. It was born in fire, birthed from flame and from music. Bright-dark as a bloodied sword, terrible as the last fair banner falling on a field of war, beautiful as the first star-rise. The song resonates through every universe there is, in the blood and bone and the dreams that come at night from the gaps between the stars. And the Flame still burns.’

His voice lead James back, far back into the memory of ancient starlight to a universe that no longer existed, and then to another, born out of defiance and loss. Names blazed and winked out — then burned again and ascended, only to vanish in an immensity of light that he seemed to feel to his nerve endings, in the sparkles behind his eyes.

There was a darkness like the end of all things and he heard the distant whine of dead winds. Blood arced, flung itself across his vision and from it, in silent glory, new universes were born, punching the emptiness, expanding. Stars ached with power, gathering planets about them, and he saw the old, old shape of his own world, the parting of continents and one that appeared on no maps save those in books, a place in the farthest West. Valinor. And so it was again, an old story, retold.

Cognac burst in a bubble of heat in his mouth.
He choked, swallowed and gasped, as if surfacing from deep water. Red semicircles stung as he drew his nails from the palms of his hands. The gracious penthouse opened before his eyes, the great windows framing the stormy sky. Everything was the same. Everything had changed.

Fenny’s hand on his shoulder was tight, reassuring. He tipped the glass again, and James drank. The raw spirit burned down into his stomach.

Vanimöré watched him. The purple eyes held a remote and unfathomable glitter. He was still there, not vanished into the crazed dream that had warped reality. On the contrary, he was more real than the apartment , than the storm outside, made of some substance that might drive through the core of the planet like a spear. Every instinct in James screamed a warning — almost every instinct. Behind the disbelief was a pride that would not allow him to run, that raised its head to meet the oncoming meteor.

‘The history, long lost, told as fiction, is the same in every world,’ Vanimöré said softly. ‘And now we come to thee, James. Callaghan was nothing once he had given Joanna Worth a child. He was chosen because of what he was: A media mogul. In this world, the media influences people's minds, can sway entire populaces — or the unthinking at least. That is what Sauron wants. And through thee, he can rule it.’

‘I hope,’ Fenny ventured. ‘You don’t mean rule in the literal sense, sir?’

‘Not yet. But eventually, yes.’ He grimaced. ‘Sauron can always find a way back to the world because we share the same blood. I came here after World War II. He arrived some years after. As long as there is a link to the world, he will take advantage of it. And the one thing he does have, is time.’

‘After the war?’ James asked. ‘Why not before it?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Why allow it?’

‘Wanting some god or Power to intercede in human affairs en masse is extremely dangerous.’ Vanimöré voice was hard with warning and contempt. ‘The echoes of gratitude for world peace would scarcely have died away before people muttered of oppression, of wanting to be free to live their own lives.’

‘That,’ Fenny admitted reluctantly. ‘Is true.’

‘Of course. Never trust a god who would promise to make everything right. In whose eyes? Theirs? No. There are enough people of goodwill to ensure that dictators, tyrants and warmongers never come into power. Gods should not meddle in the affairs of Mortals.’

‘But you have,’ James challenged.

‘I never said I was not a fool,’ Vanimöré responded. ‘I amassed fortunes because wealth is power and influence and because it allowed me to maintain a certain distance from people. This is not my world and I cannot be myself here and that…irritates me. I came initially out of a desire to help someone — someone not human — of course it evolved into more than that.’

James thought of the conspiracy theories that spoke of groups like the Illuminati.
‘You don’t want world domination then?’ he asked dryly.

‘No, that would be my father.’ Vanimöré’s face was perfectly straight though there was a spark of humour in his eyes. ‘And I will give him this: He does know how to rule. But a democracy it would not be.’

James remembered what he had read of Sauron and shook his head. An ancient power of Middle-earth here. What could he do? And —
‘Can you stop him?’

‘I am not sure. He has more power than I do on this world.’

James stared, and expostulated, ‘What?’ on a bark of disbelieving laughter.

‘If and when thou seest Sauron’s true form — beyond the glamour that he uses, as do I — thou wilt not laugh.’

‘I didn’t laugh, I just —‘

The electric light bleached in an immense crack of lightning. The building seemed to shudder. The doors to the balcony slammed open to a surge of ozone-drunk air. and from it came the being of fire, wings upraised like a stooping hawk’s. As his feet touched the carpet, he coalesced into a semblance of normality but to James’ eyes it was simply an overlay. The reality scorched through.

Laying one hand on his breast, the being bowed elegantly. A look, brief and bright as the pulse of a firefly leapt between him and Vanimórë.

‘Aelios,’ he introduced himself. ‘At least that is what I am named here.’ A smile glinted, white as ice. Turning to Vanimöré he said, ‘May I speak with James?’

It was not quite diffidence, James thought, his interest quickening with the thud of blood. He had seen enough people fawn around his father to recognise that. There was, however, a deep respect. No question who commanded here.

Vanimöré gave the barest nod but James was aware of another kind of communication; he could almost hear it like someone, before the internet, turning the dial of an old radio, hearing the stations swell and fade into static.

‘James.’ Aelios extended a hand and the smile returned, brilliant and unhuman in that brightness. His pulse hectic, James followed.

‘It is easier,’ Aelios said over his shoulder. ‘To accept the image we portray here.’

‘I can’t…unsee what you are,’ James said hoarsely as they trod the expensive carpets and ascended a stairway to a mezzanine set with plush white leather chairs and a coffee table. Further steps lead up to a wide corridor and the closed doors of bedrooms. Aelios opened one of the doors. Beautiful and elegant, the room looked unused, the great space of silken carpet untrodden, the bed as neat as a hotel room waiting for guests.

‘It is harder for people with thy blood,’ Aelios acknowledged. He settled gracefully into a chair. ‘Once the sight is opened thou wilt naturally see the truth whatever glamour we cast over ourselves.’

Hesitating, almost hovering, James set his teeth and chose another chair facing Aelios. He expected to smell singed leather, but there was no scent save for laundered bedding and a trace of expensive male cologne.

‘But it will be easier for thee to see what others see. It takes practice, but thou wilt need that.’ Aeilos eased back, his posture relaxed. “We ask thee to see what is not there rather than what is. The lie, not the truth. Hard, I grant thee.’

‘What are you?’ James burst out.

The hot-metal of the eyes rested on him then, with an oddly formal inclination of the head, Aelios said, ‘I am the Sun.’

Any retort James might have made was withered.

‘In any universe, any reality where there is a planet Earth, or Arda, I am the Sun,’ Aelios reiterated. ‘I have many names, Nemrúshkeraz is my oldest in the Valarin tongue.’ It hissed like the brush of steel on steel.

‘The Sun.’ Of course he was, James thought with a resurgence of that almost wild exhilaration, madness-tinged.

‘There are some things Vanimórë will not tell thee and some things I will not, but yes, I am the Sun and once, I darkened, going down to Utumno to (I thought) fight against Melkor. I could not step onto Arda as myself and so much of my power was left on the Outside Too much.’ Aelios paused and looked back, or beyond anything James could see. ‘Even as myself it would not have been enough. Melkor was the mightiest of all the Powers then. I was corrupted and became a Balrog, one of those who gave Fëanor his death wounds in Dor Daedaloth, who wrought ruin in the Dagor Bragollach. My whip pinned High King Fingon’s arms to his sides, rendering helpless so that Gothmog slew him—‘

Those names, old names, only half-remembered… James was on his feet. Outside, the storm pulsed and dimmed and flamed again.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he shouted. ‘I don’t believe this. It’s all bullshit…’ The last denunciation, meant to slam home his challenge, was lost in the gaze that would have halted a missile in its flight.

‘And now,’ Aelios continued. ‘I serve the Flame and all his blood. Ah, James, of course thou doth believe it, hence thine outrage and anger. But within thee—‘ He stood and reached out, laying a slim hand on James’ breast, The shock went clean through him, electrifying each nerve. ‘Thou knowest it to be true. Fight it as thou wilt, it matters not.’

With a gasp, James’ knees took him down to the seat of the chair once again. Denial sat like ash on his tongue and clogged his throat. He choked as though burning cinders bit at soft flesh.

‘If I cannot set foot upon the Earth as myself, neither can he. He leaves most of it behind on the Outside.’ Fire spat down the red hair. He leaned forward, caught James hand and drew him across to the French windows. The balcony ran around the entire penthouse and Aelios opened one of the doors and stepped out, standing in the wild wind. His hair streamed into running fire as he lifted one hand. Lightning streaked down. He glorified into impossible radiance, drawing the energy of the storm again and again. James closed his eyes against the glare.

And then there was quiet. The wind puffed out; the rain spattered a few last heavy drops and ceased. Blinking, gripping the balcony railings, James looked out over great sections of blackout-London, at the towers lit like a marching army.

‘This is a time of thunder,’ Aelios murmured. ‘A time of storms. Too many. There is so much power here and the fabric of reality is thin on this world. Sauron will know that of course.’ His radiance was dimming, like the turning down of a lamp. ‘He already knows it and uses it. He will have followed thee for years, and will know exactly where thou art.’

‘What?’

‘But while Sauron’s attention is fixed on thee it keeps his Eye — his agents, his lackeys in this world — from others.’

Steele — Vanimórë — had said something similar. Through the aftershocks painted on his retina, James narrowed his eyes.

‘He said he had come here to help someone who was not human,’ James said carefully, feeling his way like a man on treacherous ice.

‘So he did. And so he does.’

‘You have power.’ God, had he! ‘And you say Vanimórë has more.’

‘He has more on the Outside,’ Aelios said. ‘In the Monument. It is all that remains of the universe that was destroyed. It is a place of death and rebirth. A crucible. From there, he can see every universe, and there he has the power to destroy them…or create them.’

Hysteria surged up again, a mocking disbelief.
‘Then why all these games?’ James shouted. ‘Why not just—‘ He snapped his fingers. ‘End him?’ He was breathing too fast. Adrenalin fizzed through his veins.

‘I must be careful here,’ Aelios murmured as if to himself. ‘But I do not believe that Vanimöré would destroy his father, or any manifestation of Sauron. And it would only be a temporary solution. Sauron is Ainu. Death is not death, it is not the end — not for any living person, but a power can re-embody.’

James had nothing to say to that. So many people throughout the history of humankind, had prayed for a god to help them, but what if a god came unasked and not to help? A god one could not banish and who, were he slain, would only return?

‘Then what?’

‘He could be imprisoned.’ A small smile, ambiguous as a dream, gleamed and vanished. ‘Forgive me that there is little more I can say. If Sauron were to capture thee, do not think the blood-link would save thee.’ And, as James went cold. ‘Vanimöré was his slave for thousands of years. The Slave.’ His enunciation shaped the words into a title. ‘He commanded armies; he warred against the Elves. Sauron used him as a weapon. The life that Vanimöré lived was torment for a long time. Sauron will use thee in any way he wishes and break thee if thou art too weak to endure.’

Ice traced over James’ scalp and trickled down his rigid spine. With difficulty, he said, ‘He wants to control me…my father’s media empire.’

‘One must give him credit for planning. All that Callaghan built up over the decades, everything simply handed over to him. For make no mistake,’ Aelios’ warned. ‘It will not be thee that is in control.’

Briefly, after his father’s death and in the first marvellous shock of freedom, James had told Steele he would like to give it all up, travel. That was before Peter Thomson tipped himself off the balcony in New York, before he, James, had killed Skinner.

He had always thought his life under Callaghan was proscribed but now he saw that it was ordered, even ordained by his grandfather. How much had Callaghan known? Enough to obey the commands issued from on high. And now…oh, James could walk away if he chose. He had the wealth but he had been bred up to take the reins.

As if a long scream had suddenly stopped, the disbelief simply ceased leaving a strange, hollow calm.

Into it, he asked, ‘What choices do I have?’

The Sun God tilted his head. James had noticed the same uncanny, fluid movements of power in Vanimöré. Unhuman.
‘Thou canst throw in thy lot with Sauron.Thou canst work with us. Or walk thine own path but that would lead thee into Sauron’s hands. The blood is like a beacon for him to follow.’

With an effort, James pulled his eyes from Aelios and looked across London. The storm had gone and now he heard the rise of traffic, sirens wailing and closer at hand and softer, the drip of rain water.

‘Two then: You and the DDE or my grandfather.’ It was easier not to give him a name. ‘You said Vanimöré can see anything from this…Outside?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then,’ James said grimly, setting his shoulders. ‘I have some questions for him.’

‘Thou may ask, but he is here to protect those he loves, as am I and Edenel, whom you have not yet met and there is much he — we — will withhold.’

Who, James wondered, who and what could evoke love in such awesome and terrible Powers? A shiver weltered through him. The door that opened before him was ancient beyond imagining and limned in dark fire. A door into another world. It had always been there, with a dark figure standing beyond, half-glimpsed, waiting.

‘Loves?’ The word was not in his lexicon and shaped itself awkwardly in his mouth.

‘Such a banal word, is it not? Overused in this world. But do not mistake it for weakness,’ Aelios told him. ‘Never underestimate the power of a love that demands nothing from the beloved. Vanimöré’s love is stripped wholly of selfishness. Neither is it duty or obligation; its purity is almost cold. And that makes him more pitiless than thou couldst possibly imagine.’

Again, James' mouth dried.
‘I understand,’ he said foolishly and Aelios shook his head.
‘Not yet,’ he said.

‘Would he kill me?’

‘Yes. But not without reason.’

James resisted the old childhood habit of wrapping his arms around himself. He had discarded that years ago.
‘All-right,’ he said and forced himself to raise his head and look straight into the eyes of a god. His grandfather would kill him. Vanimöré would kill him. The doorway lead to a bridge slung across an abyss.

‘But thou couldst have no greater protector.’ Aelios gestured. ‘Come.’

James followed, his steps as deliberate as if already upon that narrow, wind-lashed bridge.

Coldagnir/Aelios as James would have seen him.

Chapter Text

~ A Mirror Shard.

Behind them Tirion, tall on its hill, shone in white splendour as the Fëanorion entourage cantered north and homeward.

Their leavetaking had been amicable enough, though confusion and wariness showed in Fingolfin’s narrowed eyes as he bowed his head in farewell. Finarfin had merely watched from a distance.

Fingolfin, though so skilled at concealing his emotions, did not know about the shards. There was none of the shared knowledge that linked them in the other world.

‘Yes, I will make a gift for Fingolfin,’ Fëanor flashed a smile over his shoulder that encompassed all his sons. ‘Why not?’

Their answers hung like smoke in the air but were left unsaid. They could doubtless think of a hundred reasons why not but none at all as to why Fëanor should. Judgement was reserved — for now. But his sons’ mood was more buoyant than when they had set out. The tension that had gripped them was now in abeyance.

A Mirror shard…Fëanor had only the one, but knew where to obtain others. They still spun out through the universes and it would give him an excuse to step through and into that immense glory where he felt more himself…

Supper that evening was informal and after changing into clothes more fit for his workshop, Fëanor said, ‘I will need privacy and concentration so I am locking the doors. So I ask thee not to disturb me. I might…burn myself.’

‘What?’ Curufin exclaimed.

‘Or drop something.’

Looks were exchanged, a silent ripple of laughter shook Celegorm’s bright face. Fëanor met the response with raised brows, smiling, then lifted a hand and left for the workshops. Most of Formenos were at their own meals but a few still worked, their doors open, so absorbed they did not see him enter his own workshop, close and lock the door.

He set his own shard down, watching the silver surface web and shimmer and open to the immensity that lay beyond.

It took his breath, yet he was aware that he was not breathing, that he was transformed into something that did not need air or sight or hearing yet saw and heard and lived.

~ ‘I read the books you know.’

Vanimöré turned to Fenny.

‘Years ago,’ Fenny elaborated. ‘Oh, not everything that’s been published, but the main works, and the Silmarillion.’ His eyes turned toward the long windows.’ Sauron,’ he muttered. ‘Sauron. Howard has brought me up to speed on the DDE of course, now that I’m officially employed by them — or by you, rather?’

‘By His Majesty’s Government,’ Vanimöré murmured.

‘Of course,’ Fenny cleared his throat and clasped both hands behind his back. ‘A lot to take in, but as you know, I have brushed shoulders with the reports that pass through Whitehall and some of them are almost as strange, believe me! Still…until this evening, I didn’t realise what it meant.’

‘Thou art less astonished than James,’ Vanimöré observed.

‘Older. Wiser, and I’m not related to Sauron.’

Vanimöré smiled.

‘No wonder Howard dances on the edge of a precipice. Not that he doesn’t enjoy it. Some people thrive on stress.’ Fenny shook his shoulders and walked to the windows and back. ‘Is James ah…related to you, then?’

‘The multiverse complicates things,’ Vanimöré said with massive understatement. ‘The Sauron of this world is not my father. My own father is guarded in the Timeless Halls on the Outside. There was a Vanimórë in this world. He was slain. I assume — though it is unwise to assume anything with Sauron — that he believes his son was released by the Valar and for some reason either sent, banished or otherwise came here.’

Fenny blinked several times. ‘Very well. But you are more powerful than Sauron?’

‘My Totality is,’ Vanimöré said patiently. ‘But I am not my Totality when I am embodied. And in many ways I prefer it.’

Fenny frowned, shook his head. ‘Well, I am all for your not wanting to rule the world, and for preventing Sauron from ruling it. But James…he needs careful handling.’

‘Which is why I am serving as his bodyguard.’

‘A lot of damage there. Nothing you can really see. He’s become used to containing everything but when he killed Skinner the lid blew off the silo.’

‘Yes. And I understand tamped-down rage,’ Vanimöré assured him. ‘The DDE can offer counselling. I am quite unfit for the purpose.’ At Fenny’s questioning look he smiled. ‘I suspect a psychologist would say that I had a great many unresolved issues.’

‘Ah. Yes I see. Oh dear.’ Casting his eyes past Vanimöré to where Aelios and James had gone and then back again, Fenny lowered his voice. ‘Well, then, I’ll try to encourage him to take up the offer. Living with someone like Callaghan, who saw anything like that as a weakness…well, it might not be easy.’

‘Weakness, yet Callaghan’s appetite for children was perfectly normal and to be indulged,’ Vanimöré spat. ‘Anyone who indulges their appetites without restraint cannot be trusted. James does not have those inclinations; he has locked himself down very tightly but when I said he had nothing of his father in him it was the truth.’ He drew the glamour over himself again. Fenny started. ‘I am sorry for his upbringing,’ he continued. ‘I have no doubt that Callaghan wanted to abuse him and James knows that. At least he was spared it. Others were not.’

‘His half-brother,’ Fenny murmured. ‘Yes. Very fixated on wanting to find, ah…Blaise. Not wise at the moment.’

Vanimöré shook his head. His skin pricked at the lightning charge that deepened in the air and bleached out the room. He strode to the glass doors. No need to ask what was happening when the storm calmed.

Fenny followed him to the balcony and snuffed the humid air.
‘I shan’t ask. A hologram in Venice was it?’

‘Holograms can be incredibly realistic,’ Vanimöré murmured. A warm, damp wind flooded through the doors. ‘James must not meet David yet. The two of them are damaged and need healing, or at least what healing can be obtained. I hope that James will have the chance that David has. Listen: I was an experiment. Those two are also experiments — still — which is why they were kept separate I suspect, save for that one meeting in the Virgin Islands when neither knew who the other was. Still,’ He paused. ‘What were the chances of it?’ He shook his head, putting the thought aside for later. ‘The last thing we need is for Sauron to seize both of them.’

‘Either of them,’ Fenny protested.

‘Either,’ Vanimöré corrected. ‘But Sauron has always known where James is. Blaise eluded him by vanishing here.’ He swept a hand across the city. ‘London swallowed him. As far as Sauron knows, Blaise Worth is still missing. He will know he is not dead; the blood-link is strong. But not strong enough for him or Joanna to locate Blaise. They are forced to use more traditional methods.’

‘Hmm, yes, about that: Howard is still not sure of the ah…Scottish angle.’

‘The DDE already has agents in place there and a small community is better than a city, more aware, more sensitive to strangers. It is not a perfect solution of course. There is not one.’ He turned his head and warned, ‘Aelios and James are coming back.’

And then the ring flared. It was always warm, and the power that was present in the storm and Aelios found a response in the Fëanorion-forged gold that was mildly uncomfortable. Now the heat burned into his skin. He lifted his hand. The metal, smooth as glass, glowed as if freshly poured. Fenny’s mouth dropped open.

‘One moment, please,’ he said as he passed James and Aelios.

What is it? Aelios demanded.

Fëanor, Vanimöré shot back.

James turned after him. ‘I need to speak —‘

Vanimöré whirled and held up a finger. ‘One moment!’

He passed straight through the Mirror Shard. There were some things better dealt with on the Outside.

This was (always) where the shock hit. Entering his Totality was as a man waking from a dream that seems real until the memories of his life reimpose themselves. The Many became One. The call had been urgent. Every Vanimórë in every universe and reality had returned.

The Portal met him with a wall of fire. His momentum had carried him down the spiralling steps to his chamber and now he fell back before it.

‘Fëanor!’ he shouted into the blaze.

The flames coalesced into a form that still took his breath and locked his emotions into one diamond-hard knot in his chest.

‘Vanimórë,’ the Flame smiled.

‘What hast thou done?’

The Fire receded and Vanimöré saw… a place of Mirrors. Doorways to infinity. Endless worlds.

‘Hells!’

‘I sent them both there, and into different realities.’ A superb, glittering smile, brighter than his own fire. ‘Some need more help than others. It will make a difference to them both, and to their worlds.’

‘How much does he know?’

‘Thy protégé? Thou knowest how much. The other Fëanor, very little as yet. But none of us are stupid.’

‘Stupid?’ Vanimöré took a step toward the Portal. ‘Arrogant, reckless —‘

‘Didst thou think I would not involve myself? I live through them! Thou art most truly thyself when thou art here. I am not. I am life.’

‘I know.’ Vanimöré pressed a hand to his heart where it hurt, always. ‘I wanted —‘

‘Yes, and we achieved it.’ Fëanor’s eyes moved away, looking at a time, a place gone to blowing dust. ‘For a time. Yet I knew when we became, when we faced Melkor, that those two colliding forces would destroy everything.’ He looked back. ‘Fingolfin was gone. I knew my sons would die. It was instant, Vanimöré. There was no suffering.’

Vanimöré wanted to scream. He wanted to weep. He should have faced Melkor-Ancalagon himself but in bringing back the souls of the Corrupted, he was weakened, and needed time, and that he did not have. None of them did. Eru had known it and chose the moment.

‘But we remember,’ the Flame said. ‘Everything is held within us. All of them.’

‘Dreams are not enough,’ Vanimöré said flatly. ‘And memories can be torment.’

‘It will come again.’ The words were more than a promise and too utterly certain to be a prophecy.

Vanimöré could almost believe it, then the uplifting swell of hope slammed against a barrier.
He made his voice hard and cold as stone.
‘After…Eru wanted to use me to create a new universe after his own design.’

‘And thou didst refuse,’ the Flame returned.

‘Refuse…! If we had not been what we were I would have torn his heart out.’ As he did mine. ‘It was Eru who released Melkor from the Void to bring down Dagor Dagorath. And until he gets what he wants…a universe where we worship him and love him as we once did, he will not rest.’

‘No. For thee, what we had was paradise, or near enough. Not for him.’

‘It was enough,’ Vanimöré concurred. ‘It was more than I could have hoped for and less than he was willing to accept.’

‘And thou art there, always, in that time, just as Eru looks back to when we loved him. Both of thee are mired in the past.’ The Flame challenged. ‘Well?’

Vanimöré glared, then suddenly laughed dourly. ‘True enough. But I did not demand love.’

‘Thou didst not demand anything,’ the Flame returned. ‘Thou didst give, profligately and with both hands. And closed us out as surely as the steel doors of Utumno. Thou canst not see, Vanimórë, Dark Prince, Dark God, how effective that is. As high and impenetrable as the Monument.’ His smile burned out and Vanimöré responded tartly, ‘I do not recall it troubling thee.’

‘Of course not,’ the Flame agreed and then said seriously, ‘I thank thee.’

‘For what?’

‘For helping Maglor. In that world. That Fëanor cannot — yet.’ Anguish opened in his voice. ‘I wish thou hadst told me, in the Timeless Halls, when first thou didst decide to go there.’

‘I did not want thee to know that pain of it,’ Vanimöré told him simply. ‘And there is so much one could do and ought not to. It is why I focus on individuals, not on the world as a whole. It would be too damned easy. Just as it would have been too easy to recreate all I loved and lost here, a perfect vision.’ He laid his hands on the edges of the Portal and felt the emanation of the Flame’s power surge against his skin.

‘It would be real,’ the Flame frowned.

‘Only for me. And that is not enough. Never mind that— ‘ As the Flame was about to speak. ‘I sought to spare thee anguish and I knew that thou wouldst not be able to restrain thyself. There can be… unforeseen circumstances. I should never have forced my blood — immortality — on Claire James; whether she would have accepted it anyway is hardly the point. But she did not have long and was in high fever.’

‘Wallowing does not suit thee,’ the Flame rebuked him. ‘Thou wouldst not have become involved at all, hadst thou believed she would not make that choice.’

‘Perhaps.’ It seemed so long ago and for him, it was; another universe. ‘In any event, I could not see thy son alone, losing another that he cared for, who cared for him and who understood. That is more rare even than love.’ Far rarer than desire or even pity. It came from a place deeper and older, tracings in the blood.

‘Yes.’ the Flame agreed. ‘It is in her blood.’

So it was, and her cousin, Harrison’s and their little group in St. Andrews. Echoes from the past, a pull like the tides of an ancient sea…

‘Thou hast observed?’

‘Of course.’ A negligent twist of a smile that Vanimöré did not trust for one moment. The hair on his head prickled at the thought of the Flame becoming involved.

As if he knew Vanimórë’s thoughts the smile dimpled into pure mischief for a moment, then faded.
‘Eru,’ the Flame said. ‘Will not rest until he has what he wants. We are balanced in a most precarious peace.’

Vanimöré narrowed his eyes. ‘Art thou trying to throw me off the scent?’

‘Could I? No. I know that we must grow into power. Remember thou New Cuivíenen, when thou wert possessed by Melkor and Sauron and came down upon us like the Hammer of Wrath.’

It was too long gone and too close like all his memories. He said tightly, ‘I had not the power to fight him, then.’

‘Neither did I,’ the Flame conceded. ‘Thou didst loose thy hold on thy body and gave it up to Melkor and — with my permission — possessed me. Together we slew Melkor, or the form that he then inhabited. And my soul was reborn into that of a child, but with greater power.’ *

‘The transference of such power would be too much,’ Vanimöré said. ‘It would burn up any human or Elven body in an instant. It would be the equivalent of an atom bomb on Earth. For thee to be reborn with greater power was the only safe way.’

‘I know,’ the Flame smiled crookedly. ‘But we both want the same thing.’ He reached out a hand. ‘How if we joined together again? Not to destroy Eru. That is not possible and a clash would end everything, but to deny him and create what we desire without fear that he will break it.’

Vanimöré stared at him. The Flame was not speaking of a partnership, he knew, but a fusion of souls.

And, oh by the Light and Fire! he longed for oblivion, for the Flame to step into the place he occupied; for he had a purpose, he was Life. There was no point to Vanimöré at all.

He felt as if an unendurable pain had ceased, that his yearning was quite suddenly offered into his hands. He had seen no way to achieve it without himself and Eru meeting in what would be the ultimate war, yet he had no right to annihilate reality.
And now, suddenly, that endless scream within him fell quiet. He had never felt such peace. He wanted to fall on his knees and weep.

Within that wonder of silence, an eye opened. A voice hissed, Coward! Slave! Fool!
And the voice was his own.

Thou wouldst give such filth unto the Flame, to pollute it, to corrupt it? Art thou so base?

He cringed inwardly as the memories, always present, thrust into the darkest corners, uncoiled and howled at him, a chorus of Fell-wolves. All the corrosive, burning shame, the horror vomited up and consumed his mind. He thought of the Flame that touched everything with its unparalleled glory and imagined it melded with himself, all the rot, the filth. The Flame… tainted.

‘Fire burns all things clean.’

Vanimöré lifted his head steadily. He knew that he had locked everything away, barred it shut, that his eyes were as expressionless as his face and his soul impregnable. He shook his head. The hope drained, water lost in a desert of ash. He said, cold as the darkness within,
‘When we held concourse, thou didst wonder where thy power went when I absorbed it. “Thou doth take it and it affects thee not at all. Where does it go? What abyss does it fall into, Dark Prince?”
Remember?’

The Flame stared back at him, unblinking. The lovely, haughty mouth tightened.
I forget nothing.’

‘Then how in the Hells canst thou even consider such a thing?’ Vanimöré demanded furiously. ‘I know what it is to absorb the souls of others. Think'st thou I would wish mine upon thee?’ He threw back his head and coughed bitter laughter. ‘Never. Bloody gods, think how it would affect thee, all of thee in every world, thy sons, Fingolfin. Thou wouldst not by thyself anymore!’

‘Thou did gift me with some of that coldness,’ Fëanor blazed. ‘It was foreign to my nature but it allowed me a little more patience and gods! I needed it. I need it now.’

‘A tithe of my blood is not what thou wouldst be joined with, and it would be no gift,’ Vanimöré flung back at him, a black storm in his soul. ‘Never! I honoured thy name before I ever met thee, in Tol-in-Gaurhoth and Angband when thou wert long dead and in the Void and thy sons held the North Marches of Beleriand against Morgoth’s hordes. There is nothing I would not do for thee, Flame Imperishable, Fëanor, but I will not give thee poison to sup, and that is what it would be. Thou canst not know.’ I would never have thee know.

‘No? I felt my sons in the Void and Fingolfin and was made to witness everything — and could do nothing.’

‘I know and is it not the same now, that thou canst do truly nothing?’

The light exploded in a conflagration that would have burnt worlds. Vanimöré saw it flare across the Time threads of the Portal.
‘Yes,’ came the voice from the centre of the storm. ‘I can do nothing.’

Only love restrained the Flame, Vanimöré thought, love of his blood, or he would break from the Outside. And he knew he could not. None of them could. They were trapped.

‘Uniting our Totalities would change nothing,’ Vanimöré forced himself to say. ‘We do not know enough about Eru, only what he wants, not what he is.’

The Flame gathered its fury. Burning diamond eyes bored into Vanimórë’s.

‘In other worlds I have dreamed…’ Vanimöré said more quietly. ‘That something created Eru, gave birth to him and placed him upon the First World where he brought the spirits of powers down and they were embodied. All of thee, gods.’

The Flame gestured impatiently. ‘I know. I cannot see beyond that either. It is as if there is nothing, only darkness — or a time of unknowing.’

‘And he retreats into that on a path we cannot follow.’ Vanimöré slammed a fist into the Portal’s frame. ‘What — who — created him?’

Unwillingly, painfully, he turned his inner gaze upon the unfathomable, if only to direct the Flame’s thoughts away from his suggestion. He closed his eyes. ‘He destroyed the Ancient Universe from spoiled love. How could he?’

‘I did,’ The Flame retorted. ‘Did I not? Not spoiled love, no, but from grief born of love, and from uttermost hate. And the destruction of the Universe was secondary in Eru’s eyes.’ His brows rose quizzically. ‘Think: He could not destroy us in essence. As thou didst gather and hold us so we could not leave New Cuiviénen when Ungoliant rampaged in Valinor, and again after Dagor Dagorath, so did Eru gather our souls to cast them out into a new universe.’

Vanimöré fell silent. Of course. Frustration and pain formed a knot. No self-deceiver, he knew himself to the core and that his refusal to look at the being who was Eru was rooted in the shame of betrayal. But if he thought beyond that, to where Eru originated…

‘There must be more,’ he whispered. ‘There is never Nothing. Even the Outside is not empty. But what?’ He caught himself. ‘Unless he lies. And if he does…’

‘We must learn what he is,’ the Flame said decisively. He reached out a hand. ‘I think thou art wrong: I do not believe thou wouldst pollute me, Dark God.’

Vanimöré pushed his forearm through the Portal, sending the life-strings crackling and met the Flame’s in a warrior’s clasp. It was hard to touch the Power; too much passion and pain ran through his history and his blood. And so much loss.

‘I will not see thee any less than thou art,’ he vowed.

‘When I said that fire burns clean I was not speaking of my own,’ the Flame told him. ‘Thine is a cold fire, far more pitiless. It burns into some unplace that I cannot see but it has cleansed all the vileness that was visited upon thee, Dark God. Do not doubt it.’

Of course Vanimórë doubted it. He grimaced and unlocked his fingers regretfully.

The Song suddenly lifted, like a call of recognition. Vanimöré’s eyes widened.
‘Fëanor. He comes too often and too easily.’

‘Of course. We know this is our truest self.’ The Flame’s voice became choral, ringing.

‘A shard?’ Vanimöré questioned. ‘Perhaps I was wrong to have him break the Mirror.’

‘No, better than to let the Valar possess it. And they have their uses.’

‘That,’ Vanimöré said dryly. ‘Rather depends on who picks one up.’

‘This is for Fingolfin.’

‘So I see. I hope thou — and he — know what thou art doing.’

The Flame smiled with glittering assurance. ‘We have to do a great deal of work for Fingolfin to learn trust and relearn the love he felt for us when he was young, but he would never betray us.’

‘I know.’ They looked at one another for a moment, for a million years. ‘Thou wilt have it back,’ Vanimöré promised. ‘Everything that we once had. I will see it done. For now, be thou careful.’

‘Caution is as alien to me as thy coldness, Dark God,’ the Flame said. ‘Believe me, I know to a hairsbreadth how much of my power can inhabit a physical form. But sometimes…’

‘Sometimes?’

The blazing stare pinned him with immeasurable light. ‘To burn the universe down and bring their souls out as gods.’

Vanimöré froze. The Flame could do that easily as a man blinks.

‘But will not. Because there is love.’

‘Yes.’ Vanimöré saluted him and the Portal sparkled between them. His fingers danced over the strings and then he walked through, into the penthouse study, and through into the great room where Aelios, James and Fenny stood, their postures unchanged from the moment he had left. He shared what he had done with Aelios who’s molten eyes went wide.

‘Yes, James,’ Vanimöré said calmly. ‘You wished to talk to me?’

I’m still working on variations of this, but I decided this looked like Fingolfin looking rather suspiciously at Fëanor before Fëanor left Tirion.

Chapter Text

~ ’Fingolfin has never visited Formenos, The Flame told Fëanor. ’Only Finwë, at times.’

Unused bedchambers were opened to the light, the servants bright-eyed and interested. All of them had relatives in Tirion and the antipathy between the King’s eldest sons was a source of much talk from the stable hands to the High Lords.

Fingolfin had not said who would be visiting with him, but Fëanor rather expected an entourage to match his own and was not disappointed when the deep blue banner was sighted from the gates. He smiled to himself and was waiting, with his sons when the horses clattered into the ward.

Five days. Well done, brother-mine.

Fingolfin was curious, but controlled enough not to show it. Astride the great white stallion, his blue cloak spread over its great hindquarters, black hair bound by a silver circlet, Fingolfin looked like the epitome of a Noldorin King. His face, smooth marble in the light, was expressionless. His eyes burned. It would be too easy to imagine that this was the Formenos of ‘home’, and that Fingolfin’s superlative coldness was simply an act.

Fëanor’s dreams had been strange: He watched himself in his own world as that other Fëanor who, thank the Light, while disbelieving and utterly confused grasped what had happened — or was swift enough to realise it. In the dreams, Fëanor wanted to speak to him, but was mute and invisible. Then he would wake and the reality of his own situation rushed back and for a moment, he grieved for the loss of it.

But the grief eased as soon as he saw his sons, heard their voices. They were so much the same; it was he himself who was changed.

‘Welcome,’ Fëanor said, his smile embracing Fingolfin and Fingon and Aredhel, who had chosen to accompany their father. ‘Please, come in.’

A cold collation had been set out in the Great Hall as supper was not until the evening. Fingolfin must have departed Tirion very early.

‘Thou wilt stay a few days, I hope?’ Fëanor asked, leading his guests into the hall and affecting to ignore that Fingolfin had indeed brought light baggage.

‘I thank thee,’ Fingolfin replied stiffly. ‘I think my daughter hoped for a little hunting.’

Aredhel, slipping into a place at the long table, looked up.
‘Hoped, father? I believed it was a settled thing.’ She reached for a platter. ‘Celegorm has already said we will go hawking. There is so little sport at home.’ Her eyebrows rose in question.

‘Of course thou wilt all stay,’ Fëanor said. He poured the light, sparkling very dry wine both he and Fingolfin favoured and offered the glass. ‘Shall we sit?’

Fingolfin inclined his head. One could not say the atmosphere was relaxed, though Aredhel talked quite naturally and Fingon easily, there was little ease. Fingolfin had set a barrier of ice around him which touched everyone — except the person it was erected against. Fëanor’s blood sparkled like the wine he poured.

After, the guests were shown to their chambers to change. Celegorm, Curufin and the twins took Aredhel to the stables to talk horses and hunting, Maedhros walked into the gardens with Fingon, Maglor and Caranthir, which left Fingolfin, when he trod lightly down the great sweep of stairs, to Fëanor.

‘The King thought I should come,’ he said, eyes locking onto Fëanor’s.

‘Oh, unkind!’ Fëanor returned. ‘Didst thou not say thou wouldst? To receive thy gift?’

Winging black brows flicked down. Colour flushed along the pale curve of his cheeks.
‘Yes but…it has been many years since thou didst acknowledge my begetting day.’

‘That was wrong of me,’ acknowledged Fëanor. ‘But I do have a gift for thee and I wished thee to come to Formenos so that we could talk, away from Tirion. Come,’ he turned. ‘Shall we ride?’

Fingolfin paused and Fëanor, looking back, wondered if he would refuse. The frown had deepened. But then Fingolfin said cautiously, ‘Very well.’

Provocatively, Fëanor murmured, ‘I am sure the King would wish it.’

The stallions’ hooves fell muffled by year after year of dropped needles. Here, the pines grew tall and the riders passed under a dark-green gloom, resin scented and silent.

Fingolfin had said nothing since mounting in the ward. His face remained aloof. Only when they broke from the trees onto the high uplands and the wind streamed through his hair, did he slow his mount. Pleasure sparkled through the remoteness.

Fëanor stopped beside him, watching the hard, beautiful profile as Fingolfin lifted his head, breathing deep of the air. It smelled of heather, and stone and the cool water of the little streams and tarns. The only sounds were the wind, the cry of birds and the bleating of the Formenos sheep that cropped the short turf. The view rolled north to higher hills bathed gold in Laurelin’s glow, fainter here and paler than the stark brilliance of Tirion.

‘It is beautiful here,’ Fingolfin said.

‘Yes,’ Fëanor agreed. ‘There is room to breathe.’

Fingolfin slanted him an ice-blue look, but Fëanor pressed his thighs against his stallion’s sides and said, ‘Come!’

The horses surged into a gallop across the dry, springy grass. The land opened like a willing lover; undulations and long stretches of clean, clear turf bounded by raw, rocky heights and the flight of eagles. The stallions gathered and leapt across a little stream that cut deep through the land and poured over a waterfall. They thundered side by side up a long slope to a granite tor where the wind whistled and wild goats lifted their coiled-horn heads. Below, the land gentled into a quiet, wooded valley.

From this elevation Fëanor could see the vast rise and spread of Laurelin and Telperion like filigreed towers. To the East, the wooded slopes of the lower Pelori climbed to rock and the limitless and eternal snows. Above the clouds, the peak of Taniquetil floated, so high, so distant that it might have been a different world.

Fingolfin gazed up to the seat of the gods but Fëanor saw no expression of awe or worship in his eyes. They narrowed like shards of light as he turned.

‘The kitchens packed some wine and fruit,’ Fëanor said. ‘Let us find a place to stop.’

They descended the slope toward the woods. A freshet sprang out of the hillside and danced alongside them, light and laughing, to the trees. There, where it flowed into luminous shade, they paused. The horses drank then began to crop the grass.

Fëanor spread a blanket then opened the wine and brought out fruit, soft cheese, and nuts. Under long lashes, Fingolfin watched him, accepted the wine and drank.

‘Well?’ he said and as Fëanor simply looked at him over the rim of his goblet. ‘We are far from Tirion, and far enough from Formenos. What wouldst thou say to me?’

Fëanor said, quoting the words that Nael had said exactly: ‘Beware. Small love has the proud son of Míriel ever had for the children of Indis…’* and watched as Fingolfin’s eyes widened and fixed into an unblinking stare. ‘I want to know, dear brother, who said those words to thee.’

Fingolfin’s lips parted but he said nothing. He had become, Fëanor thought, too accustomed to the clouded innuendoes of the court, a practice of the Valar with their elliptical and gnomic utterances. This direct frontal approach was new but then his eyes hardened.
‘Is it not true?’ he challenged.

‘No,’ Fëanor replied. ‘Listen. No, I did not want our father to wed Indis so soon after my mother’s death. There is no death in Aman, yet she died, and I believe the fault was mine.’

Fingolfin shifted. ‘I have heard this but one cannot blame a child in its mothers womb.’ It would be too much to say that his voice softened but the coldness that had shaped it was gone.

‘Easy to say,’ Fëanor retorted. ‘However it was, too much of her strength was taken and she passed. I was young. I wanted, I suppose, to cling to Finwë then and so yes, I resented Indis and her children but I have long known that I was wrong to do so.’

‘Long known?’ Fingolfin repeated. ‘Long? Forgive me if I doubt that.’

‘Then doubt it,’ Fëanor snapped back. ‘But when I say to thee I would not drive thee or Finarfin from Tirion, take that as truth.’

A breeze soughed in the trees. Fingolfin had leaned forward across the spread blanket and Fëanor could see the rise and fall of his chest and smell his scent. He thought of other days, stolen meetings, and a quiver of desire ran through his body. He heard the strain of it in his voice as he continued, ‘We need to be united, not divided.’ With an effort, he turned away, reaching for the saddlebag and brought out a curved wooden box. ‘Thy gift.’

Fingolfin blinked at Fëanor, hesitating, then took the box and opened it slowly as if expecting a trap to snap on his fingers.

Fitting the shard into a case had been simple, and so Fëanor’s time had been spent on the casing, running a blend of liquid sapphire and aquamarine into tiny incisions in the mithril so that thousands of eight-pointed stars decorated the surface. Fingolfin’s expression cleared into amazement.

‘Press the center,’ Fëanor instructed softly.

The lid rose as Fingolfin did so, showing him, for a moment, his own startled reflection.

‘It is beautiful,’ he said. ‘But why a Mirror?’ His sleek brows crooked.

‘I have one too.’ Fëanor reached into the folds of his cloak. ‘It is like and unlike the Palantiri.’

‘I see. It shows things that are far off?’

Fëanor tacitly allowed him to assume that, and it was true enough. What he did not say was what else the shard could show. It was risky, but Fingolfin was not a fool.

‘The Hither Lands?’

‘Yes.’

Fingolfin drew in a breath, then his head came up. Fëanor heard it too, the muffled beat of hooves.

For a heartbeat, Fëanor wondered if his sons had ridden after him, but a deeper instinct brought him to his feet. He knew this presence: approaching thunder and burnt metals from deep in the earth, the cold of the margins of space.

His hand shot out to grab Fingolfin’s wrist. He hissed, ‘Put it away.’

The horse Melkor rode was black as a shard of jet. One of Oromë’s herds, but with ears laid back and eyes that rolled red and wicked as if its rider had fundamentally altered it.
He came down from the north alone and with the breeze spreading his massy hair.

The stallion came to a snorting halt. Fëanor and Fingolfin’s mounts responded with braying screams, muscles bunching, long teeth bared.

As one, they leapt to the stallion’s heads, commanding, soothing. Fëanor flung a furious glance at Melkor who sat like a statue, his mouth curved faintly.

‘High Prince,’ he inclined his head. ‘Prince Fingolfin. An unexpected pleasure.’

His courtesy always rang false, a cloak that never quite fit. But hate him as Fëanor did, Melkor was stupendous in his beauty. It might have been the only time that beauty failed to move him. He looked directly into the midnight eyes. From a distance they seemed black as a raven’s but close inspection revealed the pinpricks of light in them, like far-off burning stars.

Unexpectedly, a hand touched his back. Fingolfin’s. He felt the warning through its press.

‘It would please me to speak to thee, Fëanor,’ Melkor said, his eyes flicking to Fingolfin. ‘In private.’

‘Would it?’ The stress he had battened down suddenly broke its chains and whipped out. ‘What hast thou to say to me, Melkor?’

Melkor’s brows flicked up. He slipped from the stallions’ back and though he was slim and taut as any Noldor, the ground quivered beneath him like thunder running through the earth. Fingolfin’s breath hissed as he approached. Neither he nor Fëanor gave ground.
Fingolfin challenging Morgoth and wounding him seven times and dying…dying…dying.

Stepping in front of Fingolfin, one arm extended like a shield, he lifted his head in defiance.

‘One has heard rumours of thine interest in Endor,’ Melkor’s smile did not reach his eyes. ‘And who knows those far lands better than I? When the Valar left to build their kingdom here, I remained.’

Fëanor said, ‘Ah yes, Utumno, the Underworld, where thou didst imprison and torment the quendi.’

The smile dropped away. There was a flicker in those dark-dark eyes that for a blink of time stripped away all pretence and revealed the truth of the being that was Melkor but it was so swiftly veiled that it might have been imagined.
‘Thou shouldst not listen to all the Valar say,’ Melkor chided.

‘I do not,’ Fëanor blazed a smile. ‘There is little to choose between thee.’

Fingolfin came to his side pushing aside his warding arm. A quick glance showed his jaw set, sinews taut and it was unbearable. Fëanor did not want Melkor to look at him.

‘What have they told thee?’ Melkor wondered, voice like melted stone.

‘I do not need the Valar to tell me anything,’ Fëanor showed his teeth.

Melkor’s head tilted. His eyes narrowed, questing as if he felt a formless tension, a change in the air. The Mirror Shards?

‘No,’ Melkor said slowly. ‘Perhaps not. Thou art such a fascinating creature, Fëanor.’

The thundercloud of his presence deepened until it cast a shadow over them.

‘Thou hast no idea,’ Fëanor said into it. He did not give back one step, though he wanted to yell at Fingolfin to run. But his half-brother was braced, feet apart, head raised.

‘I will,’ Melkor promised and the two words were weighted like blood with meaning. Fëanor imagined his body and mind probed, his skull broken apart as Melkor sought all his secrets. A prickling rush of revulsion shivered through him.

Then Melkor turned, cloak lifted by the wind and remounted. For too long, he stared down at them and then, with a smile that might, on anyone else, be charming, he said, ‘Imprisoned quendi? That does sound familiar, now that I think on it. Whatever did I hear?’ He tapped his lips thoughtfully with gloved fingers. ‘Imprisoned…Well, I am sure it will come to me in time. I believe it was most interesting.’

He wheeled the stallion and rode past them up the slope to the tor. Fëanor’s eyes followed him as horse and rider halted at the top; the figures, silhouetted by the sky, cast in deepest black. Melkor looked down at him and his laughter, deep and dark, pealed down the wind. Then he was gone.

~ The Flame? Aelios demanded. But he has never done this before. Has he?

Let us not think of that at present, Vanimöré suggested. As I can do nothing about it. The Flame is Wild.
He turned to James. ‘What was it you wished to speak to me about?’

James looked quickly from one to another, eyes narrowed.
‘Just one thing,’ he said. ‘And it is this: If you know everything, then where is Blaise?’

‘It would not be prudent for you to know anything about your brother,’ Vanimöré said flatly. ‘Yes, I know you wish to find him, but what Aelios told you was no more than the truth. And if Sauron captured you, he would force everything from you. He could take it from your mind.’

‘I only want to know if he’s all-right,’ James exploded.

‘Why ask me, blood of Sauron? Reach into yourself and know.’

James went still, words choked back.

‘Be quiet within yourself and listen. If he were dead, you would know it. Subconsciously, you must be aware that he lives.’

‘I don’t—‘ James began, then. ‘I need to think.’

Vanimöré gestured. He knew James would not leave the penthouse yet, nor could he with the kind of security the building boasted. When he had gone, he turned to the others.

‘One cannot blame him,’ Fenny remarked quietly.

‘I do not,’ Vanimöré returned briefly.

‘I tried to explain,’ Aelios offered, then moved forward to kiss Vanimöré’s mouth. ‘My mission is done.’

‘I never doubted it. In fact I am expecting an explosion from Howard any moment once he is told. But the internet is down and —‘

The intercom buzzed softly indicating a visitor. Vanimöré smiled as he tapped the keys to allow them in. ‘And here he is.’

Howard was wet and furious. His shoes left damp footprints in the luxurious carpet and he steamed (quite literally) into the room and pointed a quivering finger.
‘You…You.’ Then his irate eyes fell on Aelios and the finger found a new target. ‘No. You.’

‘Caught in the rain, Howard?’ Vanimöré asked concernedly. ‘Would you like a towel?’

‘You…You…’

‘That was very quick work. Ah, satellite phone?’

Howard ignored this. ‘A very concentrated fire apparently.’

‘No!’ Aelios widened his eyes.

‘Do you know what’s been lost? Of course you do! Not to mention computer files fried beyond hope of recovery.’

Howard silently offered a tumbler of whiskey. Howard, hardly derailed, took it and gulped. He coughed and wheezed. ‘I have no idea what happened and so I told them.’

‘I’m very impressed that you were notified so quickly,’ Vanimöré said provocatively and Howard shook the empty glass in his direction.

‘The evidence,’ he barked. ‘The names!’

‘We know the names,’ Vanimöré told him. ‘And you and I both know none of them would have come before a court. We will deal with them in our own way. I told you we would. I will see the DDE get the credit.’

Howard glared then wheeled on Fenny. ‘Get me another drink, Fenny for god’s sake.’ He sank down on a chair, grimaced then shrugged off his wet jacket. Aelios took it.
‘Allow me.’ He ran his hands over the material; it steamed and dried.

‘For the God of the Sun you have your uses,’ Howard said surlily over the refilled glass and Aelios bowed charmingly.

‘I could not allow James to see that tape,’ Vanimöré said. ‘It would have done no good at all and far too much harm.’

Howard sipped and scowled. ‘Isn’t he here?’ he asked abruptly and then straightened and looked from Vanimöré to Aelios. ‘I suppose he saw you sail in on wings of fire did he? Damn. How’s he taking it?’

‘That was a miscalculation,’ Aelios admitted. ‘I did not know there would be anyone else here.’

‘He is…thinking,’ Vanimöré said. ‘How did you get so wet?’

Howard turned a baleful glare on him. ‘I was about to eat at the Connaught. I wasn’t expecting to run through a cloudburst to get to my car.’

‘Never mind, Hélöise will feed you tomorrow evening. Shall I make you some steak? Smoked salmon?’

‘I find I’ve quite lost my appetite.’

‘Nonsense,’ Fenny said. ‘If I can work out how to use the kitchen, Steele, I’ll knock something up.’

Howard pushed himself out of the chair and the four of them passed through the hall into the enormous kitchen. Knowing his way, Howard opened the fridge and brought out a steak. Soon it was sizzling in a pan of butter.

‘Always did get a bit mifty when he’s hungry,’ Fenny confided in an undervoice.

Uncorking a bottle of red wine, Vanimöré smiled.

Howard remained silent as he cut his way into the steak and sampled the wine with a brief nod of approval. Half way through the belated meal, he patted his mouth with a napkin and said, ‘One thing is, the Met will never know how the fire started.’ He lifted his head toward Aelios and pointed his knife. ‘If you were discreet.’

‘I?’ Aelios laid a hand on his breast and Howard narrowed his eyes warningly.
‘The security cameras were destroyed,’ Aelios assured him. ‘And they would have seen nothing but fire.’ His eyes glowed into copper-and-gold.

Howard swallowed. ‘Er, right. Good.’ His knife melted through the meat and he chewed. ‘If you’re going to deal with these bastards yourself, I don’t want to know the details until after,’ he warned. ‘But if you arrange for the credit for it to go to the department it would be a good thing. Try and preserve the bodies.’

Vanimöré flicked a tiny wink at Aelios. ‘We will do our poor best. And I never meant for them to live. Even if they were convicted, prison is far too gentle for them.’ He indicated to Aelios that they leave the kitchen and once back in the lounge he said, ‘My thanks.’

‘It was my pleasure.’ But he looked troubled. ‘Vanimöré, if the Flame has become involved I do not wish my loyalties to be divided. I owe thee much, but I made an oath to serve Fëanor even before I remembered what I truly was, and all the lesser fires are born from the greater.’

Vanimöré clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I do not like it, but if I go against him it will be through concern and love. I do understand.’

Aelios searched his face and nodded. They walked out onto the balcony. Blocks of light showed where some areas of the city were now lit; others lay in darkness, but the storm was gone, drawn within Aelios. He shrugged because there was nothing now to conceal his exit as there had been his entrance.

‘At least,’ Vanimöré said straight-faced. ‘It is not Venice in broad daylight.’

‘Some things are more important than secrecy,’ Aelios said, but he smiled.

‘Yes,’ Vanimöré cupped his cheek.’Some things always will be.’ He smiled. ‘Go.’

Aelios left as himself, as fire returning to heaven, as a destroying angel. As flame.

~ James found himself in the study. Quiet, low-lit, the great window showing half London almost dark save for those buildings with their own generators. He stared out, wondering if Blaise, who had vanished here years ago, was somewhere out there in those wet, black streets or old alleys.

‘Be quiet within yourself and listen. If he were dead, you would know it.’

Steele — Vanimöré’s— words echoed back to him. He frowned, resting his fingertips on the cool glass. The lamplight spangled the clinging raindrops, turning them to glowing amber.

He had never thought of Blaise as dead.

A glittering lake, wind brushing the cypress trees and stirring his hair, a crow calling. Lucien Steele — before James had seen what he truly was — and himself saying ’I want to search for Blaise or be on hand if anything is found. Even if he…he’s dead. But I don’t feel it.’

He said aloud, ‘I don’t feel it.’

The lake stretched itself into a jewel-blue sea that lipped around him as he stood, waist-deep. Blaise’s voice carried to him, ‘—St. Andrews. I hope.’ Then white clouds scudded across a northern sky carrying leaves and the scent of rain…

But Blaise Worth had never attended the university. Still, it would be worth checking the records and to find the friend he had been with, Edward. James gathered that Blaise often vacationed with his friends, not as a hanger-on or poor relation but because as Edward had said once, ‘His father spends very little time with Blaise. Oh, he throws money at him,’ with a faint, contemptuous curl to his mouth. ‘But Blaise spent Christmas with us once in Kent. I saw him once or twice — Mr. Worth, I mean — Cold man. Never smiled.’ He shrugged. ‘The best thing he did was to send Blaise to Marlborough.’

Blaise certainly showed no sign of abandonment on that vacation, of being the atypical poor little rich boy. He had smiled often, glossy and tanned by the sun, the epitome of handsome, privileged youth. Which he was, but with that horror buried deep inside.

James had looked into the idea of repressed memories and thought he understood how shock could open the floodgates. It had happened to Blaise, how or why he did not know and the knowledge must have been impossible. He fled from it and his father, a reaction James could well understand, but had he not contacted any of his friends?

On that dreamlike taxi ride out to Henley, James had considered this and understood why Blaise had not. The shame would be too great and his Marlborough friends had been young; they could not have helped him. Yet Blaise might have sent a message, not detailing his uncovered memories, but something, a goodbye perhaps? If so, none of them had admitted anything when questioned. Recalling Edward’s disapproval when speaking of Worth, James had no doubt he would keep silent.

It was worth a try. Edward Bentley.

But was Blaise — David — still alive?

His eyes closed. One again he thought of that vacation, remembering the green islands, the crystalline waters, the rush of the sea against the sides of the yacht. Then the sound became wind blowing across lonely, undulating hills where birdsong fell from a hot sky. It faded into the harsh cry of gulls, the crash of surf, the smell of salt and old, sun warmed stone.

I don’t know. I don’t know.

He turned from the window. He wanted to believe and that was the problem. He could not trust his own mind. Indecisive, he crossed to the great desk and sat down. The laptop was closed; and next to it lay something that winked gold. Half-idly, half-curious, he picked it up. It looked like a woman’s powder compact, something from an older, more elegant age and was out of place in this very neat, very male environment, and it was exquisite. Real gold, he thought, turning it. The engravings were precisely cut. He ran his fingers over them: seven-pointed stars…

Why would Steele possess something like this? Or perhaps a female guest had left it, Hélöise Gauthier perhaps. From all he had ever heard, this would be something she might own. He lowered it back to the desk and with an almost inaudible click, the lid lifted. There was no powder. It was the case for a mirror, that was all. His reflection showed briefly, grave, frowning, then the silver surface rippled. He turned, startled, thinking that something — some glancing light — had caused it, but there was only the wall with its bookshelves.

His frown deepened. He tilted the mirror experimentally. And a starfield burned across his vision.

Chapter Text

~ ‘What did he mean?’ Fingolfin demanded, turning to face him. Melkor’s laughter hung in the air like black smoke. It was possible to choke on it.

‘Why ask me?’ Fëanor shot back. ‘I am not privy to what moves through that dark mind.’

‘It is said,’ Fingolfin enunciated with a little stinging lilt of mockery. ‘That Melkor went to Formenos and was denied entry.’

‘For once, they speak truly.’ And then, high-handed with the fear for Fingolfin that beat through him on black, bloody wings, the images of death stamped deep as a brand on his inner vision, ‘And I do not want thee to have aught to do with him, either.’

‘What?’

‘Must I repeat it?’

‘Who art thou to tell me what I should or should not do?’ His eyes burned.

‘Thine elder,’ Fëanor lashed back.

‘It is a long time since thou didst remember that,’ Fingolfin returned fierily, the cold control burnt to a core of dead ash. The facade he wore was thin. ‘And then, after years of ignoring me — us — to walk into the palace for my Begetting Day. I did not invite thee because I believed thou wouldst ignore it, as always! And no. Neither was Melkor issued an invitation. Thou knowest me not at all if thou wouldst think I would extend the hand of friendship to that one.’ Abruptly, his teeth clicked shut. The long, strong column of his throat was rigid.

‘I know well thou wouldst not welcome Melkor, so stop ripping up at me! But he is free to go whither he will affects a desire to help us.’ Fëanor was also trying to leash his anger with only marginal success. ‘Help. By the Light! Dost thou know what he did to the quendi in Utumno?’

Arrested, Fingolfin met his stare. ‘I have heard rumours.’

‘Rumours,’ Fëanor repeated. ‘The Mirror shows more than rumours. It is not quite like the palantiri. One can see the past, the future…possible futures.’

‘Futures?’ Fingolfin repeated, blinking once.

‘Look at it.’ Fëanor challenged through his teeth. ‘Look.’

With a flash of his eyes, Fingolfin drew the Mirror forth and opened it, holding it at arm's length not as if to place a distance between himself and it, rather to allow Fëanor to also look into it. Perhaps he thought to call Fëanor’s bluff, that nothing would happen and, for a moment, nothing did. He cast a lifted-brow glance aside just as the surface of the metal began to ripple.

Stars caught alight and flashed into fire and darkness and through it echoed the laughter of the darkest god and the higher arpeggio of screams that, awfully, sounded almost unhuman but were not. They were torn from an agony that could flense flesh from bone — or destroy the soul.

The captured quendi hunched in cages cells while the red light pulsed like a dark and pitiless heart and washed them in blood, breaking bone and spirit. They bent and shifted and melted into monsters and blackness devoured their once brilliant eyes.

A red maw of stone gaped, swallowing mountains and within it, deep and dark, a figure writhed in torment. White fire engulfed him, flaming upward over bare flesh and black hair. The scream rose until it was beyond hearing, a shriek felt in the blood and bones and Fëanor’s soul cried out with it, feeling (again) the energy he had poured into Edenel’s body and spirit across time, across universes. The dark hair burned pale as ice.

Fingolfin’s arm was held so stiffly that the corded sinews showed under the thin linen of his tunic. He had jolted back at the images that swelled and faded but did not let go of the Mirror. His eyes were fixed, unblinking.

A great white wolf loped across a land of snow and pines and melted into a human form, a Power whose eyes glowed gold as the ring on one finger and whose hands braided fire.

A band of Elves ran tirelessly across a wild, rolling land. The image swooped closer and Fëanor saw Edenel go down in a hunter’s crouch as if tracking the spoor of a wild beast — or conscious of danger. Those unearthly eyes tracked across the Mirror, searching, then abruptly flicked back, staring as his dark brows, such a contrast to the hair and eyes, drew down. Fëanor heard Fingolfin’s breath draw in, then the image broke into a million fragments, each of them holding swift, brilliant glimpses: An endless place, prison or hall or dungeon, half-lit, and a figure held there as if asleep, pale against the strange shadows; a tall fortress with banners flying proud, a fleet of Telerin swan-ships burning red against a dark sky, a city of pavilions on the shore of a cool, reed-fringed lake, a clash of war in the scream of horses and howls of misshapen creatures, in the whip of blood and broken bodies, a white city ringed by mountains, towers on a hill, a mountain that vented steam from three massive peaks, a plain scorched by fire, the ash kicked up by the flying hooves of a white stallion; its rider, all silver armour and the blazing eyes lit the gloom like the slash of a sword. Then the Silmarils blazed in a black crown, skin about it scorched black and Melkor’s eyes below it like windows into an unimaginable torment and Fingolfin stood before him, bright as a detonating star…

Fingolfin jerked and the images rippled away into his own reflection. His eyes, still holding that wild, unhuman light, swung to Fëanor’s face and Fëanor caught his free hand.

‘That was thee.’ There was an aching cold in his chest. ‘The past, or the future. Thou wilt challenge Melkor, and thou wilt die.’

Fingolfin did not deny it. His eyes flew across Fëanor’s face.

‘We will do battle with him,’ he pressed. ‘He is no friend to the Eldar no matter what honey he sips to coat his tongue when he speaks to us, and it sours quick enough, does it not?’

‘I know that,’ Fingolfin returned tensely. He held up the Mirror. ‘And I cannot say I would not meet that one. But what is this? Why does it show what it does?’

Fëanor paused, and Fingolfin pursued, ‘Why — think'st thou I will not comprehend what thou sayest? Thou art the most brilliant of our people; no-one denies it, but thou art not the only Maker among us, nor the only one interested in the Mysteries.’

‘Of course I do not think that,’ Fëanor denied. ‘Think’st thou I would have given this to thee if thou wert a dullard? But it is…complicated.’

‘As simple and complicated as love — or hate and that place where they merge together.’

Both their eyes flew back to the Mirror, to the eyes as clear as dew-fall, the silver hair that streamed from a cut-glass face. It was an image formed out of the universes; galaxies pinwheeled and glowed under his skin, comets rode down the silver strands of his hair. Only the eyes showed nothing, so clear there was nothing behind them — or everything.

‘Eru,’ Fëanor said grimly as the vision faded into the stars and the Mirror returned to showing only a reflection of Fingolfin’s stunned face as he turned on Fëanor like a cornered cat.

‘Eru?’ he demanded. ‘What hast thou done that this can show the face of Ilúvatar?’

‘It shows everything,’ Fëanor said impatiently. ‘Eru spoke to me. Oh, not then, before.’ He regarded Fingolfin intently. ‘If we pursue this enmity, it will lead to disaster.’

‘It is not I who—‘ Fingolfin began then snapped his white teeth together and swung away. He took several long strides, the Mirror closed now and clenched in one hand. The wide, straight shoulders, the lovely, long line of his slim back were stiff but not defensive.

‘I mean to leave Valinor,’ Fëanor said flatly and stepped forward. ‘With anyone who will come with me.’

Fingolfin looked around, fine brows drawn hard.

‘This is not our land. The Valar rule here and magnanimously doled out little kingdoms for the quendi.’ Fëanor enunciated the words contemptuously. ‘But Endor is our home! We woke to the starlight and the sound of clear waters. I want us to explore the vast regions of Middle-earth, to build kingdoms for ourselves. The Valar may have unroofed Utumno and chained Melkor but his followers scattered and many were never found and there is much to do. If they will not clean up after themselves, I will.’ He reached out and caught Fingolfin by the shoulders, pulling him close. ‘Come with me! I want you and I to rule together. I want—‘ Thee.