Island of Sorrow RPG

[Anguirel]

But a short time after Endamir had taken up his brother's mortal relict and determined to step into the harsh wilderness of reality once more, a new sound made all five Elves-even, perhaps, the new, baleful sixth of their band, the Master-Smith-stop. For it demanded all attention; promised all bounties; pacified all thoughts.

It was the sound of a playful but supremely skilful hand dancing down the length of a harp. The chords were like ripples in the very hearts and emotions of their listeners, yet each of the company felt slightly differently towards them, a vague, intangible attitude mixed with their admiration. Malris, for example, felt as if some primal devotion and loyalty within him, to serve unswervingly and gladly, was evoked.

And then the Song itself began.

O friends and fellowmen of the Old Country,
Strange Country, Old Country, full well hath you strived.
But toil leads to iron and tears and regret
And the troubles that gnaw at the night.

A harbour we're seeking, wherever we wander
And all but the harpers, they'll find it one day.
You all have your haven which speeds you to home
For there's little relief found in the depths of the fray.

Relief you are seeking, for harbour you're yearning
For happiness, or at least stilling of grief
Relief shall I grant you, while this fell night lasts
And you'll come to me in the morn...

Long before any of the five Elves had time to wonder what the words signified now, they slept where they stood, their eyes open and staring deep into vague images, dim provinces of memory, and deeper truths, incomprehensible but comforting for that very reason.

No one can tell whether the Smith slept similarly. But the Minstrel's voice and somnolent gift had contained a power few beings could have resisted, and so possibly, probably, that ancient, stubborn spirit succumbed and was granted a short respite.

[Anguirel]

Malris awoke first, and his first thoughts were filled with a kind of tranquil awe. Here, in this silent, timeless underland, he and his friends seemed to be standing as if statues portraying long-forgotten legends, or wars. He swung his arm and stepped a pace back in surprise when it moved, waving both arms now, reaccustoming himself to consciousness, and to duty.

The Song hung not so far back in the dusty finery of his mind. Maglor had given them Sleep; had it been a benevolent gift? And what...what had he meant by them coming...to him...in the morn? This morning?

Lindir and Endamir, Orëmir slung over Endamir's shoulder, stood slightly ahead of him. Orëmir, Malris realised with trepidation, seemed about as alive as the others appeared dead. Dead and living visages had congealed and met, reunited in the equality of sleep. He turned about-Lómwë was a pace behind him, looking to Tasa as a shepherd regards a lamb he guides. Malris felt worry for Tasa's sake-the tumultuous and terrible happenings had driven her from his thoughts.

So it was she he chose to awake first, tapping her shoulder firmly, but gently. Her eyes-like those of all the others-were open as they dreamed; he watched as the shimmering irises returned to contemplation of a more earthly existence, looking on fondly.

"Malris," she said hazily. "We...there was music, and we..."

"We have all slept, though I know not for how long. Now we must arise, all of us, and depart from the isle at last. The Smith desired us to go by the Keep, but I have no wish to prolong this fool's journey."

"The Smith?" Tasa questioned. Malris raised an eyebrow; perhaps she was still confused by sleep; but as they talked it became clear she had not taken in the spirit's presence in the night before, nor indeed much else; it had all been an unravelling knot of bewildering, unsortable emotions. Now Malris tried his best to illumine it by the lamp of reason, and made the awful sundering of the twins as clear as he could.

They turned back to the other three Elves. Lómwë was now being affected by the tides of wakefulness, and Lindir too stirred. The light and warmth of the forgery had long since been snuffed out, but the keen Elven eyes adjusted to the gloom. At last all four were fully awake, and Endamir too was half-conscious; Lindir stepped towards him, taking his hand with an almost brotherly touch...though not enough, certainly, to replace what had been lost.

It was the quietest of their wakings on this Island of Sorrow; yet perhaps the one most filled with meaning.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Tasa breathed deeply and looked at her companions. What had passed and how had she missed its happening? She felt Endamir's plight deeply now; he had killed his brother. She had killed her troops. He had done it without knowledge, she had lost innocent lives without forethought. They were different, but they were the same; Tasa and Endamir shared guilt. She let her tears flow, and they fell silently down her white cheeks, cold against the heat of her silver scars.

"It is time, my friends, to leave here." Her voice was soft, silver bells on the wind, chimes in the early morning. "We have travelled together to this place that holds so many memories, and we have faced many of them. I know that I have." Tasa looked at the floor between companions, sometimes looking up to almost meet their eyes. "The shadows of our deeds will haunt us forever, but never so much as they will in this place."

She left them for a moment, finding herself strong and able, feeling a heat in her veins that had long since lain dormant. She stood tall and proud, and walked with a confidence she had not felt since the Nirnaeth. She could not help but wonder at the sleep of last night.

Tasa walked a path that she did not remember, but that her body knew for her. The entrance, she knew, was this way, and so would be their exit. It was not. She tried every door she found, uncertain now. The final door, she knew in her heart, was the correct one. It would not move. She shivered, feeling crows in her hair, probing coldness in her mind. Silently she returned to the group and met each pair of eyes with sadness.

"Malris... our way is shut. Again."

[piosenniel]

Relief you are seeking, for harbour you're yearning
For happiness, or at least stilling of grief
Relief shall I grant you, while this fell night lasts
And you'll come to me in the morn...

The last of the songs words echoed in Endamir’s mind as he woke in the now cold forge chamber. He struggled to push the false promises from him. The words and music were woven thick, like honey. And like honey one could be trapped within them.

He flexed his shoulders, wondering at the fact he still held his brother’s body balanced over his shoulder. Lindir’s grey eyes met his, and Endamir felt a light pressure as the man gave his hand a reassuring touch.

‘He’s a sorcerer, you know,’ Endamir spoke aloud as Lindir drew back his hand. ‘The singer . . . cruel, really. He’s set the game and pulled us further in and further in. And now he offers some surcease of grief, is it, of loss; a recoup of hope, perhaps…of happiness.’ Endamir laughed, a hollow sound, one sharply at odds with the melody that had so recently filled the room. ‘Look at us! Enthralled by the song…enthralled . . . made thralls; slaves. He stops us as he wishes and now he moves us on, pieces on his game board. And we must move . . . though one not by his own power.’ He laughed again. ‘He’s dead, you know. Quite dead…my brother. Yet still the music and this light-forsaken place pull him onward.’

Tasa, by this time, had finished her round of the forge-room’s main entrances, and found them all locked against the companions’ exit. ‘See, even now we are herded on down ways not of our own choosing.’

Endamir rebalanced his burden and turned toward the rear of the forge chamber. ‘Smith!’ he called out, restraining the urge to add a searing epithet that would mark the man for the foul being he was in Endamir’s mind. ‘Smith! In all your long years here, you must have found a number of ways out of this dreary tomb and into the Keep. Step up and show us the way.’

[Anguirel]

Malris met Tasa's eyes with instant comprehension, remembering the occasion to which she referred-when the door out of Giledhel's quarters had closed against them, forcing them, by the counsel of the Singer, no less, to make trial of the Dwarven Corridors. Leading to where they were now...another barred escape; another choice removed; only a single path.

And you'll come to me in the morn. As Endamir spoke bitterly against the Singer, calling him a sorceror, a master of thralls, Malris found with sorrow that all the evidence seemed to point to the twin being right. The Voice was heard all over the isle of Himring; where else, then, could it come from if not from the isle's central point, the Keep? The Singer seemed to be forcibly gathering them to him now, like a larger, more terrible vision of the Smith gathering his pupils.

Set against this was only Malris' certainty that the beauty, the might of the Song was Maglor's...and his memories of that Ages-lost friend and lord. How could he have been twisted into a thing of manipulation, a chess-player who moved his former companions like chess-pieces? But what other answer could there be?

"Smith! In all your long years here, you must have found a number of ways out of this dreary tomb and into the Keep. Step up and show us the way."

The command was, remarkably, Endamir's. Certainly the old Noldo's valour and foresight was back within him if he now put grief and grievance aside to hail the only being, false as he had proved, who could guide them further.

Silence, like an arrow-shaft quivering in ash-wood, hung for moments that seemed days. Then the Smith's voice replied.

"Endamir, lad, I shall serve you truly. I have maimed your existence, and so I am bound to ye. Aye, I know the way..."

The Smith's tall, broad, now somewhat hunched figure hulked ahead in one of the storerooms.

"If you can trust a benighted spirit who has done you wrong, then follow me."

"We have little enough choice about that," Malris answered bitterly, taking up his long knife and striding in the footsteps of the Master-Smith's strangely solid phantom.

[Firefoot]

Halted at every turn they tried to take on this cursed journey. Lómwë was sick of it and frustrated. It caused them all this grief, and now it offered healing and relief. Not likely – not here. Perhaps if they were lucky, this would be the last time, and no more dangers would be met. Lómwë doubted it. “Even if it was not the Smith who shut the door behind us,” he commented to no one in particular, “someone must have. Someone wants us to go this way.” Whether this was true or not did not ultimately matter, however, as they had no choice but to follow the Smith out through the back passage ways.

They passed through room after room, the most of their purposes seeming to have been forgotten long ago. So subtle was the change in the sorts of rooms and the feel of the air that Lómwë did not at first notice when they left the armory and were heading on into the ancient Keep. At least that seemed right…

Except that Lómwë slowly began to notice that these parts were feeling, well, more occupied, increasing his mistrust of the smith once more. He seemed honest enough now, but which of them really knew where he was leading them?

The feeling rose to its height as they were passing what seemed to once have been the audience chamber, and Lómwë refused to remain silent over it any longer. “Do the rest of you not feel it?” he asked. “Smith, where are you leading us through these twisting passages? Or rather, to whom? What are you not telling us?”

“I am only leading you out, as you asked,” said the Smith, sounding rather hurt.

“You would do better not to sound so wounded,” retorted Lómwë. But the Smith had no chance to respond because it now became very clear that they were not, in fact, alone…

[Anguirel]

Even though he had ultimately been led into the Keep against his will, Malris still felt a part of himself shuddering with excitement at the prospect of once again looking upon the heart of Himring. He noted with a heady pride barely suppressed in his mind the sigils and marks of Maedhros and of Maglor carved together when they passed them; the great chambers, empty but all the more magnificent for it, flaunting their magnitude and purity; the torches, unlit but still apparently well-kept...here and there slabs of granite, marking where the soldiers of Himring's final garrison had fallen.

The Master-Smith ahead of them had reached a mighty pair of double-doors, bolted with a great...mast...of iron. "Beyond here lies..."

"The audience chamber, aye, of course I remember," Malris cut him off, sharply perhaps, but more due to impatience than malice. He walked forward and heaved one end of the bar; the Smith tugged at the other end. Dust, unmoved for Ages, showered about and haloed above the heads of the Elves, tinging their hair with argent. And the doors swung open.

“Do the rest of you not feel it?” Lómwë asked, breaking the miasma of silence that had fallen upon them throughout the journey. “Smith, where are you leading us through these twisting passages? Or rather, to whom? What are you not telling us?”

When the Smith protested that he was leading them as he had been bade, Malris found himself believing the spirit, but there was little time to argue.

The audience chamber of Himring was, unlike many of the rooms they had passed, still furnished; because its contents were carved out of the very stuff of the mountain. Against the walls rows of stone chairs jutted from the floor, the enduring seats of the Court and Council; an aisle separated the two groups of them; and at the end of that aisle stood two great rock thrones, one about a third smaller than the other. Finally, some yards away from the thrones but level with them, another small chair was positioned.

It was this chair that now moved, shaking and jerking, a voice coming haphazardly from its creaking.

"The Master of His Lordship's Smiths," it announced. "Malris, Standard Bearer to His Lordship. Lómwë, warrior of the outer Marches. Endamir, warrior of the Fortress; he carries his brother, and it appears there has been some...mishap. Lindir, Smith to His Lordship. Tasarënì, lately a warrior in His Lordship's Service, now a follower of Artanis."

"We know who we are...Chamberlain," Malris answered, "and indeed, we can keep you better up to date. I have not borne a Standard in Ages, and Lindir has long laid down his tools. Oremir was not hurt in a mishap, but murdered through the plots of the Diviner. We seek free passage out of the Fortress, nothing more."

"I apologise profoundly for any...lapse...in protocol," the Chamberlain's voice returned from the chair in an irritated tone. "Perhaps you would be interested to know that His Lordship Kanafinwe Makalaure Feanorion, called Maglor, wishes to meet with you. He finds the...official atmosphere...of the throne-room oppressive, though believe me, I have often tried to persuade him otherwise, and so awaits you in the Observatory Tower."