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Maglor had already broken Celegorm’s nose and knocked out two of his teeth before Maedhros could reach them to intervene. It was fortunate that he had no weapon – his blows were vicious, untempered, meant to do maximum harm. He writhed in Maedhros’ restraining grip, shuddering with grief.
“You killed him!” Maglor howled at Celegorm, still struggling to reach him. “As sure as Gorthaur’s wolves, you craven hound! I will never give you peace. I will sing you to the Void, I swear! I will eat your very heart!”
It took nearly all of Maedhros’ strength to guide Maglor away and ease him into his own rooms, but once there he gave over to weeping, curling around the invisible wound in his spirit and moaning into his shaking hands.
“Oh, Ingo…Ingo…”
Maedhros held him through his grief with weary tenderness, as Maglor had once kept the ills of the world at bay for him in Mithrim.
The best of them were falling, Maedhros thought, like the first-culled leaves at a gale’s beginning. Where would the maelstrom end?
They had wed in private, but not in secret, in the cool halls of the Academy of Music in Alqualondë, when the Noontide’s sweetness was still great enough to glaze their joining as a gift to both their Houses. Two princes, beloved singers, their voices winding and twining through the salty air with infinite tenderness.
That affection soured, as all things did, when Melkor’s venom spread. Maglor rode to Formenos, following Fëanor, and Finrod retreated to his grandfather’s seaside halls. They had not met, in all those years, instead exchanging scores that dripped with bitterness – no gentle melodies, but compositions raw with brass and dissonance, angry in the listening ear.
And in the Darkness, in the bloody surf below the battered piers, Finrod had found Maglor washing his hands and face and arms, weeping and sick at heart but already humming the first bars of the tale of their tragedy. He had not spoken, but the bond between them stretched, pinching and burning, then dulled to an ache, a bare echo of connection to one once held so dear. Maglor had licked his lips, watching the furious set of Finrod’s departing back, uncertain if the salt he tasted was the sea, or blood, or tears.
Beleriand smoothed their fractured edges, some. Both were layered in such bruises, by the time they met again, that there was relief in distant tenderness, in the familiar touch of mind and hand. Each was like cool water to the other, soothing the burn of Mandos’ damning brand.
But there could be no return to the innocence of youth, to the softer pleasures of those long-ago Minglings. Between Maglor’s grasslands and Finrod’s caves lay too many memories of pain. The common purpose and easy affection of their marriage was long forgotten; impossible to regain. Each retreated to his own songs, his own secrets, his own lands.
Still, the old tie hummed softly in the background – every now and then a gentle brush, a quiet touch of mind to mind. Reassuring in its presence, when fortune's battering had almost made them numb.
And in its sudden failing, Maglor knew himself alone.
What last resistance to his father’s bitter Oath he’d felt was gone: swallowed by the wolves, broken to its ending in the tower, under the leering stones.
None of Maedhros’ efforts at gentleness and patience would soothe him.
Doom sang through them, with absolute certainty. Maglor could taste it in the back of his throat; he could hear it ringing in his bones.