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Chapter Text

Huan’s jaws were at the Necromancer’s throat; the Lord of Werewolves lay on the ground, helpless to offer further resistance, his body now changed back from wolfdom to his prior, mostly-elvenoid form in token of submission.

Over him stood his conqueror: an Elven-maid, barefoot in a tattered blue dress, stained and smelling of urine, and a cloak the color of night that was likewise soiled, her broken nose askew, her front teeth knocked out, her dark hair shorn to a stubble on her head.

Her remaining teeth were set in a feral smile. Her grey eyes were alight with triumph.

Her hands played with a small but deadly knife of Nargothrond make.

Lúthien knelt before Sauron, holding the knife in front of his face where the Maia’s catlike eyes could get a close-up view.

“…how comes this? How could I be bested by a hound and a simple Elven-maid!” The Lord of Werewolves sniffed, then grinned darkly with feline teeth. “No. Not a maid. Not anymore. The stink of babes in the womb is on you, girl.”

His taunts were cut short as Huan’s teeth bit deeper into the skin of his throat, but they had had their effect: Lúthien’s cheeks reddened and her brows furrowed, shame and anger mingling on her face.

“Keep silence about things that concern you not, dwimor-lord. It does not suit one of the Maiar, fallen or not, to taunt a woman so about things that befell her unsought.” Lúthien blinked, and behind her eyelids, the Necromancer guessed, she must be fighting back tears.

“Ah!” Sauron gave a deep and knowing chuckle. “That old story. Seized and carried off, were you? Against your will, no doubt, hence your ugly face – at least until the pintle hit home and the pain turned to pleasure… and you hated yourself for enjoying it afterward.” The catlike grin came out again. “Always the same. But you are no common Elf-woman, I deem. No ordinary elleth could best me in song, or sic this monster of a hound on me. What is your secret, girl?”

“Since you asked, I shall tell you. For I am not solely an Elf by blood,” replied the mother-to-be.

She twisted a plain silver ring on her finger, pulling the band from her flesh, and her visage changed.

No more was her skin a rosy light pink; now it was the starker white of the carven marbles of Valimar. Her eyes that had been grey were now the golden yellow of the fruits of Laurelin.

Sauron knew now who she was, even before she spoke her name.

“My mother was Melian of Valinor, and my father was Elu Thingol, Elwë of the Firstborn of Elves. And I am Lúthien Tinúviel, in whose blood runs strains elven and divine alike.”

“Most cunning magic,” breathed Sauron, voice shrunken to a whisper in awe at the unexpected power of the ring. “But why such sorcery?”

Lúthien bowed her head. “I do not look like an Elf of full blood. My face is strange, my skin is alien. My mother hoped that by hiding my true features I would not suffer the taunts of other Elves… and my father hoped that I would not suffer their affections, vain though that proved.”

She did not tell him of Beren, and how he had first seen her without it, when it had slipped from her finger as she wet her hand in a stream trickling by the glades of Doriath, and he had come from horrors untold through spell-mazed woods to the sight of a maiden beautiful and strange, and had not been afraid, but rather loved her from the first.

She put the ring back on her finger. Snow-white skin became suffused with pink once more, and golden lights gave way to wonted grey.

“And I know you,” she continued. “Lord Sauron, as the Elves name you: a wizard of dark power, a king of a cursed isle. But I know you also from my mother’s stories: Mairon, her sister, who fell under the wicked influence of Morgoth long before the raising of the Sun and Moon.”

The cat-like ears on the top of his head went flat with rage as Sauron hissed, “That name is dead to me!”

“Why?” asked Lúthien. “Have you abandoned your name and your old form because Sauron is who you want to be? Are you truly happy forsaking the woman who was radiant in Valinor, instead to be the chief of Melkor’s thralls?”

“Women!” Sauron spat. “Women are weak. Men take them at their pleasure, hurt them at their pleasure, even in the realms West over sea that are accounted Heaven. I have been a woman; this I know. The world the Valar have wrought is a merciless one. The piteous whining of ravished maidens, helpless and friendless, is a constant throughout the ages.”

“Says the Lord of Werewolves to the ravished maiden holding a knife to his throat,” Lúthien said. She tapped Sauron’s chest with the point of the blade. “You were once in my position, that is clear. But your choice was other than mine. Rather than endure your ravishment with bravery, you chose to turn coat, and gave yourself a cock to join the ravishers. Didn’t you?”

“I… er…”

Sauron, who had beaten Felagund of Nargothrond with his mastery of song, was lost for words.

“I thought as much.”

Lúthien lowered the knife and began to saw at the ties of Sauron’s breeches. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of urine, for the Necromancer had pissed himself in terror. (And she tried not to remember how she had soiled her own dress in the forest, when she was pursued by Celegorm and Curufin.)

“Pissing yourself?” She chuckled. “Perhaps you’re not so different from a ravished maiden after all.”

Now it was Lúthien’s turn to grin darkly.

“Well, my lord, I have a proposition for you.”

She cut open the fastenings of the sodden breeches, and pulled out Sauron’s limp cock. It was very like the Elf-cocks she’d seen in Nargothrond.

She wondered if Beren’s also looked like that.

“Since you so enjoy hurting maidens with that little appendage of yours, I can cut it off right now, and let you bleed out in agony…”

She started stroking Sauron’s cock with her free hand. It got harder under her touch as the blood ran to it. The Lord of Werewolves moaned as she stroked his shaft. Clearly, her time in Nargothrond had begun an education of a sort that would have horrified her father.

“…or you can tell me the words of binding that hold up your tower and keep shut your cells, and let stone lie upon stone with unrelieved weight, so that I can bring down this ghastly citadel, and free the one for whom I came. Then will I grant you a swift death, to go and re-house yourself elsewhere.”

Her hand rubbed Sauron’s cock faster and faster now. She flicked his glans, once, twice. Then she let the blade of her knife dance across his throbbing penis, brushing against the engorged veins, tip catching for a horrible second in his urethra.

“Well? Which shall it be?”

Sauron groaned.

“I… I will tell you the words of binding.”

And so he revealed them, giving to Lúthien the words that kept stone heaped upon stone, and the iron doors of the cells shut, and the sinews of the unquiet dead who roamed there intact. And all the while Lúthien’s hand played up and down his cock, bringing Sauron closer and closer to release, but never all the way.

And when at last the spells of power were hers, and Sauron’s cock burned with his unspent seed, Lúthien readied her knife.

“Release me!” the Necromancer begged. “Honor your bargain, witch. My fea from my body, my seed from my cock. Either, or both. But only end it!”

She gave a dramatic sigh. “Oh, very well.”

Lúthien’s knife flashed, but it did not stab Sauron’s heart or pierce his throat. Instead she cleaved his cock from his body, slicing through engorged flesh with a quick flash of well-honed steel.

Sauron screamed, a high keening sound. Huan’s teeth drew pinpricks of blood from his throat which he ignored as he moved suddenly to cup the ruin of his groin in his hands. Copious streams of blood spurted out between them, hot and red.  His body jerked in pain.

“You… you promised.”

Lúthien smiled that wicked smile at him, all too similar to his own, in spite of her missing teeth.

“I did, and I’ll keep my bargain. I’ll cut your throat in a minute, never fear. But as you said… the world is merciless.”

Chapter Text

It is a little-known fact that Elves can hold their bladders for up to nine days.

Not that it is common for them to do so. Most Elves, like Men, relieve themselves, within reason, as soon as the urge comes upon them; it might take a couple of days for their bodies to process the waste from liquids, rather than hours as with Men, but it is extremely unusual for them to go beyond three or four days without voiding. Only in extreme circumstances would an Elf attempt to hold in their urine for more than a week. Indeed, not all Elves are capable of doing so.

However, the record for Elven bladder endurance is nine days.

This is known because it was set by Lúthien Tinúviel.

It all started with that damn shoe.

Lúthien was climbing down the trunk of Hirilorn – the great tree towering high above the rest of the forest, in whose boughs her father had imprisoned her – using a rope made of her own hair, lengthened by a magic spell. She had cut her remaining locks at shoulder length, enough to remain presentable in polite company, for the price of the spell was that her hair would never grow again. But it was a price she was willing to pay, if she could but be together with Beren in the mad quest her father had set him on.

And as she went, her feet, clad in silver slippers, scrabbled for purchase against the trunk of the tree. Time and again her soles lost their grip, and her legs swung back out dizzyingly into the air, jolting her as her arms suddenly took her full weight and she had to grip hard upon the rope of hair to avoid falling to her doom.

At last, in frustration, she kicked her shoes from her feet, letting them plummet to the earth, and climbed down the rest of the way barefoot. She had to jump to the ground from several feet up, for the rope was not quite long enough to reach the forest floor, and she had to leave it behind hanging from the boughs of Hirilorn.

When she finally reached the ground, she looked around for her shoes, but could find only one lying in the shaded grass. The other was caught high in a branch of another tree, whose bark was too smooth and branches too high for climbing. Its gleaming silver scales seemed to taunt her from their perch like a malevolent bird.

She tossed the shoe she had found aside, deciding to continue on barefoot. She had always loved the feeling of soil and grass between her toes, after all.

Later, she cursed herself bitterly for that decision.

For Celegorm and Curufin, the sons of Feanor who dwelt in Nargothrond, came through that forest in their hunting, being known to Melian and not yet regarded as foes; and their designs when they found that shoe were dark.

The brothers knew, since the slipper was so small and delicate, that a maiden must have dropped it. And being skilled hunters with lust in their blood for the chase of any kind, they decided to pursue this new animal and see what sport it might offer.

They gave the shoe to Huan, their hound sired in Valinor, and the gigantic dog sniffed it and soon picked up the trail. But soon, as they guided their horses along in his wake, they realized they did not need Huan’s sense of smell to follow their prey. A trail of white flowers was leading them right to her.

“Brother,” asked Celegorm, turning the shoe over in his hand. “It seems to me that – ”

“Yes,” answered Curufin, picking up on the meaning of his brother’s unfinished thought. “This is no ordinary quarry, even for an elleth. We hunt Thingol’s daughter herself. Why she has stolen from her father’s kingdom and the halls of Menegroth, I know not; but it is a priceless opportunity for us, I deem.”

“Opportunity?” asked Celegorm. “Should we pursue such a dangerous game as she?”

“Of course,” said Curufin. “The prize will be sweet, for sure, but there is more than that. Do you not remember the laws of marriage? Our idiot brother might have disinherited us from the High Kingship without asking, but we can still win a throne – assuming we can corner the girl and sheathe ourselves in her cunt.”

Celegorm nodded. “But only one of us can be her groom, brother,” he said. “And I fear what magic she might work against me were I to take her first. Perhaps I might shrivel up and die of eld, even as one of those barbarous Men.”

“Well then – let me take point,” Curufin reassured him. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I will be Prince of Doriath, and maybe even King, but I will treat you royally, my brother, never fear. Everything that is mine is yours, after all. So it has been, so it shall be. Everything,” he repeated, making his meaning clear.

“So it shall be.” Celegorm tossed away the slipper. “Everything.”

Lúthien had been walking in the forest for three days when she heard the noises, far off at first, but steadily approaching her. She listened, and soon realized what they came from, and realization roiled her stomach with dread.

The braying of horses and the barks of a hound were coming ever closer.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She remembered the stories her mother had told her, about wicked hunters who abducted maidens they found wandering alone in dark forests. They were part of Melian’s admonishments, telling her why she should not leave the borders of Doriath. The world outside was unsafe and perilous, her mother had explained, but within the borders of her father’s kingdom she was free from all danger.

But now she had crossed outside the borders of Doriath, and the hunters were coming ever closer.

She did not know who they were. She did not want to find out.

Lúthien broke into a run.

The hunters followed.

She ran for six days.

It was truly a feat of endurance that would have been celebrated in the annals of Middle-earth, were it not kept secret by those few who knew of it. Undoubtedly, it was the blood of Melian in her veins that spurred Lúthien to lead her pursuers on such a remarkable chase.

Still, it was not quite as astonishing as it might seem to mortal Men.

For an Elf, the need for water is not as immediate as it is for Men; and so, though her throat grew parched and her lungs ached with exertion, she was not yet in agony of dehydration by the end of the chase. Likewise, Elves may, if they will, take rest in their memories, even as their bodies sit or stand or even walk with eyes open and unseeing. This Lúthien did, though in a fashion more extreme than usual: resting for an hour or two at a time, walking in her sweet memories of blissful hours spent with Beren in the shaded gardens of Doriath, while her legs bore her at a run unceasingly forward through the forest.

But though her memories provided rest enough to keep her going, they did little to soothe her burning muscles or assuage the fear in her breast; and the rest was still not enough, not when she could only sleep in Elven fashion for a couple of hours at a time, and not at all in the deeper way shared by Men and Elves alike.

And though she had not needed to relieve herself at first, she had already let it be for three days before the hunters approached her; and now her bladder filled ever more as the chase went on. But she could not stop with the hunters on her tail, nor did she want to piss herself like an animal as she ran.

So, hour by hour, Lúthien tired. Her exhausted muscles found it more and more difficult to keep pace as she ran before the hunters. Time and again she found herself narrowly avoiding tripping over roots and rocks. Her lungs ached and her throat burned. Her bare feet smarted with cuts from sharp rocks and twigs. Worst of all, her bladder throbbed low in her gut, full to the brim, and it took ever-increasing amounts of concentration to keep herself from losing control.

She realized she would have to find a hiding place soon, else they would be upon her.

As she thought about what she might do to escape, one of Lúthien’s feet stumbled over a gnarled tree root. And she pitched forward, face first, into a large stone lying on the ground in front of her.

As Lúthien’s face hit the rock, three things happened at once.

First, her nose crumpled and bent to one side.

Second, her front teeth shattered.

Third, she pissed herself orgasmically.

The relief of finally releasing her urine was so great that all Lúthien could do was lie there and wet herself more. She forgot the hunters, forgot her throbbing nose and mouth, forgot everything except the unexpected joy of relieving the pressure in her bladder.

Urine poured down the front of her blue dress; it pooled out around her; it soaked into the ground, then saturated it, forming a miniature lake of piss. Still Lúthien lay there, her bleeding face pressed against the rock, pissing herself, flexing her pelvic muscles so that the stream would continue long after the first involuntary burst had subsided.

That was how Celegorm and Curufin found her, at the end of the trail of flowers: lying on her stomach on the ground in the middle of the forest, her face smashed, her blue dress and dark cloak soaked through with urine, piss forming a deep, gleaming, still-widening yellow puddle all around her.

Celegorm wrinkled his nose as they dismounted. “Is your royal prize still sweet, brother?”

Curufin arched an eyebrow. “Indeed so. For is she not covered in gold?”

“Even for you that was a bad pun.”

“One makes do with what one has. Come, help me lift her up.”

The two of them took hold of Lúthien’s arms, pulling her to her feet just as the last droplets of piss trickled down her legs. She winced as she stood upright in the puddle of lukewarm urine, which came to her instep and washed over her bare feet. Her sodden dress was uncomfortably chilly in the cool air of the forest.

Then she realized who had pulled her up, and fear paled her blood-smeared face. Had Celegorm not still had his arms around both her shoulders, she would have bolted once more for the depths of the forest.

“See, brother, we have found an elleth, wandering lost in the woods! And battered by the journey, it would seem,” said Curufin, who now stood facing her, taking in her bruises with a dispassionate eye. “We must take this poor maiden home with us, and give her bed and board.”

“But – ” Celegorm began to interject.

“Do you recognize her? I do not,” Curufin interrupted, and his brother nodded, taking his meaning.

“Take your hands off me at once!” said Lúthien, through a voice marred and flattened by her broken nose. “For I am Lúthien Tinúviel, daughter of Thingol of Doriath, and it will go ill with you if my father learns that you have laid hands on me against my will.”

“She is mad, poor thing,” declared Curufin, shaking his head with mock sorrow. “We must take her home and keep her restrained until we can cure her of these delusions.”

“What?!” cried Lúthien.

“Indeed, brother,” put in Celegorm. “How fortunate for her that we found her here, and can prevent her from doing mischief to herself or others. Let us go home with her, as you say.” And his eyes sparkled with an evil lust.

“But I tell the truth – I am Lúthien Tinúviel!” she said. “Look at me! Am I not unlike any other Elf you have ever seen?”

She tore herself from Celegorm’s grasp with a desperate convulsive movement, and yanked a plain silver ring from her finger. Pink skin became snow-white; grey eyes became golden.

Curufin’s eyes widened as he took in her appearance. Her smashed nose and missing teeth, which the illusion had not been designed to conceal, were visible still, but all the more disturbing in her true unearthly face.

“See!” Lúthien put the ring back on her finger. “Am I not Lúthien?”

Curufin stepped forward with a malicious smile. “No,” he said, and suddenly Celegorm had grabbed her arms again. Curufin crossed the distance between them until he was right in front of her. He seized hold of her hand and tore the ring from her finger. The illusion dissipated again.

“No,” he said, grabbing her jaw with her free hand. “You’re just some little mad Elf-slut we found by the roadside, ranting and raving about how she thinks she’s a princess.”

He forced her jaw open, and popped the ring into her mouth through the gap where her front teeth had been knocked out. The illusion returned. He did not hesitate in the slightest, but made her jaw close again, holding it shut with a firm grip, knowing she couldn’t breathe through her shattered nose.

Only when he saw her throat bob and knew she had swallowed the ring did he let go.

A tear trickled from Lúthien’s eye in defeat.

“Come on, brother,” he said. “let’s get this bitch to Nargothrond. She has to be locked up for her own safety, after all. Poor girl is deluded. Thinks she’s Lúthien Tinúviel.”

As soon as they had her in a cell in the dungeons of Nargothrond, they raped her.

Curufin, who had taken her cloak of night and locked it in a secure cabinet in the dungeon, was first, spilling his seed deep inside her.

She could feel it quicken.

Her mother Melian had always warned her that she was extremely fertile. With every footfall of her naked feet, she left flowers in her wake. And with everyone who put their member into her, she knew, she would conceive.

Celegorm took her next, but he pulled out before release, spraying her face and gown with his seed.

She thanked the Valar that she would only be bearing one bastard babe.

Then they took her upstairs and shoved her into bed with Orodreth, after they had plied him with drink.

She cried and sobbed and screamed that she was Lúthien Tinúviel, daughter of Thingol of Doriath. But Orodreth looked at her and saw a poor ordinary Elven-maid, out of her wits; and, even drunk as he was, he could see she did not at all resemble the golden-eyed, snow-skinned girl that, by virtue of his standing in one of the great houses of the Elves, he knew Thingol’s daughter to be.

And he, too, put his seed in her.

Lúthien cried and cried and cried.

Celegorm and Curufin came to her every night in the dungeons. Celegorm made sure never to spill himself in her; she wondered whether he feared being a father.

She bit Curufin, once, when he put his cock (and she was getting used to calling it a cock, rather than the more genteel words the scrolls of Doriath’s library would have had for it) into her mouth. It didn’t do much damage, with her missing front teeth, but he pulled out all the same, rage purpling his face.

He went out of the cell, and took up a pair of scissors and a razor from a shelf nearby. A wave of horror washed over Lúthien as she realized that it was most likely a shelf for torture implements. She wondered whether it was only Orcs of Morgoth who were tortured down here. She hoped so, but she knew from hard experience how capable Celegorm and Curufin were of dark deeds against their fellow Elves.

Curufin came back, handing the razor to Celegorm to hold while he worked, and took the scissors to her hair.

The hair she had cut at shoulder length when she magically lengthened it, knowing that it would never grow again, fell away. Strand by strand, her hair was shorn, leaving it as short as some of the younger Elves wore it in fashionable defiance of their elders’ traditions. But their hair would grow out, and Lúthien’s would never grow again.

She bit her lip, willing herself not to cry. I will be strong. I will be strong.

Then Curufin gave the scissors to Celegorm, taking the razor in exchange, and began shearing her head down to stubble. He did not use lather, nor take especial care to avoid cutting her, and he opened several cuts along her scalp as he worked.

Lúthien’s teeth dug into her lip, but she could not stop the tears from falling freely.

When it was done, she was left with a light dusting of black stubble along her scalp. Curufin ran a hand along it with satisfaction, and Lúthien shuddered at his touch.

Then they went back to raping her, and this time Lúthien did not bite when Curufin put his cock in her mouth.

And afterward, once she was alone again, sobbing in the darkness of her straw-padded cell, she cursed the errant shoe that had led her into this sorry state. And she prayed that she would never have to wear such treacherous things again, or else that any shoe she might ever wear would fray and tear apart beneath her feet as she walked.

So Lúthien endured several agonizing days, waiting for her accursedly slow-moving guts (which were, like her bladder, more hardy and less hasty than those of Men) to finish digesting her ring, so that it would come out the other end.

Finally, she felt the urge upon her, and went in a corner of her cell, pulled up her soiled skirts and squatted down, and took a shit. She tore off a strip from the hem of her gown to wipe herself, and then plunged her fingers into the small pile of excrement on the ground, searching for her ring.

Silver gleamed between shit-stained fingers.

She put it on, not even bothering to clean her hands first.

A few nights later, Orodreth came down to visit her in her cell.

He saw her there, wearing the ring, skin pale as marble and eyes like suns, and he went nearly as pale himself as she was.

He turned and left without a word.

But soon he came back, bearing the key to the dungeon cells in his hand; and shamefacedly he turned it in the lock.

“I am sorry,” he said, holding the door open for her. “I have no words to express my sorrow for the crime that I have visited upon you. I have dishonored my house by what I have done – but Curufin and Celegorm will pay with their heads for this, you have my word.”

“No,” she replied sadly as she stepped out. “Were you to kill them, it would require giving an accounting of their crimes to your subjects. And if my father learned what has befallen me here, there would be war between Nargothrond and Doriath. I do not want such a war stirred up on my behalf, one that would further sunder the Elves, since it can only help the Enemy – and I will not cause the death of the father of one of the children I carry.”

The King of Nargothrond bowed his head. “They will be exiled, then.”

“That is good.” She smiled weakly, giving Orodreth a glimpse of the gaps in her teeth.

“Is there anything else I can do?” he asked.

“In nine months I will send you twin babes,” replied Lúthien. “One of them should be raised as your own, for indeed he is. The other is Curufin’s, and you may raise him here, or send him to his father – but I deem it wiser perhaps that he be brought up away from such an ill sire.”

“It will be done.” Orodreth bowed. “Is there aught else?”

“One other thing,” Lúthien said. “When next your hunters stumble upon poor Elven-maids and bring them home from the wilderness, you should treat them with better hospitality.”

Orodreth, shamed, could only bow his head in acquiescence.

“That is all, then,” she said. “Farewell.”

He stood there, rooted to the floor with eyes downcast, as she exited the dungeons, and green shoots grew up between the cracks of the stone flooring in her wake.

Later, he heard from the guards that the escaped prisoner had recovered the cloak that had been taken from her when she was captured; also, that a small knife had gone missing from a weapons rack in the armory, and that Huan the hound, constant companion of Celegorm and Curufin, was missing.

“Shall we search for the hound, my lord?”

“No,” said Orodreth. “I fancy he has found a better master.”

Chapter Text

Felagund lived.

He and Beren were the only two survivors of the party that had set out from Nargothrond: ill and weakened by torment and privation, but alive. Felagund had saved Beren from being devoured by a wolf, but to escape his bonds and fight the beast he had been forced to shatter the bones of his own leg that was held in irons; and afterward Sauron had put his maimed limb in a vise imbued with dark magic, such that even all of Lúthien’s arts could not set it aright again.

But more than this, Sauron had eavesdropped while his prisoners spoke to one another in the dungeon, and knew that he had an Elven-king for a captive; and, knowing that only an ellon whole in body could hold kingship, took Felagund shortly before Lúthien’s arrival, and gelded him, taking his stones but leaving him his cock.

Lúthien had not known this when she visited her own manner of gelding on Sauron, but she was glad enough of the symmetry.

No more could Felagund be king in Nargothrond; and though, being now lame, he was no longer fit to travel to Angband, where speed and stealth would be vital above all, still he would do what he could to help Beren and Lúthien in their quest.

From the ruins of the Wizard’s Isle Beren took the corpse of Draugluin the wolf, and made a skin out of it, and Lúthien enchanted it so that he might in that guise seem to be Draugluin himself still living.

And for herself she took the fell of a bat, which Sauron kept in his most secret chambers. From the secrets he had yielded to her ere she unhoused him, she knew that the name associated with this bat-fell was Thuringwethil, “she of hidden shadow”, a dreadful creature said by rumor to be the servant of the dread necromancer Thû. But the eyes and mind of Lúthien were keen, and she knew that Thuringwethil was but Thû in other guise; for indeed Sauron had not wholly renounced that feminine form that once he had worn as a Maia of Aule.

The winter that followed was a time of rest.

Soon after their escape from the Wizard’s Isle, Celegorm and Curufin, now banished from Nargothrond, attacked them in revenge, but Beren and Felagund saw them off, with the aid of Huan and the knife Lúthien had taken from Curufin’s armory in her escape.

In the forest of Hithlum near the edge of the Gasping Plain they built a house of freshly-hewn wood for Lúthien, to live in as her pregnancy came to term; and Felagund, who had learned of such matters during his life in Valinor, brought her to birth, and instructed Beren in such as he knew of midwifery.

Twin children she had, as she had known she would: one with white hair, the son of Orodreth, and one with dark, the son of Curufin her first rapist.

Lúthien looked upon the babes with tears in her eyes, and named them ere she gave them up: Ereinion, Child of Kings, for the one begotten by Orodreth, and Celebrimbor, Silver-fist, for the son of Curufin. “For,” she said, “he will forge many great works in his days, even surpassing his father, and a hand of silver will be of just renown among them, and yet by far not the chiefest.”

And she hugged the children to her breast and kissed them each once, and wept, and gave her firstborn sons into other hands.

Felagund had volunteered to take the babes to Nargothrond, where Orodreth his brother would raise them. So he departed; and the folk of Nargothrond spoke afterward of a shepherd who came in the night and stayed but a brief time, but who brought to the King a hitherto unknown son, and also one begotten by Curufin, but lately banished as the Elves reckoned time.

Then afterwards Felagund returned to the forest. He would stay behind with Huan, whom no art or charm of Lúthien could hide from the scrutiny of Morgoth’s thanes, and keep the house ready as a refuge, when Beren and Lúthien returned from Angband.

Or if.

Curufin had taken her maidenhead, and by Elven law that entitled him to claim to be her husband. But Lúthien cared not, for Beren was the spouse of her choosing.

Soon after they had seen off the attack of Celegorm and Curufin, she had tried to coax Beren to lie with her. “For a maiden I am no more, and a wife in law I cannot be, and there would be no dishonor in our union that I have not already suffered.”

“But I would be dishonored,” said Beren, “in breaking my promise to your father. For I swore to him that I would prise a Silmaril from the Iron Crown of Morgoth ere you and I were wedded, or die in the attempt.”

“Then we shall have a wedding in Doriath, if we come through safely,” she replied, “but between us and there lie many leagues and great darkness, and I would not have the touch of ravishers be the only ones I suffered, ere I die, or worse befall me.”

“Then this I swear also to you,” Beren answered, “that such a fate shall not be. But give me one night to have by myself first, and then I shall fulfill that oath.”

Willingly she granted his request, not seeing his design. For Beren stole away in the night while she and Felagund and Huan all slept, and set off alone towards Angband in the wolf-garb of Draugluin. But in the morning they found him gone, and the keen nose of Huan tracked his scent to the border of the Gasping Plain, with Lúthien and Felagund following in his wake. There the hound brought Beren to earth, but with playful bounds rather than the deadly game of claws and teeth he had loosed on Thû in the Wizard’s Isle.

“How foolish of you, my beloved, to think to spare me from torments and death by absconding in the night alone,” Lúthien reproached him. “No pain I suffer by your side can be greater than the gulf in my heart wrought by your absence. And so I will follow you to the ends of the Middle-earth; even to Hell, as it seems we must go.” And even as she spoke she cried tears of joy at their reunion.

“Indeed I have acted rashly, and I heartily repent of it,” said Beren, pulling off the wolf-skin, “for the tears I have so thoughtlessly caused you to shed wring at my own heart. I see now with gladness that I cannot keep you from following me anywhere, whether into the Gasping Dust or the dungeons of the Necromancer. Truly, the lock is not built, the cage not wrought, that can keep Lúthien Tinúviel from whom she seeks; and well it were so, for otherwise I would not be here.”

And he laughed at his own folly; and that night they lay together as man and wife, even as her body quickened with the children begotten in Nargothrond.

But now, the night before they set forth for the attempt on Angband, when she lay with Beren for the first time after being delivered of her sons, she felt his seed enter her womb, and once again conceived.

She hoped it would be a girl.

Beren donned his wolf-garb, and Lúthien put on her bat-fell, and the charms of illusion enveloped them both; and they set forth, across the plain of Anfauglith, towards the black citadel of Angband.

In such disguise did they fool Carcharoth the wolf and the two score Balrogs set to guard the gate, and pass the doors of Thangorodrim, and enter the throne room of the Enemy.

Enormous he was. Enormous, and naked, and covered with shaggy black fur, matted and unwashed with the detritus of a thousand revels. He sat upon his throne in the center of the subterranean hall, roofed and floored and pillared with iron: amidst the black shadows surrounding him his shape was blacker still.

His head was that of a goat, huge and awful, set upon a body like an Elf or a Man’s though larger, and black as night and covered in hair as it was. His gaze was piercing, orange-golden and terrible, fiery, with three round black pupils dotting each eye. Deep scars marked his countenance, which Lúthien knew had been made by Thorondor, Lord of Eagles, when he tore the heart from the ruined body of Fingolfin, and brought it safely to Turgon in Gondolin for memorial. And upon Morgoth’s brow, beneath colossal twin curling goat-horns, glimmered the Iron Crown, and the three fabled Silmarils, the white-gleaming jewels for which so much blood had been shed.

Their radiance, dim yet distinct, shone palely against the red glare of torches and the black arches of Morgoth’s hell.

As Lúthien’s gaze traveled down the Dark Lord’s body, she saw that his legs bent backwards like the hind legs of a goat, and terminated in hooves; or rather, one leg did, for the other had been hewn off at the knee, and its place was taken by a metal prosthesis of cunning design. Here was a wound made by Fingolfin, she guessed, in his final duel before the gates of Angband.

From the back of Morgoth’s seat upon his chair of stone, a long tail with a shaggy end snaked out, twitching lazily. And between his legs there was a colossal phallus, ruddy and half-hard and bigger than any, belonging to Elf or Man or Maia, that she had ever seen.

She could not dwell too long on contemplating its girth, for there was something, someone, she had to seek out in the crowd around the Dark Lord’s throne: one face she looked for anxiously, and did not see, and its absence heartened her.

Sauron was not here.

She had hoped that the Maia would be too embarrassed by his failure to show himself in Angband for a time; and the tidings of birds, bringing her news from the Eagles, came to her in the forests, and told her that Sauron, the fire-haired Necromancer who so often wore the eyes of a cat, had not been seen in Morgoth’s court since the fall of Tol Sirion.

She had asked about other shapes that were new to the court of the Enemy. But none, they answered, were there that seemed in any wise different from the usual groupings around Morgoth’s throne: Balrogs, and Orcs, and wolves, and Elven thralls who were forced to serve the Dark Lord. No new shape or creature likely to house Sauron was known to them, nor had any news of the Necromancer’s whereabouts been reported as aught but rumor among those who served Morgoth’s will.

So, there was a good chance that the ruse Lúthien intended might work.

But she had not known for certain, not until she looked for herself at the faces around Morgoth’s throne and saw that there were no cat eyes here, no yellow irises and slitted pupils.

Thus, in Sauron’s absence, she was free to dare what she dared now.

Beren in the skin of Draugluin crawled beneath the legs of Morgoth’s huge stone chair, as Lúthien had bade him do before they set out, like a wolf raised among Angband’s packs of hounds, and he lay there waiting for Lúthien to take the lead in the plan of deception they had devised. She forced herself not to look at her beloved, but instead to gaze upon the terrifying visage of the Dark Lord, confidently looking him full in the face.

His stare was weighty, like a mantle of mail thrown over her shoulders. Agonizing moments passed as he sat in silence, looking her up and down, scrutinizing her as if his eyes could peer beneath her disguise.

Could they? She did not know. She was staking all on that not being so. Morgoth’s face, impassive, gave away nothing. But Beren trusted her. She could not, would not, let him down. Even if things went all to hell, she would figure something out… somehow.

Finally, Morgoth spoke, and the torch-fires quivered as the breath erupted from between his fangs.

“Who art thou, that so boldly darest to stand before my throne unsummoned?”

“Thuringwethil I am, my lord,” she said, and she launched into the speech she had prepared for months, claiming to be the messenger of Sauron: a task all the more daunting because, though surely none there but Sauron and Morgoth and herself would know this, to make such a claim was in fact to impersonate Sauron himself.

Long and passionate were her words, spinning a tale of the agony of shame and embarrassment that had befallen her supposed master, ending with the destruction of his bodily raiment. Which was why, she said, fearful of the wrath of Morgoth and struggling to re-embody himself, he had waited for so many months to send tidings of the fall of Tol Sirion. And she begged (though in highflown terms) for mercy for herself and her master, who were, as she hinted in the subtext of her speech, one and the same.

When she had finished, Morgoth stayed silent, his burning golden eyes and triple pupils fixing her with their unearthly gaze.

For one long moment, Lúthien actually dared to hope that her ruse had succeeded.

Then Morgoth laughed, loud and terrible, discordant like the crash of some phantasmic musical instrument devised in Hell and never yet seen in daylight, and the noise of it smote her ears. A figure stood forth from the crowd, and Lúthien recognized it; it was female, an Elf or seeming so, and though clad in foul raiment it was elegant of form, with fair skin and long dark hair, a fine delicate nose, and eyes grey as evening.

Her own features. Or rather, the features she had pretended to wear beneath the ring her parents had given her, in her days as a maiden in Doriath. The grey eyes and pinkish skin that were false seemings. The long dark hair that Celegorm and Curufin had stolen from her. The nose that she had had before she fell in her headlong flight from them and a rock marred its beauty.

The doppelganger smiled with evil malice. And Lúthien knew at once that she had made a grave mistake.

For here was Sauron, wearing her own face in mockery, as he must have ever since he returned here from Tol Sirion months ago, in anticipation of this very moment.

Sauron had known from the start that she was lying. And so had Morgoth. They had kept the secret of Sauron’s return from the wider court of Angband. To any spies that had been lurking, his new Elven shape would have seemed to be just another thrall of the Dark Lord.

They had laid a trap for her.

And, for the first time since she crossed the threshold of the Enemy’s gates, Lúthien Tinúviel knew true fear.

Chapter Text

They all gazed at him. His hair was white as snow in the sunshine; and gleaming white was his robe; the eyes under his deep brows were bright, piercing as the rays of the sun; power was in his hand. Between wonder, joy, and fear they stood and found no words to say.

At last Aragorn stirred. “Gandalf!” he said. “Beyond all hope you return to us in our need! What veil was over my sight? Gandalf!” Gimli said nothing, but sank to his knees, shading his eyes.

“Gandalf,” the old man repeated, as if recalling from old memory a long disused word. “Yes, that was the name. I was Gandalf.”

He stepped down from the rock, and picking up his grey cloak wrapped it about him: it seemed as if the sun had been shining, but now was hid in cloud again. “Yes, you may still call me Gandalf if you wish,” he said, and the voice was that of their old friend and guide. “Get up, my good Gimli! No blame to you, and no harm done to me. Truly, my friends, none of you have any weapon that could hurt me. Be merry! We meet again. At the turn of the tide. The great storm is coming, but the tide has turned.”

He laid his hand on Gimli’s head, and the Dwarf looked up and laughed suddenly. “Gandalf!” he said. “But you are all in white!”

“I am.” He smiled at them, and the sight of it warmed the three hunters, like the warm rays of the sun spearing down through the treetops into the cool forest. “Gandalf the Grey I was, and Gandalf the White I am now. Though perhaps you might judge the old name to sound slightly ill in such new garb. It came from the tongues of Men of centuries ago, who not knowing me when first I arrived here took me for one of the Eldar; and perhaps like my garments it deserves to be refreshed, in sound at least if not in meaning. Wandelf the White I might be, or Gandalf still, whichever sounds best to you, my old friends.”

Aragorn in his turn laughed. “Wandelf is kind and gracious, but he is a stranger; and Gandalf is indeed an old and dear friend. Grey or White, you shall always be Gandalf to me, I deem.”

Gandalf nodded in approval. “Well put, Aragorn. I shall be Gandalf once more, then. I am white now, whatever my name. Indeed I am Saruman, one might almost say, Saruman as he should have been. But come now, tell me of yourselves! I have passed through fire and deep water, since we parted. I have forgotten much that I thought I knew, and learned again much that I had forgotten. I can see many things far off, but many things that are close at hand I cannot see. Tell me of yourselves!”