[Anguirel]

At the edge of the lake, lying, calm now, in the muted obsidian of its waters, the dark ashen raft struck the grey shingle, and Malris and Tasa climbed onto land once more.

"It looks smaller, now that we have crossed it," Malris observed. He was not mistaken. As if the creature that had dwelt within it had been a manifestation of the lake itself, it seemed to have crawled back in on itself, like that vile monstrosity's wounded limbs. When the Elves regarded its surface, they saw not the obscurity of resisting filth, but the serene blackness of deep mystery.

"The lake is cleansed," Tasa seconded. "Now...I still recall that voice...Malris, you will struggle to believe me...but I think I know in what direction we should continue."

"You...you thought the voice was from within...Cirlach, Tasa?" Malris' voice had something of regret in it still. The sword's valiant destruction had saved their physical bodies from destruction and their souls from searing torture. Nevertheless, the blade had been a very old friend; and all that had been left of another very old friend.

"Yes, Malris, but not Cirlach alone. There was a voice...on this side of the lake, adding to the sword's excitement. I...it was difficult to tell them apart, but I think the other voice might have sounded first...might have...stirred your sword, somehow. I...an image of...chains. There are chains up ahead, Malris. Linked in...some manner...to your lost sword. And intending us no goodwill."

"I too felt strange things on that lake, struggling with that Thing...though where you heard, I...saw," Malris admitted. "Curufin. Memories of him. He told me what to do, told me to cast away the sword. And I now suspect his shade in Mandos tries to repair his troublesome handiwork. Cirlach was Curufin's creation. Perhaps these...chains...are, also."

"To avoid them, and get back to the land, we need to travel to the right," Tasa half-whispered. "But..."

"Indeed. But. But chains are made to be broken. We must face our apprehension," Malris, set in determination, concluded, "and walk down the left-hand passage."

And so they did, turning corners as Tasa guided Malris in the direction whence she had heard the grinding of the chains. Soon, though they did not know it, they walked on the same passages Endamir, Lindir, Lomwe, and fallen Oremir had trod. They heard, with the same surprise, the tapping of the craftsman's hammer...

***

"Valar, Valar, did you ever speak to me?" the Smith pleaded hoarsely. "Nay, ye did not. I was mistaken. Mercy is beyond you when it comes to exiles. You are as petty as Feanor thought you, on your lovely Western thrones! What did you ever care for us? Who then spoke to me? When will the lord return?"

A knock at the locked door into the armoury, echoing about the forge, interrupted him. The spirit left his doomed vigil over Oremir, travelling in a whipcrack of shrieking air to the threshold.

"He comes! He comes! Maedhros comes! All ills are ended! Make ready the armour!"

Lindir had not in truth continued the welding of the plate, but he hastily arranged it so that it would deceive the Smith momentarily. The prepared plate-armour was of truesilver, shining like Tilion's craft, seeming to exude a strange light. The design of Feanor's star was engraved upon the breastplate. At the Master-Smith's gesture Lindir half rose it up, a glorious but terrible assemblage of arms, apparently ready for dire war. As for the Smith, now bodily present again, he turned a key in the lock and opened the door.

The fetters pulsed excitement, and a great quantity of them fraved the doorway, sheets of beatifying light spreading out from their treacherously beauteous forms. And two Elves, one male, one female, entered the room. They were dressed in argent, intangible cloaks of-if such a thing can exist-light shadow. In that hour it seemed to all of the company, gripped by majestic madness, that they were of impossibly great height; that their long hair shone with power, the man's crimson with the royalty of dying flame, the woman's with the mixed enchantment of liquid gold and silver.

"Maedhros," the Smith said in wonderment, stepping back, "in the company of the Lady Artanis, called by the Sindar Galadriel!"

"Nay," replied a more prosaic, and deeply familiar, voice, "Maedhros is dead, Smith. I am Malris of Forlindon."

"And I Tasareni of Lothlorien," the woman added. Now the pair stepped beyond the doorway, and all of that last, repentant, faerie-glamour of Curufin, which he had bestowed through the fetters in whose creation he had been invoked, fell away. The Elves were scarcely even things of beauty; their hair tangled, their clothes grey with dust and blotched with filth.

At this moment too, Endamir recovered himself, and looked about in bemusement, a dread filling his heart as he missed his brother.

"Where is Maedhros?" the Smith queried, with uncertain rage and obvious anxiety.

"Maedhros is held in Mandos, old Elf," Malris answered, "as the song tells. I sought him long and found his corporeal bones at the bottom of a cooled fissure."

"You lie," the Master-Smith shouted, "you deceive, you lie! Chains, against him!" But all the fetters lay now, sedate, upon the ground.

"My hopes are broken," the ancient craftsman moaned, "and all that I encompassed has curdled to...blackest evil..."