Maedhros teaches Elrond and Elros the language of the orcs. Rated G.
It was a cold night at Amon Ereb. The window panes were traced with ferns of frost, snow blanketed the ground, and all around the keep my people had retreated to the warmth of their beds. Even Galwen had crept from the stables and into the kitchen, though she had no love for stone walls. Apart from the men and women on watch, who I would join at two hours past midnight, only my brother and I remained awake.
We were together in my study, both seated by the fire. Maglor was clad in his warmest clothes with his back to the flames, poring over the essays he had set for Elrond and Elros the previous week. The twins were tucked safely in bed under as many blankets as we could find for them. Being mortal, they chilled easily, and Maglor spent each winter fretting that they would fall ill. He had reason; as much as we tried to avoid the Men who dwelt in the area around our fortress, there were times when we needed to trade with them, and they sometimes carried sickness -- coughs and fevers, sore throats and congested sinuses. We Eldar were unaffected, but the boys were not.
I was at my desk, further from the fire and not so heavily garbed. After the bone-gnawing cold on high Thangorodrim and several yení of Himring’s long, icy winters, I found the weather in the south to be relatively mild, even on nights like this.
The only sounds in the room were the crackling of the fire and the occasional rustle of paper, until Maglor set his essays down on the small table before him. He sat back, beaming, and there was no small amount of pride in his expression.
“Ah, Nelyo,” he said, “my sons are remarkable boys.”
“Indeed,” I said. I had long ago stopped pointing out to him that Elrond and Elros were our hostages, not his children; he loved them as a father should, and the reminders only seemed to cause him pain. “I take it their composition lessons are going well?”
“Elrond is still struggling with the vocative case,” he admitted, “and Elros needs to take more care with his punctuation. But their ideas, Nelyo! Even Atto would not be able to find a flaw in Elrond’s reasoning, and Elros’ arguments are persuasive enough to coax blood from a stone. Such intelligent boys!”
I nodded, for he was right. The twins were blessed with keen minds. “They’re making great gains in botany and swordsmanship,” I said. While Maglor had taken responsibility for the bulk of their education, those two subjects were my domain, and I could not deny that Elrond and Elros were performing splendidly.
There was a third subject I wished to teach them, though I had been holding off on approaching my brother with the idea. I knew that he would think the boys were too young to be burdened with it. But my own opinion was that the earlier these lessons started, the better, and now that the boys were learning to defend themselves, we had no excuse not to give them every advantage we could.
I set down my pen and spoke my thoughts plainly. “I think it’s high time they learned to understand Orkish,” I said.
Maglor blanched, much as I’d expected. “You can’t be serious,” he snapped. “That’s an absurd idea. They’re much too young.”
“I’m deathly serious,” I said, looking him in the eye. “They’re not so young as that, Makalaurë -- not anymore. And you can’t keep them sheltered from Moringotto’s evil forever. That’s the entire reason I began teaching them swordsmanship, is it not? Sooner or later, they’re going to encounter orcs, and understanding Orkish will be an advantage. You can’t deny that it’s been of good use for us.”
Maglor’s lips grew thin, and he didn’t answer. He was stubborn, my brother, just like all of our family, and while he knew I was right, he clearly didn’t want to admit it. My fluency in the orcs’ harsh tongue had saved us and our people from peril on more than one occasion. But Maglor could never forget from whence that fluency came. I’d made no academic study of that ugly language. All my knowledge came from my time in Angband, where learning the speech of my captors had been vital to my survival.
Maglor had chosen to leave me there rather than give in to Morgoth’s demands or make what would certainly have been a fruitless attempt at a rescue. Abandoning me had been the wisest course of action, and I had forgiven him and my five dead brothers for it long ago. But no matter how many times I told him so, Maglor insisted on holding himself responsible for what I had suffered.
And make no mistake: I had suffered. I still suffered, though at least I was no longer bound in that iron hell. But Morgoth haunted my dreams, and I knew that I would never truly be free of his shadow.
“You know I’m right,” I insisted, resting my elbows on my desk and leaning forward. “It will serve the boys well, and I may be the only man in all of Beleriand who can teach them this.”
“Hearing those vile sounds come from your lips makes my skin crawl,” Maglor said, his voice flat. “I hate it.”
“They can’t learn the language if they never hear it spoken.”
“It’s not a language,” he spat. “It’s an abomination, a mockery, just like the orcs themselves!”
“It is a language, whether you wish to admit it or not. And the orcs may be an abomination, but they are still real. They will kill your sons if given the chance,” I argued. “Teaching the boys Orkish will give them another tool that they can use to defend themselves. Do we not owe them that?”
“It will frighten them,” he said. “It frightens me! I hear you use those words, and all I can think of is what could have happened if Findekáno had not saved you. Moringotto could have destroyed you, and I could have found myself facing whatever he left behind on the battlefield one day -- an orc with my brother’s face! All because I was too much of a coward to rescue you myself.”
His face had gone white and pinched, and he was shaking in his seat, his chest heaving. I climbed to my feet and crossed the room to kneel beside his chair. “Little brother,” I said softly, taking his trembling hand in mine, “how many times must I tell you that you made the right decision? How many times must I tell you to forgive yourself?”
“I will never forgive myself,” Maglor said, his voice choked. “Never, Nelyo.”
Reaching up, I pulled him into an embrace, holding him until his breathing had steadied and his body had ceased its shaking. “I am no orc,” I said firmly. “Moringotto did not destroy me. And you had a responsibility to our brothers, and our nephew, and all the rest of our people. You needed to do what was best for them.”
“I know,” he admitted after a moment, his voice muffled against my shoulder. “But I hate what happened to you. I hate that I did nothing to stop it.”
Maglor did not know even half of what Morgoth and his servants had done to me. I had told the full truth, or near to it, only to my brother Caranthir, whom we had lost in Doriath decades ago, and to valiant Fingon, my beloved. But Maglor knew enough. I would not burden him with more.
“I will tell the boys no tales of horror,” I said. “You know that I would not. But I will teach them the language, for the sake of their safety.”
“All right,” he murmured, giving in, as I had known he would. Stubborn he may have been, but of the two of us, I had the stronger will. When we truly disagreed, I nearly always prevailed. “But do it where I cannot hear,” he said. “And I will tell my sons that they should seek to understand the words, but not to speak them unless at the utmost need.”
I nodded. “Agreed,” I said, letting him go and pushing myself to my feet. I returned to my desk, but I could feel my brother’s sad eyes on me until I left to take my place with the night watch.
