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Confirmation reaches them in the spring that Elwing of Sirion has the Silmaril.
It takes as long as the spring only because they weren't looking. They can stretch the oath that far, they can be disinterested in knowing - but now they know, and so there it is. Elwing of Sirion is twenty-three. Half-man, so fully grown. Sirion is a city of refugees. Elves and Men and, since there are Men, children. Elwing herself has infant children.
They debate whether to send messengers. Debating is allowed, even protracted debating. The Oath, these days, is loud in their minds, and louder when they're pushing it like this, but they drag out the debate for a few months. Messengers will probably be shot on sight. The last time Elwing of Sirion received news of the House of Fëanor it would have been the news that her brothers, twins, aged seven, had not survived the sack of Menegroth.
They send messengers anyway. The messengers are shot on sight. They have good armor, Fëanorian armor, and return home injured but not lethally. Maglor's songs no longer stitch them together. War makes you worse at healing. Maglor's songs are more powerful than ever - he can knock back a wave of approaching enemies, he can make a blade's next touch deadly, he can make them faster and more impervious to danger, but he can no longer do healing.
Maedhros, when he thinks about this, thinks that perhaps there needs to be part of you that is not broken for healing spells to draw on. Or perhaps the Enemy is amused to strip that away first. Perhaps the Enemy finds it suited to the theme as the Oath tugs and yanks and twists them into violence against the lands they once defended and the peoples they once sheltered.
They send messengers to Sirion again. The messengers deliver a plea for the Silmaril, an offer of anything at all in exchange. The messengers do not return at all.
The Enemy is many many hundreds of miles from here but at night Maedhros can hear him in his head. Is it so implausible that I really let you go? the Enemy likes saying. You serve me better free than you ever would have willingly.
The Oath allows them to work slowly. They begin planning the sack of the refugee camp even more slowly than the Oath allows, so slowly that its currents are constantly tugging at them. Any slower and the currents would erode all the things they care about which are not the Oath, and it would be a disaster to go to Sirion once they've been stripped of their capacity to care about anything that is not the Silmaril. So they do not hold out forever. But they work as slowly as they can.
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"Like romantic entanglements being between men and women only - he seems to actually care a lot more about good stories..."
imeanforever
"Maybe he thinks it's a good story if people have obstacles to their romantic entanglements, I bet that's it."
"...oh. I bet that is.
How pathetically small."
How pathetically small."
I guess we really can't throw him in a black hole, can we.
imeanforever
I'm not sure if it would work, since he can apparently just make them. Also it is possible his existence sustains this universe.
Could've ordered him to swear to be less of - well. But I don't think it would have been wise to take a chance on something like that.
I'm not sure. I'd expect them to. If you're not reckless, you know, they're an advantage - you can be truthworthy when it's needed, you can swear never to swear another oath if you decide you'd rather not have them at all.
imeanforever
And then a fairy comes along. And we don't even know if fairy orders can command oaths in a way that works.
That's true. But if I'd sworn never to swear another oath you definitely couldn't make me swear one even under fairy orders. You can delay doing something you're sworn to do if it's a discrete sort of thing with no specified timeframe but you can't do something you swore not to. Physical can't.
imeanforever
Huh. I'm really curious about the interaction but there's no way to test it at all now and probably wouldn't have been any ethical way to test it before.
Oaths with limited duration. I thought of some tests but decided not to chance them, and now everyone who has Oaths can't do orders.
What are your goals for the next two hundred years? We all have a lot to cope with and have been in some cases dead for a very long time, and there's all this new physics to learn. I think we'll be happy making the city beautiful and apologizing to people who stop by to ask for that and designing the planet we'll settle once we can gate out.
imeanforever
I want to learn more magic music and stop finding nonfairies so confusing and make sure I write down what I've learned about sorcery in the last fifty years because the notes in my tree won't go that far and I don't want to forget while I can't practice and I want to learn science.
Great. All of those things are very workable.
The city grows tall and spectacular; there are classes taught on algorithms and electricity that reluctantly attract even people with very serious grievances with the house of Fëanor. Fëanor flits around trying to invent a harmonics stabilizer and teach all the algorithms classes. Macalaurë teaches her all the magic symphonies he knows and composes some new ones and works with Curufinwë on a high-fidelity sound recorder. Anyone she asks will teach her science.
It's only a century later that Fëanor has gating to Fairyland sorted. Everyone is not quite ready.
It's only a century later that Fëanor has gating to Fairyland sorted. Everyone is not quite ready.
No. That would be ridiculous. They need to go and fix Fairyland, don't they?
Bye bye! says Eru happily. Oh, this story's going to be lovely.
imeanforever
...
I'll see what I can do, she agrees, and she goes at last to her tree.
I'll see what I can do, she agrees, and she goes at last to her tree.
Here Ends This Thread