Morgoth's Ring (57 page)

'Nay, nay!' said Andreth. 'You do not understand my words.

For you are ever in one mind, my lord: the Elves are the Elves, and Men are Men, and though they have a common Enemy, by whom both are injured, still the ordained interval remains between the lords and the humble, the firstcomers high and enduring, the followers lowly and of brief service.

'That is not the voice that the Wise hear out of the darkness and from beyond it. Nay, lord, the Wise among Men say: "We were not made for death, nor born ever to die. Death was imposed upon us." And behold! the fear of it is with us always, and we flee from it for ever as the hart from the hunter. But for myself I deem that we cannot escape within this world, nay, not even if we could come to the Light beyond the Sea, or that Aman of which ye tell. In that hope we set out and have journeyed through many lives of Men; but the hope was vain.

So said the Wise, but that did not stay the march, for as I have said, they are little heeded. And lo! we have fled from the Shadow to the last shores of Middle-earth, to find only that it is here before us!'

Then Finrod was silent; but after a while he said: 'These words are strange and terrible. And you speak with the bitterness of one whose pride has been humiliated, and seeks therefore to wound those to whom she speaks. If all the Wise among Men speak so, then well I can believe that ye have suffered some great hurt. But not by my people, Andreth, nor by any of the Quendi. If we are as we are, and ye are as we find you, that is not by any deed of ours, nor of our desire; and your sorrow does not rejoice us nor feed our pride. One only would say otherwise: that Enemy whom you do not name.

'Beware of the chaff with your corn, Andreth! For it may be deadly: lies of the Enemy that out of envy will breed hate. Not all the voices that come out of the darkness speak truth to those minds that listen for strange news.

'But who did you this hurt? Who imposed death upon you?

Melkor, it is plain that you would say, or whatever name you have for him in secret. For you speak of death and his shadow, as if these were one and the same; and as if to escape from the Shadow was to escape also from Death.

'But these two are not the same, Andreth. So I deem, or death would not be found at all in this world which he did not design but Another. Nay, death is but the name that we give to something that he has tainted, and it sounds therefore evil; but untainted its name would be good.'(4)

'What do ye know of death? Ye do not fear it, because ye (5) do not know it,' said Andreth.

'We have seen it, and we fear it,' answered Finrod. 'We too may die, Andreth; and we have died. My father's father was cruelly slain, and many have followed him, exiles in the night, in the cruel ice, in the insatiable sea. And in Middle-earth we have died, by fire and by smoke, by venom and the cruel blades of battle. Feanor is dead, and Fingolphin was trodden under the feet of the Morgoth.(6)

'For what end? To overthrow the Shadow, or if that may not be, to keep it from spreading once more over all Middle-earth -

to defend the Children of Eru, Andreth, all the Children and not the proud Eldar only!'

'I had heard,' said Andreth, 'that it was to regain your treasure that your Enemy had stolen; but maybe the House of Finarphin is not at one with the Sons of Feanor. Nonetheless for all your valour, I say again: "what know ye of death?" To you it may be in pain, it may be bitter and a loss - but only for a time, a little taken from abundance, unless I have been told untruth.

For ye know that in dying you do not leave the world, and that you may return to life.

'Otherwise it is with us: dying we die, and we go out to no return. Death is an uttermost end, a loss irremediable. And it is abominable; for it is also a wrong that is done to us.'

'That difference I perceive,' said Finrod. 'You would say there are two deaths: the one is a harm and a loss but not an end, the other is an end without redress; and the Quendi suffer only the first?'

'Yes, but there is another difference also,' said Andreth. 'One is but a wound in the chances of the world, which the brave, or the strong, or the fortunate, may hope to avoid. The other is death ineluctable; death the hunter who cannot in the end be escaped. Be a Man strong, or swift, or bold; be he wise or a fool; be he evil, or be he in all the deeds of his days just and merciful, let him love the world or loathe it, he must die and must leave it

- and become carrion that men are fain to hide or to burn.'

'And being thus pursued, have Men no hope?' said Finrod.

'They have no certainty and no knowledge, only fears, or dreams in the dark,' answered Andreth. 'But hope? Hope, that is another matter, of which even the Wise seldom speak.' Then her voice grew more gentle. 'Yet, Lord Finrod of the House of Finarphin, of the high and puissant Elves, perhaps we may speak of it anon, you and I.'

'Anon we may,' said Finrod, 'but as yet we walk in the shadows of fear. Thus far, then, I perceive that the great difference between Elves and Men is in the speed of the end. In this only. For if you deem that for the Quendi there is no death ineluctable, you err.

'Now none of us know, though the Valar may know, the future of Arda, or how long it is ordained to endure. But it will not endure for ever. It was made by Eru, but He is not in it. The One only has no limits. Arda, and Ea itself, must therefore be bounded. You see us, the Quendi, still in the first ages of our being, and the end is far off. As maybe among you death may seem to a young man in his strength; save that we have long years of life and thought already behind us. But the end will come. That we all know. And then we must.die; we must perish utterly, it seems, for we belong to Arda (in hroa and fea).(7) And beyond that what? "The going out to no return," as you say;

"the uttermost end, the irremediable loss"?

'Our hunter is slow-footed, but he never loses the trail.

Beyond the day when he shall blow the mort,(8) we have no certainty, no knowledge. And no one speaks to us of hope.'

'I did not know this,' said Andreth; 'and yet...'

'And yet at least ours is slow-footed, you would say?' said Finrod. 'True. But it is not clear that a foreseen doom long delayed is in all ways a lighter burden than one that comes soon.

But if I have understood your words thus far, you do not believe that this difference was designed so in the beginning. You were not at first doomed to swift death.

'Much could be said concerning this belief (be it a true guess or no). But first I would ask: how do ye say that this has come about? By the malice of Melkor I guessed, and you have not denied it. But I see now that you do not speak of the diminishment that all in Arda Marred suffer; but of some special stroke of enmity against your people, against Men as Men. Is that so?'

'It is indeed,' said Andreth.

'Then this is a matter of dread,' said Finrod. 'We know Melkor, the Morgoth, and know him to be mighty. Yea, I have seen him, and I have heard his voice; and I have stood blind in the night that is at the heart of his shadow, whereof you, Andreth, know nought save by hearsay and the memory of your people. But never even in the night have we believed that he could prevail against the Children of Eru. This one he might cozen, or that one he might corrupt; but to change the doom of a whole people of the Children, to rob them of their inheritance: if he could do that in Eru's despite, then greater and more terrible is he by far than we guessed; then all the valour of the Noldor is but presumption and folly - nay, Valinor and the Mountains of the Pelori are builded on sand.'

'Behold!' said Andreth. 'Did I not say that ye do not know death? Lo! when you are made to face it in thought only, as we know it in deed and in thought all our lives, at once you fall into a despair. We know, if ye do not,(9) that the Nameless is Lord of this World, and your valour, and ours too, is a folly; or at least it is fruitless.'

'Beware!' said Finrod. 'Beware lest you speak the unspeakable, wittingly or in ignorance, confounding Eru with the Enemy who would fain have you do so. The Lord of this World is not he, but the One who made him, and his Vicegerent is Manwe, the Elder King of Arda who is blessed.

'Nay, Andreth, the mind darkened and distraught; to bow and yet to loathe; to flee and yet not to reject; to love the body and yet scorn it, the carrion-disgust: these things may come from the Morgoth, indeed. But to doom the deathless to death, from father unto son, and yet to leave to them the memory of an inheritance taken away, and the desire for what is lost: could the Morgoth do this? No, I say. And for that reason I said that if your tale is true, then all in Arda is vain, from the pinnacle of Oiolosse to the uttermost abyss. For I do not believe your tale.

None could have done this save the One.

'Therefore I say to you, Andreth, what did ye do, ye Men, long ago in the dark? How did ye anger Eru? For otherwise all your tales are but dark dreams devised in a Dark Mind. Will you say what you know or have heard?'

'I will not,' said Andreth. 'We do nor speak of this to those of other race. But indeed the Wise are uncertain and speak with contrary voices; for whatever happened long ago, we have fled from it; we have tried to forget, and so long have we tried that now we cannot remember any time when we were not as we are

- save only legends of days when death came less swiftly and our span was still far longer, but already there was death.'

'Ye cannot remember?' said Finrod. 'Are there no tales of your days before death, though ye will not tell them to strangers? '

'Maybe,' said Andreth. 'If not among my folk, then among the folk of Adanel, perhaps.' She fell silent, and gazed at the fire.

'Do you think that none know save yourselves?' said Finrod at last. 'Do not the Valar know?'

Andreth looked up and her eyes darkened. 'The Valar?' she said. 'How should I know, or any Man? Your Valar do not trouble us either with care or with instruction. They sent no summons to us.'

'What do you know of them?' said Finrod. 'I have seen them and dwelt among them, and in the presence of Manwe and Varda I have stood in the Light. Speak not of them so, nor of anything that is high above you. Such words came first out of the Lying Mouth.

'Has it never entered into your thought, Andreth, that out there in ages long past ye may have put yourselves out of their care, and beyond the reach of their help? Or even that ye, the Children of Men, were not a matter that they could govern? For ye were too great. Yea, I mean this, and do not only flatter your pride: too great. Sole masters of yourselves within Arda, under the hand of the One. Beware then how you speak! If ye will not speak to others of your wound or how ye came by it, take heed lest (as unskilled leeches) ye misjudge the hurt, or in pride misplace the blame.

'But let us turn now to other matters, since you will not say more of this. I would consider your first state before the wound.

For what you say of that is also to me a wonder, and hard to understand. You say: "we were not made for death, nor born ever to die." What do you mean: that ye were as we are, or otherwise? '

'This lore takes no account of you,' said Andreth, 'for we knew nothing of the Eldar. We considered only dying and not-dying. Of life as long as the world but no longer we had not heard; indeed not until now has it entered my mind.'

'To speak truly,' said Finrod, 'I had thought that this belief of yours, that ye too were not made for death, was but a dream of your pride, bred in envy of the Quendi, to equal or surpass them. Not so, you will say. Yet long ere ye came to this land, ye met other folk of the Quendi, and by some were befriended.

Were ye not then already mortal? And did ye never speak with them concerning life and death? Though without any words they would soon discover your mortality, and ere long you would perceive that they did not die.'

'"Not so" I say indeed,' answered Andreth. 'We may have been mortal when first we met the Elves far away, or maybe we were not: our lore does not say, or at least none that I have learned. But already we had our lore, and needed none from the Elves: we knew that in our beginning we had been born never to die. And by that, my lord, we meant: born to life everlasting, without any shadow o f any end.'

'Then have the Wise among you considered how strange is the true nature that they claim for the Atani?' said Finrod.

'Is it so strange?' said Andreth. 'Many of the Wise hold that in their true nature no living things would die.'

'In that the Eldar would say that they err,' said Finrod. 'To us your claim for Men is strange, and indeed hard to accept, for two reasons. You claim, if you fully understand your own words, to have had imperishable bodies, not bounded by the limits of Arda, and yet derived from its matter and sustained by it. And you claim also (though this you may not have perceived) to have had hroar and fear that were from the beginning out of harmony. Yet harmony of hroa and fea is, we believe, essential to the true nature unmarred of all the Incarnate: the Mirroanwi (10) as we call the Children of Eru.'