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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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imeanforever
"I can hurt myself, so if you had to cut my hand off and there was some way for me to close the gap..."
"You can attack my sword with your hand? Good to know. We're just going to avoid letting you fall into the hands of the Enemy, that's the easiest way to resolve that problem."
"I have told most of my people not to let you learn theirs. I am ...very much trying them, with this. They have done well with it."
imeanforever
"It's easier if people have nicknames. Especially words that mean things so I don't pay attention to the sounds, in case there's a match."
"They choose freely, do you understand that? If I give an order they obey it because they trust me to order them rightly, or they share my goals, or they value their honor. If I give them an order that is very very wrong - if I am keeping a slave, say, and order them to keep their names from her - I would be disappointed in the people in this castle if they did not consider whether following that order was right, given what they knew.
And they decided it was, because they have known me for a very long time and do know our Enemy. But I am certain that there are a number of people who at least considered forcing you to eat something and then releasing you, because when I was younger it's the sort of thing I'd have done without hesitation."
And they decided it was, because they have known me for a very long time and do know our Enemy. But I am certain that there are a number of people who at least considered forcing you to eat something and then releasing you, because when I was younger it's the sort of thing I'd have done without hesitation."
"And did you wonder why they hadn't intervened? It is because they want to see the Enemy dead more than they want to be able to live with themselves afterwards, and because they knew me once when I was a good person and still trust me on some level as if I still were."
"I have not forbidden you from speaking with them, or telling them how you work, so a plan based on concealing from them what you are and what I've done would be a rather half-baked one."
"And what I liked to tell them was the truth. I like having people who will stop me if they think I've crossed the line, even if they've been through hell and back at my side and think far too highly of me and might not notice in time."
"I don't know. Not everything that might stop the Enemy is on this side of it, but it makes a pretty big difference. You're welcome to try convincing people, if you like, that I should be stopped."
imeanforever
Sigh. "I don't have anywhere else to go or anyone else to feed me and you're loads better than Thorn."
imeanforever
"It is, but I don't have some other, middling master in my history to compare with, it was maybe twelve years of living by myself in my tree and then Thorn."