"Years and no. Though he can probably see through your invisibility because the more powerful Ainur can see souls."

"Are we sure I have a soul in the conventional local sense."

"...Is seeing souls seeing, qua seeing, or something else? I can't make illusions of heat or ultraviolet but my invisibility is proof against those senses because the illusion is of nothing-being-present, not of countering all the wavelengths I am giving off."

The house of Fëanor has a heated debate over this which lasts five minutes, very obviously could have lasted five years, and ends only when Fëanor sets his hand on the table and says "...we don't know and don't have the means to find out."

"I suppose I could go ask Melian but I'm reluctant to enter Doriath again unless I'm willing for it to be the last time I visit, especially if I go in asking questions that will make it fairly obvious I'm contemplating going and attacking Thauron."

"If he can see through invisibility, what can you do in a fight with him?"

"Hit him with ice, apparently, I'll want to test that outdoors in case control has to be learned. Hit him with Lævateinn, that being my primary weapon. Self-heal whenever he hits me. Depending on how fast he is, tactical shapeshifting - I'm not as durable in bird form and wouldn't want to linger in it except if booking a retreat outright but I can go from any position to any overlapping position whenever I switch. Silence his music, or overpower it with a stupidly loud song of my own, both at concentration penalties."

"Volume isn't how to win a song duel," Macalaurë says, "though the fact that you're using illusions he can probably contest complicates things."

"How do you win a song duel?"

"Well, at the point where you're having one, you've both called up a tremendous amount of power and you're more - siphoning from it for intended effects, or trying to wrench it in your direction, than doing something as specific as the little songs I gave you. It's generally done by weaving pieces of music that have controllable effects you know into a larger, improvised, composition that inherently, because composing is hard, can't do more than push on the general flow of power, so you can get specific effects and gradually get more access to the source. Generally a Maia would always win at that, because extra attention, but if one was sufficiently prepared and equipped for it maybe you could get somewhere."

"I definitely can't improvise musically or learn how to do it effectively in ten days."

"Can you amplify me if I'm doing it? The reason I wouldn't get into a song duel with Thauron is because he could stab me with one fragment of the attention he's not using on a song; if I were far away with people covering me I could probably play him even."

"Yes, I can amplify sounds I can hear. Requires active attention in a way that silencing normally doesn't, but I don't know how that washes out if someone's opposing me."

"He might be able to oppose my amplification too," she points out.

"Yeah. Does he know that you have access to copied, sped-up songs? If not, it might be best just to use them for the personal advantages and not try using your sound illusions at all, lest he contest and cancel all of them."

"Had the idea after I killed the Balrog, so unless he has a second mole there, one here, one in Tumunzahar, one in Doriath, or was paying any attention to the conversations I had with the Men, no, he has no idea, but that's rather a lot of ifs."

"It'd be very very convenient not to have this fight on his chosen ground," Fëanor says.

"Well, I don't think you like what is known to be potential bait."

"It's more a problem of timing. He's going to know within a day or two that you and Maitimo aren't headed in the appropriate direction, and he could be lying about how he knows that. I like the idea of trying to lure him out to the desert for a fight, and am more comfortable making Maitimo endure a few days of contact with us for the greater good than with handing him over for decades of torture for that same good, but I don't see how we can be there in time."

"I can teach more people to fly."

"All right," Fëanor says. "I propose that you, Macalaurë, Tyelcormo, and any number of people you think would be useful to have around to die protecting you and Huan, learn to fly this afternoon, develop a strategy on the way to Tumunzahar, and if you still think this can be done once you've arrived there and spoken with Maitimo, head out with him by tomorrow night. Any later will probably be too late. Keep everyone else invisible the whole time. If he has an agent in this camp, we can have a conversation to the effect that you came by wanting to ask whether Maiar oaths were really binding, complaining of an inability to get straight answers out of Melian."

"Tyelcormo and anyone capable of throwing birds can do the actual teaching while I spar with Huan, I just need to transform people in the first place. In this tactical situation I don't know how much cover to solicit, especially on the implied expectation of a suicide mission; I will be distracted by dying allies and don't know what compensatory benefit is on offer."

"The main benefit would be keeping people off Macalaurë," he says, "in case you end up needing him to sing and can't put him on a faraway mountaintop."