"Think you can find your way there yourself, or want an escort?"

"I can find my way." 

He heads down the hall. He finds the cavern with the throne, stands in front of Melkor. "I have considered it." 

AND?

"Do you have any Maiar who have oaths, who you could show me?" 

Leareth has basically made up his mind. Still, information is worth having even if he's unlikely to use it. And he doubts Melkor will kill him right away even if he refuses. Just in case he changes his mind under torture. There might still be an opportunity to use that knowledge. 

CERTAINLY. 

Thuringwethil strolls in a minute later, rolling her eyes. "Hey, sweetheart. You wanna watch me take an oath?"

"Yes." He wishes she would stop calling him 'sweetheart' but it's not like that's important, really. And normally he would check if it was a trivial, safe oath, but in this case he isn't sure he cares. 

He opens all of his mage-senses. 

"I swear that to the best of my knowledge, oaths work for Valar and Maiar the same way they work for Elves. Also, you might've only ever seen the sticky kind, the kind the soldiers have - I swear that for the next hour, I won't raise my right hand above my shoulder."

Both of them do something in her cloud of magic, like a magnetic rod that re-angles a whole field of scraps of iron dust. The first one does it temporarily, passing through; the second one remains.

"Fascinating." 

Leareth turns back to Melkor. "I do not wish to help you. Even at the cost of my life. Though I am not going to kill myself for you - you will have to do that yourself, if you wish it. Or I suppose you could wait and see if I change my mind. I doubt it, but, many things are possible." 

A SHAME. I WISH IT HAD GONE DIFFERENTLY. IS THERE ANYTHING CONCRETE YOU ARE IMAGINING WOULD CHANGE YOUR MIND?

"Not really." 'I do not think it is currently in my interest to tell you that' is the real answer, but, it's not in his interest to give Melkor that either.

THEN I WILL NOT WASTE MY TIME. 

He moves his hand. Leareth crumples to the floor. 

"I think it's your entire personality."

TAKE HIM AWAY FROM HERE.

"Sixteenth time is a perfect square, that means it's my script."

FINE. WHAT HAVE YOU GOT?

He spends most of the ride to Doriath arguing with Artanis in his head. She feels that Elwë and his wife quite reasonably don't want Doriath's protections tested by putting all the most mission-critical people in the world there. He thinks that Elwë and his wife are walking off a cliff and if they are being very reasonable about it that does not make the fall ahead any less deadly. 

They manage to get permission to go through Doriath and on to Tumunzahar. They'll take us in there, he tells Yfandes. They will just want a lot of money for the favor.

:Do you have money? We've got some in our saddlebags but I don't know that they'll accept it here: 

Not really? I can credibly promise a lot of money that is not on me. I have some magic things Leareth made me. Can we promise on Vanyel's behalf he'll do some magic items for them.

:We have some magic artifacts too, we were headed back from a trip... And if you use gold or silver here we have that, it's just in different coinage. Umm. On the making magic items part - yes, of course, but...maybe not right away: 

- how long is he going to be unconscious?

:He should be awake soon. It's, um, it's not that. ...Damn it, Leareth wouldn't have had a way of knowing, would he - we got accosted by some stranger just off the Plains and didn't have a chance to say anything–:

I don't think Leareth knew anything about your current activities. He had people out looking for Vanyel.

:That's a relief, we tried really hard not to give him a way to know. Except now it's... Um. We went south to research Leareth's background, after he dropped some revelations. And. Er. Van got hurt pretty badly. His travel-companion set off this ancient magical superweapon by accident, long story. Anyway. He's physically recovered, pretty much, but his Gifts...less so. I don't know if you people have Healing? We were hoping to get a Mindhealer to look at it back home, figure out how bad it is, but we still don't know much: 

We don't have any of your kind of magic but we have some of our own, including some for healing. The Valar can do more, if you trust them, though that's kind of complicated. If Leareth has healing abilities he never mentioned them though I think there are several things he never mentioned.