Personal intervention of Yavanna. She's going to be angry at us but probably not angrier than she already is. The Doom was a disaster but at least it also meant the Valar washed their hands of us. 

Divine intervention with questionable priorities. Fantastic.

Well, hopefully I can get the forges working better with less deforestation.

Trust me, we'd be delighted; we hate doing things that are destructive and unsustainable, and this is also an absurd amount of work. 

I'm hoping to do something analogous to increase food production. Do you grow crops at all, or are you still living on mostly orcs?

We can grow things, but not in a remotely scaleable manner. We have greenhouses, and we can fill them with hundreds of lampstones each of which is about ten weeks of engineering effort, and then about a quarter of our crops seem willing to very halfheartedly grow. 

Maybe I could do something with that. Though it doesn't sound like the best conditions to try it for the first time.

Probably not. Unless you can fetch us a Silmaril - and I assume my cousins have explained the manifest reasons not to do that - conditions can't be expected to get any better, though. 

True.

How much of a priority is food compared to forges or firepower?

That depends on when and in what kind of condition we can expect them to come across the Ice.

Not a priority until they get here, then?

I'm also much more confident I can do anything about fire than food.

Growing food takes time. If they're leaving soon then it's a priority now. But let's start with fire. He gestures at the building ahead of them. It has a handful of wary guards, who stand aside as they approach. 

Fire is basic. What I can do depends mostly on what happens to be in there, not on what I can figure out how to do.

They go into the building. It's the first time in what seems like forever that anything has been actually hot. To the sense Maitimo figured out he doesn't have, the forges have a lot more variety than the Ice did. There, it was more or less nothing but unoccupied space and physical matter, with almost no spirits other than elementals. Objects here have ownership, history, purposes, countless themes that would take different specialists to even recognize. But it's the elemental makeup that's useful here, and there is no shortage of fire. Many of the smaller elementals, the pigeons or rats of the magic world, flee when noticed. It might be possible to notice clouds of sparks or smoke appearing in places Amber looks at. Others, especially the larger ones, are entrenched enough to stay put.

Okay, there is definitely enough to work with here. More than I hoped, even.

Lovely. Do you need me to ask people to leave? I can't do it without attracting suspicion but I can certainly do it. 

I really don't need more suspicion. The bigger problem is that people would have to notice a nearly fuelless forge anyway.
Could we pass it off as a song that's not repeatable for some reason?

The explanation of you that I'm leaning towards is that you can make song effects permanent, which would be terrifying and have tremendous implications and also any new capabilities you manifest can be explained away as my cousins composing something new. Unless you think that crosses the knowledge thresholds. So - a song of my cousins' that you won't teach us - that's common, people don't always teach their songs and my cousins have cause for anger with us - but have agreed to put in place on our forges. You can have a purported agenda there or it can be assumed I smiled winningly, whatever suits you. I can tell it without any lies, that was among the hypotheses I considered when trying to figure you out. 

That explanation should be safe. Could you get away with it being a thing Men in general can do?

The Nolofinweans wouldn't easily believe that, since if it were true their camp would be warmer. So if the armies talk to each other they'd notice it's inconsistent.
Long-lasting song effects wouldn't explain any direct combat, but I can just try not to be seen fighting.

Speaking of which, do you think you could make me a few of these, enchanted so they can hurt a valarauka? She thinks of the bullet shape. Right now I can't kill one unless someone has already punctured it from inside sword range. The Nolofinweans are working on a clever approximation, but without forges it's not even sharp and they can't make anything that'd survive hitting the target whether it worked or not.

The armies are going to talk to each other enough for that to be a problem. Maybe you can do it, but not as often as you want? Maybe I can tell my people that our knowledge of your capabilities is a secret from them. I don't know if Nolofinwe has any spies here but perhaps he'd be good enough to help me manage secrecy on this, I can promise not to otherwise exploit the knowledge. Or I can find them. And yes, we can make those. 

So, I came here and you convinced me to help without telling Nolofinwe about it? I do think the real Nolofinwe would help, but I'm not sure what the spies would think is going on.

There are at least some benefits to a reputation for convincingness that far exceeds my actual capabilities. People are willing enough to treat 'then Maitimo convinced them'  as an explanation. 

You don't think you could have convinced me?

Anyway, that explanation sounds like it'd work to deflect suspicion if I do it now. We didn't want there to be witnesses to how I can make songs last longer.

"Your attention," he says mildly, though they already have it. "This is Amber, the first of the race of Men. The Enemy told us much of the capacities of Men but there are things he didn't tell us. He did not say, for example, that Men have the capacity to make the benefits of musical magic permanent. This explains many of the questions that have rather enchanted us for the last week, and I commend everyone who was thinking in that direction. Macalaure's coming to help and we're going to make the forges run hotter with less fuel; we need the space to ourselves. Please leave."

(Amber manages not to laugh at "first of the race of Men.")

I'll need maybe a couple gallons of water, but there's no rare materials involved. And how soundproof is it in here?

It's not, but Macalaure can sing louder than whatever you're doing. 

That works.

I could do it entirely with symbols, but it'll go better if I speak. I found out how good your hearing is when the Nolofinweans overheard me trying something. Passing it off as a weird human religion wouldn't help here, not since people will know it does things.

My brother's on his way. Was that statement sufficiently not-lying for the spirits' purposes, by the way?