The muddled last thoughts of one Gelmir of Nargothrond by Huinare

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The muddled last thoughts of one Gelmir of Nargothrond

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There are my feet walking in the darkness, always in the darkness, though my flesh is not in the darkness all the time for I began to sweat when the sun rose.  We must have begun walking at night, for it was cold then, and my flesh, yes, still knows the difference between sun and stars, not like my poor eyes which know only the one thing.  The army stinks around me, mostly Orcs, maybe some of those once Maiar among the officers, and we have all been walking.  

“Are we stopping at all?” I dare ask the darkness, the weariness of my feet consuming me; and someone cuffs me, “Your fate is pain, either way, Elf, perhaps your tongue would like to join your eyes?”

This would not do at all, so I shut my mouth firmly upon my tongue, and my hands are bound behind me, so all that’s left is my feet.  Walking, my feet burn and protest, but they are useful to me, more useful than the rest now, bearing me toward the end.

I know, since I am out of doors, in the dark outside the dark of Angband, and am with an army, that they are taking me back toward the people I came from.  Maybe, they intend to make an example of me, here is what happens to those who take up arms against the Dark and brag so freely of the Light.  Yet all of them, Orcs and Elves, would be deceived, for the example was made years ago and I was its object and its witness, and the world is much changed.  

The earliest recollections of childhood are of the great branching gleaming of the Two Trees, under which my family once picnicked, hale against a bright blue sky, stark without clouds–and of the fires, torches along the quays glinting off steel, lanterns splashed with vivid blood, and great white ships burning later in the cold.  I do not remember the singing or the weeping they speak of.  Always my eyes were cleverer than my ears, but not anymore, that was part of the lesson of Angband.  But then–then, I was always enamored with the light, as a child and later.  The Noldor who had been adults when our people left Valinor didn’t care much to speak of the Valar, but some of our younger generation who remembered only the light from that place were curious about those matters.  We sought out lore of Varda from those who would tell it, or found the rare neglected scroll and brought its hymns and poetry to light in our little circle of faith.  And with our own vague history that lay now far behind darkness and ice, we melded the reverence of the Avari for the stars.  Light was the ultimate goodness and therefore the ultimate power, we prated eagerly in our little meeting hall in Nargothrond, and we congratulated each other on our clear sight and our piety.

My elder brother Gwindor scoffed a little at this: “While it is good to have hope and optimism, one must be realistic.  Our enemy, too, has their own province, and its strength is no less simply because you do not approve of it.”

But at this I laughed, for I had not seen yet the reality of battle, being long apprenticed to a healer with calm, mild eyes which had in them the light of the Blessed Realm.  When the wounded, those who had survived, were brought back from the wars, the worst of their wounds had already been cleaned and tended to.  So I would change bandages and apply dressings and remove stitches, singing while I did so if the patient did not mind, and I would walk away humming my hymns to the Light knowing that I had done good work.

Yet finally Gwindor’s patronizing and disapproval grew too much, and I rose up in indignation, determined to prove the strength of my faith, and enlisted in Felagund’s army.  “You shall see, Gwindor, that true faith brings strength unlooked for in dark hours.  I guard the light of Valinor in my eyes, and, even if I come not back, the Light I bring will daunt or dissuade many foes.”

“Daunt one or two, maybe, before you are slain like a partridge, but you shall dissuade no one, Gelmir.  These enemies care nothing for the Light.”

This I shook my head at and I put it out of my mind, and with the army of Nargothrond I marched to aide our kin in battle against the Dark.  Before ever we could get there, waddling through the fens, an ambush overflowed from the reed and muck and bramble.  All that I had envisioned among my songs and books, vivid and convincing in my inner eye, did not present itself to my vision then; no, all I saw were terrible faces drawn with malice and bloodlust, and the Light of my eyes cowed no glares and stayed no blades.  I cried out to Varda and tried then to slay my foes, vicious in my terror, without any of the grace I had thought was in me–ha! Grace?  How often had I practiced my swordsmanship when Gwindor urged me?–and I did not even fell one before they took me down amid jeering and laughter.  Something hit me over the head.

My next understanding was of being in a cell, with a wall torch and grey-red stone, and the torch threw upon the indifferent walls the shadow of a tall person with strange hair that seemed neither light nor dark or maybe both.  The person considered me for a time, and I found I was too afraid to speak, though I tried to think of Varda and Light and strength.  In fact, I had never felt less strong.

At length he showed me a trinket, a medallion with the emblem of Guilin’s house.  “This was found on your person.  Young sir, what was a Noldorin lording evidently unschooled in battle doing raving about Varda and floundering in the muck of Serech?  You didn’t manage to slay a single Orc for all that you were bearing a fine blade.  I find this intriguing.  Are you afraid?”

I had tried not to be, but when he said that I noticed that I was trembling like the leaves in a high wind.  “It does not matter,” I said–fool!–, “for the light of Varda on high shall never dim, no matter what becomes of me here.”

He stared at me for a moment, then laughed, his mirth so profound that all the fearful air left his face, and my inner eye threw me a vision of my brother Gwindor laughing as a child.  “Do you really think it does not matter?  These are high ideals, to care not a jot for your own suffering as long as your Vala remains untroubled.  I deem you speak false, Elf–no, not that you lie, but that you speak in naïveté.”

I did not know what to say to that, my words had all left me and they were never all that strong with me in the first place.  

“I think,” he said with a smile that was more amused than menacing, but with menace in his bearing nonetheless, a lordly, wry sort of menace, this was surely Sauron himself, ”that you will renounce Varda before all is done.”

I shook my head again but already my fear was clutching tight around my lungs and I said nothing.  Sauron left and others arrived, baser and crude others, with knives that cut first my clothes away from me and then my hair and then into my skin.  First I could not speak for fear, and then I would not speak even against pain because they wanted me to scream or cry, and I tried to keep the thought of Varda’s pale stars in my mind, Light, uncontestable, uncontested, above my tribulations.  Already the order I had always made of the world was fraying like unhemmed cloth, I had never seen a knife wound from this angle, this incoming agony, and then they laughed the more and prised my mouth open and forced me to lick my blood from the knife.  One rummaged around on my body, his hands going lower until he shoved himself up against me, and I finally cursed them and struck out.  They jeered and held me down, and I cursed freely now and told them all about how I would slay them, and Varda was silent and each of them spilled something into me like a viscous incursion of darkness.  They left me bloody and disgusted in the dark, in the chains, and I wished then for death and also to inflict death.

Often they came back, not always with the knife but with brands or wires or other things, and always with their jeering and viscous incursions.  The only light that ever came into the darkness there was that of their torch which they placed in the scone to illuminate my humiliation, and that torch I hated, when it was dark there was peace and silence.  The hymns I sang ebbed into questions.  I asked Varda if she was watching, if Light itself watched as that torch did, impotent or indifferent all that took place.

Sauron stuck his head into the cell once.  I knew it was he who had allowed and ordered their actions, but he seemed benevolent and beautiful then because he stayed in the doorway.  He did not carry pain in with him, he only caused it to appear, with a small gesture or a brief word, and that was power.  What power had Varda shown, here?  My pride and my certainty humbled, I pleaded with him for mercy, for death if that were the greatest mercy on hand, and he said only, “Do you deny Varda?”

“No,” I wailed, I never wished to, not even then, but no, I did wish to, and I was too afraid to, I was proud still.

Sauron shrugged at me and left, and I screamed after him in a flurry of words but still not the ones he wanted, and the minions returned.  I was made frantic and fey by the knowledge of what I was supposed to do, the only thing I could do to stop the pain, to stop the light of the torch, and I bit all of them while they did their work.  I bit the last one so hard a morsel of skin and fingernail came off in my mouth, and he snarled and clutched his one hand in the other, and I glared into his eyes and he shrank back.

A small victory in such a place is really no small thing, and power glanced off me as though the sun stabbed through a hole in a rushing crowd of slate cloud.  I stared the minions down, Varda herself had come to dwell behind my eyes, and then one of them said, “I don’t really care for that look he’s giving us, lads, do you?”

“It’s downright insolent.”

“We can remedy this right quickly.”

Two grabbed me and threw my back against the wall, and my skull hit hard, and while I reeled terror slithered in around my eyes and then pain, a greater anguish than I’d yet had, and the torch went out.  I screamed long, a scream that seemed to halt for no breath, the terror worse than the pain, and mercifully it overbore me and I departed into dreams of dread.

I woke in darkness and pain, and I cursed darkness, and I cursed light.  I was afraid to feel my face with my hands, and I kept very still and sobbed and gibbered until I heard the door open.  If the torch came in I saw it not, and footsteps approached me.  I curled myself into the corner like a pillbug whose defense is useless against a far larger and greater power, and I expected pain, and only a kindly hand arrived, stroking my hair back from my face.  “Gwindor,” I sobbed, stupid and overwrought.

“Not as such,” came Sauron’s voice, very calm.

His kindness and his power and his ability to kill all of the light converged then, and I spoke in contempt and adoration.  “I renounce Varda, my lord.  Your master is the stronger.  What do you want from me?”

“Only that.  We may yet make some use of you, but in the meantime no one else shall trouble you.”

“Thank you.  Wait, please, don’t leave.”

Sauron had withdrawn his hand.  He laughed faintly.  “Excuse me?”

“I’m afraid,” I explained stupidly.

“Because of me.”

“Because I was wrong.”

Sauron sounded pleased now, “It is good to admit these things,” and his footsteps retreated toward the door, and the door was shut.

What does one do, in the darkness, sightless, lightless, with only the company of pain?  There is no way to bear it in defiance.  If it turns out, and it does turn out, that the gods are sadists, there is use in being a masochist, and so I thought upon all that had humbled my hubris and shown me the truth, and I was grateful for its ungentle intervention, and I hoped to serve it.  I hoped to act in service of the Dark, as once I had given myself to the Light.  Power is not in Light, this they showed me clearly, their Dark illuminated all the truth as in a blinding flash.  Knowing they would eventually kill me, I could no longer resent it or even much fear it, and the only fear was a dreadful delight for death ends the pain of the world.

So I march here amid the army of Angband, as the sun’s wretched heat begins to fade and I rejoice that outside of the darkness behind my eyes the world’s light is going into night.  This shall be a bad night for the enemy, I believe this to be so, and I am glad of it.  They sing still of day and hope and valor, but they know nothing of truth, they who have not been taken down into the center of darkness and life and blinded and made to see.  I despise them, and what I was, my stupidity, their folly, and I will laugh if they die, as I shall die.

I know, I am going to die, I desire that my death will serve the Dark as my life was unable to serve the Light.  

The army stops, and clanks and rustles for a time.  The stench of Orc draws away and someone new comes up near me, one of the Captains.  They take me up a long slope, a small embassy by the sound of their fewer footfalls.

“We have many more such at home, but you must make haste if you would find them,” the herald speaks, while something prickles in my veins as though he is there too, my brother Gwindor, but what are the chances? and if Gwindor were here, I should be glad that he sees me like this, wouldn’t he like to gloat that I was wrong?  But the thing is, he was wrong too, he thinks he can fight this darkness and I hope he learns as I did, I hope they all learn in flame and blindness.

“…for we shall deal with them all when we return, even so.”

Someone grabs my arms, a cutting from both sides, a saber coming down heavily.  One side falls away at once, but the other stroke was clumsy and needs to fall again.  They release me and I stagger and sprawl, and it falls again along the backs of my legs, and I am not afraid, it is all going to end and then not even the light which memory can summon to the inner eye, I am afraid and I am laughing, someone grabs my hair and tilts my head back, and somewhere a voice screams my name.