The Birds of the Temple Garden by Huinare

 THE INCURIOUS

The obsidian flung fleeting, evasive glints of light back at Mairon as the blade shook, ever so slightly, in the acolyte’s hand. “I couldn’t,” the young man apologized.

“Couldn’t what?”

Thrown by the question, Aksnuzîr attempted to find delicate words for the grotesquely obvious, quickly reduced himself to stammering, and concluded with a sudden interest in the floor, “Kill the woman, your reverence.”

“Well, yes, that is apparent.” Mairon’s voice hung artfully suspended between amusement and annoyance. Aksnuzîr, gazing compulsively back upward, noted the same ambiguity in his face. “What aspect of that process prevented your carrying it out? That the heretic is female?”

“No.”

“Clapped helpless in chains?”

“No.”

“Perhaps you didn’t want to get blood on your new robes?”

“No, reverence. I…” The Adûna’s hand had begun to shake a bit more, tiring of holding up the sheepishly proffered knife. The high priest of Melkor had made no move to accept it, yet to withdraw the hand now would appear cowardly or impolite.

“Don’t tell me it’s pity.” Mairon tilted his head as though looking away into the shadows of the temple, but still watched sidelong out of one dark eye, oddly vulturine.

“No! No pity here for heretics and subverters,” Aksnuzîr replied, honestly enough, too enthusiastically. The decision to back out of the cell and leave its occupant unscathed, which had seemed merely humiliating and career-jeopardizing at the time, had acquired a distinct sense of peril now that he stood here.

“As you say. I have exhausted my guesses.”

“I...I ought to have, your reverence. It was a momentary lapse in resolve. I shall go back at once–” The Adûna made to bow out.

Mairon held a hand up, a quiet and small gesture worth multitudes. “You shall explain.”

Aksnuzîr took a slow breath to steady himself. The habitually cavalier attitude which had cost him friends and lovers here and there, but which had propelled his career effectively, seemed now as far from him as was the sun from this place of shadow and muttering torchlight. “The heretic, your reverence, did not fear–No, that’s not true, it wasn’t that she did not fear to die. But, she did not fear me, if that makes sense. She looked at me square in the eye, she said, ‘If you’re to be the last person I see, I would see you, I would know who you are.’”

Mairon’s attention snagged on the last bit, gaze seeming to focus on something beyond the clammy-handed acolyte. “Such curiosity at the very edge of ruin.”

Grateful for even a momentary respite from the high priest’s scrutiny, Aksnuzîr unthinkingly allowed himself to sag a bit in relief. Having offered the knife back hilt-first, he had suffered an increasingly acute awareness of the sheer blade angled toward his own innards.

The dark eyes snapped back toward him so abruptly that he recoiled, nearly stabbing himself in the process.

A vague smile, a flash of contempt. “What are you curious about, Aksnuzîr?” Mairon said quietly.

“I–Nothing, my lord.”

“I see that. So, you couldn’t dispense with the condemned because you could not bear to look upon her. Or to have her look upon you.”

“Yes.”

Mairon stepped closer with the fire sparking off his eyes in much the same way as it did off the obsidian blade. “Why do a thing if you cannot fully embrace its ramifications? What other way is there?”

Aksnuzîr was certain now that his career in the new religious order was quite finished. Yet it was surely ridiculous to imagine that anything else might be finished as well, that the novice who erred in hubris or naiveté would be dealt with so harshly. There had been nothing in the contract, that was to say, the vows, about such severe sanctions being incurred under any circumstances, had there? Surely he’d have recalled a thing like that. It would be illegal. Yet the light of that stare was enough to make the acolyte attempt finally, compulsively, to draw the knife back out of reach.

Serpent-quick, the high priest’s hand was around his wrist. No, not obsidian, but the seething gold clots of the earth’s blood when Minultârik coughed it up from its unfathomable pits. “You think I am going to stab you?”

“I’m very sorry, my lord, I made a mistake. Respectfully–please allow me to terminate my service. I didn’t know, I didn’t understand it would be like this. I thought it would be like–killing a fish, or–”

“You didn’t think.”

The Adûna sobbed, or laughed, understanding at least that this was the worst possible condemnation. In defiance or despair, he tried to repossess himself of his wrist, making a small tear where the knife’s point barely brushed the front of his robe.

Mairon twitched, briefly, as though tempted to drive the blade in, then his features slid into an impassive smirk. “None of that. You may be a craven braggart with a mind about as deep as a puddle in drought, but all is not lost. Everybody is good for something. You are distraught, and you are tired. Return to your quarters and rest.”

Almost before Aksnuzîr could grasp what had occurred, the knife was no longer in his possession, Mairon was walking away with it, and he himself was left unscathed. “Your reverence, please permit me to–to offer my apologies, and–”

The high priest of Melkor glanced back over his shoulder, serene. “No need. Rest easy. We’ll find something for you to do; watch over the gardens, perhaps…”

. . . . . . .**||** . . . . . . .

INTERLOGUE: The Garden

Aksnuzîr’s window overlooks the garden, or, more accurately, the low storage shed. In times before, the temple compound was a commune of sorts for star-worshipers who craved a simple life that would not crowd their devotion. The commune was disbanded some time ago as those faithful trickled out of Arminalêth, and no one recalls much about it other than the birds. It began with a shelter for wounded or foundling hawks and eagles in a corner of the garden–these having some important association with the consort of the star-worshipers’ goddess–and had come to encompass myriad sorts of birds who had free rein of the place.

The garden, with its vegetable plots and duck ponds farther field, has fallen into disuse save for the ornamental flower and rock gardens near the compound. The birdkeepers stayed on long after the rest of the star-worshipers left, since there is no harm in a sanctuary for injured birds which are seen less and less as the cities grow, and they prudently ceased to talk about the stars. Perhaps, in a generation or two, they ceased also to think about the stars and were content simply to have a place to live quietly with their winged charges as unrest grew outside their walls.

Mairon chose the place from among a list of derelict properties Pharazôn provided for the purpose of establishing a temple. The three remaining birdkeepers, a married couple with a niece, had begun to argue that the sanctuary was not derelict, but had soon perceived that departure was better than argument. They took favorite or exceptionally fragile birds off in their cart and receded into the unflinching green of the countryside. Others of their charges linger in the garden, thriving or dying, unwittingly singing their songs now to Melkor.

Chapter End Notes

Adûnaic terms were mostly located via this helpful resource: http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/adunaic.htm.
Arminalêth. Armenelos
Minultârik. Meneltarma
Adûna. Númenorean [? Still a little vague on this]

The name of Aksnuzîr is my construction. Presumption is that aksan (Q. Axan, “law, rule”) drops its final vowel before uzîr (Q. -(e)ndil, “friend”) is affixed. [I thought it was appropriate, given that I view the dear fellow as a failed law student in the privacy of my thought.]

THE HERETIC

The cell had formerly been a cellar, semi-subterranean, two small and murky windows up near the ceiling admitting an obscure light. Now no food nor libation were to be found there, other than the tin pitcher of water; the food, such as the occupant’s ration had been, was nearly a day gone.

The door swung inward. While the prisoner squinted, the lantern’s bearer ducked through the doorway and shut the door behind him. Kathunâ had not seen this person before, but his identity was fairly evident from his garb and mien. She considered her options and did nothing.

“You frightened my acolyte.” The high priest’s voice was not unfriendly, and not loud. It did not need to be loud to be heard.

The prisoner felt herself grin a bit strangely and gesture at or with her manacled wrists, which kept her from straying more than a few paces from their anchoring point in the wall.

“Ah.” Mairon tilted his head and peered down across the small space at the woman who attempted gamely, albeit flinchingly, to maintain an even stare. “Yet we see that your gaze bears no chains, and nor, I presume, do your words, could you locate them at this time. Indeed Aksnuzîr reported that you spoke some interesting things to him.”

This seemed to require confirmation or denial. Kathunâ’s eyes darted briefly in search of words. “If someone is going to–to obliterate my being, it would be courteous of them to deal with me as a person. An interaction, not a process.”

Mairon checked a faint grin and tilted his head in the other direction, keeping a grip on the silent eyes, a turquoise-hazel. The angle of the afternoon’s filtered light shifted to reveal a patch of aimless, purposeful motes moving in the still air. “Courtesy wanes in these days, or so says every mortal generation.”

“Are you mortal?”

The high priest of Melkor had gathered that he was something of a living folk legend in Númenor, reputed to possess a long and bloody history and supernatural abilities. Not everyone believed in such things. No one asked him to his face. Even Pharazôn, as though half-consciously afraid to discover that he had essentially muzzled a dragon with parchment, declined to ask directly, which was convenient.

Mairon had not expected the question, here. He had seen his share of doomed creatures, which became often blunt in the face of their own extinguishing, but usually that bluntness comprised laments, curses, pleas. He examined the situation for the space of a few heartbeats and said, deliberately, “No.”

A last mote caught the end of the dilute sunbeam before it faded.

Crossing the small room in a few paces, Mairon set the lantern down on the floor as he crouched to eye level with the woman who sat with her knees drawn up. Kathunâ recoiled a bit, mechanically as one does in the face of uncertainty and power, but remained otherwise still and silent. The person regarding her, even crouched on his heels like a traveler at a campfire, emitted some uncanny air of self-possession and authority; it was nearly overwhelming, although perhaps her dread was magnifying that perception. He had strange eyes, darkling umber to the careless glance, swimming with warm molten colors. He said at length, softly, “What was your heresy?”

The prisoner’s gaze, no longer flinching from his, held a dozen different hues of fear, skepticism, awe. “Declining to affirm Melkor as the god of all the earth.”

“How did this come about?”

Surely he must know. “Sir, your agents raided–”

Mairon raised his brows.

“Your–people,” Kathunâ resumed, “uncovered that village of Amandili hidden in away in the mountains, within the very sight of this city, and took into custody those who did not flee.”

“And why did you not flee?”

“I would have, but I was in the village prison at the time.”

“You are touring Númenor’s prisons.”

“Not intentionally. That one would more accurately be called the mayor’s brother-in-law’s tool shed. Unfortunately, they took the tools out first.”

“A shame. Why did they imprison you in the mayor’s brother-in-law’s tool shed?”

Kathunâ was not quite sure how the grave situation had taken this turn, but said, with a certain ironic satisfaction, “Heresy.”

Mairon blinked slowly. “What heresy?”

“Declining to affirm the Valar as the gods of all the earth.”

He snickered, inaudibly, visibly. Then his tone grew almost remonstrative. “Were you planning to tell us this before or after we executed you?”

“I tried. I asked that one–Aksni–”

“Aksnuzîr.”

“–Aksnuzîr, if I might not speak with the high priest. He said His Reverence had no interest in the ravings of backward-minded heretics.”

Mairon let his breath out between his teeth, in something almost resembling a sigh. “Why did you not tell him you were irreligious–or, at any rate, not affiliated with the cult of Aman?”

“I did, sir. He said that I was trying to sell my own gods down the river in order to save my skin.”

“Ah.” The glint in the other’s eye was frightening, and Kathunâ was glad it was directed at the middle distance. He blinked and his gaze became a still, impassive pool before shifting back to her. “Aksnuzîr must have thought you were lying. I know you are not. I can see.”

“Yet does it matter?” she blurted.

Mairon studied the heretic intently. “Technically, no. We assumed you were one of the self-styled ‘Faithful,’ that group being most likely to blaspheme against Lord Melkor. Regardless of the reasons, however, you would not affirm Melkor as Lord of the Earth.” He paused. “What were your reasons?”

She stared back, unflinching now. “I don’t believe Melkor is the Lord of the Earth. I will not falsely affirm a thing.”

The high priest again tilted his head on one side, like a bird examining something shining or dying. “I hope such lofty abstractions of truth and integrity are worth it to you.” Retrieving the lantern, he rose to his feet. “Aksnuzîr has demonstrated that he is not prepared to assume any more than basic tasks. Have no dread of him, at least.”

The lantern’s light left the room, the door closed behind it, and the murky illumination through the window resituated itself.

. . . . . . .**||** . . . . . . .

INTERLOGUE: The Garden

Aksnuzîr tends the garden. He pulls weeds, he rakes, and he collects eggs from the chickens which the high priest recently acquired and situated in a coop near the pond. Mairon has taken a liking to the garden and wants the temple to produce some of its own food. Eventually, he assures Aksnuzîr, once there are more priests and acolytes, the garden will be adequately tended. For now, Aksnuzîr toils alone to bring order to it. He approaches the coop, and once he has come forth with the eggs and his back is turned, the rooster thumps against the backs of his knees in a flurry of wing, lurid tailfeather, and sharp spur.

He kicks at the rooster and calls the most heinous curses he knows down upon it. The rooster continues to escort him along the path, thumping against the backs of his knees. Aksnuzîr slips and drops the eggs. The hens rush in madly to eat the contents of their broken shells. The rooster lunges halfheartedly at Aksnuzîr’s shins before turning away to dive into the cannibalistic fray.

It would be desirable to leave, to simply slip quietly out of the door and out of the temple of Melkor forever. Two hired men patrol the perimeter of the compound, to keep strangers out. Aksnuzîr is already in, and afraid to pass them. A large bird, like a vulture or an eagle but not of a kind he has ever seen on Númenor, occasionally circles high above, a dark silhouette against the sun. He feels as though it observes him in the garden, which is madness.

Aksnuzîr digs holes in the garden, to receive tall red and white flowers from out of large pots. A worm writhes out. A mind about as deep as a puddle in drought, he remembers the high priest saying. He brings the blade of the shovel down perpendicular to the flowerbed, grinds the edge into the worm until there are two hapless halves. The dark silhouette sweeps over, once, unobserved, before vanishing into the sheer cliffs above Arminalêth.

Chapter End Notes

The name of Kathunâ is my construction (and quite possibly inept). It seems that kathu = “all”  and anâ  = “human [neuter]”, in Adûnaic. The character went unnamed until halfway through Chapter 2, when it occurred to me to riff on the title character of the Mediaeval morality play Everyman, make of that whatever you will.

THE DEVOUT

_______Some weeks later

“My understanding,” the youngest of the acolytes held forth, with due humility and self-importance, “is that death and life are inextricably intertwined. With the noble–the notable, beg pardon,”–she was on her second glass of wine–”exception of the inert life, the plants and soforth, all life causes death in order to perpetuate its life. If we fear to be a cause of death, is that not to say that perhaps we fear our very life?”

Saklinzil paused and glanced into her goblet as though noting an approving nod there. In their respective places at the table, the high priest and the king sat very still. It may have been the exceeding dim light in the place, the odd angle of the candleflames under tinted glass shades, but the two men looked expressionless, hollow-eyed.

This hardly fazed Saklinzil, a distant relative of the king’s. Possibly the distance was not so very great, reflected Mairon, given the breeding habits of noble houses. The young lady was classically pallid, raven-haired, and grey-eyed, possessed of a physical delicacy and grace; before having done with her long hair and lavish wardrobe, she’d cut a striking figure in court. Even so, something had ever seemed inexplicably but persistently incongruous about her then, but that might not be chalked up to inbreeding, since it was gone–or rather, integrated–now.

“Or perhaps we consider ourselves plants,” Saklinzil added for emphasis.

Pharazôn clapped his hands, once, in a momentary state of high amusement which was presently ousted by a brooding consideration. He leaned forward a bit, into the light, the mask of shadow drawing back to reveal an aging and fairly unremarkable countenance. Mairon also leaned a ways into the light, chin on the back of his hand, pleasantly attentive.

“That would be a great shame,” the Númenorean king mused, “to be as a plant, passive, awaiting in good faith the blessing or doom wrought by those above–sun, rain, beast, Man… Indeed, such passive things take not the shape of their own will, if such they have, but the will of any which would use them.” The parallel furrows proceeding from the inner edges of his eyebrows grew deeper, encroaching farther into his high forehead. He stabbed the air excitedly with one forefinger. “And that is why–”

He stopped, eyes widening and then settling back into their hooded glower. In the anticlimactic pause, Saklinzil took a subdued sip of her wine.

Pharazôn turned his head to peer full at his host. “What would you say of this tree, Melkrubên? If the histories be true, this mere plant has lived for many generations of Men–of Adûnâim!–and has been regarded more highly by certain factions than are the kings themselves. It neither gives nor receives death. It is not shaped–rather, it shapes those who hold it in reverence.”

Mairon let his hand drop back to the edge of the table and eyed the king somberly. The White Tree had done him no favors in entering the conversation at this junction, but things might still be salvaged. “That is no typical plant, lord. It came first from the Undying Lands. They–do things differently there.”

“‘Differently,’ eh? Do undying plants go about using Men as footstools?”

The high priest of the Temple of Melkor smirked. “Metaphorically, that may not be far from the truth.”

“I am too dense for your metaphors,” snapped Ar–Pharazôn. He took a deep draught from his cup, setting it back on the table with a vindictive clack.

“I should not say that,” Mairon said mildly. Saklinzil noted that he did not seem the least bit uneasy to have the king’s moody impatience trained upon him. “I might make bold to assume that you have seen already what I am intimating. Just before you spoke of the tree, you said…”

“Ah. I was going to say, that is why we do not have dealings with the West anymore. The Lords of the West only ever conveyed, via their smug Elvish puppets, that they wanted us to be as plants. A little garden full of people that they could keep fenced and trained and trimmed upon this island. As far as I can tell, these Valar never wanted us to be our own, but to sit here passively in the shape of their will, so that they might glance our way and congratulate themselves on their benevolence.” Pharazôn’s voice had risen steadily until he was nearly shouting, but on this occasion it did not strike Mairon as a careless tirade. Sometimes the man was eloquent, nearly admirable in his pride.

More often, he was merely vain beyond all reason. He also thought himself clever. Mairon smiled at the man’s cleverness, and at the thought of how little it would avail him in the end. “They are much as you say, lord. They forbid you to venture to the Undying Lands yourselves, saying that it would sap your life, yet there they produce mere witless plants that persist for many lives of Men.”

Pharazôn nodded and nodded whilst sawing a bite of roast swan off his plate. “Where does all this life of theirs come from? If, as Saklinzil was saying and as you seem to support, sentient life must take life in order to persist, then these Valar must bathe daily in blood.”

Saklinzil grinned very faintly. Unlike Aksnuzîr, she’d had no qualms about dispensing with one of the other two who had been captured in the raid on the mountain village. Excepting Oromë, Mairon had never seen a Vala so bloody as that young lady of noble breeding had been in that hour. Saklinzil was useful because she believed everything that Mairon told her about Melkor, unreservedly. She was not particularly credulous as a rule, but most anyone could become so, given a circumstance which validated their own private understanding of the world.

“As I said,” Mairon answered the king, “things are done rather differently in Aman. They need not take life in a literal sense. They simply deny life to others. They would not have you know this, of course; why else would they wish to keep you away from their lands, to conceal from you their faces? All of the potential, all of the experience and innovation that might be, if the lifespan of Men were not so lamentably brief–this they pour like wasted mead upon–upon trees!”

Pharazôn sat with his fork raised halfway to his mouth, where the subdued light bounced off it as his hand shook. “None of it surprises me.”

“What would happen,” Saklinzil put in, measuredly, “if we felled Nimloth?”

The king stared at her, then at Mairon, and food at the end of his fork continued wobbling. “Could we–?”

The high priest did not air the delight which had overtaken his mind at Saklinzil’s suggestion. Pragmatically, he recited, “You are the King of Anadûnê, son of a regal lineage, lord of a coastal empire stretching–”

“Yes, yes,” Pharazôn waved his fork impatiently for silence. Mairon, subduing a jocular thought about Alqualondë, ducked his head to avoid the errant bite of swan as it launched from the cutlery and sailed over him. “I’m aware that I could have the damned thing chopped down right now. I meant, figuratively, could one do that. Even for those who don’t take it as a religious symbol, it’s, well, a cultural relic of great historical significance.”

“That may be. Culture changes, some things lose significance, others gain it.”

“I do not wish to speak of this now,” announced the king, but the thought had taken root. It might be tended carefully, reaped in its own time.

“As you please, lord.” Mairon shot a brief glance in Saklinzil’s direction and raised his cup.

. . . . . . .**||** . . . . . . .

INTERLOGUE: The Garden

Saklinzil explores the garden. It is good to traverse tall grass and shrubs without snagging or tripping on elaborate courtly clothing. The more the noble of Anadûnê dread death, the more they clutter their lives with silk and jewels. Yet the hand of death will not be stayed nor tempted by decadence.

Walking under the long-neglected arbor, Saklinzil looks for grapes. Only a few have put in an appearance, on the sunny top layer of the monstrously tangled old vine. These, the mockingbirds have been attending to. It is supposed to be Aksnuzîr’s task to frighten them away. Saklinzil considers lurking in wait until one of the pair comes for more grapes, then throwing a knife at the bird, but perhaps it would be ill-advised to do Aksnuzîr’s job for him.

She walks north, back toward the main structure of the compound, then turns east and walks the length of the building, first past the low cellar windows. One of the three heretics still inhabits a locked cellar, a situation about which His Reverence has been circumspect. Another acolyte, not Aksnuzîr, sometimes brings food and drink there.

Saklinzil reaches the corner of the main building and proceeds into a small copse of deciduous trees. Autumn is quiet at this low elevation and so near the coast, but a few of the trees sport feebly golden leaves.

It was well done, Mairon had said. It had been her idea, her own, to dispense with Nimloth, and he agreed that it would strengthen their position if they could bring it about. Saklinzil smiles to herself. Hearing a whirring sound, she looks up to where a large web hangs suspended between two low branches. A tiny iridescent green figure strains vainly to break loose. Saklinzil’s eyes widen and she goes forward, until she stands under the hummingbird, so close she could reach up to free it. She could reach up to crush it her fist.

She sits down on the leaf litter and watches for the spider’s return.

Chapter End Notes

The name of Saklinzil is my construction. Adûn. sakal = “shore/coast [inferred, per http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/adunaic.htm]”; inzil = “flower”.

Adûnâim: Númenoreans

 Melkrubên: Bên appears to be a commonly accepted fan construction of “servant” in Adûnaic (originating from here, I think?). But it does the job, which was to give Pharazôn some thing by which to call Mairon; I got the sense that the former would find any existing option awkward or unpalatable in some way, especially as the latter starts gaining power. “Servant of Melkor” is suitably vague in that one almost can’t tell whether it’s an honorific or a slight.

The occurrence of swan at the meal is a nod to the unique and somewhat disturbing song “Olim Lacus Colueram,"a part of my writing soundtrack for this tale, from Orff’s Carmina Burana.

Readers under the misapprehension that I pulled the hummingbird getting stuck in a spider web out of my imagination are advised to look up hummingbirds and spider webs on youtube, at least if that’s your thing. Also available on youtube, for the soulless among us, are videos of spiders and mantids snacking on hummingbirds.