The Birds of the Temple Garden by Huinare

---

The Heretic

Who is this heretic, and why is she here?

In which the garden also sees some inmprovements, or not.

---

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.