The Maia and the Aulendili by Huinare

The Spike

Saruman sees Celebrimbor, and possibly wishes he hadn't.

Darker than the preceeding chapters, but I tried to stay in keeping with the earlier tone and not get very graphic.

Mairon readjusted his literal and figurative grips on the palantír and went on, «I hate to lose my temper with you, but you’ve allowed a valuable captive to escape.»

The person on the other end of his communication gathered himself painfully and rejoined with a weary pedantry, «That platform was one hundred and fifty meters above the ground, and I was unaware of the continuing meddling of the Eagles in–»

«Perhaps you thought that placing him on the roof might result in his falling while trying to climb down, that he might conveniently die thus and spare your tidy hands his blood?»

The old man, as it were, raised his eyes to glare directly into the palantír, which currently held no image for him other than a void darkness. Curumo had ever been more vexing than Mairon would care to admit, a paradox of cowardice and pride, attempts to intimidate him analogous to breaking a glass window and sifting through its shards. «You know little of the state of my hands.»

«Doubtless whatever bloody acts you implicate yourself in would seem mild to me,» Mairon said lightly, a new idea visiting him. «Let me show you something.»

The wizard drew back from the palantír as far as he was able. «I’m sure that telling me would suffice.»

Mairon called up still more of his will, envisioning both palantíri as mere extensions of it. Curumo put up a few moments’ physical and mental resistance before his hand fell onto the stone as though magnetized. Taking his memory of his last visit to the House of the Mírdain–the sensory components of it, nothing of his own thoughts or feelings at the time–, Mairon passed it along the channel of his will to be transcribed in the mind of the other.

In one of the workshops, the smiths had wrought a stockpile of simple iron weapons. It appeared these had been made with hasty innovation as their foe crossed Eregion; having already used all wood available to them, they had fashioned long skewers of iron to serve as pikes. These heavy weapons lay on the floor alongside the wall like menacing man-height toothpicks. Only one had seen any use, and that was currently impaling a wild-eyed Noldo who was prevented from collapsing only by the circumstance of his wrists being bound firmly to an anvil behind him.

Curumo blanched, trying fruitlessly not to see, at which Mairon’s impression of the old man in the palantír was curiously transposed with one of the dark-haired, beardless Maia who had been by turns colleague and adversary. «I don’t know whether you’d have met Tyelperinquar,» resumed the lord of Mordor. «He told me he barely remembers aught of Aman. Before, I passed pleasant time in work or conversation with him. But you see that did not change anything, when he placed himself in the way of my goals.»

In Mairon’s carefully tended and transmitted memory, his own past voice addressed Celebrimbor, “This could end quickly and with little pain. Indeed, it need not end at all; I made sure that quaint weapon of yours didn’t hit anything vital, and I can see to it that it is removed and that you recover completely. But, you must disclose to me the location of those crafts which you have fashioned only by my counsel and my favor.”

Celebrimbor’s breath came loudly and excruciatingly. “Now that I’ve seen your mind–? You may as well kill me.”

“That may be, but not soon nor easily if you stay this course. I have half a mind,” reflected Mairon, circling the anvil contemplatively, “to hand you off to a troll, affixed to this spike as you are, and haul you around raised on high like a banner. Do you think it would inspire more dread if you were dead, or still able to look your folk in the eye with such a visage of anguish as you bear now?”

Through the palantír, Curumo’s countenance was a silent snarl and he fought to break away. Mairon abandoned his memory in order to secure his grip on the wizard. «You always did have a weak stomach. I hope for your sake that you understand why I showed you this, Curumo, so that I need not show you any more.»

The other made no answer and sat like a sapling gripping the earth in the face of a flash flood, trying staunchly to conceal his horror–but no, more than that, to conceal something different which surpassed a mere aversion to violence. The palantír betrayed him here. His unhappiness went forth, diluted yet magnified, as though carried on a ripple left by a plunge into frigid water. Mairon, who had been utilizing the palantír longer and could more readily manipulate it, caught a fleeting impression from the old man’s still older mind, a large common room in someone’s home where chairs had been situated to place an Elf woman and her infant child at front and center. The distance and angle at which they were seen suggested that Curumo had been lurking in some corner when he observed the event. The woman was standing and holding the child whilst the people in the room recited some blessing or welcome, and the father and grandparents stood fanned out behind the mother. One of the grandmothers had reddish-brown hair, striking amidst the crowd of largely dark-haired individuals of which the child itself was one.

Mairon seized upon this brief glimpse, deducing readily enough what it meant. «So you did meet Tyelperinquar, after a fashion. I suppose that stands to reason. His great-grandfather, by all accounts, was dear to Aulë.» He was gratified when the other Maia winced faintly. «You knew Mahtan, at the least. And Nerdanel? Either Curufinwë?–not so much. It must trouble you to see this branch of Mahtan’s lineage come to so painful and ignoble an end. Why do you think I showed you that?»

Curumo’s presence, like a guttering torch, flickered in fear and contempt. «Because you are deranged?»

Few would dare say any such thing. Mairon’s hand twitched over the palantír as he oscillated between amusement and vexation, before he decided that the best reaction was none at all. «Whatever else I may be, I am practical; what reason would I have to show you that?»

A long pause ensued. Evidently reasoning that obduracy would only result in the prolonging of this unpleasant interaction, Curumo eventually ceded, «That was an apt demonstration of what occurs when your allies provide more offense than usefulness.»

«I couldn’t have said it better myself. I’d also urge you to reflect upon the fact that Celebrimbor had done, well, nothing at all to vex me, before he concealed the lesser Rings. Whereas you have intermittently caused me significant annoyance since before the world was formed. What pity do you think I’d have for you, if you were to renege upon our arrangement?»

«As much as I deserve. In this you have grown wise.»

The old man’s dark eyes looked directly into the palantír again at that, and Mairon examined them with interest. Curumo was eloquent, almost bizarrely convincing, but incapable–at least to one who understood him in some ways, if not in others–of flattery that did not hold some grain of truth.

«And what of those who are important to you?» Mairon resumed. «Of what consequence are they to me?»

The wizard again winced and looked away, in spite of himself. «I have long since betrayed or discarded anyone who may have met that criterion.»

Mairon wondered at this. «I’d have been tempted to assume so much, given what I know of your history. Yet every so often you manifest these seemingly random altruistic streaks. It’s apparent you cared for Mahtan’s family. If there is anyone else whose destruction might still move you, I assure you, I will find them, and I will stake them upon your loyalty.»

Curumo nodded once, subdued, desirous of ending the conversation. The lord of Mordor released him and he receded back from the palantír.

But Mairon remained by his own stone, refocusing it more broadly upon the tower of Orthanc, which had benefited but little from the wizard’s attempts to shield it from spying palantíri. The afternoon was drizzly, mostly overcast, and a mist was accumulating in the valley around the tower’s dark flanks. After some time, the old man appeared on the roof and stood in the wan light that still flooded over the mountains, watching westward, a solitary figure on a cold island in a sea of fog.

Chapter End Notes

This chapter fulfills my one of my three prompts for the SWG’s 2015 Fanworks Day participation, “The Nature of Fear” [“…write a story that explores fear in some way. Whether you try to scare your readers with a horror story or show how a character perceives and reacts to fear, your goal is to gain a greater understanding of this powerful emotion through your writing.”].